01/06/06 fear.net 1234 6 Fear and Fearmongering on the Internet One of the most pervasive things I see on the Internet discussion groups I am in is fear. I don't just mean fear in general, but a fear inspired also by the comments of others in the discussions. I have thought about this for years and observed it in some detail, and have made uncomfortable conclusions-- that people want control so badly that they fear those who thrive in the uncontrolled environment an Internet situation can provide. It happens every year on most lists, where someone may be offended by a discussion going in directions he/she doesn't feel comfortable with, and rather than using a delete key or ignoring the situation, the person feels a need to stop the discussion altogether. Sometimes these people call on the moderator, saying a discussion is "off topic," and sometimes responses are to fan the flames until they can claim it has become a "flame war" that must be stopped. There are a number of tactics and strategies seen over and over again to stop discussions, and rarely is this a legitimate tactic or strategy actually addressing an obviously interesting question at hand. Political Correctitude may be called into play and the options for stifling conversations that should be some kind of representative for the least stifled are many. In fact, it is this kind of thing that directly led to the formation of this blog. As you have hopefully seen in the blog's introduction, I try to write just one thing per day that might be in some manner a factor in changing the world, but I must honestly say that the people I send them to are pretty much unresponsive, to say the least and reactionary to say the most. Reactionary politics is a term used to describe things done in reaction to changes to stifle those changes. An example I use is the creation of copyrights to stop the effect of the Gutenberg Press. When only the extremely wealthy or educated could read there was no law against copying anything, as only the very elite were involved in copying and publishing. When The Gutenberg Press made publishing easier enough that the masses could partake in what used to be world enough only for the very elite, the elite took measure after measure to the royal court for 150 years until a copyright law was finally a reality. The only reason, however, was a desire for the scribes and stationers of The Stationers Guild to maintain the monopoly they had prior to The Gutenberg Press. This is reactionary politics. The same thing takes place to stifle things every day. Even worse, a great deal of mis/disinformation is sent into the situation by those who are unethical enough. Those who are ethical are barred by their ethos from a similar counterattact. This then requires not only a decent audience, but the decent participation of that audience to shout down an assortment of those who end discussions, or at least a decent participation in pointing out the logical flaws in their arguments or the lack of arguments at all. The truth is that I am very impressed and depressed by the power people have shown in being able to stop some discussions that everyone was obviously interested in. After all, how could such a discussion become intense, if the truth was that there was no interest. As for "off topic," I notice that somehow the question does not arise when the moderator's favored side is in a winning position. Censorship is a terrible thing. I should add here that one of the most powerful usages of copyright throughout the ages has been censorship. I should also add here that the anti-negative is not a similar thing to positive, much less the same thing. I have written articles about anti-negative, and about copyright that I can put in the blog on request. One of the real questions that you should ask out loud when you run into such censorship situations is if the people in the disucssion NEED your input to realize an attack on their values has been made. All too often one might presume that audience silences mean that the audiences have accepted what someone has said rather than that they are simply ignoring them. Ask! Another example in the copyright arena is a rather big reliance on threat legal action rather than on a legal quotation that actually shows a law has been violated. We get these all the time at Project Gutenberg. Our first response is simply to tell them that the law has not been quoted in their message, and that we will await a further message that details which provisions, under which specific laws, they feel are violated. In the end we have always found they are just blowing out legal smoke and have no real coypright understanding. It is really amazing just how much action is taken off the record by such silly threats and assertions. "What I have done is legal." "What you have done is illegal." Of course it gets much fuzzier on Internet discussion groups where the rules aren't well defined. The solutions can be simple when you are censored: 1. Form a "back channel" communications group that a concerned group can use to continue the disucssion if the moderator tries to end the disucssion. You might be surprised to learn just how many famous, really famous, Internet groups started this way. 2. Write your answers in a blog and mention the URL. If the moderator censors even that, combine these two and send URLs via the back channel. [Back channel means private email to those usually in a public discussion. You can simply save the address from anyone you want to talk with, usually in headers that accompany each email. I am a little distraught, when it comes to discussion groups that keep everyone so anonymous that you can't contact them outside some method officially sanctioned by the moderators. That is too much power and control. When it comes down to it, most fear is caused by some lack of control, but who wants THAT much control over a conversation? A lot of people do. Otherwise we wouldn't be having THIS discussion. It happens a lot. And, by the way, it happens a lot with winter coming. I have a theory that "Seasonal Affective Disorder" is much more widespread than most people think and is in many ways also present in such groups.