16 ms·

I don't get this. Here in Germany for example holocaust denial is illegal. Assume you are in a country where it's not, say the USA. Assume you slowly witness a

• angelzen 5y ago
  Who is the arbiter of good / bad speech? What is the process through society figures out what speech is good and what speech is bad?
  • duhast 5y ago
    Level of virality and black box algorithms.
• gfodor 5y ago
  You don’t have a monopoly on truth. The “anti-vaxxers” are not a monolithic group, and some people who are skeptics of consensus views on the various questions involved will probably be vindicated as other non-consensus views have been so far, which is normal in any chaotic situation where data is limited.
  • LightG 5y ago
    Tell that to the regularly highlighted examples of Covid-19 and/or vax deniers who end up ... dead. Scientific, rational debate is ideal on these subjects ... but is that even possible anymore when people are jumping off the deep end so much. David Koresh would be envious.
    • burnafter182 5y ago
      Selection bias, plain and simple.
      • Izkata 5y ago
        Exactly, they have just as many examples of people who publicly say the vaccine is safe, who end up hospitalized or dead within a few weeks due to adverse reactions to the vaccine.
        • chefkoch 5y ago
          Can you provide examples?
        • Loocid 5y ago
          I would love to see some stats on this, because I'm very confident you couldn't find "many". There have only been 8200 deaths in the USA following a vaccine dose, and they aren't even confirmed to be caused by the vaccine. Compared to the 690k COVID deaths I think you're much, much more likely to find people that are antivax that died from COVID, than provax that died following a vaccination.
          • josephcsible 5y ago
            > they aren't even confirmed to be caused by the vaccine Keep in mind this is also true of deaths following COVID. Remember this one in particular? https://wpde.com/news/nation-world/man-who-died-in-motorcycle-crash-counted-as-covid-19-death-in-florida-report-07-18-2020 https://wpde.com/news/nation-world/man-who-died-in-motorcycl...
        • machiaweliczny 5y ago
          Anecdotal but I know of noone who died due to vacinne (only heard about blood clot). I also don't know of fit and < 40 years old that died although astma friend 30yo was heavily hispitalised. Heard of many older/fat people who died. Some people close to dying sypposedly got helped by Amantadine. I took 2 shots of Moderna and I am shareholder but I still think that banning debate is stupid. I still have doctor friends who personally don't feel the risks is in vacine favor for them personally. IMO YT should be forced to allow filering of content by each user. I hate it so much that I am served stupid crap from time to time. This would be much better that this erosion of basic rights. There should be ability to share curation algos but that's obviously against ad driven,supply driven monipolies. Fuck em.
  • HyperRational 5y ago
    "You don’t have a monopoly on truth." Actually, yes, scientists DO have a monopoly on truth. That is the point of science.
• raxxorrax 5y ago
  Here in Germany we also had Blockwarts if we stick to tasteless comparisons.
• hellojesus 5y ago
  There is absolutely no reason a government should make such things as denialism illegal. An act like that would certainly breed doubt immediately because the only reason to make something like that illegal IS because you're hiding something. People are allowed to make their own choices. If they belive the holocaust isn't real, fine. When they discuss it, refute them. In the US, the only time the line is crossed is when discussion calls for immediate and specific violence, could directly cause harm, or falls into the slanderous/libel and even that can be difficult to prove. I can see no reason for the above illegality of speech to expand. Something like making holocaust denial illegal is borderline compelled speech. Sure, you could just not talk about the holocaust, but if you want or need to talk about it you must now espouse the official position of the government. Absolutely terrifying to think about.
  • codyswann 5y ago
    > the only reason to make something like that illegal IS because you're hiding something That is the most illogical statement I've read all month.
    • Koshkin 5y ago
      I think they meant that the limiting of free speech often serves to suppress the public voicing of an 'inconvenient truth.'
      • hellojesus 5y ago
        Yes, exactly. Making something illegal is serious. The result of making something like this illegal is: 1. Person is not allowed to talk OR 2. Person is allowed to talk but is now compelled to only espouse a message approved by the government. Illegal speech in the US is speech which does harm or has a direct incitement to harm such as specifically calling for a violent action, shouting fire in a crowded theater, or lying about someone to harm their reputation and cause financial impact. To make something like denialism illegal would require you to show that, by allowing someone to say it, they are causing direct and immediate harm. That's not the case here at all. Saying the holocaust didn't happen doesn't cause people to then go commit genocide. At worst it convinces people some horrific event didn't happen, but that horrific event is still horrific conceptually. Denying vaccines work may convince people not to get them so maybe you'd argue direct harm there? But it's not clear to me how you can measure the harm since it's arguable that said unvaccinated person may get covid and be totally unphased. What about those people that got covid prior to the vaccine? How could you argue direct harm from them when they already have the antibodies sans the vaccine?
• ekianjo 5y ago
  > Depriving them of any platform is morally imperative. Who are you to judge what needs to be censored?
• robrenaud 5y ago
  Americans tend to believe that the counter to bad speech is good speech. But on the vaccine front, it has become increasingly clear that good speech, backed by overwhelming evidence is insufficient for a significant minority to come to a reasonable mindset. Free speech is great if almost everyone is reasonable. America is not nearly there. Empirically, free speech has failed, as an insane fraction of American citizens are vaccine hesitant and believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
  • hellojesus 5y ago
    Have you considered that the number of vaccine hesitant people has increased specifically as a result of the ever-increasing suppression of dissent? To me it seems like that's exactly what's happening. The US should have handled this exactly like a sane country: - No lockdowns. You determine your individual risk level. Businesses are free to require masks if they want to. (I really would only be okay with a compelled wfh order, if possible.) The gov owes a lot of people a lot of money for compelling them not to work. The gov wouldn't owe money if consumers just stopped shopping places because they didn't feel comfortable not wearing a mask in a business that didn't require them. - Vaccines rollout is: take it if you want. We recommend it. It appears to be safe. Here is the data. If you don't want it, fine, but we are business as usual so you're accepting a higher risk.
    • arcatech 5y ago
      What you're proposing is really not an effective way to handle an outbreak of an airborne respiratory virus.
      • tastyfreeze 5y ago
        What they are proposing is how our nation is supposed to work. Everybody is responsible for assessing the risks for their self. If everybody does this then it is an effective way to handle an outbreak.
      • gfodor 5y ago
        Well, apparently, neither is what we have done. But at least in the scenario mentioned above, we don't find ourselves slipping into totalitarianism. Perhaps there is no way, in a liberal society, to have a silver bullet? It turns out principles matter in such situations.
• axus 5y ago
  Hasn't the number of would-be holocaust deniers been increasing in Germany? China is an example of platform-denying taken to the extreme,
  • goldenbikeshed 5y ago
    No it hasn't. It would perhaps have if the strategy of history falsification that the far right kept trying since about the 60ies would have worked. These laws were one factor in making sure no such history falsification took place on a broad scale.
• commandlinefan 5y ago
  > Would that make you reconsider if the holocaust really happened? Well, to play devil's advocate - if it did, and anybody were to say it did, saying so out loud would also be illegal in Germany.
  • tbihl 5y ago
    Which paves the way for the argument that many/most people also disbelieve the Holocaust, but they have to keep quiet because of the threat of government hanging over them.
• Manuel_D 5y ago
  > Now the USA make holocaust denial illegal. Would that make you reconsider if the holocaust really happened? Not me, but I could easily see it making other people suspicious. It directly plays into the anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish control of communications. Pass such a law and the first thing they would do is point to its passage as proof of whatever conspiracy theory they're espousing. The correct response to bad speech is not censorship, it's more speech: refute those arguing for bad policy, counterprotest those espousing hate. Imprisoning Hitler and his cronies didn't work in Germany, and far right groups like AfD still gain traction in the country.
  • res0nat0r 5y ago
    Eh as mentioned above, folks who already want to be convinced Bill Gates is implanting microchips in vaccines to track their movement (as they complain about this via their phone on facebook lol), aren't going to change their minds. Deplatforming works and helps stop disinfomration. The racist Richard Spencer and the rightwing clown Milo Yiannopoulos both say they're broke and unemployed now thanks to everyone banning their racist content. These things are fine to do and work.
    • h0h0h0h0111 5y ago
      A large percentage of the population believe an invisible being in the sky created the universe in 7 days, why is everyone so surprised that a percentage of the population believe Bill Gates is implanting microchips in vaccines?
    • mdp2021 5y ago
      > Deplatforming ... helps stop disinfomration And also confirms the scepticism of those who have grown diffident of dominant narratives. Deplatforming can also stop information. -- The issue is an old epistemological issue: it is the "demarcation problem". We have been there. It's not trivial.
      • res0nat0r 5y ago
        In this case though, vaccines save lives and aren't a different narrative, so it's fine to delete disinformation that is getting people killed.
• SuoDuanDao 5y ago
  >Would that make you reconsider if the holocaust really happened? It would change my bayesian priors. Not enough to change my opinion entirely, but it would move me more towards the middle. Imagine flat-earthers were suddenly banned from all public fora. Currently, I'm able to see the arguments they make, and they're decisively unconvincing. If I knew a lot of people believed something that strange but didn't know why, it would absolutely be more convincing than now, when I hear the arguments. I think the same is true of any seriously badly-reasoned belief.
  • datavirtue 5y ago
    I'm still not convinced there are people who think the world is flat. It feels like a gaffe. Am I in denial?
    • leetcrew 5y ago
      I mean, it certainly looks flat (or at least, not curved) to me when I look out my window ;) it's pretty rare for an ordinary person to have the opportunity to directly observe the curvature of the earth. I personally don't notice it when I fly commercially. you can indirectly observe it with binoculars on the beach by watching ships (dis)appear over the horizon, but a) you have to recognize the implication, and b) this can be confounded by a mirage/shimmer effect. it's not hard for me to imagine that some extremely skeptical people might doubt that the world isn't simply how it looks: flat.
      • goatlover 5y ago
        We have satellites imaging the Earth as they orbit it. We have astronauts on the Space Station. People fly and sail all over the world. Maps and GPS work based on the Earth's curvature. There's no conspiracy by NASA or whoever which could possibly keep the truth from hundreds of millions of people who know for fact the shape of the Earth.
        • saalweachter 5y ago
          > There's no conspiracy... Just goes to show how powerful the conspiracy is.
• mdp2021 5y ago
  Paradoxically, but somehow yes, you should then nurture serious doubts about the situation - censorship means somewhere, something is clearly wrong. If a reaction is wildly disproportionate, you should raise suspicion. If the reason alleged for the disproportion is "what would be the reaction of people", you (though maybe not you specifically) should flee as if chased by the devil. Your terminology is confusing: there is hesitance. The hesitant want clear, trustworthy information. Lack of clarity over the clash of what is seen and what is narrated reinforces hesitance. The censorship of those who claim the impossible easily hits those who claim the possible, and the first can be used as a strawman against the second. This is one of the practical reasons why your «moral imperative» is invalid: these months showed that you cannot set the threshold.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• bronzeage 5y ago
  You can't compare the two at all. One is a historical fact that debating it leads only to hatred of Jews and no other observable effect on society. The other is an experimental medical operation that people are sometimes forced to take and debate on it can literally change lives. If somehow lives or even something less important was on stake when debating the holocaust then maybe censoring it would be wrong. You're not allowed to publish death threats to politicians either. I can live with censorship of things that only serve to encourage violence and nothing else. When something positive is at stake, I'm against censorship.
• coding123 5y ago
  We're now comparing anti-vaxxers to nazis.
• adolph 5y ago
  There in Germany y’all do lots of stuff: Scientologists in Germany face specific political and economic restrictions. They are barred from membership in some major political parties, and businesses and other employers use so-called "sect filters" to expose a prospective business partner's or employee's association with the organization. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_in_Germany https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientology_in_Germany
  • amaccuish 5y ago
    And that's... bad?
• bwship 5y ago
  No comorbidity has caused the life of thousands of people. Drinking slurpies and eating ding-dongs all day, the chickens have come home to roost. 80% of Covid deaths involved obese people. Stop blaming people who won't get the vaccine for the troubles. I got Covid from a friend who had the vaccine, lo and behold, we had the exact same symptoms, including losing taste, fever, cold sweats, etc., and he actually had it a little worse because he had headaches from it as well. Vaccine works, mmmhmm, ok, better get booster 3 and 4 and 5...to be sure.
• logicchains 5y ago
  > I don't get this. Here in Germany for example holocaust denial is illegal. Didn't the "Alternative For Germany" get like 10% of the vote there, and they're pretty much Nazis? Doesn't seem to be working.
  • distances 5y ago
    Come on now, they aren't open Nazis or holocaust denials. They're run-of-the-mill European right wing populists against immigration, EU in general, and most things progressive.
    • goldenbikeshed 5y ago
      They have been moving towards holocaust denial since 2015, actually.
• joecool1029 5y ago
  There's a guy in my area that legally named himself Hitler and drives around in a car covered with swastikas. He's not gained any followers, just ridicule and a bunch of court orders for being shitty to his children. Nobody wants to be him. Building the tools to better censor is a slippery slope that moves quickly from silencing extremists to silencing activists. >Would that make you reconsider if the holocaust really happened? Pulling the h-card out as a cudgel in every single political argument has reduced people's ability to reflect or care about it. Same as the 'think of the children' arguments. It's an emotionally manipulative and dishonest debate method.
  • machiaweliczny 5y ago
    I watched yesterday as programmer in Belarus gets killed by having unfavorable view of government. Please protect 2nd amendment, free speach and privacy. Also would be nice to solve internet polarisation and economics of propaganda somehow.