4 ms·

Nevermind that Daryl Davis has literally converted over 200 KKK members: https://www.rt.com/viral/371340-meet-black-man-kkk/ https://www.rt.com/viral/371340-mee

Nevermind that Daryl Davis has literally converted over 200 KKK members: https://www.rt.com/viral/371340-meet-black-man-kkk/ https://www.rt.com/viral/371340-meet-black-man-kkk/ THAT is how you beat fascism. Not censorship. Lazy programmers trying censor via bits and bytes are never going to accomplish in a million years what Mr. Davis already has.

caslon 6y ago
200 people isn't very much. Twitter has 192 million users. Assuming (extremely generously given that twitter is on the Internet and has a userbase that skews younger) that twitter matches America's partisan divide, it probably has around 90 million users. It seems unlikely that at least a thousand people out of 90 million aren't gullible enough to be swayed by hellbanning.
- NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
  Show me proof that twitter censorship has converted even ONE racist/nazi and I'll entertain this notion. "it seeming unlikely" hardly compares to a man with 200 trophies to prove his method works.
  - caslon 6y ago
    Hellbanning has a history of working well for deradicalization of online communities that were a lot worse than twitter is; Jeff Atwood has a good post giving a brief look at the history of it: https://blog.codinghorror.com/suspension-ban-or-hellban/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/suspension-ban-or-hellban/
    - NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
      That's not proof that any one actual person was deradicalized, which was the metric. Mr. Davis has 200 examples. I'm only asking for one. His method works. The deplatformers' citation of their own platforms only proves that they control their own platforms, not that any extremist view was changed.
      - caslon 6y ago
        That does show that people were deradicalized; read the Metafilter thread linked.
yongjik 6y ago
And Jack Churchill captured Nazi outposts with a longbow and a broadsword, but if allies armed every soldier with longbows and broadswords, something tells me that we'd be under Nazi occupation to this day. Some great things are done by great people, but they don't necessarily scale well.
- NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
  This misses the point (that the author of OPs post nailed). It doesn't matter that it doesn't scale. It works, and censorship doesn't. Do you want a (difficult) method that works (personal involvement and direct conversation), or a simple, easy, lazy one (deplatforming/cancel/censorship) that doesn't?
  - yongjik 6y ago
    Censorship comes with its own problems, but if your position is that it flat out doesn't work, you'd need a more convincing argument. Nazi censored. Stalin censored. Xi censors. Seems hard to explain if censorship doesn't work.
    - NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
      >Nazi censored. Stalin censored. Xi censors. Seems hard to explain if censorship doesn't work. Nazis also killed the speakers. Stalin killed the speakers. Xi kills the speakers. Citing mass genociders as "censorship works" is hilariously bad evidence of censorship working when terminating the speaker most definitely works.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      Sure it worked. Using a nuclear warhead works to solve your ant infestation, too. We want something that works and that doesn't have the nasty side-effects. Nazi, Stalin, and Xi's tactics aren't the answer we're looking for.

caslon 6y ago

200 people isn't very much. Twitter has 192 million users. Assuming (extremely generously given that twitter is on the Internet and has a userbase that skews younger) that twitter matches America's partisan divide, it probably has around 90 million users. It seems unlikely that at least a thousand people out of 90 million aren't gullible enough to be swayed by hellbanning.

NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
Show me proof that twitter censorship has converted even ONE racist/nazi and I'll entertain this notion. "it seeming unlikely" hardly compares to a man with 200 trophies to prove his method works.
- caslon 6y ago
  Hellbanning has a history of working well for deradicalization of online communities that were a lot worse than twitter is; Jeff Atwood has a good post giving a brief look at the history of it: https://blog.codinghorror.com/suspension-ban-or-hellban/ https://blog.codinghorror.com/suspension-ban-or-hellban/
  - NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
    That's not proof that any one actual person was deradicalized, which was the metric. Mr. Davis has 200 examples. I'm only asking for one. His method works. The deplatformers' citation of their own platforms only proves that they control their own platforms, not that any extremist view was changed.
    - caslon 6y ago
      That does show that people were deradicalized; read the Metafilter thread linked.

yongjik 6y ago

And Jack Churchill captured Nazi outposts with a longbow and a broadsword, but if allies armed every soldier with longbows and broadswords, something tells me that we'd be under Nazi occupation to this day. Some great things are done by great people, but they don't necessarily scale well.

NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
This misses the point (that the author of OPs post nailed). It doesn't matter that it doesn't scale. It works, and censorship doesn't. Do you want a (difficult) method that works (personal involvement and direct conversation), or a simple, easy, lazy one (deplatforming/cancel/censorship) that doesn't?
- yongjik 6y ago
  Censorship comes with its own problems, but if your position is that it flat out doesn't work, you'd need a more convincing argument. Nazi censored. Stalin censored. Xi censors. Seems hard to explain if censorship doesn't work.
  - NaturalPhallacy 6y ago
    >Nazi censored. Stalin censored. Xi censors. Seems hard to explain if censorship doesn't work. Nazis also killed the speakers. Stalin killed the speakers. Xi kills the speakers. Citing mass genociders as "censorship works" is hilariously bad evidence of censorship working when terminating the speaker most definitely works.
  - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
    Sure it worked. Using a nuclear warhead works to solve your ant infestation, too. We want something that works and that doesn't have the nasty side-effects. Nazi, Stalin, and Xi's tactics aren't the answer we're looking for.