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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

#411

Post by lmm »

anigbrowl wrote: post #276
devtul wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Saudi Arabia letting women drive was/is deemed a bad idea. Some cultures think it is a bad idea to not cut off the clit of girls. There are Islamic scholars that will go at length on how you should discipline physically your wife, for her own good. In those places/societies opinions against all of it would be considered wrong ideas. If you stiffen speech, you don't just stop the society from regressing, you also r…

Yes, proposing that a group have more rights that they don't currently enjoy is just like saying a group should be suppressed and have their rights curtailed.

It is. The only point where "rights" matter is when two groups of people are in conflict, and each side will always be able to express what they want as a "right" (e.g. making it illegal for other people to describe you in their own terms is your "right to exist").

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

#412

Post by lmm »

AgentME wrote: post #341
drb91 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But when you have the whole internet as your audience, no matter how many times you are refuted, you can say it again and a whole group of people will be hearing it for the first time. Why is that a problem? You can't force people to believe in reality. Might as well have this process happen in the open to actually provide a disincentive to believing conspiracy theories/propaganda/ads/fake news/whatever. Hell, I'll…

>For instance, consider white supremacy: if you give people a choice between social groups and make them feel welcome, they can use simple, self-serving logic to join the one that meets their needs. White supremacy doesn't help white people, rationally, it's just stupid, except for very convoluted goals. Doesn't the fact that white supremacists groups still get members contradict your idea here that people won't join…

> Doesn't the fact that white supremacists groups still get members contradict your idea here that people won't join them?

I think their point was that people join because they aren't welcome anywhere else; if there were other places where those people were welcome, maybe they wouldn't join those groups.

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

#413

Post by candiodari »

specialist wrote: post #272
mirimir wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

A lie is half-way around the world before the truth has its pants on. — Mark Twain Younger me was a free speech ultimatist. Alas, human nature. Propaganda works, so well that people aren’t even aware of changing their minds. Overton windows. Blowback, where refuting further cements the falsehood. Belief as attire. Etc, etc.

And, as has been clearly illustrated, "trusted" news source can't always be trusted either. So preventing "lies" (lie is almost always a matter of perspective) to spread ... is really always also preventing people from finding out the truth.

We just used to find that acceptable. Wars have been started by fake news from "reputable" sources. If fake news regulations become widespread and usable, they would be trivially easy for the rich and the government to abuse for censorship.

Can you imagine how this would have gone had the president had the ability to prevent "fake news" from spreading ?

https://globalnews.ca/news/4209011/trump-immigrant-animal-fa...

(I would argue that in Europe this "fake news" censorship is in fact pretty much normal. Only ... a part of the fake news isn't fake at all, but rather embarrassing to the government. The situation with rioting in French cities is 100x worse than sites like "Le Monde" report (which ones? Let's just say any > 1 mil ppl and there's only a few you'd be wrong about. Nice is pretty damn bad, for instance. Destruction in the city center every friday. You should see the security measures shops are taking, wtf). And other things that the government doesn't like get extremely downplayed as well : France was pretty much shut down due to a student strike in Paris for Macron's labor laws 3 times, and twice for his agricultural policy (both of which are downright abusive, and I'd say the protests were very justified) ... and there was a small mention of a protest march in Le Monde. Mass car torchings are a weekly occurrence since 2005 or so where I live. It baffles me, but it really looks like they're literally doing this just to save face for that asshole Macron. I get it ... I get it. He "saved Europe", especially after Brexit. He also fucked up France, and that matters more to me, and should matter more to French media and French voters. It's absurd because there literally isn't a single person in France that doesn't know these events happen, so what's the point of keeping them out of newspapers ? Do they think people will just forget ?)

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

#414

Post by thecabinet »

superkuh wrote: post #406
CM30 wrote: post #86

This sort of thing illustrates the biggest issue with web hosting, domain registrars and the internet's infrastructure in general; everything is privately owned by companies who get unlimited rights to decide who and what they want to host. The solution is to require all hosting and domain companies to act as utilities, and require neutrality in regards to any content that's legal. They're not private forums or homes…

The solution is not to create more laws which will give the real danger (governments) more power to use their violence. The solution is to simply have everyone host themselves. Even a moderate home broadband connection is more than enough to serve up your personal website. Once you start relying on third parties you've lost. That's their property, not yours. When you claim it is yours and use government violence to e…

It’s impossible to avoid relying on third parties. Somebody has to lease you the DNS name; we’ve already seen that used to punish sites. Somebody has to host your server or sell you an internet connection. Moving to Tor is the only way to protect yourself from those means of punishment, at which point you’ve lost 99.99% of any audience you might’ve had. You might as well just go to a physical newsletter.

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

#415

Post by kanox »

superkuh wrote: post #406
CM30 wrote: post #86

This sort of thing illustrates the biggest issue with web hosting, domain registrars and the internet's infrastructure in general; everything is privately owned by companies who get unlimited rights to decide who and what they want to host. The solution is to require all hosting and domain companies to act as utilities, and require neutrality in regards to any content that's legal. They're not private forums or homes…

The solution is not to create more laws which will give the real danger (governments) more power to use their violence. The solution is to simply have everyone host themselves. Even a moderate home broadband connection is more than enough to serve up your personal website. Once you start relying on third parties you've lost. That's their property, not yours. When you claim it is yours and use government violence to e…

Your ISP is also a private third party. If Microsoft rejects you why wouldn't Comcast? The 70 dollars you pay for a home connection isn't worth dealing with a twitter mob, so they'll gladly boot you.

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

#416

Post by candu »

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 not clear that this is true, though. Psychologically, your average human is likely to assign equal weight to the bad idea and its refutation, which is exactly what you don't want. Moreover, this assumes that people hear both the bad idea and its refutation, as opposed to one or the other from inside whatever cognitive echo chamber they happen to inhabit.

In some cases (climate change denial, flat-earthers, geocentrism, Holocaust denial, etc.), the refutation may also presume a higher level of scientific, historical, or other general knowledge than the bad idea. Bad ideas that play upon our cognitive / perceptual biases have lasted for millenia, and they are very hard to dislodge from the public mind. To some extent, these are all bad ideas that people have to be educated and/or socialized out of.

IMHO, this is one of those precepts that most people want to be true. Unfortunately, we're not yet in that perfectly educated rational utopia :s

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

#417

Post by spicymaki »

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".

>People are better off hearing a bad idea and hearing it refuted then never hearing a bad idea.

That seems like a bad idea. Can you prove that given historical data and current data? Show me where the spread of bad ideas on social networks has been a net positive in large populations. Show me where the refutation of bad ideas has been effective in those populations. Provide a time scale as well.

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

#418

Post by CaptainZapp »

snowwrestler wrote: post #381
0x8BADF00D wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe not. But is one’s life diminished by hearing bad ideas? I don’t think so. For instance, the idea that the Earth is flat is laughable. But my life doesn’t deteriorate nor improve based on that idea. We can all agree it’s a stupid idea, laugh at it, and move on.

Depends on the bad idea. If the bad idea was that you and your family should be killed or forcibly expelled from your jobs and homes, and you heard it discussed seriously and frequently by your neighbors, police officers, and elected officials--yeah, I think that might diminish your quality of life in some ways.

You don't even have to go that far.

Look at anti-vaxxers. A small group of hysterical "do-gooders" educated by bad ideas are doing a lot of harm and if it's up to them would reverse the arguably greatest achievement in medical history.

Kids actually get killed thanks to the efforts of those assholes.

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

#419

Post by spicymaki »

0x8BADF00D wrote: post #300
moomin wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are an infinite number of bad ideas in the world. No-one’s life would be improved by hearing them all.

Maybe not. But is one’s life diminished by hearing bad ideas? I don’t think so. For instance, the idea that the Earth is flat is laughable. But my life doesn’t deteriorate nor improve based on that idea. We can all agree it’s a stupid idea, laugh at it, and move on.

That is clearly untrue. History is just full of bad ideas that has caused the death of untold numbers of people. The problem is that we can’t all agree and people do not move on.

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

#420

Post by yontherubicon »

0x8BADF00D wrote: post #292
anigbrowl wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, proposing that a group have more rights that they don't currently enjoy is just like saying a group should be suppressed and have their rights curtailed.

People don’t get more rights than others. All individuals get the same unalienable rights, and that is a universal truth which is self-evident.

This doesn't work without a universal moral law, an assumption now deprecated in many circles.
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