Voluntary Mandatory Self-Ratings and Limits on Speech

[Sampo Syreeni]

On Thu, 16 Aug 2001, Tim May wrote:

>You're missing my general point. If you prefer that I not use "religion,"
>I could just as easily use an example where certainly people of some
>community think that some otherwise-constitutional practice is "harmful."

True. Yet harm gives you cause for Common Law action, no?

>The U.S. Constitution is in fact a series of limitations on what
>government may do...including what it may due to its "subjects."

That's also precisely what I meant, even if I expressed it a bit
differently.

>We don't need a proposal for "voluntary self-labelling"...if it's
>voluntary, people can already do it. In fact, they already do. Of course,
>what people are now doing is not at all what the proponents of "voluntary
>self-labelling" apparently intend to be the voluntary labels.

That is precisely why I said labelling is a "nice gesture". The Code must
not concern itself with labelling, but you *can* do it, some people want
labelled content, and there are political advantages in both rating your
content and having truly voluntary raters around. Why not be one of them,
then? If you don't want to, it's always a valid reason. I just think there
are valid gains in rating, and so e.g. to a degree rate my own site.

>Truly voluntary self-labelling, without imposed standards, is IPSO FACTO
>what we already have, right? If someone voluntary says their site is "hot"
>or chooses to say nothing, this is "voluntary."
>
>Right?

Quite. My argument was about what is "nice", no more.

>> As for misrating, that's a problem of reputation. If you can solve it
>> in an anonymous economy, you can certainly solve it in a non-anonymous
>> rating context.
>>
>Actually, this is a separate topic worthy of more discussion that simply
>saying "you can certain solve it in a non-anonymous rating context."

How? Maybe we should limit discussion to this as it's more cypherpunkish
than rating/labelling per se.

>By the way, what does anonymous vs. non-anonymous have to do with truly
>voluntary self-ratings, that is, whatever anonymous or non-anonymous
>agents _say_?
>
>A voluntary system means an uncoerced system...

It's a question of where you draw the line between coerced and uncoerced. If
many enough of your peers think it's good behavior to label your
communications, and failure to do so leads to an amount of badwill, does
that constitute coercion? If not, we have a voluntary system where social
pressures encourage you to rate, but where the gain is not a direct economic
advantage, but rather the avoidance of the badwill of others. One might
argue that such "bad behavior" should be tolerated, and that rating is no
longer properly "voluntary" if rating only means you avoid an extra-legal
social sanction. Nevertheless, there is a definite incentive for a
non-anonymous person to rate correctly (to maintain his reputation),
sometimes an incentive to misrate regardless (like when you're advocating a
politically incorrect opinion), and the extra possibilities afforded by
anonymity in these situations (using a disposable tentacle to communicate
and/or misrate). This way, anonymity does make a difference even in an
uncoerced situation.

>this point explodes in too many obvious directions for me to even try to
>write about here, given the low level of interest in the discussion the
>two of us have been having.

Agreed. If the topic of rating once again surfaces, for whatever reason, we
can always pick it up then. For now it does seem interest is minimal.

Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy, mailto:decoy at iki.fi, gsm: +358-50-5756111
student/math+cs/helsinki university, http://www.iki.fi/~decoy/front