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Far left is pretty obvious in its meaning: outside of the Overton window, to the left. People on the far left seem to refuse to understand that their views are

Far left is pretty obvious in its meaning: outside of the Overton window, to the left. People on the far left seem to refuse to understand that their views are rejected by 95% of the population. Nazis were not "just an example". They are literally always the example that is brought up, because they are a particularly emotive topic. The reality is that actual Nazis are extremely rare, and justifying defederation on the basis of their existence is equivalent to justifying child sex reassignment surgery in general because of the tiny percentage of intersex people. It is that absurd.

maxbond 3y ago
Nazis are rare in general, but pretty common on, yanno, Nazi forums. Just like not many people engage in the expensive sport of racing hotrods, but there are a lot of them on hotrod forums. They get kicked off of mainstream platforms so they often end up in the fediverse. So yeah, if you start up a Mastodon server and federate with everyone - you're gunnuh federate with Nazis. They might be a minority, but trolls always in the minority, that doesn't mean they can't cause trouble. If you haven't encountered Nazis on the internet, I don't know what to say, you must be hanging out in some pretty chill communities. I see someone promoting Nazi adjacent conspiracy theories on HN every few months, and a couple times I've seen literal Nazis here. You know why I don't see them more often? Because their posts get flagged and their accounts get banned. "Free speech advocates" plug their ears when you bring this up, at which point everyone else ("far left" or not - and there are about as many literal leftist radicals as there are Nazis) is forced to stop taking them seriously because they refuse to have a productive conversation. It's also a bit of an oxymoron to intimate that "far left" politics, where it's defined by you as being "outside the Overton window" as being common and influential enough to engage in widespread censorship. If they're so powerful and widespread - then clearly they aren't outside the Overton window? Clearly we're talking about something pretty mainstream?
- memefrog 3y ago
  You're demonstrating just the problem. "Nazi-adjacent conspiracy theories". Can you elaborate on what that means? Because this is the sort of language that is used all the time by people to tar anything right of Chairman Mao as 'fascist'. For example is it a 'Nazi-adjacent conspiracy theory' to point out all the times that European leaders have stated unequivocally that they want to bring in large numbers of people from third world countries to substitute for the workers that Europe lacks because of plummeting birth rates? >You know why I don't see them more often? Because their posts get flagged and their accounts get banned. "Free speech advocates" plug their ears when you bring this up at which point everyone else (...) is forced to stop taking them seriously because they refuse to have a productive conversation. What are you talking about? Nobody plugs their ears when it is brought up that people get banned from Internet forums. It is common knowledge, universally accepted, that people get banned from here sometimes, and that people's posts get flagged and hidden. And why put free speech advocates in quotes? It suggests you are distancing yourself from the term. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but the impression I get from your post is that you don't think that free speech advocates are genuine in their advocacy. I might be reading more into it than there is, though. Either way, I have no idea what you're trying to say. What are people being wilfully blind about? And don't reply telling me that I 'refuse to have a productive conversation' and I'm 'plugging my ears' please. >("far left" or not - and there are about as many literal leftist radicals as there are Nazis) There are far-left reddit forums with hundreds of thousands of subscribers (some even in the millions). /r/antiwork, /r/socialism, many others besides. /r/antiwork has more than 2.5m subscribers. /r/socialism has around half a million. Are those all dedicated radical left-wing activists? Of course not, but they're still far left. There are way more people on the far left than there have ever been Nazis on the Internet. Man, you literally just need to go to Twitter and look at any political topic and you see hordes of terminally online far-left slacktivists reply-guying to right-wing politicians. >It's also a bit of an oxymoron to intimate that "far left" politics, where it's defined by you as being "outside the Overton window" as being common and influential enough to engage in widespread censorship. If they're so powerful and widespread - then clearly they aren't outside the Overton window? Clearly we're talking about something pretty mainstream? The fediverse is absurdly niche. Even Twitter itself is actually very niche in the grand scheme of things, in this realm. Widely used by celebrities? Sure. Widely used to discuss politics by actual people? No. I'm not sure I've ever met anyone else in real life that discussed politics online outside of occasionally commenting on Facebook posts. This isn't an unusual experience. Discussing politics on Twitter is very niche. Discussing politics on the fediverse is about 1000x more niche. So yeah it's not that hard for the far left to dominate a couple of online platforms used by, realistically, a few thousand people. They're tiny and politically irrelevant in the real world (in elections) but of course they can still dominate extremely niche web forums used exclusively by terminally online techies, like Mastodon.

maxbond 3y ago

Nazis are rare in general, but pretty common on, yanno, Nazi forums. Just like not many people engage in the expensive sport of racing hotrods, but there are a lot of them on hotrod forums. They get kicked off of mainstream platforms so they often end up in the fediverse. So yeah, if you start up a Mastodon server and federate with everyone - you're gunnuh federate with Nazis. They might be a minority, but trolls always in the minority, that doesn't mean they can't cause trouble. If you haven't encountered Nazis on the internet, I don't know what to say, you must be hanging out in some pretty chill communities. I see someone promoting Nazi adjacent conspiracy theories on HN every few months, and a couple times I've seen literal Nazis here. You know why I don't see them more often? Because their posts get flagged and their accounts get banned. "Free speech advocates" plug their ears when you bring this up, at which point everyone else ("far left" or not - and there are about as many literal leftist radicals as there are Nazis) is forced to stop taking them seriously because they refuse to have a productive conversation. It's also a bit of an oxymoron to intimate that "far left" politics, where it's defined by you as being "outside the Overton window" as being common and influential enough to engage in widespread censorship. If they're so powerful and widespread - then clearly they aren't outside the Overton window? Clearly we're talking about something pretty mainstream?

memefrog 3y ago
You're demonstrating just the problem. "Nazi-adjacent conspiracy theories". Can you elaborate on what that means? Because this is the sort of language that is used all the time by people to tar anything right of Chairman Mao as 'fascist'. For example is it a 'Nazi-adjacent conspiracy theory' to point out all the times that European leaders have stated unequivocally that they want to bring in large numbers of people from third world countries to substitute for the workers that Europe lacks because of plummeting birth rates? >You know why I don't see them more often? Because their posts get flagged and their accounts get banned. "Free speech advocates" plug their ears when you bring this up at which point everyone else (...) is forced to stop taking them seriously because they refuse to have a productive conversation. What are you talking about? Nobody plugs their ears when it is brought up that people get banned from Internet forums. It is common knowledge, universally accepted, that people get banned from here sometimes, and that people's posts get flagged and hidden. And why put free speech advocates in quotes? It suggests you are distancing yourself from the term. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but the impression I get from your post is that you don't think that free speech advocates are genuine in their advocacy. I might be reading more into it than there is, though. Either way, I have no idea what you're trying to say. What are people being wilfully blind about? And don't reply telling me that I 'refuse to have a productive conversation' and I'm 'plugging my ears' please. >("far left" or not - and there are about as many literal leftist radicals as there are Nazis) There are far-left reddit forums with hundreds of thousands of subscribers (some even in the millions). /r/antiwork, /r/socialism, many others besides. /r/antiwork has more than 2.5m subscribers. /r/socialism has around half a million. Are those all dedicated radical left-wing activists? Of course not, but they're still far left. There are way more people on the far left than there have ever been Nazis on the Internet. Man, you literally just need to go to Twitter and look at any political topic and you see hordes of terminally online far-left slacktivists reply-guying to right-wing politicians. >It's also a bit of an oxymoron to intimate that "far left" politics, where it's defined by you as being "outside the Overton window" as being common and influential enough to engage in widespread censorship. If they're so powerful and widespread - then clearly they aren't outside the Overton window? Clearly we're talking about something pretty mainstream? The fediverse is absurdly niche. Even Twitter itself is actually very niche in the grand scheme of things, in this realm. Widely used by celebrities? Sure. Widely used to discuss politics by actual people? No. I'm not sure I've ever met anyone else in real life that discussed politics online outside of occasionally commenting on Facebook posts. This isn't an unusual experience. Discussing politics on Twitter is very niche. Discussing politics on the fediverse is about 1000x more niche. So yeah it's not that hard for the far left to dominate a couple of online platforms used by, realistically, a few thousand people. They're tiny and politically irrelevant in the real world (in elections) but of course they can still dominate extremely niche web forums used exclusively by terminally online techies, like Mastodon.