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This is an imaginary dichotomy, though. The proponents of content moderation on social media argue that hate speech causes tangible harm. For example, there are

This is an imaginary dichotomy, though. The proponents of content moderation on social media argue that hate speech causes tangible harm. For example, there are many mass shooters that say that they got radicalized purely online, such as Dylan Roof. This is not intangible harm, it is tangible.

mrhands556 4y ago
There will always be insane people in this world. Was Hitler and the nazis radicalized through the internet? Was Timothy McVeigh? Censoring people out of the fear semi casual relationships occurring between them and radicalization doesn’t work. It’s not like people who apt to deeply believe radical ideas once their source becomes censored they just stop there. Human beings don’t work like that. I don’t believe libsoftiktok is causing real world harm.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  > Was Hitler and the nazis radicalized through the internet? They radicalized millions of people via their speech, which is the correct level of abstraction. Whether it was offline or online speech is a distinction without a difference. > There will always be insane people in this world. Mono-causal explanations are factually wrong. The Dylan Roofs of the world clearly have severe mental health problems, combined with being radicalized online by other people's speech. It's the union of all these factors that causes the observed outcome. > I don’t believe libsoftiktok is causing real world harm. Well, it's harder to make a case for libsoftiktok than places like 4chan. I think it's reasonable to say that 4chan et al. have literally caused people to die via mass shootings.
bnralt 4y ago
Sure, but where is the line drawn? A lot of political rhetoric across the board is pretty extreme. The guy who shot up a Republican Congressional baseball game at baseball practice was into a lot of anti-GOP and anti-Trump stuff[1]: > He had also joined several anti-GOP Facebook groups, including “Terminate The Republican Party;” “The Road to Hell Is Paved With Republicans;” and “Join The Resistance Worldwide!!” I'm all for people toning things down. But the entire online ecosystem seems to be full of various factions warring against each other with extreme rhetoric. Even the discussion of extreme rhetoric is filled with extreme rhetoric ("These people are going to get someone killed!"), which can (and is) used to justify all sorts of bad things. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/14/homepage2/james-hodgkinson-profile/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/14/homepage2/james-hodgkinson-pr...

mrhands556 4y ago

There will always be insane people in this world. Was Hitler and the nazis radicalized through the internet? Was Timothy McVeigh? Censoring people out of the fear semi casual relationships occurring between them and radicalization doesn’t work. It’s not like people who apt to deeply believe radical ideas once their source becomes censored they just stop there. Human beings don’t work like that. I don’t believe libsoftiktok is causing real world harm.

hackerlight 4y ago
> Was Hitler and the nazis radicalized through the internet? They radicalized millions of people via their speech, which is the correct level of abstraction. Whether it was offline or online speech is a distinction without a difference. > There will always be insane people in this world. Mono-causal explanations are factually wrong. The Dylan Roofs of the world clearly have severe mental health problems, combined with being radicalized online by other people's speech. It's the union of all these factors that causes the observed outcome. > I don’t believe libsoftiktok is causing real world harm. Well, it's harder to make a case for libsoftiktok than places like 4chan. I think it's reasonable to say that 4chan et al. have literally caused people to die via mass shootings.

bnralt 4y ago

Sure, but where is the line drawn? A lot of political rhetoric across the board is pretty extreme. The guy who shot up a Republican Congressional baseball game at baseball practice was into a lot of anti-GOP and anti-Trump stuff[1]: > He had also joined several anti-GOP Facebook groups, including “Terminate The Republican Party;” “The Road to Hell Is Paved With Republicans;” and “Join The Resistance Worldwide!!” I'm all for people toning things down. But the entire online ecosystem seems to be full of various factions warring against each other with extreme rhetoric. Even the discussion of extreme rhetoric is filled with extreme rhetoric ("These people are going to get someone killed!"), which can (and is) used to justify all sorts of bad things. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/14/homepage2/james-hodgkinson-profile/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/14/homepage2/james-hodgkinson-pr...