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A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

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Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#181

Post by ubernostrum »

stcredzero wrote: post #96
mlillie wrote: post #2

This reeks of both-sides-ism and enablement. "Where does it stop?" is the same slippery slope garbage peddled by #HimToo and #BlueLivesMatter acolytes. But even engaging with the question at face value, the answer is very simple, and the author of this piece didn't try very hard if he couldn't find someone who is able to answer it. In fact, the best answer was given by Karl Popper in 1945. > In order to maintain a to…

This reeks of both-sides-ism and enablement. The whole point of Free Speech is to enable all sides of any issue to have their say. That is a fundamental mechanism against totalitarianism. In order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must be intolerant of intolerance. Sorry, but Karl Popper's idea is just Orwellian nightmare fuel. "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength." Tolerance is to live…

The whole point of Free Speech is to enable all sides of any issue to have their say

And that freedom includes the freedom to say "I don't want to be associated with you".

Any "anti-deplatforming" is, of necessity, forced unwilling speech. Which is sort of the opposite of what "free speech" people should be standing up for. If someone doesn't want to lend you their soapbox, the solution is not to put a gun to their head and order them to hand it over; it's to go build your own soapbox. And if enough people are unwilling to associate with you that it's becoming burdensome to maintain your soapbox (difficulty getting materials, etc.), perhaps that's a sign from the marketplace of ideas that your ideas aren't very good.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#182

Post by BurningFrog »

archagon wrote: post #168
BurningFrog wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the "fascism is infectious" theory, under which we are all potential fascists if we just get exposed to the "infection". By this theory fascism is somehow so inherently attractive that is has to be regulated similar to an addictive drug.

People are surprisingly easy to reprogram. You can read countless stories of once-liberal parents turning into hateful conspiracy nuts in their old age out of prolonged exposure to right-wing media. If you see people around you saying “white males are undergoing a genocide” or “brown people are criminals” every day, chances are you’ll eventually start to internalize some of those talking points. Without tremendous ef…

People adapt to their surroundings, and try to fit in, of course.

But that's not unique to fascism. By this argument you'd have to ban all ideologies.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#183

Post by rudolfwinestock »

evrydayhustling wrote: post #152

Reading this article is like watching someone beat the ocean with a stick. What would it look like for an "anti-deplatforming" initiative to succeed? All ideas have equal access to all platforms? Just the big ones? The objective is so poorly formed, it's not even wrong. A platform's identity and ability to attract an audience are determined by the activities they accept / cultivate, not vice versa. Infowars wanted to…

When people complain about being deplatformed, they're just saying "the platforms that accept me aren't popular enough".

What happens when you or those who share your opinions don't get accepted by the popular platforms?

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#184

Post by woodruffw »

woodruffw wrote: post #170
stcredzero wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no conditioning going on. The general population that grew up online in web forums is very much conditioned to accept totalitarian dictates about who can say what, where. Even to the point where they concoct ideology about it. a discussion that's been going on for as long as liberal democracies have existed The US government coming in and telling a private entity, no you must tolerate free speech on your prop…

Not totalitarian (neither of us is in a position of power over the other, and neither of us is advocating for government intervention), and not concocted (these questions belong to a long tradition in Western political thought). If by "conditioned" you mean that public sentiments are changing, sure. But I don't think that demands such a negative description. The company town case is interesting, but it's just a case.…

Per those two points I made above, I want to address some of the claims made in that video:

1. It's immediately apparent that nobody lives on Facebook, in any literal sense. The host's comparison of Chickasaw and Facebook rests on the implicit assumption that there's something equivalent between being denied free expression in the town you live in (where all your belongings are, &c) and being denied a Facebook account. This doesn't ring true to me -- it's clearly far more serious to be denied free expression in one's semipermanent (real-life!) community than it is on a Facebook server.

2. As the host notes, this case is not active law.

More generally, there are some telling omissions in the host's story: company towns and private roads didn't spring out of a pure market, they were subsidized by a roaring post-war defense economy that was being fueled by federal dollars. That fact was undoubtedly bouncing around in the minds of the justices who decided this case.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#186

Post by spaginal »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #160
stcredzero wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise, almost no one cares what a Jehovah's witness has to say. The US government coming in and telling a private entity, no you must tolerate free speech on your property is historical fact and precedent. There is a lawsuit where a company owned this mining company town, including all of its roads and sidewalks. A Jehovah's witness won a lawsuit on the basis of the First Amendment, enabling her to walk about that…

Ain't gonna happen in this case, for two reasons: 1. Jehovah's witnesses tend not to shoot up synagogues, whereas an otherwise typical member of Gab did. 2. Antisemitism isn't a protected class. I can see from your comments that you are one of those, "I'd defend to the death your right to say it," people. I must admit, I would not defend to the death someone's right to spew hate toward Jews. That's not my hill to die…

A muslim shot up a gay night club, we don’t ban Islam or mosques or deplatform Muslims from the internet for holding similarly antisemitic views. To suggest such an action would be roundly decried and the person drummed out.

Similarly, as much as anyone hates antisemitic speech, it IS protected speech because it’s free speech.

At some point we are going to have to decide in this country if we wish to continue forward with the enlightenment and grow up as a society where we actually talk to eachother again, or are we going to descend back into declaring someone a heretic and burning them, or in modern parlance, deplatforming and doxing.

You don’t stop ignorance by banning it or doing virtual book burnings, you stop it by educating people with the ignorant viewpoint.

Banning speech and ideas simply grows it underground, where you never get to witness it through glad handing, but you will experience it at the worst possible outcome instead.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#187

Post by jlizzle30 »

evrydayhustling wrote: post #152

Reading this article is like watching someone beat the ocean with a stick. What would it look like for an "anti-deplatforming" initiative to succeed? All ideas have equal access to all platforms? Just the big ones? The objective is so poorly formed, it's not even wrong. A platform's identity and ability to attract an audience are determined by the activities they accept / cultivate, not vice versa. Infowars wanted to…

Interesting comment. I think you are right but what OP is predicting is the inevitably of the overton window being narrowed on these services via the mechanisms described. This narrowing will lead to more and more services being preformed outside the mainstream over time.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#188

Post by mattsfrey »

It seems like many people are caught up in the details here and missing the wider principles.. What kind of internet do you want? I grew up with an internet that was entirely open and free, there have always been the hate dens and their garbage. I view domain services as essentially infrastructure, not arbitrators of content. If sites/services are being shut down at the infrastructure level, we've entered a new age of the internet and it is terribly frightening.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#189

Post by Natsu »

tptacek wrote: post #164
stcredzero wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likewise, almost no one cares what a Jehovah's witness has to say. The US government coming in and telling a private entity, no you must tolerate free speech on your property is historical fact and precedent. There is a lawsuit where a company owned this mining company town, including all of its roads and sidewalks. A Jehovah's witness won a lawsuit on the basis of the First Amendment, enabling her to walk about that…

It sounds suspiciously as if you're drawing a direct comparison between the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War 2 and Gab getting kicked off GoDaddy. That can't possibly be an argument you really want to make.

That's clearly a refutation by counter-example, not an argument or claimed equivalence of the events.

It's weird that you would try to push such an infamous counter-example out of bounds instead of making an argument.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#190

Post by toasterlovin »

archagon wrote: post #168
BurningFrog wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the "fascism is infectious" theory, under which we are all potential fascists if we just get exposed to the "infection". By this theory fascism is somehow so inherently attractive that is has to be regulated similar to an addictive drug.

People are surprisingly easy to reprogram. You can read countless stories of once-liberal parents turning into hateful conspiracy nuts in their old age out of prolonged exposure to right-wing media. If you see people around you saying “white males are undergoing a genocide” or “brown people are criminals” every day, chances are you’ll eventually start to internalize some of those talking points. Without tremendous ef…

> People are surprisingly easy to reprogram. You can read countless stories of once-liberal parents turning into hateful conspiracy nuts in their old age out of prolonged exposure to right-wing media.

You should be more skeptical of your intuitions about which way the arrow of causality points.

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