8 ms·
I have a bit of trouble with these arguments, because the "free speech" argument feels really recent to me. At it's core, twitter is an assemblage of communiti
by rtpg 10y ago
I have a bit of trouble with these arguments, because the "free speech" argument feels really recent to me.
At it's core, twitter is an assemblage of communities. Twitter can simply decide that, no, it doesn't want neo-nazis on its website. These people are then free to go make their own websites to hang out on.
Websites like Digg or Something Awful, despite also not being about single topics, were never sitting around thinking "Oh, I want to ban this guy that goes around calling black people monkeys, but free speech". Even 4chan would ban people for that sort of dumb stuff. I feel like this argument only became prevalent after reddit became big.
There is an argument to be made that reddit's philosophy on this point single-handedly made all "community" websites worse, because it stigmatized the notion of "drawing a line in the sand", and implied that all websites have to accept everyone.
I think in the newspaper example, Twitter is a newspaper, not the campus. People can make new websites easily, just like they can make new newspapers. Twitter is under no obligation to "publish" stuff if they don't want to. The internet is the campus. No DNS blocking, just banning users from some websites.
And, honestly, the amount of people who care about the "free speech" issue dwarfs the amount of people who see Twitter as "the place to get trolled at". It doesn't seem like good branding to be at the same level as 8chan on this point.
Though, to your point, on a more general level, figuring out what's going on in the audience for these sorts of messages is important.
- yomly 10y agoActually I think there's more nuance than simply whether or not to silence certain views. The problem with the alt-right is that it is an idea. Ideas are very hard to kill by censorship and when you do let them "fester" they get more extreme and radical. This is in part how we arrived at the alt-right becoming what it is today. We should want the alt-right out in public in spaces where there are checks and balances. There, it can be killed by moderation (in both senses of the word, organic and inorganic) and dilution. If you push the alt-right to exclusively use their own walled gardens, to concentrate in their own unmoderated, subverted echo chambers, that's when you should be very terrified because that's when you birth actually scary groups. There will always be unpopular opinions on some subject. No matter how much proof you have, there will be flat earthers and creationists. No matter how much you promote equality, there will be bigots. But there is also always a continuum on the spectrum of these affiliations - some people may be mildly xenophobic and have valid concerns on immigration or have ignorant/antiquated views on gender equality, for example. When you take a hard-line stance on these opinions on the hope of promoting one ideal (no matter how noble) you always run the risk of also promoting the other through polarisation.
- briandear 10y agoDo you think the "alt-right" is the only major problem? Try tweeting something against a Hillary or Obama policy during the election or challenge a 'liberal' person -- the responses can be no less harassing and vitriolic. This idea that the 'right' is a problem is in itself part of the problem. There is plenty of harassment from those that claim they are more tolerant than the rest of us. I do agree with your echo chamber point though -- one needs only to spend a few minutes on Mother Jones's comment section to read all manner of hate against those who have different opinions from their own. You are exactly correct -- the public sphere ought to welcome all viewpoints as sunlight is ultimately the best disinfectant. One of the reasons Hillary lost the election is that her campaign seemed to be in a bubble -- holding valid concerns of many groups in contempt while surrounding itself with voices that spent more time self congratulating or feeling intellectually superior whilst many Americans (such as in the Rust Belt) found themselves marginalized. The Obama campaign by contrast actually reached out to the so-called deplorables.
- jessedhillon 10y agoYes, a left wing bubble exists. However, without any qualifications of scope and scale, it sounds like you're suggesting that the vitriol approaches a comparable level to that of the alt-right. That's just a plainly false equivalency.
- tnone 10y agoYou say that, when the alt right is an artificial internet meme, while leftist dogma rules over universities and continues to go after people's jobs for wrongthink. Vitriol is clearly a bad measure when subjective interpretation rules are becoming official policy. Even Twitter now has special treatment for particular groups enshrined in its policy. You can be as vitriolic as you want, as long as it's against the "correct" group.
- someguydave 10y agoHear hear. Equality before the law is the true egalitarian ideal.
- ikeboy 10y agohttp://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-centralized-web/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-centrali...