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

491–500 of 863 posts

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

#491

Post by nindalf »

akvadrako wrote: post #222
nindalf wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HN doesn't have very strong moderation FWIW, I agree. But the people who are shadow banned for trivial offences would probably be writing replies to your comment about this ... if they knew they were shadow banned that is. And we wouldn't be able to read it either way, so it's a moot point. Just one data point, but one of my friends has been shadow banned from HN for years and he never even knew that he was. Say wh…

Didn't he notice that nobody would reply to his comments? Or is the shadow banning quite advanced?

He tried commenting a few times, found that no one replied. I guess that discouraged him from commenting so he stopped.

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

#492

Post by unethical_ban »

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".

You and the people who talk like you are getting downvoted because you're contrarian without actually stating an opposition view to what you're ranting about.

Someone: Extremism is bad.

You: What is extreme is subjective.

The next step would be for you to try to give counter points of what you think is extreme that others consider not, or better, what you think is not extreme that others consider so.

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

#493

Post by Seirdy »

AshWolfy wrote: post #417
marcus_holmes wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep running into "but who are the intolerant people these days?" The J K Rowling mess as an example: clearly someone historically very tolerant. Writes some articles about some areas where she disagrees with the current thinking. Is immediately cancelled. I don't see much tolerance there? Who, exactly, is being intolerant here? Or is it just everyone? Maybe I should not tolerate this any more? We've totally lost t…

JK rowling tolerant? Is this the same woman who wrote a race of hooked nose greedy villians who control all the world's banks into her books?

Don't forget the elves who turned out to actually enjoy slavery, and the girl fighting for their liberation essentially being labeled a "whiny SJW" after founding STEW.

It's easy to make a series of tweets to look like an ally, but they don't offset starting a campaign against trans recognition. Ask yourself if you'd take a company promoting "environmental sustainability" seriously if it continues to fund climate-change-denying politicians.

Easy advocacy doesn't cancel out the more significant types of advocacy.

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

#494

Post by runarberg »

flyingfences wrote: post #471
runarberg wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow! A few sentences later I link to a leftist accusing a Maoist leftist for being reactionary and discriminatory. I even mention the fact that Maoists and National Bolsheviks (which are very much racists while leftists) exist in the very first sentence of the paragraph. However, these are not the norm. They are a very small minority and most leftist groups will not tolerate them.

I don't care what "a leftist" has accused another leftist of... I'm taking issue with the fact that you are saying that "discrimination against white people" is not "racial discrimination" with the implication that it's somehow better.

What!? I say that? Are you pointing to the fact that I refer to sibling comments in how the equivalence is wrong? And that is somehow me implying that “discrimination against white people somehow better”?

Please, get over your self.

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

#495

Post by AnimalMuppet »

jawarner wrote: post #427
monkeypizza wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you define away neutrality, there is no neutrality, yes. But does everyone agree with your definition? This seems more like a "you're with us or against us" trick. "I care about protecting all children" is still neutral, right? But if someone popularized "ICAPBC", by your argument "ICAPAC" would innately become a shibboleth? Something doesn't seem right here, where neutral positions automatically get converted to…

What is neutrality in this scenario? BLM is about protesting anti-black racial injustice in the criminal justice system. Is neutral ground that there is no injustice? That it doesn't matter? Yes, there was violence at a small fraction of protests, and it's fair to have pushback on that. That seems a separate issue than rejecting BLM on the face of it with an expression like ALM.

Neutral ground is that injustice is wrong, no matter who it happens to. It's wrong when it happens to blacks, it's wrong when it happens to Asians, it's wrong when it happens to Hispanics, and it's wrong when it happens to whites. That's neutral.

From there, you look around and you see that blacks and Hispanics seem to have injustice happening to them in ways that don't often happen to whites. (Not sure about Asians; but my perception is that they may experience injustice, but less of it than blacks.) And then, coming from a position that all injustice matters, when you seen injustice happening more to specific groups, you say "That injustice matters." Not that it's the only injustice that matters, or that other injustice doesn't, but that specific injustice seems to happen a lot, and it's not OK. We need to do something about it.

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

#496

Post by vkou »

tanseydavid wrote: post #485
vkou wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also has much lower reach. Ideas are viral - and don't spread very well when they have less exposure. You don't see too much pro-Al-Qaeda or ISIS material on Facebook or Twitter. Somehow, we've managed to censor that extremism away.

I have to wonder out loud whether many commenters actual took the time to read the article. Because the responses seemed heavily skewed towards "Yeah, but..." responses that sort of ignore the article's main point.

The article's main point is that apparently, 10-15% of the population voting for unabashed fascists is a colossal policy failure.

Whereas I don't actually see that as a problem. In any given population, about ~10% of it is going to be sympathetic to fascism. That is what it is. It's an appealing ideology for a lot of people.

The problem is when you get closer to 40%, or 50%, and unabashed fascists start making their way onto first, and second-rate political party tickets, as opposed to ineffectively screaming into the void on third-rate ones. We've just had a bit of a brush with that, here. Not interested in repeating it.

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

#497

Post by tablespoon »

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…

>> 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 you willing to go to shut other people up because you disagree with them? ...

> By what principle is it wrong for the government to censor? Once you've answered that, please explain how that principle magically stops at the government.

Yeah, it's a moral right, but its implementation is more complicated than a lot of people want to acknowledge.

Is it censorship for you to refuse to wear a shirt that I give you with some slogan I agree with? No. Is it censorship for you to take down a yard sign with that slogan that I placed in your front yard? No. What if you allowed someone else to put up a yard sign that you agree with? Still no.

If literally one guy owns all the land in the world, is it censorship for him to control what signs get put up? Almost certainly.

No one's going to be able to give you a pithy principle that fits in an internet comment that tells you where the censorship/not censorship line is, given the huge grey areas between those extremes. This is an area where lots of interests need to be balanced, and where reasonable people can disagree.

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

#498

Post by ravenstine »

karaterobot wrote: post #328
ravenstine wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only would they disagree with you, but their strategy actually works. Leftists, "wokeness", and social justice wouldn't be the hot topics they've been if the strategy of leftists weren't effective. In terms of "adults", they are few and far between. There will always be biological adults, but so many adults are emotionally stunted that it's difficult for me to give them the title. Just as domestically raised cats…

> Not only would they disagree with you, but their strategy actually works. Leftists, "wokeness", and social justice wouldn't be the hot topics they've been if the strategy of leftists weren't effective. Is the goal of social justice movements just to be hot topics? Your statement makes it seem like success is measured by the amount of retweets or something. Clearly that can't be true, but if global fascism and ethni…

> Is the goal of social justice movements just to be hot topics?

I'm not sure I understand precisely what you're getting at but, for the record, anyone reading this should understand that I am not suggesting that hot topics are the goal of social justice.

In fact, I wasn't even making a value judgement of left wing causes in general, but people seem to always take the word "leftists" as a pejorative. All I'm saying is that leftist political strategies have been successful in that, on any given day, I can tune in to any given medium and count on trans rights, BLM, UBI, social equity, anti-racism, and so forth being a topic of conversation. This wasn't nearly as true before the current wave of leftism gained steam.

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

#500

Post by fatsdomino001 »

tablespoon wrote: post #456
fatsdomino001 wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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." This is such a terrible idea. All this accomplishes is causing extremists to find echo chambers where they will never actually know what they're doing is wrong. It's much better to keep extremists in mainstream platform…

>> "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." > This is such a terrible idea. All this accomplishes is causing extremists to find echo chambers where they will never actually know what they're doing is wrong. It's much better to keep extremists in mainstream pla…

> That core may get more extreme in its echo chamber, but its overall movement could end up being smaller and weaker.

This is precisely the problem. That core will certainly get more extreme because there's no cross pollination between it and other more moderate groups.

I would rather have more people with less extreme views than fewer people with more extreme views, because it's much more likely the more extreme people are a greater danger to society than the less extreme people.

> Extremism is not a problem of lack of information.

True, but it's more complicated than that. Extremism almost always results when you disenfranchise or ostracize a community. It's much better to integrate it so there's crossflow of information and empathy still. Dehumanizing groups of people also dehumanizes yourself.

Post reply on HN