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If InfoWars says Sandy Hook never happened, and they have millions of followers, ban them. That’s a really low bar for banning. Same with Milo. Not only did he

If InfoWars says Sandy Hook never happened, and they have millions of followers, ban them. That’s a really low bar for banning. Same with Milo. Not only did he repeatedly lie in a very verifiable way, but he did it with the vigor of a bully. These are toxic people and institutions that don’t care about the facts. They’re after your amygdala, and we are, to some extent, slaves to our amygdala. You can get a PhD and still retain a lot of your most basic instincts, for better or worse. If we are slaves to our amygdala, how do we have civilization at all? We externalize cognition, just like we’ve done since the dawn of time. Culture is externalized cognition. Standards are externalized cognition. They are ways of protecting us from ourselves. If you let anyone get on the world’s largest platform, with the world’s largest megaphone, and shout whatever they want, what do you expect other than the devolution of society? And why should we throw our hands up and say “we built the platform. We built the megaphone. Anyone can use it.” That’s not a mythological embracement of freedom. That’s stepping back from your responsibility to set standards.

djsumdog 7y ago
Who decides who's lying and who's telling the truth? Who is the arbitrator of an obvious lie. Declaring something an "obvious lie" has historically been used to keep other people down as well. This goes down a very dangerous road. Banning speech is not the right way to deal with this. When you do, you give the speaker more energy. When people in the civil rights movement in the US was slapped down, it gave speakers like MLKing a source to inspire his people; to stand tall in the face of adversity. The line should be violence. Speech is speech. Speech is not violence (unless is specifically advocates violence and that's been defined in US court cases as not-protected speech). Diablo Valley College ethics professor Eric Clanton was basically let off the hook with a slap-on-the-wrist conviction for hitting someone in the head with a bike-lock .. basically because the person he hit was alt-right. That is fucked up and totally not acceptable. All violence, no matter who it is against, should be the hard line .. and it's not, and that's the real issue.
- keenmaster 7y ago
  "Who is the arbitrator of an obvious lie[?]" Easy. The final arbitrator is the owner of the platform. It is just one platform. If a platform becomes ban-happy, you can simply walk away, even if you weren't personally banned. Hacker News has plenty of rules and standards, and it will quickly mute and ban someone who violates even a subset of them. That is absolutely not a problem, and the platform is better off for it. It probably has a much larger userbase as a result, so the population of Hacker News users is dynamic, and HN can make decisions that benefit a lot of future users at the expense of a few current users. Why shouldn't HN be viewed negatively for that, but other platforms should? Isn't that arbitrary? ~Thought exercise~: Let's say you were the mayor of a large city. There are multiple areas in the city where you can shout whatever you want during certain hours. Would you let someone hook up an internet-connected megaphone in each area and pipe in hate speech everywhere simultaneously? And what if we were in a future where there were physical bots indistinguishable from humans that crowded into those public spaces, vociferously indicated their agreement, and cheered him on? That future is now. In reality, Facebook owns those public spaces. No one actually goes to that spot in the park anymore. Mark Zuckerberg is the mayor. Oh, and it's not just one city, he's everyone's mayor, everywhere. If you don't use Facebook but you're on Whatsapp, you're still in his jurisdiction. As for the "during certain hours" part? Nope, those internet-connected megaphones are blasting 24/7. Those bots are nodding their heads 24/7. Our mayor also collects megaphone usage fees for himself. He gives you dopamine points, likes, and social validation each time you come back for more. Freedom, yeah.
- jmhnilbog 7y ago
  If you're going to argue that truth is relative, fine. Let each person decide their own truth and broadcast it. Let each person decide what to believe and decide what is good and what is evil and let them constantly fight. Constant misery. Science was a good idea for civilization to adopt as defining truth. Hey, I did this, and then THAT happened! You try! Wow, it happened again! Let's see if it always happens! It does! Don't believe me? Try it yourself! Eventually, yes, you have to trust specialists, because there's too much to try on your own. So you vet the specialists, and the specialist specialists. You don't just throw everything away and listen to the first fat idiot who says everything that happens is a lie and paid actors staged Sandy Hook.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  Banning speech is not the right way to deal with this. When you do, you give the speaker more energy. Questionable; long term traffic ranking data doesn't seem to bear out your hypothesis. In the case of Infowars, one might note that people put up with its increasing toxicity for a really long time. You don't seem to give any weight to the impact of the Sandy Hook families of Jones' long-running campaign of calling the entire thing a hoax. All violence, no matter who it is against, should be the hard line .. and it's not, and that's the real issue. You seem to be arguing that the law gives left-wing people a pass while not doing the same for the alt-right, but a very similar case with the politics reversed took place around the same time and had a very similar outcome (ie, probation). https://www.berkeleyside.com/2019/09/24/kyle-based-stickman-takes-felony-plea-deal-in-berkeley-weapons-case https://www.berkeleyside.com/2019/09/24/kyle-based-stickman-...

djsumdog 7y ago

Who decides who's lying and who's telling the truth? Who is the arbitrator of an obvious lie. Declaring something an "obvious lie" has historically been used to keep other people down as well. This goes down a very dangerous road. Banning speech is not the right way to deal with this. When you do, you give the speaker more energy. When people in the civil rights movement in the US was slapped down, it gave speakers like MLKing a source to inspire his people; to stand tall in the face of adversity. The line should be violence. Speech is speech. Speech is not violence (unless is specifically advocates violence and that's been defined in US court cases as not-protected speech). Diablo Valley College ethics professor Eric Clanton was basically let off the hook with a slap-on-the-wrist conviction for hitting someone in the head with a bike-lock .. basically because the person he hit was alt-right. That is fucked up and totally not acceptable. All violence, no matter who it is against, should be the hard line .. and it's not, and that's the real issue.

keenmaster 7y ago
"Who is the arbitrator of an obvious lie[?]" Easy. The final arbitrator is the owner of the platform. It is just one platform. If a platform becomes ban-happy, you can simply walk away, even if you weren't personally banned. Hacker News has plenty of rules and standards, and it will quickly mute and ban someone who violates even a subset of them. That is absolutely not a problem, and the platform is better off for it. It probably has a much larger userbase as a result, so the population of Hacker News users is dynamic, and HN can make decisions that benefit a lot of future users at the expense of a few current users. Why shouldn't HN be viewed negatively for that, but other platforms should? Isn't that arbitrary? ~Thought exercise~: Let's say you were the mayor of a large city. There are multiple areas in the city where you can shout whatever you want during certain hours. Would you let someone hook up an internet-connected megaphone in each area and pipe in hate speech everywhere simultaneously? And what if we were in a future where there were physical bots indistinguishable from humans that crowded into those public spaces, vociferously indicated their agreement, and cheered him on? That future is now. In reality, Facebook owns those public spaces. No one actually goes to that spot in the park anymore. Mark Zuckerberg is the mayor. Oh, and it's not just one city, he's everyone's mayor, everywhere. If you don't use Facebook but you're on Whatsapp, you're still in his jurisdiction. As for the "during certain hours" part? Nope, those internet-connected megaphones are blasting 24/7. Those bots are nodding their heads 24/7. Our mayor also collects megaphone usage fees for himself. He gives you dopamine points, likes, and social validation each time you come back for more. Freedom, yeah.
jmhnilbog 7y ago
If you're going to argue that truth is relative, fine. Let each person decide their own truth and broadcast it. Let each person decide what to believe and decide what is good and what is evil and let them constantly fight. Constant misery. Science was a good idea for civilization to adopt as defining truth. Hey, I did this, and then THAT happened! You try! Wow, it happened again! Let's see if it always happens! It does! Don't believe me? Try it yourself! Eventually, yes, you have to trust specialists, because there's too much to try on your own. So you vet the specialists, and the specialist specialists. You don't just throw everything away and listen to the first fat idiot who says everything that happens is a lie and paid actors staged Sandy Hook.
anigbrowl 7y ago
Banning speech is not the right way to deal with this. When you do, you give the speaker more energy. Questionable; long term traffic ranking data doesn't seem to bear out your hypothesis. In the case of Infowars, one might note that people put up with its increasing toxicity for a really long time. You don't seem to give any weight to the impact of the Sandy Hook families of Jones' long-running campaign of calling the entire thing a hoax. All violence, no matter who it is against, should be the hard line .. and it's not, and that's the real issue. You seem to be arguing that the law gives left-wing people a pass while not doing the same for the alt-right, but a very similar case with the politics reversed took place around the same time and had a very similar outcome (ie, probation). https://www.berkeleyside.com/2019/09/24/kyle-based-stickman-takes-felony-plea-deal-in-berkeley-weapons-case https://www.berkeleyside.com/2019/09/24/kyle-based-stickman-...