51 ms·

You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

• JacobSuperslav 6y ago
  if censoring assholes doesn't work then tell me how come we haven't heard anything from donald trump in months? because he doesn't have a major platform anymore.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• gotoeleven 6y ago
  I predict this comment section will be full of normative statements.
• dkjaudyeqooe 6y ago
  Like most of these rants against "censorship" they skip over people's rights to restrict speech as a form of speech itself: there is no moral (or legal) right to give people you disagree with a forum or audience to express their view. Calling to silence others (that is, encouraging them to take your view of not giving them an audience) is fine as long as people have a choice on how to respond. If there is some notion that we have no choice but to enable other's views then our own views become secondary to them. We no longer have absolute control over expressing the views we agree or disagree with. Is the government or some other absolute authority censoring wrong? Yes. Are powerful monopolies (or near monopolies) wrong to censor? No, because they have the same speech rights as others, the problem there lies in the market power of the monopolies, not their speech.
  • bopbeepboop 6y ago
    “Free speech” in the moral sense is exactly that people who operate civil infrastructure shouldn’t use their privilege for censorship. So... people who believe in “free speech” as a moral value will disagree with your first paragraph — and hence, your entire post. You assume your conclusion, so your argument fails to be persuasive. “I disagree with what you say, but I’ll fight to the death to defend your right to say it” is a maxim of free speech — and a bold declaration of the exact opposite of your message: if we want a free society, we have a moral duty to aid the freedom of others — not suppress it.
    • hnhg 6y ago
      I guess you have a problem with news editorial decisions then? For example, Fox News have a strong bias running through their programming. Isn't that a kind of implicit censorship of ideas?
      • smaryjerry 6y ago
        Opinions are biased and specific people and programs are biased on Fox News and many other channels, but to be a journalist you literally have to correct false statements you make. This makes Fox News as reliable as all other stations. People often post memes about Fox News or CNN saying something wildly stupid but don’t realize they are posting a literal opinion from an opinion show not news from a news show.
        • GVIrish 6y ago
          > but to be a journalist you literally have to correct false statements you make What? No, you absolutely do not have to correct false statements you make to be a journalist. Reputable publications post retractions and clarifications because that is how they maintain their reputation, but it is in no way a requirement.
          • smaryjerry 6y ago
            You actually do or you can lose your license to broadcast. The FCC is prohibited by law from engaging in censorship or infringing on First Amendment rights of the press. It is, however, illegal for broadcasters to intentionally distort the news, and the FCC may act on complaints if there is documented evidence of such behavior from persons with direct personal knowledge. This is also besides slander and libel, lying about an individual or organization.
            • GVIrish 6y ago
              > It is, however, illegal for broadcasters to intentionally distort the news, and the FCC may act on complaints if there is documented evidence of such behavior from persons with direct personal knowledge. What particular laws are you referring to? > This is also besides slander and libel, lying about an individual or organization. Sure, you can get sued for that. But getting sued for libel or defamation doesn't mean you can't be a journalist anymore. A journalist who loses a libel lawsuit can keep writing even if they've been sued into oblivion.
  • benchaney 6y ago
    This article has nothing to do with whether or not platforms ought to be able to perform content moderation. The point you are making is just not relevant. Not even tenuously.
  • blastro 6y ago
    > Calling to silence others (that is, encouraging them to take your view of not giving them an audience) is fine as long as people have a choice on how to respond. This succinctly expresses a feeling of mine I hadn't been able to put into words so beautifully. Thank you!
  • jonemi 6y ago
    The article made the distinction between empirical "can" you censor and normative "should". His point is that censorship or cancelling isn't effective.
  • dkjaudyeqooe 6y ago
    Watching the score on this post go up and down so much is fascinating. But a warning to those who downvote: It's a trap! By doing so you're agreeing with me.
    • triceratops 6y ago
      Hahaha!
  • ycombigator 6y ago
    Choosing not to be part of an audience (and encouraging others not to be) is not the same as denying others from being part of one they wish to be part of.
  • vladvasiliu 6y ago
    I think you have a point in that no one has a right to force me to listen to their speech. However, I think that in the case of the monopolies being discussed here, it's different. The issue is that they "enable" speech in a generic way. They don't enable this or that speech in particular. They also don't force A to listen to B's speech. If anything, they do the complete opposite, what with the whole "echo chamber" situation. I think this is the whole meat of the "platform vs publisher" debate. A newspaper or other media have to actively "enable" something. When they publish speech A, they choose to not publish speech B. It's often an "either / or", at least for questions of space. They produce whatever speech they print / show. It's theirs, it's their point of view. However, Facebook, Twitter and other similar companies only put out a tool. This tool is then used by this or that person to speak this or that argument. FB doesn't actively and directly help speaker A anymore that they help speaker B. Also, as an FB user, no one forces you to listen to B's speech if you don't care for it. Your right not to listen to speech you disagree with is not infringed. If I publish a story on FB, it's my story, my speech, not Facebook's. Just as if I shout in the town square it's my speech that I shout. It doesn't become the mayor's speech because it's in his town or the square's architect because he built it in such a way that my voice can physically be heard. If you consider that FB has some right to prevent people from speaking "wrong" views, then why stop at FB? We should come up with ways to help other companies to prevent their product from being used for speech and other actions they don't agree with. Like the power company. Maybe they don't like their electricity being used to spread some "wrong" ideas. I'm pretty sure the local bakery isn't all that happy either to support some X-ist fanatic. Where do we draw the line?
    • adamcstephens 6y ago
      The argument is we draw the line at public versus private. Elected governments are not allowed to restrict speech, but private companies are. I don’t subscribe to this view, but it’s what the libertarian paternalists think.
    • GVIrish 6y ago
      > However, Facebook, Twitter and other similar companies only put out a tool. This tool is then used by this or that person to speak this or that argument. FB doesn't actively and directly help speaker A anymore that they help speaker B. Facebook actually deliberately manipulates people's feeds in order to promote content that will increase engagement. Twitter does the same by default. > Just as if I shout in the town square it's my speech that I shout. It doesn't become the mayor's speech because it's in his town or the square's architect because he built it in such a way that my voice can physically be heard. The town square is public property. If you instead decide to step inside a private business and shout they can have you removed from the premises. > Like the power company. Maybe they don't like their electricity being used to spread some "wrong" ideas. Electricity is regulated as a utility and as such wouldn't be allowed to cut service for that reason. A bakery could refuse to bake cakes with swatiskas on them if they so chose for example. Where the private business's choices on refusing service runs into trouble is when they refuse service based on a customer's race/ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation.
  • spoonjim 6y ago
    I feel like the choice on how to respond is less than it ever was, at least for myself. It is 100% infeasible for me to contract any of the canon taught in my office: diversity is a top priority, women are oppressed, etc. I don’t even disagree with all of it, but I do know that I don’t have the option of doing anything but earnestly nodding my head at the diversity events.
  • refurb 6y ago
    If you are calling to silence people then you don’t believe in free speech. Simple as that.
    • elastolin 6y ago
      Pretty much this.
  • square_usual 6y ago
    > Are powerful monopolies (or near monopolies) wrong to censor? No, because they have the same speech rights as others, the problem there lies in the market power of the monopolies, not their speech. This doesn't work if every platform - whether they have market power or not - are compelled to censor by mobs. Most recently, Glenn Greenwald wrote about journalists trying to get Substack to censor its authors [1]. Well before, Signal employees tried to make their company have an anti-extremism policy [2]. The fact of the matter is, most people don't know enough about censorship to fight against it, and so small groups of dedicated people can create enough of an uproar in their circles about something to make it untenable for any major platform to speak about it, simply because those platforms now have to contend with a vocal minority pushing a narrative. This has been a very common tactic in India, where I'm from: interest groups will object to a movie or a book loudly enough to de-facto, and even sometimes, de-jure censor it. Most recently, a Netflix series lead to a controversy as it dared to show teenagers doing drugs. This lead to Netflix being notified buy the Indian equivalent of the CPS, and was directly caused by people complaining about the show on Twitter. [3] There is a pardadox of tolerance with respect to free speech. We cannot expect to maintain freedom of expression if we treat everyone who actually expresses themselves as a sinner. 1: https://greenwald.substack.com/p/journalists-start-demanding-substack https://greenwald.substack.com/p/journalists-start-demanding... 2: https://www.theverge.com/22249391/signal-app-abuse-messaging-employees-violence-misinformation https://www.theverge.com/22249391/signal-app-abuse-messaging... 3: https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2021/mar/11/netflix-gets-notice-from-top-child-rights-body-for-wrongful-depiction-of-kids-in-bombay-begum-2275353.html https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2021/mar/11/netflix-...
    • NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
      >There is a pardadox of tolerance with respect to free speech. We cannot expect to maintain freedom of expression if we treat everyone who actually expresses themselves as a sinner. In every thread about free speech, the people against it cite the 'paradox of tolerance'. Or half of it anyway. They invariably leave off the back half, which is pointedly anti-censorship: >Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — *In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise.* But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. -Karl Popper
  • Impossible 6y ago
    There are multiple issues with free speech no matter what, and some of them are the result of closed platforms that have too much power over communication channels, but ultimately need to moderate to avoid turning their platform into 8chan. I agree with you that many complaints about free speech on the internet have weird caveats like... You should have the right to say whatever you want without criticism or you should have the right to engage in rational debate or play devil's advocate on any topic even if another party doesn't want to. Like you said this might make the free speech proponent happier, but ends up limiting the speech of the person that doesn't want to engage in that way.
  • tsimionescu 6y ago
    So, if AT&T cut out phone service from union sympathizers, that would be OK, because they are just expressing their right to free speech? I think there is such a thing as critical communication infrastructure, and even if it run by private companies, it should be protected from censorship. Whether all of FB or just private messaging fall under this is more debatable, but there have to be clear limits on what a company that facilitates communication between 1 billion people can do.
    • Griffinsauce 6y ago
      > the problem there lies in the market power of the monopolies, not their speech.
      • tsimionescu 6y ago
        So if there were 50 companies, and all of them censored you for saying something really unpopular, would things be any better? Critical infrastructure must be legally protected from censorship and (private, mandate-less) eavesdropping. Whether it is run by a monopoly or many small companies is immaterial.
        • NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
          >Critical infrastructure must be legally protected from censorship and (private, mandate-less) eavesdropping. Whether it is run by a monopoly or many small companies is immaterial. Well said. What we have today is an oligopoly on speech by a small handful of ideologically identical technotyrants who have managed to circumvent the first amendment without ever having had to so much as introduce a bill to Congress. If this keeps going it isn't going to end well.
        • XorNot 6y ago
          Critical infrastructure has never been regarded as a public platform. No one has been prevented from buying their own internet connection or DNS names and running their own site over the "common carrier" status internet backbone infrastructure. It's just a lot less useful when your goal is radicalization and you need to hit the widest possible audience to get conversions.
  • FeepingCreature 6y ago
    > there is no moral (or legal) right to give people you disagree with a forum or audience to express their view. I think there actually is such a moral obligation.
  • smsm42 6y ago
    There's no legal right, unless you are a government employee (who btw routinely censor anyway, e.g. any state university with a content-based speech policy is violating the law). But there's very much a moral right and moral obligation - if you are in a position of power, as people leading the high-tech industry and prominent politicians are, you are responsible for maintaining the society that promoted you to that power in good health. And good health of the society requires free exchange of ideas and freedom to debate this ideas without fear of being persecuted and punished. Yes, even if you're end up being wrong - in fact, freedom to be wrong (excluding, of course, recognition that you're wrong) is vital to any proper debate, since if being wrong implies one's destruction and punishment, no serious and honest debate is possible, and no serious and honest truth-seeking through free exchange of ideas is possible either. You'd either fear to express your ideas, if you're powerless, or use your power to suppress other's ideas and punish them, if you're powerful - and that would have no relation with whose ideas are better. Only when the exchange of ideas are free, and only when ideas can participate in this competition without prior approval by powerful incumbents, any healthy democratic society is possible. And yes, whoever in power in such society, which now includes the big tech leadership, have moral if not legal responsibility for it - a responsibility that they are not only neglecting but blatantly violating right now. Censorship by powerful monopolies is as wrong as censorship by the government, and we need to stop hiding behind this stupid idea "but it's not government, so we can ignore it".
    • GVIrish 6y ago
      So in the case that participants on a social platform engage in trolling, harassment, and abuse (sometimes with bots), that company should not do anything? If some people who are attempting to exchange ideas and debate in good faith, are shouted down by people hurling epithets and death threats, the platform owners should shrug their shoulders? When people openly promote and even plan violent attacks against others big tech should just leave things be?
      • smsm42 6y ago
        I think we have more than ample proof of Big Tech companies blocking people not for abuse/bots but for expressing viewpoints that the platform management deems politically unacceptable. So let's not pretend that fighting bot abuse, spam, violent threats, etc. is the same as political censorship - the platforms can do one without the other, and actually have been doing it successfully up to about 2019, when they started increasingly censor by political views. And now political bans are pretty much commonplace. Once can pretend that it's all "fighting disinformation" and "preventing violence" but nobody is buying it anymore. It's political censorship, sometimes openly partisan censorship, and nothing more.
  • BaseS4 6y ago
    And you don't have the freedom to measure the presumed audience reach of someone's speech. Furthermore, your calculation of someone's reach isn't entitled to be the standard of how reduction of reach is to be applied. In fact, you don't even own the audience or the platform that you claim you have the right to deny others from using. You have absolutely no say, sway, or stake in anything you are discussing. You're just hiding behind a Google lobbyist's buzzphrase and pretending you are targeting people you don't like.
  • SiVal 6y ago
    By that argument, the US "monopoly or near monopoly" phone company AT&T during the Vietnam War could have decided that anyone who spoke on the phone about their opposition to the Vietnam War was unpatriotic and canceled their telephone service, and leftists who so often now make the argument you're making would have supported their right to do so. "The private phone companies should be allowed to enforce their terms of service prohibiting anything they consider 'hate speech' against America," explains Noam Chomsky, adding that "I don't share their opinions about the war, but it's not as if the govt-run postal service is doing it, so I don't see the problem." The two major credit card companies that dominated could have canceled anti-war "haters'" credit cards in the name of patriotic support of the just cause, banks closed their checking accounts, the major airlines refused to fly them, and so on, and those on the left with your principled commitment to the right of "monopolies and near monopolies" to enforce their political preferences would have had no major objections--as long as it really is a general principle and not just a pretense. Is the government or some other absolute authority censoring wrong? Yes. Are powerful monopolies (or near monopolies) wrong to censor? No, because they have the same speech rights as others And yet I suspect that this support for the "freedom" of the most powerful to silence, control, and enforce their will is not really the general, politically neutral commitment to everyone's freedom of choice that it pretends to be.
    • XorNot 6y ago
      They literally could have if the technology and motivation was there, that's why they were considered a monopoly and broken up by act of the state: because the lack of a viable competitor service means that sort of consumer hostile action was possible. Of course, in reality phone company's exchange the right to monitor what you say for common carrier status which makes them legally immune to the fact you are saying it, and credit card companies do in fact ditch whoever they want because they have no such burden. The solution in one case is obvious (protect net neutrality) and the solution in the other case would line up with the calls for US Post to be extended to offering basic banking services to ensure an appropriate floor on the transaction market, and as a government entity would have to allow everyone to transact. It's not clear to me what you seem to think Google, Twitter or Facebook should get in response for becoming a "public plaza" style arrangement which would be detrimental to their business model and wouldn't destroy the rest of the internet in the process? After all is a DDOS attack also free speech? A botnet? What are we going to obligate them to carry and on what basis?
  • bcgraham 6y ago
    > Calling to silence others (that is, encouraging them to take your view of not giving them an audience) is fine as long as people have a choice on how to respond. The urge to preempt what an audience hears is suspect.
  • NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
    >Like most of these rants against "censorship" they skip over people's rights to restrict speech as a form of speech itself: there is no moral (or legal) right to give people you disagree with a forum or audience to express their view. I don't disagree with this as stated. But the reality is different. When the tech-oligopoly has a mono-ideology and they all censor the same people, and then pull the rug (hosting) out from under competing platforms, and then rip up the signs (dns) pointing to alternatives, and then siege the opposing cities (payment processors ban them) it becomes a much worse problem. That moves from the theoretical to the practical. > Are powerful monopolies (or near monopolies) wrong to censor? No, because they have the same speech rights as others, the problem there lies in the market power of the monopolies, not their speech. Yes, because it's not just websites. It's infrastructure and finance colluding with the presentation layer. At what point do we all agree that it's a problem, and admit that the powerful aren't always right?
  • slibhb 6y ago
    > Like most of these rants against "censorship" they skip over people's rights to restrict speech as a form of speech itself: there is no moral (or legal) right to give people you disagree with a forum or audience to express their view. Free expression is a moral right. And what is a platform anyway? A wordpress site? A twitter account? An IP address? A bank account? A megaphone? A street corner? A sign? How far are you willing to go to shut other people up because you disagree with them? > Calling to silence others (that is, encouraging them to take your view of not giving them an audience) is fine as long as people have a choice on how to respond. How did we turn so quickly to this view? When I was growing up, everyone would have blanched at the suggestion that attempting to "silence others" is a-okay. It wasn't that it was illegal. It was that it was a strategy that would only occur to weak, ineffectual people who were afraid to argue on the merits. > Is the government or some other absolute authority censoring wrong? Yes. Are powerful monopolies (or near monopolies) wrong to censor? No, because they have the same speech rights as others, the problem there lies in the market power of the monopolies, not their speech. By what principle is it wrong for the government to censor? Once you've answered that, please explain how that principle magically stops at the government.
    • mahogany 6y ago
      > And what is a platform anyway? A wordpress site? A twitter account? An IP address? A bank account? A megaphone? A street corner? A sign? How far are you willing to go to shut other people up because you disagree with them? Well, I'm curious, what do you think it is? If I run a forum or a blog, should I have to allow any comment, to be morally in the right? Let's say I run a forum dedicated to discussing Christianity, and some person keeps posting arguments that God isn't real, or posts pictures of aborted fetuses, in every thread on my forum. If free expression is a moral right, is it immoral for me to remove such content from any thread? Even threads about daily worship or about lost loved ones?
    • tablespoon 6y ago
      >> Like most of these rants against "censorship" they skip over people's rights to restrict speech as a form of speech itself: there is no moral (or legal) right to give people you disagree with a forum or audience to express their view. > Free expression is a moral right. > And what is a platform anyway? A wordpress site? A twitter account? An IP address? A bank account? A megaphone? A street corner? A sign? How far are you willing to go to shut other people up because you disagree with them? ... > By what principle is it wrong for the government to censor? Once you've answered that, please explain how that principle magically stops at the government. Yeah, it's a moral right, but its implementation is more complicated than a lot of people want to acknowledge. Is it censorship for you to refuse to wear a shirt that I give you with some slogan I agree with? No. Is it censorship for you to take down a yard sign with that slogan that I placed in your front yard? No. What if you allowed someone else to put up a yard sign that you agree with? Still no. If literally one guy owns all the land in the world, is it censorship for him to control what signs get put up? Almost certainly. No one's going to be able to give you a pithy principle that fits in an internet comment that tells you where the censorship/not censorship line is, given the huge grey areas between those extremes. This is an area where lots of interests need to be balanced, and where reasonable people can disagree.
• ofrzeta 6y ago
  I never understood the point of Strafgesetzbuch section 86a. It does not make any sense to outlaw using Nazi symbols. It's like outlawing symptoms instead of caring for the illness. People will just take it underground and you will have a harder time tracking it down.
  • modmans2nd 6y ago
    Being underground makes it hard for those wishing to spread it to spread it.
    • ofrzeta 6y ago
      Maybe I shouldn't have mixed up two different aspects of this question. "Taking it underground" relates more to the expression of ideas as the discussed in the article. I don't see much of this in the use of the classical Nazi symbols. On the other hand the law has been used to a ridiculuous extent in banning Nazi symbols from all sorts of cultural artifacts such as games or movies. Doesn't make any sense to me.
  • Nasrudith 6y ago
    Its purpose was somewhat historic in that it kills any attempt to invoke their symbolism or terrible power for "legitimacy". While nearly everyone rightfully recognizes it as terrible some see that as fear and a source of power. Fascism is a death cult which conflates its ability to commit travesties with strength and vicarious empowerment to its supporters to make crimes against humanity heroic. Stopping the death cults from drawing upon resources for their twisted in-group is a purpose. The constitution embedded ban means any resurrectionists can be hammered down without any credible slippery slope worries. It is true that a new set could emerge eventually. However having to neuter their own symbols undermines their twisted claim to strength and makes them look pathetic in the same way the battle of Cable Street undermined their claims of strength - even with their warped doublethink trying to be both mighty victor against overwhelming odds and crying victim after they lost is too much. Gangs get impressionable recruits by dealing violence to demonstrate power not being seen getting laid out after they try to attack somebody and get decked in the face.
• adrianmonk 6y ago
  Let me ask a related question looking at it from the other direction: can you encourage an idea by spreading it more widely? If not, then propaganda and advertising are both myths that don't really work.
  • ofrzeta 6y ago
    Related: can you make an idea more appealing to some people by contemning it?
  • oblio 6y ago
    Propaganda and advertising absolutely do work. Chess set sales were up a huge percentage when the Queen's Gambit became popular. Daenerys became a somewhat popular baby girl's name after Game of Thrones became popular. These are super simple, super obvious examples, but you can find more. They're not guaranteed to work, but they do work.
• TameAntelope 6y ago
  > Look: the most powerful governments, militaries, and intelligence services in the world have in recent decades tried to prevent the communications of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS, using the most sophisticated digital means possible and with the full backing of various publishing and social media platforms. And yet those organizations effortlessly shared their propaganda and their rhetoric and coordinated across distance all the same. This isn't entirely true [1]: > As of January 2015, ISIS had reconstituted its regional accounts with strong privacy settings, allowing only a small group of known ISIS supporters to follow the accounts and read their tweets. The content of the tweets—primarily news releases, videos and photos from ISIS’s various provinces—are then disseminated by a number of other smaller accounts using hashtags. After the initial dissemination, the content is more widely distributed, but at significantly reduced levels from early 2014. > Despite this, the number of new accounts created dropped significantly after the first round of suspensions in September (section 2.5.4), and while we do not have complete data to make a positive assessment, it appears the pace of account creation has lagged behind the pace of suspensions. Another study about the impacts of Twitter's more aggressive stance against ISIS found, "These findings support the notion that Twitter’s policy deteriorates IS followers’ ability to gain traction on the platform, likely hindering their reach to potential recruits. " [2]. A third study also concluded, "Our data showed that the costs for most pro-IS users of engaging on Twitter (in terms of deflated morale, diffused messages and persistent effort needed to maintain a public presence) now largely outweigh the benefits." [3]. Deplatforming seems to work to reduce the spread of extremist ideas, which then reduces the spread of extremist actions, based on the years of research we've apparently been doing on the topic prior to today. We can reasonably disagree on the philosophy (and this appears to largely be a think piece), but there are practical realities that cannot be ignored. [1] https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/isis_twitter_census_berger_morgan.pdf https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/isis_tw... [2] https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/DigitalDecayFinal_0.pdf https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/Digital... [3] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319395856_DISRUPTING_DAESH_-_MEASURING_TAKEDOWN_OF_ONLINE_TERRORIST_MATERIAL_AND_ITS_IMPACTS https://www.researchgate.net/publication/319395856_DISRUPTIN... [4] https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1348147867739975681.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1348147867739975681.html <- where I found this info (there's more here I didn't add to this comment, all credit to @AmarAmarasingam for compiling this data)
• modmans2nd 6y ago
  Deplatforming it helps prevent it from normalizing in the community.
  • ycombigator 6y ago
    No, just makes it edgier for the kids. Takes longer to crystalise but crystallises harder.
    • pii 6y ago
      so if we don't have "actual nazi's" right now, in 20 years we 100000% will, and it will be "the left's" fault?
      • jimmygrapes 6y ago
        Yes.
  • dmingod666 6y ago
    That is with the assumption that 1) the platforms are controllable and 2) those that control it vaugely align with your beliefs / morals.
• DubiousPusher 6y ago
  If you cannot censor away opinions, if suppression of ideas doesn't work then why in exactly these kinds of articles do people bemoan it as dangerous? I may agree that most censorship is wrong but it does work. It worked for centuries to help maintain systems of inequality. It worked for centuries to maintain familial control and enforce sexual monoculture in many countries. Information control works so well, it prevents people from even understanding themselves or what they really want in the face of ideologically imposed values. We are steeped in a culture of Hollywood telling us what the lessons of history are about. One of the off repeated "hopeful" messages we are fed is that you can't kill an idea but my reading of history has led me to the other conclusion entirely. That controlling the conversation, its constraints and determining the status quo are profoundly powerful tools.
  • chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    > suppression of ideas doesn't work then why in exactly these kinds of articles do people bemoan it as dangerous? Because then these bad ideas fester in dark places and emerge as an entrenched ideology that is more difficult or impossible to respond to before they have resulted in adverse outcomes. > I may agree that most censorship is wrong but it does work. It worked for centuries to help maintain systems of inequality. It seems you’ve answered your own question then. Censorship is bad because it sustains systems of inequality. > It worked for centuries to maintain familial control and enforce sexual monoculture in many countries. Information control works so well, it prevents people from even understanding themselves or what they really want in the face of ideologically imposed values. You are attributing effects to censorship when material circumstances and ideology contributed in large amounts. Its much easier to destroy ideas by burning books when all the books are manufactured by skilled craftsman using their hands. > We are steeped in a culture of Hollywood telling us what the lessons of history are about. One of the off repeated "hopeful" messages we are fed is that you can't kill an idea but my reading of history has led me to the other conclusion entirely. That controlling the conversation, its constraints and determining the status quo are profoundly powerful tools. You can’t kill an idea but you can delay it or make people too terrified to spread it openly.
  • vbezhenar 6y ago
• sagichmal 6y ago
  Eliminate? No. Reduce to the point of practical irrelevance? Yep. Deplatforming works.
  • freebuju 6y ago
    Deplatforming solves a problem. And only temporarily in the abundance of VPN & encrypted technologies. IMO it makes things even worse since these groups will congregate in secret much further away from the public eye where they can perpetuate unbalanced and unhealthy ideas.
    • XorNot 6y ago
      If it made things "worse" they why are they not already doing those things? These groups want to be on public platforms because their goal is to radicalize people. Or do you think that it was a mistake to kick ISIS and other radical Islam groups off Twitter too?
      • freebuju 6y ago
        > If it made things "worse" they why are they not already doing those things? What do you mean by your statement "not doing those things"? I hope you know talking about doing something,,, actually doing something,,, and getting caught in the act of doing the "something" are ALL different situations in themselves. How on earth is equating ISIS members to Gab or even Parler users even remotely the same? It either means you are not aware of the real issue at hand or you seem to have a personal biasness against different political views to yourself. My point is, Twitter accounts or not, normal (please double bold this word as you read this) people who hold different unpopular views should have the space and freedom to speak their minds. Unfortunately freedom of speech is a black and white affair. If twitter as a platform doesn't allow their users to legally exercise this right, they might as well come out and freely state they are partisan and include this in their policy. Rather than pretend to be something they are not. Note: Terrorism is criminalized and well-defined within most state laws. My argument is not in defence of this.
    • GVIrish 6y ago
• dmingod666 6y ago
  My reading from the outside is, the left needs to realize (I'm sure it applies to the right equally as well) that scolding people into guilt is not a viable approach to affect action or to change perceptions when you're dealing with adults. Neither does boxing people into this, that and that category do any good. Like if all you want to do is dehumanize those guys so you can happily insult / hurt them without hurting your conscience, go ahead, that's choice.. you have different goals.. but remember that instinct that wants you to scream at this-this-this type of person is a confrontational approach that deep down falls in the pattern of, eliminating the other tribe.. if you choose to do something about it and what you do is your responsibility and problem. I just think the solution should lie in : 1) dialog 2) laws I think beyond those 2 lie some really wrong answers..
  • clusterfish 6y ago
    I think the extremes, both left and right, have realized that their greatest enemy is not the other extreme, but the masses in between. A group that has the numbers, with mild views that can dilute your message with reasonable doubt, challenge certain aspects of your extreme yet be broadly acceptable to a much wider audience including those tending towards your side – that's poision for an extremist. Therefore, their solution to that is tribalism, polarization, and shaming for any hint of non-compliance with the extreme's dogma. End result is that the vast majority of moderate people do not participate in debates on sensitive topics, leaving the field open for polarizing demagoguery. All that's left is to make more topics sensitive to get an advantage there too, and that's progressing very well too.
    • runarberg 6y ago
      this might be false equivalence. People far on the left (except from some nas-bols; which I’ve never encountered in the wild) call them selfs anti-facists. It is clear who their greatest enemy is. In fact far left groups (like food not bombs, etc.) often engage in social programs called mutual aid where the goal is to spread propaganda through helping the masses.
      • 6y ago
• Zardoz84 6y ago
  You can't dialog with fascist.
  • ericd 6y ago
    The vast, vast majority of people who disagree with the left are not fascists. The urge to label them fascists and make them seem monstrous and unworthy of engagement is the impulse leads to civil war.
    • redis_mlc 6y ago
      I think the GP was referring to the left/DNC. Not only will they not listen to reason, they burned our downtowns, just like Mussolini's fascists, or the Russian Red Terror, around WW2. Make no mistake, the left/DNC are Marxists and fascists. We are in an ideological civil war, and have been since 2012. Anybody who's studied history already knows this.
    • cheschire 6y ago
      I agree, but I would suggest you use the same logic about labelling anyone in any part of the political spectrum then. Using terms such as "the left" might seem less antagonistic than calling someone a "fascist" yet come across just as harshly when read / heard by someone who hears "the left" preached in the 2 minutes hate of their preferred news source.
      • deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      • FeepingCreature 6y ago
        Yeah but nobody here said "you can't talk with leftists, they're all extremists and closed-minded." edit: At least nobody I've seen yet. People are probably gonna say it (this goes for any "it" as conversation length grows), but I'd expect it to be downvoted.
        • cheschire 6y ago
• victorfonseca 6y ago
  It's fascinating when someone who is in a position of power and never suffers from hate speech develops his mind. People who suffer from hate speech know and understand cristal clear what they want to ban from our society. But others, which are not feeling it at the skin level, are just "hate," a natural part of the human being.
  • bad_username 6y ago
    Please do not automatically jump to assumptions that people who you disagree with are in position of power or never encounter hate. This kind of sweeping generalization is what fuels racism, sexism and other kinds of "identitarianism", it stifles thought and prevents nuanced discussion.
    • heavyset_go 6y ago
      Somehow I doubt that opinions about people who hold racist beliefs is what fuels those people, and not, well, racism.
• justbored123 6y ago
  According to the authors logic, we should stop censoring fraud, false advertisement, child grooming, defamation, doxxing, false testimony, etc. because "it doesn't work" and "erodes free speech". This is clearly nonsense. It works, and it should be done, the only question as with all laws is were the line should be. We restrict freedom in general when it hurts other people (slavery, rape, killing, trespassing,etc) and we don't go around crying about slippery slopes and lack of freedom for it. Clear examples of good censoring of free speech are the courts decision in the Alex Jones - Sandy Hook case and the Washington Post paying reparations to Nathan Phillips (the child mocking the native American). In both cases their "free speech" caused damage to people and the court decided that they didn't were protect under the free speech laws.
• a_bonobo 6y ago
  >Federal prosecutors and the Ministry of the Interior regularly move against organizations deemed far-right or hate groups. On the contrary, the Verfassungschutz and other federal organisations built to work against enemies of the state support the enemies of the state! And that is where the 'vast and varied far-right network' comes from, it's supported by tax money. The Verfassungsschutz is a special intelligence agency observing enemies of democray, which includes neonazis and the like. This agency uses 'V-Maenner', which is a network of paid informers within these structures. In 2013, every fourth criminally active neonazi V-mann was receiving state payments: https://web.archive.org/web/20130405050440/http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/v-leute106.html https://web.archive.org/web/20130405050440/http://www.tagess... When the NSU murdered people in Germany, V-mann informants used the money paid for them by the state to support the group (https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2018-02/nsu-ausschuss-stuttgart-verfassungsschutz-finanzierung-rechtsterrorismus https://www.zeit.de/gesellschaft/zeitgeschehen/2018-02/nsu-a... ). Early 2000 Germany tried to outlaw the NPD, the then-biggest far-right political party. The outlaw process failed because the Verfassungschutz had too many of its members in the party's rank, so the judges could not say which party activities were anti-democratic, or what was the government's own doing ('fehlende Staatsferne' - not enough distance from the state). Because the state taxes itself a measly 10% on these payments we have a rough idea on how much they pay - Tino Brandt, one of the NPD's party functionaries in Thuringia, received 200,000 DM over 6 years until 2001. In the same state alone (remember, Germany has 16 states) in the same time the government paid out 1.5 million DM. The last head of the agency, Hans-Georg Maassen, is now retired after it became apparent that he was ignoring evidence. He has since opened a Twitter account where he's spouting Fox News-level far right nonsense. This was the head of the agency 2012 to 2018. The OP's whole argument falls down if you consider that the German state is saying they're fighting Nazis but then they go and fund them very well with tax-money. It would be much easier to fight Nazis if they wouldn't get millions in funding.
  • sprayk 6y ago
    > The OP's whole argument falls down if you consider that the German state is saying they're fighting Nazis but then they go and fund them very well with tax-money. It would be much easier to fight Nazis if they wouldn't get millions in funding. How does this do anything but support the OP's argument? OP argues that hate speech laws are futile because those in power get to decide what is hate speech and how it is enforced and it is always possible for the wrong people to be in power. Has-Geog Maassen and the overall failure you highlighted seems like a perfect example of this seeming inevitability in practice.
• justbored123 6y ago
  According to the authors logic, we should stop censoring child grooming, fraud, false advertisement, defamation, doxxing, false testimony, etc. because "it doesn't work" and "erodes free speech". This is clearly nonsense. It works, and it should be done, the only question as with all laws is were the line should be. We restrict freedom in general when it hurts other people (slavery, rape, killing, trespassing,etc) and we don't go around crying about slippery slopes and lack of freedom for it. Clear examples of good censoring of free speech are the courts decision in the Alex Jones - Sandy Hook case and the Washington Post paying reparations to Nathan Phillips (the child mocking the native American). In both cases their "free speech" caused damage to people and the court decided that they weren't protect under the free speech laws.
  • refurb 6y ago
    But Alex Jones - Sandy Hook case wasn't censorship (he was free to say what he said), he was sued for defamation. We already have laws on that and all the other stuff you mention child grooming, fraud, false advertisement, doxxing, false testimony, etc. The point is - we have laws for speech that enters the criminal realm.
    • ephimetheus 6y ago
      So how is Volksverhetzung, which is defined by law, any different?
      • refurb 6y ago
        That’s a speech law, thus it would be a circular argument (I.e. your speech violated a speech law).
    • justbored123 6y ago
      You are completely missing the point. Because those laws exist, the argument for "free speech" and against censorship is ignorant. We don't have free speech and never had and never will, no country on earth has, because it's ridiculous to the point of been childish. Speech is not free, it has limits, like everything else. And about Alex Jones, the case proves beyond reasonable doubt that he should had been censored to prevent the damage and that is my point. His speech has real life serious consequences that hurt people even if he didn't do it personally and he didn't intended to happen.
• zapdrive 6y ago
  What the left also needs is a realization that some of its beliefs are akin to extremism. And some of the left inspired policies have really really hurt and isolated a significant population. The left needs to soften it's stand on such issues.
  • Sohcahtoa82 6y ago
    What the right also needs is a realization that some of its beliefs are akin to extremism. And some of the right inspired policies have really really hurt and isolated a significant population. The right needs to soften it's stand on such issues. It's such a generic statement that it's meaningless and could apply to any group of opinions.
    • NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
      Doesn't mean it's wrong... The racists on the right know they're racists. They admit it. The racists I've encountered on the left are the racism-of-low-expectations kind with a dash of openly-racist-against-white-people, and then they go and act morally superior to people who aren't racist against any race. The sanctimony is grating.
      • kristopolous 6y ago
        Really? Where? Usually I've seen forms like this "I strongly believe in (basic description of X)" "You know that's X, right?!" "I'm not X" "Alright, would you say you believe in (wikipedias first paragraph on X)?" "Oh yes! You really understand!" "You know I just lifted that from wikipedia article on X" "Let me hear it again. Ok, that's not exactly right." Etc... Try it yourself next time, it's pretty remarkable. They're not acting in bad faith or trying to deceive. It's like an addict who believes they smoke cigarettes not because they have an addiction but because they enjoy the taste. Most people want to believe they've made the right decisions (https://grist.org/article/80-percent-of-humans-are-delusionally-optimistic-says-science/ https://grist.org/article/80-percent-of-humans-are-delusiona...). They think racism is wrong so therefore their beliefs can't be racist.
• pii 6y ago
  I think we should negotiate with Hitler too. He's not such a bad guy, eh? I don't like parts of his philosophy, but i'm sure if we DIALOG with him, he'll come around to our side, right? Or maybe concede a bit of ground with a compromise, right?
  • FeepingCreature 6y ago
    You know, I thought for about five minutes on how to reply to this. But instead I'll just say, I now know why Godwin's Law exists.
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • dang 6y ago
    Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar hell like this. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26432620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26432620.
• jackjeff 6y ago
  I know the article spends its time describing how anti hate speech laws in Western Europe are not working. But frankly they’re not enforced. I think this is why they don’t work. I see censorship has putting dirt under the carpet. People will try again. There’s no accountability. Social media censorship would ban flashing boobs with the same enthusiasm as Nazi propaganda. The latter is not a breach of terms and condition, it’s literally illegal over here, in the same way punching someone in the street would be. Why not put these people in court? I understand it won’t entirely eliminate right wing ideology, but at least it sends a clear message that racist, homophobic, and threat to use violence are illegal. If you look at right wing parties in France and Germany, their speech is a lot more nuanced. They can’t go about and say things like “all Mexicans are rapists” (a Trump quote) because it would lend them in jail or worse to be stripped of the right to run for elections. So it works! The only problem is that it is not enforced for anyone else. People can go about and write things like that on social media and face no consequences whatsoever. At worst, their accounts will be disabled. Edit. Typos
  • Clubber 6y ago
    >“all Mexicans are rapists” (a Trump quote) Except he didn't actually say that. It's actually Tim Kaine misquoting Trump, so technically it's a Kaine quote. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/aug/08/tim-kaine/tim-kaine-falsely-says-trump-said-all-mexicans-are/ https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2016/aug/08/tim-kaine/... By enforcement, I assume you mean arrest and jail people for speech. It will probably work for a while, as it does it more dictatorial countries. At least until the cities start burning down.
  • jimmygrapes 6y ago
    > a Trump quote Not so much. You weaken your argument with such blatant falsehoods.
  • ulucs 6y ago
    > “all Mexicans are rapists” (a Trump quote) How can any sane person claim this without even giving a source?
    • 6y ago
• JamisonM 6y ago
  I feel like the author should consider the /actual/ alternative.. Jobbik, etc with real governing power in places that do not "censor" instead of citing 13% support for fascism in France. It is a complex issue, but censorship does "do" something, lots of research out there about how making things like QAnon just a little harder to access trims off support at the edges. If you want to make this argument you have to reckon with those facts.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• devwastaken 6y ago
  Much of the assumptions of the article are the opposite of the titles conclusion. Racism and hate did not go away. People were much less capable of organizing it and normalizing it's behavior before the internet. You actually had to go vast distances to get people together before. Now, it's a facebook group or 'conservative social media' platform away. With the dawn of anonymity began the demonstration of human nature when it does not receive local social pressures. A completely new and unique prototype of communications that bypass our evolutionary social ques. Without identity, pressure from peers, and authority, humans are left with the freedom to choose any way they want to conduct themselves. Sadly, humans chose to conduct themselves poorly. A result a 2nd grader could also predict. Instead of caring about the truth they care about superiority. Instead of honesty they care about being on a team. We can censor people. Governments can absolutely create a great firewall where only approved businesses are licensed and given access by ISP's to receive incoming socket connection requests. ISP's prevent this all the time due to multi layer NAT. ISP's can lock down ports and prevent two subscribers from communicating without a server that is explicitly allowed on their IP range to do so. Certainly, we could. But anonymity has benefits. People can discuss important matters without that social threat. People cannot seek a recourse when they are offended, cannot censor information, etc. Ghost in the Shell had a very interesting scenario in which people would VR dive into a group chat to discuss controversial events - and it all went mostly professional and fact seeking. This prediction is so far away from what we actually have now - actual fabrication of facts and cults that surround them. People entirely uninterested in reasoning or being reasoned with. Just a room full of people reinforcing each other without any basis in fact. Also the author disagreeing "hate crimes" being a thing: the reason for hate crimes is that individuals would organize to intimidate the lives of others that belong to specific ethnic groups. People have a right to be free from that, and it's absolutely the purpose of government to uphold that right. Organized crime has always received special laws targeting it to deter it.
• jcuenod 6y ago
  Banning hate speech (even if it's whack-a-mole) also protects the victims. 1. It says that society (with the power to make laws) has your back. 2. It does what it can to prevent the environment from being toxic (obviously with limitations raised in the article).
  • freebuju 6y ago
    I would also consider these people who have these extremist ideas victims. Society has never had your back. In so many other areas including this one. What we have is interest groups as people within society. And these groups will always have different and sometimes directly opposing ideas. Thinking that society or even the law has your back is an error in logic. Again, about toxic social spaces. There is much reason to place Twitter & Facebook as toxic just as much as Parler was. Platforms aren't necessarily toxic, people are. And to be frank, this is a media consumption choice. If you unintentionally visit Gab today and feel the majority of the content does not align with your values and beliefs. Close the tab and visit another platform. Freedom of speech needs to encouraged in any modern society and should be protected as a human right. Anyone who tries to influence your thinking by diluting this, is seeking to control and weaken your mind for their own gain.
• safothegreat 6y ago
  Look, we need to factor in that humans are social creatures. And that our ideas secure themselves through the help of validity from others. Hate speech that occurred on Reddit in a community was validated and encouraged that eventually lead to a man carrying out a terrorist attack in Toronto. https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjwdk3/man-accused-of-toronto-van-attack-says-he-corresponded-with-other-incel-killers https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjwdk3/man-accused-of-toront...
• bubble_net 6y ago
  It's embarrassing to admit, but with my ban today from /r/science, I'm now banned from three major subreddits, with the other two being /r/politics and /r/worldnews. While I'm highly opinionated, I've always followed these subreddits' rules because I do believe rules are important for functional forums. These subreddits are also not some niche forum catering to a select group; they're major forums around topics of very general interest, so they really should have very high tolerance for unorthodox viewpoints. All the bans I received were entirely politically/ideologically motivated. In /r/politics I was permanently banned for saying something like 'I don't think little girls should be forced to share change rooms with little boys who identify as girls'. For that I was accused of transphobia and permanently banned. The mod who imposed the ban wouldn't even quote the offending statement or try to explain what was transphobic about it. In private messages, they just stuck to their guns and stonewalled me on my requests for elaboration. The /r/science ban was due to a comment I posted which contained a harsh criticism of the authors of a posted article. These authors were not forum members, so there was no subreddit rule violation, as far as I'm aware. I strongly suspect the real motivation for the ban was that in the comment, I also criticized the study's premise, that observing "racial blind ideology", was by definition, "anti-Black". This is the article in question: https://academictimes.com/belief-in-white-jesus-linked-to-racism/ https://academictimes.com/belief-in-white-jesus-linked-to-ra... I really think there is a significant amount of extremism coming from the establishment nowadays, and the attempts to silence opposing viewpoints is a symptom of that.
• nindalf 6y ago
  I'm surprised to see people agreeing with this hypothesis ... while commenting on HN. I'm a huge fan of the site rules (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and the way they are applied by the moderation team. But that said, HN has the most heavy handed censorship of any site I frequent. Read all the rules from start to finish and ask yourself if you'd be ok following these rules in every Internet forum. "Strong moderation" and "heavy censorship" are the same thing, just dependent on whether you agree with the moderation or not. If you disagree, please show me a site without moderation that still has high quality discussion.
  • skybrian 6y ago
    I like well-moderated sites like Hacker News, but this isn’t going to do anything to prevent extremists from communicating using other forums. What are you going to do, shut down all group chats that doesn’t conform to your standards? It’s a much harder problem than creating a site that has good moderation.
    • nindalf 6y ago
      The goal isn't to drive extremism to extinction, it's to make it niche so the mainstream doesn't get infected with it.
      • Spivak 6y ago
        I genuinely don't understand how a forum of people who would almost certainly self-identify as internet-natives don't understand the concept of mainstreaming. We invented all this language do talk about and describe how ideas work and spread in the information age but decided to just pretend it doesn't exist anymore. When did programmers become so... binary? Like it's so frustrating to talk about issues like this on HN because huge swaths of the US part of crowd see themselves as very distant from the "gods & guns" crowd but then fall into the same patterns of thinking that hate and extremism are just part of this world and that the free market (of ideas) will solve everything with proper education and personal responsibility. That any solution that isn't perfect or has a downside for them personally is worthless because they're so insulated from the actual harm being done. That's all fine and good in a world where everyone is acting in good faith, truthfully, and that propaganda, and emotional manipulation don't exist. But the internet isn't some some big Socratic circle. The people in the comments here haven't had their online life improved by a huge subreddit ban, forumn takedown, or twitterspehere implosion after having exactly zero power to do anything other than endure the abuse and hope to not catch their eye and it shows.
• XorNot 6y ago
  So, what is extreme left to you? Which groups, existent groups, are they? This whole line of discussion seems to consist of some rich false equivalency being mediated by presuming the existence of equivalent opposing forces and then making them appear equal in size and threat by not talking about who they actually are.
  • anm89 6y ago
    I say this as someone who doesn't identify with the right or really care about any of these politics at all. Go google of a picture of the Minneapolis police department engulfed in flames shooting out 50 feet over the top. That was certainly a strongly predominantly left driven action.
    • XorNot 6y ago
      The Minneapolis police department was set on fire by a "Boogaloo Boi". ... Ivan Harrison Hunter, a Texas rightwing extremist, bragged about helping to set the fire then was seen shooting 13 rounds at the building ... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/texas-boogaloo-boi-minneapolis-police-building-george-floyd https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/texas-boogaloo...
      • leereeves 6y ago
        No one person was responsible for that fire or those riots. Even your source doesn't claim so, it only accuses him of "helping to set the fire". > “I set fire to that precinct with the Black community,” and, “My mom would call the FBI if she knew.” > “I’ve burned police stations with Black Panthers in Minneapolis,” he claimed in one message, and in another, “The BLM protesters in Minneapolis loved me.”
      • ttt0 6y ago
        Boogaloos are far-right only in the sense that they're libertarians afaik. > Video shot that night shows a person later identified as Hunter firing 13 rounds from a semiautomatic assault-style rifle on the 3rd precinct police station while people believed to be looters were inside. He then high-fived another person and shouted, “Justice for Floyd!” according to the complaint. Doesn't seem like a person who you picture when you think about a "right-wing extremist".
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• didibus 6y ago
  I think this article is pretty light on alternate solutions. It proposes rationally and intellectually trying to make the other side see why you are right and they are wrong, and makes a kind of snarky claim that somehow that CAN more easily be done, where I'm only seeing a normative idea here, it should be done, but can it? I'm not so sure it can personally. I think it forgets that most people are just whatever their surrounding makes them. That's why "trends" are so powerful influencers. That's why you have clear pockets, areas where the people in the same geographic areas all vote mostly similar and share similar values and ideas. The people who think their way unbiased through value, moral and ideas are rare. What we're left with in my opinion as viable solutions are two approaches: 1. Censorship 2. Propaganda Of the two, I think Propaganda is the best. I think we've seen that on both side now, left or right, it's the "trending" messages, tweets, memes, and all that which work best to convince and influence others. Propaganda creates culture, and culture defines peoples viewpoint. The issue today is all about Propaganda and the powers behind them. What is being most promoted? Retweeted? Recommended? When you have legitimate bots and troll farms participating in these efforts, and when you have extremists on all sides actively pushing messaging online, it creates new "trends" and it slowly plants seeds in people's head one way or another. Whichever side I'd be on, I'd focus my effort there to win. Publish messaging, memes, photos, clips, headlines that discredit the other side at every turn, adds haze and confusion, throws shades. And fill every channel with an abundance of your own messaging, values, ideas, alongside catchy positives. Now do this well, and it also results in censoring the other as a side effect. If you're the thing trending and being recommended, it means the other messages won't reach as many people. If you flood things, the other messages are less likely to be seen.
• rhn_mk1 6y ago
  For an essay that focuses on empiricism to answer questions, this one is sorely missing counterfactuals. We have: > Luckily we have international precedent to help us answer those questions. Do they support the idea that hate speech law stops hate, far-right extremism, fascism? and then the study of Germany and France, which both have the laws, and where the situation is relatively bad. But without an attempto to compare the situation in countries with relevant laws to those which don't have them, how can we attribute the result to those laws?
• sleepysysadmin 6y ago
  >Should we stop hate speech? What makes you think we can? Can we even define hate speech? If you think that you're going to eliminate discrimination or racism through banning speech by calling it 'hate speech' you're wrong. When you ban 'hate speech' what gets banned is speech that the people in power hate. In other words you're not stopping Nazis and people calling for genocide. That basically never happens. Instead those in political power use the hate speech laws to crush political activists and journalists. Here is Canada for example, hate speech laws have been used against many comedians. Journalists quite often. Book authors even, there are examples where RCMP arrest and jail book authors because their book was critical of the government. No racism or threats of violence. No charges are ever filed and the book stays in publication.
• kthejoker2 6y ago
  Ctrl+F "Popper" - zero results found. If you don't provide a cogent counterargument to Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance, I can't take an essay like this seriously. Simply throwing up your hands and saying, "hate exists, let it rain free on the marketplace of ideas" is ... well, not worth a lot. Also, I love the absence of evidence = evidence of absence argument: * Germans have stringent anti-hate speech laws * ... yet there are still German extremists! ... and what if the laws were not so stringent?
  • GVIrish 6y ago
    > * Germans have stringent anti-hate speech laws * ... yet there are still German extremists! Yeah I found that a bit of a strange point. I don't think the goal of Germany's anti-hate laws was to magically and completely eradicate extremism. It was to prevent them from getting powerful enough to take Germany back down the path to darkness that they did during the Third Reich. Not to say that I think their model should replicated or exported, just that I don't think that's right lens to view it through. Just like saying, 'Well the Civil Rights Act didn't eradicate racism, what's the point?'
  • vwatson 6y ago
    The Popper part is easy: In the 1970s, during the student revolts, many right leaning people (who would be called fascists these days) got platforms on talk shows and politely debated their left wing counterparts. It did not lead to the Fourth Reich, on the contrary, public opinion has shifted to the left in and after the 70s. The right wing backlash you see now is a direct result of the insanity and totalitarianism of today's "left", which is really a smoke screen for the corporate-directed suppression of the middle classes (both black and white). This Popper statement, made in a completely different era, is overused to shut down opponents and justify censorship.
    • AshWolfy 6y ago
      You can draw a line from rush limbaugh to tuker carlson, they built a legion of people who they encouraged not to think for themselves and now they are sicking them on the world >insanity and totalitarianism citation needed? Thats literally the same line limbaugh used in the 70s
• Justsignedup 6y ago
  Everyone seems to be attacking the arguments from the same angle and I feel it is wrong: There are a few arguments going on: - Is the left and the right really the same 2 extremes? - Should we enable radicals on the platforms because free speech? - Should we treat everyone with respect? The problem is that what we really have is a few crowds: (1) "They took our guns" people. Single issue, at the expense of all others. This unfortunately includes "the climate crisis is a hoax" and "COVID is a hoax" and "Vaccines are evil" crowd. (2) Ensure human rights to all people of the country crowd. This is more of a social argument that conflicts highly with people who scapegoat. This is effectively the anti-scapegoat crowd, usually considered the "left". (3) Social equality crowd (usually is a subset of (2)). This is all about people who are looking at patterns in society that elevate one group at the expense of another. This isn't rich vs poor, but rather for example looking at how school funding is set up to make sure certain community have terrible school and thus a perpetuating cycle of crime and poverty. The problem is that the (1) crowd is being used to elect politicians who basically give no shit about society, and only focus on making the rich richer at the expense of everything else. I mean fucking pandemic and corporate bailouts, while most businesses collapse. These politicians vote directly against the (1) crowd, and everyone else, but push division. We're no longer actually debating economic policies. We're debating racism and voting based on that. I am not happy with the democratic party in the US. They are pretty terrible. But the other side is literal Nazis. The problem with "embracing" and fixing the (1) crowd is that a large number of people opposing (1) are directly harmed by (1). Very hard to forgive when the causes of the deaths of your family are asking for hugs caz "sorry I realized I am wrong". Many are not willing to do that. How do you ask someone to give up their trauma and find it in their hearts to forgive the other side? It can happen, but it is not "simple".
  • captainredbeard 6y ago
    Do you live in the US? The way you phrased that makes me wonder and the Republicans are not anywhere near unified enough (or draconian enough) to be Nazis. As a reminder, the Nazis interred people based on race and exterminated them. The Republicans are just jerks.
• motohagiography 6y ago
  I no longer think there is a sincere effort to reduce extremism. When you view what platforms and governments are doing through the lens of their thinking they can create just enough managed extremism to use as a pretext for both crackdowns and further leverage, they are in fact succeeding magnificently. The question isn't whether they will succeed at creating or suppressing extremism, but whether democratic governance will survive the hell they are about to unleash. When it all happens, remember to act surprised.
  • randcraw 6y ago
    There's advantage to promoting the imminent danger of an enemy in order to motivate voters to support your efforts to protect them from it. If the military doesn't have a big enemy, who needs a big military? Pretty much every candidate for high office I can remember has run on a platform of fighting SOMETHING (nazis, communists, terrorists, socialists, crime, etc). Extremism is good for business, if your business is self-promotion.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• throwawaymanbot 6y ago
  Deplatforming works. Simply because of their revenue stream.
• supernovae 6y ago
  Censorship is the battleground, not the issue. The problem isn't censorship per se, it's the weaponization of it. Claiming you can or can't do something is merely projecting how one frames the debate. This issue still stands and the entire argument is moot.
• ZebusJesus 6y ago
  Gate speech laws are kinda like vaccines. They don’t stop it but they sure do keep it from spreading to everyone. End of the day A Nazi doesn’t have anything to say and doesn’t deserve the protections to be able to say it. They fact that we can decent this is what makes us humans or else it’s just computers applying filters
  • mint2 6y ago
    Not directed at this comment, one of the minority like it. But These hacker news posts where the majority of comments treat private companies like Twitter and Facebook censoring neonazi propaganda as if they are censoring unions or advocates of universal health care make me really dismayed at hacker news. It’s like they say there are really no way humans are capable of distinguishing between literal white nationalist extremist views and people advocating for universal health care. It really makes me question the user base of hacker news
    • ZebusJesus 6y ago
      Thank you the level of Nazis are ok here is very disturbing.
• ZebusJesus 6y ago
  One side of extremism want to kill people the other doesn’t this is pretty simple
  • throwaway53453 6y ago
    Unironically, which one is that then? Because as far as I can tell, both are armed and battering each other.
    • AshWolfy 6y ago
      > right-wing extremists have killed 329 victims in the last 25 years, while antifa members haven't killed any https://www.businessinsider.com/right-wing-extremists-kill-329-since-1994-antifa-killed-none-2020-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/right-wing-extremists-kill-3...
      • throwaway53453 6y ago
        > while antifa members haven't killed any https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_of_Aaron_Danielson_and_Michael_Reinoehl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_of_Aaron_Danielson_an... Yesterday: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/imez-wright-george-floyd-minneapolis-shooting-b1816082.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/imez-wrigh... Edit: This just in! https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1370281113239891969 https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1370281113239891969 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEWsJ8SvlMY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEWsJ8SvlMY Antifa are clearly one of the most violent organisations active today. Borderline terrorists (= "action or threat designed to influence the government or intimidate the public").
        • AshWolfy 6y ago
          Youre right, the article is old, antifa has killed a single person, its only 300 times more murders from the right than antifa now. of course also ignoring that antifa medics were attempting to provide medical aid to danielson when the right pushed them away As for those other 2, the first has nothing to do with antifa, the second is a trash fire where no one was hurt I also like how your response to statistics is individual stories
• omgwtfbbq 6y ago
  Might be useful to think of Extremist views and conspiracy theories as Mind Viruses. Currently we have no way to fight the disease or inoculate people against them other than preventing the ideas getting into their heads in the first place.
• thomastjeffery 6y ago
  The censorship we are talking about is not censorship: it's moderation. Every forum worth using has moderation. The problem today is that most people aren't using user-moderated forums. Instead, they are using corporate-moderated social networks.
  • randcraw 6y ago
    Agreed. All social activities that willingly injure others can't be stopped; they can only be suppressed. Murder, theft, cigar smoking in enclosed spaces... you name it, the only way to counteract malignant behaviors is to punish transgressors in order to obstruct the activity to the extent that a) we prevent it from growing, and b) we can tolerate the persistence of the activity at some diminished level of intensity. Free speech requires us to strike a balance, like fighting crime. Driving hate speech underground successfully hides it from public view so that folks who don't want to swim in that cesspool can avoid it, the same way we hide porn from eyes who want to escape it. And the fact is, ever smarter tech methods can do this increasingly well, despite what Facebook claims.
  • alacombe 6y ago
    "moderation" is censorship.
    • soared 6y ago
      Incorrect. If I spam a link to my personal blog on hn the moderator or community will flag/kill them. That is not censorship.
      • alacombe 6y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. "moderation" fits within that definition.
        • thomastjeffery 6y ago
• yanderekko 6y ago
  I'm not a fan of cancel culture but this isn't a great argument against it. The question isn't whether cancellation can achieve complete eliminationist objectives, but whether it can prove useful at the margins in terms of achieving your political goals. I think the answer is likely "yes to some extent", although people are predictably biased to over or underestimate the overall effectiveness depending on whether they see censorship working for or against their causes or net. My main pushback to cancel culture stuff is something of a "paradox of the paradox of tolerance" critique - that people are trying to use it as a cudgel to pretextually silence views that are well within the Overton window and that rather than this leading to the Overton window shifting (the desired effect) it will lead to pillarization, wherein multiple non-overlapping Overton windows will vie for cultural/political supremacy in ways that will not only lead (and have already lead) to very ugly conflicts, but involve massive amounts of time/energy being wasted on hot-button issues that in the grand scheme of things are just not very important.
• lanecwagner 6y ago
  This clip from cobra kai really made me rethink censorship for some reason: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8VGzyy5FTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8VGzyy5FTY
• ralmidani 6y ago
  You can't censor it away completely, but you can help the redeemable extremists __know__ they're indulging in extremism by forcing them to go to fringe websites rather than allow them to stay on Twitter and Facebook as if nothing is wrong. As for the "deplorables" who know what they're doing and will never question it or feel any remorse, we should not be giving them a megaphone. sources[0]: I was susceptible to extremist thought (not actions, fortunately) when I was younger. The sense that I might get into trouble if I participated in fringe websites kept me from going further down the rabbit hole. I kept reading mainstream news and sites, and while I would give a lot of things an extremist spin in my mind, eventually the narrative stopped making sense. sources[1]: https://twitter.com/iyad_elbaghdadi https://twitter.com/iyad_elbaghdadi (can't find the specific Tweet, but he went through a similar experience, and almost became a full-blown extremist Muslim, before the sites he used to frequent were taken offline).
  • jdlyga 6y ago
    Definitely agree. Back a year ago when you saw this kind of stuff all over Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc it felt so normalized. But now you have to go to fringe websites. It's still out there of course. But it's very back-alley and definitely makes you take what people are saying with a grain of salt.
    • ralusek 6y ago
      And would you describe things as having gotten better this last year? And I don't mean in the sense that you see less of what you think there should be less of online, because then of course it's gotten better if that's the variable being minimized. I mean, do you think the state of extremism and political unity has improved via marginalizing views held by enormous portions of the population?
      • ForHackernews 6y ago
        Yeah, absolutely! In the US, Trump lost the election and we have a genuine shot at police reform for the first time in a generation. In Europe, the pandemic has exposed the incompetence of empty populism.
• bloaf 6y ago
  I have some unprofessional sociological suspicions, so I will lay them out as assertions with this caveat serving as the blanket qualifier. First, some observations: 1. Research has found that the probability of conspiratorial thinking is quadratic with respect to political extremism in either direction. 2. Dangerous political movements are predicated on an "us v. them" mentality, almost by definition of dangerous. What makes a group dangerous is precisely the fact that they are willing to harm people in concrete ways, and willingness to harm requires a targeted "them". 3. Distributed censorship and other forms of persecution are actually conspiracies with an inherent "us" and "them." The more groups (media companies, government, etc) censor similar ideas in similar ways for similar reasons, the more apt appears the description "they conspired against those ideas." Therefore: the problem with censorship is that it makes the conspiracy theorists right. Censorship is also an acknowledgement that the censor and censored are in fact different and opposing groups. No longer can the censor say "come on guys, we're all on the same team here," they have ceded that high ground. Both of these effects can actually help extremist groups attract new people. As they say Plures efficimur, quitiens metimur a vobis: semen est sanguis Christianorum: the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church. HOWEVER All of this analysis is a kind of "perfect sphere on a friction-less plane" view of the market of ideas. We must not fall into the trap of thinking that if we removed all censorship, the market of ideas would be efficient. If censorship is an effort to artificially devalue some ideas, there is also the countervailing force of amplification which artificially inflates. The problem is that money has always (and technology has recently) enabled people to distort the market of ideas through amplification. There are actually bad actors (e.g. Russia) who actively amplify ideas beneficial to their interests by putting engineered talking points into fake social media accounts. I do not believe it is possible to fight such a strategy on the same terms. Amplifying contrary ideas simply increases polarization. Attempting to re-level the playing field via censorship has the problems I listed earlier.
  • wnoise 6y ago
    > 1. Research has found that the probability of conspiratorial thinking is quadratic with respect to political extremism in either direction. Extremism has no natural quantification. This statement is nonsense.
• uniqueid 6y ago
  He claims Weimar Germany is an example of failed hate speech laws, but that's a weird claim, since they didn't enforce them (certainly not against Nazis). Then he has an impassioned section where he claims the hate speech laws from '45 failed. The laws that date back to denazification! But he writes them off, with an exclamation mark, as an utter failure since some people in Germany, 75 years later support the far right. That rather moves the goal posts.
• molbioguy 6y ago
  When it comes to "unpopular" ideas and peoples, fear and moral superiority justifies: censorship -> incarceration -> extermination The path is plausible and logical if each previous step fails. And heck, the ends (protecting people from hate) justify the means, so why fret over it? I mean, what could go wrong?
• Aunche 6y ago
  You can censor obvious examples of extremism. I don't think anyone disagreed that Youtube was correct in censoring Isis recruitment videos, for instance. The problem is that people are trying to censor "dog-whistling" extremism. By its very nature, it's a losing battle. Only dogs can hear dog whistles, so there's a high likelihood that you're censoring someone innocent. Also, even if you do censor a dog whistle, they can easily make another.
  • ralmidani 6y ago
    You can hear a dog whistle even if you're not a dog. For years, Trump's bigotry was designed to be just subtle enough to get past the media censors, but a lot of people aside from his followers knew exactly what he was doing. The media and big tech only started censoring Trump when he became a danger to American institutions and political figures; endangering the lives of Mexicans, Muslims, and Black people was not deemed extremist enough to warrant censorship.
    • splistud 6y ago
      That is a breathtaking amount of assumptions to make in 3 lines of text
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • rayiner 6y ago
    Allowing "dog whistles" to be censored also creates a powerful incentive to redefine ideas the censors don't like as "dog whistles." For example: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/biden-latino-vote-strategy.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/opinion/biden-latino-vote... > With the help of two liberal pollsters, Joshua Ulibarri and Celinda Lake, we conducted 15 focus groups with members of various Hispanic communities across the country and ran a national survey. We also polled large cohorts of whites and African-Americans. The results are sobering. We began by asking eligible voters how “convincing” they found a dog-whistle message lifted from Republican talking points. Among other elements, the message condemned “illegal immigration from places overrun with drugs and criminal gangs” and called for “fully funding the police, so our communities are not threatened by people who refuse to follow our laws.” > Almost three out of five white respondents judged the message convincing. More surprising, exactly the same percentage of African-Americans agreed, as did an even higher percentage of Latinos. These numbers do not translate directly into support for the Republican Party; too many other factors are at play. Nevertheless, the results tell us something important: a majority across the groups we surveyed did not repudiate Trump-style rhetoric as obviously racist and divisive, but instead agreed with it. "Liberal pollsters" and "progressive" opinion writers perceived this example of "Trump-style rhetoric" as "dog whistles" and "obviously racist and divisive" but most Black and Latino people agreed with it.
• swayvil 6y ago
  Is there something better than censorship? I mean, if you just gotta control that information. Gatekeeping at main choke-point. Censorship. Seems like the hamhanded option. I like a voting system. Information rated and filtered according to trusted peers. I guess that's the same as HN's voting, but you'd be voting on the voters too. And of course we could also vote in more sophisticated ways than simply good-bad. But that might get laborious.
• dominotw 6y ago
  you can. North korea is a good example.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• mnouquet 6y ago
  There was an old adage saying that you should not do upon other what you wouldn't want to be done to you. Remember that being gay was in the crosshairs ? By bullying perceived right-wing ideas, you only expose yourself to a pendulum swing. Never forgive, never forget. ps: I have been harassed, bullied, I will not surrender my guns to the [old] new bullies, NEVER.
• rebuilder 6y ago
  I'm sympathetic to this argument in many ways. For one, extremist movements tend to thrive on oppression - being censored "proves" the system is rigged against them. But the argument in this article is very flawed. For one, yes, Germany has a far right movement. The real question is, how influential would it be without all the legislation to suppress it? Social norms matter, and legislation can reinforce those norms. It's important to pick the right battles, however. Laws can be used to create pressures against becoming e.g. a white supremacist as long as the majority of the population opposes that ideology. OTOH, try using laws to make people go vegan, and it's not going to go very well in the current situation.
  • Pyramus 6y ago
    > The real question is, how influential would it be without all the legislation to suppress it? I had exactly the same thought. The argument is deeply flawed. > Social norms matter, and legislation can reinforce those norms. Brexit is a great example for this phenomenon. Directly after the vote, xenophobia and homophobia increased significantly in the UK. It need not written into legislation, the signal of a common understanding is enough to change behaviour.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• mcguire 6y ago
  You may not be able to censor away extremism, but you can prevent them from organizing violence at your kitchen table.
• 4varyingodds 6y ago
  um dumb stuff ...this time... dumb people... damned P-: 1st.) There is a mechanism in conflict: 'crimination' (Schuldzuweisungen) => 'justification' (Rechtfertigungen) => 'to order sombody to be quiet', censoring maybe ditiching somebody (den Mund verbieten) +[vary]; recursion Now while practicing, 'censoring ?' The hatecrime-testspecimens calcitrate: "No! this is the so called 'harmonisation' of contents", not ? (Disclaimer: 'explicit' and a little OT) The Coach asks: 'This time obsession, do you bought all the emotional stuff ?' ^^
• deleted 6y ago
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• 11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
  I keep coming back to whether people in general still think open mindedness is a virtue. By open mindedness, I mean open to new experience, open to new ideas, open to new people. Practicing openness means observing and hearing and then evaluating for yourself whether you want to assimilate the experience or idea into your life. Open mindedness also means being open to new information, even if it contradicts a basis for what you already believe or practice. If we are not open to contradiction, we can never recognize when we are wrong about what we believe. Being wrong about what we believe leads to doom for societies. Hate is expressed in many ways, some nuanced, some not. But I have confidence that I can witness it, identify it, and categorize for myself. Allowing others to control what I am exposed to means I am no longer in control of what I know and believe. We've seen this creeping definition of hate over the last so many years. It's modulated to the point that I don't know what people mean any longer when they claim 'racism' for example, yet they prevent me from seeing or reading examples, even so I can just identify it and judge for myself. Freedom means determining for yourself what is and is not hate. Having it hidden from you takes that freedom away. It is our responsibility as free persons to learn how to observe and judge what should and should not be part of our lives. Collectively, we will keep hate at bay simply by recognizing it for ourselves and not assimilating it into our lives.
  • bhupy 6y ago
    In addition, in my experience I’ve found the discussion to be centered around the freedom to express one’s self, but free speech is also very much about the freedom of the recipient to seek out and listen to whatever speech they want.
  • JPKab 6y ago
    You are describing a core concept called liberalism. As a liberal myself, we've become increasingly unwelcome in the United States' only viable left of center political party. We've allowed regressive, illiberal religious fanatics to take over our party. Just like the Republicans allowed regressive, illiberal religious fanatics to take over their party in the 80s. In both cases, they were considered useful idiots to be appeased while the adults in the room winked and nodded at each other. In both cases, the game theory quickly devolves into pandering to them, and increasingly alienating segments of the population. The wokies have increasingly demanded Mao-like public concessions from elites, and have been universally successful in getting it. This echoes what the evangelicals were able to demand and solicit from GOP members in the 80s-today. The worst part about this is that the coalition of regressives on the left is so fractious, because they are all so obsessed with immutable characteristic driven identity. Any time an argument or policy that helps one identity group is proposed, another identity group complains they aren't getting the attention THEY need. Because it's such a fractious coalition, elites within the party apparatus and their allies in the press desperately try to spin certain elements of reality. An example of this is the startlingly weird coverage of the violent attacks against vulnerable Asian Americans in US cities. The fact that they are perpetrated exclusively by young black men is deliberately obfuscated, with significant efforts to conflate the attacks with a narrative of ascendant "white supremacists". This video is from a mainstream, respected news outlet. It's utterly shocking in it's blatant obfuscation of facts to serve a narrative bias: https://youtu.be/1lyVzQsXLl4 https://youtu.be/1lyVzQsXLl4 Meanwhile, the opposition to the fractious regressive left, are feeding off of this. They are recruiting, and are gaining moral license to justify violence. This is extremely dangerous. These right wing extremists, who they are increasingly awakening at an alarming rate, is far more cohesive as a group. Antifa are mainly annoying, and when they use violent tactics, can be mildly dangerous. But they are weak, untrained, and unorganized compared to their right wing counterparts. In the US, they can easily acquire weapons, but the expertise to use them is not easy to come by. Liberals like you and me need to stand up, and boldly and loudly and aggressively speak out against any and all forms of regressive, illiberal leftism. If we don't, 2022 is going to be an absolute bloodbath electorally, but far worse is the increasing opposite reaction these lunatics will solicit from the right. Trump's voters aren't going to just go away because the tech companies have banned them. This article clearly points that out.
• gampleman 6y ago
  Today Scotland passed the wildly controversial hate crime bill. Thankfully the bill was amended several times which gutted many of the more extreme provisions. But I can tell you for a fact that people I know have been seriously preparing to go underground - they perceived this bill as such a serious threat to their freedom of speech and religious liberty that some where preparing to purchase property in remote locations to enable clandestine meetings, others started reading on encryption, etc. Not one said “oh well, time to change my basic wordlview, since it might soon be illegal”.
  • soared 6y ago
    I don’t think passing a law intends to change individual peoples’ worldview. I wasn’t able to find an article with a my example of things that would be prosecuted after the bill was passed that could be controversial, only hand-wavey claims.
• shirakawasuna 6y ago
  An analysis of what is efficacious for opposing "extremism" is pointless without also looking at the cause(s) of that "extremism" or being able to identify natural experiments. Natural experiments: looking at Germany and noticing that there are still lots of Nazis doesn't mean those interventions were not effective, as you don't know what would've happened using other regimes (or just doing nothing). You haven't tested the most basic alternative hypothesis that would confound using this data in this way. Causes: this is a big can of worms, particularly on a forum where "politics" is frowned upon, which really means that anything non-normative that could cause significant disagreement is frowned upon. But unless you can identify driving forces of, e.g., Nazis and their recruitment, talking about effective interventions is premature and reductive.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• turkey99 6y ago
  Analogy that Americans won’t understand, “You can’t stop firearms deaths by banning guns.”
• thinkingemote 6y ago
  It's almost likeky that no one will read this, but for what it's worth the main thing is understanding. Ask your opposite "why do I think like this". Seems to me, that, at least in the commentaries, that the right understands why someone is left than the left understands why someone is right. 10 years ago the left wing understood things. Now they just label and other their opposition
• aaroninsf 6y ago
  Deplatforming is not censorship. It is declining to sell someone a megaphone. In particular: it is declining to assist in the amplification of targeted and tuned disinformation. Our society has very few tools against weaponized big data. Declining to amplify disinformation is one that is actually effective and easy.
• michaelbrave 6y ago
  I thought it was more to hinder further recruitment because allowing it is much like giving it weight and making it seem normal. By minimizing it's exposure it both acts as a reminder that "that isn't normal or acceptable" and by banning it it cuts down on potential recruitment.
• artifact_44 6y ago
  No. Deplatforming actually works really really well. The irony of this being on HN where shadowbanning is de rigeur.