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> That's the cost of doing horrible business. But doesn't Twitter have many people saying horrible things? If gab is letting people talk about murdering people

> That's the cost of doing horrible business. But doesn't Twitter have many people saying horrible things? If gab is letting people talk about murdering people and not taking action, I'm fine with it - but is that the case?

anonymous5133 8y ago
Yup and so does facebook, youtube, reddit and so on.
- manicdee 8y ago
  Gab was specifically founded because Reddit didn’t let them say the things they like saying.
  - anonymous5133 8y ago
    Yup but it still persists. The users just spread out into other subs and do it there as well.
  - fweespeech 8y ago
    That was Voat. Gab is the same but Twitter. But for all their bitching, they are still active on both in large numbers. Both platforms really only engage in token bans.
- slg 8y ago
  One could argue that the Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc are also more dangerous because they allow the recruitment and radicalization of normal people. Before social media was around someone would have had to seek out a site like Stormfront. They would have had to take an active interest in these hate groups. With social media the hate comes to them and is mixed in with all the usual cat pictures and memes. This serves to normalize hate and creates an easy avenue to recruit disenfranchised people who might never have previously been exposed to this type of thing pre-social media.
  - anonymous5133 8y ago
    One could also argue that twitter, reddit and facebook also discourage people from joining hate groups and so on. All of these platforms can be used for good or bad. Maybe someone was a jew hater before but then they watch a documentary about Israel and realize that the jews aren't so bad etc. That same person might also watch a documentary about hate groups and realize they are a member of one and decide to make a positive change in their life.
    - slg 8y ago
      Sure, these platforms can be used for both good and evil. But I don't see how that is relevant to my point. You don't have to allow the evil just so people can continue to do good. Or are you arguing that people are drawn to Twitter by the hate groups and are then recruited away by good Twitter users and those converts outnumber the number of people that the hate groups are able to recruit through Twitter?
      - anonymous5133 8y ago
        What I see is mostly positive actions being done to counter the negatives. If someone makes hate speech then there are people who counter it by saying it is wrong and so on. The bigger issue I see is if when these communities become echo chambers which I think is far more toxic. Now if Gab was removing speech that was against hate speech then I think that is a major issue. I see this issue happening more on Reddit where you have community that basically have rules like "if you don't agree with xyz then you will be banned immediately." So the whole thing is an echo chamber in itself. Also the truth is, these hate speech people aren't going to just disappear. They will persist and continue. The only solution is to counter those people, in dialogue, and keep on them about why they're wrong etc.
        slg 8y ago
        I think you are being naive here if you think that the hate speech on these sites is being countered by a similar amount of positive speech. You also seem to be ignoring the victims of that hate speech and the abuse they have to endure. Maybe the person sending the death threats is better under the current system than if they were quarantined off on some other site, but my sympathy rests much more with the person receiving the death threat.
tptacek 8y ago
This argument is tiresome and insults our intelligence. Gab isn't in the spotlight because it happens to host some white supremacists, as Twitter and Facebook do. It's scrutinized because it actively courts white supremacists; it is white supremacist Twitter. Even today, when the front page (unusually busy! during most of the day, there were at least six (6) stories circulating on "popular stories") is primarily about "save Gab", you are only ever one click away from fever-swamp racism; virtually everyone who comments there is a white nationalist. I've been screen-shotting Gab for months (I have weird hobbies) and one of the accounts I thought was a bot (Gab was overrun by bots, presumably to boost its traffic numbers and dilute the neo-Nazism) --- it posted garish landscape photos like clockwork every day --- also turned out to be a white nationalist. Seriously, even the inspirational landscape account is a Nazi on Gab. But don't take the site's word for it. Listen to the site itself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18318536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18318536 People have been screenshotting Gab.ai tweets for a year (they deleted the worst of them after yesterday's tragedy). It's not like there's any uncertainty about what they are. Now, it is true that you can make a coherent argument for leaving sites like Gab and Stormfront alone; "more speech is antidote for bad speech", etc. But what you can't do is try to argue that Gab is just Twitter, and is being singled out unfairly. That's not what's happening. Even if Stormfront added a record review section and started doing in-depths on the new Kurt Vile album, we'd still all understand what Stormfront was. But fewer people know what Gab is, so it's a little bit more confusing.
- EGreg 8y ago
  Private companies like CloudFlare and GoDaddy don’t have to work with sites they don’t want to work with, any more than the sites have to allow people to post on them. InfoWars itself would moderate its posters.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
  > Now, it is true that you can make a coherent argument for leaving sites like Gab and Stormfront alone; "more speech is antidote for bad speech" A coherent one, but maybe also a wrong one. We've heard a lot less in the news about various de-platformed people. When was the last time Milo was in the news? https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-bans-work https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-...
notatoad 8y ago
Twitter is bad at removing abusive or threatening content from their site. That's not the same as refusing to remove it.
- deleted 8y ago
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- deleted 8y ago
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- fweespeech 8y ago
  Reddit (among other platforms) have knowingly enabled neo-nazis and racists for years. They, like Twitter, really only react when called out publicly by media outlets with large scale distribution. Gab is only viewed special case because the founder stupidly marketed it as a "free speech absolutist" sort of place.
- hhjinks 8y ago
  Right, it's worse. Twitter has selectively been enforcing its ToS for years. How is removing hate speech conductive to anything but hiding the issue. Let people moderate their own feeds, and don't make people rely on archiving services to see politically significant information like a terrorist's social media history.
  - notatoad 8y ago
    >How is removing hate speech conductive to anything but hiding the issue. well for one, it makes it a slightly nicer place for the victims of that hate speech.
    - hhjinks 8y ago
      That is so much better handled by just letting your users control their own feed.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
wpietri 8y ago
Gab was explicitly started as a place for hosting things that the major platforms were, however, imperfectly, trying to get rid of. So yes, it's the case. I get the drive. Circa 1994-2000, I was involved in bianca.com, the first web-based chat site and run with a strident free-speech ethos. Especially early on, the web was a pretty staid academic place, so a site where you could talk about anything was hugely novel. It turns out that if you let people talk about anything but most other sites have certain restrictions, then your site will become known for what other sites don't accept. In 1994, that was porn. The founders didn't really set out to have site about sex, but by 1997, that's the category we won our Webby in. None of us were really exciting about running a sex site, so eventually we turned our attentions elsewhere. These days the problem isn't porn; there's plenty of room for that on the internet. For places like Gab and 4chan, what they get is the world's worst people, the ones kicked off Twitter and Facebook. According to a study this year, Gab has much more hate speech than Twitter (although less than 4chan). [1] Given its history [2] it is not shocking at all that one of their ardent racists went out and killed a bunch of people. After the way Elliot Rodger was radicalized online, [3] nobody should be surprised that online hate turns into real-world violence. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.05287 https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.05287 [2] https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/ywxb95/gab-is-the-alt-right-social-network-racists-are-moving-to https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/ywxb95/gab-is-the-alt-rig... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Isla_Vista_killings#Manifesto_and_online_posts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Isla_Vista_killings#Manif...
- fzeroracer 8y ago
  This is easily the most succinct way of putting it. A site without restrictions or rules will quickly become a site focused on things other sites restrict. We've seen this happen time and time again with places like Gab, 4chan and Voat where without moderation they become festering pits. It's a careful balancing act every site owner and moderator has to consider because if you're not careful the core concept of a site can quickly change and fill in the gaps your rules or moderation leaves. I've experienced this a few times personally and is why I'm always wary when people complain about censorship when they're banned or kicked off of a platform.
  - 8y ago

anonymous5133 8y ago

Yup and so does facebook, youtube, reddit and so on.

manicdee 8y ago
Gab was specifically founded because Reddit didn’t let them say the things they like saying.
- anonymous5133 8y ago
  Yup but it still persists. The users just spread out into other subs and do it there as well.
- fweespeech 8y ago
  That was Voat. Gab is the same but Twitter. But for all their bitching, they are still active on both in large numbers. Both platforms really only engage in token bans.
slg 8y ago
One could argue that the Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc are also more dangerous because they allow the recruitment and radicalization of normal people. Before social media was around someone would have had to seek out a site like Stormfront. They would have had to take an active interest in these hate groups. With social media the hate comes to them and is mixed in with all the usual cat pictures and memes. This serves to normalize hate and creates an easy avenue to recruit disenfranchised people who might never have previously been exposed to this type of thing pre-social media.
- anonymous5133 8y ago
  One could also argue that twitter, reddit and facebook also discourage people from joining hate groups and so on. All of these platforms can be used for good or bad. Maybe someone was a jew hater before but then they watch a documentary about Israel and realize that the jews aren't so bad etc. That same person might also watch a documentary about hate groups and realize they are a member of one and decide to make a positive change in their life.
  - slg 8y ago
    Sure, these platforms can be used for both good and evil. But I don't see how that is relevant to my point. You don't have to allow the evil just so people can continue to do good. Or are you arguing that people are drawn to Twitter by the hate groups and are then recruited away by good Twitter users and those converts outnumber the number of people that the hate groups are able to recruit through Twitter?
    - anonymous5133 8y ago
      What I see is mostly positive actions being done to counter the negatives. If someone makes hate speech then there are people who counter it by saying it is wrong and so on. The bigger issue I see is if when these communities become echo chambers which I think is far more toxic. Now if Gab was removing speech that was against hate speech then I think that is a major issue. I see this issue happening more on Reddit where you have community that basically have rules like "if you don't agree with xyz then you will be banned immediately." So the whole thing is an echo chamber in itself. Also the truth is, these hate speech people aren't going to just disappear. They will persist and continue. The only solution is to counter those people, in dialogue, and keep on them about why they're wrong etc.
      - slg 8y ago
        I think you are being naive here if you think that the hate speech on these sites is being countered by a similar amount of positive speech. You also seem to be ignoring the victims of that hate speech and the abuse they have to endure. Maybe the person sending the death threats is better under the current system than if they were quarantined off on some other site, but my sympathy rests much more with the person receiving the death threat.

tptacek 8y ago

This argument is tiresome and insults our intelligence. Gab isn't in the spotlight because it happens to host some white supremacists, as Twitter and Facebook do. It's scrutinized because it actively courts white supremacists; it is white supremacist Twitter. Even today, when the front page (unusually busy! during most of the day, there were at least six (6) stories circulating on "popular stories") is primarily about "save Gab", you are only ever one click away from fever-swamp racism; virtually everyone who comments there is a white nationalist. I've been screen-shotting Gab for months (I have weird hobbies) and one of the accounts I thought was a bot (Gab was overrun by bots, presumably to boost its traffic numbers and dilute the neo-Nazism) --- it posted garish landscape photos like clockwork every day --- also turned out to be a white nationalist. Seriously, even the inspirational landscape account is a Nazi on Gab. But don't take the site's word for it. Listen to the site itself: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18318536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18318536 People have been screenshotting Gab.ai tweets for a year (they deleted the worst of them after yesterday's tragedy). It's not like there's any uncertainty about what they are. Now, it is true that you can make a coherent argument for leaving sites like Gab and Stormfront alone; "more speech is antidote for bad speech", etc. But what you can't do is try to argue that Gab is just Twitter, and is being singled out unfairly. That's not what's happening. Even if Stormfront added a record review section and started doing in-depths on the new Kurt Vile album, we'd still all understand what Stormfront was. But fewer people know what Gab is, so it's a little bit more confusing.

EGreg 8y ago
Private companies like CloudFlare and GoDaddy don’t have to work with sites they don’t want to work with, any more than the sites have to allow people to post on them. InfoWars itself would moderate its posters.
asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
> Now, it is true that you can make a coherent argument for leaving sites like Gab and Stormfront alone; "more speech is antidote for bad speech" A coherent one, but maybe also a wrong one. We've heard a lot less in the news about various de-platformed people. When was the last time Milo was in the news? https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-media-bans-work https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bjbp9d/do-social-...

notatoad 8y ago

Twitter is bad at removing abusive or threatening content from their site. That's not the same as refusing to remove it.

deleted 8y ago
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deleted 8y ago
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fweespeech 8y ago
Reddit (among other platforms) have knowingly enabled neo-nazis and racists for years. They, like Twitter, really only react when called out publicly by media outlets with large scale distribution. Gab is only viewed special case because the founder stupidly marketed it as a "free speech absolutist" sort of place.
hhjinks 8y ago
Right, it's worse. Twitter has selectively been enforcing its ToS for years. How is removing hate speech conductive to anything but hiding the issue. Let people moderate their own feeds, and don't make people rely on archiving services to see politically significant information like a terrorist's social media history.
- notatoad 8y ago
  >How is removing hate speech conductive to anything but hiding the issue. well for one, it makes it a slightly nicer place for the victims of that hate speech.
  - hhjinks 8y ago
    That is so much better handled by just letting your users control their own feed.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]

wpietri 8y ago

Gab was explicitly started as a place for hosting things that the major platforms were, however, imperfectly, trying to get rid of. So yes, it's the case. I get the drive. Circa 1994-2000, I was involved in bianca.com, the first web-based chat site and run with a strident free-speech ethos. Especially early on, the web was a pretty staid academic place, so a site where you could talk about anything was hugely novel. It turns out that if you let people talk about anything but most other sites have certain restrictions, then your site will become known for what other sites don't accept. In 1994, that was porn. The founders didn't really set out to have site about sex, but by 1997, that's the category we won our Webby in. None of us were really exciting about running a sex site, so eventually we turned our attentions elsewhere. These days the problem isn't porn; there's plenty of room for that on the internet. For places like Gab and 4chan, what they get is the world's worst people, the ones kicked off Twitter and Facebook. According to a study this year, Gab has much more hate speech than Twitter (although less than 4chan). [1] Given its history [2] it is not shocking at all that one of their ardent racists went out and killed a bunch of people. After the way Elliot Rodger was radicalized online, [3] nobody should be surprised that online hate turns into real-world violence. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.05287 https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.05287 [2] https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/ywxb95/gab-is-the-alt-right-social-network-racists-are-moving-to https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/ywxb95/gab-is-the-alt-rig... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Isla_Vista_killings#Manifesto_and_online_posts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Isla_Vista_killings#Manif...

fzeroracer 8y ago
This is easily the most succinct way of putting it. A site without restrictions or rules will quickly become a site focused on things other sites restrict. We've seen this happen time and time again with places like Gab, 4chan and Voat where without moderation they become festering pits. It's a careful balancing act every site owner and moderator has to consider because if you're not careful the core concept of a site can quickly change and fill in the gaps your rules or moderation leaves. I've experienced this a few times personally and is why I'm always wary when people complain about censorship when they're banned or kicked off of a platform.
- 8y ago