Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Removes Infowars from Podcast Directory

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 287 posts

Re: Apple Removes Infowars from Podcast Directory

#251

Post by jhayward »

resters wrote: post #250
jhayward wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment makes several errors, the most severe of which is the category error of thinking Alex Jones, et. al. are about discussion and dialogue. He is not. He and his ilk are about weaponizing the norms of society to destroy society. They are at war, not having a discussion. It is a fatal error to misunderstand this as a norms vs views issue. It is not. It is war.

> It is war. This brings to mind the war on drugs, war on terror, etc. Typically war is used when we are meant to take sides in support of drastic action without too much thought getting in the way. > He and his ilk are about weaponizing the norms of society to destroy society. I'm honestly not sure from this comment if you are deliberately trolling/baiting or if you just feel a tremendous amount of righteous indigna…

> This brings to mind the war on drugs, war on terror, etc. Typically war is used when we are meant to take sides in support of drastic action without too much thought getting in the way.

No, it isn't meant to dull anyone's thinking or whatever you are implying. It's quite straightforward. Recognize when war is being waged upon you, and act accordingly. Thus the category error attributed to your earlier comment.

> I'm honestly not sure from this comment if you are deliberately trolling/baiting

No, I'm being quite literal. You don't need to do any interpretation, or look for some deep motivation. Recognize when war is being waged. Simple.

> Some people think that a picture of two men holding hands is morally objectionable content, and they seek authority to make their view dominate the public discourse. How is your goal different from theirs other than in the small detail of which content is objectionable?

The fact that you draw an equivalence between a picture of men holding hands and Alex Jone's incitement says that you aren't really engaged in any meaningful discussion. This isn't a classroom, you aren't Plato or Socrates. You aren't interested in debate, you're just trolling.

Re: Apple Removes Infowars from Podcast Directory

#252

Post by tootahe45 »

mrguyorama wrote: post #164
nailer wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Trying to put CNN on the same (low) level as InfoWars is disgusting and a deliberate misrepresentation of fact.

Apart from the obvious acting of Alex Jones, i put post-Trump CNN on the same level as Infowars. Jones definitely puts out less hysteria than CNN if you monitor both youtube channels.

Re: Apple Removes Infowars from Podcast Directory

#253

Post by resters »

Eric_WVGG wrote: post #225
resters wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... but what was going to turn their beliefs around? Educating people about morally correct beliefs is a separate undertaking that is typically what members of the clergy undertake with worshipers. I don't think there is any need for such a role in secular society. If you disagree, don't just downvote this, explain what level of moral education and policing is appropriate in a free society. > ...this move may caute…

> explain what level of moral education and policing is appropriate in a free society. The problem, as I currently perceive it, is not how society performs moral education or policing on adults, but rather how we teach critical thinking skills to children. For a related example, there was an excellent article recently where someone visited a “flat earth” convention and interviewed various participants. What he found…

Interesting thoughts.

I agree that students should learn critical thinking in school, but I'd argue that Alex Jones has not gained popularity by appealing to untrained minds, but by appealing to human emotional needs.

I take solace in the realization that humans are extraordinarily hypocritical. Consider the massive engagement numbers from Youporn in the most religious counties in the US. Belief has virtually nothing to do with action, so there is no reason to be concerned about anyone's beliefs.

People act for emotional reasons that are beneath the level of belief. Jones appeals to people for those reasons, and I fear that censoring him only strengthens the emotional meaning of his existence for his followers, and will motivate them to share his messages more actively now that the content isn't as easy to find by accident.

Re: Apple Removes Infowars from Podcast Directory

#254

Post by resters »

amerkhalid wrote: post #230
resters wrote: post #113

Anyone of average intelligence who spends 30-60 seconds listening to Alex Jones will quickly realize that Jones suffers from some kind of mental illness or personality disorder, and that there is nothing of interest or value to learn from his rants. Those who ignore the obvious signs and still choose to listen to it do so for their own, identity-driven or emotional reasons. This is the same process that causes humans…

No, you don’t always need to shine light on all nastiness on the web to fight it. Do you remember YouTube’s comment section or any other forum without decent moderators? I remember YouTube comments being highly nasty. Many people had installed browser plugins solely to hide YouTube comments. Google finally started to remove nasty comments. And now I rarely ever see horrible comments. In fact, you can actually get use…

What if someone argued that killing food animals is murder and must be due to hate, and wanted a youtube channel about grilling meats to be taken down due to a TOS violation.

The problem with the whole idea of hate speech (which I think is a foolish idea) is that it classifies certain ideas as abhorrent. Ideas cannot be abhorrent, only actions can be.

If ideas were abhorrent, than we would all be guilty just for considering them, even if we decide for now to reject them. Not sure why you would assume that anyone holds non-provisional, permanent beliefs. That's just not how human consciousness works.

Actions can be harassing, inappropriate, etc. But someone simply publishing a private channel that others can encounter only through voluntary choices is not harassing.

Content platforms have the perverse incentive of appealing to society's moral leaders (these days usually politicians). We should resist the idea of legitimizing platform level censorship of content, and instead insist upon the higher standard of enforcing conduct guidelines. If a user harasses other users, that's a problem. If a user self-publishes opinions that are simply expressed as opinions, we should not view that as a problem unless the world we idealize is one in which views not held by moral leaders are always considered abhorrent.

Re: Apple Removes Infowars from Podcast Directory

#255

Post by resters »

jhayward wrote: post #251
resters wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is war. This brings to mind the war on drugs, war on terror, etc. Typically war is used when we are meant to take sides in support of drastic action without too much thought getting in the way. > He and his ilk are about weaponizing the norms of society to destroy society. I'm honestly not sure from this comment if you are deliberately trolling/baiting or if you just feel a tremendous amount of righteous indigna…

> This brings to mind the war on drugs, war on terror, etc. Typically war is used when we are meant to take sides in support of drastic action without too much thought getting in the way. No, it isn't meant to dull anyone's thinking or whatever you are implying. It's quite straightforward. Recognize when war is being waged upon you, and act accordingly. Thus the category error attributed to your earlier comment. > I'…

In the interest of avoiding a flame war, I would like to clarify my comment. Please elaborate on what "war" is being waged. That's a strong statement. Jones is to me equivalent to those guys who wear the "got hates gays" signs and go to college campuses preaching inflammatory stuff, in other words, clowns.

Re: Apple Removes Infowars from Podcast Directory

#256

Post by zaroth »

pvg wrote: post #236
zaroth wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the totality of my comment makes clear the relevance. In the matter of interpreting historical internet posts and judging whether the speaker should be censored or punished for them, or not, the lines are quite blurred. Is there not something worth discussing here — as we examine the reactions to Sarah Jeong, Quinn Jones, Alex Jones.... to me these are all part of the same movement. By which I don’t mean nece…

lines are quite blurred. They aren't. The lines between a professional conspiracy- and snake-oil-monger, a person whose friendship with Nazis made them lose a job offer and a person against whom a targeted smear campaign failed are not at all blurred. These things are not closely related and piling Roseanne Barr on to this blob of amorphous grievance-gunk just makes it more sealion-shaped and sealion-sized. It's not…

If you don’t see any parallels to the NYT firing a new tech editor based on her offensive tweets and the NYT not firing a new tech editor for her offensive tweets, then I can certainly understand how you don’t see any relation to InfoWars being censored, and I won’t press the point.

It seems like you feel like this is all so cut and dry, however the public discussion on all sides would seem to discredit that notion. It’s what NYMag calls, “on the one hand, utterly obvious ... and at the same time muddled and thorny.” [1]

I had to Google the sealion reference, I think you’ve quite abused the term. [2]

[1] - http://nymag.com/selectall/2018/02/why-quinn-norton-and-the-...

[2] - https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/sea-lioning

Re: Apple Removes Infowars from Podcast Directory

#257

Post by zaroth »

tptacek wrote: post #247
pvg wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lines are quite blurred. They aren't. The lines between a professional conspiracy- and snake-oil-monger, a person whose friendship with Nazis made them lose a job offer and a person against whom a targeted smear campaign failed are not at all blurred. These things are not closely related and piling Roseanne Barr on to this blob of amorphous grievance-gunk just makes it more sealion-shaped and sealion-sized. It's not…

Even more clearly, Apple choosing to be selective about who they'll retain in their podcast catalog is not at all the same discussion as The New York Times choosing who to hire . This is practically the textbook case of an unrelated controversy derailing a thread.

My comment was in relation to the waterfall effect which proceeded Apple’s decision to delist InfoWars, not to Apple exercising editorial control over its store, which IMO by itself would be entirely unnewsworthy.

Re: Apple Removes Infowars from Podcast Directory

#258

Post by 394549 »

eksemplar wrote: post #226
394549 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So who determines which companies have the rights to exclude others and which doesn't? You misunderstand: I wasn't commenting on which companies have rights or not, but about which rights companies should have at all, and where their rights stand in relation to those held by individuals. Corporations are not natural persons, they're creatures animated by legislation and can be regulated by it or abolished entirely.

This has absolutely nothing to do with that though. You can't force a company or an individual to listen to your opinion on whether penguins are the greatest birds alive.

> You can't force a company or an individual to listen to your opinion on whether penguins are the greatest birds alive.

No, that's wrong. The government can force a company to provide services to someone, despite however much that company may disagree them, their views, or their identity. A lot of anti-discrimination law works that way. For instance: private individuals have the right not associate with a particular person for any reason, but companies do not.

Re: Apple Removes Infowars from Podcast Directory

#259

Post by pvg »

tptacek wrote: post #247
pvg wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lines are quite blurred. They aren't. The lines between a professional conspiracy- and snake-oil-monger, a person whose friendship with Nazis made them lose a job offer and a person against whom a targeted smear campaign failed are not at all blurred. These things are not closely related and piling Roseanne Barr on to this blob of amorphous grievance-gunk just makes it more sealion-shaped and sealion-sized. It's not…

Even more clearly, Apple choosing to be selective about who they'll retain in their podcast catalog is not at all the same discussion as The New York Times choosing who to hire . This is practically the textbook case of an unrelated controversy derailing a thread.

That's true, the distinction is greater than I made it out to be.

On the other hand, derailment was a serious concern during the industrial revolution and some thread-workers violently opposed new, disruptive technology. This is a technology site. Bears, beets, Battlestar Galactica, all this has happened before and will happen again and is totally not unrelated.

Re: Apple Removes Infowars from Podcast Directory

#260

Post by pvg »

zaroth wrote: post #256
pvg wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lines are quite blurred. They aren't. The lines between a professional conspiracy- and snake-oil-monger, a person whose friendship with Nazis made them lose a job offer and a person against whom a targeted smear campaign failed are not at all blurred. These things are not closely related and piling Roseanne Barr on to this blob of amorphous grievance-gunk just makes it more sealion-shaped and sealion-sized. It's not…

If you don’t see any parallels to the NYT firing a new tech editor based on her offensive tweets and the NYT not firing a new tech editor for her offensive tweets, then I can certainly understand how you don’t see any relation to InfoWars being censored, and I won’t press the point. It seems like you feel like this is all so cut and dry, however the public discussion on all sides would seem to discredit that notion.…

I think my reply [0] over there [1] also works here [2]. So say we all.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17702100

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17702100

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17702036

Post reply on HN