6 ms·

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
  > 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. That result makes it more difficult for law enforcement to follow their movements, but it also has the effect of making it more difficult to recruit new members and spread their ideas. The whole reason social media has been so powerful in spreading ideas, good and bad, is because it reduces communication friction and effort while promoting discoverability. If extremists have to move to Signal and Telegram, it makes them less discoverable, and requires more effort on the part of their members. Over time that makes it less likely they'll be able to grow or maintain their numbers.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - freebuju 6y ago
    > That result makes it more difficult for law enforcement to follow their movements The easiest enemy to go after is an exposed one. The 2nd is a weak one. > extremists have to move to Signal and Telegram, it makes them less discoverable Extremist groups do not need to be discoverable. They just need to plant enough conviction into the minds of susceptible and willing hosts. I assure you, not so much energy is required to convert in this case. Certainly not more than religious ones. Though I need to clarify. When extremism crosses the border of advocating for mass violence. It gains a new universally unambiguous term: terrorism.
- sagichmal 6y ago
  > Deplatforming solves a problem. Yep! > 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. The whole point of deplatforming is to prevent those stupid ideas from having a general audience. Sunlight is not always the best disinfectant.
bad_username 6y ago
The minute your platform becomes malevolent, and begins to "work" against your values, will you not regret granting it the power of moderating the social discourse?
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  What power? When in the history of the internet has a website's owner been unable to edit or remove the text that's published on their own site?
NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
It works....in the short term...within a very narrow scope. And then suddenly, for no reason at all, someone incredibly well aligned with everyone you deplatformed rises to power.
- oblio 6y ago
  They don't rise to power if the political system is sane. In many countries without First Past the Post systems, an extremist rises in popularity. Then when the final vote comes, it is revealed that most people are moderate and the crazy does not get into power.
  - NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
    Is there a sane political system? FPTP is dogshit, agreed. But does even ranked choice voting result in a sane system? I'm not implying it can't. I honestly just don't know.
    - oblio 6y ago
      No system is completely sane but some are better than others at keeping out the loonies :-) European ones are decent.
elastolin 6y ago
What if we starting deplatforming Jews or reducing Jewish influence to the point of pratical irrelevance? Would that be okay?
- bitdizzy 6y ago
  No, obviously it would not be okay. What point are you trying to make?
  - elastolin 6y ago
    So, deplatforming (silencing) a group is okay, but doing the same for other group is not okay based on some arbitrary criteria.
    - bitdizzy 6y ago
      It's ok to kiss your spouse but not a stranger. It's ok to punch someone who punched you but dont go to a kindergarten and start punching kids. "Arbitrary criteria" describes all norms.
      - elastolin 6y ago
        "everything means nothing yada yada yada" You know exactly what I mean, cut the bullshit. Point being, deplatforming may be okay for the group who exercises it, but not for the group that is being deplatformed. Who the fuck decides? The government? Some out of touch Big Tech CEOs? Fuck that. Just take a look at Venezuela's current "Law against Hatred" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_against_Hatred)to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_against_Hatred)to get an idea of how dumb this whole approach is. Now, if I'd be willing to argue that this is a antitrust issue (FB, TW, Google / Amazon AWS, CloudFlare / PayPal, Stripe / Visa, MasterCard) having too much power to the point that they decide whether you live or not, and that there should be way more alternatives.
        bitdizzy 6y ago
        It is entirely and issue of the means of communication being concentrated into the hands of a few powerful organizations, like its been since the radio was captured by capitalist regulation. > Who the fuck decides? Everyone decides norms in the small bubble around them. When people organize their influence grows too. Some people have too much power. Some people should never have power, like nazis. A lot of the arguments in this thread you will notice are about whether deplatforming makes nazis less nazis. Well, that's not the point. The point is to make sure they aren't accepted, that they can't use the public square to recruit and gain power. Some would argue that this is ineffective, but they are now stuck in the bind of thinking that access to places of public discourse is both an important right and also practically unimportant. Maybe they're too young to remember the holocaust deniers on use usenet or how ineffectual stormfront was before 4chan and before mass social media. People who are hungry for power will try to gain it in the easiest ways possible. If you think them having power would suck, then you want to make it harder for them. I simultaneously think facebook and twitter and CBS and fox news etc. have too much control over public discourse and also don't want white supremacists to be able to freely use that power to bring back hell on earth. That includes the new york times giving the likes of Richard Spencer space on their page, Tucker Carlson crying about how much white people are under attack and facebook letting white supremacists run recruiting groups thousands in size.
alacombe 6y ago
Only "works" because those community becomes underground and more radicalized.
- sagichmal 6y ago
  Great. Let them do that. The important thing is that they're not getting their message in front of whoever happens to be scrolling the Reddit front page. That's enormously more harmful.

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
> 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. That result makes it more difficult for law enforcement to follow their movements, but it also has the effect of making it more difficult to recruit new members and spread their ideas. The whole reason social media has been so powerful in spreading ideas, good and bad, is because it reduces communication friction and effort while promoting discoverability. If extremists have to move to Signal and Telegram, it makes them less discoverable, and requires more effort on the part of their members. Over time that makes it less likely they'll be able to grow or maintain their numbers.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- freebuju 6y ago
  > That result makes it more difficult for law enforcement to follow their movements The easiest enemy to go after is an exposed one. The 2nd is a weak one. > extremists have to move to Signal and Telegram, it makes them less discoverable Extremist groups do not need to be discoverable. They just need to plant enough conviction into the minds of susceptible and willing hosts. I assure you, not so much energy is required to convert in this case. Certainly not more than religious ones. Though I need to clarify. When extremism crosses the border of advocating for mass violence. It gains a new universally unambiguous term: terrorism.
sagichmal 6y ago
> Deplatforming solves a problem. Yep! > 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. The whole point of deplatforming is to prevent those stupid ideas from having a general audience. Sunlight is not always the best disinfectant.

bad_username 6y ago

The minute your platform becomes malevolent, and begins to "work" against your values, will you not regret granting it the power of moderating the social discourse?

heavyset_go 6y ago
What power? When in the history of the internet has a website's owner been unable to edit or remove the text that's published on their own site?

NaturalPhallacy 6y ago

It works....in the short term...within a very narrow scope. And then suddenly, for no reason at all, someone incredibly well aligned with everyone you deplatformed rises to power.

oblio 6y ago
They don't rise to power if the political system is sane. In many countries without First Past the Post systems, an extremist rises in popularity. Then when the final vote comes, it is revealed that most people are moderate and the crazy does not get into power.
- NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
  Is there a sane political system? FPTP is dogshit, agreed. But does even ranked choice voting result in a sane system? I'm not implying it can't. I honestly just don't know.
  - oblio 6y ago
    No system is completely sane but some are better than others at keeping out the loonies :-) European ones are decent.

elastolin 6y ago

What if we starting deplatforming Jews or reducing Jewish influence to the point of pratical irrelevance? Would that be okay?

bitdizzy 6y ago
No, obviously it would not be okay. What point are you trying to make?
- elastolin 6y ago
  So, deplatforming (silencing) a group is okay, but doing the same for other group is not okay based on some arbitrary criteria.
  - bitdizzy 6y ago
    It's ok to kiss your spouse but not a stranger. It's ok to punch someone who punched you but dont go to a kindergarten and start punching kids. "Arbitrary criteria" describes all norms.
    - elastolin 6y ago
      "everything means nothing yada yada yada" You know exactly what I mean, cut the bullshit. Point being, deplatforming may be okay for the group who exercises it, but not for the group that is being deplatformed. Who the fuck decides? The government? Some out of touch Big Tech CEOs? Fuck that. Just take a look at Venezuela's current "Law against Hatred" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_against_Hatred)to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_against_Hatred)to get an idea of how dumb this whole approach is. Now, if I'd be willing to argue that this is a antitrust issue (FB, TW, Google / Amazon AWS, CloudFlare / PayPal, Stripe / Visa, MasterCard) having too much power to the point that they decide whether you live or not, and that there should be way more alternatives.
      - bitdizzy 6y ago
        It is entirely and issue of the means of communication being concentrated into the hands of a few powerful organizations, like its been since the radio was captured by capitalist regulation. > Who the fuck decides? Everyone decides norms in the small bubble around them. When people organize their influence grows too. Some people have too much power. Some people should never have power, like nazis. A lot of the arguments in this thread you will notice are about whether deplatforming makes nazis less nazis. Well, that's not the point. The point is to make sure they aren't accepted, that they can't use the public square to recruit and gain power. Some would argue that this is ineffective, but they are now stuck in the bind of thinking that access to places of public discourse is both an important right and also practically unimportant. Maybe they're too young to remember the holocaust deniers on use usenet or how ineffectual stormfront was before 4chan and before mass social media. People who are hungry for power will try to gain it in the easiest ways possible. If you think them having power would suck, then you want to make it harder for them. I simultaneously think facebook and twitter and CBS and fox news etc. have too much control over public discourse and also don't want white supremacists to be able to freely use that power to bring back hell on earth. That includes the new york times giving the likes of Richard Spencer space on their page, Tucker Carlson crying about how much white people are under attack and facebook letting white supremacists run recruiting groups thousands in size.

alacombe 6y ago

Only "works" because those community becomes underground and more radicalized.

sagichmal 6y ago
Great. Let them do that. The important thing is that they're not getting their message in front of whoever happens to be scrolling the Reddit front page. That's enormously more harmful.