Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#51

Post by Broken_Hippo » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

iammisc wrote: post #31

jan_Inkepa wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the same realism about secularism when a catholic became head of the big secularist-leaning party in my then county of residence. People were sure interested in his private feelings about sinfulness, or said that they would never vote for a party with a religious leader. The party angled itself as secularist, but that particular kerfuffle revealed it to be a highly contingent value of the membership (and of peo…

I'm confused.. isn't a secularist party in favor of not involving personal religious beliefs in Civic issues? In that light, what's wrong with someone with personal religious beliefs from participating? Others made his religion important not him, from what you describe

I'm sorry, but: Wouldn't it be important to make sure the person actually wants secular values in politics when parts of their religion doesn't think the same way?

I mean, if he doesn't personally think folks should be using birth control or that same sex marriage is bad (as the Catholic Church does), isn't it important to ask how they deal with this? Does it come out in votes or does the person think that they should live up to a stricter moral code than what law dictates?

If you don't find this stuff out, you might wind up in a position where the law reflects religious values rather than broader secular ones. You don't have to have an official religion for this to happen, merely enough religious folks in office that vote with their religion.

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#52

Post by Clubber » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 4:40 PM UTC

BoxOfRain wrote: post #39

BitwiseFool wrote: post #2

2020-2021 has shown me that most people happen to be 'fair weather fans' of civil rights. Everyone claims to love free speech but when suppression of speech opposing their own worldview comes into play, they suddenly dither and fall back on other rationalizations to justify the censorship. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'hate speech'. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'misinform…

>I have a much better understanding of historical moral panics and cessions of freedoms. Whereas I used to wonder how some societies ever gave into such pressures, I now realize it's not that hard to persuade the average citizen into accepting such things. Me too. I've always wonders what drives people into the arms of fascists and other such overtly unpleasant belief systems and the simple answer is fear. Fear for y…

>Fear for yourself, your family, and your future will apparently cause people to abandon all sorts of supposedly cherished beliefs.

And we (the US) must realize we've been put under a constant state of fear by news / advertisers for the last 30+ years. We don't really even realize that we aren't in a "neutral" mental state because we've been constantly bombarded by fear mongering. The constant fear is "normal" here. It wasn't always like this. This is why the "for the children," is so effective at infringing on our rights, we are afraid for the wellbeing our kids, more so than ourselves. It's nefarious to use our fear for our children to pass controversial legislation. I mean stop to think about how evil that is.

What would our country look like if we weren't being constantly being programmed to be afraid?

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#53

Post by bdamm » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 4:42 PM UTC

foobarian wrote: post #27

godshatter wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the state's going to host it, then their bar should be whether it's legal or not. If they want to put scary warnings around certain content or lock some of it behind age restriction, sure, fine. But if they are going to use public funds to host a government run publicly available video sharing platform, they should be very cautious about removing any content that doesn't violate actual laws. Free speech and all th…

Yes, exactly. And deciding legality should be done better than current automatic moderations that punish innocent content without a working appeals process.

Requiring that content be sourced from actual humans in good faith, and identifying people violating terms of service by spamming with puppet bots would be a good start. If the service is being operated by a national government, then you could require posters to prove residence or citizenship. But would anyone really want to use such a service? Could it possibly be even produced or operated efficiently? Once you put strict legal requirements on the operating entity it will get very slow, expensive, and user unfriendly.

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#54

Post by naasking » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

faet wrote: post #6

Banning hate communities does work though [0]. I assume that the results are similar for twitter and facebook. "Hateful" Reddit or FB communities also don't allow "free speech". The moderators will ban people who go against the grain. There is no free exchange of ideas or disputing as if you're going against the grain you'll just get banned from that community (but not the platform). As such, either the platforms all…

Sure it worked at reducing hate speech on reddit, but is that the right objective? It's not implausible to think that the resentment from such local measures could cause hate to increase in a more global sense. Kind of like entropy in thermodynamics: local work can reduce local entropy, but at the expense of causing a global increase in entropy.

If the real objective should be a global decrease in hate, then maybe local suppression/exile might not be the right mechanism.

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#55

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #2

2020-2021 has shown me that most people happen to be 'fair weather fans' of civil rights. Everyone claims to love free speech but when suppression of speech opposing their own worldview comes into play, they suddenly dither and fall back on other rationalizations to justify the censorship. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'hate speech'. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'misinform…

[deleted]

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#56

Post by Clubber » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

londgine wrote: post #44

faet wrote: post #6

Banning hate communities does work though [0]. I assume that the results are similar for twitter and facebook. "Hateful" Reddit or FB communities also don't allow "free speech". The moderators will ban people who go against the grain. There is no free exchange of ideas or disputing as if you're going against the grain you'll just get banned from that community (but not the platform). As such, either the platforms all…

> Banning hate communities does work though ... The sentence is incomplete. Banning X communities does work to achieve the goal of people not talking about X. I don't think that your linked study is really necessary, the Chinese cultural revolution worked really well (to achieve the goal of "preserving Chinese communism") [0]. Imagine if 30 years ago large digital monopolies banned what was considered unmentionable b…

>Banning X communities does work to achieve the goal of people not talking about X.

Honestly I'm not sure that is even accurate, I would imagine it does the opposite. People are drawn to what's not allowed, it's even one of the morals of the Adam and Eve story. Pretty old but still relevant idea of human nature.

Here's an interesting story about Goldberger who defended the Neo Nazis in Skokie.

https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/rights-protesters/sk...

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#57

Post by klyrs » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

BitwiseFool wrote: post #2

2020-2021 has shown me that most people happen to be 'fair weather fans' of civil rights. Everyone claims to love free speech but when suppression of speech opposing their own worldview comes into play, they suddenly dither and fall back on other rationalizations to justify the censorship. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'hate speech'. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'misinform…

> 2020-2021 has shown me that most people happen to be 'fair weather fans' of civil rights.

A close read of the constitution itself shows that this has been the case since the very founding of the united states.

> The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#58

Post by brandonmenc » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 4:49 PM UTC

nonameiguess wrote: post #34

BitwiseFool wrote: post #2

2020-2021 has shown me that most people happen to be 'fair weather fans' of civil rights. Everyone claims to love free speech but when suppression of speech opposing their own worldview comes into play, they suddenly dither and fall back on other rationalizations to justify the censorship. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'hate speech'. Well, it's not free speech being violated when it's 'misinform…

What changed in 2020? Do you not remember the Dixie Chicks getting blacklisted for speaking against George Bush, Janet Jackson being deplatformed from record labels for showing a nipple on television, the LA DNC in 2000 cordoning off protesters into "free speech zones" 4 blocks away from the convention, gangsta rap and heavy metal being censored in the 80s and 90s, pushes for civil rights being met with dogs and fire…

> What changed in 2020?

Liberals started doing it.

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#59

Post by da_chicken » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 4:50 PM UTC

londgine wrote: post #44

faet wrote: post #6

Banning hate communities does work though [0]. I assume that the results are similar for twitter and facebook. "Hateful" Reddit or FB communities also don't allow "free speech". The moderators will ban people who go against the grain. There is no free exchange of ideas or disputing as if you're going against the grain you'll just get banned from that community (but not the platform). As such, either the platforms all…

> Banning hate communities does work though ... The sentence is incomplete. Banning X communities does work to achieve the goal of people not talking about X. I don't think that your linked study is really necessary, the Chinese cultural revolution worked really well (to achieve the goal of "preserving Chinese communism") [0]. Imagine if 30 years ago large digital monopolies banned what was considered unmentionable b…

Chinese censorship is backed by the threat of arbitrary imprisonment or violence. In that case, it's not really the banning of the topic that's working, it's policing for compliance and de facto criminalization of defiance.

Re: Private censorship is not the best way to fight hate or defend democracy (2018)

#60

Post by PerkinWarwick » Wed, Sep 29, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

faet wrote: post #6

Banning hate communities does work though [0]. I assume that the results are similar for twitter and facebook. "Hateful" Reddit or FB communities also don't allow "free speech". The moderators will ban people who go against the grain. There is no free exchange of ideas or disputing as if you're going against the grain you'll just get banned from that community (but not the platform). As such, either the platforms all…

>"Hateful" Reddit or FB communities also don't allow "free speech". The moderators will ban people who go against the grain.

Which is fine I think, but why have Reddit or FB do the censoring (aside from things that are outright illegal). I don't much care if a bunch of Nazis or tankies are busy planning world domination on Reddit while sharing recipes. Why do you care?