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Actually 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

by yomly 10y ago

Actually 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 ago
Do 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 ago
  Yes, 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 ago
    You 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 ago
      Hear hear. Equality before the law is the true egalitarian ideal.
      - hga 10y ago
        One problem is that, to the extent the inchoate Alt Right has decided upon this (and I think it has), we explicitly reject egalitarianism AKA equalitarianism (they're cognate, right?). In Vox Day's first cut 16 point formulation, Point 7 is: The Alt Right is anti-equalitarian. It rejects the idea of equality for the same reason it rejects the ideas of unicorns and leprechauns, noting that human equality does not exist in any observable scientific, legal, material, intellectual, sexual, or spiritual form. From http://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/08/what-alt-right-is.html http://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/08/what-alt-right-is.html
        nickpsecurity 10y ago
        Well, I appreciate you sharing a clear statement on what it is. I haven't seen one before this. Although plenty is debatable here, No 14 and 15 look immediately contradictory as one leads to laws with a preference for whites or discrimination against blacks while other implies a pure meritocracy. I don't have to guess about this, though, given I live in the South whose history shows how it plays out. ;) Good that there's a number of items on the list I agree with. Some common ground.
nl 10y ago
I have some sympathy for your argument. But I think there is a fair amount of evidence from this election that the increased velocity of idea transmission on media like Twitter made it impossible to dilute. That's one of the factors in information spread models, and it seems relevant here. The alt-right used to be in their own walled garden echo chambers: Breitbart, Stormer etc. Now Steve Bannon is two months from being chief-of-staff in the Whitehouse. So I guess that didn't work out so well.
- hga 10y ago
  Reince Priebus, GOPe RNC chairman, is going to become chief of staff (and only as long as he plays straight), Steve Bannon is going to become an adviser, I would imagine akin to Karl Rove, just a lot more competent. ADDED: he is formally "chief strategist and senior counselor".
flashman 10y ago
> Ideas are very hard to kill by censorship and when you do let them "fester" they get more extreme and radical I believe allowing these people on your community site gives them the space they need to become more extreme and radical. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept, and it's always struck me as very convenient that Reddit's minimal censorship policy magically aligns with minimisation of operating costs.
- Chris2048 10y ago
  > The standard you walk past is the standard you accept I think this is not only wrong, but troubling. tolerating actions on the street is not the same as tolerating speech in a private forum.
  - paulddraper 10y ago
    Is twitter your idea of a private forum? I thought the point of twitter is that everything is public?
    - Chris2048 10y ago
      I meant with regards to the statement you made, not with regards to Twitter specifically - But Twitter is still Opt-in, you subscribe to those you wish to follow, and can unsubscribe at will.
- throwanem 10y ago
  > I believe allowing these people on your community site gives them the space they need to become more extreme and radical. I never dreamed I'd see the day when electing a president was called radical.
AJ007 10y ago
The unfortunate reality of censorship is that it allows ideas to be rewritten because the past has vanished. Re-branding doesn't even require a name change. Take a look at Wikipedia; even though controversial topics may be locked down or contain some bias there is a history of the edits. Who said what when. It makes it easier to paint a rosy picture of your cause when the previous stuff you said has vanished from public view. It is very possible that censorship of ISIS content on Twitter (I'll take an extreme example) actually has made it easier for them to spread. You are both able to rewrite history and harness whatever in a human brain likes things which are forbidden (aggressively used by musicians and entertainers for decades in the West to market to a younger audience.) The biggest weapon against people with really bad ideas is definitely an undeletable history. In Europe, they no longer have that tool.
- jk563 10y ago
  > In Europe, they no longer have that tool. Funnily enough, in the UK we're about to pass into law a ridiculous bill that forces ISPs to store the last 12 months of browsing history for every user. This is amongst other wide sweeping powers such as being able to ask companies to do the impossible (Apple to break into a phone). Definitely something I personally will be finding out the finer details of.
nickpsecurity 10y ago
Exactly what you said. It's what I warned them about when they were kicking people off forums. Then, I watched them get shocked over and over again by both the AltRight and Trump support. They had no clue how any decent person could do such a thing. That's because they weren't listening to them and even kicked them out of the forums. Had they been present, they could've weakened the support a bit on the more moderate ones. At the least, whoever they propped up would reflect less-extreme views of their supporters. Isolation only makes bad things worse.
ben0x539 10y ago
> 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. I feel like I'm justified in being much more terrified when the white nationalists are out in the open, empowered to inflict violence on people because they're confident country has their back. Like, you can be terrified on an abstract level because you think the anti-nazi politics aren't being performed optimally, we'll be over here fearing for our lives.
- yomly 10y ago
  This isn't about politics. This isn't abstract. This is about what we are seeing right now being a manifestation of trying silence a group and that it can get even worse. A politician was assassinated in the UK suspected (read: highly likely) over Brexit. Don't assume things can't get even worse is what I'm warning...
  - ben0x539 10y ago
    Uh, yeah, right-wing extremists murdering people is pretty much what I posted about.
    - yomly 10y ago
      Put it this way. There's always one person who gets a bit too riled up in the mob. Maybe they'll say something like "yeah we should kill politician xyz!!!!!" If it's in public, chances are, more normal people (who happened to also be part of the discussion) will recoil and you can hope that person will realize that they overstepped something and dial back their thoughts/ideas. In a private space, where the discussion is framed by the founders and newcomers are joined (possibly only after being "vetted") it's probably more likely that after a suggestion like "let's kill xyz" will be escalated with something like "great idea - I know person A who sells guns on the side. And suddenly that person who possibly could have been talked out of doing something tragic has instead been empowered to act. I have faith that most of us are not malicious, but are still susceptible to the animal in us and all the instincts that come with that...

by yomly 10y ago

briandear 10y ago

Do 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 ago
Yes, 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 ago
  You 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 ago
    Hear hear. Equality before the law is the true egalitarian ideal.
    - hga 10y ago
      One problem is that, to the extent the inchoate Alt Right has decided upon this (and I think it has), we explicitly reject egalitarianism AKA equalitarianism (they're cognate, right?). In Vox Day's first cut 16 point formulation, Point 7 is: The Alt Right is anti-equalitarian. It rejects the idea of equality for the same reason it rejects the ideas of unicorns and leprechauns, noting that human equality does not exist in any observable scientific, legal, material, intellectual, sexual, or spiritual form. From http://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/08/what-alt-right-is.html http://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/08/what-alt-right-is.html
      - nickpsecurity 10y ago
        Well, I appreciate you sharing a clear statement on what it is. I haven't seen one before this. Although plenty is debatable here, No 14 and 15 look immediately contradictory as one leads to laws with a preference for whites or discrimination against blacks while other implies a pure meritocracy. I don't have to guess about this, though, given I live in the South whose history shows how it plays out. ;) Good that there's a number of items on the list I agree with. Some common ground.

nl 10y ago

I have some sympathy for your argument. But I think there is a fair amount of evidence from this election that the increased velocity of idea transmission on media like Twitter made it impossible to dilute. That's one of the factors in information spread models, and it seems relevant here. The alt-right used to be in their own walled garden echo chambers: Breitbart, Stormer etc. Now Steve Bannon is two months from being chief-of-staff in the Whitehouse. So I guess that didn't work out so well.

hga 10y ago
Reince Priebus, GOPe RNC chairman, is going to become chief of staff (and only as long as he plays straight), Steve Bannon is going to become an adviser, I would imagine akin to Karl Rove, just a lot more competent. ADDED: he is formally "chief strategist and senior counselor".

flashman 10y ago

> Ideas are very hard to kill by censorship and when you do let them "fester" they get more extreme and radical I believe allowing these people on your community site gives them the space they need to become more extreme and radical. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept, and it's always struck me as very convenient that Reddit's minimal censorship policy magically aligns with minimisation of operating costs.

Chris2048 10y ago
> The standard you walk past is the standard you accept I think this is not only wrong, but troubling. tolerating actions on the street is not the same as tolerating speech in a private forum.
- paulddraper 10y ago
  Is twitter your idea of a private forum? I thought the point of twitter is that everything is public?
  - Chris2048 10y ago
    I meant with regards to the statement you made, not with regards to Twitter specifically - But Twitter is still Opt-in, you subscribe to those you wish to follow, and can unsubscribe at will.
throwanem 10y ago
> I believe allowing these people on your community site gives them the space they need to become more extreme and radical. I never dreamed I'd see the day when electing a president was called radical.

AJ007 10y ago

The unfortunate reality of censorship is that it allows ideas to be rewritten because the past has vanished. Re-branding doesn't even require a name change. Take a look at Wikipedia; even though controversial topics may be locked down or contain some bias there is a history of the edits. Who said what when. It makes it easier to paint a rosy picture of your cause when the previous stuff you said has vanished from public view. It is very possible that censorship of ISIS content on Twitter (I'll take an extreme example) actually has made it easier for them to spread. You are both able to rewrite history and harness whatever in a human brain likes things which are forbidden (aggressively used by musicians and entertainers for decades in the West to market to a younger audience.) The biggest weapon against people with really bad ideas is definitely an undeletable history. In Europe, they no longer have that tool.

jk563 10y ago
> In Europe, they no longer have that tool. Funnily enough, in the UK we're about to pass into law a ridiculous bill that forces ISPs to store the last 12 months of browsing history for every user. This is amongst other wide sweeping powers such as being able to ask companies to do the impossible (Apple to break into a phone). Definitely something I personally will be finding out the finer details of.

nickpsecurity 10y ago

Exactly what you said. It's what I warned them about when they were kicking people off forums. Then, I watched them get shocked over and over again by both the AltRight and Trump support. They had no clue how any decent person could do such a thing. That's because they weren't listening to them and even kicked them out of the forums. Had they been present, they could've weakened the support a bit on the more moderate ones. At the least, whoever they propped up would reflect less-extreme views of their supporters. Isolation only makes bad things worse.

ben0x539 10y ago

> 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. I feel like I'm justified in being much more terrified when the white nationalists are out in the open, empowered to inflict violence on people because they're confident country has their back. Like, you can be terrified on an abstract level because you think the anti-nazi politics aren't being performed optimally, we'll be over here fearing for our lives.

yomly 10y ago
This isn't about politics. This isn't abstract. This is about what we are seeing right now being a manifestation of trying silence a group and that it can get even worse. A politician was assassinated in the UK suspected (read: highly likely) over Brexit. Don't assume things can't get even worse is what I'm warning...
- ben0x539 10y ago
  Uh, yeah, right-wing extremists murdering people is pretty much what I posted about.
  - yomly 10y ago
    Put it this way. There's always one person who gets a bit too riled up in the mob. Maybe they'll say something like "yeah we should kill politician xyz!!!!!" If it's in public, chances are, more normal people (who happened to also be part of the discussion) will recoil and you can hope that person will realize that they overstepped something and dial back their thoughts/ideas. In a private space, where the discussion is framed by the founders and newcomers are joined (possibly only after being "vetted") it's probably more likely that after a suggestion like "let's kill xyz" will be escalated with something like "great idea - I know person A who sells guns on the side. And suddenly that person who possibly could have been talked out of doing something tragic has instead been empowered to act. I have faith that most of us are not malicious, but are still susceptible to the animal in us and all the instincts that come with that...