91–100 of 114 posts
I agree with most of the article, but the author faltered in the area I predicted he would before I began to read. He expresses fear that without some restraint that sites might become "like 8chan". To which I have to ask, why is that a problem? Because its a hotbed for hate speech? What is hate speech? I'm sure I dont need to elaborate further on what I see wrong with that. What people seem to forget/ignore is that…
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Radicalization is not about opinions , it is about convincing the radicalized to undertake acts of violence and threats thereof for a political purpose . You get, yeah, that these are also places where these little shitheads gather and decide who to brigade (the aforementioned "oh, hmm, that lady has opinions about video games, let's try real hard to destroy her life" dreck that the various chans indulge in when they…
> Radicalization is [...] about convincing the radicalized to undertake acts of violence and threats thereof for a political purpose I haven't heard it used that way. Wikipedia, abbreviated: > Radicalization is a process by which an individual comes to adopt increasingly radical political, social, or religious ideals and aspirations that reject or undermine the status quo or contemporary ideas and expressions of the…
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Radicalization is not about opinions , it is about convincing the radicalized to undertake acts of violence and threats thereof for a political purpose . You get, yeah, that these are also places where these little shitheads gather and decide who to brigade (the aforementioned "oh, hmm, that lady has opinions about video games, let's try real hard to destroy her life" dreck that the various chans indulge in when they…
> Radicalization is [...] about convincing the radicalized to undertake acts of violence and threats thereof for a political purpose I haven't heard it used that way. Wikipedia, abbreviated: > Radicalization is a process by which an individual comes to adopt increasingly radical political, social, or religious ideals and aspirations that reject or undermine the status quo or contemporary ideas and expressions of the…
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> Radicalization is [...] about convincing the radicalized to undertake acts of violence and threats thereof for a political purpose I haven't heard it used that way. Wikipedia, abbreviated: > Radicalization is a process by which an individual comes to adopt increasingly radical political, social, or religious ideals and aspirations that reject or undermine the status quo or contemporary ideas and expressions of the…
Let's take a concrete example: how about people swapping recipes for chemical weapons and discussing their efficient deployment against unknowing civilians? Or people discussing and developing (largely anonymously) the logistics of mass shootings, with a view to maximizing the body count?
In practice, you see this as well. There's a lot of people posting on the Internet about how they're going to do this and that, but in practice most of them are just blowing off steam.
I get why a site like Facebook which wants to have community standards would like to enforce it, but it should be up to the proprietor.
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1. No, there should not. People should have the freedom to congregate and to discuss. If people are hurt by this, too bad. There is no solution. 2. There isn't one. If I say something, there are some insane people who will hear it, and some of them might kill someone. Too bad, but it doesn't make me a terrorist. 3. Facebook and Google are natural monopolies, and they should be regulated like telecom carriers.
> 1. No, there should not. People should have the freedom to congregate and to discuss. If people are hurt by this, too bad. There is no solution. Hogwash. We have harassment, stalking, libel, defamation, and slander laws in meatspace for a reason. The fact that doing it on the Internet exempts you from these laws because enforcement isn't "cost effective" is a problem . The Libertarian Internet(tm) was tried and fai…
All those are illegal online too. But if I go to the pub and discuss some harassment with my friends that I'm going to do later, the pub clearly isn't held liable for this. Why? Because even if he owns it, the pub owner has no responsibility for what is said inside of the tavern walls.
So, what is taking place on these forums is rarely illegal.
> The question at this point is whether we put laws in place such that individuals can seek cost-effective justice, or whether we wait until so many people get burned that they start clamoring for the government to step on the Internet with jackboots.
And then they move to mailing lists, or FMS. Then what? You going to shut down Tor as well?
My opinion is this: people should grow thicker skin. Those who fail to do so pose a threat to society, insofar as they call for further censorship. Therefore, anyone who is harmed by these people can post-hoc be considered to have deserved it.
It used to be the case that people were recommended to not use their real name on the Internet for basic safety reasons. Now they are encouraged to do so, and whoever doesn't is branded a 'troll'. Who is really at fault here?
Freedom is the right to be wrong. If I am free as long as I only do it "The Right Way", I'm not free. People need to try different things, make mistakes, be foolish. Without that freedom, we become a(n at least metaphoric) theocracy. Society's disapproval cannot be incorporated into law in a free society.
I don't think punching you in the face because I disagree with your opinion is a legitimate form of free expression, so I think your claim is overly broad. Clearly there are some right and wrong ways to express your freedom. Absolute freedom is simply incoherent.
That said, I agree with the general thrust of your point that we need to be forgiving with people's expression. People are imperfect, should be able to make mistakes and they should not suffer for the rest of their lives for earnestly expressing an unpopular opinion or engaging in debate on a contentious issue.
I think this will become a civil rights issue in coming years.
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Is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance relevant here? Also, if you ask for (legal) spaces for "anything goes" content, you need to campaign not just against "hate speech" laws, but all the other laws that prohibit various kinds of information.
Maybe, but probably not. I encourage people to read the full Karl Popper quote, which contains this: In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary ev…
"Internet radicals" have come to life in the real world, and organized such that they threaten violence, either racist ("race war now") or anti-semitic. Popper's point specifically talks about "rational argument", of which the pure rhetoric (as pointed out by Sartre) is the only tool anti-semites have at their disposal. They do not argue with rational argument.
If my mileage does vary, what then?
Marcuse wrote about the requirement of "rational argument" in 1965:
"Now in recalling John Stuart Mill's passage, I drew attention to the premise hidden in this assumption: free and equal discussion can fulfill the function attributed to it only if it is rational expression and development of independent thinking, free from indoctrination, manipulation, extraneous authority. The notion of pluralism and countervailing powers is no substitute for this requirement. One might in theory construct a state in which a multitude of different pressures, interests, and authorities balance each other out and result in a truly general and rational interest. However, such a construction badly fits a society in which powers are and remain unequal and even increase their unequal weight when they run their own course. It fits even worse when the variety of pressures unifies and coagulates into an overwhelming whole, integrating the particular countervailing powers by virtue of an increasing standard of living and an increasing concentration of power."
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I'm not sure at what level the tolerance would end: if there's a group on the Internet which occasionally launches or encourages random acts of violence such as beating up LGBTQ people or a bombing or truck attack, does it deserve to be left in peace? Should only the people who commit the real-world violence be suppressed, and site itself left alone to prepare the next attack? Or does a group need to rise to the leve…
I'm not a big believer in collective guilt. If someone hangs out and shitposts on a marginal forum, what is the responsibility of the other people on that forum for their criminal actions? If they're co-conspirators, that's one thing, but making shitty memes and shooting up a synagogue are very different things. I've noticed that every single one of the recent mass murderers from the white supremacist camp has a Face…
This would make the paradox of tolerance laughably restricted - it would require that we think only on the level of individual action, and that there would need to be nothing short of completely unanimous support for an action. This misses out on the idea of stochastic terrorism. From another angle, let's say there were a society of Nazis in the real world. Most, but not all of the group argue that the Jews should be murdered. One of the group murders a Jew. By your metric, we would only be allowed to revoke tolerance of the group if every member murders a Jew. Isn't that a very high price to pay? Would we only be justified in revoking tolerance from a child porn forum if every member has abused a child?
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Maybe, but probably not. I encourage people to read the full Karl Popper quote, which contains this: In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary ev…
>it says that we may need to physically fight those whose 'opinions' are backed by force or the credible threat of it. "Internet radicals" have come to life in the real world, and organized such that they threaten violence, either racist ("race war now") or anti-semitic. Popper's point specifically talks about "rational argument", of which the pure rhetoric (as pointed out by Sartre) is the only tool anti-semites hav…
But the criterion you're proposing applies just as well to Antifa as it does to the Three Percenters, unless you add in a heaping helping of "has opinions I don't like".
Which I'm unwilling to do, because there are people who don't like my opinions, and this kind of thinking gives them ground to persecute me when it's my turn.
So where do I draw the line? Somewhere between the Patriot Prayer crowd and Atomwaffen, basically. The Proud Boys are skirting right along that line, and catching lengthy prison sentences for their trouble. So I think the system we have is working, and don't feel a need to give it more teeth.
I think the kids who show up in black and start street fights are a gift to the far right. I wish they'd hang it up; their hearts are mostly in the right place, but it's strategically stupid.
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>. If I am free as long as I only do it "The Right Way", I'm not free This is a shallow definition of freedom, the sort of idea of freedom that children instinctively have when they're told to go to bed and start throwing a tantrum and it is largely what the internet was built on, maybe not accidentally by people who in many ways were juvenile adults. There's a deeper version of freedom, a more adult one, that recogn…
> This is a shallow definition of freedom, the sort of idea of freedom that children instinctively have when they're told to go to bed and start throwing a tantrum and it is largely what the internet was built on, maybe not accidentally by people who in many ways were juvenile adults. You sound like a very silly child to me, with arguments such as this.