4 ms·

The point is there's nothing inherently "far right" about the technology or the platform. Protection of offensive speech is a bedrock classical liberal view.

pron 6y ago
> Protection of offensive speech is a bedrock classical liberal view. So is the protection of personal freedom, and yet no one claims we shouldn't put people in jail. Protection of speech is not an absolute principle of liberalism; just one principle that is weighed against others. Plus, in this case, most of the speech banned by Twitter is protected and can't land you in jail. It is also not at all a principle of liberalism that any publisher must publish any speech. Quite the opposite, the reputation of institutions like newspapers and universities are entirely predicated on their freedom to filter out and not disseminate certain things. The liberal view is that institutions should be able to build their reputation by choosing which speech they want to disseminate and amplify.
wokwokwok 6y ago
> The point is there’s nothing inherently “far right”... The point being made is that the application of censorship on some platforms results in a uneven distribution of users with such views in platforms that don’t due to self selection. If the entire population has an X% rate of folk with extreme views, and 0% are allowed on platforms A, B, C... but platform D allows it. The regardless of the overall distribution of users you cannot deny that the rate of folk with extreme views on D will be more than the 0% on A, B, and C. Like, it’s not a matter of opinion; that’s just a fact. So it’s fair to say Gab has higher proportion of users with extreme views simply by allowing them; that is, it is inherently controversial to even allow controversial discourse on your platform. I don’t care if you don’t like that; that’s irrelevant. It’s simply not correct to assert that the platform is not to blame; when different platforms enforce different rules you get different content on different platforms. It’s the same for porn, under age users, pictures of dogs ffs. If you allow it, you’ll get it... and if you do when no one else does, you’ll get attention for being the “only Platform with [whatever]”. The argument to here is about if the content is good or not; whether Gab is “far right” or “far left” is just arbitrary bs labels that distracts from the actual discussion of the content itself.

pron 6y ago

> Protection of offensive speech is a bedrock classical liberal view. So is the protection of personal freedom, and yet no one claims we shouldn't put people in jail. Protection of speech is not an absolute principle of liberalism; just one principle that is weighed against others. Plus, in this case, most of the speech banned by Twitter is protected and can't land you in jail. It is also not at all a principle of liberalism that any publisher must publish any speech. Quite the opposite, the reputation of institutions like newspapers and universities are entirely predicated on their freedom to filter out and not disseminate certain things. The liberal view is that institutions should be able to build their reputation by choosing which speech they want to disseminate and amplify.

wokwokwok 6y ago

> The point is there’s nothing inherently “far right”... The point being made is that the application of censorship on some platforms results in a uneven distribution of users with such views in platforms that don’t due to self selection. If the entire population has an X% rate of folk with extreme views, and 0% are allowed on platforms A, B, C... but platform D allows it. The regardless of the overall distribution of users you cannot deny that the rate of folk with extreme views on D will be more than the 0% on A, B, and C. Like, it’s not a matter of opinion; that’s just a fact. So it’s fair to say Gab has higher proportion of users with extreme views simply by allowing them; that is, it is inherently controversial to even allow controversial discourse on your platform. I don’t care if you don’t like that; that’s irrelevant. It’s simply not correct to assert that the platform is not to blame; when different platforms enforce different rules you get different content on different platforms. It’s the same for porn, under age users, pictures of dogs ffs. If you allow it, you’ll get it... and if you do when no one else does, you’ll get attention for being the “only Platform with [whatever]”. The argument to here is about if the content is good or not; whether Gab is “far right” or “far left” is just arbitrary bs labels that distracts from the actual discussion of the content itself.