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Twitch and Reddit enacted bans simultaneously: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/29/reddit-bans-pro-trump-forum-in-crackdown-on-hate-speech-344698 https://

• searchableguy 6y ago
  "coincidence"
• rickbutton 6y ago
  Why? There is a massive political movement for racial equality happening all over the country. They are responding to pressure from consumers, which they very much should, because all of these companies have ignored these issues for decades. They aren't coordinating with each other in some conspiracy to silence white supremacists. The -people- want white supremacists to be deplatformed (a good thing!).
  • patrickaljord 6y ago
    The fact that it all happened on the same day does imply some kind of coordination though.
  • disposekinetics 6y ago
    This is why you never give into the mob, even when their point is a good one. That's how individual rights are lost to the collective.
    • throwaway29102 6y ago
      Yaaaaaas...this one salty
    • snowwrestler 6y ago
      No one has a right to post on Reddit or Youtube. If we want to be concerned about individual rights, we should at least be somewhat accurate about the definition of the word.
      • nbardy 6y ago
        When a set small of companies control your ability to communicate freely on the internet and they act in consort it becomes an issue of free speech.
      • tathougies 6y ago
        Honestly, we need to rethink this. For example, I 'own' my sidewalk, but anyone can protest there. A lot of public space is privately owned, but can still be used for protest. The internet is the new public square. It can be privately owned, but still forced to recognize the rights of the public.
        • iron0013 6y ago
          If by “it” you mean privately-owned websites, then no, it cannot be forced to do so. That would be a violation of the websites’ owners own freedom of speech. Not to mention their property rights! I thought the right to absolutely control one’s own private property was the most sacrosanct of conservative values?
          • Karunamon 6y ago
            "Private" property becomes morally murky when you extend an invitation to the general public to use that space. Doubly so when a small handful of these privately-owned websites are responsible for carrying a the vast majority of the of the discourse on the internet. As it stands, Google+Youtube, Facebook, and Reddit (1st, 2nd, 4th, and 6th most popular websites in the country) currently have the power to ban, or worse, guide, all discussion of any topic they wish, with no accountability whatsoever. That is a frightening amount of power to have, and one that I don't believe the free market is equipped to deal with its abuses. This latter problem is something I'm legitimately surprised more people are not concerned about. Just because they're using this power to target something you don't like doesn't mean it won't be used for more nefarious purposes in the future.
  • etherael 6y ago
    I'm not familiar with Richard Spencer or David Duke's content, but I have heard plenty of Stefan Molyneux's, and > by alleging that members of protected groups were inferior. From the article is an outright lie, that simply flat out never happened. If this is what "the people" are demanding, this should be taken as evidence that "the people" are to put it bluntly, fucking retarded. But that is no great surprise by this point in time of course.
    • fault_lines 6y ago
      "Screaming 'racism' at people because blacks are collectively less intelligent...is insane." “You cannot run a high IQ [white] society with low IQ [non-white] people…these [non-white] immigrants are going to fail...and they're not just going to fail a little, they are going to fail hard…they're not staying on welfare because they’re lazy...they’re doing what is economically the best option for them...you are importing a gene set that is incompatible with success in a free-market economy.” —YouTube video, The Death of Europe | European Migrant Crisis, October 4, 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eydDN55Vyc&amp=&feature=youtu.be&amp=&t=29m18s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eydDN55Vyc&amp=&feature=you... This is just two quotes from one appearance. There are many more: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/stefan-molyneux https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/indi...
      • etherael 6y ago
        > "Screaming 'racism' at people because blacks are collectively less intelligent...is insane." Is it 'racist' to scream at people because whites have a lower distribution of fast twitch muscle fibers than blacks and thus the results and distributions of champions in sports where this is essential heavily favour blacks? Is this a comment on the "inferiority" of a specific race, or an observation of material reality? Why are you "inferior" if you have less fast twitch muscle fibers, or a specific genetic distribution that results in some demographic group of which you are a member (not even you, individually, necessarily) having a lower IQ? Saying that traits differ between racial phenotypes is not the same thing as saying that racial phenotypes are "inferior" or "superior". > You cannot run a high IQ [white] society with low IQ [non-white] people Which is to say you're bracketing things in there that weren't actually said, but I was listening at the time and I recall the context specifically referred to racial groups that have an observed higher IQ distribution than "whites", so once again, it's not a case of "inferiority" vs "superiority". It's a case of "Here are these observed distributions in actual demographic data from all over the world". To equate the two and pretend they're the same thing is frankly dishonest. > There are many more: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/indi https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/indi You know, although a lot of the quotes in this link are purposely taken out of context and even directly bracketed to imply something that was not actually said, reading this actually the worst one I could find and the one that I think comes closest to being a legitimate charge of the "inferior" vs "superior" dichotomy is potentially "I don’t view humanity as a single species...” which is outright scientifically false, so I'm listening now to the particular piece where this is spoken to figure out if it's more of the above distortions or actually as bad as it sounds, and will check back in afterwards with either an apology for claiming that the original statement was false or a correction on this particular quote, too. EDIT; Just wow, turns out this was the most deceptive quote of all. He was not referring to racial phenotypes in this discussion at all, the context was in the discussion of individuals who have engaged in the violent rape of a child, it had nothing at all to do with race. I'm disgusted with the audacity of the outright lying of the SPLC to this magnitude. It seems to me a significant reason they might be trying to censor people like this as well is so they can make these claims that turn out to be outright lies, and it is then impossible to actually go back and check what was said, and you're left with having to take their word for it, just as is presently the case with all their citations that point to youtube. Full quote for context on just how ridiculous this characterisation actually is; Caller; I also heard a sex therapist talk, some guy who's been working with specifically men for the past thirty-five years who said the hardest thing to cure, is the man who's already crossed the line into the sexual abuse of children or violence towards children.. Molyneux; Look I've made this argument for many years, that the conscience short circuits and is no longer available for recovery, when you have done an evil for which there is no restitution. And there is no restitution possible for the rape of a child. Or the murder of a child. There's no parent who would say give me ten million dollars, you can murder my child. If somebody said listen, Stef, if I steal your bike, I'll give you ten million dollars, well basically you're just buying my bike for an absurd amount of money. Molyneux; But for certain ills, there is no restitution that is possible. And where restitution is impossible, forgiveness is impossible, and where forgiveness is impossible, it seems to me that incarceration, isolation of the human virus from the community is the right thing to do. I don't view humanity as a single species. Timestamp 24:30 for anyone that wants to verify this for themselves https://cdn.freedomainradio.com/FDR_2768_Wednesday_Show_9_Aug_2014.mp3 https://cdn.freedomainradio.com/FDR_2768_Wednesday_Show_9_Au...
  • m0zg 6y ago
    > movement for racial equality It stopped being that within a couple of days of starting and was co-opted to advance other goals. It's for "racial equality" only inasmuch as no sane person will argue _against_ racial equality. Same as "antifascism" is also _nominally_ against something that's unquestionably bad, so no sane person will disagree with the core premise. In practice, it's a militant Stalinist organization, same as it was since inception in Weimar Germany. But in for a penny in for a pound, so we're now firing people for free speech, toppling statues, doxxing, censoring, organizing "autonomous zones" with weekly shootings, looting, and renaming Yale and Stanford. And by "we" I mean upper middle class young whites, who were told they're racist just by virtue of being born with a little less melanin, and there's nothing they can do about their racism short of lifetime of repentance. This being largely a non-theistic religion, this is how they are trying to atone.
    • vkou 6y ago
      > It stopped being that within a couple of days of starting and was co-opted to advance other goals. It's for "racial equality" only inasmuch as no sane person will argue _against_ racial equality. Same as "antifascism" is also _nominally_ against something that's unquestionably bad, so no sane person will disagree with the core premise. This is a wonderful theory, but the past couple of years (Centuries, in the case of racial equality) of political discourse in America has shown that it does not match reality. There are plenty people who have no problem arguing for racism, or for fascism, and thanks to Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, those people have gained both a lot more influence and a lot of, to put it charitably, allies of convenience - or, to put it uncharitably, true believers.
    • Jon_Lowtek 6y ago
      Antifa USA 2020 is not the paramilitary wing of a german stalinist party, even if "Antifa in Germany 1931" was one. It is not the same organisation. It is a lifestyle branding sold to left wing youth, like Che Guevara t-shirts. Now there is an organisation in the USA that has recently started to use the Antifa Branding. It's called Torch Network or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Racist_Action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Racist_Action but that one, too is not related to Germany 1931 or to Stalinism.
  • nradov 6y ago
    The pressure is more directly from advertisers. Major consumer brands don't want their advertisements appearing next to objectionable user generated content.
    • snowwrestler 6y ago
      Why not? Because their customers don't like it either. It all comes down to what is popular and unpopular--which is fine in a marketplace. That's exactly how marketplaces are supposed to work.
    • chrischattin 6y ago
      It could also be coming from investors. Tencent owns a major chunk of Reddit now.
• dogma1138 6y ago
  > Seems odd for multiple independent companies to act in concert like this Yes and no, this is less collusion and more to avoid platform hopping basically if one platform bans them they’ll flock to another even if the medium isn’t identical or the platform is not optimal for their use case any platform would do in times like these. I’m pretty sure at this point when the behavior pattern is known the platforms inform each other of high profile bans. The others follow suit to avoid being branded as the one that didn’t or worse as the one that accepted the now pariahs “with open arms”.
  • ALittleLight 6y ago
    I don't know about that. Twitter didn't ban Molyneux and I've not seen people branding Twitter as "The platform that permits Molyneux". (Until me, just now)
  • at_a_remove 6y ago
    If it were platform hopping, it would be ban, then hop, then ban, then hop. It takes time to hop and move all of your content and followers. This time has not elapsed.
    • dogma1138 6y ago
      It’s to prevent this, so you don’t have their user base hope to the other platform to express their anger, it also helps when you share the news cycle. This isn’t an opinion for or against this pattern just an observation on why it makes sense.
      • at_a_remove 6y ago
        Sort of a pre-emptive revenge, then.
  • paulpauper 6y ago
    Moloenux has been on YouTube for over a decade. He wasn't evading any bans.
• Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
  It is coordinated. Remember when Alex Jones got banned from literally everything on the same day? The reddit bans wave was leaked in advance. The more actors involved in a coordinated action the harder it is to keep a secret. Original leak: https://old.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/hh1pjd/reddits_largest_ever_banwave_is_coming_monday/ https://old.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/hh1pjd/redd...
  • dmix 6y ago
    > Apparently they're going to ban a large number of subs on Monday and frame it as an anti-racism initiative Has this been announced or was this just speculation?
    • Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
      https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/update_to_our_content_policy/ https://old.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/hi3oht/updat...
    • freehunter 6y ago
      It actually happened today. Check Reddit‘s /r/announcements for the official thread.
    • jacquesm 6y ago
      "Apparently they're going to ban a large number of subs on Monday and frame it as an anti-racism initiative" Frame it? It is an anti-racism initiative. It may have side effects as well but that is the main driver.
      • Acrobatic_Road 6y ago
        They did not ban racist subreddits like /r/blackpeopletwitter and /r/fragilewhiteredditor. If you don't know, to post on /r/blackpeopletwitter you have to send a photo of your skin color to the moderators. They are literally racially segregating users.
• ReptileMan 6y ago
  The way different actions spread are like watching the Snowcrash virus in real time. Endlessly entertaining.
• maximente 6y ago
  google legal frequently shares information with legal departments from other tech companies when it comes to moderating/acting upon content/users. in fact, the big tech companies' legal teams share information pretty regularly as they all deal with the same legal hurdles e.g. users from north korea, cuba, ITAR, etc. it wouldn't surprise me if there was an informal discussion and a decision by google led others to also take action.
  • Fjolsvith 6y ago
    Just companies taking orders.
• beefee 6y ago
  This appears to be coordinated election interference from tech monopolists.
  • vkou 6y ago
    People doing political things you don't like is not election interference, anymore than some billionaire bankrolling right-wing SuperPACs is election interference. Elections aren't held in a vaccum. People 'interfere' with them by persuading, spending money, and by choosing to give political ideas access to their platform. Media agencies 'interfere' with elections all the time, by exercising their discretion for the last point, and by actively agitating on the first point. And why would de-platforming racist white nationalists interfere with the election, anyways? Is there a racist white nationalist on the ballot in 2020, who will be hurt by this?
    • toxik 6y ago
      Both kinda sound pretty undemocratic though, so there’s some merit to the claim.
  • jacquesm 6y ago
    If they were monopolists they wouldn't have to coordinate anything.
  • lowtolerance 6y ago
    Someone doesn’t understand the terms “election interference” or “monopolists”.
  • eli_gottlieb 6y ago
    Please explain. In which districts in the United States are neo-Nazis affiliated with Stefan Molyneux, David Duke (former leader of the KKK), and Richard Spencer (who was videoed performing a Sieg Heil) up for election, as challengers or incumbents? I was not aware these men were employed by one of the two major political parties, or even one of the two smaller ones. If the specific figures being banned are not affiliated with any candidate for election, even under a minor party or for local office, how is this "election interference"?
• at_a_remove 6y ago
  How coincidental! Surely I am to think nothing of it. Hey, let's talk about COVID-19 real quick ...
• anticonformist 6y ago
  The public square is owned by private companies and they're enforcing anti-first amendment principles. One can't even argue that these banned people can move to another platform if they're all coordinating. Leftist extremists are effecting public banishment of their rightist extremist opponents. It wouldn't be as bad if leftist extremists were getting banned at the same time. The problem is that leftist extremists have bullied the mainstream left into extreme action.
  • throwaway29102 6y ago
    Clutch them pearls guuuurl.
  • kstrauser 6y ago
    Today, Reddit banned the Chapo Trap House left extremist group. From someone not involved in either extreme, it appears to me like they're being consistent and banning people for behavior and not politics. I've not heard anyone calling for George Will to be deplatformed, for instance.
    • 0xy 6y ago
      Just checking, but you know the standard for "consistent" is not "at least one far left extremist group was banned" right? That is absolutely not the definition of consistent, so I have no idea why you've tried to square this circle. Consistent means proportional enforcement without political bias, which has clearly never been a priority for reddit. After all, reddit has repeatedly targeted right-leaning subs with shadow bans and stealth editing including directly from the CEO. Which left-leaning subs have received CEO stealth editing treatment?
      • kstrauser 6y ago
        I don’t know. Which left-leaning subs, specifically, have violated the Reddit ToS in the same way that the_donald and the various “clown world” subs did and were not treated the same?
• Miner49er 6y ago
  This happened a couple years back when they both made some big policy changes related to guns. I'm pretty sure it's just pressure from major advertisers they both share. Here is an HN link from it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16643040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16643040
• dandanqu82 6y ago
  It’s like the nuclear arms treaty. If one company doesn’t ban these accounts, it can gain all the users who subscribe to these people and benefit. All companies agree to potentially lose these users, so no one profits from doing the so called “wrong thing”. Same thing with mask use in airlines. Some companies do not want to enforce mask use until all airlines do it, because they do not want customers opposed to masks leaving them for competitors that do not require masks on flights.
• yongjik 6y ago
  Act individually, and each company is dragged over the internet rage court individually, and as a bonus the last one to act will be roasted as "only doing it because all others did." Act together, and they are accused of conspiracy. I guess their PR teams decided the latter is less hassle for them.
• erichocean 6y ago
  > Seems odd for multiple independent companies to act in concert like this. It shouldn't, all social networks delegate banning "hate content" to the SPLC and ADL. It's much more efficient/effective to do things this way, and more importantly, it assures fair enforcement. Otherwise, you'd have the same content allowed on one platform, but banned on another. This approach is much better for the platforms and their users.
  • LyndsySimon 6y ago
    How does outsourcing the decision to the SPLC/ADL “assure fair enforcement”?
    • erichocean 6y ago
      Consistency is a big part of fairness, maybe the biggest part. Outsourcing "cancellation" decisions to the SPLC/ADL ensures that people are being consistently banned across all of the major social networks, after a full investigation by non-profits whose entire reason for existence is to do these kinds of investigations. They have, collectively, centuries of experience (and began long before the Internet existed). Delegating also ensures that cancellations aren't done willy-nilly—the SPLC/ADL are not like a Twitter mob. They have (combined) over a billion in funds to investigate hate speech on the Internet, and to then advise the social networks that they are hosting hate speech—who then make the actual decisions to ban or not ban. Typically, they coordinate and all ban in unison, to avoid weird situations where someone is banned on one (or a few networks), but not all. Obviously, none of this will feel "fair" to racist Whites, but there are places online (e.g. Gab, Bitchute, etc.) for them to speak freely to other racists where they won't be banned.
• danudey 6y ago
  I detest Donald Trump and everything he stands for and enables, but the idea of banning him from Twitch makes me imagine a world where he didn't get banned from Twitch and instead tried to pivot to being a full-time game streamer, and that makes me laugh at least a little bit.
  • CyberDildonics 6y ago
    He would probably get banned for cheating