5 ms·

Censorship and deplatforming are ways of making the competition shut up. If someone has a different opinion than you do, they should have free speech to say it.

Censorship and deplatforming are ways of making the competition shut up. If someone has a different opinion than you do, they should have free speech to say it. Within reason of course, nobody wants Nazis or Pedophiles to spread their opinions because they are obscene. This is why Musk is trying to buy out Twitter, and he is trolling them with his wealth. Don't forget removal from the APP Store or blocked by proxies. Information still wants to be free, not stifled by tyrants just for being different opinions than the shareholders have. Remember there is a reason why people want to root their phone, they want the freedom to install any app they wish to install. The more it gets locked down, the more people are going to find ways to unlock it. Instead of deplatforming and censorship, ratings should be used instead for people to decide what they are going to read.

laverya 5y ago
> nobody wants Nazis or Pedophiles to spread their opinions because they are obscene. I want both sets of people to expose their views to the public. Disgusting though these views may be, it is safer for society if individuals are able to check and decide that someone else's views are reprehensible. If the people are merely told such by authorities, with the "offending" content immediately removed, then the authorities have enormous power to expand the definition of "offending" when it pleases them to do so.
- GoOnThenDoTell 5y ago
  People aren’t ironclad in their current views of right and wrong for all topics, its possible to convince people of really anything with enough exposure
  - malthuswaswrong 5y ago
    >its possible to convince people of really anything with enough exposure Not really. You can spend days, weeks, and months; millions of dollars; thousands of paid shill accounts; all geared towards selling a single lie. And that lie can be exposed to millions of people in 10 seconds for free. But only if there is free speech.
- colordrops 5y ago
  Agreed, the neo-nazis were fringe and people laughed at their marches. Now that they are taken entirely too seriously, the attention and victimization has empowered them to recruit and grow. The deplatforming has had the opposite of the intended effect, instead putting them in a spotlight.
  - phs318u 5y ago
    Except that's not quite the sequence that occurred to my recollection. With the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, what was previously "unsayable" was being said by the highest voices, directly legitimising fringe voices and empowering many that previously self-regulated to an extend for fear of judgement. That fear proved unfounded as it turned out and media (both MSM and social) amplified all sorts of previously fringe content. It's only once the push-back began that companies, fearing for their bottom line in some form or other (customers moving, regulation, legal fights) began turfing people off their platforms. At least, that's how it seems to me.
- IggleSniggle 5y ago
  There’s an argument around growing / shrinking a market here. Have you ever experienced morbid fascination? Some people get addicted to the experience of horror (I don’t mean the genre). This arguably creates a new demand for something that even those demanding it would not otherwise have had any interest in. I think you’re right about the dangers of giving authority over what does and doesn’t get censored, but there are also very real dangers on the other side of this. You don’t make consuming heroin normative, because you don’t want to make it easy to fall into an addiction by accident for those who are more prone to do so. The more harm the addiction causes to society as a whole, the more prerogative you have to protect people from accidentally becoming addicted.
  - rglullis 5y ago
    We "protected" people from heroin addiction by getting a State-sponsored opiod addiction.
- aklemm 5y ago
  This doesn’t produce a good outcome because violent, indefensible bad actors shout down others and each one drives away 100 reasonable people. Yours is naive idea, though I recognize you are advocating for the good of all.
malthuswaswrong 5y ago
>Within reason of course, nobody wants Nazis or Pedophiles to spread their opinions because they are obscene. Who decides what's reasonable? Who decides what constitutes a "Nazi" or a "Pedophile"? If someone tries to suggest that convicting a 14 year old girl as a sex offender for having nude photos of herself on her phone is preposterous that person can be effectively silenced by labeling them as a pedophile. "But that's ridiculous. Nobody would do that." -Somebody who has never been on the internet. Every idiotic position you can think of exists on the internet, and can be amplified to make it seem like it's a more popular opinion than it really is. The only logical course of action is to allow all speech and let the reader discern for themselves.
- phs318u 5y ago
  > The only logical course of action is to allow all speech and let the reader discern for themselves. The assumption being that most readers are discerning. Kind of reminds of the adage about markets working based on rational actors. In both situations, reality would like a word.
  - krick 5y ago
    No, there's no such assumption. In fact, by virtue of ignoring the main point of his, your post is an example "of the adage about markets working based on rational actors", which doesn't go well with reality. And the point is: "Who decides what's reasonable?" You? Well, yeah, I hope you do for yourself. But I don't want you to dare to even try to decide that for me. Nothing personal, of course: there's no single person on the planet I would trust to do that for me. In other words, it's not about assuming anything about the most readers (it is rather about NOT assuming anything about them). And, in fact, I don't even expect any good outcome "for the most of readers". I am pretty positive most people will find a way to fuck themselves no matter what you do. The only assertion here is that it will be worse for everyone if you TRY to do something about it. I mean, it should be pretty obvious thing to say, as much as people like to tell stories about "how terrible it was when Stalin was in charge" — it is best for everyone if there's no individual or group of people who can enforce their ideas of what is right on the others. (BTW, I don't believe that this is really avoidable too. It happes one way or the other. The only thing that makes me say anything about this, is that this is just scary that half of the society today doesn't even understand that they SHOULD TRY to prevent anyone from being able to control what they say or think. They WANT to be controlled. They WANT to fuck themselves and everyone around them.)
thebigman433 5y ago
Elon Musk is buying Twitter to increase his wealth, mindshare, and influence. He does not actually care about free speech, and its naïve to think that he is buying the platform for "altruistic" reasons. He is also the lead of a company that has seemingly fired an employee for posting about their publicly available features, and is also facing one of the biggest labor lawsuits ever in the state of California. He is a billionaire who has built huge amounts of wealth by exploiting people, and he wants to control the flow of information and build his wealth even more.
- Gollapalli 5y ago
  He built huge amounts of wealth by building rocket ships and electric cars because he's worried about the earth becoming uninhabitable and thinks we need to be an interplanetary civilization. This is a dude who's dedicated his entire life to (in his mind) save all of humanity from certain doom. I think it's a bit disingenuous to say that it's all just exploitation.
  - ryan_lane 5y ago
    He bought both of those companies. It's a bit disingenuous to say he built them.
    - Gollapalli 5y ago
      I buy a broken down camaro. The windshield is gone. The sheetmetal is rusted. The frame is bent. The motor needs rebuilt. I patch/replace the sheetmetal, and paint it. I straighten the frame. I rebuild the motor, and put a supercharger on it to boot. It’s a pretty nice little hot rod, and it was busted before. But you tell me, did I buy it or build it?
      - ryan_lane 5y ago
        You buy an already functioning camaro factory that restores camaros, you do basically nothing in terms of hiring or management, you shitpost on twitter all day and hire an army of twitter bots to promote the amazing work you're doing on building that camaro. But you tell me, did you buy that camaro, or did you build it?

laverya 5y ago

> nobody wants Nazis or Pedophiles to spread their opinions because they are obscene. I want both sets of people to expose their views to the public. Disgusting though these views may be, it is safer for society if individuals are able to check and decide that someone else's views are reprehensible. If the people are merely told such by authorities, with the "offending" content immediately removed, then the authorities have enormous power to expand the definition of "offending" when it pleases them to do so.

GoOnThenDoTell 5y ago
People aren’t ironclad in their current views of right and wrong for all topics, its possible to convince people of really anything with enough exposure
- malthuswaswrong 5y ago
  >its possible to convince people of really anything with enough exposure Not really. You can spend days, weeks, and months; millions of dollars; thousands of paid shill accounts; all geared towards selling a single lie. And that lie can be exposed to millions of people in 10 seconds for free. But only if there is free speech.
colordrops 5y ago
Agreed, the neo-nazis were fringe and people laughed at their marches. Now that they are taken entirely too seriously, the attention and victimization has empowered them to recruit and grow. The deplatforming has had the opposite of the intended effect, instead putting them in a spotlight.
- phs318u 5y ago
  Except that's not quite the sequence that occurred to my recollection. With the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, what was previously "unsayable" was being said by the highest voices, directly legitimising fringe voices and empowering many that previously self-regulated to an extend for fear of judgement. That fear proved unfounded as it turned out and media (both MSM and social) amplified all sorts of previously fringe content. It's only once the push-back began that companies, fearing for their bottom line in some form or other (customers moving, regulation, legal fights) began turfing people off their platforms. At least, that's how it seems to me.
IggleSniggle 5y ago
There’s an argument around growing / shrinking a market here. Have you ever experienced morbid fascination? Some people get addicted to the experience of horror (I don’t mean the genre). This arguably creates a new demand for something that even those demanding it would not otherwise have had any interest in. I think you’re right about the dangers of giving authority over what does and doesn’t get censored, but there are also very real dangers on the other side of this. You don’t make consuming heroin normative, because you don’t want to make it easy to fall into an addiction by accident for those who are more prone to do so. The more harm the addiction causes to society as a whole, the more prerogative you have to protect people from accidentally becoming addicted.
- rglullis 5y ago
  We "protected" people from heroin addiction by getting a State-sponsored opiod addiction.
aklemm 5y ago
This doesn’t produce a good outcome because violent, indefensible bad actors shout down others and each one drives away 100 reasonable people. Yours is naive idea, though I recognize you are advocating for the good of all.

malthuswaswrong 5y ago

>Within reason of course, nobody wants Nazis or Pedophiles to spread their opinions because they are obscene. Who decides what's reasonable? Who decides what constitutes a "Nazi" or a "Pedophile"? If someone tries to suggest that convicting a 14 year old girl as a sex offender for having nude photos of herself on her phone is preposterous that person can be effectively silenced by labeling them as a pedophile. "But that's ridiculous. Nobody would do that." -Somebody who has never been on the internet. Every idiotic position you can think of exists on the internet, and can be amplified to make it seem like it's a more popular opinion than it really is. The only logical course of action is to allow all speech and let the reader discern for themselves.

phs318u 5y ago
> The only logical course of action is to allow all speech and let the reader discern for themselves. The assumption being that most readers are discerning. Kind of reminds of the adage about markets working based on rational actors. In both situations, reality would like a word.
- krick 5y ago
  No, there's no such assumption. In fact, by virtue of ignoring the main point of his, your post is an example "of the adage about markets working based on rational actors", which doesn't go well with reality. And the point is: "Who decides what's reasonable?" You? Well, yeah, I hope you do for yourself. But I don't want you to dare to even try to decide that for me. Nothing personal, of course: there's no single person on the planet I would trust to do that for me. In other words, it's not about assuming anything about the most readers (it is rather about NOT assuming anything about them). And, in fact, I don't even expect any good outcome "for the most of readers". I am pretty positive most people will find a way to fuck themselves no matter what you do. The only assertion here is that it will be worse for everyone if you TRY to do something about it. I mean, it should be pretty obvious thing to say, as much as people like to tell stories about "how terrible it was when Stalin was in charge" — it is best for everyone if there's no individual or group of people who can enforce their ideas of what is right on the others. (BTW, I don't believe that this is really avoidable too. It happes one way or the other. The only thing that makes me say anything about this, is that this is just scary that half of the society today doesn't even understand that they SHOULD TRY to prevent anyone from being able to control what they say or think. They WANT to be controlled. They WANT to fuck themselves and everyone around them.)

thebigman433 5y ago

Elon Musk is buying Twitter to increase his wealth, mindshare, and influence. He does not actually care about free speech, and its naïve to think that he is buying the platform for "altruistic" reasons. He is also the lead of a company that has seemingly fired an employee for posting about their publicly available features, and is also facing one of the biggest labor lawsuits ever in the state of California. He is a billionaire who has built huge amounts of wealth by exploiting people, and he wants to control the flow of information and build his wealth even more.

Gollapalli 5y ago
He built huge amounts of wealth by building rocket ships and electric cars because he's worried about the earth becoming uninhabitable and thinks we need to be an interplanetary civilization. This is a dude who's dedicated his entire life to (in his mind) save all of humanity from certain doom. I think it's a bit disingenuous to say that it's all just exploitation.
- ryan_lane 5y ago
  He bought both of those companies. It's a bit disingenuous to say he built them.
  - Gollapalli 5y ago
    I buy a broken down camaro. The windshield is gone. The sheetmetal is rusted. The frame is bent. The motor needs rebuilt. I patch/replace the sheetmetal, and paint it. I straighten the frame. I rebuild the motor, and put a supercharger on it to boot. It’s a pretty nice little hot rod, and it was busted before. But you tell me, did I buy it or build it?
    - ryan_lane 5y ago
      You buy an already functioning camaro factory that restores camaros, you do basically nothing in terms of hiring or management, you shitpost on twitter all day and hire an army of twitter bots to promote the amazing work you're doing on building that camaro. But you tell me, did you buy that camaro, or did you build it?