You can't censor away extremism or any other problem • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by anm89 » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 7:42 AM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #152

So, what is extreme left to you? Which groups, existent groups, are they? This whole line of discussion seems to consist of some rich false equivalency being mediated by presuming the existence of equivalent opposing forces and then making them appear equal in size and threat by not talking about who they actually are.

I say this as someone who doesn't identify with the right or really care about any of these politics at all.

Go google of a picture of the Minneapolis police department engulfed in flames shooting out 50 feet over the top. That was certainly a strongly predominantly left driven action.

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

#162

Post by XorNot » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 7:42 AM UTC

_v7gu wrote: post #130

smsm42 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are usually two steps here: 1. Declare people who disagree with you fascists 2. Declare that it's impossible to dialogue with fascists Then it all becomes very easy.

We should unironically taboo the words fascist (unless referring to 30's Italy), nazi (unless referring to third reich), communist (unless they propose a People's Republic) and socialist (not really referring to anything, but the word has become an ad hom at this point) to have any kind of healthy political debate. It is cowardly to hide behind those words and not say what you actually mean

[flagged]

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

#163

Post by yongjik » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 7:43 AM UTC

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #150

yongjik wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Censorship comes with its own problems, but if your position is that it flat out doesn't work, you'd need a more convincing argument.

Nazi censored. Stalin censored. Xi censors. Seems hard to explain if censorship doesn't work.

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

#164

Post by hef19898 » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 7:43 AM UTC

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #155

hef19898 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today they complain about being cancelled before going silent. Very good quote.

>Today they complain about others who were silenced before they themselves are silenced. FTFY! Which ironically runs right into the famous poem: >First they came for the Communists >And I did not speak out >Because I was not a Communist >Then they came for the Socialists >And I did not speak out >Because I was not a Socialist >Then they came for the trade unionists >And I did not speak out >Because I was not a trade…

I am not sure what you opinion is. The poem you quoted is aimed at true, real, historically existing Nazis. So it is less applicable at people with somewhat similar views complaining about being called out. Calling them out and confronting them is exactly what the poem advocates for.

The same goes for your post about tolerance towards intolerance. And then you complain about anti-white racism, which is not a thing.

Care to elaborate?

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

#165

Post by NaturalPhallacy » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 7:43 AM UTC

TameAntelope wrote: post #7

> Look: the most powerful governments, militaries, and intelligence services in the world have in recent decades tried to prevent the communications of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS, using the most sophisticated digital means possible and with the full backing of various publishing and social media platforms. And yet those organizations effortlessly shared their propaganda and their rhetoric and coordina…

>As of January 2015, ISIS had reconstituted its regional accounts with strong privacy settings, allowing only a small group of known ISIS supporters to follow the accounts and read their tweets. The content of the tweets—primarily news releases, videos and photos from ISIS’s various provinces—are then disseminated by a number of other smaller accounts using hashtags. After the initial dissemination, the content is more widely distributed, but at significantly reduced levels from early 2014.

I'm sure detonating high explosives on their heads and putting bullets through most of them had nothing to do with it!

> Despite this, the number of new accounts created dropped significantly after the first round of suspensions in September (section 2.5.4), and while we do not have complete data to make a positive assessment, it appears the pace of account creation has lagged behind the pace of suspensions.

Lack of something doesn't prove it's gone. So they realized they couldn't use twitter. Did that change their views? Did it change their minds? Citing a lack of participation in a hostile platform proves nothing except that twitter controls twitter.

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

#166

Post by refurb » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 7:43 AM UTC

justbored123 wrote: post #122

refurb wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Alex Jones - Sandy Hook case wasn't censorship (he was free to say what he said), he was sued for defamation. We already have laws on that and all the other stuff you mention child grooming, fraud, false advertisement, doxxing, false testimony, etc. The point is - we have laws for speech that enters the criminal realm.

You are completely missing the point. Because those laws exist, the argument for "free speech" and against censorship is ignorant. We don't have free speech and never had and never will, no country on earth has, because it's ridiculous to the point of been childish. Speech is not free, it has limits, like everything else. And about Alex Jones, the case proves beyond reasonable doubt that he should had been censored t…

No, you're looking at it in too black and white a way. It's not a decision between "no limits to speech at all" and "any limit is fine because free speech doesn't exist".

The line, at least in the US, is that all speech is free unless it "incites imminent criminal behavior". And no, the criminal behavior doesn't include criminal speech (that's just circular logic).

Yes, the line the US draws favors free speech far more than almost any other country. And that's a part of the ethos of our country. Other countries are free to do whatever they want.

And no, Alex Jones shouldn't have been censored (by the government). We don't allow the government to arbitrarily deny citizens rights unless they have been given a fair trial. In his case, a judge decided his speech fell into the realm of defamation and thus his victim was due restitution.

And that's how it should work. We don't need "speech police" and we don't need to create new laws to further remove people's rights. If someone oversteps the bounds of free speech then a judge can decide what to do, not Facebook.

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

#167

Post by NaturalPhallacy » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 7:44 AM UTC

TameAntelope wrote: post #136

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did, and is. Just because you only pay attention to mainstream (D) media doesn't mean he's not on others.

Donald Trump did not join Parler or Gab.

https://gab.com/realDonaldTrump

edit: should have done my own research better, the profile reads:

>Reserved for the 45th President of the United States of America🇺🇸 This account is an uncensored Twitter archive and shares email statements sent by The Office of Donald J. Trump.

AFAIK Trump isn't on gab.

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

#168

Post by XorNot » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 7:45 AM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #132

Zardoz84 wrote: post #27

You can't dialog with fascist.

I partly agree with you. You cannot convince a person with an extreme view (see flat earthers for example). But I do believe you need to give reasonable responses to extreme views, to prevent others from becoming extreme. Calling someone "fascist" is in that sense never constructive. Reasonable views are hard to argue with.

Jean-Paul Sartre, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

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

#169

Post by NaturalPhallacy » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 7:50 AM UTC

caslon wrote: post #154

NaturalPhallacy wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hellbanning has a history of working well for deradicalization of online communities that were a lot worse than twitter is; Jeff Atwood has a good post giving a brief look at the history of it: https://blog.codinghorror.com/suspension-ban-or-hellban/

That's not proof that any one actual person was deradicalized, which was the metric.

Mr. Davis has 200 examples. I'm only asking for one. His method works. The deplatformers' citation of their own platforms only proves that they control their own platforms, not that any extremist view was changed.

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

#170

Post by hef19898 » Fri, Mar 12, 2021, 7:50 AM UTC

curiousgeorgio wrote: post #144

hef19898 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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 me…

The AfD called to shoot migrants at the EU border. They retreated to the "only one person's personal opinion" after a harsh backlash.

QAnon representatives are calling for the murder of Democrats. The same group advocates for brutal treatment of migrants, restrictions of freedom of choice for women, direct violence against muslims.

I don't see any of this on the left side of the political spectrum. Also, when someone in a group voices radical opinions and calls for violence it represents the groups view when said group is not distancing itself from these views. Because if the group doesn't, the one person is just the group trying to find out how far they can go.