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Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

thehill.com

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

#171

Post by che_shirecat »

CommieBobDole wrote: post #54
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…

This has been my position as well for a long time, but I'm starting to feel like there's an unexpectedly enormous number of people out there with zero ability to critically evaluate information, and it seems as if all a terrible idea needs in order to gain critical mass is that it be emotionally satisfying and generally known. I honestly don't know where we go from here - I continue to believe that giving the state t…

The alt-right playbook (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaPgDQkmqqM) is a great summary of common experiences with this sort of cancer online. It's next to impossible to engage with these people for rational debate, when all they care about is spreading their hatred and ignorance through the virality of the internet, rendering pointless any civil discussion by arguing in bad faith.

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

#172

Post by adamsea »

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…

Inciting violence is not free speech, just like yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater is not free speech.

The article clearly states that the removed comments incite violence:

> "Microsoft received a complaint about specific posts on Gab.ai that advocate ‘ritual death by torture’ and the ‘complete eradication’ of all Jews. After an initial review, we have concluded that this content incites violence, is not protected by the First Amendment, and violates Microsoft Azure’s acceptable use policy," Microsoft said in a statement to The Hill.

Are you suggesting that this type of language should be protected by free speech laws?

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

#173

Post by weirdstuff »

qop wrote: post #148
braythwayt wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That argument works well in relatively small social groups where people generally can be relied upon to act in good faith, and where there are social disincentives to clinging to bad ideas after they have been refuted. When you have a small group with social bonds, you don't have to worry about a bad actor constantly repeating their already-refuted arguments to people who haven't heard the refutation. But when you ha…

HN is well into the territory of censoring, rather than moderation. Let's be real here. Ever since dang, it's been a free fall.

I'd add it's not just HN, but most social sites are far into self-censorship territory. I agree though, HN is much more hostile these days.

WRT dang, even today he shut down a thread regarding the deepening SEC inquiry into Musk (which had new news as of this afternoon), and said that this was something along the lines of "Musk hysteria" or some such thing.

I was kind of shocked at the removal of that thread as it was covering a new development, and was not, as dang put it, a dupe or hysteric.

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

#174

Post by mxfh »

tinalumfoil wrote: post #126
braythwayt wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That argument works well in relatively small social groups where people generally can be relied upon to act in good faith, and where there are social disincentives to clinging to bad ideas after they have been refuted. When you have a small group with social bonds, you don't have to worry about a bad actor constantly repeating their already-refuted arguments to people who haven't heard the refutation. But when you ha…

People are better off hearing a bad idea and hearing it refuted then never hearing a bad idea. You could say, "well then detractors of the idea will have to keep refuting it" and you'd be right. That's how public forums work, and I hope you don't take everything your parent's believed for granted just because their detractors have already been "refuted".

It's too easy to come up with, spam and spread bad ideas, but actual work to refute them. As long as people are not paid to refute bad actors with an agenda, bad views will eventually stand unchallenged and make life worse for everyone for the profit an amusement of a view. As said refuting partially worked in small communities, but not on a global audience scale where the is no effective way of social sanctions, that would happen in smaller knit ones.

So, in the light of this spreading provenly bad ideas shouldn't be made as cheap of a process that it is now.

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

#175

Post by fvdessen »

acdha wrote: post #96
partiallypro wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that most of these existed well before the internet and were just as widespread. Generally the people who post this stuff are the people already preconditioned to believe it. These people also have their views emboldened when they see it is banned...they view it as some conspiracy to hide the "truth." IMO, these bans against Alex Jones aren't going to have the good intended result they were meant to. If anything…

> Note that most of these existed well before the internet and were just as widespread. Do you have a citation for that? It seems unlikely that the Internet didn’t increase the reach for fringe views by making them available to everyone rather than just the few who requested conspiracy materials by mail.

> just the few who requested conspiracy materials by mail.

I remember conspiracy theory / UFO magazines being more widely distributed than regular newspapers. There's even a joke on that in the first Men in Black movie.

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

#176

Post by samlevine »

Threats of violence already violate Gab's ToS:

"Users are prohibited from calling for the acts of violence against others, promoting or engaging in self-harm, and/or acts of cruelty, threatening language or behaviour that clearly, directly and incontrovertibly infringes on the safety of another user or individual(s)."

https://gab.ai/about/guidelines

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

#177

Post by anigbrowl »

will_dev_4_food wrote: post #104
anigbrowl wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And who decides what is and isn't a silly idea? This is a bad faith argument. I say so because the purported mechanism for such decision-making is actually spelled out upthread, and because this rhetorical question is then followed by a glaring fallacy of composition that seeks to draw a general conclusion from a single and highly over-simplified example.

It’s not a silly example but rather a common one. Many years ago it was only the fat that were attractive because they were the financially secure. Many believed that royalty were th only form of legitimate government, and colonial activity among “savages” was doing them all a favor. Science, academics, and even personal experience vary with time. Not all variance that follows is truthful...some is exaggerated purpos…

I didn't say it was silly. Please try to differentiate between the quotation that I'm responding to and what I said in response.

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

#178

Post by mirimir »

mxfh wrote: post #174
tinalumfoil wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are better off hearing a bad idea and hearing it refuted then never hearing a bad idea. You could say, "well then detractors of the idea will have to keep refuting it" and you'd be right. That's how public forums work, and I hope you don't take everything your parent's believed for granted just because their detractors have already been "refuted".

It's too easy to come up with, spam and spread bad ideas, but actual work to refute them. As long as people are not paid to refute bad actors with an agenda, bad views will eventually stand unchallenged and make life worse for everyone for the profit an amusement of a view. As said refuting partially worked in small communities, but not on a global audience scale where the is no effective way of social sanctions, tha…

Yes.

Also, you can refute all you want, but if the bad ideas are better clickbait than your refutations, they will spread faster.

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

#179

Post by dragonwriter »

DanAndersen wrote: post #166
dragonwriter wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone with a server can host content in a technical sense, but can it ever scale without playing ideologically with the big players? For a wide reach via the press, you may need to either buy more (or higher capacity) presses or convince those who already have then of the value of devoting them to your ideas. That's inherent in freedom of the press and the marketplace of ideas. You aren't entitled to someone else'…

Perhaps I was unclear. When I said "scale," I meant it specifically in the context of being able to weather DDoS attacks. By way of analogy, consider you are the owner of a small independent city paper -- the sort you see offered for free in boxes on streetcorners. Now imagine a large corporate entity -- perhaps a competing paper or someone with a personal grudge or a political mission. Every day, they go to all the…

> Has there or has there not been any violation of your rights?

By the attacker? Sure, that's a straightforward violation of property rights.

By a private third party better able to afford to, say, hire guards to protect against that attack for not choosing to allow you to use their resources for that purpose? No.

The fact that people who might commit an attack exist does not give you a claim by right on other private party’s resources as an anticipatory defense.

You might have a policy argument that government should provide public, equal access, content neutral resources for that purpose, but that is a claim of on-balance public benefit, not one to which there is an inherent right by any common conception of which I am aware.

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

#180

Post by spaginal »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #152
mrguyorama wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[flagged]

Amen.
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