3 ms·

Is it intersting that people do not understand intuitively that this can only lead to 1984 sonner or later. They will understand it only when it's too late.

commandlinefan 7y ago
The only people who do understand have already been labeled "hateful".
- metamet 7y ago
  That's a pretty absurd thing to say. I don't have to post thinly veiled pepe "memes" in order to see how real this slippery slope is. The fact is that there is is a lot of hate speech online, and it mostly fosters in unmoderated forums and channels. Finding an extremist group (of any kind, really) is as easy as a handful of clicks. Fringe ideas become normalized and accelerate the extremism due to the ability of these long tail groups to find each other. Flat Earthers have reinforced each other this way, and they continue to attracts new people due to YouTube rabbit holes. Not sure there is a good solution to it, though. You can rely on private companies to moderate and choose what they allow on their platform, but that's proven to be highly ineffective. Then you face the problem where a platform opens up in order to foster these specific communities (8chan/8kun being the primary example right now), which then forces the companies they pay for their services to react to market pressure to either support or deny them. They'll always exist, somewhere.
  - banads 7y ago
    >Fringe ideas become normalized and accelerate the extremism due to the ability of these long tail groups to find each other. The same is true for good ideas. For instance, suggesting that doctors should wash their hands was originally considered an offensive fringe idea which could get you locked up in an insane asylum. >Not sure there is a good solution to it, though. The only solution to bad ideas is to allow them to be freely expressed so that they can be delt with publicly and transparently. Hiding bad ideas through censorship is like keeping a boil covered with a bandaid -- it's only going to fester. "Like a boil that must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed to the light of human conscience before it can be cured."
    - metamet 7y ago
      > The same is true for good ideas. Absolutely. This is precisely why I don't think there is any form of feasible solution out there. Things get weird when forum moderation is used to snuff out dissenting opinions. You see this a lot on certain forums on Reddit in the last few years. r/Conspiracy, for example, was initially overtaken with right wing conspiracies peddled by Alex Jones (Pizzagate being the most obvious), with certain mods banning anyone critical of it and the Trump administration. Not entirely sure why my post above is receiving down votes, though, as there really isn't a realistic approach to suppressing hate speech outside of the free market that doesn't teeter on opening the door to totalitarianism. The spread and incubation of hate speech, debunked conspiracies and just general misinformation is, unfortunately, just a byproduct of the existence of the internet. Not much room for inoculation outside of education.
      - banads 7y ago
        >general misinformation is, unfortunately, just a byproduct of the existence of the internet. Not much room for inoculation outside of education. The scale of it is greatly enhanced by the internet, but such problems have existed since language itself was invented

commandlinefan 7y ago

The only people who do understand have already been labeled "hateful".

metamet 7y ago
That's a pretty absurd thing to say. I don't have to post thinly veiled pepe "memes" in order to see how real this slippery slope is. The fact is that there is is a lot of hate speech online, and it mostly fosters in unmoderated forums and channels. Finding an extremist group (of any kind, really) is as easy as a handful of clicks. Fringe ideas become normalized and accelerate the extremism due to the ability of these long tail groups to find each other. Flat Earthers have reinforced each other this way, and they continue to attracts new people due to YouTube rabbit holes. Not sure there is a good solution to it, though. You can rely on private companies to moderate and choose what they allow on their platform, but that's proven to be highly ineffective. Then you face the problem where a platform opens up in order to foster these specific communities (8chan/8kun being the primary example right now), which then forces the companies they pay for their services to react to market pressure to either support or deny them. They'll always exist, somewhere.
- banads 7y ago
  >Fringe ideas become normalized and accelerate the extremism due to the ability of these long tail groups to find each other. The same is true for good ideas. For instance, suggesting that doctors should wash their hands was originally considered an offensive fringe idea which could get you locked up in an insane asylum. >Not sure there is a good solution to it, though. The only solution to bad ideas is to allow them to be freely expressed so that they can be delt with publicly and transparently. Hiding bad ideas through censorship is like keeping a boil covered with a bandaid -- it's only going to fester. "Like a boil that must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed to the light of human conscience before it can be cured."
  - metamet 7y ago
    > The same is true for good ideas. Absolutely. This is precisely why I don't think there is any form of feasible solution out there. Things get weird when forum moderation is used to snuff out dissenting opinions. You see this a lot on certain forums on Reddit in the last few years. r/Conspiracy, for example, was initially overtaken with right wing conspiracies peddled by Alex Jones (Pizzagate being the most obvious), with certain mods banning anyone critical of it and the Trump administration. Not entirely sure why my post above is receiving down votes, though, as there really isn't a realistic approach to suppressing hate speech outside of the free market that doesn't teeter on opening the door to totalitarianism. The spread and incubation of hate speech, debunked conspiracies and just general misinformation is, unfortunately, just a byproduct of the existence of the internet. Not much room for inoculation outside of education.
    - banads 7y ago
      >general misinformation is, unfortunately, just a byproduct of the existence of the internet. Not much room for inoculation outside of education. The scale of it is greatly enhanced by the internet, but such problems have existed since language itself was invented