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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

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.
      - krapp 3y ago
        No, I'm not going to play that game. The validity of my argument does not rest on my ability to draft a specific content policy for a website. I'm not an expert in that field and I assume the process of doing so to standard would require far more time and effort than this conversation is worth. Substack's actual content policy is here[0], and as you can read it already contains prohibitions of various kinds of content. Feel free to substitute "Nazi ideology" with "material that advocates, threatens, or shows you causing harm to yourself, other people, or animals" or "sexually exploitative content" if you like. We're just arguing about where to draw the lines in the sand, but clearly drawing those lines is possible. [0]https://substack.com/content https://substack.com/content
        dbrueck 3y ago
        This whole story is about the fact that the articles you want censored are allowed under Substack's content policy, so I don't think Substack's content policy is a good example for what you're after, no? Like I pointed out at the very beginning, efforts to censor always seem to break down, and one reason for that is that it's hard to come up with coherent policies. It's easy to speak at a super high level about how things ought to be, but once you try to distill those ideas into something that has any practical value - i.e. something that can be actually used and applied - it all starts to fall apart. The result is that platform providers end up in one of 2 main camps: 1) The content does not represent us at all. We set some very broad limits, but for the most part, people can say what they say and we're just providing the platform. 2) Content has to conform to our standards, and application of those standards can and will appear to be completely arbitrary. Neither approach is without its problems, and both approaches anger a lot of people. In general, though, if you're in the business of trying to attract creators and help them build audiences on your platform, #1 is much less bad than #2 - the latter will either limit your ability to get off the ground or will become a millstone when you do.
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.

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.
    - krapp 3y ago
      No, I'm not going to play that game. The validity of my argument does not rest on my ability to draft a specific content policy for a website. I'm not an expert in that field and I assume the process of doing so to standard would require far more time and effort than this conversation is worth. Substack's actual content policy is here[0], and as you can read it already contains prohibitions of various kinds of content. Feel free to substitute "Nazi ideology" with "material that advocates, threatens, or shows you causing harm to yourself, other people, or animals" or "sexually exploitative content" if you like. We're just arguing about where to draw the lines in the sand, but clearly drawing those lines is possible. [0]https://substack.com/content https://substack.com/content
      - dbrueck 3y ago
        This whole story is about the fact that the articles you want censored are allowed under Substack's content policy, so I don't think Substack's content policy is a good example for what you're after, no? Like I pointed out at the very beginning, efforts to censor always seem to break down, and one reason for that is that it's hard to come up with coherent policies. It's easy to speak at a super high level about how things ought to be, but once you try to distill those ideas into something that has any practical value - i.e. something that can be actually used and applied - it all starts to fall apart. The result is that platform providers end up in one of 2 main camps: 1) The content does not represent us at all. We set some very broad limits, but for the most part, people can say what they say and we're just providing the platform. 2) Content has to conform to our standards, and application of those standards can and will appear to be completely arbitrary. Neither approach is without its problems, and both approaches anger a lot of people. In general, though, if you're in the business of trying to attract creators and help them build audiences on your platform, #1 is much less bad than #2 - the latter will either limit your ability to get off the ground or will become a millstone when you do.

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.