6 ms·

These aren't conservative voices, they're hate voices and should be banned. There's lots of legitimate conservative voices out there who are not being listened

These aren't conservative voices, they're hate voices and should be banned. There's lots of legitimate conservative voices out there who are not being listened to. And, they're not banned either.

Mizza 8y ago
I can't believe this needs to be stated, but the objection that normal people have to censorship is that we don't want a small handful of corporations and celebrity bullies to be the ones who get to decide what is or isn't "legitimate voice", as you put it.
- codingdave 8y ago
  "normal people"? This is a discussion that has some serious points on both sides. I don't believe throwing judgments on the people who choose a side that differs from your own will be helpful.
  - wu-ikkyu 8y ago
    I think they meant "normal people" as in not a corporation or a celebrity
    - close04 8y ago
      I tend to use regular people just to avoid this confusion :).
      - DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
        IIUC, in U.S. jurisprudence the term "natural person" serves that role.
        close04 8y ago
        This is slightly different. It's to differentiate between individual entity and legal entity. But normal/regular person can be used as opposed to celebrity, or billionaire. Both Jeff Bezos and myself are natural persons. Only one is a normal/regular person :).
Mattasher 8y ago
Lead dev on the service here. Please have a look at the page, especially the comments about how unpopular views can change over time, and how the views you hold are certain to seem deplorable to someone out there (hn user nostrademons has a good quote about this which I used). At core though, for me this is about protecting access to information and the importance of decentralized (uncensorable) identity, not about who private companies should or shouldn't allow on their platforms.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- insomniacity 8y ago
  Matt, it sounds like you've rebuilt the graph I already have through Keybase (https://keybase.io/ https://keybase.io/). Can I not just use that instead?
  - Mattasher 8y ago
    I love the Keybase project (I'm user @mattasher)! You guys are on my list of people to contact as we get closer to public rollout. Anyone at Keybase I should contact specifically?
- that_guy1 8y ago
  in footnote 3 you write, 'Candice Owens replaced the word “white” with “black”' . She replaced "white" with "Jewish"
  - Mattasher 8y ago
    Good catch! I believe she did both replacements, in different tweets. I've updated the footnote to be more clear.
ldayley 8y ago
The rebelious streak in me has been seeking out and reading so-called “banned books”— books that were at one point banned by a community for some reason or another— since I was a teen. Many of these are classics that ran afoul of norms or the party line at some point, somewhere. The problem isn’t that the voices of hate are being banned. The problem is that the mechanisms used to lower the volume on or silence hate speech can lower the volume or silence any other form or speech. This is why the US enshrined free speech as the first amendment of the constitution. Technical means of defying censorship, like this one, help to preserve that right.
- richrichardsson 8y ago
  Are you under the impression that it's the government running Twitter or any other online forum? I really don't understand why people are having issues understanding that a private enterprise is free to censor as they see fit.
  - prophesi 8y ago
    I think the issue arises with how powerful these social media platforms are. If your Twitter/FB/etc accounts get shadow banned, you now essentially have no voice on the internet.
    - dvtrn 8y ago
      Some people (not the one typing this comment) are absolutely fine with that too, it seems. "This is objectionable to me, therefore, no one should be allowed to consume or be exposed to it." That's what bothers this particular commentor (me).
    - checkyoursudo 8y ago
      I don't use Facebook, and I only log into Twitter once every couple of months or more rarely than that. I don't use any other of the super-popular social networks (I guess I have a linkedin profile that I haven't logged into in 5 or more years.) My own access habits are in practice similar to one who is banned or suspended regularly. I have never felt like I essentially have no voice on the internet. I understand that if some popular person with lots of followers gets banned then it seems like they would risk losing a lot of their audience that they may rely on for income etc etc etc, but that's hardly the reality of the average 10/100/1000-followers user, is it? Just because the big social networks are really big doesn't mean that they are the only places you can find a way to have a voice on the web. I don't mean to diminish your feelings if you feel that way. If you love twitter or fb or whatever and you get kicked out, then I certainly get that would be hard. But there are other places on the web. Lots of other places. Maybe some alternative places let you have even more of a voice precisely because they're smaller and it takes less to cut through the noise.
macspoofing 8y ago
>There's lots of legitimate conservative voices out there who are not being listened to. Like who?
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  Tom Fitton or JudicialWatch was shadowbanned at Twitter. You go ahead and find the “hate speech” posts. Candace Owens, a black conservative woman was temporarily banned from twitter for making the same comments NYT’snew editor made but replaced “white” with “Jewish” and all of a sudden twitter decides those are racist. She did it prove a point and twitter played right along. Those are two examples.
  - pjc50 8y ago
    https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/judicial-watch/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/judicial-watch/ those guys? "Judicial Watch has made numerous false and unsubstantiated claims, with a “vast majority” of their lawsuits dismissed"
    - sverige 8y ago
      Your source is itself notorious for not being what it claims to be. I would argue that any website that claims to be a fact checker (whether left or right politically) is automatically less trusted, since their entire raison d'etre is to claim the right to declare whether others are biased or not. The reality is that everyone is biased. Claiming to not be so means starting from a false premise.
    - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
      I said find the hate speech. Not does your biased website doesn't approve of them. JW is one of the only groups out there actually winning lawsuits to disclose information on the 2016 election and FBI mishandling of basically everything. Sorry, they're real lawyers, in real cases, using actual facts that stand up in a court of law. I can see why your favorite website there doesn't like that. ALSO... FWIW... My local news paper is EXTREMELY BIASED, and your site lists them as Neutral.
Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
Censoring people only makes them yell louder. You drive people deeper into radicalization when you treat them like this.
- SiempreViernes 8y ago
  No: people radicalise by contact with other radical people, not by being isolated.
  - sverige 8y ago
    That's a strong statement. I can immediately think of one exception to your rule: the "Unabomber," Ted Kaczynski, who both held radical ideas and was notably isolated in a remote mountain cabin with no electronic communications.
    - SiempreViernes 8y ago
      He is clinically insane though, being something closer to a serial killer than a real terrorist.
- checkyoursudo 8y ago
  Maybe this is true, but it seems like this claim needs some evidence. Shaming people sometimes makes them rebel, and sometimes makes them reform. Maybe you drive more people into radicalization than self-reflection when you shut them down. I'm not sure I've ever seen evidence of that either way, have you? However, it seems almost axiomatic that if a person cannot be heard (as easily) then that person cannot recruit (as easily). I would guess that this is at least part of the purpose behind de-platforming tactics. Maybe. Maybe de-platformers just want to stop hearing from their opponents. I'm wary of de-platforming as a universal tactic though I might be convinced that it is sometimes the right approach. At any rate, if it's effective, then people will keep doing it. And it seems to be pretty effective.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago
ahallock 8y ago
'Hate voices' -- could you think of a more nebulous term? That surely wouldn't be abused to punish political enemies.

These aren't conservative voices, they're hate voices and should be banned. There's lots of legitimate conservative voices out there who are not being listened to. And, they're not banned either.

Mizza 8y ago

I can't believe this needs to be stated, but the objection that normal people have to censorship is that we don't want a small handful of corporations and celebrity bullies to be the ones who get to decide what is or isn't "legitimate voice", as you put it.

codingdave 8y ago
"normal people"? This is a discussion that has some serious points on both sides. I don't believe throwing judgments on the people who choose a side that differs from your own will be helpful.
- wu-ikkyu 8y ago
  I think they meant "normal people" as in not a corporation or a celebrity
  - close04 8y ago
    I tend to use regular people just to avoid this confusion :).
    - DoofusOfDeath 8y ago
      IIUC, in U.S. jurisprudence the term "natural person" serves that role.
      - close04 8y ago
        This is slightly different. It's to differentiate between individual entity and legal entity. But normal/regular person can be used as opposed to celebrity, or billionaire. Both Jeff Bezos and myself are natural persons. Only one is a normal/regular person :).

Mattasher 8y ago

Lead dev on the service here. Please have a look at the page, especially the comments about how unpopular views can change over time, and how the views you hold are certain to seem deplorable to someone out there (hn user nostrademons has a good quote about this which I used). At core though, for me this is about protecting access to information and the importance of decentralized (uncensorable) identity, not about who private companies should or shouldn't allow on their platforms.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
insomniacity 8y ago
Matt, it sounds like you've rebuilt the graph I already have through Keybase (https://keybase.io/ https://keybase.io/). Can I not just use that instead?
- Mattasher 8y ago
  I love the Keybase project (I'm user @mattasher)! You guys are on my list of people to contact as we get closer to public rollout. Anyone at Keybase I should contact specifically?
that_guy1 8y ago
in footnote 3 you write, 'Candice Owens replaced the word “white” with “black”' . She replaced "white" with "Jewish"
- Mattasher 8y ago
  Good catch! I believe she did both replacements, in different tweets. I've updated the footnote to be more clear.

ldayley 8y ago

The rebelious streak in me has been seeking out and reading so-called “banned books”— books that were at one point banned by a community for some reason or another— since I was a teen. Many of these are classics that ran afoul of norms or the party line at some point, somewhere. The problem isn’t that the voices of hate are being banned. The problem is that the mechanisms used to lower the volume on or silence hate speech can lower the volume or silence any other form or speech. This is why the US enshrined free speech as the first amendment of the constitution. Technical means of defying censorship, like this one, help to preserve that right.

richrichardsson 8y ago
Are you under the impression that it's the government running Twitter or any other online forum? I really don't understand why people are having issues understanding that a private enterprise is free to censor as they see fit.
- prophesi 8y ago
  I think the issue arises with how powerful these social media platforms are. If your Twitter/FB/etc accounts get shadow banned, you now essentially have no voice on the internet.
  - dvtrn 8y ago
    Some people (not the one typing this comment) are absolutely fine with that too, it seems. "This is objectionable to me, therefore, no one should be allowed to consume or be exposed to it." That's what bothers this particular commentor (me).
  - checkyoursudo 8y ago
    I don't use Facebook, and I only log into Twitter once every couple of months or more rarely than that. I don't use any other of the super-popular social networks (I guess I have a linkedin profile that I haven't logged into in 5 or more years.) My own access habits are in practice similar to one who is banned or suspended regularly. I have never felt like I essentially have no voice on the internet. I understand that if some popular person with lots of followers gets banned then it seems like they would risk losing a lot of their audience that they may rely on for income etc etc etc, but that's hardly the reality of the average 10/100/1000-followers user, is it? Just because the big social networks are really big doesn't mean that they are the only places you can find a way to have a voice on the web. I don't mean to diminish your feelings if you feel that way. If you love twitter or fb or whatever and you get kicked out, then I certainly get that would be hard. But there are other places on the web. Lots of other places. Maybe some alternative places let you have even more of a voice precisely because they're smaller and it takes less to cut through the noise.

macspoofing 8y ago

>There's lots of legitimate conservative voices out there who are not being listened to. Like who?

SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
Tom Fitton or JudicialWatch was shadowbanned at Twitter. You go ahead and find the “hate speech” posts. Candace Owens, a black conservative woman was temporarily banned from twitter for making the same comments NYT’snew editor made but replaced “white” with “Jewish” and all of a sudden twitter decides those are racist. She did it prove a point and twitter played right along. Those are two examples.
- pjc50 8y ago
  https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/judicial-watch/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/judicial-watch/ those guys? "Judicial Watch has made numerous false and unsubstantiated claims, with a “vast majority” of their lawsuits dismissed"
  - sverige 8y ago
    Your source is itself notorious for not being what it claims to be. I would argue that any website that claims to be a fact checker (whether left or right politically) is automatically less trusted, since their entire raison d'etre is to claim the right to declare whether others are biased or not. The reality is that everyone is biased. Claiming to not be so means starting from a false premise.
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    I said find the hate speech. Not does your biased website doesn't approve of them. JW is one of the only groups out there actually winning lawsuits to disclose information on the 2016 election and FBI mishandling of basically everything. Sorry, they're real lawyers, in real cases, using actual facts that stand up in a court of law. I can see why your favorite website there doesn't like that. ALSO... FWIW... My local news paper is EXTREMELY BIASED, and your site lists them as Neutral.

Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago

Censoring people only makes them yell louder. You drive people deeper into radicalization when you treat them like this.

SiempreViernes 8y ago
No: people radicalise by contact with other radical people, not by being isolated.
- sverige 8y ago
  That's a strong statement. I can immediately think of one exception to your rule: the "Unabomber," Ted Kaczynski, who both held radical ideas and was notably isolated in a remote mountain cabin with no electronic communications.
  - SiempreViernes 8y ago
    He is clinically insane though, being something closer to a serial killer than a real terrorist.
checkyoursudo 8y ago
Maybe this is true, but it seems like this claim needs some evidence. Shaming people sometimes makes them rebel, and sometimes makes them reform. Maybe you drive more people into radicalization than self-reflection when you shut them down. I'm not sure I've ever seen evidence of that either way, have you? However, it seems almost axiomatic that if a person cannot be heard (as easily) then that person cannot recruit (as easily). I would guess that this is at least part of the purpose behind de-platforming tactics. Maybe. Maybe de-platformers just want to stop hearing from their opponents. I'm wary of de-platforming as a universal tactic though I might be convinced that it is sometimes the right approach. At any rate, if it's effective, then people will keep doing it. And it seems to be pretty effective.
- Sir_Cmpwn 8y ago

ahallock 8y ago

'Hate voices' -- could you think of a more nebulous term? That surely wouldn't be abused to punish political enemies.