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He'd be disgusted at the censored echo chamber Reddit has become.
by timintheglades 5y ago
He'd be disgusted at the censored echo chamber Reddit has become.
- brian_herman 5y agoAnd the fact they took him off the founder page.
- rusk 5y agoHe’d probably also have been equally disgusted at what “free speech” manifested as.
- twofornone 5y agoAre you sure? Or would people be accusing him of "white supremacy"? Edit: how deliciously ironic, on a thread about Aaron Swartz, a comment questioning censorship is flagged.
- vanderZwan 5y agoOn the basis of what exactly?
- twofornone 5y agoOn the basis of defending "hate speech", according to at least one organization he cofounded[0]: >and in opposition to censorship and corporate control of government I truly wonder what position he would have taken regarding covid/vaccine censorship. Or reddit's implicit authoritarian policy against criticism of LGB and especially T. He seems like an enough of an idealist to have been a free speech absolutist. 0. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_Progress https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_Progress
- lez 5y agoIt's no question he is against any kind of censorship.
- rusk 5y agoHe “was” against any kind of censorship. His principles forever frozen in time. I wonder had he lived would his position have softened in the interval. I think many of us have been on this journey.
- vanderZwan 5y agoAs phrased your comment is implying that anyone who isn't a "free speech absolutist" isn't an idealist, which does not sound right to me, but I'll assume that was just an accidental byproduct of brevity. That aside, the type of "censorship and corporate control of government" that was prevalent when Aaron Swartz found that organization had strong ties to the post-9/11 insanity that took over Western politics and media. It was a different situation than the ones that you are describing. I wouldn't make any assumptions about whether he would have judged them the same way.
- garbagetime 5y agoWhat is "free speech" and how did it manifest?
- rusk 5y agoI'm referring to the proliferation of hate groups, that flourished under the defense that they represented "free speech". I don't think it's quite what Swartz had in mind, though even if he felt it defensible at the time (as I would have) his feelings on the matter may have become more nuanced (as have mine) since then.
- raxxorrax 5y agoMine have fortified because people declared reasonable statements as hate left and right. There really is no place for nuance and it doesn't net you anything. Places that forbid it aren't free from offense or conflict and are often quite fundamentalist. Hate speech rules simply do not work at all.
- CountDrewku 5y agoDo you think this hate groups just disappear when you censor them? I think it's the opposite and you reinforce their behaviors and thinking.
- rusk 5y agoI think that if you feed and water them they proliferate. You're going to have people with strongly held views, and theirs nothing you can do about that, but you can limit their ability to sway the weak minded however.
- SuperQue 5y agoIt's not just that. It's that hate and lies have the same weight as any other opinion. Paradox of tolerance.
- 5y ago
- raxxorrax 5y agoHe would. It is a consequence that you will also always defend unsavory speech. This hasn't changed through the ages and is often mentioned preemptively because the experience tells you how people will react. I think he would have been smarter than to jump on the bandwagon against hate speech though. But that isn't what you mean anyway.
- rusk 5y ago> This hasn't changed through the ages Hasn't it? A few hundred years ago you were talking about the right to speak unsavorily without being put in jail or worse. In the last hundred years we have developed pervasive media and communications, and these days the discussion is to what degree the unsavory should be given a platform, granted air-time, provided with targeted advertising ... and perhaps more importantly the right to tune it all out if you want. In the days of Voltaire if you didn't like what somebody was saying you could just walk the other way. These days they follow you round YouTube.
- raxxorrax 5y agoMore exactly we are not talking about giving it a platform. We are talking about removing hate from platforms and it is as ridiculous as it sounds.
- kragen 5y agoIn 02006 Aaron described himself as "something of a free speech absolutist": http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/becausewecan http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/becausewecan So I have my own justification for freedom of speech: because we can. Human freedom is important, so we should try to protect it from encroachment wherever possible. With most freedoms — freedom of motion, freedom of exchange, freedom of action — permitting them in full would cause some problems. People shouldn’t be free to walk into other people’s bedrooms, take all their stuff, and then punch the poor victims in the face. But hurling a bunch of epithets at the guy really isn’t so bad. Freedom of speech is one place where we can draw the line and say: all of this is acceptable. There’s no further logic to it than that; freedom of speech is not an instrumental value. Like all freedom, it’s fundamental, and the only reason we happen to single it out is because it’s more reasonable than all of the others. Close readers will note that this theory doesn’t quite live up to my own goals. By laying freedom of speech’s provision on top of our reasonable ability to do so, I suggest that freedom of speech could be taken away if providing it became unreasonable. But I think this is the right choice: if people really, seriously started getting hurt because of freedom of speech, it seems right for people to take the privilege away. But, to be honest, I can’t even imagine how that might be possible. Words just don’t genuinely wound, they’re always mediated by our listening. I do worry that people might try to stretch this justification — say that continued free speech might destroy the war effort, or the government, or civil society. But I have no problem destroying all of those. It’s only the destruction of actual people that I worry about.
- rusk 5y agoI've no doubt he was very much a hardliner in his day. What I'm speculating about is what he would have thought today, after the last 10 years and the maturation of reddit, facebook and co. Provided he hadn't spent that entire time incarcerated of course!
- kragen 5y agoI don't think you should be speculating that he would endorse the repulsive views he spent his life struggling against, any more than you should be hurling a bunch of epithets at me. Please stop.
- fractal618 5y agoHe'd be Godly if he was still here, but there are others like young Aaron with us today. Let's take care of them.
- bryans 5y agoAs a current target of malicious censorship and threats by the admins, I'd have to agree that anyone from the original team would be horrified by what's happening at Reddit right now. Being directly and abusively gaslit by a billion dollar company is a level of Twilight Zone that I'm honestly struggling to cope with.
- junon 5y ago> anyone from the original team would be horrified by what's happening at Reddit right now Except for Huffman (spez) who still works there and doesn't seem to care whatsoever.
- scohesc 5y agoWhen you're making as much as they're probably making, why rock the boat?
- junon 5y agoFor some people, money doesn't trump morality.
- ldehaan 5y agoYep, but that's not spez.
- junon 5y agoErr care to explain how you can assert that?
- xboxnolifes 5y agobecause they aren't rocking the boat.
- junon 5y ago