431–440 of 473 posts
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This isn't an issue of what should be legal. It's an ethical issue.
If it's ethical, it's even more baffling why this would be a problem; providing services to enable and amplify white nationalism is clearly unethical.
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If it's ethical, it's even more baffling why this would be a problem; providing services to enable and amplify white nationalism is clearly unethical.
Censorship is unethical because it's a giant slippery slope of subjectivity. Are we really calling Alex Jones a white supremacist?
What does that actually mean? How would you translate it into any sort of policy short of complete and absolute non-regulation of speech (or, really, anything if you just pick something other than 'censorship' as a scare-word).
As to Jones,
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We should let the crazies advertise themselves as crazies. Bad ideas should be exposed so they can be argued down. Suppressing ideas instead of arguing just creates a Streisand Effect entrenching them. There is another comment here, where someone analyzes the Weimar Republic's actions as doing just this. The Judiciary and Law enforcement seemed biased towards one side, which increased support for the other. The legis…
I don't think you caught the reference. Maybe plug that name into Wikipedia and revisit your argument.
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You are mistaking "good faith" for satisfying others' entitlement The spirit of your complaint here is "there should be a reasonably easy path for me to widely distribute my message without getting the rug pulled out from under me". There is exactly one way to distribute your message, and whether it is easy or hard is up to you. That is: satisfy the requirements of every platform you build on top of, and fill in the…
>You are mistaking "good faith" for satisfying others' entitlement The spirit of your complaint here is "there should be a reasonably easy path for me to widely distribute my message without getting the rug pulled out from under me". There is a reasonably easy path to do exactly that. But it has dependencies, and certain people are manipulating these dependencies in any which way they can to control online discourse.…
When PayPal start banning clients based on their activity outside of monetary transactions, PayPal effectively condemns certain points of view. Which might sound sensible at first, if the views are questionable, but it also implies that not banning an account is a way of endorsing the holder. And just like that, you arrive at the conclusion that PayPal and other service providers are responsible for the moral quality of all their clients, and not just can but have to ban clients who transgress. How's that for freedom of association?
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Censorship is unethical because it's a giant slippery slope of subjectivity. Are we really calling Alex Jones a white supremacist?
Censorship is unethical because it's a giant slippery slope of subjectivity What does that actually mean? How would you translate it into any sort of policy short of complete and absolute non-regulation of speech (or, really, anything if you just pick something other than 'censorship' as a scare-word). As to Jones, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones#White_genocide
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak for me."
— Martin Niemöller
Alex Jones is a paranoid lunatic, misinterpreting a very real assault on demographics like the straight white male as full-on white genocide, as well as many unrelated issues like immigration, but that doesn't really make him a white supremacist. Being afraid that your demographic is being targeted doesn't make you a supremacist. There are many minority demographics right now who validly feel that way. Calling for the extermination of other races would make him a white supremacist. Alex Jones being a white supremacist is a false narrative perpetuated by the informal group of gatekeepers trying to silence his platform.
> How would you translate it into any sort of policy short of complete and absolute non-regulation of speech?
That's false absolutism. You cannot dismiss censorship as a "scare-word". It's scary for a damn good reason. Right now they're only coming for the socialists. Soon they will come for someone you care about, and then I wonder if you will still be so readily apologetic for the information gatekeepers of the new era.
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This isn't an issue of what should be legal. It's an ethical issue.
If it's ethical, it's even more baffling why this would be a problem; providing services to enable and amplify white nationalism is clearly unethical.
The question is of "Fascism" Scope Creep, no? Accepting that big tech companies can decide what is and isn't ethical to "amplify" is going to quash some issues where all sides need to be heard and communicate with each other, into a one-dimensional conception of whatever the most popular liberal people think is over the line into "fascism" at a given historical moment. With millions of dollars a day of US military aid going to Israel, for one thing, and state officials pushing to ban boycotts explicitly in law, I don't think it's silly to worry about this.
I'll say I honestly don't know if Stripe and hosting sites dropping white nationalists sets such a uniformally bad precedent. The material reality of it is pretty good. I'm also not going to treat objectors who talk about free speech like children.
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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. ?
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Censorship is unethical because it's a giant slippery slope of subjectivity What does that actually mean? How would you translate it into any sort of policy short of complete and absolute non-regulation of speech (or, really, anything if you just pick something other than 'censorship' as a scare-word). As to Jones, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones#White_genocide
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak for me." — Martin Niemöller Alex Jones is a paranoid lunatic, misinterpreting a very real…
"How now, how now, chop-logic! What is this?"
--William Shakespeare
a very real assault on demographics like the straight white male
Oh! Never mind, I'll see myself out.
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>You are mistaking "good faith" for satisfying others' entitlement The spirit of your complaint here is "there should be a reasonably easy path for me to widely distribute my message without getting the rug pulled out from under me". There is a reasonably easy path to do exactly that. But it has dependencies, and certain people are manipulating these dependencies in any which way they can to control online discourse.…
After some thought, here is what really matters. The same people who make demands on companies to effect deplatforming are the ones who post about "freedom of association" for those companies when the deed is done. This is not a real argument, just an excuse. When PayPal start banning clients based on their activity outside of monetary transactions, PayPal effectively condemns certain points of view. Which might soun…
PayPal publicly condemned certain points of view long before Gab: prohibiting "the promotion of hate, violence, racial intolerance or the financial exploitation of a crime" was part of the TOS when Gab signed up, as was the fact that the definition of those things was up to PayPal. They don't seem to share you're opinion that non-fraudulent monetary transactions are the only aspect of their business.
And as far as anyone having to ban clients who transgress, when did that happen? As we've tossed around in other threads, you can loudly and proudly make not-banning the core of your business. But you're expressing a personal priority for diverse expression (or at least the type of expression you make welcome, c.f. Gab's Pepe) that other people might not share, or might not prioritize the same way you do. Freedom of association means you make your choice and other people make theirs.
[1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/
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If it's ethical, it's even more baffling why this would be a problem; providing services to enable and amplify white nationalism is clearly unethical.
If you're familiar with Jesse Singal's journalistic work I think it's straightforward for us to consider what was meant above there. The question is of "Fascism" Scope Creep, no? Accepting that big tech companies can decide what is and isn't ethical to "amplify" is going to quash some issues where all sides need to be heard and communicate with each other, into a one-dimensional conception of whatever the most popula…