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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 m

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.
    - hnick 6y ago
      I'm not sure what the laws are for physical protests. Do mall car parks and similar places on "private" but non-enclosed land have to accommodate public protest? Is that sort of thing what you're talking about? I'm leaning towards the idea that platforms with no barrier to entry should be treated as public to some degree, while those with a sign-up process more involved than email and password are still treated as private.
      - tathougies 6y ago
        No... I'm talking about things like 'privately-owned public space' in cities like San Francisco (so Salesforce park), or city sidewalks. In most cities, the land owner even in downtown will own the sidewalks, but there is an 'easement' that says it's a public right of way. However, it's a public space, and anyone can protest or say what they want there. Their freedom of speech is protected, even though the land is private. The land is certainly private because the landowner is responsible for upkeep and can generally modify it so long as the sidewalk meets certain requirements. Here's an example in New York City where the Occupy protests took place: https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/the-21-million-sidewalk-how-much-are-privately-owned-public-spaces-worth https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/the-21-million-sidewalk-how... All this is to say is that we have a model for privately owned public space -- spaces where private interests have certain rights and obligations and ownership but where accomodations for the public must be made. Here's another example in London and Portland: https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/public-space-battle-playing-out-portland-museum https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/public-space-battle-playing... https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jul/24/revealed-pseudo-public-space-pops-london-investigation-map https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jul/24/revealed-pseu... In San Francisco at least -- only using it because I'm most familiar -- certain buildings are required to have public spaces, and you in general have a right to be in this space for free. There are even some beautiful rooftop decks that are privately owned but have been made public to meet the requirement -- like the deck on one kearny.
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.

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.
  - hnick 6y ago
    I'm not sure what the laws are for physical protests. Do mall car parks and similar places on "private" but non-enclosed land have to accommodate public protest? Is that sort of thing what you're talking about? I'm leaning towards the idea that platforms with no barrier to entry should be treated as public to some degree, while those with a sign-up process more involved than email and password are still treated as private.
    - tathougies 6y ago
      No... I'm talking about things like 'privately-owned public space' in cities like San Francisco (so Salesforce park), or city sidewalks. In most cities, the land owner even in downtown will own the sidewalks, but there is an 'easement' that says it's a public right of way. However, it's a public space, and anyone can protest or say what they want there. Their freedom of speech is protected, even though the land is private. The land is certainly private because the landowner is responsible for upkeep and can generally modify it so long as the sidewalk meets certain requirements. Here's an example in New York City where the Occupy protests took place: https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/the-21-million-sidewalk-how-much-are-privately-owned-public-spaces-worth https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/the-21-million-sidewalk-how... All this is to say is that we have a model for privately owned public space -- spaces where private interests have certain rights and obligations and ownership but where accomodations for the public must be made. Here's another example in London and Portland: https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/public-space-battle-playing-out-portland-museum https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/public-space-battle-playing... https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jul/24/revealed-pseudo-public-space-pops-london-investigation-map https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jul/24/revealed-pseu... In San Francisco at least -- only using it because I'm most familiar -- certain buildings are required to have public spaces, and you in general have a right to be in this space for free. There are even some beautiful rooftop decks that are privately owned but have been made public to meet the requirement -- like the deck on one kearny.

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.