4 ms·

Of course, every individual extremist has their own story, but we are also all products of our environments and it is clear that the web creates an environment

by s17n 6y ago

Of course, every individual extremist has their own story, but we are also all products of our environments and it is clear that the web creates an environment in which extremism thrives. Personally I think free speech is worth it but we can't pretend there's not a cost.

TheOperator 6y ago
The free speech web has created the most peaceful least violent society in history. Censors on the other hand are found constantly endlessly and relentlessly at the vanguard of the bloodiest most extremist movements of all time. What is this cost exactly? Censors have shown an utter and complete lack of evidence that censorship reduces violence whatsoever when you look at the long run and broader picture. They also love destroying the economy as well as art. Censorship at the end of the day always ends up being a particularly evil form of power politics regardless of the noble intentions it sets out with. Outside of a very narrow scope of things that ought to be censored (calls to violence which would include 8ch, defamation, fire in a theater, etc)
- TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
  > Censors have shown an utter and complete lack of evidence that censorship reduces violence whatsoever That's because the scale and untracked nature of such noncensored sites make their impact difficult to quantify. We know that social contagions exist, but we don't know the extent to which they affect people. School shootings are far, far more common than they used to be. They started to really rise around the same time that sites like 4chan glorified the shooters and discussed the issue like it was a game. They spoke of becoming an hero(sic), talked of getting a high score, and made memes of their dead bodies. The world tends to loathe extremes. We know that extreme censorship causes social issues. Why wouldn't complete non-censorship combined with anonymity cause issues too?
  - riggernetard 6y ago
    https://ourworldindata.org/exports/homicide-rates-across-western-europe-10583a5a083e2959491228e50201be98_v4_850x600.svg https://ourworldindata.org/exports/homicide-rates-across-wes... https://marginalrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Violence-Stylized-2.png https://marginalrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Vi... https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2018/02/Screen-Shot-2018-02-27-at-1.30.01-PM-1519756226.png?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90&w=1000&h=427 https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2018/02/Sc... https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.N_4i8HfZ4_caPVq7oGIQaAHaFi%26pid%3DApi&f=1 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F... the world is roughly 100000% less violent than it used to be, and the violent crime rate has not increased much in the past 5-10 years. this is a total lie.
    - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
      This isn't a lie, but it's also more nuanced than this. The world has been seeing a massive decrease in poverty. At the same time, only something like 4.6 billion people have internet. I'm not saying that social media causes a flood of violence, I'm just saying that there are violent social contagions that should be addressed. Think of ISIS's social media campaigns for recruitment.
    - kodah 6y ago
      This account name is trash.
- cutemonster 6y ago
  > free speech web has created the most peaceful least violent society in history. Not sure what makes you think that. Free speech certainly has helped, but so many other different things and changes has happened the last 100 years. In any case, hateful let's-do-a-genocide ultra free speech didn't help. Such things I think it's good to censor.
  - betwixthewires 6y ago
    >In any case, hateful let's-do-a-genocide ultra free speech didn't help. Absolutely it did. We get to see who the crazies are. We get to see what extremist ideologies threaten our peace. We get to talk to people that hold those ideologies, understand them, sometimes demonstrate the error in their view and sometimes simply prepare for them. They exist whether we hear their voices or not. It's better to hear their voices than not.
    - cutemonster 6y ago
      You live in the US? I start wondering if you've gotten your worldview messed up That you over estimate how dangerous various ideologies are Compared with traffic accidents, and possible worse, those who sometimes get elected as presidents in your country. I'm wondering if the places on the internet you apparently visit, slightly have brought you into a fantasy world now, where you worry for and want to prepare for the wrong things. I'm wondering if you believe you need weapons to defend yourself? Whilst being less interested in climate change and wildfires? But never mind me and have a nice day
  - riggernetard 6y ago
    > In any case, hateful let's-do-a-genocide ultra free speech didn't help. have you read 1 thing by any political revolutionary of the past? ones you like. washington. lincoln. malcolm x. rosseau. they're quite violent, and would get censored by your 'lets-do-a-genocide free speech' laws.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
> an environment in which extremism thrives. True. But what if other, more virtuous things thrive more ?
nine_k 6y ago
Not "web" but the "attention economy" which tries to lure users into echo chambers and raise outrage in these chambers, so that the users spend more time there and click more (political) ads. Stay away from the outrage machine. Be polite. Assume your partner in a dialogue is neither a fool nor malevolent. Quench flames. Try to understand, not to prove you're right. Sounds easy and obvious, doesn't it?
lazyjones 6y ago
> it is clear that the web creates an environment in which extremism thrives. No, it's not clear. Please elaborate. The strongest weapon against extremist ideas is other views on the issues that created the extremism in the first place. Most extremists don't want their people to communicate freely, for a reason.
- cordellwren 6y ago
  Your argument presumes that the natural tendency of the web is to foster a free and open market of ideas, rather than a system of closed echo chambers each inhabiting distinct realities in a post-truth landscape. That by no means seems to be a sure assumption today. If anything, the question now is whether the latter state of affairs might not be the default, and if so, whether it is reversible at all.
  - lazyjones 6y ago
    You're talking about the "social media" in specific and not the web in general. Yes, social media create echo chambers, that's what they are for. The web never did, it created search engines to find arbitrary content, self-published blogs, online courses, Wikipedia etc. etc.
    - acdha 6y ago
      The web most certainly supported bubbles: who you link to has a huge impact on where readers go next and the language people use affects which results they get for searches (even before Google started personalizing things based on your past history). It was slower than Twitter/Facebook but the effect is exactly the same as the social media problem. I have a relative who went down the conservative conspiracy theory rabbit hole in the years after 9/11 and the web was a huge accelerant for his intellectual decline because once he found a community of fellow travelers he’d stay in that network of blogs where they strenuously resisted outside sources or the general idea of objective reality. When those communities moved primarily onto social media, they moved faster and got wider range but the practices didn’t change at all.

by s17n 6y ago

TheOperator 6y ago

The free speech web has created the most peaceful least violent society in history. Censors on the other hand are found constantly endlessly and relentlessly at the vanguard of the bloodiest most extremist movements of all time. What is this cost exactly? Censors have shown an utter and complete lack of evidence that censorship reduces violence whatsoever when you look at the long run and broader picture. They also love destroying the economy as well as art. Censorship at the end of the day always ends up being a particularly evil form of power politics regardless of the noble intentions it sets out with. Outside of a very narrow scope of things that ought to be censored (calls to violence which would include 8ch, defamation, fire in a theater, etc)

TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
> Censors have shown an utter and complete lack of evidence that censorship reduces violence whatsoever That's because the scale and untracked nature of such noncensored sites make their impact difficult to quantify. We know that social contagions exist, but we don't know the extent to which they affect people. School shootings are far, far more common than they used to be. They started to really rise around the same time that sites like 4chan glorified the shooters and discussed the issue like it was a game. They spoke of becoming an hero(sic), talked of getting a high score, and made memes of their dead bodies. The world tends to loathe extremes. We know that extreme censorship causes social issues. Why wouldn't complete non-censorship combined with anonymity cause issues too?
- riggernetard 6y ago
  https://ourworldindata.org/exports/homicide-rates-across-western-europe-10583a5a083e2959491228e50201be98_v4_850x600.svg https://ourworldindata.org/exports/homicide-rates-across-wes... https://marginalrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Violence-Stylized-2.png https://marginalrevolution.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Vi... https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2018/02/Screen-Shot-2018-02-27-at-1.30.01-PM-1519756226.png?auto=compress%2Cformat&q=90&w=1000&h=427 https://theintercept.imgix.net/wp-uploads/sites/1/2018/02/Sc... https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.N_4i8HfZ4_caPVq7oGIQaAHaFi%26pid%3DApi&f=1 https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F... the world is roughly 100000% less violent than it used to be, and the violent crime rate has not increased much in the past 5-10 years. this is a total lie.
  - TheAdamAndChe 6y ago
    This isn't a lie, but it's also more nuanced than this. The world has been seeing a massive decrease in poverty. At the same time, only something like 4.6 billion people have internet. I'm not saying that social media causes a flood of violence, I'm just saying that there are violent social contagions that should be addressed. Think of ISIS's social media campaigns for recruitment.
  - kodah 6y ago
    This account name is trash.
cutemonster 6y ago
> free speech web has created the most peaceful least violent society in history. Not sure what makes you think that. Free speech certainly has helped, but so many other different things and changes has happened the last 100 years. In any case, hateful let's-do-a-genocide ultra free speech didn't help. Such things I think it's good to censor.
- betwixthewires 6y ago
  >In any case, hateful let's-do-a-genocide ultra free speech didn't help. Absolutely it did. We get to see who the crazies are. We get to see what extremist ideologies threaten our peace. We get to talk to people that hold those ideologies, understand them, sometimes demonstrate the error in their view and sometimes simply prepare for them. They exist whether we hear their voices or not. It's better to hear their voices than not.
  - cutemonster 6y ago
    You live in the US? I start wondering if you've gotten your worldview messed up That you over estimate how dangerous various ideologies are Compared with traffic accidents, and possible worse, those who sometimes get elected as presidents in your country. I'm wondering if the places on the internet you apparently visit, slightly have brought you into a fantasy world now, where you worry for and want to prepare for the wrong things. I'm wondering if you believe you need weapons to defend yourself? Whilst being less interested in climate change and wildfires? But never mind me and have a nice day
- riggernetard 6y ago
  > In any case, hateful let's-do-a-genocide ultra free speech didn't help. have you read 1 thing by any political revolutionary of the past? ones you like. washington. lincoln. malcolm x. rosseau. they're quite violent, and would get censored by your 'lets-do-a-genocide free speech' laws.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

> an environment in which extremism thrives. True. But what if other, more virtuous things thrive more ?

nine_k 6y ago

Not "web" but the "attention economy" which tries to lure users into echo chambers and raise outrage in these chambers, so that the users spend more time there and click more (political) ads. Stay away from the outrage machine. Be polite. Assume your partner in a dialogue is neither a fool nor malevolent. Quench flames. Try to understand, not to prove you're right. Sounds easy and obvious, doesn't it?

lazyjones 6y ago

> it is clear that the web creates an environment in which extremism thrives. No, it's not clear. Please elaborate. The strongest weapon against extremist ideas is other views on the issues that created the extremism in the first place. Most extremists don't want their people to communicate freely, for a reason.

cordellwren 6y ago
Your argument presumes that the natural tendency of the web is to foster a free and open market of ideas, rather than a system of closed echo chambers each inhabiting distinct realities in a post-truth landscape. That by no means seems to be a sure assumption today. If anything, the question now is whether the latter state of affairs might not be the default, and if so, whether it is reversible at all.
- lazyjones 6y ago
  You're talking about the "social media" in specific and not the web in general. Yes, social media create echo chambers, that's what they are for. The web never did, it created search engines to find arbitrary content, self-published blogs, online courses, Wikipedia etc. etc.
  - acdha 6y ago
    The web most certainly supported bubbles: who you link to has a huge impact on where readers go next and the language people use affects which results they get for searches (even before Google started personalizing things based on your past history). It was slower than Twitter/Facebook but the effect is exactly the same as the social media problem. I have a relative who went down the conservative conspiracy theory rabbit hole in the years after 9/11 and the web was a huge accelerant for his intellectual decline because once he found a community of fellow travelers he’d stay in that network of blogs where they strenuously resisted outside sources or the general idea of objective reality. When those communities moved primarily onto social media, they moved faster and got wider range but the practices didn’t change at all.