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What are you on about, he basically said democracy needs to police social networks and hold them to a high standard given their huge amounts of power. I particu

What are you on about, he basically said democracy needs to police social networks and hold them to a high standard given their huge amounts of power. I particularly like the line about a restauranteur not having to serve an 8 course meal to a fascist. This is the correct way to look at freedom of speech - you can say what you want - but there is no requirement for me to provide services for you to reach billions of people with your statements.

alfromspace 7y ago
If normal people want to hear my message, and there's only one platform they can effectively locate it through, then I'd say you are required to provide services to me. At this point, it's like cutting off somebody's internet or phone service for their political views - the argument that Verizon isn't the government and is just "muh showing you the door" wears thin. There seems to be this underlying assumption that nationalism, paleoconservatism and various commonly-held views that are wrongly called "fascism" are actually things people want to hear, and if we allow them the same access to services as any other views, their popularity will overturn this entire neoliberal scheme that's being artificially propped up by organizations like the ADL rooting out free speech in every area they can legally do so. I sort of agree - this entire project would fail without censorship. And, if as Baron Cohen implies, we're really just a bunch of stupid hateful beasts always primed to commit another Holocaust as soon as the boot is off our neck, well...then we've got deeper problems in our society than a lack of social media censorship.
- andy_ppp 7y ago
  Your Karma of -9 leads me to worry about the quality of your opinions, however your arguments are quite well put, so I'll do my best to address them. Firstly, I mean really hateful fascistic stuff not any of the things you mention - I don't agree with nationalism (or even patriotism, countries are a completely made up idea) but would defend your right to talk about it as you see fit on any platform, paleoconservartism is more than fine too or even talk about advocating gun laws or anti abortion stuff. All fine. The problem is the current climate is not a fact based discussion about issues on their merits, instead the system is being gamed by these platforms and people using these platforms to wield influence (and craft a society) that will allow much great abuses of power going forward. I think the Standford prison experiment and the smaller version Cohen ran in his film shows you that people are not good, we all can be riled up and lash out because of strong beliefs we might hold. I think having platforms that don't try to help tone down and instead encourage hateful thinking really is dangerous, especially when a lot of these opinions are based on lies.

alfromspace 7y ago

If normal people want to hear my message, and there's only one platform they can effectively locate it through, then I'd say you are required to provide services to me. At this point, it's like cutting off somebody's internet or phone service for their political views - the argument that Verizon isn't the government and is just "muh showing you the door" wears thin. There seems to be this underlying assumption that nationalism, paleoconservatism and various commonly-held views that are wrongly called "fascism" are actually things people want to hear, and if we allow them the same access to services as any other views, their popularity will overturn this entire neoliberal scheme that's being artificially propped up by organizations like the ADL rooting out free speech in every area they can legally do so. I sort of agree - this entire project would fail without censorship. And, if as Baron Cohen implies, we're really just a bunch of stupid hateful beasts always primed to commit another Holocaust as soon as the boot is off our neck, well...then we've got deeper problems in our society than a lack of social media censorship.

andy_ppp 7y ago
Your Karma of -9 leads me to worry about the quality of your opinions, however your arguments are quite well put, so I'll do my best to address them. Firstly, I mean really hateful fascistic stuff not any of the things you mention - I don't agree with nationalism (or even patriotism, countries are a completely made up idea) but would defend your right to talk about it as you see fit on any platform, paleoconservartism is more than fine too or even talk about advocating gun laws or anti abortion stuff. All fine. The problem is the current climate is not a fact based discussion about issues on their merits, instead the system is being gamed by these platforms and people using these platforms to wield influence (and craft a society) that will allow much great abuses of power going forward. I think the Standford prison experiment and the smaller version Cohen ran in his film shows you that people are not good, we all can be riled up and lash out because of strong beliefs we might hold. I think having platforms that don't try to help tone down and instead encourage hateful thinking really is dangerous, especially when a lot of these opinions are based on lies.