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

Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

thehill.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 565 posts

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#41

Post by yifanl »

Nadya wrote: post #31

A common argument in philosophy is that bad ideas should occur in the open - where everyone may ridicule them. When they are cast to the shadows they can grow, under everyone's noses, in private where only there are they allowed to exist. In private, these bad ideas cannot be challenged by others and people will be convinced to believe in them, with nobody challenging the idea as a genuinely terrible idea. It gives b…

I don't think that's true.

If there is a sufficiently large group of willing listeners (or determined trolls), then having a bad idea out there in reach of that audience legitimizes it far faster than private discussion could. At which point, challenging them invites the creation of a cult rather than dispersing the idea.

For a frivolous example, my roommate is now convinced that the Star Wars prequels are legitimately good movies because of r/PrequelMemes.

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#42

Post by X6S1x6Okd1st »

Nadya wrote: post #31

A common argument in philosophy is that bad ideas should occur in the open - where everyone may ridicule them. When they are cast to the shadows they can grow, under everyone's noses, in private where only there are they allowed to exist. In private, these bad ideas cannot be challenged by others and people will be convinced to believe in them, with nobody challenging the idea as a genuinely terrible idea. It gives b…

I'd love to see an analysis of if this theory is true. There's another argument for allowing hateful speech which is that it is a containment strategy. It appears that there isn't much to that theory. An analysis of reddit's 2015 banning on r/fatpeoplehate and r/coontown did not see the hateful speech increase where 'migrants' went.

http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#43

Post by gamblor956 »

kodablah wrote: post #40
Nadya wrote: post #31

A common argument in philosophy is that bad ideas should occur in the open - where everyone may ridicule them. When they are cast to the shadows they can grow, under everyone's noses, in private where only there are they allowed to exist. In private, these bad ideas cannot be challenged by others and people will be convinced to believe in them, with nobody challenging the idea as a genuinely terrible idea. It gives b…

> I wait to see what will be next on the chopping block. I wish we didn't have to wait. I wish there was a large enough group of people that would boycott companies that make up the internet infrastructure (e.g. ISPs, registrars, DNS, CDNs, cloud providers, etc) for censoring lawful content. I wish we didn't require mass media articles to get groups of consumers to act in a common interest. And I would prefer it was…

There was no government involvement in this. Microsoft made a business decision that hosting Gab would subject them to business pressures from other customers/potential customers not wanting to use a service used by hatemongers.

That's not censorship. That's the free market at work. Gab is free to host their own website; and if necessary their own DNS servers. Hell, they're free to go Tor-only.

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#44

Post by inevitable2 »

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." -John Gilmore

Lately this is getting absurd. I believe this quote is still true, but the amount of 'I don't like what is being said so therefore you should be silenced' is going too far. I don't agree with what this guy said (or even know who he is aside from what was said in the article), but I'm alarmed that Microsoft would go after Gab for a user on Gab's platform.

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#45

Post by lylecubed »

Nadya wrote: post #31

A common argument in philosophy is that bad ideas should occur in the open - where everyone may ridicule them. When they are cast to the shadows they can grow, under everyone's noses, in private where only there are they allowed to exist. In private, these bad ideas cannot be challenged by others and people will be convinced to believe in them, with nobody challenging the idea as a genuinely terrible idea. It gives b…

> A common argument in philosophy is that bad ideas should occur in the open - where everyone may ridicule them.

Not to get too far off topic, but is this actually true in practice in the real world? Scientific studies have shown that the idea that gets repeated the most often is the idea that "wins". A bad idea gets repeated and spread every time it gets criticized. If the idea proves more "credible" than the criticism of it, then all that criticism does is contribute to the spread of the idea it's trying to kill.

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#46

Post by mrguyorama »

BryantD wrote: post #37
Nadya wrote: post #31

A common argument in philosophy is that bad ideas should occur in the open - where everyone may ridicule them. When they are cast to the shadows they can grow, under everyone's noses, in private where only there are they allowed to exist. In private, these bad ideas cannot be challenged by others and people will be convinced to believe in them, with nobody challenging the idea as a genuinely terrible idea. It gives b…

That common argument rests on norms established by millennia of relatively difficult communication. Best not to assume that the same people would come to the same conclusions today. For example, QAnon believers have not had their speech restricted. That conspiracy theory is as open as anything you could name. People have challenged it. It's still going. If you believe that challenging terrible ideas makes those who h…

A number of other silly ideas that still hold traction and do actual damage despite being out in the open and actively refuted:

Moon landing conspiracy

Anti-vaccers/Vaccines cause autism

Fad diets and "detox"s

Anti-intellectualism

Alex Jones (to the tune of millions of subscribers on his recently killed youtube)

Global Warming

etc

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#47

Post by driverdan »

> Neo-Nazi deletes anti-Semitic posts from 'alt-right' Twitter

Who writes these terrible headlines? Why do these blogspam sites refuse to put the actual topic in the subject?

This makes it sound like Twitter is alt-right. It's not even accurate since Gab isn't political or "alt-right," Nazis use it because they refuse to censor.

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#48

Post by kodablah »

gamblor956 wrote: post #43
kodablah wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wait to see what will be next on the chopping block. I wish we didn't have to wait. I wish there was a large enough group of people that would boycott companies that make up the internet infrastructure (e.g. ISPs, registrars, DNS, CDNs, cloud providers, etc) for censoring lawful content. I wish we didn't require mass media articles to get groups of consumers to act in a common interest. And I would prefer it was…

There was no government involvement in this. Microsoft made a business decision that hosting Gab would subject them to business pressures from other customers/potential customers not wanting to use a service used by hatemongers. That's not censorship. That's the free market at work. Gab is free to host their own website; and if necessary their own DNS servers. Hell, they're free to go Tor-only.

> There was no government involvement in this

I know that, I am clearly saying I don't want it for any consumer-led efforts.

> That's not censorship

Did you mean to say it's not government censorship or do we just have different definitions of the word? Whether they can host their own site or whatever has absolutely nothing to do with what is and isn't censorship.

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#49

Post by [deleted] »

gamblor956 wrote: post #43
kodablah wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wait to see what will be next on the chopping block. I wish we didn't have to wait. I wish there was a large enough group of people that would boycott companies that make up the internet infrastructure (e.g. ISPs, registrars, DNS, CDNs, cloud providers, etc) for censoring lawful content. I wish we didn't require mass media articles to get groups of consumers to act in a common interest. And I would prefer it was…

There was no government involvement in this. Microsoft made a business decision that hosting Gab would subject them to business pressures from other customers/potential customers not wanting to use a service used by hatemongers. That's not censorship. That's the free market at work. Gab is free to host their own website; and if necessary their own DNS servers. Hell, they're free to go Tor-only.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

#50

Post by slater »

driverdan wrote: post #47

> Neo-Nazi deletes anti-Semitic posts from 'alt-right' Twitter Who writes these terrible headlines? Why do these blogspam sites refuse to put the actual topic in the subject? This makes it sound like Twitter is alt-right. It's not even accurate since Gab isn't political or "alt-right," Nazis use it because they refuse to censor.

> Gab isn't political or "alt-right"

haha, good one!

Post reply on HN