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> Groups becoming more extreme when they exodus is fine and part of the calculus. The reason to take it off of Reddit is to prevent more followers from joining
by s3r3nity 6y ago
> Groups becoming more extreme when they exodus is fine and part of the calculus. The reason to take it off of Reddit is to prevent more followers from joining up with them.
Is this really any better than religious idealogues burning books that aren't its Bibles, lest people get tempted to reject their faith or question their ideologies?
Or North Korea blocking any information about capitalist successes, lest that cause their citizens to question the communist / fascist ideologies they've been exposed to and cause more followers to switch?
Pretending that there aren't other opinions because you're worried that people can't properly evaluate and weigh the evidence / ideas is a weak excuse for censorship.
Of course, I should mention that I do not support many of the prevailing sentiments in r/DonaldTrump - but we should be better arming individuals with better critical thinking and believability weighting abilities, rather than resort to censorship.
"Censorship is telling a man he can't have steak just because a baby can't chew it." - Mark Twain.
- dragontamer 6y ago"Censorship" seems to work pretty well around here in HackerNews. When someone's opinion becomes violent or unhelpful, the mods around here will delete their post, curtailing discussion and making this area more reasonable for overall discourse to move forward. There are unreasonable opinions and unreasonable people out there. The only possible weapon online groups have to combat unreasonable people in a discussion forum, is censorship. ------- But sure, feel free to use the decades old arguments of "unmoderated speech" from the days of USENET. Some of us have been around long enough to see this argument style play out over-and-over again. Again-and-again, the only USEFUL discussion forums are those who are run by good moderators. "Censoring" Spam, pornography, doxxing and yes, censoring calls to overt violence in the real world, is incredibly important to keep online discussions safe. Cutting out hateful groups is _effective_. Its the weapon of last resort, but given what we've seen this past week, it is a well warranted move. It is no different than a moderator coming around here to delete spam.
- s3r3nity 6y agoSuccesses to an ends for censorship doesn't make it any more ethical. China is a pretty strong economy right now - that doesn't make the CCP's aggressive forms of censorship any more just or ethical.
- dragontamer 6y agoJust because you don't like censorship doesn't make its use less ethical. Censoring porn and spam from /r/HackerNews is not only effective, its ethical. Its the only way effective discourse can take place on this website. ------ Lets turn this around. What's YOUR solution to porn and spam on discussion sites? Do you want that sort of stuff to just overrun this webiste? You're talking in one of the most heavily moderated websites on the internet right now. Discussion is supposed to lean towards technical talk alone.
- ModernMech 6y ago> Censoring porn ... [is] the only way effective discourse can take place on this website. Yes, but it diminishes the level of intercourse significantly.
- chillacy 6y agoGiven the deontologists and consequentialists have not quite reached a definitive answer, I'm not sure how everyone would agree with this definition of "more ethical".