5 ms·

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 p

by 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.
- feoren 6y ago
  This reminds me of the argument that police forces can't be racist if they employ black officers. Even black police officers are more likely to shoot an innocent black man than an innocent white man in the same situation. Want to find someone who is racist against Argentinians? Go to Peru or Chile. Just because some Latinos in a focus group agree with a message does not mean it's not racist against Latinos.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    > Just because some Latinos in a focus group agree with a message does not mean it's not racist against Latinos. It's not "some." According to the article, it's a decisive majority (more than 3 in 5).
  - wnoise 6y ago
    The stats show the police, black or white, are about equally likely to use excessive force against black or white people _per incident_. The problem is that they make contact with black people far more often per-capita. Some of this is being more suspicious of black people, of looking harder at them to find something. This is most convincingly seen with the drug war, where uses of drugs are about equal by race, but black people are stopped, searched, and arrested significantly more often. Some is a larger pre-existing societal problem of where people live. When black people are more likely to live in bad neighborhoods, and police are more likely to have encounters in bad neighborhoods...

by Aunche 6y ago

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.

feoren 6y ago
This reminds me of the argument that police forces can't be racist if they employ black officers. Even black police officers are more likely to shoot an innocent black man than an innocent white man in the same situation. Want to find someone who is racist against Argentinians? Go to Peru or Chile. Just because some Latinos in a focus group agree with a message does not mean it's not racist against Latinos.
- rayiner 6y ago
  > Just because some Latinos in a focus group agree with a message does not mean it's not racist against Latinos. It's not "some." According to the article, it's a decisive majority (more than 3 in 5).
- wnoise 6y ago
  The stats show the police, black or white, are about equally likely to use excessive force against black or white people _per incident_. The problem is that they make contact with black people far more often per-capita. Some of this is being more suspicious of black people, of looking harder at them to find something. This is most convincingly seen with the drug war, where uses of drugs are about equal by race, but black people are stopped, searched, and arrested significantly more often. Some is a larger pre-existing societal problem of where people live. When black people are more likely to live in bad neighborhoods, and police are more likely to have encounters in bad neighborhoods...