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>Turns out, most people don’t just dislike gab, they think it’s dangerous not to take action and don’t want to be on the eventual wall of people who Did Nothing

>Turns out, most people don’t just dislike gab, they think it’s dangerous not to take action and don’t want to be on the eventual wall of people who Did Nothing when retrospection comes. The vast majority of people who support this deplatforming have been whipped up into a hysteria by their peers and media and unironically believe that half the country belongs to the party of racism and white supremacy and anti-science, and that platforms like gab are merely hangouts for extremism and insurrection plotting. Ironically, this sort of treatment is going to breed extremism, and if I may say, rightly so. You don't demonize and dehumanize half the country by associating them with "whiteness" and nazism, especially while claiming to be anti-racist. At best, this path leads to construction of a parallel society, with it's own infrastructure. At worst, genocide, but which side will do the genociding is hard to predict, the way things are going. There's no excuse for this blatand politicization of all of our institutions, and the way that they all implicitly and explicitly collude to effectively deny voices to half of the country while worshipping SCIENCE! as though it were some unreproachable religion.

scrollaway 5y ago
I agree that demonizing and “othering” people on the Other Side is a bad idea for the reasons you state. I also agree with your overall point. I disagree that deplatforming gab is demonizing anybody. It’s tackling an absolute cesspool of a community. It’s among the worst of the worst that’s available out there. I’m sure they’ll survive without it.
- twofornone 5y ago
  That's only because our media does not scrutinize the other side with the same intensity. You have literal communists LARPing about the coming revolution on reddit alongside entire subreddits dedicated to celebrating deaths among so called "plague rats", on a platform where the TOS ostensibly state that there is no tolerance for such behavior. But it's not surprising given that for a brief period last year the TOS explicitly stated that hate against the "majority group" (i.e. white people) is totally fine. If this were legitimately about extremism it'd be one thing, but the way it is shaping up, one side's extremism gets a pass, and that bias is toxic to a functioning society. The same way that excuses were made by all of our institutions for the nationwide, year long protests during a pandemic. Our institutions have clearly chosen a side. And I'm not necessarily saying that the act of deplatforming gab is demonization, but what I am saying is that this one sided demonization/dehumanization is used as an excuse to target platforms like gab.
  - scrollaway 5y ago
    Your problem is not with the actions taken against gab but with the lack of consistent actions taken against similar cesspools. There’s nothing I can do about that. Nothing will be achieved by hooking onto this in a whataboutist format, it’s just irrelevant. I read your post as a hopeless grievance but rest assured that I have concerns of my own about how much leeway is given to left leaning platforms as well. But that doesn’t invalidate how bad Gab is. This world view is consistent.
    - michaelmrose 5y ago
      It might be considered unkind to make fun of the dead and dying but arguably such examples are made after the persons own stupidity killed them and the point of the example isn't merely to glory in their death but prevent others from joining them in the grave. Anyone who can't tell the difference between look at suzy she's made sarcastic comments about vaccines every day up until the day she died of covid don't be like suzy and keep your powder dry pretty soon we shall all get together and murder the libtards isn't looking very hard. One encourages death and violence the other mocks the harm that has already come about and will continue to come about. The former is against most civil discussion forums rules and the latter is allowed many places. Before they decry uneven enforcement they might do well to understand the rules.
      - twofornone 5y ago
        >It might be considered unkind to make fun of the dead and dying but arguably such examples are made after the persons own stupidity killed them and the point of the example isn't merely to glory in their death but prevent others from joining them in the grave You're talking about a virus with a 99.99%+ survival rate in healthy people under 40, not the damn plague. And I know we're not allowed to discuss it, but can you explain why cases are as high as they've ever been in, say, Israel and England, when they're 70-80%+ vaccinated, if these vaccines are so safe and effective? Why does media continue to push the lie that the majority of deaths are in the unvaccinated when official UK data shows vaccinated and unvaccinated death rates at approximate parity with vaccination rate? I.E. the DATA clearly shows that vaccines are not nearly as effective as claimed. Don't you think it's a little ridiculous that there is effectively no platform outside of 4chan where such questions can even be asked? How is that good for society, to unquestioningly follow the same institutions that have repeatedly and massively blundered while pursuing their own personal financial interests? Do you deny that the authoritarians making this policy are humans like you and I, subject to the same errors and temptations as anyone else? Informed consent is predicated upon freedom of discussion, of which there effectively is none, because suddenly citizens across the western world are cheering on mass censorship and suppression of the very dissent that is required for a functioning society. And just as you don't need to be an expert in astrology to understand that it is bunk, you don't need a PHD in virology to see the glaring institutional issues in academia/industry/regulation which cause incentives to align perversely. If it is in fact true that the vaccines are innefective and/or dangerous, there is now the momentum of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of careers and reputations on the line, potentially keeping this fact under wraps. It's not a conspiracy, its emergent pressure. In such a case it is up to laypeople to hold their governments accountable, but instead we are welcoming our own censorship. Something is going to break.

scrollaway 5y ago

I agree that demonizing and “othering” people on the Other Side is a bad idea for the reasons you state. I also agree with your overall point. I disagree that deplatforming gab is demonizing anybody. It’s tackling an absolute cesspool of a community. It’s among the worst of the worst that’s available out there. I’m sure they’ll survive without it.

twofornone 5y ago
That's only because our media does not scrutinize the other side with the same intensity. You have literal communists LARPing about the coming revolution on reddit alongside entire subreddits dedicated to celebrating deaths among so called "plague rats", on a platform where the TOS ostensibly state that there is no tolerance for such behavior. But it's not surprising given that for a brief period last year the TOS explicitly stated that hate against the "majority group" (i.e. white people) is totally fine. If this were legitimately about extremism it'd be one thing, but the way it is shaping up, one side's extremism gets a pass, and that bias is toxic to a functioning society. The same way that excuses were made by all of our institutions for the nationwide, year long protests during a pandemic. Our institutions have clearly chosen a side. And I'm not necessarily saying that the act of deplatforming gab is demonization, but what I am saying is that this one sided demonization/dehumanization is used as an excuse to target platforms like gab.
- scrollaway 5y ago
  Your problem is not with the actions taken against gab but with the lack of consistent actions taken against similar cesspools. There’s nothing I can do about that. Nothing will be achieved by hooking onto this in a whataboutist format, it’s just irrelevant. I read your post as a hopeless grievance but rest assured that I have concerns of my own about how much leeway is given to left leaning platforms as well. But that doesn’t invalidate how bad Gab is. This world view is consistent.
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    It might be considered unkind to make fun of the dead and dying but arguably such examples are made after the persons own stupidity killed them and the point of the example isn't merely to glory in their death but prevent others from joining them in the grave. Anyone who can't tell the difference between look at suzy she's made sarcastic comments about vaccines every day up until the day she died of covid don't be like suzy and keep your powder dry pretty soon we shall all get together and murder the libtards isn't looking very hard. One encourages death and violence the other mocks the harm that has already come about and will continue to come about. The former is against most civil discussion forums rules and the latter is allowed many places. Before they decry uneven enforcement they might do well to understand the rules.
    - twofornone 5y ago
      >It might be considered unkind to make fun of the dead and dying but arguably such examples are made after the persons own stupidity killed them and the point of the example isn't merely to glory in their death but prevent others from joining them in the grave You're talking about a virus with a 99.99%+ survival rate in healthy people under 40, not the damn plague. And I know we're not allowed to discuss it, but can you explain why cases are as high as they've ever been in, say, Israel and England, when they're 70-80%+ vaccinated, if these vaccines are so safe and effective? Why does media continue to push the lie that the majority of deaths are in the unvaccinated when official UK data shows vaccinated and unvaccinated death rates at approximate parity with vaccination rate? I.E. the DATA clearly shows that vaccines are not nearly as effective as claimed. Don't you think it's a little ridiculous that there is effectively no platform outside of 4chan where such questions can even be asked? How is that good for society, to unquestioningly follow the same institutions that have repeatedly and massively blundered while pursuing their own personal financial interests? Do you deny that the authoritarians making this policy are humans like you and I, subject to the same errors and temptations as anyone else? Informed consent is predicated upon freedom of discussion, of which there effectively is none, because suddenly citizens across the western world are cheering on mass censorship and suppression of the very dissent that is required for a functioning society. And just as you don't need to be an expert in astrology to understand that it is bunk, you don't need a PHD in virology to see the glaring institutional issues in academia/industry/regulation which cause incentives to align perversely. If it is in fact true that the vaccines are innefective and/or dangerous, there is now the momentum of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of careers and reputations on the line, potentially keeping this fact under wraps. It's not a conspiracy, its emergent pressure. In such a case it is up to laypeople to hold their governments accountable, but instead we are welcoming our own censorship. Something is going to break.