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Has the Overton window shifted so far that now terrorist recruitment, grooming and organization is just a "counterculture" that's outside of "mainstream discour

Has the Overton window shifted so far that now terrorist recruitment, grooming and organization is just a "counterculture" that's outside of "mainstream discourse"? And the solution to this is to expose them to "opposition" on "general platforms"?

mindslight 8y ago
Derailing the argument this way sure is an easy answer, but it's not a productive answer. Terms like "recruitment" and "grooming" cast the issue as being driven by some external actors, rather than an intrinsic result of polarization. There is a sizable quantity of legitimate people feeling marginalized by the "mainstream" discourse, whatever the hell that means. That these various masses of people are being pushed ever-closer towards unreasonable views is the entire problem.
- panarky 8y ago
  You've confused cause and effect. Twitter and Facebook do not ban "legitimate people" because they express "non-mainstream" views. People get banned when they post graphic violence, promotion of violence, threats, intimidation and child exploitation. They also get banned for targeting harassment towards a person or group [0]. If I run a café where strangers can sit down and talk to each other, I would eject any customer who did any of these things -- to protect my "legitimate" customers and to ensure the bad actors don't wreck my café. Bad actors don't behave badly because they've been banned. They're banned because they first behaved badly and were warned multiple times. [0] https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules
  - mindslight 8y ago
    Talking about "banning" is a strawman, and pointing to impartial rules is an easy way to write off that they end up applied preferentially. What I'm referring to is that the blue team has taken over the discourse of many popular forums [0]. HN has gotten better, but a few years ago it was quite hard to raise legitimate non-blue-flavored criticism without being downvoted into oblivion. Predictably, the only red-flavored comments being left were then lower effort, which would then get flagged to death. So then people with moderate red-flavored views are left to go find different discussion forums if they want to express those views. And the places they end up have been similarly "claimed" by the red team, and are thus analogously tolerant of red team extremism. Now rather than experiencing events like Christchurch primarily as a shared tragedy in which humans were killed (eg holy fuck what are we all doing to each other), the tragedies are mediated by political groupthink. To avoid having to distance themselves from their extremists, the home team caricaturizes the reaction of the other team. This creates cognitive dissonance which normalizes the extremist behavior rather than condemning it. [0] At least from our perspective here. I'm certainly willing to posit someone could have a mirrored view where their popular forums are ever-more red-team flavored. This fits into my point.

mindslight 8y ago

Derailing the argument this way sure is an easy answer, but it's not a productive answer. Terms like "recruitment" and "grooming" cast the issue as being driven by some external actors, rather than an intrinsic result of polarization. There is a sizable quantity of legitimate people feeling marginalized by the "mainstream" discourse, whatever the hell that means. That these various masses of people are being pushed ever-closer towards unreasonable views is the entire problem.

panarky 8y ago
You've confused cause and effect. Twitter and Facebook do not ban "legitimate people" because they express "non-mainstream" views. People get banned when they post graphic violence, promotion of violence, threats, intimidation and child exploitation. They also get banned for targeting harassment towards a person or group [0]. If I run a café where strangers can sit down and talk to each other, I would eject any customer who did any of these things -- to protect my "legitimate" customers and to ensure the bad actors don't wreck my café. Bad actors don't behave badly because they've been banned. They're banned because they first behaved badly and were warned multiple times. [0] https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules
- mindslight 8y ago
  Talking about "banning" is a strawman, and pointing to impartial rules is an easy way to write off that they end up applied preferentially. What I'm referring to is that the blue team has taken over the discourse of many popular forums [0]. HN has gotten better, but a few years ago it was quite hard to raise legitimate non-blue-flavored criticism without being downvoted into oblivion. Predictably, the only red-flavored comments being left were then lower effort, which would then get flagged to death. So then people with moderate red-flavored views are left to go find different discussion forums if they want to express those views. And the places they end up have been similarly "claimed" by the red team, and are thus analogously tolerant of red team extremism. Now rather than experiencing events like Christchurch primarily as a shared tragedy in which humans were killed (eg holy fuck what are we all doing to each other), the tragedies are mediated by political groupthink. To avoid having to distance themselves from their extremists, the home team caricaturizes the reaction of the other team. This creates cognitive dissonance which normalizes the extremist behavior rather than condemning it. [0] At least from our perspective here. I'm certainly willing to posit someone could have a mirrored view where their popular forums are ever-more red-team flavored. This fits into my point.