4 ms·

I'm curious if they'll ban symbols associated with any religions with theologies they would consider to have racist elements. And perhaps ban the showing of fl

I'm curious if they'll ban symbols associated with any religions with theologies they would consider to have racist elements. And perhaps ban the showing of flags of all nations with laws they consider racist. My point is that I have trouble taking a company's public justifications seriously, when the company appears unwilling to take the financial/reputational hit of applying that reasoning consistently.

maxerickson 6y ago
Confederate flags aren't national flags, so you are looking for something more than consistency when you make that comparison.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  > Confederate flags aren't national flags That's a really poignant statement. I genuinely believe that some people consider the Confederate flag a symbol of the true United States, which was betrayed by the North. And while they lost the civil war, they were still in the right. For these people, the Confederate flag is a symbol of resistance to an oppressive nation state, and flying it is no more "racist" than it would be for someone to fly the flag of Tibet. And obviously, some other people associate the Confederate flag with institutional slavery. That's why I think we need to discuss the fact that these policies tacitly involve choices about: (a) Which groups can and cannot be offended. (b) Given the large variety of associations that different people can have regarding a particular symbol, which of those many associations are given primacy?
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    Losers gonna loser. Also, you miss my point. While you might expect different rules for national flags, you wouldn't apply those rules to the flags of a defunct uprising. Even if some people have some beliefs about what the defunct uprising was.
  - watwut 6y ago
    I don't think there is any reasonable interpretation of history in which South was betrayed by the North. You might claim that they should have been allowed to leave the union, you might make statements on which way territories should have gone, but it is really hard to see betrayal there. Second, actual breaking point between the states at the time was slavery. The "states right" in question was the one that allowed or disallowed slavery on new territories.
    - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
      > I don't think there is any reasonable interpretation of history in which South was betrayed by the North. You may be right. It's likely that you know more of that war's history than I do. For the sake of the larger discussion, however, let me ask: Suppose that a group takes offense at some symbol, but it's based on a dubious understanding of historical fact. I'm curious if Twitch's underlying reasoning would consider that to disqualify the viewpoint of those who feel offended by the display of the symbol.
      - watwut 6y ago
        I have no idea, but I also have no idea why you would expect me to have answer that. I am not even sure what disqualify the viewpoint is. And I also think that trying to frame all these conflicts solely through lens of "offense at some symbol" is reductive. It is popular and easy way to talk about all that.
        DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
        > I have no idea, but I also have no idea why you would expect me to have answer that. I apologize for being confusing. I wasn't trying to imply that you in particular should answer that question. I should have written something like, "In the greater context of trying to see if Twitch's tacit reasoning is logically consistent, I'm also curious how they'd deal with ...". > I am not even sure what disqualify the viewpoint is. Sorry again for being unclear. Some background, if you're interested: I'm working on the assumption that there are myriad things in our world that different people find offensive. There's (almost?) no ethical position on which 100% of humans agree. When companies pick which particular issues on which they'll take public positions, they're implying a few things: (1) That of all the issues that people have gripes with in the world, this issue is more important to the company than any of the issues on which they're not taking a position. (2) The people who agree with their position are right, and those who disagree with their position are wrong. To whit, when Twitch disallows showing the Confederate flag, I would say this disqualifies the viewpoint that it's a symbol primarily regarding states' rights. Sorry if "disqualify the viewpoint" isn't the best term. >And I also think that trying to frame all these conflicts solely through lens of "offense at some symbol" is reductive. I didn't mean to be reductive. My larger goal is to understand the implicit reasoning behind companies taking stances like this, and deciding at least for myself if those stances are internally consistent. When I talk about "taking offense at some symbol", it's one of my straw-man theories regarding the company's justification for proscribing a certain kind of speech on their platform. And TBH, what I truly suspect is that companies just try to accommodate whatever public sentiment / outrage is currently in vogue, and make public statements rationalizing that position rather than being honest about the arbitrariness of their posturing.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - Ancapistani 6y ago
    > For these people, the Confederate flag is a symbol of resistance to an oppressive nation state, and flying it is no more "racist" than it would be for someone to fly the flag of Tibet. > And obviously, some other people associate the Confederate flag with institutional slavery. As someone who considers themselves squarely in the first group, but who is cognizant of others’ views and therefore choose alternate symbols, I feel compelled to point out that there is significant overlap. They are far from a “union set” (a pun!) but there are actual racists who use that flag. I’m just happy that the actual first flag of the Confederacy is largely unmarred in popular culture, along with the Bonnie Blue
user-the-name 6y ago
They are applying the reasoning entirely consistently, you are just refusing to actually accept what the reasoning is.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  (If I'm missing something, I'd be grateful for a correction. I don't want to hold wrong beliefs, especially ones that make me more cynical.) Here's my (current) reasoning, explained by example: (1) Twitch's new rules ban display of the Confederate flag for this reason: "Given its historic and symbolic association with slavery and white supremacist groups in the US". (2) I'm assuming that Twitch's general reasoning is: "Displaying symbol ${S}, which [some subgroup of humans, selected by an unspecified criterion] ${G} associate with bad-thing ${B} and supremacist group ${R}, will be treated as Hateful Conduct." (3) Assuming that I've correctly inferred Twitch's reasoning in (2), then here are some real-world examples that I think also meet their reasoning's criteria: (3a) S="Israeli flag", G="Arabs living in Israel", B="Denying national rights to non-Jews", R="Israeli government". (See [0] below) (3b) S="PRC flag", G="Uyghers living in PRC", B="religious persecution", R="Non-muslims in control of PRC government." (See [1] below) (3c) S="Islamic crescent-and-star symbol", G="some Christians living in Muslim countries", B="religious persecution", G="The persons in power who use ${S} and do ${B}". (See [2,3] below; also backed by personal knowledge.) (3d) S="Political symbols of the U.S. Democratic party", B="advocacy of black slavery", G="black slaves prior to the U.S. civil war". (3e) S="Political symbols of the U.S. Republican party", G/B/R left as an exercise to the reader. (I'm not trying to pick on Republicans more than Democrats; it's just that the post is getting long and I need to do my day job.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law:_Israel_as_the_Nation-State_of_the_Jewish_People#:~:text=It%20is%20the%20most%20important,which%20the%20state%20was%20established%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law:_Israel_as_the_Natio.... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghurs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghurs [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48146305 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48146305
  - user-the-name 6y ago
    Not "historic association". "Current association".
batty_alex 6y ago
The confederate flag isn't a national flag, though. The Confederacy isn't a religion. It was, at one point in history, a nation that lost an ideological war over a state's right to allow for the ownership of slaves It deserves the same treatment as a swastika or Nazi flag. Bringing it back isn't some matter of "pride" - it's to let certain people know where you stand
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jmull 6y ago
You're raising a "where will they draw the line?" argument. The thing is, there is always a line to be drawn. These are not black and white issues. There is always a line to be drawn. You're worried about consistency, but it's not inconsistent to draw a line in a grey area in an inherently grey space. You can still make a good inconsistency argument, but you need to understand where they've drawn their line, by what principles, and show how they've failed to meet them.
- DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
  Thanks, that's helpful. I tried to be explicit about my guess at the Twitch's underlying principles in item (2) of my comment. It seems clear though that my guess could easily be wrong. It would be awesome if they just came out and explained their reasoning.
bobthechef 6y ago
That's a bit off topic, but I'll bite. First, a lot of the comments show some confusion. "Free". We are not free to do evil, only good, though we can be permissive of certain evil acts committed by others because its punishment would lead to still greater ills. Speech can also be good or evil. To make slanderous claims is evil because it not only perverts the faculty of speech, but maligns someone innocent of the accusation which brings others into errors about that person and also harms that person. calls for violence are evil. Those who claim free speech means saying whatever you want whenever you want aren't very rigorous and often fall back on some kind of incoherent and insidious skepticism (a la "says who") or relativism. Or they don't really mean it and are reacting to abuses of censorship. And that's the other side of the coin. Theory is one thing, but out of a concern about the abuse of censorship by tyrants and those in power, we may wish to tolerate evil speech to some degree. So the question now becomes: what are the acceptable limits of the permissiveness in the current conditions? There is a correct answer, but in practice, that is going to be determined by various political forces acting for various reasons. While tradition used to have a greater say in determining prohibitions on speech and "expression" for the sake of the common good (seen in blasphemy and pornography laws), today the revolutionary left has taken control and has been busily imposing speech codes that prevent "undesirable" discussion in opposition to the revolutionary ideology, often in the name of "the people". Meaning, we're no longer talking about banning swastikas and other pernicious symbols. We're talking about the silencing of even rationally defended views that don't agree with the revolutionary ideology while giving virtual free reign to toxic leftist polemic because it falls in lockstep with the ideology. All of this is to say that this move by Twitch is not really that interesting. There are far more dangerous developments in play. And to your point, I do expect even more pressure to be put on religious faiths to conform the revolutionary ideology. Take the Roman Catholic Church, for example. Catholicism was always hated and feared in the United States. And indeed, it had been neutered in various ways to conform to liberal ideological expectations over the course of the 20th century. However, given the proliferation of various novel and exotic sexual identity protected groups, I fully expect the RCC to experience a new period of persecution in the US under the guise of protecting these groups from the supposed persecution by the Church. Either that, or the bishops will continue down the path of going full Protestant and step in line with the demands of the state (and subsequently crumble into even greater irrelevance and apostasy). Probably both and in either case this is a success for revolutionary social engineers. A similar fate awaits others.

maxerickson 6y ago

Confederate flags aren't national flags, so you are looking for something more than consistency when you make that comparison.

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
> Confederate flags aren't national flags That's a really poignant statement. I genuinely believe that some people consider the Confederate flag a symbol of the true United States, which was betrayed by the North. And while they lost the civil war, they were still in the right. For these people, the Confederate flag is a symbol of resistance to an oppressive nation state, and flying it is no more "racist" than it would be for someone to fly the flag of Tibet. And obviously, some other people associate the Confederate flag with institutional slavery. That's why I think we need to discuss the fact that these policies tacitly involve choices about: (a) Which groups can and cannot be offended. (b) Given the large variety of associations that different people can have regarding a particular symbol, which of those many associations are given primacy?
- maxerickson 6y ago
  Losers gonna loser. Also, you miss my point. While you might expect different rules for national flags, you wouldn't apply those rules to the flags of a defunct uprising. Even if some people have some beliefs about what the defunct uprising was.
- watwut 6y ago
  I don't think there is any reasonable interpretation of history in which South was betrayed by the North. You might claim that they should have been allowed to leave the union, you might make statements on which way territories should have gone, but it is really hard to see betrayal there. Second, actual breaking point between the states at the time was slavery. The "states right" in question was the one that allowed or disallowed slavery on new territories.
  - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
    > I don't think there is any reasonable interpretation of history in which South was betrayed by the North. You may be right. It's likely that you know more of that war's history than I do. For the sake of the larger discussion, however, let me ask: Suppose that a group takes offense at some symbol, but it's based on a dubious understanding of historical fact. I'm curious if Twitch's underlying reasoning would consider that to disqualify the viewpoint of those who feel offended by the display of the symbol.
    - watwut 6y ago
      I have no idea, but I also have no idea why you would expect me to have answer that. I am not even sure what disqualify the viewpoint is. And I also think that trying to frame all these conflicts solely through lens of "offense at some symbol" is reductive. It is popular and easy way to talk about all that.
      - DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
        > I have no idea, but I also have no idea why you would expect me to have answer that. I apologize for being confusing. I wasn't trying to imply that you in particular should answer that question. I should have written something like, "In the greater context of trying to see if Twitch's tacit reasoning is logically consistent, I'm also curious how they'd deal with ...". > I am not even sure what disqualify the viewpoint is. Sorry again for being unclear. Some background, if you're interested: I'm working on the assumption that there are myriad things in our world that different people find offensive. There's (almost?) no ethical position on which 100% of humans agree. When companies pick which particular issues on which they'll take public positions, they're implying a few things: (1) That of all the issues that people have gripes with in the world, this issue is more important to the company than any of the issues on which they're not taking a position. (2) The people who agree with their position are right, and those who disagree with their position are wrong. To whit, when Twitch disallows showing the Confederate flag, I would say this disqualifies the viewpoint that it's a symbol primarily regarding states' rights. Sorry if "disqualify the viewpoint" isn't the best term. >And I also think that trying to frame all these conflicts solely through lens of "offense at some symbol" is reductive. I didn't mean to be reductive. My larger goal is to understand the implicit reasoning behind companies taking stances like this, and deciding at least for myself if those stances are internally consistent. When I talk about "taking offense at some symbol", it's one of my straw-man theories regarding the company's justification for proscribing a certain kind of speech on their platform. And TBH, what I truly suspect is that companies just try to accommodate whatever public sentiment / outrage is currently in vogue, and make public statements rationalizing that position rather than being honest about the arbitrariness of their posturing.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Ancapistani 6y ago
  > For these people, the Confederate flag is a symbol of resistance to an oppressive nation state, and flying it is no more "racist" than it would be for someone to fly the flag of Tibet. > And obviously, some other people associate the Confederate flag with institutional slavery. As someone who considers themselves squarely in the first group, but who is cognizant of others’ views and therefore choose alternate symbols, I feel compelled to point out that there is significant overlap. They are far from a “union set” (a pun!) but there are actual racists who use that flag. I’m just happy that the actual first flag of the Confederacy is largely unmarred in popular culture, along with the Bonnie Blue

user-the-name 6y ago

They are applying the reasoning entirely consistently, you are just refusing to actually accept what the reasoning is.

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
(If I'm missing something, I'd be grateful for a correction. I don't want to hold wrong beliefs, especially ones that make me more cynical.) Here's my (current) reasoning, explained by example: (1) Twitch's new rules ban display of the Confederate flag for this reason: "Given its historic and symbolic association with slavery and white supremacist groups in the US". (2) I'm assuming that Twitch's general reasoning is: "Displaying symbol ${S}, which [some subgroup of humans, selected by an unspecified criterion] ${G} associate with bad-thing ${B} and supremacist group ${R}, will be treated as Hateful Conduct." (3) Assuming that I've correctly inferred Twitch's reasoning in (2), then here are some real-world examples that I think also meet their reasoning's criteria: (3a) S="Israeli flag", G="Arabs living in Israel", B="Denying national rights to non-Jews", R="Israeli government". (See [0] below) (3b) S="PRC flag", G="Uyghers living in PRC", B="religious persecution", R="Non-muslims in control of PRC government." (See [1] below) (3c) S="Islamic crescent-and-star symbol", G="some Christians living in Muslim countries", B="religious persecution", G="The persons in power who use ${S} and do ${B}". (See [2,3] below; also backed by personal knowledge.) (3d) S="Political symbols of the U.S. Democratic party", B="advocacy of black slavery", G="black slaves prior to the U.S. civil war". (3e) S="Political symbols of the U.S. Republican party", G/B/R left as an exercise to the reader. (I'm not trying to pick on Republicans more than Democrats; it's just that the post is getting long and I need to do my day job.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law:_Israel_as_the_Nation-State_of_the_Jewish_People#:~:text=It%20is%20the%20most%20important,which%20the%20state%20was%20established%22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Law:_Israel_as_the_Natio.... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghurs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghurs [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48146305 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-48146305
- user-the-name 6y ago
  Not "historic association". "Current association".

batty_alex 6y ago

The confederate flag isn't a national flag, though. The Confederacy isn't a religion. It was, at one point in history, a nation that lost an ideological war over a state's right to allow for the ownership of slaves It deserves the same treatment as a swastika or Nazi flag. Bringing it back isn't some matter of "pride" - it's to let certain people know where you stand

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

jmull 6y ago

You're raising a "where will they draw the line?" argument. The thing is, there is always a line to be drawn. These are not black and white issues. There is always a line to be drawn. You're worried about consistency, but it's not inconsistent to draw a line in a grey area in an inherently grey space. You can still make a good inconsistency argument, but you need to understand where they've drawn their line, by what principles, and show how they've failed to meet them.

DoofusOfDeath 6y ago
Thanks, that's helpful. I tried to be explicit about my guess at the Twitch's underlying principles in item (2) of my comment. It seems clear though that my guess could easily be wrong. It would be awesome if they just came out and explained their reasoning.

bobthechef 6y ago

That's a bit off topic, but I'll bite. First, a lot of the comments show some confusion. "Free". We are not free to do evil, only good, though we can be permissive of certain evil acts committed by others because its punishment would lead to still greater ills. Speech can also be good or evil. To make slanderous claims is evil because it not only perverts the faculty of speech, but maligns someone innocent of the accusation which brings others into errors about that person and also harms that person. calls for violence are evil. Those who claim free speech means saying whatever you want whenever you want aren't very rigorous and often fall back on some kind of incoherent and insidious skepticism (a la "says who") or relativism. Or they don't really mean it and are reacting to abuses of censorship. And that's the other side of the coin. Theory is one thing, but out of a concern about the abuse of censorship by tyrants and those in power, we may wish to tolerate evil speech to some degree. So the question now becomes: what are the acceptable limits of the permissiveness in the current conditions? There is a correct answer, but in practice, that is going to be determined by various political forces acting for various reasons. While tradition used to have a greater say in determining prohibitions on speech and "expression" for the sake of the common good (seen in blasphemy and pornography laws), today the revolutionary left has taken control and has been busily imposing speech codes that prevent "undesirable" discussion in opposition to the revolutionary ideology, often in the name of "the people". Meaning, we're no longer talking about banning swastikas and other pernicious symbols. We're talking about the silencing of even rationally defended views that don't agree with the revolutionary ideology while giving virtual free reign to toxic leftist polemic because it falls in lockstep with the ideology. All of this is to say that this move by Twitch is not really that interesting. There are far more dangerous developments in play. And to your point, I do expect even more pressure to be put on religious faiths to conform the revolutionary ideology. Take the Roman Catholic Church, for example. Catholicism was always hated and feared in the United States. And indeed, it had been neutered in various ways to conform to liberal ideological expectations over the course of the 20th century. However, given the proliferation of various novel and exotic sexual identity protected groups, I fully expect the RCC to experience a new period of persecution in the US under the guise of protecting these groups from the supposed persecution by the Church. Either that, or the bishops will continue down the path of going full Protestant and step in line with the demands of the state (and subsequently crumble into even greater irrelevance and apostasy). Probably both and in either case this is a success for revolutionary social engineers. A similar fate awaits others.