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I do not buy the 'a standpoint can be too extreme to not be worth discussing'. Interracial marriage would have been one of those standpoints as recently as the

I do not buy the 'a standpoint can be too extreme to not be worth discussing'. Interracial marriage would have been one of those standpoints as recently as the 1960s. If you find yourself incapable of articulating actual reasons, not emotional appeals, of why certain things are wrong, that is a personal failing and certainly you shouldn't tackle those issues yourself. But those who have thought about these issues should be able to bring them forward and deal with them objectively and dispassionately. The number of people who seem to operate on this mindset of "killing loads of people would actually be good, but its too nasty to speak of" is really fucking disturbing. There are objective, rational reasons why such things would be monumentally destructive. I also encounter a disturbing number of people who are earnest racists, who believe that certain races have inherent biological advantage over others, but who believe that they are not racists because they find acknowledging that as inhumane. They don't use epithets and they support affirmative action and diversity and such out of DUTY. All the while never being able to learn that they're WRONG.

subroutine 9y ago
I agree that nothing is too extreme that it shall be completely purged from all discussion. Is that what we are talking about here though? It's not like r/fatpeoplehate and r/CoonTown were communities of academic discourse regarding obesity and race. These were communities where people (probably mostly teenagers) spewed hatred for overweight or black people 24/7. Together I think these contrasting ideas... (1) hate speech should be mitigated, but (2) retaining free speech is paramount... engender a few interesting points: 1. Purging these communities from reddit does nothing to remove the underlying fact that given an anonymous social forum, some people will readily participate in hateful discussions targeting overweight people and minorities. 2. When removed from reddit, do these people find different alternative social outlets to share their hate (i.e. after the ban, did 4chan etc. experience a measureable increase in fat/racist posting). 3. If #2 is yes, is it better or worse (and in what ways) that these people and their discussions are forced to move into forums that more readily accept, or even champion hate-speech. 4. Is there a net benefit or net detriment to keeping these shithead communities within an ecosystem like reddit where they, on one hand, can recruit more moderate minds, but on the other hand, are subject to the ridicule of more moderate minds.
- kbenson 9y ago
  I think it's entirely possibly that there may be a net benefit to segregating problematic groups now, but it may not necessarily remain that way in the future. We are undergoing growing pains in our society stemming from a vast easing of the cost of self publication along with massive siloing of opinions such that people are not always presented with credible alternatives to their own point of view (or credible alternatives are rendered less credible through lack of trust). In the same way that I think those being born now will have different views on privacy, spreading personal information and identity than those in their teens now, and those have different views on those topics than those in their thirties (the pendulum swings slowly, but I'm confident we'll settle on being more private than early adopters of social media have been, but less private than those that lived without it), I think future generations will come up with their own solutions to the problems of credibility, fake news, and the other myriad problems insular social network sub-groups have exacerbated. Put another way, these hate groups are using tactics that are proven, but have wider reach and more effectiveness given our current reality, so the only way to effectively fight that virality of that in the short term (until people learn to mitigate the worst effects on themselves) might well be to isolate the behavior. It's like any other virulent disease in that respect.
  - SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
    From my experience, many of the people that inhabit these hate groups often browse subs like r/incel (involuntarily celibate). It may be the case that simply quarantining these groups may work to drop their numbers because members of these groups will simply not reproduce and not spread their toxic ideologies onto their kids.
    - kbenson 9y ago
      While funny, that's actually an interesting point. If the main spread of the ideology is through viral memetics to the point that spread through cultural familial indoctrination is very low, quarantining the the practitioners in some manner is double effective. This works even without them having problems procreating, as the same outcome would be observed if offspring are less likely to have similar beliefs (which I'm not sure is true).

subroutine 9y ago

I agree that nothing is too extreme that it shall be completely purged from all discussion. Is that what we are talking about here though? It's not like r/fatpeoplehate and r/CoonTown were communities of academic discourse regarding obesity and race. These were communities where people (probably mostly teenagers) spewed hatred for overweight or black people 24/7. Together I think these contrasting ideas... (1) hate speech should be mitigated, but (2) retaining free speech is paramount... engender a few interesting points: 1. Purging these communities from reddit does nothing to remove the underlying fact that given an anonymous social forum, some people will readily participate in hateful discussions targeting overweight people and minorities. 2. When removed from reddit, do these people find different alternative social outlets to share their hate (i.e. after the ban, did 4chan etc. experience a measureable increase in fat/racist posting). 3. If #2 is yes, is it better or worse (and in what ways) that these people and their discussions are forced to move into forums that more readily accept, or even champion hate-speech. 4. Is there a net benefit or net detriment to keeping these shithead communities within an ecosystem like reddit where they, on one hand, can recruit more moderate minds, but on the other hand, are subject to the ridicule of more moderate minds.

kbenson 9y ago
I think it's entirely possibly that there may be a net benefit to segregating problematic groups now, but it may not necessarily remain that way in the future. We are undergoing growing pains in our society stemming from a vast easing of the cost of self publication along with massive siloing of opinions such that people are not always presented with credible alternatives to their own point of view (or credible alternatives are rendered less credible through lack of trust). In the same way that I think those being born now will have different views on privacy, spreading personal information and identity than those in their teens now, and those have different views on those topics than those in their thirties (the pendulum swings slowly, but I'm confident we'll settle on being more private than early adopters of social media have been, but less private than those that lived without it), I think future generations will come up with their own solutions to the problems of credibility, fake news, and the other myriad problems insular social network sub-groups have exacerbated. Put another way, these hate groups are using tactics that are proven, but have wider reach and more effectiveness given our current reality, so the only way to effectively fight that virality of that in the short term (until people learn to mitigate the worst effects on themselves) might well be to isolate the behavior. It's like any other virulent disease in that respect.
- SimbaOnSteroids 9y ago
  From my experience, many of the people that inhabit these hate groups often browse subs like r/incel (involuntarily celibate). It may be the case that simply quarantining these groups may work to drop their numbers because members of these groups will simply not reproduce and not spread their toxic ideologies onto their kids.
  - kbenson 9y ago
    While funny, that's actually an interesting point. If the main spread of the ideology is through viral memetics to the point that spread through cultural familial indoctrination is very low, quarantining the the practitioners in some manner is double effective. This works even without them having problems procreating, as the same outcome would be observed if offspring are less likely to have similar beliefs (which I'm not sure is true).