I very strongly feel that we should be very careful to avoid adopting a legalistic attitude towards freedom of speech. That is, I am opposed to the argument that private corporations are not bound by the first amendment, and therefore it's okay for them to suppress content. I agree that they're not bound by the first amendment (I don't claim to understand the nuances of the "platform" laws so I won't address that), b…
> I believe in shining a light on them I hear this a lot. Light is the best disinfectant. What evidence do you have for this? I've never seen a bad or immoral or harmful idea die out when more people learn about it and scrutinize it. However, I have repeatedly seen the opposite: Sharing bad ideas increases their audience, increases ignorance, hate, fear, and human suffering. You're looking at an article describing th…
Leaded gasoline, phlogiston, cold fusion, phrenology, scientific racism, basically the entire history of the progress of science.
But let's also not forget that you're asking for a list of discredited ideas, so you wouldn't have heard of them, by definition, if things are working as they should, because they're wrong and the former proponents have long since abandoned trying to disseminate them to you.
> Deplatforming these people and, importantly, showing social pressure that these are bad ideas and shouldn't even be entertained as valid debate, has shown to work repeatedly.
If all you're doing is defining "work" as "the censorship target was censored" then you're not claiming anything. When you kick these people off of major platforms, they don't cease to exist, they break off like an extremist splinter group and go to a place with no moderating influences to fester. You don't see them anymore, but they're still there, and then suddenly somehow Donald Trump is the President of the United States and people can't believe it and don't understand how it happened.
> In fact, social pressure is one of the most effective tools against hate and ignorance like this.
Censorship isn't social pressure, it's force. Social pressure is telling wrong people why they're wrong, every time.
People who are wrong need to be made right, not made frustrated and angry and yet not only still wrong but now even more convinced that their wrong ideas are right because they now have real evidence that they're not getting a fair public debate.