South Korean Forums Will Need to Scan Every Images with AI Censorship Tools

113 pointsposted 7 hours ago
by Cider9986
(discuss.privacyguides.net)

87 Comments

jdw64

3 hours ago

The problem is that using an AI censorship tool requires purchasing a solution from a specific vendor. And the deadline is effectively less than a month. There’s nothing particularly unusual about this—South Korea especially has many IT zombie companies that sustain themselves through government contracts. In practice, there’s a local CMS structure in place, and Korean programmers, who are generally weak in English, have to rely on that local CMS, which makes them weak in programming as well. (This is why, despite being a country with a high proportion of highly educated people, South Korea has relatively few prominent programmers.)

South Korea was the first country in the world to implement an internet censorship law. There is a historical record of censorship, regardless of which administration—left or right—was in power.

That said, it’s a complicated issue because these censorship systems also tend to create state IT contracts and job opportunities.

To make things more concrete: most local bulletin board systems and forum platforms are heavily tied to a specific commercial CMS. This is not a coincidence — government-affiliated projects often mandate that CMS, and developers here, lacking both English proficiency and exposure to global open-source alternatives, end up locked into its ecosystem. As a result, even basic AI censorship features become dependent on that vendor’s proprietary modules. When a tight deadline (less than a month) forces a purchase, there’s no room to explore better, cheaper, or more transparent options. The structure itself perpetuates vendor lock-in, weak technical capacity, and a cycle of superficial compliance rather than genuine innovation.

unscaled

2 hours ago

This sounds to me like a repeat of what happened with SEED[1]. The recipe is the same: a real problem followed by a hasty (and probably inferior) NIH solution, a single implementation forced down everybody's throats followed by years of technological stagnation.

Hopefully this mandate wouldn't end up being as far reaching as the SEED mandate did (forcing South Korean web to run on older Internet Explorer versions with custom insecure ActiveX controls for everything).

[1] https://archive.is/ermII

jdw64

2 hours ago

My country is always like this. I think it's a problem unique to East Asian countries—following orders obediently. I read the link you shared, and it seems similar.

unscaled

an hour ago

That's interesting. I didn't know any other country in East Asia that showed this level of restrictive policy that sets up a cascade of problematic tooling and technologies.

Japanese Internet was pretty bad in the 2010s, but this was all self-inflicted done by the private sector. The government had very little do with it. And even then, ActiveX controls were very rare. My main pain point with online banking was ugly sites, back buttons that don't work and passwords limited to 8 or 12 characters "for security reasons". But those problems are not specific to Japanese or Asian banking sites. The only Japan-specific woes I can think of are frequent maintenance windows where most banking functionality is done (mostly eliminated on my bank) and weird 2FA methods like Security Cards (just a paper card with a table of codes for challenges, also completely gone now).

DeathArrow

2 hours ago

>The problem is that using an AI censorship tool requires purchasing a solution from a specific vendor.

This smells of corruption.

zuzululu

2 hours ago

It's essentially a takedown of Korean imageboards and forums where political memes, especially of the current president, is very popular.

They are fully aware that these operators will not be able to afford the hardware and sustain their public squares by requiring a ridiculous ordinance targeting them.

I see GP is downplaying this very fact that its the "norm" in Korea and I can tell you that it's not. Korea has enjoyed free expression through the internet, now posting meme of the Korean president is going to be impossible/illegal for the site operator. This is definitely not normal and the AI narrative is just a convenient excuse.

jdw64

2 hours ago

Korea's tax revenue has increased thanks to the AI boom, so the country is actively promoting AI at the national level, creating pressure that you have to use it or else, and continuously announcing projects with 'AI' attached to them. The problem is that a freelance individual like me has no way to get involved—it's almost entirely a business based on personal connections. Personally, I think if this is successfully operated in Korea down the line, it could be exported to other countries

sysguest

an hour ago

hmm so which sane country would 'import' this?

zuzululu

31 minutes ago

No sane country would import what jdw64 is describing.

AI boom, but only the politically loyal can bid, is not only insane, its literally justifying corruption and censorship by forcing people to take out loans from them to buy GPUs to be compliant, which seems to be the crux of what he thinks other countries should follow.

I guess it can make for a cheap kdrama where authoritarians will use GPUs as collateral and force journalists and political into an everlasting debt and call it a "national AI strategy".

jdw64

42 minutes ago

Among all the governments in the world, is there any that is 'in its right mind'?

f33d5173

3 hours ago

CMS here not referring to content management system?

jdw64

2 hours ago

You're right about the CMS. But unlike the Western ecosystem centered around WordPress, South Korea's public and web ecosystem is pathologically dependent on isolated local bulletin board system (BBS)-centric CMS platforms like 'GnuBoard' or 'ZeroBoard/XE.' As a result, when the government mandates censorship modules, it creates vendor lock-in, as those modules are supplied exclusively in the form of plugins for these local CMS platforms

numpad0

an hour ago

so we don't have many if any of those vBulletin instances on Japanese Web either... That's just normal.

jdw64

an hour ago

Right. Each country has its own environment dependencies, but instead, global competitiveness weakens. But isn't the Japanese web rather more distinctive in terms of website styles? They have so many hardcore programmers over there

jdw64

2 hours ago

You're right. I need to explain that the bulletin board systems and forum systems are built primarily around a specific CMS. Sorry about that.

philipov

2 hours ago

Does it stand for Censorship Management System?

jdw64

2 hours ago

Our local CMS stands for 'Can't Modify, Sorry'

shlewis

4 hours ago

No traditional media talk about this as much as it should be. No one seems to care but the always-angry, chronically online. I had no high hopes for free internet in this country but it's getting worse than I've ever imagined.

jeroenhd

21 minutes ago

Looks like South Korea is taking a page out of its northern neighbour's book.

Will this impact software exported out of Korea? I can't imagine Samsung will gain any popularity if their phones come prepackaged with AI censorship tools. It massively backfired when Apple planned to do it on iPhones.

donkeylazy456

5 hours ago

Forcing CUDA and guiding for Ubuntu 18.04 (FYI, EOS was 2023). Do they really think single Quadro GPU server can handle heavy traffics in real-time?

iamnothere

4 hours ago

It’s insane to mandate the specific vendor used. This reads like a backroom deal was reached. Or gross incompetence.

zuzululu

2 hours ago

They are fully aware that website operators of popular discussion forums cannot afford it. This is effectively a mass censorship/takedown of Korea's remaining corners of free speech.

Imagine if a subreddit had to shut down because they have to now purchase expensive hardware just to vet each image shared.

These forums are popular with the young who share meme images of the current president of Korea and this new ordinance would immediately put an end to that.

october8140

3 hours ago

The future is self hosted private invite only communities of vetted real life humans, likely done in person.

Gigachad

3 hours ago

That's pretty much the present today. Tbh I'm fine with the public internet just dying off at this point and people going back to their local smaller scale groups.

SV_BubbleTime

3 hours ago

And when you need longer reach than that?

A “I vouch for this person” system?

Pay08

3 hours ago

That has largely worked for private trackers.

shit_game

an hour ago

lobste.rs has a pretty decent system with a global invite tree, where users can provide access for other people. it comes with the benefit of creating an association graph of accounts that allows for swift moderation, and lets the userbase grow within a community of people likely to appreciate the culture.

AYBABTME

2 hours ago

Something missing as cultural context is that deepfake, involuntary "porn", and all sorts of abuse of personal image, are a rampant and omnipresent problem in Korea. Many things are great here, but the sexual landscape when it comes to men versus women and kids, is nasty. You can't really apply a Western mindset to this without understanding just how messed up some of that stuff is. So whatever you think of the mechanism, the problem behind it is very real.

I do think a proposal that AI-filters content on small forums is a bit weird, and probably clumsy. But Korea faces a real problem and usually leans toward a bias to action and "just do it". It leads to weird stuff but also to dynamic problem solving. The part I'm trying to preempt here is measuring this against so called "universal" values; these French Revolution/Enlightenment ideas of universal rights aren't really universal, they're one culture's logic, consistent inside its own bubble but exported like it's the default for everyone. I'll say, I do like them. But other self-consistent logics exist, and I think Korea's set is one of them. It's going to sound cliché but it leans on harmony and the group where the Western one leans on the individual. Both produce aberrations, only different ones.

For example, first time I came here I thought it's crazy to have so many speeding cameras and CCTVs everywhere. Years later I didn't so much "got used to it" but I think it's a tradeoff that mostly works and I grew to appreciate it.

Korea prefers lightweight polices (literally friendly looking) with a lot of automated, bulk enforcement, instead of sparse enforcement backed by the occasional armored truck. That's a design choice, not a slide into dystopia.

So all I'm trying to convey is, keep an open mind, and don't apply some supposed "universal" mindset blindly. Critique the mechanism all you want. Just don't do it by treating one culture's values as the yardstick everyone else gets measured by.

Fwiw I think it's a misfire. But I don't think it's a slippery-slide down dystopia. It's just Tuesday.

unscaled

an hour ago

I don't think it's a dystopia. Hanlon's razor still applies. But I beg to differ on your classification of North Korean policies as "lightweight". Korean internet policies usually mandate a very specific technology (like SEED, or apparently this new model now) and weave a web of highly-detailed, Korea-specific regulations that end up creating a monopoly or oligopoly of objectively inferior and highly insecure software.

This is not lightweight. Even the much maligned Online Safety Act in the UK that forced age verification is a far more lightweight policy than what Korea does. It doesn't mandate a specific software or hardware, it doesn't mandate a specific cipher or protocol. Even the list of methods acceptable methods for age verification is explicitly non-exhaustive[1]. And this is the current poster-child of government overreach in the west!

My example of extremely lightweight digital policies (for most things) would be Japan. Vague requirements, non-exhaustive examples, copious exceptions ("you don't have to implement X if it's technologically cumbersome"), everything can be done either manually or in a fully automated way. Is this good? I think Japan is sometimes far too lenient (e.g. on security requirements), but objectively speaking this is lightweight. Korean digital policy is not lightweight by any definition of that word. If not sending tanks to catch every revenge porn distributor is "lightweight" for you that's fine, but which country does that? If we judge a heavyweight policy by its restrictiveness, then there are probably only a handful countries that can compete with Korea.

[1] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/siteassets/resources/documents/onli...

AYBABTME

44 minutes ago

I wrote "lightweight polices" not policies. The police presents itself as benign looking in a public context. Enforcement of day to day offences is done mechanically by machines. A state trooper doesn't stop you on a speed check with his hand on his gun.

Yes, online policies are wild and not lightweight at all.

unscaled

15 minutes ago

Ok, I think I misunderstood you. Lightweight policing, not policy. I guess this happens in the US, but in most countries cops wouldn't stop you for a traffic violation with a gun in their hand. In some countries (e.g. the UK) the police aren't even carrying guns. As far as I'm concerned is not lightweight policing but normal policing. The US is the outlier here, not Korea.

jdw64

2 hours ago

I often agree with you to some extent. In Korea, you can't just say there's no problem with revenge porn—that's basically the logic the Korean government uses. But the issue is that the main source of revenge porn actually comes from overseas communities that Koreans use.

Of course, Korea's largest domestic community has had issues with filtering—things like terrorism threats and rape cases have occurred there. But that's because that community (DCinside) is so large. In reality, the incidents that have truly enraged the public started on Twitter (X) and Telegram. So do the key actors behind these problems end up being subject to censorship? No, they don't.

And does censorship actually eliminate the problems you mentioned? Or does it just make things darker and worse?

I myself have a typical East Asian mindset—I believe a certain level of restriction on freedom is necessary. But to be honest, I see this as internet martial law

malloryerik

3 hours ago

Will this affect non-Korean online communities in Korea? Like Instagram?

prodigycorp

3 hours ago

Korea is backwards in technology in every possible way.

- For the longest time, you needed a windows computer to access any sort of government or banking service, and it's still the case for most services

- Because of the reliance on crappy windows laptops, you see everyone who uses a laptop carries an external mouse around to places like coffee shops (bc their trackpads suck)

- the de-facto document format are crappy hancom formats

- watching korean news is farcical - every time they cut to public footage, literally 80% of the frame is blurred. I see no point in even watching the news.

- APIs and API documentation for stuff is sooooo poorly designed/written. Like, it's a f-ing joke.

- External map providers were iced out of hte market until this past year

- You need a phone number to sign up for literally anything.

There are so many more examples but these are just the ones off the top of my head. There is not an inch of breathing room for dynamism.

Koreas issues arent political. This is what happens in pure oligopolies. People on twitter love to fantasize about Korea being so technofuturistic but the truth is that the startup culture is terrible, there's no venture capital scene, and the big companies write all the rules

dogwalker5000

2 hours ago

> - External map providers were iced out of hte market until this past year

Foreign internet content companies (like Twitch) got iced out a few years ago too due to “sending party pay” fees imposed by ISPs.

jdw64

2 hours ago

You're right. This stems from the characteristics of a small country. In fact, in Korea, Twitter (X) is looked down upon as something only crazy people use, and its image is not good.

But the overall situation you described is basically a combination of a chaebol-centered, family-run system of national governance, layered on top of large corporate oligarchy. Within that structure, the problem becomes one of survival through vendor contracts rather than aggressive investment—that's the real issue.

I personally hate this culture, which is why I'm trying to get a job in the U.S. Working 84 hours a week for three months and making less than 8 million won is exhausting.

t-3

2 hours ago

> In fact, in Korea, Twitter (X) is looked down upon as something only crazy people use, and its image is not good.

It's basically the same in many areas of the US. Social media use is very regional due to network effects.

jdw64

2 hours ago

Oh, really? That's interesting. I suppose that makes sense, since in the U.S., a single state is often larger than all of South Korea. Thanks for the good conversation. Sometimes the world is surprising in ways like this

Pay08

3 hours ago

> the de-facto document format are crappy hancom formats

What's hancom?

mparkms

3 hours ago

Awful Korean-developed MS Office clone.

edit: for more context, it was initially adopted because it had better support for Korean language features, but now it serves basically no purpose other than be a pain in the ass for anyone who has to deal with their proprietary, incompatible with everything file formats.

jibal

2 hours ago

A web search will give you a faster and better answer than you will get by asking here.

Pay08

36 minutes ago

Apparently not, since most of the results I get (that are in English) are about a lawsuit they lost for violating the AGPL.

gblargg

2 hours ago

It would be funny if someone hacked the database to block any praise of the current politicians and this censorship, only allowing criticism of it.

Cider9986

an hour ago

There seems to be less hacktivism now.

Cider9986

7 hours ago

Original: South Korean Online Communities Will Need to Scan Every Images with AI Censorship Tools

eqvinox

5 hours ago

Minority Report wasn't supposed to be an instruction manual ffs.

Also, will the AI curtail artistic activity? Things it doesn't recognize? We had watchdogs on personal expression before, one of the outcomes was "degenerate art" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degenerate_art]

matt3210

4 hours ago

They have stock in nvidia

DeathArrow

2 hours ago

Can't they simply move their hosting and domains to other countries?

polski-g

3 hours ago

People predict that by 2032, the only country on earth to host websites will be the USA.

dylan604

2 hours ago

What do the bets on the prediction markets look like, and are these the same people that Trump is always referring?

zb3

3 hours ago

Do they specify a particular model? Is that model public?

petermcneeley

4 hours ago

The catholic church fought the printing press for hundreds of years. Lets see how long our rulers fight the internet.

wqaatwt

an hour ago

No they didn’t, quite the opposite, they were the main customers and and certainly accelerated the spread of the technology. Of course banning the printing of specific books is another matter.

Islamic countries OTOH handle banned or strictly restricted its use. Coincidentally most progress there ceased and they were stuck in the 1500s for the next 400 years or so..

themafia

4 hours ago

The printing press was very much an invention /not/ at the disposal of the citizens. It analogizes poorly to the Internet.

t-3

an hour ago

How many people are involved in ISPs, data centers, and other internet backbones? Most people are consumers rather than producers or "printing press" operators.

lokar

3 hours ago

Of course not, it’s the books that people had access to.

morkalork

3 hours ago

Actually it's perfect. How long did it take rulers to go from fighting the printing press to using it for propaganda and their own ambitions? The internet has just speed run that same course.

zuzululu

5 hours ago

A little backstory to Korea's political scene: left leaning political power has come to power , similar to UK's Starmer, and have started implementing draconian surveillance laws.

There's almost no real opposition to stop these type of insane laws that violate individual freedoms. Expect more weirdness out of Korea

eqvinox

5 hours ago

Starmer is about as left headed as a straight line railway across Australia. Corbyn was left (maybe).

cf. https://www.politicalcompass.org/uk2024

Even if you consider that page biased in whatever way - it's still useful for comparisons on the same scale. E.g. https://www.politicalcompass.org/norway2025

AuthAuth

3 hours ago

he is objectively left wing. People are over indexing on his controversies instead of looking at his policy platform as a whole. Also take into account that he is in a democracy the leans right on many un-impactful but hot topic issues.

mullingitover

3 hours ago

What does the left have to do with this? South Korea has had draconian anti-online privacy laws for as long as it has had the internet.

sysguest

an hour ago

maybe that's where the irony starts?

mparkms

3 hours ago

If the implication is that the left is more willing to violate freedoms, you're leaving out that the right-wing president was ousted for attempting to subvert democracy by instituting martial law for no good reason.

anigbrowl

3 hours ago

Sure buddy, just omit the fact that the last president tried to do a coup and is now serving a long prison sentence. It's all the fault of the left leaning guy, there was no censorship or state surveillance in Korea before that.

jdw64

2 hours ago

I’m Korean too, but people forget that the right wing has also enforced censorship. Personally, I think the Korean right wing cries out for freedom, but in reality their ideology is rooted in the anti-communist thought of the anti-communist liberal era. I myself have somewhat negative feelings toward communism, but the so-called 'right-wing' regime in Korea is really just nostalgia for dictatorship. The current Korean administration is called 'left-wing' only because the opposition is far-right. In fact, the Korean Political History Association has long classified the 'Democratic Party'(Party name) administration as conservative. This is simply due to a poor understanding of politics[1],[2]

[1]https://www.khan.co.kr/article/202502272123025

[2]https://www.kci.go.kr/kciportal/ci/sereArticleSearch/ciSereA...

zuzululu

an hour ago

I don’t think this framing works nor is your attitude of "I'm korean I automatically know more than a foreigner who studied Korean history". It is true that Korean conservatives have used censorship and authoritarian language before such as Yoon’s 2024 martial-law attempt is the obvious recent example, and nobody serious should minimize that but that does not make the Democratic Party some neutral actor, or make censorship a uniquely partisan problem. The current ruling party's previous president, Moon Jae-in’s gov, passed laws specifically suppressing anti-North Korea leaflet and threatened activists against sending them into North Korea which the Constitutional Court later struck it down as an excessive restriction on free speech. That is a clear sign of suppressing free speech at home to directly appease an authoritarian country!

Same with media regulation in 2021, the same party tht is in power now pushed laws that directly supressed press freedom, prompting strong condemnation from Reporters without Borders and international human rights group. And lo behold you have laws now extend beyond simply press to free speech on the internet exactly as they had warned 5 years ago.

The trend of suppressing free speech continues under current admin where lawmakers passed another false-information bill allowing up to 5x damages against news orgs and independent journalist's YouTube channels, where there is no bipartisan oversight in arbitration and it is heavily in control by the ruling "democratic party".

The Korean Democratic Party is not Marxist, but seemingly have shown affinity for them from failed sunshine policy that directly enabled the development of nuclear weapons and human rights abuses with North Korea, pushing more state intervention/lawfare than any other party in history. Korean ideology does not map cleanly onto US/Europe labels and attempt to smearing conservatives to gatekeep the true political reality of Sout hKorea and its history is simply immature.

jdw64

an hour ago

First, I'm a bit sorry for my somewhat sarcastic tone earlier. You're also right about some things.

That said, your research basically differs from what the Korean Political Science Association states. Regardless, both of Korea's two major political parties fundamentally like authority and censorship. Looking at their actual censorship policies, both have done quite similar things. So what difference is there? Mainly, Korea's conservative party-affiliated newspapers have more influence, so they are stronger at agenda-setting.

Judging by your tone, I think you basically understand Korea through the lens of Christian conservative issues, especially related to religion. But in reality, there are complex circumstances behind it.

First, as you said, the issue of 'fake news' is fairly complicated in Korea. Starting with the Yoon Seok-youl administration imposing heavy penalties on actual 'real news' by labeling it as fake news through the KCSC, there has been basic political pressure on algorithmic intervention by Korea's major platforms. Also, President Park Geun-hye conducted KakaoTalk surveillance and a blacklist of the cultural sector. But these insider details don't get conveyed to you as a foreigner. Why is that?

It's partly because Korea's left-leaning news media lack global competitiveness. Your perspective is mostly colored by Korean Christian conservatism. Why might that be? Probably because your news about Korea mostly comes through Korean-American Christian conservative media outlets. And Christian groups in Korea are closely connected to the far right. Why? Because religious groups can easily provide personnel to help with election campaigning, so there is a collusive relationship. Anyway, I don't think your perspective is entirely wrong, but your tone was so intense and you so harshly 'condemned' the opposing side that I became a bit sarcastic. Your perspective does make some sense.

However, I do think there is a problem with the materials available for foreigners to study this issue. That also feels like part of Korea's lack of global competitiveness

zuzululu

19 minutes ago

Ah there's the "You are foreigner you will never understand" line!

You went from Democratic Party is akshually conservative to "everybody censors in korea, you dont get us" but if both sides censor, then my point stands: the Democratic Party does not get laundered as harmless just because it uses words that sound nice and formal.

I'm not a christian and it really doesn't change the previous actions to ban anti-North Korean activists sending leaflets, lawfares against journalists and non bipartisan arbitration of the press.

Earlier you said that AI censorship is okay because the whole country benefits economically from more AI use and that it should be exported to other countries. Now you are blaming Christians.

I don't think you are coming across as rational or persuasive and the constant condescending tone towards foreigners in general is off putting. I think if anything you are unable to recognize your own political bias and trying to gatekeep Korea as this weird orientalist object. and it really isn't.

jdw64

2 minutes ago

Looking at your first post, you basically say in context that it's a left-wing regime with no one to stop it — but I don't understand why this is linked to a 'left-wing regime.' Even the Korean Political Science Association basically classifies the Democratic Party as part of the conservative camp. In fact, it's more accurate to see it as a big tent party.

In that context, reading your post makes me ask back: 'So were the right-wing parties fine?' But that's not the case — it's just that censorship incidents happen under every administration.

If you had written something like, 'South Korea tries to censor under every administration, and the National Assembly is all in cahoots,' then naturally I would have said, 'Are you Korean? You seem to know Korean history very well.

jdw64

10 minutes ago

Hmm, you're too fixated on specific words. To be honest, I think you're only seeing fragments of South Korea.

It's not because you're a foreigner — the problem is simply that what you see from outside is only a fragment of the issue.

Look back at your original post.

And for the record, I was mostly making dark jokes.

This time, purely for your sake, I'll speak without any dark humor — just the facts:

Banning leaflets sent by North Korean activists — this issue has both pros and cons. These actions fundamentally create military tension for residents living near the border with North Korea. The Democratic Party side (pro-Sunshine Policy) naturally dislikes it. It's a conflict between personal convictions and national interests.

The more AI usage increases, the more it benefits the national economy? — Not exactly. South Korea is so favorable toward AI primarily because the country has many memory semiconductor companies. The government is simply shaping policy to ride that trend.

And my comment about exporting the censorship system if it succeeds — that was just a dark joke.

Legal attacks on journalists, non-transpartisan media regulations — these are problems that every administration has faced. And yet your original post only focused on the 'current' government, didn't it? Let's not twist what you said.

If you had written a comment saying something like 'South Korea transpartisanly regulates the media and has a national character that loves restricting freedom,' I would have upvoted you and praised you. But instead, you framed it as if only one administration behaves that way, while whitewashing others — and your tone was so assertive. That's the only reason I criticized you.

No one hates South Korea more than I do.

js8

5 hours ago

Starmer is not left-leaning, he's a liberal (and supports austerity). People should learn the difference between the left, the right and liberalism.

iamnothere

4 hours ago

Traditional labels are becoming useless anyway, liberal can mean anything from libertarian free market enjoyer to radical progressive depending on who you are talking to. And I am talking about self-identified labels!

You also have many right wingers (internationally) moving towards things like industrial policy, subsidies, and a populist labor focus (coupled with anti-immigration rhetoric of course). In some cases, even nationalization is under discussion. It’s a wild time to try and label things.

ronsor

3 hours ago

A better axis is libertarian-authoritarian, because the "left" and the "right" aren't inherently either.

js8

2 hours ago

My main point was there is not a single axis. Even left and right are not strictly opposites, you can have a society that decides based on some mix of authority and democracy (individual preference). They are only opposites at the extreme, if you insist that every political problem has to be addressed in the particular way.

js8

2 hours ago

The labels are not useless, they represent certain values and disagreements over how society should be governed. Of course, each of the values has a failure mode, but they are different. The values are:

- Right-wing, conservative, authoritarian - society should be governed by elites, conflict should be resolved by submission to authority

- Left-wing, socialist, democratic - society should be governed by equal peers, conflict should be resolved by democratic consensus

- Liberal, individualist, pro-freedom - the question of societal governance (and the arising conflict) should be avoided if possible by giving each participant their own life independent on others

Of course it is confusing because people cheat and do not always want to state their aims clearly. The values are also not opposites, but independent; they can also be applied per problem. For example, most famously, some communists were both left (they wanted a socialist society without classes) and right (they wanted the transformation under the party authority). But each pair of these has a similar conflict like that, so (aside from the communist spectrum above) you get also capitalist spectrum between right vs liberal, and anarchist spectrum between left vs liberal. In the middle of all 3, things are roughly social-democratic.

866-RON-0-FEZ

4 hours ago

He's a twonk and Britain is essentially a police state at this point. The American Revolutionary War was fought over far less than what is going on right now.

yonaguska

4 hours ago

at this point I don't get bogged down in the details. They're all just different masks for authoritarianism.

js8

2 hours ago

That's very reductionist, and itself a kind of right-wing (authoritarian) idea - all politicians are corrupt so there is no meaningful way to change things.

jibal

2 hours ago

Indeed. Aside from being extraordinarily intellectually lazy, bothsidesing actually enables corruption by failing to identify it, or failing to distinguish degrees of corruption that are so severe as to be more differences in kind than differences in degree. And thus in the U.S. we get Trump and his entire cabinet, Clarence Thomas and the rest of the Federalist Society, the Kochs, money pouring into elections via Citizens United courtesy of John Roberts, and much of the rest of the GOP political apparatus ... in large part a result of people staying home or voting 3rd party because their "principles" didn't let them vote for "the lesser of two evils".

fithisux

4 hours ago

Are crooks called liberals these days?