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Unfortunately, the nature of Twitter makes debate unlikely to end in agreement. Twitter is just trying to improve the environment for its users so more people

by panic 10y ago

Unfortunately, the nature of Twitter makes debate unlikely to end in agreement. Twitter is just trying to improve the environment for its users so more people will join and stick around. Most people find the "ideas that powered the NSDAP" quite disgusting.

micaksica 10y ago
> Most people find the "ideas that powered the NSDAP" quite disgusting. If we are truly building a society of tolerance, whether or not one has a visceral reaction to an idea should not stop whether or not one can discuss and debate it. I'm not a neo-Nazi, but I've talked at length with them about their views. I will give anyone a few minutes to explain what they are about, try to listen to it neutrally, and form my own opinion. My personal conclusion of neo-Nazism is that it is a way for white men that feel they have no economic opportunity to blame a convenient target, and they try to rationalize Nazi Germany's domestic infrastructural successes as a reason why the country was doing what was right. I think it is a prime example of scapegoating, and I find it violent and hateful. If we are paying lip service to tolerance and acceptance of alternative worldviews to make ourselves feel like better progressives, we are doing our views a disservice and acting more hypocritical than those that blatantly wear radical views of censorship and discrimination.
- panic 10y ago
  Sure, but not everyone enjoys spending their time engaging with Nazi rhetoric. There are plenty of places outside of Twitter where you can actually choose whether or not to have a discussion.
  - mreiland 10y ago
    He didn't say debating, he said listening.
  - sparky_z 10y ago
    > Sure, but not everyone enjoys spending their time engaging with Nazi rhetoric. There are plenty of places outside of Twitter where you can actually choose whether or not to have a discussion. You could say the exact same thing about literally any view and it would be equally true.
    - pasquinelli 10y ago
      that would be of the same form, but not equally true. there are actual differences between the substance of things beyond logical form.
      - sparky_z 10y ago
        No, in this case I disagree. You could say the same thing, word for word, about any real-world ideology and it would be equally true. If you think I'm wrong about that, I would like a concrete example. (Maybe you think I'm trying to say that all ideologies are equally valid, but I'm not. I'm just pointing out that that particular comment is so reasonable-sounding and hard to argue with precisely because it doesn't actually say anything of substance.)
      - kbart 10y ago
        "Sure, but not everyone enjoys spending their time engaging with vegan rhetoric. There are plenty of places outside of Twitter where you can actually choose whether or not to have a discussion." By this logic, Twitter should ban pretty much any ideology.
  - rustynails77 10y ago
    Let's look at it another way. Ban all hate groups, or don't ban any of them. However, don't pick and choose. I don't agree with Neo Nazis. I hold Neo Nazis with the same contempt that I hold feminists. Why not apply the policy for all hate groups? For example, in Australia we refuse to acknowledge the approximately 25% of violence and abuse by females within the household. The worst case statistic is NSW ("Twice as many female victims (19,488) as male victims (9,261) in New South Wales."). Not one of these victims is given a voice! http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/4510.0~2014~Main%20Features~Experimental%20Family%20and%20Domestic%20Violence%20Statistics~10000 http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/... Also check http://www.oneinthree.com.au/ http://www.oneinthree.com.au/ You will see that men who are victims of domestic violence are turned away from support groups. This doesn't surprise me as there is an aggressive campaign to ignore male victims from media, government and community support groups. I conducted a Google search from 2015 to determine that 100% of references in the Australian media stated that domestic violence was a "male only" behaviour and the only victims represented were female. I checked over 2000 references! In other words, 2000 of 2000 references represented one gender with relation to violence. If you listen to Cassie Jaye (the feminist who created the documentary The Red Pill), she says that feminists in media refuse to acknowledge male victims because it will take money away from female victims. In other words, if you are a boy or a man who is beaten or abused, feminists insist males get no representation or support. It's almost a complete media kibosh throughout the western world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itSTzV29bS0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itSTzV29bS0 So, why is Twitter not banning prominent feminists? or, why isn't Twitter banning all media outlets who support such hateful messages that insist that some victims of violence should be ignored? This is a fundamental breach of human rights! You can't get much worse! Check media references for an absence of any of the following, 80% of suicide victims are male 25% of domestic violence is by a female 90% of incarceration is male You will also notice that Cassie Jaye said she was suppressed by feminists. Cassie also said that she was advised by feminists not to represent any issues that impact men. This would explain the media suppression across all western countries. If you're going to ban a hate group, why not include feminism. It's certainly one of the biggest and most active groups today and actively violates human rights. I've given plenty of pointers in this single post alone to build evidence. There is almost universal silence from the overwhelming majority of feminists on this topic. It's a sad indictement of the overwhelming majority of the feminist movement. Check media, documentaries from 2016, support groups, even discussion forums. The message is consistent and it consistently breaches human rights. So, should Twitter ban hate groups? If you really must silence hate groups, then ban them all. And like you, I dislike spending so much of my time fighting hate groups like feminism because there is no impartiality on the topic. How extreme do you need to get before people will speak up?
- tootie 10y ago
  I disagree. I think there is most definitely a boundary between people with different opinions and people with opinions that are fundamentally at odds with living in a civilized society. "I don't like Goldman Sachs" is an opinion you can debate on its merits. "Kill all the Jew bankers" is not. The boundary is somewhere in between those two. I can't speak to the particular accounts banned by Twitter, but the alt right have a carefully developed vocabulary designed explicitly to sneak across that boundary.
  - micaksica 10y ago
    > I think there is most definitely a boundary between people with different opinions and people with opinions that are fundamentally at odds with living in a civilized society. In this statement, you are unilaterally making a rule as to what ideals are OK to hold as part of "civilized society", and where the boundary is. Stating your society is more "civilized" than another is an opinion in and of itself, and arguably those who hold views opposite yours likely think your societal views also contain hints of barbarism or offend human nature. There are multiple ethical views that humanity and even this culture have held throughout the past century alone that the predominant society has now decided are reprehensible, that other nations consider reprehensible, and then there are also views that have been considered reprehensible now widely accepted by this culture. Personally, my beef is not with whether or not people agree or disagree with these views; the argument in this subthread is external to my original message: I'm tired of the Valley's progressive ideology consistently espousing acceptance, free organization, and free speech when we as an industry keep taking steps that seem against it when we disagree with the information provided. It is the message of social media: people should be able to communicate and unite worldwide. If we aren't radically upholding this belief, then we need to change the mantra to be aligned to what it actually means: associate with us, our ideas, and our worldview, and we will give you a voice. If you don't, your voice on this platform will be stripped, even if you are not engaged in attacking those that disagree with you.
    - tootie 10y ago
      I didn't decide where it is, I'm just saying it's definitely there.
- pasquinelli 10y ago
  so we shouldn't build a society of tolerance then, that way we don't have to debate nazism for eternity. i can't imagine a greater waste of time than talking at length with neo-nazis.
  - exclusiv 10y ago
    Full tolerance allows us to monitor those that might be harmful. You can't convert most of them but you can watch them. And sometimes the people the majority thinks are being intolerant will end up being right. Bottom line though: look at all the intolerant societies with no real framework. They don't fare well. The Founders of the US Constitution believed in unalienable rights for a reason.
- badlucklottery 10y ago
  Sounds like you're talking about the paradox of tolerance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance Twitter has to choose between upholding the ideal of tolerance (4Chan is a good example of this) and trying to create a community of tolerance by running off the intolerant crowd. I don't think there's a happy medium in this case because the alt-right seem to really like disrupting conversations that are inconvenient to them (instead of just tuning them out) and Twitter's short-form messages make that extremely easy because the conversations are so disjointed and often misinterpreted to begin with.
  - micaksica 10y ago
    Thank you for the link. I didn't know there was a formal name for this. > the alt-right seem to really like disrupting conversations that are inconvenient to them That's aggressive behavior, then. I'm defending the alt-right's ability to use Twitter for expression and talk with themselves, and with people that have shown interest in their ideas. If they're off brigading every source they disagree with all the time with harassment and memes, that's a different issue, and Twitter should be wielding the banhammer in an egalitarian fashion on all groups behaving this way (per the views they hold themselves to.)
    - badlucklottery 10y ago
      >I'm defending the alt-right's ability to use Twitter for expression and talk with themselves, and with people that have shown interest in their ideas I don't think this was an outright purge of the alt-right, just those they saw as ringleaders of abusive brigading. Alex Jones and other big names from that group are still out there doing their thing. >Twitter should be wielding the banhammer in an egalitarian fashion on all groups behaving this way (per the views they hold themselves to.) Absolutely.
      - nsxwolf 10y ago
        Here's where I get confused. Alex Jones is alt-right? He hates racists and Nazis.
haimez 10y ago
But at what COST. As a platform shaping measure, this is clearly an intentional measure to create a /specific/ different echo chamber. This is the mechanic that just created a Trump presidency.
- pasquinelli 10y ago
  that's assuming a lot. maybe trump won, more than anything else, because he was the republican candidate in a year that a two term democrat was sitting in the presidency.
  - haimez 10y ago
    It's fair to say I'm assuming an interpretation that's difficult to prove on its own merit, but the implied counter-interpretation here implies that it was perfectly normal for him to be the republican nominee in the first place, and par for the course. Tides go in, tides go out. You can't explain that.
- exclusiv 10y ago
  It was Hillary's to lose but the D's did have 2 terms which made it tougher. Nonetheless, Trump gave her fodder daily. She lost to Obama when he was hardly known. Nearly lost to an old and little known socialist atheist/Jew. Email scandal. Benghazi. Whitewater. Pay to play laundering / vast personal riches. All the scandals from the 90s. Deplorables. Saying blacks and Muslims can't succeed regardless of circumstance / "professional never do wells". Her supporters act like she was squeaky clean. When I chatted with them they had hardly no knowledge of her or Bill's checkered past. I've heard people say she lost because she's a woman. That's like the QB throwing 4 interceptions and saying they lost because the kicker missed a field goal.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

by panic 10y ago

micaksica 10y ago

> Most people find the "ideas that powered the NSDAP" quite disgusting. If we are truly building a society of tolerance, whether or not one has a visceral reaction to an idea should not stop whether or not one can discuss and debate it. I'm not a neo-Nazi, but I've talked at length with them about their views. I will give anyone a few minutes to explain what they are about, try to listen to it neutrally, and form my own opinion. My personal conclusion of neo-Nazism is that it is a way for white men that feel they have no economic opportunity to blame a convenient target, and they try to rationalize Nazi Germany's domestic infrastructural successes as a reason why the country was doing what was right. I think it is a prime example of scapegoating, and I find it violent and hateful. If we are paying lip service to tolerance and acceptance of alternative worldviews to make ourselves feel like better progressives, we are doing our views a disservice and acting more hypocritical than those that blatantly wear radical views of censorship and discrimination.

panic 10y ago
Sure, but not everyone enjoys spending their time engaging with Nazi rhetoric. There are plenty of places outside of Twitter where you can actually choose whether or not to have a discussion.
- mreiland 10y ago
  He didn't say debating, he said listening.
- sparky_z 10y ago
  > Sure, but not everyone enjoys spending their time engaging with Nazi rhetoric. There are plenty of places outside of Twitter where you can actually choose whether or not to have a discussion. You could say the exact same thing about literally any view and it would be equally true.
  - pasquinelli 10y ago
    that would be of the same form, but not equally true. there are actual differences between the substance of things beyond logical form.
    - sparky_z 10y ago
      No, in this case I disagree. You could say the same thing, word for word, about any real-world ideology and it would be equally true. If you think I'm wrong about that, I would like a concrete example. (Maybe you think I'm trying to say that all ideologies are equally valid, but I'm not. I'm just pointing out that that particular comment is so reasonable-sounding and hard to argue with precisely because it doesn't actually say anything of substance.)
    - kbart 10y ago
      "Sure, but not everyone enjoys spending their time engaging with vegan rhetoric. There are plenty of places outside of Twitter where you can actually choose whether or not to have a discussion." By this logic, Twitter should ban pretty much any ideology.
- rustynails77 10y ago
  Let's look at it another way. Ban all hate groups, or don't ban any of them. However, don't pick and choose. I don't agree with Neo Nazis. I hold Neo Nazis with the same contempt that I hold feminists. Why not apply the policy for all hate groups? For example, in Australia we refuse to acknowledge the approximately 25% of violence and abuse by females within the household. The worst case statistic is NSW ("Twice as many female victims (19,488) as male victims (9,261) in New South Wales."). Not one of these victims is given a voice! http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/4510.0~2014~Main%20Features~Experimental%20Family%20and%20Domestic%20Violence%20Statistics~10000 http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/... Also check http://www.oneinthree.com.au/ http://www.oneinthree.com.au/ You will see that men who are victims of domestic violence are turned away from support groups. This doesn't surprise me as there is an aggressive campaign to ignore male victims from media, government and community support groups. I conducted a Google search from 2015 to determine that 100% of references in the Australian media stated that domestic violence was a "male only" behaviour and the only victims represented were female. I checked over 2000 references! In other words, 2000 of 2000 references represented one gender with relation to violence. If you listen to Cassie Jaye (the feminist who created the documentary The Red Pill), she says that feminists in media refuse to acknowledge male victims because it will take money away from female victims. In other words, if you are a boy or a man who is beaten or abused, feminists insist males get no representation or support. It's almost a complete media kibosh throughout the western world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itSTzV29bS0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itSTzV29bS0 So, why is Twitter not banning prominent feminists? or, why isn't Twitter banning all media outlets who support such hateful messages that insist that some victims of violence should be ignored? This is a fundamental breach of human rights! You can't get much worse! Check media references for an absence of any of the following, 80% of suicide victims are male 25% of domestic violence is by a female 90% of incarceration is male You will also notice that Cassie Jaye said she was suppressed by feminists. Cassie also said that she was advised by feminists not to represent any issues that impact men. This would explain the media suppression across all western countries. If you're going to ban a hate group, why not include feminism. It's certainly one of the biggest and most active groups today and actively violates human rights. I've given plenty of pointers in this single post alone to build evidence. There is almost universal silence from the overwhelming majority of feminists on this topic. It's a sad indictement of the overwhelming majority of the feminist movement. Check media, documentaries from 2016, support groups, even discussion forums. The message is consistent and it consistently breaches human rights. So, should Twitter ban hate groups? If you really must silence hate groups, then ban them all. And like you, I dislike spending so much of my time fighting hate groups like feminism because there is no impartiality on the topic. How extreme do you need to get before people will speak up?
tootie 10y ago
I disagree. I think there is most definitely a boundary between people with different opinions and people with opinions that are fundamentally at odds with living in a civilized society. "I don't like Goldman Sachs" is an opinion you can debate on its merits. "Kill all the Jew bankers" is not. The boundary is somewhere in between those two. I can't speak to the particular accounts banned by Twitter, but the alt right have a carefully developed vocabulary designed explicitly to sneak across that boundary.
- micaksica 10y ago
  > I think there is most definitely a boundary between people with different opinions and people with opinions that are fundamentally at odds with living in a civilized society. In this statement, you are unilaterally making a rule as to what ideals are OK to hold as part of "civilized society", and where the boundary is. Stating your society is more "civilized" than another is an opinion in and of itself, and arguably those who hold views opposite yours likely think your societal views also contain hints of barbarism or offend human nature. There are multiple ethical views that humanity and even this culture have held throughout the past century alone that the predominant society has now decided are reprehensible, that other nations consider reprehensible, and then there are also views that have been considered reprehensible now widely accepted by this culture. Personally, my beef is not with whether or not people agree or disagree with these views; the argument in this subthread is external to my original message: I'm tired of the Valley's progressive ideology consistently espousing acceptance, free organization, and free speech when we as an industry keep taking steps that seem against it when we disagree with the information provided. It is the message of social media: people should be able to communicate and unite worldwide. If we aren't radically upholding this belief, then we need to change the mantra to be aligned to what it actually means: associate with us, our ideas, and our worldview, and we will give you a voice. If you don't, your voice on this platform will be stripped, even if you are not engaged in attacking those that disagree with you.
  - tootie 10y ago
    I didn't decide where it is, I'm just saying it's definitely there.
pasquinelli 10y ago
so we shouldn't build a society of tolerance then, that way we don't have to debate nazism for eternity. i can't imagine a greater waste of time than talking at length with neo-nazis.
- exclusiv 10y ago
  Full tolerance allows us to monitor those that might be harmful. You can't convert most of them but you can watch them. And sometimes the people the majority thinks are being intolerant will end up being right. Bottom line though: look at all the intolerant societies with no real framework. They don't fare well. The Founders of the US Constitution believed in unalienable rights for a reason.
badlucklottery 10y ago
Sounds like you're talking about the paradox of tolerance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance Twitter has to choose between upholding the ideal of tolerance (4Chan is a good example of this) and trying to create a community of tolerance by running off the intolerant crowd. I don't think there's a happy medium in this case because the alt-right seem to really like disrupting conversations that are inconvenient to them (instead of just tuning them out) and Twitter's short-form messages make that extremely easy because the conversations are so disjointed and often misinterpreted to begin with.
- micaksica 10y ago
  Thank you for the link. I didn't know there was a formal name for this. > the alt-right seem to really like disrupting conversations that are inconvenient to them That's aggressive behavior, then. I'm defending the alt-right's ability to use Twitter for expression and talk with themselves, and with people that have shown interest in their ideas. If they're off brigading every source they disagree with all the time with harassment and memes, that's a different issue, and Twitter should be wielding the banhammer in an egalitarian fashion on all groups behaving this way (per the views they hold themselves to.)
  - badlucklottery 10y ago
    >I'm defending the alt-right's ability to use Twitter for expression and talk with themselves, and with people that have shown interest in their ideas I don't think this was an outright purge of the alt-right, just those they saw as ringleaders of abusive brigading. Alex Jones and other big names from that group are still out there doing their thing. >Twitter should be wielding the banhammer in an egalitarian fashion on all groups behaving this way (per the views they hold themselves to.) Absolutely.
    - nsxwolf 10y ago
      Here's where I get confused. Alex Jones is alt-right? He hates racists and Nazis.

haimez 10y ago

But at what COST. As a platform shaping measure, this is clearly an intentional measure to create a /specific/ different echo chamber. This is the mechanic that just created a Trump presidency.

pasquinelli 10y ago
that's assuming a lot. maybe trump won, more than anything else, because he was the republican candidate in a year that a two term democrat was sitting in the presidency.
- haimez 10y ago
  It's fair to say I'm assuming an interpretation that's difficult to prove on its own merit, but the implied counter-interpretation here implies that it was perfectly normal for him to be the republican nominee in the first place, and par for the course. Tides go in, tides go out. You can't explain that.
exclusiv 10y ago
It was Hillary's to lose but the D's did have 2 terms which made it tougher. Nonetheless, Trump gave her fodder daily. She lost to Obama when he was hardly known. Nearly lost to an old and little known socialist atheist/Jew. Email scandal. Benghazi. Whitewater. Pay to play laundering / vast personal riches. All the scandals from the 90s. Deplorables. Saying blacks and Muslims can't succeed regardless of circumstance / "professional never do wells". Her supporters act like she was squeaky clean. When I chatted with them they had hardly no knowledge of her or Bill's checkered past. I've heard people say she lost because she's a woman. That's like the QB throwing 4 interceptions and saying they lost because the kicker missed a field goal.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]