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Where do we go from here and who is going to step up to help us?

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131–140 of 200 posts

Re: Where do we go from here and who is going to step up to help us?

#131
post #3

"We're suffering from success and our Discord was the first casualty. You know as well as I do that if you gather 250k people in one spot someone is going to say something that makes you look bad. That room was golden and the people that run it are awesome. We blocked all bad words with a bot, which should be enough, but apparently if someone can say a bad word with weird unicode icelandic characters and someone can…

>> Of course every platform has the right to dictate users of their platform yada yada... People who claim that should logically be wanting Rosa Parks to have started her own bus company.

The buses were public and segregation was a law. Blacks made up 75% of the bus customers [0]. A competing, nonsegregated, service would have owned the market if it were possible. So it probably wasn't.

The situation here is very different. There is no government monopoly favouring Reddit or Discord.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgomery_bus_boycott

Re: Where do we go from here and who is going to step up to help us?

#132
post #54
post #11

> On both Discord and Reddit, wallstreetbets users frequently refer to themselves collectively as “retards” and “autists,” and have been known to deploy the kinds of racial slurs and deliberately offensive language that have become commonplace in 4chan-style posting forums. I read WSB daily for years and cannot recall a single usage of a racial slur. They definitely referred to themselves as autists/retards in a self…

> They definitely referred to themselves as autists/retards in a self-deprecating manner but that's hardly the same thing. I fail to see how 'autist' is any less of a slur than e.g. 'trap' or 'gay', when used in the right (wrong) context. It's not a racial slur, but it's quite certainly a slur.

Spillover from medical terms is very common. You sometimes hear someone being called a "psycho" or a "sociopath" but you don't make the assumption that the accuser is a trained psychiatrist.

"Idiot" used to be a medical condition, someone suffering from idiocy.

"Retard"; someone whose mental development had been retarded and remained in a childhood state into adulthood.

These words are not supposed to be taken literally (when used colloquially) but to suggest that the person in question displays signs of the medical condition.

I guess we could try to label this as misuse of the terms and try to end the practice, but where would that lead us? "Bob is double plus ungood at thinking"?

Re: Where do we go from here and who is going to step up to help us?

#133
post #45
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet it wasn't an issue to them until this moment.

They were banned after "repeated warnings". It's possible that those warnings began before these market movements.

They could've just as well "repeated" the "warning" one last time and shut them down next week. They choose to act now. At the very least, this was a PR mistake.

Re: Where do we go from here and who is going to step up to help us?

#134

Why should I care about them? They are perpetrating a financial bubble that will harm its participants, the economy (possibly to a significant degree), and that is specifically designed to hurt certain people. They are encouraging a mechanism that could do far more damage in the future. It's an angry, violent mob, and what I see looks very much like other violent, angry mobs I've seen recently, including the portraya…

You make a compelling point why I shouldn’t care about Wall Street hedge funds, you are right they form financial bubbles, you’re right it harms participants, the economy, and are specifically designed to bankrupt companies. Unfortunately even if I don’t participate in these games, my tax money is used to bail them out when they lose.

> my tax money is used to bail them out when they lose.

I squirted coffee through my nostrils with laughter when I read this. True dat.

Re: Where do we go from here and who is going to step up to help us?

#135
post #11

> On both Discord and Reddit, wallstreetbets users frequently refer to themselves collectively as “retards” and “autists,” and have been known to deploy the kinds of racial slurs and deliberately offensive language that have become commonplace in 4chan-style posting forums. I read WSB daily for years and cannot recall a single usage of a racial slur. They definitely referred to themselves as autists/retards in a self…

Unfortunately they are consistently homophobic though - particularly on the Discord :\

Re: Where do we go from here and who is going to step up to help us?

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." Cardinal Richelieu (Alledgelly) A lesson this generation will have to learn again.

I'm confused, what is the lesson here? That quote seems to get thrown around so often that it can be applied to anytime that anyone gets criticized for anything. The moderator's statement appears to be asking for more help with moderation, not advocating for less moderation or advocating for more hateful behavior to be allowed.

There are two lessons:

1) Language is imprecise. We do not communicate with the idea that our words have a unique, specific meaning. This means that you can do things like quote my statements out of context in order to change their intent.

2) People are not perfect. You can almost always find some "fault" in even the best people. People should not be punished for a "fault" unless it does measurable harm to someone else.

Re: Where do we go from here and who is going to step up to help us?

#139
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a weird analogy that doesn’t make any sense. It’s actually quite offensive to compare the segregation of a whole people to what’s basically a sign on Discords door that said “We don’t allow this type of speech. We have bouncers here.” Also Rosa Parks wasn’t anonymous, and I assume many on WSB are. I wonder if they would act the same if they weren’t? Or in real life?

It was more a comment on the general "Oh, big tech banned you?" well just create your own payment network, dns service, cdn, hosting, etc etc. And to extend your analogy, it's like a whole nightclub being permanently closed because one of the 250,000 people in the club (admittedly a big club) said a bad word. It's just a new form of Tone Policing ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tone_policing )

It’s like a nightclub being closed by the nightclub’s owner, which I think most would agree the nightclub’s owner has the right to do by virtue of being the owner. It’s not closed by police or any outside entity.

Re: Where do we go from here and who is going to step up to help us?

#140
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused, what is the lesson here? That quote seems to get thrown around so often that it can be applied to anytime that anyone gets criticized for anything. The moderator's statement appears to be asking for more help with moderation, not advocating for less moderation or advocating for more hateful behavior to be allowed.

There are two lessons: 1) Language is imprecise. We do not communicate with the idea that our words have a unique, specific meaning. This means that you can do things like quote my statements out of context in order to change their intent. 2) People are not perfect. You can almost always find some "fault" in even the best people. People should not be punished for a "fault" unless it does measurable harm to someone el…

Also that meaning is created by the listener, not defined by the speaker. Anything you say can be misinterpreted, either genuinely or maliciously. The message communicated is whatever the listener hears, with all their history, biases and intentions.
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