5 ms·

I agree with this stance both because shining light on bad ideas is generally the better approach, but also because the alternative (censoring the "bad" stuff)

I agree with this stance both because shining light on bad ideas is generally the better approach, but also because the alternative (censoring the "bad" stuff) seems to always break down.

cowpig 3y ago
The proliferation of fascist messaging, on the other hand? Breakdown-proof.
krapp 3y ago
I realize it's radical to say in today's post-truth world but Nazi content is bad, no scare quotes necessary. And censoring it does work, whereas "shining a light on it" only causes it to spread more aggressively.
- throwawa14223 3y ago
  Nazi content is bad, Communist content is equally if not worse. Some people would argue banning sex work related content is just as justified. Who chooses what is bad enough to be censored? A content free-for-all may be the best we can hope for.
  - krapp 3y ago
    No, not everything is a slippery slope. It is possible to ban one kind of content without being forced to inevitably ban all content, or any content anyone might object to. Most human beings are capable of discernment and of comprehending context and nuance in this regard.
    - throwawa14223 3y ago
      And yet we're having a talk about nazis when substack is literally hosting the most vile ideology humanity has ever created. If censorship is on the table communists need to be part of the first batch to go. Since deplatforming works.
    - dbrueck 3y ago
      > It is possible to ban one kind of content Actually, have you done that? If you haven't, you should try because in general it's an extremely difficult problem. The fact that essentially every single platform that has user-generated/-contributed content struggles with this should make it obvious that it's not easy at all. Even the stuff you'd think would be simple (e.g. blocking profanity) is hard, but once you try to nail down things as nebulous as subject matter, it's more or less impossible to define a policy that always works. The most reliable is to have a human apply a "I know it when I see it" standard, but that obviously doesn't scale and is itself subjective. So, if you decide to ban Nazi ideology, that seems good at first. But can someone write a historical post that outlines the ideology so we can learn about it? Seems reasonable. But what if the mere tone of the historical article seems to shine a somewhat positive light on it? What if the article says the ideology is bad overall but had some ideas that were maybe good at their core but then became distorted? It goes on and on and on - for any policy you define, there will be ways for bad stuff to slip through and there will be cases where good stuff gets censored. You may adopt the position that that's good enough, but it is quite hard to "ban one kind of content" effectively.
      - krapp 3y ago
        You're confusing "effectively" with "perfectly." Yes I believe it's possible to effectively censor Nazi ideology without having an objective and universally accepted definition of that, which unambiguously covers all possible edge cases, and despite the possibility of error. We accept a system of laws despite laws being ambiguous, needing humans to recognize context and nuance to interpret. We communicate with language despite words not being defined with the rigidity of mathematical proof. We accept scientific models which fail to perfectly map the territory. To claim that efforts which are imperfect must be abandoned is absurdly defeatist, simply giving in to chaos.
        dbrueck 3y ago
        > You're confusing "effectively" with "perfectly." We'll see! :) Can you please share what you think Substack's content policy should be? Just your rough draft of content guidelines that would "effectively censor Nazi ideology". I'm not talking about vague platitudes but actual rules or guidelines for authors and commenters to follow.
  - nyokodo 3y ago
    > A content free-for-all may be the best we can hope for. Only if we sacrifice innocence from even the few corners it persists in. Nor would content anarchism last if we achieved it as human nature appears to not be anarchic so culture will tend to reject it and there will always be power inequalities that will all result in censorship creeping back in. The best we can hope for is a limited amount of censorship that makes it as easy as possible to be good and happy. That raises a lot of questions about what is reasonable and what is good, but that is where the battleground will be.
    - throwawa14223 3y ago
      The last few years seem to have proven that humanity cannot be trusted to use censorship to enable what is good. I don't want to live under someone else's moral dictatorship and I highly doubt anyone else wants to live under mine. Radical free speech seems the only option.
      - krapp 3y ago
        But "radical free speech" is your moral dictatorship and, in insisting that it is the only viable option, you are insisting everyone else should live under it.
        throwawa14223 3y ago
        Radical free speech is not my moral dictatorship. I want to ban lots of vile groups from speaking. It is a truce.
    - Geisterde 3y ago
      Power inequalities will creep in? Is there a greater power inequality than you and the government? You want the intellectual battleground to be around what gets censored? How does that get decided? If the majority of people want to censor the plight of an oppressed group because its convenient, will that pass? You are willingly throwing away the idea of free information exchange because you are scared of, censorship?
  - imtringued 3y ago
    From the comment section of the substack: "When the situation is not equal, pretending to be neutral favors the oppressors." - Jame Scholl In your scenario you seem to be equating two ideologies that are bad because of different reasons. Nazi content is social darwinist in the sense that they believe in a race war between nations and that it is every race's duty to enslave and extract resources from the inferior races. It is appealing because every Nazi believes that they are part of the chosen race. I haven't seen anything near that level from any communist. The worst thing they do is hate their boss and demand a revolution which is supposed to result in some utopia. When you talk to them about Marxist Leninism most of them tell you that they don't approve of it. There is a difference between wanting fascism as a goal and having facism as a side effect of a flawed ideology. The communist is harmless until the revolution happens. The Nazi will be racist and violent as soon as today.
    - throwawa14223 3y ago
      I don't think I understand your point, but I'm open to trying to understand? You mention that they are bad for different reasons but I think my reasons for opposing them to identical. They are fundamentally evil ideologies (Marxism and Fascism) and they also have each been implemented in a way that each resulted in the mass murder of millions (Nazis and Communists). Edit: Forgot the article 'the' article in the last sentence.
  - arcatech 3y ago
    > Who chooses what is bad enough to be censored? The people who are hosting the content on their servers.
- dbrueck 3y ago
  > "shining a light on it" only causes it to spread more aggressively Do you have any evidence of this? Studies often suggest otherwise, e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0022103173900723 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002210... There are so many problems with censorship, but here are two examples: 1) At a really high level, bad ideas don't hold up well under scrutiny, and censorship literally takes away scrutiny. If you want to weaken the spread of a dumb idea, make its advocates defend it publicly. The most insane and backwards ideas can be made to sound somewhat reasonable in an echo chamber. 2) The quotes around "bad" were a nod to the shifting definition of what is bad. Censorship is appealing when the thing to censor is extreme, but it's a power that is too easily abused. You start off with noble ideas of e.g. censoring "hate" but suddenly realize that that's impossible to define well, and so just about anything can be construed as hateful and, by extension, censorable. Censorship just becomes a cudgel wielded by whoever is currently in power.
  - sasmithjr 3y ago
    I cannot stress enough that I think your second bullet is missing the point by a country mile. The Substack post is specifically talking about Nazi viewpoints, not "bad" viewpoints for some shifting definition of bad. And because we're talking about Nazi views, I think your first bullet then falls apart, too. There's no new scrutiny required for Nazi views because we've already done that work. Additionally, Substack is allowing the monetization of (and thus profiting from) Nazi viewpoints. That's more than "shining a light on it".
    - dbrueck 3y ago
      Ok, so play along for a minute: what should Substack's policy about Nazi stuff be, specifically? If you were tasked with defining their policy on just this one subject matter, what would you come up with?
      - chris_wot 3y ago
        Demonetize them. Their only benefit is to publish their work, nothing more. That would not stop freedom of speech, but I can’t understand why you would pay them for their objectionable and vile views.

I agree with this stance both because shining light on bad ideas is generally the better approach, but also because the alternative (censoring the "bad" stuff) seems to always break down.

cowpig 3y ago

The proliferation of fascist messaging, on the other hand? Breakdown-proof.

krapp 3y ago

I realize it's radical to say in today's post-truth world but Nazi content is bad, no scare quotes necessary. And censoring it does work, whereas "shining a light on it" only causes it to spread more aggressively.

throwawa14223 3y ago
Nazi content is bad, Communist content is equally if not worse. Some people would argue banning sex work related content is just as justified. Who chooses what is bad enough to be censored? A content free-for-all may be the best we can hope for.
- krapp 3y ago
  No, not everything is a slippery slope. It is possible to ban one kind of content without being forced to inevitably ban all content, or any content anyone might object to. Most human beings are capable of discernment and of comprehending context and nuance in this regard.
  - throwawa14223 3y ago
    And yet we're having a talk about nazis when substack is literally hosting the most vile ideology humanity has ever created. If censorship is on the table communists need to be part of the first batch to go. Since deplatforming works.
  - dbrueck 3y ago
    > It is possible to ban one kind of content Actually, have you done that? If you haven't, you should try because in general it's an extremely difficult problem. The fact that essentially every single platform that has user-generated/-contributed content struggles with this should make it obvious that it's not easy at all. Even the stuff you'd think would be simple (e.g. blocking profanity) is hard, but once you try to nail down things as nebulous as subject matter, it's more or less impossible to define a policy that always works. The most reliable is to have a human apply a "I know it when I see it" standard, but that obviously doesn't scale and is itself subjective. So, if you decide to ban Nazi ideology, that seems good at first. But can someone write a historical post that outlines the ideology so we can learn about it? Seems reasonable. But what if the mere tone of the historical article seems to shine a somewhat positive light on it? What if the article says the ideology is bad overall but had some ideas that were maybe good at their core but then became distorted? It goes on and on and on - for any policy you define, there will be ways for bad stuff to slip through and there will be cases where good stuff gets censored. You may adopt the position that that's good enough, but it is quite hard to "ban one kind of content" effectively.
    - krapp 3y ago
      You're confusing "effectively" with "perfectly." Yes I believe it's possible to effectively censor Nazi ideology without having an objective and universally accepted definition of that, which unambiguously covers all possible edge cases, and despite the possibility of error. We accept a system of laws despite laws being ambiguous, needing humans to recognize context and nuance to interpret. We communicate with language despite words not being defined with the rigidity of mathematical proof. We accept scientific models which fail to perfectly map the territory. To claim that efforts which are imperfect must be abandoned is absurdly defeatist, simply giving in to chaos.
      - dbrueck 3y ago
        > You're confusing "effectively" with "perfectly." We'll see! :) Can you please share what you think Substack's content policy should be? Just your rough draft of content guidelines that would "effectively censor Nazi ideology". I'm not talking about vague platitudes but actual rules or guidelines for authors and commenters to follow.
- nyokodo 3y ago
  > A content free-for-all may be the best we can hope for. Only if we sacrifice innocence from even the few corners it persists in. Nor would content anarchism last if we achieved it as human nature appears to not be anarchic so culture will tend to reject it and there will always be power inequalities that will all result in censorship creeping back in. The best we can hope for is a limited amount of censorship that makes it as easy as possible to be good and happy. That raises a lot of questions about what is reasonable and what is good, but that is where the battleground will be.
  - throwawa14223 3y ago
    The last few years seem to have proven that humanity cannot be trusted to use censorship to enable what is good. I don't want to live under someone else's moral dictatorship and I highly doubt anyone else wants to live under mine. Radical free speech seems the only option.
    - krapp 3y ago
      But "radical free speech" is your moral dictatorship and, in insisting that it is the only viable option, you are insisting everyone else should live under it.
      - throwawa14223 3y ago
        Radical free speech is not my moral dictatorship. I want to ban lots of vile groups from speaking. It is a truce.
  - Geisterde 3y ago
    Power inequalities will creep in? Is there a greater power inequality than you and the government? You want the intellectual battleground to be around what gets censored? How does that get decided? If the majority of people want to censor the plight of an oppressed group because its convenient, will that pass? You are willingly throwing away the idea of free information exchange because you are scared of, censorship?
- imtringued 3y ago
  From the comment section of the substack: "When the situation is not equal, pretending to be neutral favors the oppressors." - Jame Scholl In your scenario you seem to be equating two ideologies that are bad because of different reasons. Nazi content is social darwinist in the sense that they believe in a race war between nations and that it is every race's duty to enslave and extract resources from the inferior races. It is appealing because every Nazi believes that they are part of the chosen race. I haven't seen anything near that level from any communist. The worst thing they do is hate their boss and demand a revolution which is supposed to result in some utopia. When you talk to them about Marxist Leninism most of them tell you that they don't approve of it. There is a difference between wanting fascism as a goal and having facism as a side effect of a flawed ideology. The communist is harmless until the revolution happens. The Nazi will be racist and violent as soon as today.
  - throwawa14223 3y ago
    I don't think I understand your point, but I'm open to trying to understand? You mention that they are bad for different reasons but I think my reasons for opposing them to identical. They are fundamentally evil ideologies (Marxism and Fascism) and they also have each been implemented in a way that each resulted in the mass murder of millions (Nazis and Communists). Edit: Forgot the article 'the' article in the last sentence.
- arcatech 3y ago
  > Who chooses what is bad enough to be censored? The people who are hosting the content on their servers.
dbrueck 3y ago
> "shining a light on it" only causes it to spread more aggressively Do you have any evidence of this? Studies often suggest otherwise, e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0022103173900723 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/002210... There are so many problems with censorship, but here are two examples: 1) At a really high level, bad ideas don't hold up well under scrutiny, and censorship literally takes away scrutiny. If you want to weaken the spread of a dumb idea, make its advocates defend it publicly. The most insane and backwards ideas can be made to sound somewhat reasonable in an echo chamber. 2) The quotes around "bad" were a nod to the shifting definition of what is bad. Censorship is appealing when the thing to censor is extreme, but it's a power that is too easily abused. You start off with noble ideas of e.g. censoring "hate" but suddenly realize that that's impossible to define well, and so just about anything can be construed as hateful and, by extension, censorable. Censorship just becomes a cudgel wielded by whoever is currently in power.
- sasmithjr 3y ago
  I cannot stress enough that I think your second bullet is missing the point by a country mile. The Substack post is specifically talking about Nazi viewpoints, not "bad" viewpoints for some shifting definition of bad. And because we're talking about Nazi views, I think your first bullet then falls apart, too. There's no new scrutiny required for Nazi views because we've already done that work. Additionally, Substack is allowing the monetization of (and thus profiting from) Nazi viewpoints. That's more than "shining a light on it".
  - dbrueck 3y ago
    Ok, so play along for a minute: what should Substack's policy about Nazi stuff be, specifically? If you were tasked with defining their policy on just this one subject matter, what would you come up with?
    - chris_wot 3y ago
      Demonetize them. Their only benefit is to publish their work, nothing more. That would not stop freedom of speech, but I can’t understand why you would pay them for their objectionable and vile views.