Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

freddiedeboer.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 863 posts

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#141

Post by pochamago »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #13

If you cannot censor away opinions, if suppression of ideas doesn't work then why in exactly these kinds of articles do people bemoan it as dangerous? I may agree that most censorship is wrong but it does work. It worked for centuries to help maintain systems of inequality. It worked for centuries to maintain familial control and enforce sexual monoculture in many countries. Information control works so well, it prev…

>If you cannot censor away opinions, if suppression of ideas doesn't work then why in exactly these kinds of articles do people bemoan it as dangerous?

Because the unintended consequences are harmful to bystanders. Probably more harmful than to the intended targets, since they're already socially ostracized for their openly bigoted views. Take, for example, the recent upswing in deplatforming. Most of the statistical data seems to suggest that the masses have become more afraid to speak openly, but it doesn't seem to have actually stopped extreme racists from saying racist things.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#142

Post by jude- »

jude- wrote: post #32
dmingod666 wrote: post #17

My reading from the outside is, the left needs to realize (I'm sure it applies to the right equally as well) that scolding people into guilt is not a viable approach to affect action or to change perceptions when you're dealing with adults. Neither does boxing people into this, that and that category do any good. Like if all you want to do is dehumanize those guys so you can happily insult / hurt them without hurting…

> I just think the solution should lie in : 1) dialog 2) laws If they're not willing to be reasonable (like, you don't get to "dialog" about whether or not genocide is appropriate), then the best and most moral course of action could very well be to stop them from recruiting your friends. In the context of tech, this is the essence of deplatforming. Twitter and Facebook cannot censor, since they are not governments.…

[flagged]

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#143

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

caslon wrote: post #121
NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nevermind that Daryl Davis has literally converted over 200 KKK members: https://www.rt.com/viral/371340-meet-black-man-kkk/ THAT is how you beat fascism. Not censorship. Lazy programmers trying censor via bits and bytes are never going to accomplish in a million years what Mr. Davis already has.

200 people isn't very much. Twitter has 192 million users. Assuming (extremely generously given that twitter is on the Internet and has a userbase that skews younger) that twitter matches America's partisan divide, it probably has around 90 million users. It seems unlikely that at least a thousand people out of 90 million aren't gullible enough to be swayed by hellbanning.

Show me proof that twitter censorship has converted even ONE racist/nazi and I'll entertain this notion.

"it seeming unlikely" hardly compares to a man with 200 trophies to prove his method works.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#144

Post by curiousgeorgio »

hef19898 wrote: post #114
dmingod666 wrote: post #17

My reading from the outside is, the left needs to realize (I'm sure it applies to the right equally as well) that scolding people into guilt is not a viable approach to affect action or to change perceptions when you're dealing with adults. Neither does boxing people into this, that and that category do any good. Like if all you want to do is dehumanize those guys so you can happily insult / hurt them without hurting…

[flagged]

> And of the two sides, only one is actively trying to restrict the freedom of people based on skin, religion and sex. Only one side is arguing for violence against weaker people, like fugitives and migrants.

I sincerely don't think either of the two sides is advocating for those things (ignoring a very few extremists - on both sides - with malicious intent, who don't represent the majority).

I do see those issues mentioned a lot in the public debate, but mostly in the context of straw man arguments repeated as a sort of battle cry, and to denigrate "the other side".

It was a whole lot easier to push McCarthyism than it ever was to convincingly prove you weren't a communist.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#145

Post by lazyeye »

runarberg wrote: post #36
clusterfish wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the extremes, both left and right, have realized that their greatest enemy is not the other extreme, but the masses in between. A group that has the numbers, with mild views that can dilute your message with reasonable doubt, challenge certain aspects of your extreme yet be broadly acceptable to a much wider audience including those tending towards your side – that's poision for an extremist. Therefore, their…

this might be false equivalence. People far on the left (except from some nas-bols; which I’ve never encountered in the wild) call them selfs anti-facists. It is clear who their greatest enemy is. In fact far left groups (like food not bombs, etc.) often engage in social programs called mutual aid where the goal is to spread propaganda through helping the masses.

Im sure the foot soldiers of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot had that exact same purity of thought, the exact same infallible self-belief and the exact same absolute certainty they were on the right side of history.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#146

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

hef19898 wrote: post #123
NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't mean it's wrong... The racists on the right know they're racists. They admit it. The racists I've encountered on the left are the racism-of-low-expectations kind with a dash of openly-racist-against-white-people, and then they go and act morally superior to people who aren't racist against any race. The sanctimony is grating.

Don't they deny being racist, sexist or whatever more often than not when called out? It sure seems so.

I'm not even sure if you're talking about the racist left or the racist right and that is mildly amusing.

I don't know a lot (any?) racist right folks, but I know a shitload of racist left and they ALL publicly, verbally, in writing, rail against racism in one breath, and then shit on white people in the next.

I acknowledge that this is anecdotal, but still...

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#147

Post by freebuju »

jcuenod wrote: post #99

Banning hate speech (even if it's whack-a-mole) also protects the victims. 1. It says that society (with the power to make laws) has your back. 2. It does what it can to prevent the environment from being toxic (obviously with limitations raised in the article).

I would also consider these people who have these extremist ideas victims.

Society has never had your back. In so many other areas including this one. What we have is interest groups as people within society. And these groups will always have different and sometimes directly opposing ideas.

Thinking that society or even the law has your back is an error in logic.

Again, about toxic social spaces. There is much reason to place Twitter & Facebook as toxic just as much as Parler was. Platforms aren't necessarily toxic, people are. And to be frank, this is a media consumption choice. If you unintentionally visit Gab today and feel the majority of the content does not align with your values and beliefs. Close the tab and visit another platform. Freedom of speech needs to encouraged in any modern society and should be protected as a human right. Anyone who tries to influence your thinking by diluting this, is seeking to control and weaken your mind for their own gain.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#148

Post by oblio »

adrianmonk wrote: post #6

Let me ask a related question looking at it from the other direction: can you encourage an idea by spreading it more widely? If not, then propaganda and advertising are both myths that don't really work.

Propaganda and advertising absolutely do work.

Chess set sales were up a huge percentage when the Queen's Gambit became popular. Daenerys became a somewhat popular baby girl's name after Game of Thrones became popular. These are super simple, super obvious examples, but you can find more.

They're not guaranteed to work, but they do work.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#149

Post by roenxi »

edrxty wrote: post #133
zapdrive wrote: post #56

What the left also needs is a realization that some of its beliefs are akin to extremism. And some of the left inspired policies have really really hurt and isolated a significant population. The left needs to soften it's stand on such issues.

Examples? I'm not really sure what you're aiming at here. I don't know of any documented cases where too much environmentalism or healthcare really hurt significant populations.

The right supports environmentalism and healthcare. They disagree with specific leftist plans.

The official right wing position towards the left is "your outcome would be lovely, but it isn't worth the excessive cost to getting there".

There isn't a sizeable lobby who is "against environmentalism", for example. There is a huge lobby who just doesn't see how a comfortable living standard can be achieved without fossil fuels.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#150

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

yongjik wrote: post #134
NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nevermind that Daryl Davis has literally converted over 200 KKK members: https://www.rt.com/viral/371340-meet-black-man-kkk/ THAT is how you beat fascism. Not censorship. Lazy programmers trying censor via bits and bytes are never going to accomplish in a million years what Mr. Davis already has.

And Jack Churchill captured Nazi outposts with a longbow and a broadsword, but if allies armed every soldier with longbows and broadswords, something tells me that we'd be under Nazi occupation to this day. Some great things are done by great people, but they don't necessarily scale well.

This misses the point (that the author of OPs post nailed). It doesn't matter that it doesn't scale. It works, and censorship doesn't.

Do you want a (difficult) method that works (personal involvement and direct conversation), or a simple, easy, lazy one (deplatforming/cancel/censorship) that doesn't?

Post reply on HN