4 ms·

It's a question of scale and monopoly. Imagine an Old West town. There's a street running through the middle, and right in the middle, a public square, with a

by donw 6y ago

It's a question of scale and monopoly. Imagine an Old West town. There's a street running through the middle, and right in the middle, a public square, with a saloon where everybody goes to drink and gossip, and a soapbox right out front. Anybody can stand on the soapbox, and speak to the people in the square. Of course, the folks in the saloon are going to hear them. Now, one day, the saloon owner gets fed up. She's tired of all those abolitionists arguing that we have a moral duty to end slavery. And she's the wealthiest person in the town -- most of the profits from the local mine end up being spent at her saloon. So, one day, she buys up the town square, and tells the townspeople that they can only use the soapbox if you say things that she support. And she's got money, so the local police will enforce those laws. The square is where people gather. Regardless of ownership, it is not just a public spaces, but the public space where discourse, is held and it is in the public interest to ensure that, in that space, the human right to free speech is not trampled by a politically motivated oligarch. > I'm under no obligation to amplify your message. You, personally, are not. But Twitter, Facebook, and Google are large enough where they dominate everything else, and regulating them to prevent human rights abuses is in the public interest. Same reason we want to impose environmental regulations on oil companies. Honestly, I doubt I'll manage to convince you with this. But I should hope that you would not want to live in a world where what you can say is regulated by the richest person in the town.

joshuamorton 6y ago
I reject this analogy. Google and Twitter and Facebook aren't providing a government service (they never "bought up" the pre-existing public land). They aren't using violence or government services to enforce their rules (the police), and there are still other places to speak. The actual analogy would be that the most popular saloon owner bans white supremacists, and they get pissy because the white supremacy saloon isn't popular enough to stay open, so the only place they can go is the public park, but no one hangs out there because there are only white supremacists there. And man, that sounds like a great situation! Edit: And I'll once again stress that these differences matter. They're profoundly important. You not being able to say a particular thing on a particular website is not an existential threat to free speech. The government being able to decree that certain entities are not entitled to their own 1A protection is. And that's exactly what you're requesting: that things you define as "platforms" lose first amendment protections. That's more of a threat to free speech than anything a single platform can do.
- donw 6y ago
  Just to make it very, very clear what you believe to be a great situation: you want to create a big group of underground neo-nazis, ideologically isolated from the rest of society, with an amazingly strong victimhood complex, their own independent communications infrastructure... and who collectively have nothing to lose and little hope for a better future. Yeah, I can't see how that could possibly go wrong. Like I said, I'm seeing smoke. If you actually want to fight racism, you don't do that with violence. You do it like Daryl Davis[1]: through kindness, listening, and making them think. [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/daryl_davis_what_do_you_do_when_someone_just_doesn_t_like_you/transcript https://www.ted.com/talks/daryl_davis_what_do_you_do_when_so...
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    > Just to make it very, very clear what you believe to be a great situation: you want to create a big group of underground neo-nazis, ideologically isolated from the rest of society, with an amazingly strong victimhood complex, their own independent communications infrastructure... Neo-Nazis aren't dumb. They would do all of these things anyway. We know, because they did. Neo Nazis use the open, public squares as recruiting tools. They don't yell "Gas the Jews". They say much more "acceptable" things. "Wow, it's truly painful how high the interest rates are. You know why that is, don't you?" And you, intrigued, say "No, no I don't." And they give you an invitation to a private, special event where they start talking about the banks and the man and how he holds us down. And you agree. And then by the end, it's less the banks, and more the jews who control the banks, and also the immigrants who steal our jobs. And in fact, the jews encourage the immigrants to come because they can better control the immigrants than we can. You should be afraid of the immigrants and the jews who control the banks. And a lot of people find that unsettling and leave. But a few people find it unsettling and believable. And those people, those are new recruits who now get more and more pulled into the extremism. (In the real world, by the way, this is going to a subreddit like the now banned /r/ConsumeProduct, seeing a discord link in the sidebar which goes to a literal fascist recruitment chatroom, and eventually graduating from the recruitment chat to like actively fascist places). They'd take advantage of the disapproval people had anyway. They sell it as a redpill truth that the people keeping you down don't want you to know, the proof is that most people will disagree with them or look at you aghast when you claim these things (victimhood, check!). It feeds on the same stuff as conspiracy theories, at first. They keep the really extreme stuff hidden anyway (underground, check!. Ideologically isolated, check!). And use complex recruiting paths to slowly pull people in (independent comms infra, check!) and recruit them (big group, check!). The only thing that groups choosing to kick them out does is that it makes it much, much more difficult for them to recruit, because they can't siphon people off out of the prior recruiting channels. You can't slowly radicalize someone when the chat rooms where you radicalize people are banned. You can't siphon people out of existing communities when they ban you. It's much, much easier to radicalize someone slowly over time (boiling the frog) than to try and confront them with the whole "Gas the Jews" schtick from the get-go. So if making it more difficult for neo nazis to recruit is really what concerns you, you have weird priorities. Now if you didn't know that, then fine, congrats. You're one of today's lucky 10,000 who learned more about how neo nazi radicalization pipelines work. And lest you think I'm making this up, this is exactly the kind of thing that self described Neo-Nazis consider to be how they ended up becoming "red-pilled"[0]. Very, very few of them go "oh, how unjustly those poor Neo-Nazis are treated, I must investigate". It starts with "edgy" things and people and slowly escalates. But let's also remember how we got here. You were first worried about an angry mob, who might cause someone to lose their job. Now you're defending neo-nazis right to openly debate the "jewish question". Does that mean that it's acceptable for a Neo-Nazi to call for death of a Jew, since that's free speech, but if the Jew turns around and suggests that, perhaps, the Neo-Nazi who just called for extermination should be fired from his job, that we should be upset with the Jew, because being fired is "violence", but being exterminated...isn't? I'm having trouble understanding the logic here. [0]: https://www.splcenter.org/20180419/mcinnes-molyneux-and-4chan-investigating-pathways-alt-right#chan https://www.splcenter.org/20180419/mcinnes-molyneux-and-4cha...

by donw 6y ago

joshuamorton 6y ago

I reject this analogy. Google and Twitter and Facebook aren't providing a government service (they never "bought up" the pre-existing public land). They aren't using violence or government services to enforce their rules (the police), and there are still other places to speak. The actual analogy would be that the most popular saloon owner bans white supremacists, and they get pissy because the white supremacy saloon isn't popular enough to stay open, so the only place they can go is the public park, but no one hangs out there because there are only white supremacists there. And man, that sounds like a great situation! Edit: And I'll once again stress that these differences matter. They're profoundly important. You not being able to say a particular thing on a particular website is not an existential threat to free speech. The government being able to decree that certain entities are not entitled to their own 1A protection is. And that's exactly what you're requesting: that things you define as "platforms" lose first amendment protections. That's more of a threat to free speech than anything a single platform can do.

donw 6y ago
Just to make it very, very clear what you believe to be a great situation: you want to create a big group of underground neo-nazis, ideologically isolated from the rest of society, with an amazingly strong victimhood complex, their own independent communications infrastructure... and who collectively have nothing to lose and little hope for a better future. Yeah, I can't see how that could possibly go wrong. Like I said, I'm seeing smoke. If you actually want to fight racism, you don't do that with violence. You do it like Daryl Davis[1]: through kindness, listening, and making them think. [1] https://www.ted.com/talks/daryl_davis_what_do_you_do_when_someone_just_doesn_t_like_you/transcript https://www.ted.com/talks/daryl_davis_what_do_you_do_when_so...
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  > Just to make it very, very clear what you believe to be a great situation: you want to create a big group of underground neo-nazis, ideologically isolated from the rest of society, with an amazingly strong victimhood complex, their own independent communications infrastructure... Neo-Nazis aren't dumb. They would do all of these things anyway. We know, because they did. Neo Nazis use the open, public squares as recruiting tools. They don't yell "Gas the Jews". They say much more "acceptable" things. "Wow, it's truly painful how high the interest rates are. You know why that is, don't you?" And you, intrigued, say "No, no I don't." And they give you an invitation to a private, special event where they start talking about the banks and the man and how he holds us down. And you agree. And then by the end, it's less the banks, and more the jews who control the banks, and also the immigrants who steal our jobs. And in fact, the jews encourage the immigrants to come because they can better control the immigrants than we can. You should be afraid of the immigrants and the jews who control the banks. And a lot of people find that unsettling and leave. But a few people find it unsettling and believable. And those people, those are new recruits who now get more and more pulled into the extremism. (In the real world, by the way, this is going to a subreddit like the now banned /r/ConsumeProduct, seeing a discord link in the sidebar which goes to a literal fascist recruitment chatroom, and eventually graduating from the recruitment chat to like actively fascist places). They'd take advantage of the disapproval people had anyway. They sell it as a redpill truth that the people keeping you down don't want you to know, the proof is that most people will disagree with them or look at you aghast when you claim these things (victimhood, check!). It feeds on the same stuff as conspiracy theories, at first. They keep the really extreme stuff hidden anyway (underground, check!. Ideologically isolated, check!). And use complex recruiting paths to slowly pull people in (independent comms infra, check!) and recruit them (big group, check!). The only thing that groups choosing to kick them out does is that it makes it much, much more difficult for them to recruit, because they can't siphon people off out of the prior recruiting channels. You can't slowly radicalize someone when the chat rooms where you radicalize people are banned. You can't siphon people out of existing communities when they ban you. It's much, much easier to radicalize someone slowly over time (boiling the frog) than to try and confront them with the whole "Gas the Jews" schtick from the get-go. So if making it more difficult for neo nazis to recruit is really what concerns you, you have weird priorities. Now if you didn't know that, then fine, congrats. You're one of today's lucky 10,000 who learned more about how neo nazi radicalization pipelines work. And lest you think I'm making this up, this is exactly the kind of thing that self described Neo-Nazis consider to be how they ended up becoming "red-pilled"[0]. Very, very few of them go "oh, how unjustly those poor Neo-Nazis are treated, I must investigate". It starts with "edgy" things and people and slowly escalates. But let's also remember how we got here. You were first worried about an angry mob, who might cause someone to lose their job. Now you're defending neo-nazis right to openly debate the "jewish question". Does that mean that it's acceptable for a Neo-Nazi to call for death of a Jew, since that's free speech, but if the Jew turns around and suggests that, perhaps, the Neo-Nazi who just called for extermination should be fired from his job, that we should be upset with the Jew, because being fired is "violence", but being exterminated...isn't? I'm having trouble understanding the logic here. [0]: https://www.splcenter.org/20180419/mcinnes-molyneux-and-4chan-investigating-pathways-alt-right#chan https://www.splcenter.org/20180419/mcinnes-molyneux-and-4cha...