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> now we have Visa, Mastercard, Apple, Google, Amazon and Cloudflare deciding what we are and are not allowed to see, read and buy. I think the blame is displa

> now we have Visa, Mastercard, Apple, Google, Amazon and Cloudflare deciding what we are and are not allowed to see, read and buy. I think the blame is displaced. It’s not these nice companies that decide what you are and what you are allowed to see. It’s you. Or more generally - we, the People, ourselves. Indeed: Gab is not using Amazon or Google cloud services, Visa and Mastercard do not serve Gab - it has to rely on checks, money orders and crypto. Gab does not have an app… actually it has, in a way of a web link, copied to your home page - btw I have never seen an app that was better than a web page for the same company, have you? Gab has even launched GabPay, its own payment processor open to others. Gab explicitly promise not to delete anything unless it is found illegal by a court. Still, you the People are not using Gab, you are using Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Why are you not using Gab? Last time I’ve checked it was because Gab… does not delete the content that you the People find objectionable! A cherry on this cake was the decision of some state GOP party committee to delete their Gab account because Gab refuses to censor anti-Semitic content. So, please - do not blame this nice long list of the evil companies. You have at least one alternative. You, the freest people in the world, are not using it. Not enough censorship there.

bavent 4y ago
Maybe there's no censorship, but there's a shitload of white supremacists. Almost exclusively from what I've seen.
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  My point exactly.
  - bavent 4y ago
    Which was what?
    - MikePlacid 4y ago
      Let me copy vetbatim: You have at least one alternative. You, the freest people in the world, are not using it. Not enough censorship there.
      - bavent 4y ago
        Right, what do you mean by that? That Americans aren't using it because they prefer censorship, or that they aren't using it because they're dumb, or some third or fourth points? I'm not sure what you mean.
        thaumasiotes 4y ago
        > Right, what do you mean by that? That Americans aren't using it because they prefer censorship, or that they aren't using it because they're dumb, or some third or fourth points? I'm not sure what you mean. This is pretty obtuse as a response to the comment above you: >>>>>> You have at least one alternative. You, the freest people in the world, are not using it. Not enough censorship there. What could "Not enough censorship there" mean other than that people want more censorship than Gab provides?
        throwaway29812 4y ago
        People prefer sanitized spaces.
        MikePlacid 4y ago
        I prefer sanitized spaces too. I just want to have a sanitizing tool in my own hands - sanitizing what I personally read. But my tool should have no influence on what you will see and read. Moderation is probably needed. But it should be decentralized.
        throwaway29812 4y ago
        Decentralized moderation is a fantasy. Do you want to clean every public bathroom before you enter it ? Uncover every troll personally on Twitter every time you log on? Malign activity (bots and trolls) are organized and at scale, the only way to fight back is at the same scale. Individual users would be helpless.
- stainablesteel 4y ago
  so you're going to let the white supremacists monopolize the free internet?
  - bavent 4y ago
    I would rather they didn't but the post I replied to was about one alternative to things - not any of the other alternatives, like federated systems (Mastodon, etc) or even something like IRC that I love dearly. They picked one of the things that is notorious for being full of white supremacists (and also banning people for being "left wing", as was my experience of disagreeing with a prominent Gab user, on Gab, for which my account was banned. So much for "freedom of speech".)
    - stainablesteel 4y ago
      yeah, i know what you mean they do put in a serious effort though because of how ostracized they are, i can't help but think it will come in handy someday
- narrator 4y ago
  There are other issues such as criticism of lockdowns, vaccine safety, anthropogenic global warming, central bank digital currencies, investigation of certain incidents like the Las Vegas mass shooting, supporting the Russian side of the Ukraine war, etc that will get you banned on other platforms. They are all lumped together in the mind of your average CNN viewer as "white supremacy" unfortunately. Sometimes there are weird glitches in the issue lumping, like when people say that Trump is anti-vax even though Trump has been an advocate of the vaccines.
  - phpthrowaway99 4y ago
    I have a black friend that was almost, sorta, called racist because he said he thinks his house rent in the Berkeley was high because tons of illegal aliens are renting too and driving up demand. He tried to argue that without the millions of illegals in California, taking atleast a million housing units, rent would be cheaper. But everyone was shocked he could even say that. Things are getting comical. As if the actual race or color of the millions of people taking up housing is the actual issue.... Not their legal status. If they were a different color or race he's be ok with it?
    - llanowarelves 4y ago
      Also Mexican is not even a race. Same with Muslim. Etc. The skin color thing was always a strawman. There's slightly different physiology, behavioral tendencies like cultures, which may simply be different (intelligent adaptations by group from their geographical origins). Nobody thinks an albino African is "White". And when the Tanzanian albino gets chopped into a potion by his non-Albino brothers -- an actual crime predicated upon skin color alone -- would we call it a racial hate crime? We barely even talk about that issue internationally.
- hunterb123 4y ago
  There's a shitload of black/white/muslim supremacists on Twitter too. Twitter is almost exclusively toxicity. There's normal people on Gab as well. It's nice if you want to talk about taboo topics during controversial times like lockdowns, certain laptops, certain vaccines, etc.. Basically if you want to escape western propaganda.
dahfizz 4y ago
I think you're misunderstanding. The problem is that payment processors will not do business with "unsavory" customers. It's not about curation or moderation, it's that any porn-adjacent business is locked out of the economy. Me scrolling through gab won't make visa more accepting.
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  Gab has it’s own payment processor, open to others, no need to rely on Mastercard and to be locked out of economy. Or so it seems to me. https://help.gab.com/article/gab-pay-overview https://help.gab.com/article/gab-pay-overview
  - dahfizz 4y ago
    - only works in USA - no fraud protection - no e-commerce integration - a couple months old Maybe it'll catch on and grow, but this is not currently a solution.
    - tsol 4y ago
      I mean at the end of the day payment processors are private businesses, they can do business with who they want. If you don't like the alternative, then you're free to give your business to the entrenched power.
      - Jiro 4y ago
        Payment processors are regulated by the government.
cool_dude85 4y ago
You cannot "show nuts" on Gab, from their ToS you may not: Be obscene, sexually explicit or pornographic. Note that mere nudity e.g. as a form of protest or for educational/medical reasons will not fall foul of this rule.
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  My point was: there exists a platform that is banned by app stores, cloud services and financial processors. It’s demonstrates not just a theoretical possibility to survive without them, it survives and functions… and is shunned by the people.
  - nwiswell 4y ago
    So it does not censor the sort of thing that reasonable people do want censored on their social media, and does censor the sort of things that people don't want arbitrarily censored. And in exchange for that, you get to deal with inconvenient access. Yeah, of course it's shunned. Based on what you've said, it doesn't represent any kind of practical improvement over the status quo, so the question of whether or not it's associated with / frequented by distasteful people doesn't even factor into this.
  - discardedrefuse 4y ago
    Classic martyr. You're making it sound like Gab is "shunned by the people" because it's uncensored. In reality it's an issue of content. The people just aren't interested in Gab's content. And that will never change because that shit content also happens to be the reason for Gab's existence. Gab created a shit platform for shit people to post shit content and you're blaming everyone else for its failure. In contrast, Reddit was plenty successful long before they started censoring to appease their corpo-overlords. The difference was that A) shit wasn't the only content available and B) average users weren't automatically subjected to the shit content that they were hosting.
    - MikePlacid 4y ago
      > Gab created a shit platform for shit people to post shit content I absolutely loved your hate speech. I do not agree with it but will always defend your right to say it. Let me clarify just a couple of points. 1. Here’s what Gab’s founder tells about the purpose of Gab: Gab’s mission is to be the home of free speech online. It seeks to export American values and freedom to the maximum extent permitted by American law to Internet users around the world. Gab concurs with the Committee’s view that these values protect offensive and unpopular speech, but not illegal speech, such as threats. Unlawful speech is not and has never been allowed on Gab. 2. I am pointing at Gab as an example of definite *success*. It survives and functions despite being no-platformed and banned by 25+ service providers over the years including both App Stores, multiple payment processors, and hosting providers. The example of *failure* in this context is another free-speech platform… forgot it’s name - it was deplatformed in 2020 and stopped functioning for a long period of time. Very unprofessional. (Edit: Parler of cause. Parler was deplatformed by Amazon and both app stores - and immediately went down. That’s what failure looks like) So, you may think that they are shit people. Ok. But you’ve failed to silence them, despite trying heavily. Doesn’t it provoke your professional interest - how they managed to do it?
TylerLives 4y ago
>Why are you not using Gab? Last time I’ve checked it was because Gab… does not delete the content that you the People find objectionable! I don't think this is the reason. I've never used Gab but Reddit 10-15 years ago was a lot more free than it is today and it was great. I'm sure there were some people who were displeased with moderation, but in general, most users enjoyed the freedom and diverse(in the real sense) communities that existed there. The change on Reddit and similar websites came from the top. There is no way to be sure about how they did it, but I'm certain it wasn't freely chosen by the users.
- autoexec 4y ago
  Reddit's censorship usually comes in waves following bad press (most users don't care, and the ones that do don't have to go to offensive subreddits, but the press can't resist clickbaity headlines!) and the fear that the bad press will scare away advertisers and whatever new messed up scheme the site is thinking about to make money off the content the internet provides for them at no cost.
  - q-big 4y ago
    > and the fear that the bad press will scare away advertisers Why don't such sites have a similar fear that the measures that they consider to apply to appease the press will scare away users/visitors?
    - autoexec 4y ago
      Fewer advertisers than users? I think they know they'll lose users, but new users are coming in all the time and so every time they push the site father into restrictive censorship a group comes in who never knew it was anything else.
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      We must do something. This is something. We must do it.
kyle-rb 4y ago
The reason I don't use Gab isn't "not enough censorship", it's because none of the people I want to talk to are on there. I use Twitter because the people I like are on there. They often get banned for dumb reasons, and I'd prefer they didn't, but the general network effect of Twitter is strong enough that people will just make new accounts and/or avoid posting stufff that trips the censors. Plus, as some other comments mention, Gab does not in fact "not delete anything unless it is found illegal by a court", their TOS[0] says they can ban you for posting obscenity. Why would I want to go on a website full of white-christian-nationalists if I can't send them goatse? [0] https://gab.com/about/tos https://gab.com/about/tos
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  My (main) point was not that Gab is perfect. The main point was: Gab is banned by all these evil app stores, cloud services and financial processors, still it survives and functions. That means - you can have your ideal Gab without relying on these nice monopolists too. My wish list for such an ideal Gab would be: - only illegal content should be banned and by legal process only; - the moderation should be decentralized and placed in each user’s hands. My blocking you should mean I won’t see you, but all others will. That way you may post all goatses you like, but the “suprematists” (and me) wouldn’t see them. Unless you’ll post some clever things from time to time, not only goatsees, then I would rather read you. But my decision to see or not your posts should not affect other readers. I would even pay for such a platform.
  - projektfu 4y ago
    That was ... kind of the idea behind Google Plus. But I imagine that there would still be loud constituencies who couldn't rest at censoring their own feed.
  - int_19h 4y ago
    https://getaether.net/docs/faq/voting_and_elections/ https://getaether.net/docs/faq/voting_and_elections/ "When you vote in favour of a person, you are making that person a moderator for yourself, regardless of whether they win the vote or not. There is no such thing as becoming a candidate. You just flip the mod switch on from Preferences. This will enable the mod UI in your client, and you can start modding. This will generate moderation graph entities originating from you. These will only be valid for you, and the people who chose you as a mod (i.e. voted for you) in that community. This will also make your name appear on the elections list. From there, people can check your past actions without applying it onto their own client first, and your reasonings for them (Mod actions provide an optional ‘reason’ field to be filled in). If they like what they see, they will vote for you, and for the person voting, you will become a mod. That means your mod actions from that point on will start to affect what that user sees. Election makes it so that the people who come into a community, who have not chosen or disabled that particular mod by themselves, will use the mod list shaped by the elections. If a user has explicitly chosen a particular person to be a mod in that community, that takes precedence. Likewise, if a user has disabled a mod, that person will never be a mod for that user, regardless of the results. That is all being a mod is: some people liking your curation enough that they decide to apply your curation to their own view as well."
phendrenad2 4y ago
Is it too much to ask for porn without racism? Is that a bridge too far for GAB supporters?
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  Thank you for your question. It is another nice illustration of my main point. I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it. That was said in 1750s. My “living experience” of growing up in a totalitarian society tells me that it is not only true, but vital - vital for having a free and prosperous society. American Fathers agreed with Voltaire. But my feeling (which I do not like) is that an easily observable slice of native Americans have forgotten what exactly makes their country so nice to live in. “The lubricant oil is stinky and greasy - let’s get rid of it, car rides will be much more pleasant”. Let me ask you a question in my turn. Why presence of racists on Gab bothers you so? No one forces you to read them or talk with them.
  - phendrenad2 4y ago
    Unfortunately your "main point" misses the reality of the world. > Why presence of racists on Gab bothers you so? No one forces you to read them or talk with them Glad you asked. The presence of racists on Gab makes me unwilling to be "guilty by association" (in the eyes of others) for being on the same site as them. Simple as that. This is a reality in the world, and until you find a way to stop people from instinctively applying the "guilty by association" principle, I'm unwilling to be on the same site as Nazis. Sorry.
  - RavingGoat 4y ago
    But Gab's purpose is racist speech so why go there? They don't allow free speech because if you go there to argue with the racists they ban you. In fact, Gab has even more censorship than Twitter.
    - hooverd 4y ago
      It's a parallel Christian society away from the current Judeo-Bolshevik one. Of course going there to argue with them infringes on their free speech.
sheepdestroyer 4y ago
Falsely equating showing a harmless boob and hate speech, so typically intellectually dishonest. This is the most disturbing about US's entendre of free speech... Hate speech is not speech, banning it is not censorship. What does sex have in common with the actively and directly harmful Garbage that people go on Gab for? Nothing if you're not a troll.
- drdeca 4y ago
  Blasphemy/heresy isn’t speech and banning it isn’t censorship. Now, I want to be clear. While many people when they give the examples of blasphemy and heresy, they mean those as things that they think are actually good, but which people in power in the past thought were bad and therefore censored/punished. That’s not how I’m thinking about these. Blasphemy and heresy are things I view as actually bad. As such, what I’m not saying is not “you supporting restrictions on hate speech is just enforcing your own dead dogma over an actual critical eye!” . No, that’s not what I’m saying. So when I oppose censoring blasphemy/heresy, I am opposing censoring some things which I think are actually bad. Likewise, even though e.g. racism is bad, I don’t conclude that expressing racist fact-claims is “not speech”. It is clearly speech, just bad speech. And as speech, it should be permitted(in some senses of the term “permitted”) in some venues. (Whether the use of slurs needs to be permitted, when there are ways to express whatever claims without using slurs, may be a different question, due to it being a restriction on how something is expressed rather than on what is expressed. However, on the other hand, I do find the definition of “slur” to be, hm, something to ponder? Something that can be initially confusing.) Though, of course, there should also be venues where it is not allowed, just as there are venues where spouting heresies can get one banned.
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  > Hate speech is not speech, banning it is not censorship. What on Earth makes you think so??
  - sheepdestroyer 4y ago
    It is a very common take. For instance : https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/-/hate-speech-is-not-free-speech-says-secretary-general-ahead-of-human-rights-day https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/-/hate-speech-is-not-free-...
seydor 4y ago
> Or more generally - we, the People, ourselves. That is also false. It is a majority that chooses. The majority , also called a mob , has figured out that it's more profitable to weaponize their votes rather than increase human dignity.
hooverd 4y ago
Unless you're a Judeo-Bolshevik, of course. If I wanted the Gab experience I could just browse /pol/ (I don't), but at least 4chan has other interesting boards.
gjm11 4y ago
I think you are failing to distinguish between three possibilities. 1. Most people like censorship, or at least certain kinds of censorship. They don't use Gab because Gab doesn't censor the things they want censored. 2. Most people don't want to be in a forum that's all crazy evil people all the time. They don't use Gab because they think most of the people on Gab are crazy and/or evil. 3. Most people just want to use whatever social network their friends and family use. Maybe also other people they admire or find interesting and want to follow despite not knowing them. They don't use Gab because hardly anyone they know or admire is on Gab and everyone they know is on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or Twitter or whatever. You are claiming it's all about #1. I actually suspect #3 is much the most important effect. The other two may look alike but they are different and I think #2 is much bigger than #1. A hypothetical version of Gab that didn't censor white supremacists, QAnon groupies, people who think the COVID-19 vaccines will enable Bill Gates to control you with 5G networking, etc., but that somehow wasn't (perceived to be) dominated by those people might actually be pretty attractive. It probably still wouldn't get much use because everyone's on other social networks and no one is on Gab, but it would be in with a chance of success. But, of course, if everyone else is running full-scale witch hunts and you make a space that doesn't do that, then all the witches will go there, whether or not that was your goal. I think in Gab's case it was actually their goal, though. They may say that they're all about freedom of speech, and maybe they believe that, but I'm pretty sure that what motivated the creation of Gab was wanting freedom for certain particular kinds of speech. (Note: wanting a space not dominated by X is the same thing as wanting X to be censored, even if it turns out that not censoring X inevitably leads to the space being dominated by X. Someone who leaps off a tall building because he delusionally thinks he can fly doesn't want to fall to the ground and die. Someone who tries to avoid accidental death and fatal diseases doesn't want to suffer gradual decay as a result of aging. Etc.) Anyway: if you want to argue that Gab's lack of success shows that people want censorship, you need to show some actual evidence that it's #1 rather than #2 and #3 that causes it, and so far you haven't.

bavent 4y ago

Maybe there's no censorship, but there's a shitload of white supremacists. Almost exclusively from what I've seen.

MikePlacid 4y ago
My point exactly.
- bavent 4y ago
  Which was what?
  - MikePlacid 4y ago
    Let me copy vetbatim: You have at least one alternative. You, the freest people in the world, are not using it. Not enough censorship there.
    - bavent 4y ago
      Right, what do you mean by that? That Americans aren't using it because they prefer censorship, or that they aren't using it because they're dumb, or some third or fourth points? I'm not sure what you mean.
      - thaumasiotes 4y ago
        > Right, what do you mean by that? That Americans aren't using it because they prefer censorship, or that they aren't using it because they're dumb, or some third or fourth points? I'm not sure what you mean. This is pretty obtuse as a response to the comment above you: >>>>>> You have at least one alternative. You, the freest people in the world, are not using it. Not enough censorship there. What could "Not enough censorship there" mean other than that people want more censorship than Gab provides?
      - throwaway29812 4y ago
        People prefer sanitized spaces.
        MikePlacid 4y ago
        I prefer sanitized spaces too. I just want to have a sanitizing tool in my own hands - sanitizing what I personally read. But my tool should have no influence on what you will see and read. Moderation is probably needed. But it should be decentralized.
        throwaway29812 4y ago
        Decentralized moderation is a fantasy. Do you want to clean every public bathroom before you enter it ? Uncover every troll personally on Twitter every time you log on? Malign activity (bots and trolls) are organized and at scale, the only way to fight back is at the same scale. Individual users would be helpless.
stainablesteel 4y ago
so you're going to let the white supremacists monopolize the free internet?
- bavent 4y ago
  I would rather they didn't but the post I replied to was about one alternative to things - not any of the other alternatives, like federated systems (Mastodon, etc) or even something like IRC that I love dearly. They picked one of the things that is notorious for being full of white supremacists (and also banning people for being "left wing", as was my experience of disagreeing with a prominent Gab user, on Gab, for which my account was banned. So much for "freedom of speech".)
  - stainablesteel 4y ago
    yeah, i know what you mean they do put in a serious effort though because of how ostracized they are, i can't help but think it will come in handy someday
narrator 4y ago
There are other issues such as criticism of lockdowns, vaccine safety, anthropogenic global warming, central bank digital currencies, investigation of certain incidents like the Las Vegas mass shooting, supporting the Russian side of the Ukraine war, etc that will get you banned on other platforms. They are all lumped together in the mind of your average CNN viewer as "white supremacy" unfortunately. Sometimes there are weird glitches in the issue lumping, like when people say that Trump is anti-vax even though Trump has been an advocate of the vaccines.
- phpthrowaway99 4y ago
  I have a black friend that was almost, sorta, called racist because he said he thinks his house rent in the Berkeley was high because tons of illegal aliens are renting too and driving up demand. He tried to argue that without the millions of illegals in California, taking atleast a million housing units, rent would be cheaper. But everyone was shocked he could even say that. Things are getting comical. As if the actual race or color of the millions of people taking up housing is the actual issue.... Not their legal status. If they were a different color or race he's be ok with it?
  - llanowarelves 4y ago
    Also Mexican is not even a race. Same with Muslim. Etc. The skin color thing was always a strawman. There's slightly different physiology, behavioral tendencies like cultures, which may simply be different (intelligent adaptations by group from their geographical origins). Nobody thinks an albino African is "White". And when the Tanzanian albino gets chopped into a potion by his non-Albino brothers -- an actual crime predicated upon skin color alone -- would we call it a racial hate crime? We barely even talk about that issue internationally.
hunterb123 4y ago
There's a shitload of black/white/muslim supremacists on Twitter too. Twitter is almost exclusively toxicity. There's normal people on Gab as well. It's nice if you want to talk about taboo topics during controversial times like lockdowns, certain laptops, certain vaccines, etc.. Basically if you want to escape western propaganda.

dahfizz 4y ago

I think you're misunderstanding. The problem is that payment processors will not do business with "unsavory" customers. It's not about curation or moderation, it's that any porn-adjacent business is locked out of the economy. Me scrolling through gab won't make visa more accepting.

MikePlacid 4y ago
Gab has it’s own payment processor, open to others, no need to rely on Mastercard and to be locked out of economy. Or so it seems to me. https://help.gab.com/article/gab-pay-overview https://help.gab.com/article/gab-pay-overview
- dahfizz 4y ago
  - only works in USA - no fraud protection - no e-commerce integration - a couple months old Maybe it'll catch on and grow, but this is not currently a solution.
  - tsol 4y ago
    I mean at the end of the day payment processors are private businesses, they can do business with who they want. If you don't like the alternative, then you're free to give your business to the entrenched power.
    - Jiro 4y ago
      Payment processors are regulated by the government.

cool_dude85 4y ago

You cannot "show nuts" on Gab, from their ToS you may not: Be obscene, sexually explicit or pornographic. Note that mere nudity e.g. as a form of protest or for educational/medical reasons will not fall foul of this rule.

MikePlacid 4y ago
My point was: there exists a platform that is banned by app stores, cloud services and financial processors. It’s demonstrates not just a theoretical possibility to survive without them, it survives and functions… and is shunned by the people.
- nwiswell 4y ago
  So it does not censor the sort of thing that reasonable people do want censored on their social media, and does censor the sort of things that people don't want arbitrarily censored. And in exchange for that, you get to deal with inconvenient access. Yeah, of course it's shunned. Based on what you've said, it doesn't represent any kind of practical improvement over the status quo, so the question of whether or not it's associated with / frequented by distasteful people doesn't even factor into this.
- discardedrefuse 4y ago
  Classic martyr. You're making it sound like Gab is "shunned by the people" because it's uncensored. In reality it's an issue of content. The people just aren't interested in Gab's content. And that will never change because that shit content also happens to be the reason for Gab's existence. Gab created a shit platform for shit people to post shit content and you're blaming everyone else for its failure. In contrast, Reddit was plenty successful long before they started censoring to appease their corpo-overlords. The difference was that A) shit wasn't the only content available and B) average users weren't automatically subjected to the shit content that they were hosting.
  - MikePlacid 4y ago
    > Gab created a shit platform for shit people to post shit content I absolutely loved your hate speech. I do not agree with it but will always defend your right to say it. Let me clarify just a couple of points. 1. Here’s what Gab’s founder tells about the purpose of Gab: Gab’s mission is to be the home of free speech online. It seeks to export American values and freedom to the maximum extent permitted by American law to Internet users around the world. Gab concurs with the Committee’s view that these values protect offensive and unpopular speech, but not illegal speech, such as threats. Unlawful speech is not and has never been allowed on Gab. 2. I am pointing at Gab as an example of definite *success*. It survives and functions despite being no-platformed and banned by 25+ service providers over the years including both App Stores, multiple payment processors, and hosting providers. The example of *failure* in this context is another free-speech platform… forgot it’s name - it was deplatformed in 2020 and stopped functioning for a long period of time. Very unprofessional. (Edit: Parler of cause. Parler was deplatformed by Amazon and both app stores - and immediately went down. That’s what failure looks like) So, you may think that they are shit people. Ok. But you’ve failed to silence them, despite trying heavily. Doesn’t it provoke your professional interest - how they managed to do it?

TylerLives 4y ago

>Why are you not using Gab? Last time I’ve checked it was because Gab… does not delete the content that you the People find objectionable! I don't think this is the reason. I've never used Gab but Reddit 10-15 years ago was a lot more free than it is today and it was great. I'm sure there were some people who were displeased with moderation, but in general, most users enjoyed the freedom and diverse(in the real sense) communities that existed there. The change on Reddit and similar websites came from the top. There is no way to be sure about how they did it, but I'm certain it wasn't freely chosen by the users.

autoexec 4y ago
Reddit's censorship usually comes in waves following bad press (most users don't care, and the ones that do don't have to go to offensive subreddits, but the press can't resist clickbaity headlines!) and the fear that the bad press will scare away advertisers and whatever new messed up scheme the site is thinking about to make money off the content the internet provides for them at no cost.
- q-big 4y ago
  > and the fear that the bad press will scare away advertisers Why don't such sites have a similar fear that the measures that they consider to apply to appease the press will scare away users/visitors?
  - autoexec 4y ago
    Fewer advertisers than users? I think they know they'll lose users, but new users are coming in all the time and so every time they push the site father into restrictive censorship a group comes in who never knew it was anything else.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    We must do something. This is something. We must do it.

kyle-rb 4y ago

The reason I don't use Gab isn't "not enough censorship", it's because none of the people I want to talk to are on there. I use Twitter because the people I like are on there. They often get banned for dumb reasons, and I'd prefer they didn't, but the general network effect of Twitter is strong enough that people will just make new accounts and/or avoid posting stufff that trips the censors. Plus, as some other comments mention, Gab does not in fact "not delete anything unless it is found illegal by a court", their TOS[0] says they can ban you for posting obscenity. Why would I want to go on a website full of white-christian-nationalists if I can't send them goatse? [0] https://gab.com/about/tos https://gab.com/about/tos

deleted 4y ago
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MikePlacid 4y ago
My (main) point was not that Gab is perfect. The main point was: Gab is banned by all these evil app stores, cloud services and financial processors, still it survives and functions. That means - you can have your ideal Gab without relying on these nice monopolists too. My wish list for such an ideal Gab would be: - only illegal content should be banned and by legal process only; - the moderation should be decentralized and placed in each user’s hands. My blocking you should mean I won’t see you, but all others will. That way you may post all goatses you like, but the “suprematists” (and me) wouldn’t see them. Unless you’ll post some clever things from time to time, not only goatsees, then I would rather read you. But my decision to see or not your posts should not affect other readers. I would even pay for such a platform.
- projektfu 4y ago
  That was ... kind of the idea behind Google Plus. But I imagine that there would still be loud constituencies who couldn't rest at censoring their own feed.
- int_19h 4y ago
  https://getaether.net/docs/faq/voting_and_elections/ https://getaether.net/docs/faq/voting_and_elections/ "When you vote in favour of a person, you are making that person a moderator for yourself, regardless of whether they win the vote or not. There is no such thing as becoming a candidate. You just flip the mod switch on from Preferences. This will enable the mod UI in your client, and you can start modding. This will generate moderation graph entities originating from you. These will only be valid for you, and the people who chose you as a mod (i.e. voted for you) in that community. This will also make your name appear on the elections list. From there, people can check your past actions without applying it onto their own client first, and your reasonings for them (Mod actions provide an optional ‘reason’ field to be filled in). If they like what they see, they will vote for you, and for the person voting, you will become a mod. That means your mod actions from that point on will start to affect what that user sees. Election makes it so that the people who come into a community, who have not chosen or disabled that particular mod by themselves, will use the mod list shaped by the elections. If a user has explicitly chosen a particular person to be a mod in that community, that takes precedence. Likewise, if a user has disabled a mod, that person will never be a mod for that user, regardless of the results. That is all being a mod is: some people liking your curation enough that they decide to apply your curation to their own view as well."

phendrenad2 4y ago

Is it too much to ask for porn without racism? Is that a bridge too far for GAB supporters?

MikePlacid 4y ago
Thank you for your question. It is another nice illustration of my main point. I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it. That was said in 1750s. My “living experience” of growing up in a totalitarian society tells me that it is not only true, but vital - vital for having a free and prosperous society. American Fathers agreed with Voltaire. But my feeling (which I do not like) is that an easily observable slice of native Americans have forgotten what exactly makes their country so nice to live in. “The lubricant oil is stinky and greasy - let’s get rid of it, car rides will be much more pleasant”. Let me ask you a question in my turn. Why presence of racists on Gab bothers you so? No one forces you to read them or talk with them.
- phendrenad2 4y ago
  Unfortunately your "main point" misses the reality of the world. > Why presence of racists on Gab bothers you so? No one forces you to read them or talk with them Glad you asked. The presence of racists on Gab makes me unwilling to be "guilty by association" (in the eyes of others) for being on the same site as them. Simple as that. This is a reality in the world, and until you find a way to stop people from instinctively applying the "guilty by association" principle, I'm unwilling to be on the same site as Nazis. Sorry.
- RavingGoat 4y ago
  But Gab's purpose is racist speech so why go there? They don't allow free speech because if you go there to argue with the racists they ban you. In fact, Gab has even more censorship than Twitter.
  - hooverd 4y ago
    It's a parallel Christian society away from the current Judeo-Bolshevik one. Of course going there to argue with them infringes on their free speech.

sheepdestroyer 4y ago

Falsely equating showing a harmless boob and hate speech, so typically intellectually dishonest. This is the most disturbing about US's entendre of free speech... Hate speech is not speech, banning it is not censorship. What does sex have in common with the actively and directly harmful Garbage that people go on Gab for? Nothing if you're not a troll.

drdeca 4y ago
Blasphemy/heresy isn’t speech and banning it isn’t censorship. Now, I want to be clear. While many people when they give the examples of blasphemy and heresy, they mean those as things that they think are actually good, but which people in power in the past thought were bad and therefore censored/punished. That’s not how I’m thinking about these. Blasphemy and heresy are things I view as actually bad. As such, what I’m not saying is not “you supporting restrictions on hate speech is just enforcing your own dead dogma over an actual critical eye!” . No, that’s not what I’m saying. So when I oppose censoring blasphemy/heresy, I am opposing censoring some things which I think are actually bad. Likewise, even though e.g. racism is bad, I don’t conclude that expressing racist fact-claims is “not speech”. It is clearly speech, just bad speech. And as speech, it should be permitted(in some senses of the term “permitted”) in some venues. (Whether the use of slurs needs to be permitted, when there are ways to express whatever claims without using slurs, may be a different question, due to it being a restriction on how something is expressed rather than on what is expressed. However, on the other hand, I do find the definition of “slur” to be, hm, something to ponder? Something that can be initially confusing.) Though, of course, there should also be venues where it is not allowed, just as there are venues where spouting heresies can get one banned.
MikePlacid 4y ago
> Hate speech is not speech, banning it is not censorship. What on Earth makes you think so??
- sheepdestroyer 4y ago
  It is a very common take. For instance : https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/-/hate-speech-is-not-free-speech-says-secretary-general-ahead-of-human-rights-day https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/-/hate-speech-is-not-free-...

seydor 4y ago

> Or more generally - we, the People, ourselves. That is also false. It is a majority that chooses. The majority , also called a mob , has figured out that it's more profitable to weaponize their votes rather than increase human dignity.

hooverd 4y ago

Unless you're a Judeo-Bolshevik, of course. If I wanted the Gab experience I could just browse /pol/ (I don't), but at least 4chan has other interesting boards.

gjm11 4y ago

I think you are failing to distinguish between three possibilities. 1. Most people like censorship, or at least certain kinds of censorship. They don't use Gab because Gab doesn't censor the things they want censored. 2. Most people don't want to be in a forum that's all crazy evil people all the time. They don't use Gab because they think most of the people on Gab are crazy and/or evil. 3. Most people just want to use whatever social network their friends and family use. Maybe also other people they admire or find interesting and want to follow despite not knowing them. They don't use Gab because hardly anyone they know or admire is on Gab and everyone they know is on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or Twitter or whatever. You are claiming it's all about #1. I actually suspect #3 is much the most important effect. The other two may look alike but they are different and I think #2 is much bigger than #1. A hypothetical version of Gab that didn't censor white supremacists, QAnon groupies, people who think the COVID-19 vaccines will enable Bill Gates to control you with 5G networking, etc., but that somehow wasn't (perceived to be) dominated by those people might actually be pretty attractive. It probably still wouldn't get much use because everyone's on other social networks and no one is on Gab, but it would be in with a chance of success. But, of course, if everyone else is running full-scale witch hunts and you make a space that doesn't do that, then all the witches will go there, whether or not that was your goal. I think in Gab's case it was actually their goal, though. They may say that they're all about freedom of speech, and maybe they believe that, but I'm pretty sure that what motivated the creation of Gab was wanting freedom for certain particular kinds of speech. (Note: wanting a space not dominated by X is the same thing as wanting X to be censored, even if it turns out that not censoring X inevitably leads to the space being dominated by X. Someone who leaps off a tall building because he delusionally thinks he can fly doesn't want to fall to the ground and die. Someone who tries to avoid accidental death and fatal diseases doesn't want to suffer gradual decay as a result of aging. Etc.) Anyway: if you want to argue that Gab's lack of success shows that people want censorship, you need to show some actual evidence that it's #1 rather than #2 and #3 that causes it, and so far you haven't.