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You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

freddiedeboer.substack.com

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

#401

Post by mahogany »

slibhb wrote: post #243
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #4

Like most of these rants against "censorship" they skip over people's rights to restrict speech as a form of speech itself: there is no moral (or legal) right to give people you disagree with a forum or audience to express their view. Calling to silence others (that is, encouraging them to take your view of not giving them an audience) is fine as long as people have a choice on how to respond. If there is some notion…

> Like most of these rants against "censorship" they skip over people's rights to restrict speech as a form of speech itself: there is no moral (or legal) right to give people you disagree with a forum or audience to express their view. Free expression is a moral right. And what is a platform anyway? A wordpress site? A twitter account? An IP address? A bank account? A megaphone? A street corner? A sign? How far are…

> And what is a platform anyway? A wordpress site? A twitter account? An IP address? A bank account? A megaphone? A street corner? A sign? How far are you willing to go to shut other people up because you disagree with them?

Well, I'm curious, what do you think it is?

If I run a forum or a blog, should I have to allow any comment, to be morally in the right? Let's say I run a forum dedicated to discussing Christianity, and some person keeps posting arguments that God isn't real, or posts pictures of aborted fetuses, in every thread on my forum. If free expression is a moral right, is it immoral for me to remove such content from any thread? Even threads about daily worship or about lost loved ones?

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

#402

Post by runarberg »

throwaway53453 wrote: post #307
lighttannotwite wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're still terrible concepts that have been roundly denounced on their own merits Hol' up, "it is ok to be white," is a terrible concept denounced on its own merits? Lol ok It's a good thing that under Critical Theory, since race is a social construction (that's why Black is supposed to be capitalized, because it refers to the construction, not the color) there's no reason besides being "roundly denounced" (whic…

God help the mixed race people who have it from both the left and right...

The left does not hate white people. It is reactionary rhetoric that is trying to raise a false equivalence. The left hates white supremacy and white privilege. If you are a white person that basks in your privilege, the left doesn’t hate you because of the color of your skin, but because of how you act as a result of it.

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

#403

Post by vladvasiliu »

XorNot wrote: post #253
vladvasiliu wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is extremely odd to find so many on Hacker News arguing for laws to say "that server you own and run in your house that hosts a small web forum...that's a public space now, I mean if for you the scale simply doesn't come into equation, then yeah, I guess Twitter, serving millions and millions of users and being used for communication by many public figures is exactly the same thing as a random server in someone'…

You've avoided answering the question: if Twitter and other private platforms are suddenly "public spaces" due to scale...what does that mean? Practically? These are businesses with costs, expenses, legal liabilities (i.e. copyright and defamation law), advertisers to keep happy for revenue. You're demanding the government step in and nationalize a business which in no way has a monopoly on a concept which has never…

I'm not talking about nationalizing anything, just defining what they are. In the particular case of Twitter and FB, I'd be on the side of declaring them utilities. They wouldn't be liable for what people say there as long as it's otherwise legal. In return, they wouldn't be allowed to cut people off without due process (in an actual court, not by some contractor following an order because the CEO doesn't like someone).

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

#404

Post by swayvil »

Is there something better than censorship?

I mean, if you just gotta control that information. Gatekeeping at main choke-point. Censorship. Seems like the hamhanded option.

I like a voting system. Information rated and filtered according to trusted peers.

I guess that's the same as HN's voting, but you'd be voting on the voters too.

And of course we could also vote in more sophisticated ways than simply good-bad. But that might get laborious.

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

#405

Post by vlanders10 »

buescher wrote: post #395
Lammy wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still using subjective terms like "extremism" in an objective way that the people on the receiving end of that label may not agree with or appreciate.

Not only subjective terms like "extremism", but religious terms like "redeemable".

Also "remorse", which is quite popular among SJW tribunals when they silence someone on unverified testimony of the popular clique members while refusing to hear the "accused" even once.

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

#406

Post by ralusek »

runarberg wrote: post #53
runarberg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At the risk of entertaining the no true Scotsman : A leftist that doesn’t empathize with the masses, is not a true leftist.

There is no consistent conception of the masses to the left. Traditionally, there is the labor class and the capital class. In the modern left, oppressors and oppressed are typically determined by identity group, but the game is the same. To win the game of leftism, you better pray that you're in the "masses."

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

#407

Post by AshWolfy »

roenxi wrote: post #149
edrxty wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yes im sure the insurance companies and fossil fuel companies who have spent millions of think tanks and studies and election were just concerned about living standards.

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

#408

Post by ralmidani »

Lammy wrote: post #383
ralmidani wrote: post #351

You can't censor it away completely, but you can help the redeemable extremists __know__ they're indulging in extremism by forcing them to go to fringe websites rather than allow them to stay on Twitter and Facebook as if nothing is wrong. As for the "deplorables" who know what they're doing and will never question it or feel any remorse, we should not be giving them a megaphone. sources[0]: I was susceptible to extr…

You're still using subjective terms like "extremism" in an objective way that the people on the receiving end of that label may not agree with or appreciate.

They might not agree with it at first, but eventually, large numbers will realize how non-sensical their movement's ideas are. CNN has profiled former QAnon true believers who are recovering.

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

#409

Post by throwaway53453 »

runarberg wrote: post #402
throwaway53453 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God help the mixed race people who have it from both the left and right...

The left does not hate white people. It is reactionary rhetoric that is trying to raise a false equivalence. The left hates white supremacy and white privilege . If you are a white person that basks in your privilege, the left doesn’t hate you because of the color of your skin, but because of how you act as a result of it.

There's no such thing as white privilege. Only socioeconomic privilege.

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

#410

Post by [deleted] »

Aunche wrote: post #382

You can censor obvious examples of extremism. I don't think anyone disagreed that Youtube was correct in censoring Isis recruitment videos, for instance. The problem is that people are trying to censor "dog-whistling" extremism. By its very nature, it's a losing battle. Only dogs can hear dog whistles, so there's a high likelihood that you're censoring someone innocent. Also, even if you do censor a dog whistle, they…

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