7 ms·

You realize Voat exists right? And Gab? I wrote this about how Voat grew: https://battlepenguin.com/tech/voat-what-went-wrong/ https://battlepenguin.com/tech/v

• bonaldi 7y ago
  Deplatforming doesn't work by silencing people, and the environment that you'd have to create to make it otherwise is not an enticing one. So yes, you can often cause the creation of spaces like Voat as a result of deplatforming. Sure, something like Voat pops up. But Reddit improves. And Reddit is where all the people are. There will always be dive bars, there will always be rough online neighbourhoods. But start by cleaning up the civic square.
  • kerkeslager 7y ago
    > And Reddit is where all the people are. All the people in your echo chamber, that is.
    • tptacek 7y ago
      If what you mean to say is that "the subset of spaces that does not include Voat and Gab is an echo chamber", you are probably saying something about your own views that you might not mean to say.
      • kerkeslager 7y ago
        How so? To be clear, I definitely don't agree with most of what is said on Voat, and I'm not really familiar with Gab.
        • tptacek 7y ago
          You might want to familiarize yourself more with services before making sweeping arguments about what excluding them means for the discourse.
          • kerkeslager 7y ago
            Having complete information before forming any opinion is an impossibly high standard. My opinion is based on what I know, and I've been pretty open about what I don't know. If you feel there's some relevant information I'm missing, I'd be really happy to hear it, but pointing out that I don't know everything is fairly uninformative. Let's keep the discussion on the topic, not on me.
            • tptacek 7y ago
              The standard you're being held to isn't "complete information".
              • kerkeslager 7y ago
                What standard am I being held to? Where am I failing to meet that standard? Do you actually have any disagreement with anything I've said, or are you just going to make snide remarks from the sideline? You aren't making any concrete statements on where you think I'm wrong, and you are evading any questions I've asked to try to get clarity, so to be honest, I have no idea what you actually think I'm wrong about, or even whether you think I'm wrong. If it were someone else, I'd just dismiss you as a troll, but I've read and respected your opinions in the past, which makes your current method of arguing a bit disappointing for me. You're well-positioned to change my mind if you ever decide to share what you actually think.
    • NathanKP 7y ago
      Voat is tiny. Sure there is always going to be a population of die hard edgelords who are determined enough to move to a new site, but in general the vast majority of people are lazy. And most likely it takes the bot / disinformation account owners a while to move all their activity over to a new community
  • eanzenberg 7y ago
    More and more, as time goes on, people are leaving the MSM including reddit for these off-shoots and it risks creating separate bubbles for every group-think out there. This is what de-platforming and cancel culture does. It's also not black and white. Sure 99% of us can agree that banning or de-platforming such horrendous stuff like NAMBLA is good. But MSM starts to push out and group non-extremists into the same bucket and ban them all, and you get where we are today, with a good chunk of society that doesn't listen to or trust the MSM.
• thebokehwokeh2 7y ago
  I'd argue that in this case, it deplatforming absolutely worked in the way intended. There are 2 factors at play here. People who are willing to argue in good faith, and people who are simply trying to put forth an agenda regardless of what anyone says. Those who likely moved to Gab and Voat and 4/8chan are likely persons that fit the latter description. There is no need to even have discussions with people like these on the internet. The best is for them to be deplatformed and continue their self flagellation. They are simply too far gone. If anything, these sites will probably radicalize, but it will also be easier for authorities to keep tabs on particularly dangerous accounts. The concept of deplatforming is to protect the integrity of good faith discussion. The key idea there is "good faith". Persons like the aforementioned Milo clearly do not engage in any concept of good faith discussion. IMO there is no need for any discussion base like reddit or facebook to protect these types.
  • kerkeslager 7y ago
    > People who are willing to argue in good faith, and people who are simply trying to put forth an agenda regardless of what anyone says. I think that it would be wise to doubt one's own ability to differentiate between these two groups. I also think that the purpose of public debate is not to persuade the person you are debating with: that's almost never possible. It's to persuade the audience. Bad faith arguments, if they really are bad faith arguments, are usually pretty easy to shoot down, so I don't think that we have anything to fear from bad-faith arguers. In fact, deplatforming benefits bad-faith arguers because their bad-faith arguments look more reasonable when nobody confronts them. At another level, deplatforming is a bad faith argument, by your own definition. Aren't you trying to put forth your agenda, regardless of what anyone says, by deplatforming people? Your agenda may be good, but that doesn't justify bad faith actions to support it.
  • panzagl 7y ago
    Deplatforming can't work- otherwise the world would now be as white-bread homophobic and misogynistic as it was in the 50's when blacks, gays, and women were deplatformed.
    • 7y ago
• JulianMorrison 7y ago
  What you're describing is "that heap of Nazis over there". It doesn't matter if the deplatformed people pop back up in marginal, poorly connected hate-tolerant sites. That actually helps. They have been successfully "sent to Coventry" in a place where their cultural impact is nil.
  • kerkeslager 7y ago
    I don't know on what basis you think that their cultural impact is nil.
    • JulianMorrison 7y ago
      Because they're left in a situation where the only people they're able to talk to are already-committed Nazis. Some of those have indirect diffusion paths back out into the mainstream culture. But the direct ones are blockaded.
      • kerkeslager 7y ago
        Is the voting booth not direct enough for you?
  • jessaustin 7y ago
    So we don't have to worry about Nazis anymore? I'm glad to learn that; somehow I had been misinformed by the newspapers.
• potatoz2 7y ago
  This is akin to an argument that you shouldn't fire your nazi-sympathizing coworker when they discuss their support for an ethnonationalist state because they may join neo-nazi groups and "radicalize" as a result. Yes, they may. But while they do the workplace where most people interact is a livable place for the rest of us. We shouldn't make it easier to be heard if you have despicable views just because of the implied threat it might get worse.
  • eanzenberg 7y ago
    Yes, and for truly horrendous viewpoints it's ok to ban them outright. But society isn't black and white, and when you start lumping non-extremists into the same bucket and banning them all you end up where we are today: distrust of MSM but a big chunk of society.
    • ceres 7y ago
      You keep talking about "non-extremists" but you are not telling us what you mean by that.
      • eanzenberg 7y ago
        I don't want to get political, but do you think Joe Rogan is an extremist? Jeanine Cummins? What about Ben Shapiro? These are people that the MSM is trying to cancel quite literally right now.
        • jessaustin 7y ago
          Haha the idea that incumbent news firms can do anything to Rogan is kind of hilarious. What are they going to do, shut down the internet and UFC? Close all the comedy clubs? He is completely insulated from anything they can do.
        • potatoz2 7y ago
          "cancel" doesn't really mean anything here. I don't think Joe Rogan or Ben Shapiro should get fired from the average workplace (I'm not familiar with Jeanine Cummins) unless they insist on trying to impose their views. I don't think they should be banned from presumably neutral platforms (reddit, Facebook, Twitter). On the other hand, I don't think they should be given a column in other media publications and they're more than fair game for ridicule and criticism. I don't think they have a moral right to publish in any subgroup within ostensibly neutral platforms (Facebook group, subreddit).
• tmh79 7y ago
  Deplatforming totally works, it quarantines the toxic people/ideas and doesn't allow them to spread further. Its fine if they move to voat or whatever, voat has orders of magnitude less people who use it casually, so there is a much lower opportunity for their message to spread.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• anigbrowl 7y ago
  That's OK. People do move to platforms like Gab, but those platforms tend to be echo chambers in their own which has a limiting effect on their popularity in addition to the limiting factor of their initial toxicity. They're not really good for recruitment (because they're echo chambers that only appeal to people already invested in a point of view), nor do they provide much amusement from baiting other people with very different opinions; these two factors are in stark contrast to mainstream platforms, which provide an abundant supply of both. Naturally, you get cross-platform raiding where people organize on one platform to attack another and then enjoy the spoils if their attack results in upset, outrage, bans of the target etc. But off-platform raids are relatively easy for platform operators and target populations to monitor, detect, and repel. Likewise, the extremist or highly toxic platforms that people do congregate on function well for a policy of managed containment.
• samelawrence 7y ago
  Only the most dedicated move to those platforms. Those willing to leave the mainstream so they can continue to have those sorts of discussions.