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Are you at all worried about the possibility that America could have another civil war because a sufficiently large proportion of Americans are radicalized in u

Are you at all worried about the possibility that America could have another civil war because a sufficiently large proportion of Americans are radicalized in uncensored, insufficiently moderated communities? Facebook's own research found “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools” and that most of the activity came from the platform’s “Groups You Should Join” and “Discover” algorithms: “Our recommendation systems grow the problem.” [0] We just suffered a textbook seditious conspiracy against the United States, which was planned on Parler and thedonald dot win. Is there a chance that Google's decision to remove Parler from their app store will only throttle the spread of Parler? Have you heard of the slippery slope fallacy? [1] And if so, why doesn't the prohibition of apps for child pornography produce the harms you cite? [0] https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages-division-top-executives-nixed-solutions-11590507499 https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages-di... [1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fallacies/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fallacies/

throwawaysea 6y ago
Why do you think there was a seditious conspiracy? Do you really honestly believe that a few hundred people marching onto the capitol have the ability to destabilize the country? Remember, we have layers upon layers of armed forces that would end any such attempt very very easily. I think this incident was more realistically just a bunch of amped up protesters who got caught up in the moment and crossed a physical barrier, but had no greater ambition of taking over the US government. Not to mention, this is not the first time rioters have taken over capitol hill while Congress has gathered. It has happened over and over many times, even in the past few years. Which of the following events did you see broad front-page coverage of, along with censorship/deplatforming on social media, and calls for resignation/expulsion of politicians: Was it the capitol riot that AOC directly participated in (https://theintercept.com/2018/11/13/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-sunrise-activists-nancy-pelosi/ https://theintercept.com/2018/11/13/alexandria-ocasio-cortez...)? Perhaps it was the repeated incidents after AOC and Rashida Tlaib both encouraged this group to continue illegal rioting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_Movement)? Or the several past Capitol Hill riots staged by Democracy Spring (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Spring)? Or perhaps the Obamacare riots (https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/10/politics/health-care-protests-capitol-hill/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/10/politics/health-care-protests...)? Or maybe when 600 people raided capitol hill to protest immigration law (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/womens-march-protesters-call-end-family-separation-capitol/story?id=56240419 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/womens-march-protesters-call...)? The reality is none of them resulted in any consequences for the activists, affiliated politicians, or organizations that either organized/led/incited those riots. After all, AOC is still here on Twitter/Instagram/whatever. The same thing happened throughout 2020. Rose City Antifa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_City_Antifa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_City_Antifa) organized numerous highly violent riots at federal buildings in Portland - guess what, their Twitter account (https://twitter.com/RoseCityAntifa https://twitter.com/RoseCityAntifa) still stands. BLM-affiliated events have caused billions in damage, and resulted in a far greater number of deaths - shouldn't they be deplatformed as well? The tech companies making these changes at the eleventh hour is simply them pandering to the incoming administration (their new masters) and them finally caving in to their own political biases and putting their immense, unchecked power to use by attacking and suppressing their political enemies. It's a dark, dark day and like in all such catastrophes, it'll be welcomed with open arms.
- yongjik 6y ago
  > Do you really honestly believe that a few hundred people marching onto the capitol has the ability to destabilize the country? How are we to know? Four years ago everybody was like "do you really believe a senile ex-talk-show host will withstand a round of debate^W^W^W^W^W become the Republican candidate^W^W^W^W become the president? Come on." Yet here we are.
- modriano 6y ago
  > Why do you think there was a seditious conspiracy? Do you really honestly believe that a few hundred people marching onto the capitol have the ability to destabilize the country? Remember, we have layers upon layers of armed forces that would end any such attempt very very easily. You might want to review the facts. The Capitol Police were overwhelmed, our elected representatives, who were in the process of finalizing our election, had to run for their lives, and the layers upon layers of armed forces were not there to protect our representatives. This was a massive security failure and we should never come this close to having our elected representatives taken hostage and executed by insurrectionists. And if that had happened, yes, it would have destabilized the country. How could it not?
  - djsumdog 6y ago
    > The Capitol Police were overwhelmed, What crazy fantasy world are you living in? That's absolutely not what happened at all! Are you INSANE? The police were literally taking selfies with protestors, the protestors stayed within the velvet ropes and the TRUMPers stopped anyone who tried to break things. https://invidious.xyz/watch?v=LPxFGKVl5H https://invidious.xyz/watch?v=LPxFGKVl5H (skip to 2:35)
- winston_smith 6y ago
  Huh, that's pretty crazy, especially with AOC herself writing up impeachment papers: "Sunrise planned a sit-in in Pelosi's office and asked Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to help them publicize the event, which she instead decided to join herself...The sit-in took place on November 13. Over 250 protesters showed up to occupy Pelosi's office, with 51 being arrested by Capitol Police." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_Movement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_Movement
sawjet 6y ago
Welcome to the streisand effect. Big tech has effectively silenced 80m Americans and Parker and other alternative wrongspeak will grow much faster now.
- loopz 6y ago
  That is not the Streisand effect.
- klodolph 6y ago
  The 80M number is not “Americans silenced”, it’s the number of Twitter accounts that follow Trump’s Twitter account. Evidence generally supports the notion that deplatforming works. If you remove people from your platform, they generally end up scattered across other platforms or new platforms in smaller numbers. “Alternative” platforms are more likely to collapse, which just makes things worse. Think about this—when was the last time you heard about Alex Jones or Milo Yiannopoulos? What happened to r/fatpeoplehate or r/watchpeopledie? If you want to find these communities, where do you go? You have to search them out. Maybe you check out one of the chans. Maybe you go searching for Discord invites. But you still keep a Reddit and YouTube account, of course. You keep using Twitter and Instagram and Facebook even though the communities you want are deplatformed. Most people don’t go through the effort. The communities end up fractured. The alternative platforms like Parler and Voat are often worse for exactly the same reasons that they exist in the first place. That’s why deplatforming succeeds.
- x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
  Do you really think 80MM Americans have been "silenced"? What is wrong with you. As a member of a group that has been historically marginalized in the US, it's laughable to see tech bros act as if they've suffered some Red Summer of 1919 because they can't post on social media.
brigandish 6y ago
If you start conflating free speech with child pornography when that isn’t even relevant or necessary to the point at hand then it’ll be no wonder if you lack responses, and maybe you’ll consider that proof of a strong argument, who knows? Maybe that’s even the point of slinging that in there. I fail to see how that will lead to productive discussion though.
- modriano 6y ago
  Neither I nor the person I replied to mentioned free speech. They asserted that Google or Apple removing an app will lead to Google or Apple "[taking] everything else from you". I pointed out a class of apps that are banned and asked why we haven't slipped down the slope they described.
  - brigandish 6y ago
    > in uncensored, insufficiently moderated communities > if so, why doesn't the prohibition of apps for child pornography Forgive me, I was obviously mistaken to bring up freedom of speech or to claim that you were conflating apps/sites that allow freedom of speech with those that allow child pornography. /s Edit: fixed my egregious typos.
    - jakelazaroff 6y ago
      The point is that free speech absolutism requires that child pornography be protected speech.
      - saithound 6y ago
        There are good arguments against free speech absolutism, but this is not one of them, since child pornography IS protected speech in the US. You can write a book of poetry that has entire chapters featuring Achilles and the Tortoise raping babies in patently offensive detail. If Congress tried to pass a law that bans your book, it would easily pass the Miller test, and the Court would tell them to think again. Heck, you can find books featuring pornographic scenes involving children on Amazon today. Of course you are not allowed to possess or distribute explicit photos of actual minors (the same way you are not allowed to possess or distribute human kidneys, or for that matter copies of Windows XP): fortunately, none of these acts are speech, even under extreme straw men versions of free speech absolutism. Easy test: you are still able to convey any of your thoughts/opinions and make absolutely _any_ point to any audience without inconvenience even if you don't resort to these activities.
ehvatum 6y ago
The proposition that free and open discussion creates civil war is frightening. If we are prepared to believe such a thing, then we have no democracy to protect.
- billjings 6y ago
  Incitement isn't permitted by any interpretation of the 1st amendment. The current state of affairs offers nothing more granular than shutting down all of Parler in response to their failure to moderate this speech effectively.
- modriano 6y ago
  I suspect you believe that as an article of faith, but it makes me think you haven't been on the internet in decades. Go onto thedonald dot win and you'll see hundreds of thousands of people who have created an insulated bubble where assertions that support their preferred outcomes are articles of gospel. If you can go on there and convince a single person that the election was legitimate, that ballot security measures make it impossible for their beliefs to be true, and that Biden was legitimately elected, it's possible for the proposition "free and open discussion can diffuse false ideas" to be valid, but if you can't, then you might want to reevaluate.
- loopz 6y ago
  Lies are often how wars start.
- stubish 6y ago
  Discussion? I haven't seen discussion come out of the US on a number of topics for decades. Discussions might start, but someone comes along and starts incoherently screaming.
- pjc50 6y ago
  If the freeness encompassed saying "let's have a civil war", "these people are your enemy", "buy weapons for the incoming civil war", and selling t-shirts with a proposed civil war start date, then maybe? How do you think civil wars start? And how many actual wars have been started by lies? Usually by the instigating government or yellow press, but in this case it's DIY yellow press letting people make up their own lies.
lenkite 6y ago
Actions like these where one side fully suppresses the other - one set of standards for themselves and another set of standards applied to people they oppose - are exactly the kind of actions that lead to civil war. Comparing ~70 million Americans to paedophiles...
- djsumdog 6y ago
  or comparing ~70 million Americans to Nazis
  - pixl97 6y ago
    Well, when they stop acting like fascists. I will.
    - another_sock 6y ago
      Until then support their inability to communicate, get them fired from their jobs, and treat them like enemies (like an anti-fascist of course)
  - rrose 6y ago
    if the boot fits
djsumdog 6y ago
> large proportion of Americans are radicalized in uncensored You do realize, both sides of America think the other side is radicalized. This was literally the reaction on Trump's first day of office: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXR3d22BhHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXR3d22BhHs Have you forgotten about that? Does that look anything like the 6th? No, of course it doesn't. Had those people been let into the State House, it may have burned to the ground in 2017! > insufficiently moderated community Section 230 was put in place because it's difficult to moderate effectively when you're trying to launch a startup. Are you saying no one can launch a social network unless they have the money and staff to moderate each an every single post that comes in?
- modriano 6y ago
  > You do realize, both sides of America think the other side is radicalized. On Wednesday, while our elected Representatives and Senators were in the process of finalizing the count of the US election, armed Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol. Several of these people were carrying zip-tie handcuffs and were hunting for Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer. 5 people died in this insurrection attempt. Here's the video of the QAnon insurrectionist who was shot by the Capitol Police as she was breaking into the area where our elected Reps and Senators had retreated to. This was an attempt to overthrow our government, and it's a matter of luck that our legislators weren't executed by this mob. Attempting to "Both Sides" this is intellectually dishonest, as a riot in the streets is a categorically different thing than a seditious conspiracy that involved the violent disruption of the finalization of results from our election. > Are you saying no one can launch a social network unless they have the money and staff to moderate each an every single post that comes in? I'm not intimately familiar with Section 230, but I don't want my country destroyed. If Google and Apple facilitate distribution of a toxic product that destroys my country, that's a problem for me. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2021/01/08/ashli-babbitt-shooting-video-capitol/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2021/01/08/ash...

throwawaysea 6y ago

Why do you think there was a seditious conspiracy? Do you really honestly believe that a few hundred people marching onto the capitol have the ability to destabilize the country? Remember, we have layers upon layers of armed forces that would end any such attempt very very easily. I think this incident was more realistically just a bunch of amped up protesters who got caught up in the moment and crossed a physical barrier, but had no greater ambition of taking over the US government. Not to mention, this is not the first time rioters have taken over capitol hill while Congress has gathered. It has happened over and over many times, even in the past few years. Which of the following events did you see broad front-page coverage of, along with censorship/deplatforming on social media, and calls for resignation/expulsion of politicians: Was it the capitol riot that AOC directly participated in (https://theintercept.com/2018/11/13/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-sunrise-activists-nancy-pelosi/ https://theintercept.com/2018/11/13/alexandria-ocasio-cortez...)? Perhaps it was the repeated incidents after AOC and Rashida Tlaib both encouraged this group to continue illegal rioting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_Movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_Movement)? Or the several past Capitol Hill riots staged by Democracy Spring (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Spring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Spring)? Or perhaps the Obamacare riots (https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/10/politics/health-care-protests-capitol-hill/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/10/politics/health-care-protests...)? Or maybe when 600 people raided capitol hill to protest immigration law (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/womens-march-protesters-call-end-family-separation-capitol/story?id=56240419 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/womens-march-protesters-call...)? The reality is none of them resulted in any consequences for the activists, affiliated politicians, or organizations that either organized/led/incited those riots. After all, AOC is still here on Twitter/Instagram/whatever. The same thing happened throughout 2020. Rose City Antifa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_City_Antifa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_City_Antifa) organized numerous highly violent riots at federal buildings in Portland - guess what, their Twitter account (https://twitter.com/RoseCityAntifa https://twitter.com/RoseCityAntifa) still stands. BLM-affiliated events have caused billions in damage, and resulted in a far greater number of deaths - shouldn't they be deplatformed as well? The tech companies making these changes at the eleventh hour is simply them pandering to the incoming administration (their new masters) and them finally caving in to their own political biases and putting their immense, unchecked power to use by attacking and suppressing their political enemies. It's a dark, dark day and like in all such catastrophes, it'll be welcomed with open arms.

yongjik 6y ago
> Do you really honestly believe that a few hundred people marching onto the capitol has the ability to destabilize the country? How are we to know? Four years ago everybody was like "do you really believe a senile ex-talk-show host will withstand a round of debate^W^W^W^W^W become the Republican candidate^W^W^W^W become the president? Come on." Yet here we are.
modriano 6y ago
> Why do you think there was a seditious conspiracy? Do you really honestly believe that a few hundred people marching onto the capitol have the ability to destabilize the country? Remember, we have layers upon layers of armed forces that would end any such attempt very very easily. You might want to review the facts. The Capitol Police were overwhelmed, our elected representatives, who were in the process of finalizing our election, had to run for their lives, and the layers upon layers of armed forces were not there to protect our representatives. This was a massive security failure and we should never come this close to having our elected representatives taken hostage and executed by insurrectionists. And if that had happened, yes, it would have destabilized the country. How could it not?
- djsumdog 6y ago
  > The Capitol Police were overwhelmed, What crazy fantasy world are you living in? That's absolutely not what happened at all! Are you INSANE? The police were literally taking selfies with protestors, the protestors stayed within the velvet ropes and the TRUMPers stopped anyone who tried to break things. https://invidious.xyz/watch?v=LPxFGKVl5H https://invidious.xyz/watch?v=LPxFGKVl5H (skip to 2:35)
winston_smith 6y ago
Huh, that's pretty crazy, especially with AOC herself writing up impeachment papers: "Sunrise planned a sit-in in Pelosi's office and asked Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to help them publicize the event, which she instead decided to join herself...The sit-in took place on November 13. Over 250 protesters showed up to occupy Pelosi's office, with 51 being arrested by Capitol Police." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_Movement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise_Movement

sawjet 6y ago

Welcome to the streisand effect. Big tech has effectively silenced 80m Americans and Parker and other alternative wrongspeak will grow much faster now.

loopz 6y ago
That is not the Streisand effect.
klodolph 6y ago
The 80M number is not “Americans silenced”, it’s the number of Twitter accounts that follow Trump’s Twitter account. Evidence generally supports the notion that deplatforming works. If you remove people from your platform, they generally end up scattered across other platforms or new platforms in smaller numbers. “Alternative” platforms are more likely to collapse, which just makes things worse. Think about this—when was the last time you heard about Alex Jones or Milo Yiannopoulos? What happened to r/fatpeoplehate or r/watchpeopledie? If you want to find these communities, where do you go? You have to search them out. Maybe you check out one of the chans. Maybe you go searching for Discord invites. But you still keep a Reddit and YouTube account, of course. You keep using Twitter and Instagram and Facebook even though the communities you want are deplatformed. Most people don’t go through the effort. The communities end up fractured. The alternative platforms like Parler and Voat are often worse for exactly the same reasons that they exist in the first place. That’s why deplatforming succeeds.
x86_64Ubuntu 6y ago
Do you really think 80MM Americans have been "silenced"? What is wrong with you. As a member of a group that has been historically marginalized in the US, it's laughable to see tech bros act as if they've suffered some Red Summer of 1919 because they can't post on social media.

brigandish 6y ago

If you start conflating free speech with child pornography when that isn’t even relevant or necessary to the point at hand then it’ll be no wonder if you lack responses, and maybe you’ll consider that proof of a strong argument, who knows? Maybe that’s even the point of slinging that in there. I fail to see how that will lead to productive discussion though.

modriano 6y ago
Neither I nor the person I replied to mentioned free speech. They asserted that Google or Apple removing an app will lead to Google or Apple "[taking] everything else from you". I pointed out a class of apps that are banned and asked why we haven't slipped down the slope they described.
- brigandish 6y ago
  > in uncensored, insufficiently moderated communities > if so, why doesn't the prohibition of apps for child pornography Forgive me, I was obviously mistaken to bring up freedom of speech or to claim that you were conflating apps/sites that allow freedom of speech with those that allow child pornography. /s Edit: fixed my egregious typos.
  - jakelazaroff 6y ago
    The point is that free speech absolutism requires that child pornography be protected speech.
    - saithound 6y ago
      There are good arguments against free speech absolutism, but this is not one of them, since child pornography IS protected speech in the US. You can write a book of poetry that has entire chapters featuring Achilles and the Tortoise raping babies in patently offensive detail. If Congress tried to pass a law that bans your book, it would easily pass the Miller test, and the Court would tell them to think again. Heck, you can find books featuring pornographic scenes involving children on Amazon today. Of course you are not allowed to possess or distribute explicit photos of actual minors (the same way you are not allowed to possess or distribute human kidneys, or for that matter copies of Windows XP): fortunately, none of these acts are speech, even under extreme straw men versions of free speech absolutism. Easy test: you are still able to convey any of your thoughts/opinions and make absolutely _any_ point to any audience without inconvenience even if you don't resort to these activities.

ehvatum 6y ago

The proposition that free and open discussion creates civil war is frightening. If we are prepared to believe such a thing, then we have no democracy to protect.

billjings 6y ago
Incitement isn't permitted by any interpretation of the 1st amendment. The current state of affairs offers nothing more granular than shutting down all of Parler in response to their failure to moderate this speech effectively.
modriano 6y ago
I suspect you believe that as an article of faith, but it makes me think you haven't been on the internet in decades. Go onto thedonald dot win and you'll see hundreds of thousands of people who have created an insulated bubble where assertions that support their preferred outcomes are articles of gospel. If you can go on there and convince a single person that the election was legitimate, that ballot security measures make it impossible for their beliefs to be true, and that Biden was legitimately elected, it's possible for the proposition "free and open discussion can diffuse false ideas" to be valid, but if you can't, then you might want to reevaluate.
loopz 6y ago
Lies are often how wars start.
stubish 6y ago
Discussion? I haven't seen discussion come out of the US on a number of topics for decades. Discussions might start, but someone comes along and starts incoherently screaming.
pjc50 6y ago
If the freeness encompassed saying "let's have a civil war", "these people are your enemy", "buy weapons for the incoming civil war", and selling t-shirts with a proposed civil war start date, then maybe? How do you think civil wars start? And how many actual wars have been started by lies? Usually by the instigating government or yellow press, but in this case it's DIY yellow press letting people make up their own lies.

lenkite 6y ago

Actions like these where one side fully suppresses the other - one set of standards for themselves and another set of standards applied to people they oppose - are exactly the kind of actions that lead to civil war. Comparing ~70 million Americans to paedophiles...

djsumdog 6y ago
or comparing ~70 million Americans to Nazis
- pixl97 6y ago
  Well, when they stop acting like fascists. I will.
  - another_sock 6y ago
    Until then support their inability to communicate, get them fired from their jobs, and treat them like enemies (like an anti-fascist of course)
- rrose 6y ago
  if the boot fits

djsumdog 6y ago

> large proportion of Americans are radicalized in uncensored You do realize, both sides of America think the other side is radicalized. This was literally the reaction on Trump's first day of office: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXR3d22BhHs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXR3d22BhHs Have you forgotten about that? Does that look anything like the 6th? No, of course it doesn't. Had those people been let into the State House, it may have burned to the ground in 2017! > insufficiently moderated community Section 230 was put in place because it's difficult to moderate effectively when you're trying to launch a startup. Are you saying no one can launch a social network unless they have the money and staff to moderate each an every single post that comes in?

modriano 6y ago
> You do realize, both sides of America think the other side is radicalized. On Wednesday, while our elected Representatives and Senators were in the process of finalizing the count of the US election, armed Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol. Several of these people were carrying zip-tie handcuffs and were hunting for Mike Pence, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer. 5 people died in this insurrection attempt. Here's the video of the QAnon insurrectionist who was shot by the Capitol Police as she was breaking into the area where our elected Reps and Senators had retreated to. This was an attempt to overthrow our government, and it's a matter of luck that our legislators weren't executed by this mob. Attempting to "Both Sides" this is intellectually dishonest, as a riot in the streets is a categorically different thing than a seditious conspiracy that involved the violent disruption of the finalization of results from our election. > Are you saying no one can launch a social network unless they have the money and staff to moderate each an every single post that comes in? I'm not intimately familiar with Section 230, but I don't want my country destroyed. If Google and Apple facilitate distribution of a toxic product that destroys my country, that's a problem for me. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2021/01/08/ashli-babbitt-shooting-video-capitol/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2021/01/08/ash...