A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming • Hacker News Board

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#241

Post by dragonwriter » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 7:15 AM UTC

oh_sigh wrote: post #235

dragonwriter wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a lawsuit where a company owned this mining company town, including all of its roads and sidewalks And when a single company has similar control over the internet, even for a particular group of people such that they are otherwise unreachable (as AT&T once did nationalky over telephone communications), Marsh v. Alabama might be relevant (It might not, since active relaying is not the same of not denying ac…

> And when a single company has similar control over the internet, even for a particular group of people such that they are otherwise unreachable ICANN?

Sure, you'd at least have a debatable case of a First Amendment issue under the Marsh v. Alabama precedent if the federal or a state government was enforcing a content-based deplatforming effort by ICANN.

But that's not at all the actual present issue.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#242

Post by manfredo » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 7:20 AM UTC

jakelazaroff wrote: post #90

manfredo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no paradox of tolerance if we're exclusive talking about the tolerance of speech. Even the most abhorrent words are still just words and do not inherently exclude those that disagree with them. /pol/ and Gab are filled with right wing extremists, but the platforms do tolerate left wing extremists as well. The paradox of tolerance only applies when talking about actions. A group that is actively excluding oth…

I posted this elsewhere in the thread, but it bears repeating here: there is plenty of speech (such as advocacy of violence) that, if we tolerate it, has a net negative impact on speech. Put another way: why would I paint a target on my back by trying to debate people who actively advocate for my murder? I'm much more likely to shut up and stay safe.

Making credible and specific calls for violece (e.g. "actively advocating for your murder" as you put it) is punisheable by law. There does exist a mechanism to punish people actively working towards causing harm, rather than spreading ideas. Of course, many would try to claim that whole ideas should be off limits - but that's essentially a concession that they're advocating using censorship (whether through government or corporate action) to manipulate which ideas can be disseminated through societies.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#243

Post by pjc50 » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 7:31 AM UTC

hakfoo wrote: post #228

amputect wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the alternative to "build your own platforms" though. Are you willing to compel Stripe by threat of force to keep processing credit cards for nazis? Are you willing to completely torpedo freedom of association, as long as the people demanding your company continue associating with them are sufficiently monstrous?

What makes the 'deplatforming' threat viable is that so many critical aspects of an online business are a choice between private-enterprise players. Stripe or Authorize.net. AWS or DigitalOcean. GoDaddy or Namecheap. As you suggest, they have no individual legal obligation to serve a business that may cause bad press/high risk/whatever. But when you can enough of them pointing in the same direction, it creates the ch…

Ah, state-hosted platforms calling for the extermination of Jews. It's not exactly Radio Free Europe, is it?

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#244

Post by colllectorof » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 7:45 AM UTC

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…

> What would it look like for an "anti-deplatforming" initiative to succeed?

Casting mere absence of de-platforming efforts as an initiative definitely gets the golden medal for mental gymnastics in this entire discussion.

>A platform's identity and ability to attract an audience are determined by the activities they accept / cultivate, not vice versa.

It's interesting how you don't factor in the actual value being provided. As if the only thing that can drive people to use a service is whether the company bans the "right" people.

Also, since when does a DNS provider or credit card processor suddenly need an "identity"?

>Gab would like to use Stripe or Paypal because they are trusted payment providers, but those networks felt they'd stop being trusted payment providers if they let Gab stay on.

Users trust PayPal because it moves money in a predictable way without leaking credit card info. This has nothing to do with some unrelated vendor using the system, as long as that vendor isn't scamming people.

Are you seriously advocating baking activism? Do you understand how unstable the entire society will become if more organizations follow this suit in more cases?

>And there's plenty of reason to think they're right: super-permissive platforms exist and work (4chan et al.), they just don't attract the same broad audience.

4chan as opposed to what? Most platforms that are currently at the top of that food chain rose there by being permissive and they're changing their mottos only now, when they feel they can get away with it. Reddit and Twitter used to be staunch advocates of free speech when they actually needed to attract users, instead of relying on the network effect. But that's not even particularly relevant to this discussion.

>When people complain about being deplatformed, they're just saying "the platforms that accept me aren't popular enough". I'm glad our internet is enough of a distributed commons that many platforms are broadly accessible -- but nobody owes you an audience at the most popular ones.

Gab was a social media platform. Their audience wasn't provided to them by PayPal, GoDaddy or Azure. Your argument makes no sense in this context.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#245

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 7:46 AM UTC

PavlovsCat wrote: post #180

tptacek wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that, like, an extremely banal observation? It doesn't mean it does matter either. Meanwhile: what was the point of comparing this situation to internment camps?

Banally true, yes. > It doesn't mean it does matter either. Someone said something doesn't matter because "few people care", just one example of something that mattered and about which also "few people cared" refutes that reasoning. They're not making an argument, they're refuting one. edit: Another example would be Linus' announcement of Linux at the time. Few people cared, in contrast to the people who today find L…

> The point matters more than the comparison used to make it.

Only if we assume the soundbite it's just like when Japanese Americans were put in concentration camps didn't happen.

The point could have been made without the comparison, by writing something like this:

"Surprisingly few people cared" is a very poor metric to apply to a principle of rights and justice.

And then we can discuss how social norms and the legal system interact, rather than have this conversation.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#246

Post by joshuamorton » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 7:49 AM UTC

hakfoo wrote: post #228

amputect wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the alternative to "build your own platforms" though. Are you willing to compel Stripe by threat of force to keep processing credit cards for nazis? Are you willing to completely torpedo freedom of association, as long as the people demanding your company continue associating with them are sufficiently monstrous?

What makes the 'deplatforming' threat viable is that so many critical aspects of an online business are a choice between private-enterprise players. Stripe or Authorize.net. AWS or DigitalOcean. GoDaddy or Namecheap. As you suggest, they have no individual legal obligation to serve a business that may cause bad press/high risk/whatever. But when you can enough of them pointing in the same direction, it creates the ch…

> But when you can enough of them pointing in the same direction, it creates the chilling effect-- a business that's technically legal but can't get the services they need. It basically creates am unspoken private regulation well beyond the actual law of the state.

Yes, but this is how the free market works. That my $.25 artisanal dog cupcake business can't get the services it needs at the price I can afford doesn't raise complaints.

But when we replace dog cupcakes with Nazi chat rooms, suddenly we need the government to step in and subsidize a business which the market has shown is not worth it. In economic terms, the "distaste" of a client is an externality, and there is an increase in price associated with that externality. If the company can't afford it that's just the market at work. So the government providing a platform like this is just the government subsidizing business with negative externalities that the free market was correct tly pricing. It's like subsidies for strip mining or fracking or rhino poaching. But this is something you support in this case.

It's odd to me.

> I tend to think the answer might be non-profit or state-run "service providers of last resort" -- charter-bound to provide service for any legal purpose, no matter how distasteful.

And what if my distateful venture needs redis or windows 10 or a spanner like distributed database, or whatever other service your unflashy system doesn't provide?

Then either I can't get off the ground anyway, or you require that the government service maintain feature parity with all the others, neither of which seems viable.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#247

Post by TheSpiceIsLife » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 7:50 AM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #198

tptacek wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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. You know better than that, and you should know full well I'd expect better of you.

Then why not just write

"Surprisingly few people cared" is a very poor metric to apply to a principle of rights and justice.

?

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#248

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 7:50 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #169

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". This is perfect.

[deleted]

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#249

Post by jakelazaroff » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 7:51 AM UTC

manfredo wrote: post #242

jakelazaroff wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted this elsewhere in the thread, but it bears repeating here: there is plenty of speech (such as advocacy of violence) that, if we tolerate it, has a net negative impact on speech. Put another way: why would I paint a target on my back by trying to debate people who actively advocate for my murder? I'm much more likely to shut up and stay safe.

Making credible and specific calls for violece (e.g. "actively advocating for your murder" as you put it) is punisheable by law. There does exist a mechanism to punish people actively working towards causing harm, rather than spreading ideas. Of course, many would try to claim that whole ideas should be off limits - but that's essentially a concession that they're advocating using censorship (whether through governme…

The problem is that, although plenty of speech that is not a call for violence still causes harm, many free speech zealots (and hateful people, in bad faith) refuse to recognize it as such and consider it "spreading ideas".

Consider: "blood and soil" and "Jews will not replace us" aren't credible and specific calls for violence, but if I encounter an angry group of people chanting them I'm going to feel unsafe, and I'm certainly not going to do or say anything that makes me read as Jewish. This is literally the conduct on Gab that people are defending!

Unfortunately, hate speech creates a zero-sum situation: you have to choose whether to suppress the hate speech, or the people it targets. There's no way to choose both, and supporting Gab here just tells me that my speech doesn't matter. The law defines this narrowly because law must be black and white, but there's no reason we as a society can't see the (really, really, really dark) shades of gray here.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#250

Post by int_19h » Sat, Nov 03, 2018, 8:02 AM UTC

woodruffw wrote: post #103

> Most successful deplatformings are Pyrrhic victories We have reasonable (not perfect!) empirical evidence that this is not the case [1]. It appears that toxic and hateful movements can only resist disapprobation when they develop a sufficiently large, sufficiently public (in the visibility sense, not the publicly-owned sense) channel. Continually disrupting those channels works. [1]: http://comp.social.gatech.edu/p…

It didn't work in Europe. Just look at AfD. That in a country that goes so far in suppressing "toxic and hateful movements", its courts have the power to ban political parties, if their platform deviates too far from the norm.