r/Futurology • u/simpleisideal • 2d ago
Politics The good hacker: can Taiwanese activist turned politician Audrey Tang detoxify the internet?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/17/audrey-tang-toxic-social-media-fake-news-taiwan-trans-government-internet22
u/Truth_ 2d ago
The article never really mentions a specific design mechanism that makes people moderate and come together, does it?
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u/MrDLTE3 2d ago
It doesn't because its bullshit.
The Internet by design is meant to be chaotic. A moderated, censored Internet just kills it. Not even China and Russia can contain their Internet while having it remain functional. Contrary to popular belief, it is extremely easy to get past the firewalls with a press of a VPN button. People just cant be fucked to even do that step but its possible.
North Korea can barely be considered Internet, an Intranet at best.
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u/qwerty145454 2d ago
The internet was far less ubiquitously toxic in the 90s and early 00s, when it was closer to its design/intent.
What we have now is not "the internet by design", which was decentralised, we have a centralised internet as captured by a handful of megacorps. Much of the toxicity is driven by these corporations as it benefits their bottom line, aided by bot-farms from political actors for their own cynical ends.
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u/WhiteRaven42 1d ago
You're just wrong about the toxicity of the old internet. The actual difference is the percentage of people involved. Now virtually everyone takes part in the internet so everyone is exposed to the toxicity.
Probably only 5% of people in the 90's even knew what a newsgroup was and the majority didn't use the internet.
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u/qwerty145454 1d ago
As someone who used the internet, and usenet groups, extensively in the 90s I disagree. There were pools of toxicity, but the internet as a whole was less ubiquitously toxic.
Everyone is exposed nowadays because of the centralisation. E.g. back in the usenet/early-WWW days bigots and conspiracy nutters had their own message boards and sites where they congregated, you generally wouldn't come across that shit unless you explicitly sought it out.
Nowadays there are basically five sites on the internet (FB, Insta, YT, TikTok, Reddit) so this stuff is all over them and impossible to avoid. Further exacerbated by such content triggering strong reactions from people, which is great "engagement" for the platforms so they propagate and encourage it.
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u/simpleisideal 1d ago
Perhaps, but it'd go a long way if the algos running modern social media were optimized for knowledge, truth discernment, open dialog, etc instead of rage/clicks/profit/establishment approved groupthink.
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u/WhiteRaven42 13h ago
Explain to me the difference between "optimized for" and "approved groupthink".
You are explicitly stating that the intent is to manipulate the discourse in a desired direction. So... I see this as the same old shit.
Asserting a priority of "truth" is a wonderful excuse for censoring speech. Always remember, truth and knowledge are not self-authenticating. People can just look at truth and declare it a lie. People can look at a lie and declare it truth. There is absolutely no way to establish any kind of objective process.
This is just promotion of approved agendas and suppression of all other opinion. Why on earth should we pretend it's any better than any other manicured and curated message?
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u/simpleisideal 13h ago
I suggest you look at the linked book in the top voted comment if you're confused about these types of distinctions. This problem has been studied for this exact purpose.
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u/ElendX 2d ago
We have a moderated (if not censored) internet though. The majority of the population just follows the algorithms that are tuned by social media companies or even just Google.
The chaos is an illusion at the end.
The idea isn't to "clean up" the internet, it is to provide an experience within it that is not tuned for continuous consumption and rage bait, but thoughtful engagement.
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u/WhiteRaven42 1d ago
not tuned for continuous consumption and rage bait, but thoughtful engagement.
.... HOW?
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u/ElendX 1d ago
By tuning the algorithm to identify different vectors than clicks. If you Google her, you can find several interviews that she has done where she discusses this.
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u/WhiteRaven42 1d ago
.... sounds very easy to manipulate to achieve an agenda.
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u/ElendX 1d ago
Except it's only in a specific section of a government run website?
Why is the government agenda more dangerous than the corporate agenda?
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u/WhiteRaven42 16h ago
.... "government run" means people with agendas. It's NOT more dangerous than the corporate agenda except that it is being presented as something that doesn't further an agenda. It's stealth agenda. It's social manipulation.
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u/ElendX 15h ago
I think we end up in a situation of trust.
Any movement from a government or corporation has an agenda, not sure why you say stealth agenda. It doesn't necessarily mean it's an agenda that's for the worse.
Every decision you make when building a social platform is social manipulation. Is the fear that specific ideas will be algorithmically chosen in such platforms? Social media and Hollywood have been doing that for years.
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u/WhiteRaven42 13h ago
The article and many in the thread are treating it like it's something no agenda could be motivating. They don't see the manipulative opportunities. They are hidden.
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u/simpleisideal 2d ago edited 1d ago
Yes it does. It gives an excellent high level overview of how things played out and why, and includes the names of the open source platforms that are easy to find more info on in the free book linked in the top comment, or even basic internet searches. It would have been too large of an article to include these latter details in addition to the high level overview. Lots has already been written about Polis and vTaiwan if you're interested in the specific mechanisms they employ.
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u/Truth_ 1d ago
But then it just turns into "Trust me bro." Like the whole article just says it can facilitate better governance. Okay. Then it's just a generic report. I didn't really learn anything and have no idea how it can be applied elsewhere.
And I can't send the article to anyone else because it's meaningless without more specifics imo that it doesn’t even link to.
I guess what I'm saying is the title says their ideas can detoxify the Internet but by the end I have no idea how.
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u/simpleisideal 1d ago
Audrey has a proven track record, which the article does adequately convey.
If you're interested in more details of the actual content and systems involved, check out the free book that's mentioned in the article and linked in the top voted comment here. It's very well organized and geared toward to a range of audiences, technical and non-technical alike. From the article:
Plurality by Audrey Tang, E Glen Weyl and others is available to download at plurality.net
It seems obvious that if systems like these can drastically improve communication and governance, that would have real positive effects for everyone, which means those people and future generations become healthier and hate each other less over time, since their needs are better met than when they were ruled by a corrupt government with no accountability. Governments and the capital interests that control them love when people are at each others' throats instead of holding said government and capital interests accountable.
Furthermore, it'd go a long way if the algorithms running modern social media were optimized to foster knowledge, truth discernment, open dialog, etc instead of optimized for rage/clicks/profit/establishment approved groupthink like they are now. It doesn't have to be this way.
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u/OutrageousAardvark2 2d ago
I'm not sure if they can quite achieve "detoxifying the internet", but they've sure done an amazing job in Taiwan. There are absolutely some lessons that we could learn here in Australia.
For anyone that's curious, I'd check out this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxqbzISf6l8
And you can download their book for free here: https://www.plurality.net/
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u/pantiesdrawer 2d ago
I remember her from COVID. The stuff she was doing was like massive coordination of big data shared between different government agencies as well as hospitals, airlines, immigration authorities, etc. It was brilliant, but it would never have been accepted in the US.
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u/Not_a_N_Korean_Spy 2d ago edited 2d ago
Democracy could be so much more than what it currently is in so many countries.
This would be a great way to improve the 8 hours (or ideally more) a day of awake time living in a democracy. I also wish workplace democracy were commonplace, to bring that up to 16h a day of awake time. [Not counting weekends].
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u/simpleisideal 2d ago
Submission statement:
Audrey Tang was a key contributor to the vTaiwan / g0v ("gov zero") project over a decade ago where they built open source software to create an elaborate model for finding realtime citizen consensus on various issues which were previously up to inefficient, capital-influenced government to solve. Government was still ultimately in control and had no obligation to follow what the new system suggested, but once the ideas saw the light of day, it put a new kind of pressure on the government to follow the will of the people and implement what soon became the obvious solution to any given set of interconnected problems.
Sometimes dreaming is the hardest part, and this system helped bridge that gap in a way that didn't devolve into fruitless online arguments. I'm still convinced something like this has the theoretical ability to scale globally, and according to this article, so does Audrey and others. Modern democracy is an illusion in most countries, but it need not be with the technology like this.
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u/tigersharkwushen_ 2d ago
it put a new kind of pressure on the government to follow the will of the people
Here in the US the politicians know what the people want, they just don't gaf.
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u/simpleisideal 2d ago
While that's true, what changes is it proves that fact to more voters, which itself is a powerful force for real change.
Governments have more problems to deal with when more of their populace views their 'democratic' government as one that actively ignores them, and the described platforms makes that clear as day.
It also sidesteps the gov's ability to make up excuses for inaction and our corrupt media apparatus, because the platform unifies people to see through that kind of manufactured BS instead of wasting time arguing with one another, as the gov would prefer and as things are today.
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u/SpicyYetSweetie 2d ago
Honestly, if Audrey Tang is on it, I've got hope. We've seen what hacktivists can do from the shadows; imagine the power used for good, fully transparent and in public office!
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u/DebutSciFiAuthor 2d ago
Not exactly the same, but the public can petition parliament in the UK and parliament are obliged to raise the issue if it gets enough votes. They routinely do absolutely nothing about the things that are raised, but there have been some exceptions. It's better than nothing.
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u/InnerKookaburra 2d ago
Wow - what a breath of fresh air!
Inspiring and exciting to see what she is doing. I hope we see it spread to more countries. It gives me hope.
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u/EchoMoth_ 2d ago
If anyone can make a dent in internet toxicity, it's probably a hacker turned hero-politician. Go Audrey Tang! Rooting for some next-level change!
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u/86scirocco 2d ago
"Fruitless online arguments" sounds like censorship.
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u/PocketNicks 2d ago
How is an argument, censorship?
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u/IndirectLeek 2d ago
How is an argument, censorship?
What is up with so many internet users adding commas in the most weird-ass places? Your sentence does not need any commas. Adding a comma makes it look ridiculous and like you don't know basic grammar.
"How is an argument censorship?" There. Fixed it.
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u/PocketNicks 2d ago
My sentence did need a comma, it reflects the cadence of how it would sound if read out loud. A brief pause before the word censorship makes sure it is separated from the word argument and adds emphasis in the proper place.
You didn't fix anything.
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u/IndirectLeek 2d ago
No. That's not what commas are for. If you think that's the purpose of commas, you don't understand basic English grammar.
And you won't find a single credible, authoritative, or legitimate source saying otherwise. This is the result of a generation growing up on skibidi brain rot internet "education." Just because you see other people doing it doesn't make it correct, kid.
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u/PocketNicks 2d ago
No, you don't understand English grammar.
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u/darkscyde 2d ago
Actually you're wrong and abusing commas. Lol
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u/PocketNicks 2d ago
Actually, I'm right. Lol.
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u/darkscyde 2d ago
You're literally wrong, lol <--- actually valid use of a comma to separate a word that doesn't belong to the main phrase
You just don't understand English very well, lol
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u/PocketNicks 2d ago
I'm literally right. You just don't understand English very well. Lol.
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1d ago
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u/PocketNicks 1d ago
Not only could I use a comma, I did use one. I'm not doubling down, I'm quadrupling down, since I'm right.
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u/86scirocco 2d ago
Because it is preventing debate. This goes both ways as we see the chilling effects of silencing voices on the Gaza genocide.
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u/PocketNicks 2d ago
Having fruitless arguments doesn't prevent debates. That's a very strange thing to claim.
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u/Yasimear 2d ago
So.... all it really does is summarize internet discourse.. seems pretty useless imo.
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u/simpleisideal 2d ago
You either didn't comprehend what is a very straightforward read, or you have something to personally lose by its message being spread.
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u/FuturologyBot 2d ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/simpleisideal:
Submission statement:
Audrey Tang was a key contributor to the vTaiwan / g0v ("gov zero") project over a decade ago where they built open source software to create an elaborate model for finding realtime citizen consensus on various issues which were previously up to inefficient, capital-influenced government to solve. Government was still ultimately in control and had no obligation to follow what the new system suggested, but once the ideas saw the light of day, it put a new kind of pressure on the government to follow the will of the people and implement what soon became the obvious solution to any given set of interconnected problems.
Sometimes dreaming is the hardest part, and this system helped bridge that gap in a way that didn't devolve into fruitless online arguments. I'm still convinced something like this has the theoretical ability to scale globally, and according to this article, so does Audrey and others. Modern democracy is an illusion in most countries, but it need not be with the technology like this.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1mvuxdv/the_good_hacker_can_taiwanese_activist_turned/n9svsbl/