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Microsoft threatens to stop hosting Gab unless posts are removed

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

#241

Post by s73v3r_ »

Endy wrote: post #183

I have an alternate solution especially for Gab and Voat. Rather than allowing them to become known cesspits, advertise them to people and say, "see how others' opinions exist" - people will sign up for curiosity, they'll sign up to argue, etc. But most importantly, they'll be there on that platform and perhaps some people will actually learn to communicate openly with people they disagree with or whose views they de…

Yeah, no. People will see the vile toxicity right up front (it's not hidden at all there), and they'll leave in 5 minutes.

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

#242

Post by bitwize »

jewelthief91 wrote: post #209
bitwize wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lately we're sort of learning that absolute freedom to express any opinion you like is kind of a bad idea, especially at web scale. The example of Germany, which is freer and more democratic than the USA despite having strict laws forbidding expressing any sort of Nazi-like opinion, supports this.

How is Germany more free and Democratic? Aren't they purposefully less free because of anti-Nazi laws?

Germany consistently places higher than the USA on international press freedom indices. The press, in general, is a protected institution there, whereas here, blowhards like Trump do their damnedest to intimidate journalists out of doing their job, which is to expose the dealings of government to the public.

And you don't have to read Hackernews for long to see how terminally fucked and anti-freedom the U.S. justice system is. Things like plea bargaining, money bail, and systemic racism in law enforcement and criminal proceedings make U.S. "freedom" illusory unless you're white and wealthy.

As for democracy, it's well known that votes in Congress can be easily bought in the US, far more easily than in Germany's parliament.

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

#243

Post by Covzire »

api wrote: post #200
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'm shocked by how many liberals who really ought to know better are cheering for the deployment of corporate oligopolistic censorship at this scale. We're not talking about just kicking someone off Twitter... now we're talking about kicking them off supposedly neutral public cloud platforms. This is a major escalation and honestly it's changing my mind a bit about the whole issue. I was a fence sitter before but now…

Censorship of legal speech isn't the answer, ever. I can't wait for SV to find it's compass again and return to the love of free speech. That said, I do think we need a solution to have our open platforms where people can avoid certain things they find toxic. I don't want to read ideas from certain people, so letting the end user decide is the best solution.

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

#244

Post by jewelthief91 »

bitwize wrote: post #242
jewelthief91 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Germany more free and Democratic? Aren't they purposefully less free because of anti-Nazi laws?

Germany consistently places higher than the USA on international press freedom indices. The press, in general, is a protected institution there, whereas here, blowhards like Trump do their damnedest to intimidate journalists out of doing their job, which is to expose the dealings of government to the public. And you don't have to read Hackernews for long to see how terminally fucked and anti-freedom the U.S. justice…

How is this freedom attributable in any direct way to restrictions on "hate speech"?

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

#245

Post by s73v3r_ »

inevitable2 wrote: post #44

"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 G…

Characterizing this kind of thing as just "I don't like what you said" is not being honest with your argument.

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

#246

Post by forapurpose »

komali2 wrote: post #79
lylecubed wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 critic…

I would like to know this as well. Case in point, when I was a kindergarten teacher, kids wouldn't have a concept of race. I'd have white girls asking me if I could put their hair in braids like "the tan girls." But by 4th grade I'd be teaching about slavery, racism, etc, and the kids would be then learning about a concept that was utterly nonsensical to the non-racism-indoctrinated kids. So I'm wondering what would…

> by 4th grade I'd be teaching about slavery, racism, etc, and the kids would be then learning about a concept that was utterly nonsensical to the non-racism-indoctrinated kids. So I'm wondering what would happen if I never taught about racism at all.

Assuming these kids are in the U.S., then you omitting the topic from their 4th grade class would only omit a tiny portion of what they encounter in their lives. If my 4th grade teacher omitted something from history class, I don't think it's possible that I've never learned about it (assuming it has some significance).

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

#247

Post by s73v3r_ »

jewelthief91 wrote: post #209
bitwize wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lately we're sort of learning that absolute freedom to express any opinion you like is kind of a bad idea, especially at web scale. The example of Germany, which is freer and more democratic than the USA despite having strict laws forbidding expressing any sort of Nazi-like opinion, supports this.

How is Germany more free and Democratic? Aren't they purposefully less free because of anti-Nazi laws?

But because of those, other groups whom the Nazis and other alt-right groups would have targeted are more free to participate in the conversation.

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

#248

Post by patrickg_zill »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #237
zkms wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well you can host your own website on your own server. Sure, then the people who drove you off Facebook/Amazon/Apple iTunes/Youtube/Azure/EC2/Digitalocean/Cloudflare will go after your DNS registrar and the ISP/CDN/colocation-facility you're using. They won't give up and they'll ruthlessly go after every single commercial entity you do business with. After all, if it's not the government punishing you for speech, i…

Yeah, I don't buy that. If Stormfront and Daily Stormer can still be up, then there can't really be any credibility to that argument.

The DS's original domain and another subsequent one, was deleted or taken over by the registrar, I thought?

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

#249

Post by api »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #221
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".

So tell me how the "refuting" of the idea that Sandy Hook was a hoax caused the harassment of parents of children murdered there to stop?

The people harassing Sandy Hook victims should be arrested for stalking and assault or sued for libel and slander. Letting them talk about it on the Internet just helps the idiots incriminate themselves.

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

#250

Post by gspetr »

anigbrowl wrote: post #117
ilove_banh_mi wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think of a bakery refusing to make a wedding cake for people they disapprove of?

This is a poor point of comparison, since baking the cake doesn't put anyone at risk, whereas an exhortation to commit violence against specific people does.

It's the double standard/selective enforcement by these corporations that most people have the biggest problem with.

There are high profile "violence-inciting" people[0] that are still on Facebook et al.

Those classified by SPLC as hate groups. Google is known to use SPLC's assistance in policing Youtube.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Farrakhan#Allegations_of...

This man sounds much worse than whatever bullshit Alex Jones was peddling.

They have the right to run their businesses in any legal way they see fit, but they most definitely should not be doing any grandstanding like the Cloudflare CEO did, acting as the holier-than-thou defenders of the public, while plenty of even worse actors are still cozy on their platforms.

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