771–780 of 970 posts
Do you all think Steve is ok? Like on a personal health level? The constant onslaught of "you're a nazi and racist" and being overwhelmingly hated by your user base must take a toll. How do CEOs in positions like this not burn out or avoid major stress-related health problems?
Money.
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That’s the Reddit and Youtube we need again.
IDK, the internet of that era was a pretty toxic place. Sexism and racism were rampant, such that many people I know IRL simply refused to participate in most internet spaces (including HN). This gave the impression that those viewpoints were mainstream, but that was never the case. I don't think losing out on so many voices of people who don't want to be around that stuff is worth it.
I would rather see it, be educated that it exists, and choose to think the way I want to.
Thought policing is a slippery slope.
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"Take his badge and gun" is the typical expression. That person replaced gun with manhood implying that the person's manhood is derived from them power-tripping with weapons. Threatening violence IN RESPONSE to violence is a far cry from INSTIGATING violence against peace. One is defending yourself against bullying by standing up to it with comparable force. The other is bullying. Is there nothing people like you won…
> Threatening violence IN RESPONSE to violence is a far cry from INSTIGATING violence against peace. So by that logic it was wrong for Twitter to sensor the President’s tweet regarding using force to stop vandals destroying monuments.
2) An exceedingly large proportion of those statues were erected during exceedingly specific historical political climates, which generally feature the following:
>Having been well after the events or the deaths of the figures commemorated >During periods of economic decline or uncertainty >Following periods agitation for civil rights, particularly by black Americans, and the subsequent spasm of anti-black violence or political jostling
In other words, those monuments tend to represent oblique commemoration of racist violence, and seem to threaten future violence by their presence. Taking them down is not instigation, it's a response.
I mean, even without this context, how can one argue that the dismantling of an extant object is instigation? Its original erection would be the first act, courting a response of either general respect (it stays up) or general disdain/shame (it's taken down) over the course of its existence.
Worth taking note that in today's climate, you really cannot win when you are in a position to moderate important things that a lot of people use. There is constantly tremendous pressure on you to perform opposing actions, and even making no decision at all will cause you significant mental stress and harassment, regardles of what the issue is. You have to pick who you want to cave to, and to what extent, and no matt…
Would something decentralized help? I don't think people want that. The_Donald involved a lot of spreading their message / fake news sites / spamming across other subs and etc. Do people want to be on a platform where other folks on the same platform are targeting their community with dishonest and often bigoted content? I'm also not sure how much The_Donald was as a community. The sheer volume of users at its height…
The most important thing to realise is: This is ONLY happening because the internet is now centralised.
Put aside Trump. Put aside politics. Put away US culture wars, and all other mass politics. It does not matter who is banned or why. Understand that what is happening now is the INEVITABLE result of an internet concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
We have less websites. More natural tech monopolies. More points of failure: host, DNS, DDos protection, CAs. As any or all of these become centralised, website and communities are placed under the inevitable threat of censorship. Yesterday it was about copyright, today it is about politics, some day it will probably be about creed or race. When you give unaccountable power to the few, they will use it as they see fit.
This couldn't happen in a decentralised web, with more sites, players, hosts, more places for communities and discussion, more places to go if the site-owner turns sour.
We had a web 20 years ago where everyone from a Nazi to a transvestite from transsexual Transylvania could have their own place on the web which no-one else could take from them. We have lost that. Now several people can take your place on the web away. A small number of centralised gatekeepers control what is allowed to stay online.
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Not just hate you, but stalk, threaten and harass you. There are some people where even just saying-- as a moderator-- "Hey, can you chill out and at lease pretend to treat other posters with some respect" will trigger a full on war against you. There aren't many people like this, but it only takes a few because even a single obsessed person can spew a lot of hate.
Many people are very scared to publicly support him. Tolerance and respect does not extend to Christians or conservatives. Was joking that a new method of insurance fraud is to simply put a Trump bumper sticker on your car and wait for someone to torch it.
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> I'm also not sure how much The_Donald was as a community. The sheer volume of users at its height seemed to involve a huge amount of brand new accounts you never saw again / never posted again (except when they show up as a group again), and etc. Or those without brand new accounts show up and post strange dishonest lead in type posts that sort of try to lead folks down a bigoted path ... that you can blatantly see…
As soon as those metrics are exposed though, people will start hacking them by purchasing older accounts, etc.
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Well, if you had any doubt about the character of TD and what it has become at its new home, just cruise around it. It’s full of conspiracy theories, misogyny, racism, and outright calls to violence. It is a common sentiment there that the only good Democrat is a dead one. These “edgy” takes receive many upvotes.
Just visited the site. Looks like you need to go through capticha/cloudflair wait and then you have to create an account. I never got that far. But you went through all of that and verified your email. Now you are reporting it is full of [insert trending bad words]. Are you part of that community? A reporter? Were there any upvotes on comments you approved of?
Edit: it’s currently going direct to a login screen. That’s not normal.
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It's tricky. I'm not a fan of Nazism myself, not least because I wouldn't survive very long if they succeeded. Punching them in the face is the least of what I would need to do to survive. .. but what stops me from calling you a Nazi if I personally don't like you? You can take a few steps away. Someone can say something, and a response can be, "the logic of this argument is Nazism." I've seen this argued (badly). No…
I definitely agree that it's tricky, and I don't think "Nazis" are the only threat we face today. Anybody whose approach to discourse is to shout down ideas rather than engage with them in good faith or just ignore them and walk away is suspect, IMO. For instance, after 2020 so far I'm definitely at the point where I have serious doubts about the judgment of any Trump supporter or even any Republican voter, but if th…
That's why I'm terrified and why I want to support freedom of expression. Because if we start classifying ideas as "problematic" and shutting people out, then what is remaining to iron out differences? You can say a chess match (that might be interesting), but the truth is it'll be a shoving match or a gunfight.
I see a rise of an illiberal mob from both right and left, and they share in common the idea that the other side is completely irreconcilable. But it's not. They also agree that somehow the other side's ideas are dangerous (the ideas themselves). It just feels that way because social media -- back on topic here since we are on a Silicon Valley news site -- exacerbates these differences.
This is to me the biggest reason that I support freedom of expression. Because "stamping out ideas" doesn't exist. It's a fiction. You don't "defeat racism" or "defeat Nazism" by shutting down media. Ideas are behind these things, and the ideas are held by humans. Humans continue to want to express those ideas. Those humans will go elsewhere, and they continue to exist.
Even worse. People are going to vote for whoever they want to vote for, and the ballot is secret, so they don't have to tell you. So why not just foster an environment where everyone can express their ideas and there are no Problematic ideas? First you get to see what a lot of people think, in their own words and not in the words of those that agree with you. Second, there's a chance, even if it's a low one, of challenging those ideas with your own ideas.
Spamming, doxxing and violent threats aren't considered freedom of expression by almost anyone, and are rarely defended on moral grounds. I'm talking purely about ideas.
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Would something decentralized help? I don't think people want that. The_Donald involved a lot of spreading their message / fake news sites / spamming across other subs and etc. Do people want to be on a platform where other folks on the same platform are targeting their community with dishonest and often bigoted content? I'm also not sure how much The_Donald was as a community. The sheer volume of users at its height…
> The_Donald involved a lot of spreading their message / fake news sites / spamming across other subs and etc. Yea, I gotta say, having to previously deal with r/The_Donald brigades on another large subreddit was incredibly annoying and depressing. Can't speak to spreading fake news, but massive influxes of r/The_Donald users spamming truly vile stuff in an ostensibly non-political sub really sucked (as a moderator,…
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Gotta respect the iron fist of /r/askhistorians. Probably the best sub on reddit.
The iron fist is a double edged sword in some senses. Although reddit acted as a free speech haven for a long time, it was only overall, and not ever in major specific communities. True free speech is valued because it fosters debate, and allows bad speech to be rebutted by more speech. A marketplace of ideas, and maybe more importantly, the counterspeech doctrine, are incredibly important principals in justifying th…