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You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

freddiedeboer.substack.com

581–590 of 863 posts

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

#581

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.

Every white person has a white privilege and thus is racist and benefits from white supremacy. Same difference. The left doesn't hate white people, they just hate 90% of them.

Colorblindness (aka. not being racist by the old definition) is considered white supremacy.

"There's only one human race" is white supremacy.

"All Lives Matter" is white supremacy.

"Cultural appropriation" is white supremacy.

Being an "ally" is white supremacy.

Meritocracy is white supremacy.

Celebrating Columbus Day is white supremacy.

Being attracted to people of your own race is white supremacy.

Questioning the white privilege theory in the first place is white supremacy.

...and many more.

source: https://twitter.com/CoralineAda/status/1267529522041282563

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

#582
post #480
post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely agree. Back a year ago when you saw this kind of stuff all over Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, etc it felt so normalized. But now you have to go to fringe websites. It's still out there of course. But it's very back-alley and definitely makes you take what people are saying with a grain of salt.

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.

You're not hanging out in the correct circles or reading in the correct language. The proper nouns aren't there but the ideas and principles are. White supremacists spend more time praising police killings than they do saying "Heil Hitler". Change your language to Arabic and you'll see much more praise for the beheading of Samuel Paty than "praise IS"

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

#583
post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some slightly bad opinion suddenly finds themselves shut out of the main platforms because of hate speech rules A "slightly bad opinion" has to be more than "slightly bad" to break hate speech rules. If you feel a platform is overzealous in enforcing hate speech rules, don't use it. Or maybe ask yourself some questions before moving out. EDIT: the rain of downvotes is telling as usual.

That’s not true. Not being attracted to transgender people is enough to get banned on Reddit. I was banned from r/asktransgender for telling a girl in a relationship with a pre-transition MtF person that it doesn’t make sense to call herself a lesbian (since sexual orientation is based on sex and not gender)

[deleted]

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

#584
post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> some slightly bad opinion suddenly finds themselves shut out of the main platforms because of hate speech rules A "slightly bad opinion" has to be more than "slightly bad" to break hate speech rules. If you feel a platform is overzealous in enforcing hate speech rules, don't use it. Or maybe ask yourself some questions before moving out. EDIT: the rain of downvotes is telling as usual.

That’s not true. Not being attracted to transgender people is enough to get banned on Reddit. I was banned from r/asktransgender for telling a girl in a relationship with a pre-transition MtF person that it doesn’t make sense to call herself a lesbian (since sexual orientation is based on sex and not gender)

This view, that sex exists and matters at all, is called by trans rights activists "biological essentialism" and it'll probably get you banned here, too. I definitely wouldn't post comments with the opinion that sex is binary from an account that could be linked to my real identity.

Belief in binary or bimodal sex expression in homo sapiens is grounds for removal from the technology industry entirely

I like to eat so you'll never see me again on this site, at least not with this handle.

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

#585
post #542

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…

Can anyone name a time in history where the people censoring things turned out to be the "Good Guys"?

Honestly cannot- doesn't mean there isn't one, but this leads to a possible heuristic worth exploring.

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

#586
post #542

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…

Can anyone name a time in history where the people censoring things turned out to be the "Good Guys"?

Your argument/trope fails for a simple reasons: "They" don't exist.

* Here on HN we censor each other.

* The US censors basic nudity.

* Germany censors denying the Holocaust.

* The patent office censors inventions.

* Scientists have devised a peer-censorship system.

* The police censors your attempts to distribute illegal material.

* Banks censor your funds to ISIS.

... the list goes on and on and on.

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

#587

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…

There are different types of extremists, and only one type of extremism is targeted by the mainstream broadcast sites.

It's tiring hearing the "megaphone" meme. It's a loaded term and means more than its literal meaning.

There are extremists on the left and the right. If you only only target extremism on the right, you might think you're doing a service, but in fact you're going to make the problem worse.

Here come the downvotes.

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

#588
um dumb stuff ...this time... dumb people... damned P-:

1st.) There is a mechanism in conflict: 'crimination' (Schuldzuweisungen) => 'justification' (Rechtfertigungen) => 'to order sombody to be quiet', censoring maybe ditiching somebody (den Mund verbieten) +[vary]; recursion

Now while practicing, 'censoring ?' The hatecrime-testspecimens calcitrate: "No! this is the so called 'harmonisation' of contents", not ?

(Disclaimer: 'explicit' and a little OT) The Coach asks: 'This time obsession, do you bought all the emotional stuff ?' ^^

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

#589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

That's true, but it also seems to effectively hold for the originals, only with conformity rather than contrarianism:

> Someone: Extremism is bad.

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

#590
post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a major and serious point. A large part of the discourse has become slapping the "extremist" label on every dissenting argument from the other side, regardless of where the position actually is. If you ban extremist speech, then what you've done is create incentive to label everything as extremist.

I consider myself a centrist; I have been registered as an Independent since the first election in which I voted (21 years ago), and have voted for Republicans and Democrats. Politically, I try to evaluate each idea on the merits rather than which party espouses it. So at least in my case, there is no "other side" which I can mislabel as extremist.

Hahaha, of course there is. There is much more to politics than only Republicans and Democrats - in many countries they would both the be considered as on the same side.
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