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Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

arstechnica.com

231–240 of 868 posts

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#231
post #195
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://terfisaslur.com/

an entire website with people saying things about terfs but not a single sentence explaining wtf a terf is, i'm too old for twitter feuds

Trans-exclusionary radical feminist. So basically feminists that believe the femininity is endangered by the mere existence of male-to-female transgender people.

So basically transphobes that also larp as feminists.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#232
post #229

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> Conservativism largely fails over time in the free marketplace of ideas as evidence by human progress and societal change. This is obviously just selection bias. Everything that changes is a loss for "conservatism"; ignore everything that stays the same, which is the majority of everything. Here are some "conservative" (i.e. longstanding existing) policies: Due process, separation of powers, warrant requirements, f…

All the "conservative" policies you listed are currently being championed for by the left however.

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Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#233

At Ars Technica, few of the commenters are concerned about the erosion of privacy and freedom of speech of Gab users.

First they came for the fascists, and I was happy. Then it ended, because slippery slope is a fallacy.

Oh come on. They've already come for wall street bets for putting hedge funds in a difficult position.

It will get worse. It will be about people in power going unchallenged. Wake up.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#234
post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Conservativism largely fails over time in the free marketplace of ideas as evidence by human progress and societal change. This is obviously just selection bias. Everything that changes is a loss for "conservatism"; ignore everything that stays the same, which is the majority of everything. Here are some "conservative" (i.e. longstanding existing) policies: Due process, separation of powers, warrant requirements, f…

All the "conservative" policies you listed are currently being championed for by the left however.

Who is responsible for cancel culture? Tech censorship? "Believe All Women"? Who is calling for a new War on Terror targeting the domestic population?

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#235

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Your comment would make sense if Reddit and r/politics is an accurate description of the US population. But I'll have to disagree, since the comment above me suggests that there are a significant number of non-American Reddit users who lean more left than the average American, skewing the upvoting patterns. I'd argue that there are a different set of "artificial advantages" on the internet, such as that. And when I b…

Redditors lean farther left than the average american. The average internet user is also left of the average american because they trend younger. But it's also undeniable that the average American leans left. That's why Republicans lose the popular vote in both chambers of congress and the presidency nearly every election. Their positions are unpopular, that's why they get down voted on "mainstream" sites where the u…

This explanation ignores the cabal of moderators which controls all political subreddits, as well as the fact that /r/politics and /r/worldnews are regularly ridiculed in the rest of reddit for being Bernie-Central, to the poinnt that posting about other candidates on the left gets you called a traitor. Anyway that's why I get my politics on /r/anime_titties.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#236
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First they came for the fascists, and I was happy. Then it ended, because slippery slope is a fallacy.

First they came for the fascists. Then they came for the conservatives. Which made fascists recruit conservatives. Then they came for free speech advocates. Which made fascists recruit them. Then they came for capitalists. Which made the fascists recruit them. Don’t you worry, the fight isn’t over. The more you ban, the larger the counter groups get and the more radicalized they get. You see it today already. Book bu…

You're right. They were on the side of the fascists. And the Allied world came together to stop them.

Strongly consider who it is you're allying with and what it about you. It's not as heroic as you would love for it to seem.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#237
post #207

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Stalin and Mao were communists.

This only works if you put cold war blinders on and equate the word communism to being left wing. Their policy and actions were decidedly not left wing.

The problem is left and right are not a single dimension. Liberal left wing policies can often overlap with libertarian right wing policies. This is because the align on the freedom dimension. There are other examples but I don't think you can argue that Mao and Stalin are not left wing. They both push the idea that the state can and should supply the needs of the people. This is a very left wing view on both the financial and social dimension.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conservativism largely fails over time in the free marketplace of ideas as evidence by human progress and societal change. Conservativism is fundamentally about suppressing change in favour of familiarity and established norms, which could certainly be seen as censorship. An obvious example of this is the conservative/Puritan influence in American culture, which has lead to excessive censorship of sexual content and…

Counterexample - Islamic culture is conservative and thriving in the world (20% of all humans are Muslim), with roughly the same beliefs and culture as it's had for the past 1000 years.

> with roughly the same beliefs and culture as it's had for the past 1000 years.

I'm not sure this demonstrates a deep understanding of the shifting patterns within Islamic culture.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#239
post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s incredible that supporting free speech is considered to be only important enough to the “far right” now to be worth marketing to. > Free speech used to be something all Americans supported and defended. It's not that most Americans don't care about free speech. It's that most Americans understand that constitutional free speech means the government can't infringe on your speech, except in limited circumstances…

Before taking "constitutional" free speech for a concept, we have to understand that free speech is a prescriptive social norm . It happens to have a constitutional instantiation. That instantiation happens to be expressed as a restriction on the government's chartered power; this is an artifact of the process by which it was drafted, i.e. as part of a collection of proposed restraints on the powers federal governmen…

Free speech as a "prescriptive social norm" has never been unlimited or free of consequences though.

Discourse within the "acceptable" range has been true free speech certainly, but step outside those boundaries and throughout US history there have been serious repercussions. Common law courts have long recognized that if you walk up to someone on the street and scream obscenities at them you have no recourse when you get punched in the face - the concept of "fighting words". Even today no one bats an eye when a restaurant doesn't allow a patron to dine there when they don't meet the restaurant's arbitrary dress code or if the patron has an "offensive" t-shirt slogan. Various forms of ostracism have been used against people speaking out against what is acceptable since human society has existed.

State Governments have punished speech they don't as well. For example in the South pre-Civil War many southern states made it illegal to publish anti-slavery books, newspaper articles, and speeches. You could literally be arrested for speaking against slavery in any form.

I think the actual social norm you're talking about is acceptance of conservative political discourse and opinion. Certain kinds of political discourse have been verboten in the US (eg people were fired and blacklisted for communism) so that's not new as a concept, but this is the first time in US history there is strong pushback against conservatism.

To some degree I see this social pressure as being weaponized because so much of the US is gerrymandered and tiled in the favor of conservatives*. Despite being a minority party Republicans control a majority of state legislatures. CA gets two senators. A group of 11 rural conservative states representing the same population gets 22 senators. When a rump party that represents a strict minority of the population gets to continuously impose its will, change voting rules, pack the Supreme Court, and so forth are you truly surprised when a lot of people get angry? When some people are no longer willing to be polite about politics?

When the normal relief valve - elections having consequences - gets subverted for decades that pressure must find relief somewhere.

The pressure is even more intense now that the major conservative party in the US is openly embracing nationalism and at least some are openly advocating for ending democracy: whether you agree with it or not the Republican party has declared war on the majority of the US population. Some people are going to see that as an existential threat and respond accordingly.

* I know the pedants will want to divert discussion to how the US is arranged into separate states deliberately, federalism, etc. I am well aware of those arguments, there is no need to re-hash them. Much like calling universal healthcare and worker protections "socialism", or trying to fine/punish people and take down their video clips due to "copyright claims" all you are doing is teaching the upcoming generations that socialism is better at solving problems, copyright should be abolished, and federalism sucks. Proceed at your own peril.

Re: Gab has been hacked and 70GB of data leaked

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t disagree with comment guidelines. Their platform, their rules. But my point is if it was my platform, I wouldn’t moderate it any more than the law requires: Imminent threats of violence, illegal pornography, libel, etc. I guess I would probably go beyond and ask people not to Dox others, and ask others not to bully or disparage one another. I find it no different from two people discussing communism in a priv…

What if other people exploit your platform in order to direct culture, though? If you run a bar and after a year or two you realize that all of your patrons are nazis, presumably because their passionate discussions drove away anyone who overheard them, then any action you take to promote your bar is effectively promoting that ideology and directing culture in a rather unsavory direction. What do you do then? You don…

> If you run a bar and after a year or two you realize that all of your patrons are nazis

It could also mean that nazis like your bar.

I've seen this argument get politicized too much to the point of it being emotional. Like your nazi reference.

Social platforms should be moderated according to law. Whatever users legally & lawfully discuss in your platforms should not restricted. And this kind of applying pressure towards platforms worries me. They are merely tools. Let the law deal with this issue and leave free speech alone.

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