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A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

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Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#271

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?

There are already a large number of fights over this. And the solution is the same: complain and hope for the court of public opinion to go your way.

E.g. breastfeeding on Facebook, lgbt content generally, the drone strike reporting app on iOS, sex work adverts after FOSTA etc.

Then there's the illegal stuff like fraud websites, ddos control domains, and anything to do with copyright infringement.

It's noticeable which people only show up to defend far right speech on the internet.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#272
Despite all the handwringing here, there's no concrete proposal for what to do with rent-seeking attention-seeking deliberatvely difficult individuals whom one has no obligation to entertain the ideas of.

If I were NYU, I would simply never book Milo Whatever-his-name-is. Having to deplatform him indicates that someone wanted to platform him in the first place. Kick his useless ass to the curb/kerb, as the case may be.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#273

> The next challenger to Twitter will not be another centralized platform like Gab. It will be decentralized – perhaps a federation like Mastodon, where each node runs its own CoC and community standards – similar to IRC days. You might want to ask Wil Wheaton what he thinks about Mastodon...

Mastodon is not granular enough, we need a system were every device is a server of content.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#274
post #228

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…

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Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess they'll have to return to sharing their desire to kill black people the old fashioned way, in person. Something you aren't grappling with here is the way the Internet has enabled previously-scattered terrible people to connect and self-radicalize. David Neiwart, who tracked various "patriot", white supremacist, and other fringe groups since the 90s, wrote a very readable book about how things have changed sin…

Actually inciting violence or conspiring to do so is covered under common law statutes and can be easily prosecuted. This is far different, it is companies deciding on their own volition to unilaterally ban entities from accessing the very "pipes". Today it's at the domain level, so the convenience of being able to type in a name versus an IP is what's at stake. What next, ISP's blocking traffic?.. Like I've said it'…

I’m responding to your comment more as a representative of a general sentiment.

The implicit psychological construct behind this little “mini-panic” around fringe groups be “de-platformed” is a common one: something bad is happening, and we are losing freedoms/rights/capabilities we (society) has in the past.

It’s a variation on the notion that “the world is going to hell a hand basket.” The rhetorical fallacy is called “false idealization of the past.”

In fact, the access of everyday people to a variety of mediated forms of communication is at historically unprecedented levels.

In virtually the entire history of human society, access to powerful methods of communication was completely under the control of the elite power structures of the society.

The problem that these new communication platforms are trying to deal with is unprecedented. It turns out there are unexpected consequences of allowing access to mass communication, and means of spreading propaganda, to “fringe” groups like “white supremecists” The problem is unique in a couple of ways.

One is that it is only very recently, very recently, in our society (the US in this case) that the precepts of white supremacy have been “fringe!” In fact these are the hateful ideologies that built much of our modern world, on the backs of those unfortunate to have not been born “white.”

This has been hard fought-for progress, and banishment to the “fringe” of these ideas is a major success. The attempts to drive these ideas even further to the fringe represents a triumph of humanistic values. Especially as reactionary groups inevitably fight back with whatever means they have at hand.

It just happens to have happened right around the time that technology put methods of mass media into the hands of more and more everyday people.

Using “De-Platforming” as a method of social control is entirely civilized, and justified. We have bedrock principles of free speech in the US, but those are almost entirely based around the idea of preventing the government from jailing speakers it diagrees with.

To raise an alarm about, “well, what if your currently considered ‘progressive’ movement is deemed deserving of De-Platforming in the future” is a false alarm, because there simply are no historical examples to draw from. These technologies are too new. (Not just the technology, also the increasing ubiquitousness of networked communication.)

It also pretends that in some philosophical sense, all ideas are equally valid, and is divorcing the content of ideas from the form.

I don’t agree that all points of view are equally valid, and viewing ideas through the lens of “form” over “content” is antithetical to the very core concept of ideas and thought itself.

IMO, people are too quick to trot out “slippery slope” fears about difficult problems. However, we can’t get “off of the slope” in a metaphysical sense. We are alive, until we aren’t,and must navigate the treacherous slopes of reality to the best of our capabilities. As both individuals and as members of society.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#276
post #221

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?

No need to jump to the idea of compulsion. If there were an established social norm that "platform platforms" should make an active attempt to be viewpoint-neutral, chances are that enough of them would voluntarily follow that norm to allow platforms like Gab to continue operating. If the norm isn't established, well, good luck passing a law to force anyone to follow it. Right now, the trend seems to be against such…

Why should "platform platforms" establish a norm attempting to actively appear "viewpoint neutral"?

"come a little closer mouse so that I may better catch you and eat you..."

Why on earth should society bend over backwards to aid spoiled deliberate attention-seekers when there are 7 billion other people who are actually trying to resolve problems that need our actual attention.

These "malingerers" are using up valuable medical staff's time they could be spending upon actually ill patients!

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#277

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?

what the person above me said: SPOT ON!!!

"It's noticeable which people only show up to defend far right speech on the internet."

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#278
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There are already a large number of fights over this. And the solution is the same: complain and hope for the court of public opinion to go your way. E.g. breastfeeding on Facebook, lgbt content generally, the drone strike reporting app on iOS, sex work adverts after FOSTA etc. Then there's the illegal stuff like fraud websites, ddos control domains, and anything to do with copyright infringement. It's noticeable whi…

But gab isn't far right. As I understood it, it's just a Twitter alternative. It doesn't make it inherently left or right.

Many people pointed towards lgbt content being taken down and said: "Look, you guys brought this on yourselves." The implication being that some vocal lgbt people were pushing for censorship of other people, but it ended up being used against themselves.

I think the solution is to require platforms over a certain size to allow all of these things. Platforms are not held responsible for many things due to being platforms. The government could amend those rules and say that if they want to be protected under those rules and they are larger than X then they should allow freedom of expression/speech.

Platforms such as Twitter, reddit, and Facebook are already treated by many like public spaces. Perhaps this would fall in line with their.

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume it means the mass of people might stop using those services (like paypal) because they don't want to support sites that talk about racist things like happens with gab. gab is different than say reddit to me because while reddit might have some people posting racist things or threatning to kill someone or rape them, but reddit will ban them or the group - but allowing for that kind of speech ends up appearing…

Wells Fargo has laundered billions of dollars for drug cartels, yet people have not stopped using them: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/al-capone-meet-wells... If people can't get off their asses to stop working with a company that has worked with organizations responsible for thousands of deaths, I don't think support of Gab is going to drive anyone's payment platform decisions.

but why would any corporation would want virtue signallng opportunity ? Nike has shows that its great for PR

Re: A Heretic's Guide to Deplatforming

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stormfront is still up and running. They had a hard time getting access to the same QOS and pricing as do sites that companies actively want to host, but at some point we're complaining that white nationalists don't get FRAND terms, and it's a little hard to get worked up about that. Gab ran Twitter for White Nationalists off Digital Ocean, Azure, and who knows where else. Gab's users have a disconcerting tendency to…

> Gab's users have a disconcerting tendency to blow up synagogues. The Gab user in question was issuing threats on Twitter as well for months. Twitter did nothing about it. Under your exceptionally poorly formed argument, Twitter's users have a tendency to blow up synagogues (it was actually a shooting). Under your premise, Twitter and Facebook should be forced off the Internet, or otherwise maligned, because the peo…

Your response is inapt, because the comment about Gab’s users “blowing up synagogues “ is a rhetorical argument, not a literal one.

Arguing that if Gab is punished collectively because the shooter posted there, then Twitter should be too, because he posted their as well, is fallacious in its structure.

The original comment you responded to was alluding to the fact that Gab was founded, in part, because twitter and the other big platforms are actively trying to purge “hate speech” from their platforms.’

Yes, the Synagogue shooter posted on both platforms. But Twitter has been trying to minimize and reduce such content, up to banning users, while Gab is actively choosing editorial policies that attract users that spread hate speech!

Gabs existence itself is proof that Twitter is working on this problem and trying to minimize hate speech, and is succeeding to some degree. Gab, on the other hand is trying to increase the amount of hate speech in the world! That is what makes them so deserving of being “De-Platformed.”

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