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

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

#161

Post by Manuel_D »

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…

To be clear, the study found that platforms banning topics succeeds in removing those topics from the platform - not necessarily from society as a whole. The study did not conclude that banning hateful communities off of reddit actually made those users less hateful or curbed the spread of hateful content online. If each of those banned users subsequently posted twice as much hateful content on a different platform, that still comports with the conclusions of that study.

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

#162

Post by dude187 »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #147
dude187 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is bound to that stance. Some people, myself included, believe that there is no line. You have the right to say anything.

I agree with this line of reasoning, but then we have to ask the question: are platforms obligated to host all speech that is not illegal (in whatever jurisdiction they reside in)? Should they be obligated? If I as a private citizen decide to create a platform to host discourse, do I have the freedom to decide what is permitted there? If the answers to the followup questions are "yes", then we arrive to the status qu…

I believe that common carrier applies to platforms, not just the infrastructure of wires. These platforms could not exist without the large privilege given to them I'm immunity to the illegal content they serve up.

The problem is that these platforms have it both ways. They can censor entire political parties, yet play dumb and cry immunity "we're just a platform" when there's literal illegal content that makes it's way to their public hosting.

Once they censor based on content, they should lose all until and be considered a publisher of that content. They're no longer a passthrough, they're now actively working to manipulate opinions

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

#163

Post by idiotsecant »

mardoz wrote: post #95
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 free speech advocates ignore here is that even they generally draw a line somewhere. Death threats, defamation, pedophilia, sharing bomb making materials etc are usually accepted by everyone to not be acceptable. 'But those are different' is usually the argument here. But why though? Because they cause harm? Doesn't inciting racial hatred cause harm? Once we stop arguing over the issue being black/white but inst…

>What free speech advocates ignore here is that even they generally draw a line somewhere.

Yes, that is a problem of some discussion in government. To solve this problem researchers have created so-called 'crimes', which are violations of 'laws' which define the things we may and may not do, and people become subject to 'punishments' if disobeyed.

Leading thinkers have suggested that the way to make things 'illegal' is to pass 'laws' restricting them.

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

#164

Post by nescioquid »

PerkinWarwick wrote: post #121
nescioquid wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness, it is trivial to point to any number of counter-examples throughout history if you just want to dismiss the observation. Hedges is a journalist and was referring to the changes he saw in the squeezed middle and lower classes through his career, and probably wasn't making a sweeping historic claim. I mentioned it as contrast to the parent comment who simply concluded people are incapable of rational thoug…

> if you just want to dismiss the observation. I'm not and I'm willing to give it a chance. I'm just not seeing a strong correlation. What I do see people doing when they lack control is to attempt to gain control. Put together a group, grab some of that sweet power through mass. The more ambitious ones fight their way up the power structure. Special bonus points if you can take over an existing seat of power.

> What I do see people doing when they lack control is to attempt to gain control.

One way in which people gain (the feeling of) control is to imagine the world differently (superstition, conspiracy, religion) in a way that makes them virtuous or special and others not (i.e. essentially Nietzsche's idea of ressentiment). If you haven't the power to take part in a real struggle, this is not so surprising to me.

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

#165

Post by reedjosh »

newbamboo wrote: post #45

The cia wants big tech monopolies because we are in direct competition with China. Mimetic desire to be dominant great power. But the problem is monopolies suck. They stifle innovation and make the culture sluggish and less dynamic. Where do we go from here? Probably some new great power emerges that allows true freedom and fosters bottom up innovation. I just wonder where that will come from.

Decentralized and or federated social and value sharing systems.

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

#166

Post by clairity »

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…

the lesson here should be that we're not really much different from our ancestors of 5-50k years ago and because of that, concentrations of power (and by extension, influence) are inherently dangerous. leaders with too much power will inevitably make mistakes, and keeping institutions limited and focused means the harms from those mistakes are limited in scope.

in government, that means extending federalism: smaller governing bodies loosely federated (primarily for mutual protection and interrelational fairness). in business, it means truly competitive (and fair) markets with diverse participants, not oligarcal ones (like these platforms).

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

#167

Post by wutbrodo »

unethical_ban wrote: post #126
wutbrodo wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, and long before Covid, that was a valid (and much-expressed) criticism of them, as well as a general criticism of using non-federated platforms. But expanding explicitly into deciding what users are allowed to see and express to each other is a million times worse than the type of banal malevolence that arises from "show people what they like to see".

There's the fundamental difference! I love finding the "fundamental difference". The crux, the place where philosophies diverge, where the understandings break down. I fundamentally disagree with the premise that "keeping harmful, intentional disinformation away from people" is worse than "letting people unknowingly subscribe to disinformation". I would argue, perhaps, that there should be open policies on what topic…

> "keeping harmful, intentional disinformation away from people"

This is begging the question though. It's assuming that "harmful, intentional disinformation" is 1) well-defined and 2) always going to be determined by those with your best interests at heart. It relies on a blind faith in the fundamental and eternal moral purity of Facebook and other mega-corporations. I wholeheartedly disagree that they fit this mold.

This is true even if you turn your religious passion towards government institutions instead of Facebook. Do you similarly agree that criminal trials and due process are unnecessary? After all, the same pre-hoc confidence in your ability to categorize without rigor leads to "Why would we want criminals going free due to technicalities and lawyer's tricks?". I assume you don't agree with this statement, because in that context, you've internalized the idea that institutions are both corruptible and flawed even when uncorrupted, and it behooves us as a society to have some epistemic humility instead of pretending that Truth is carved onto clay tablets and handed down from God.

If you've paid any attention to the pandemic, you'd know that even a situation where government is in full control of defining "misinformation" can be consistently and significantly misleading. "Mask truther" used to mean someone who thought wearing masks was a good idea for preventing spread, discussing the lab leak hypothesis was "misinformation", the vaccines were "rushed and unsafe" until Trump was out of office, etc etc etc. It's hard to pick a topic where it wasn't trivial to front-run official advice by several months, repeatedly, over the entire pandemic.

It's a bit of a paradox: The very certainty and (illusory) Truth-with-a-capital-T that you take for granted is forged through a process of skepticism, second-guessing, and constant poking at beliefs. Hamstringing that process is like killing the golden goose to make more room for all the eggs you plan to have.

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

#168

Post by poszlem »

short_sells_poo wrote: post #147
dude187 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody is bound to that stance. Some people, myself included, believe that there is no line. You have the right to say anything.

I agree with this line of reasoning, but then we have to ask the question: are platforms obligated to host all speech that is not illegal (in whatever jurisdiction they reside in)? Should they be obligated? If I as a private citizen decide to create a platform to host discourse, do I have the freedom to decide what is permitted there? If the answers to the followup questions are "yes", then we arrive to the status qu…

The reason why platforms are expected to host even the speech they don't agree with is the same why some bakers are forced to make cakes for homosexual weddings. If you compel to the latter, you should also compel to the former and vice-versa.

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

#169

Post by exporectomy »

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…

Yep. Every western country I know of except America, has only a token gesture of human rights and they're only rights that happened to match the culture at the time with no longer term vision at all.

New Zealand, for example has its Bill of Rights Act which says no forced medical procedures. Somebody was recently fired for refusing a Covid vaccine and went to court arguing that right. The judge said, yea, there is that right, but also the government can revoke it whenever they feel like for any reason they want, and they have, so no luck.

Discrimination based on race or sex? Certainly not! Oh, except for hiring domestic workers, selecting flatmates, decency, safety, sports, etc, etc. In other words, all the places where people were already doing discrimination.

The UN's ambitiously named "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" has 28 rights for people, and a 29th right of governments to deny any of those rights for reasons of morality, public order, general welfare of democratic society. In other words, any reason whatsoever.

Remember freedom of internal travel? China used to be a human rights violator for restricting that. Now every country and its dog is doing the same. But this time it's "us" not "them", so it's all OK.

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

#170

Post by cratermoon »

chroem- wrote: post #94
cratermoon wrote: post #37

Harmful speech and misinformation should not have a platform.

It's all fun and games until the Ministry of Truth refers your case to the Ministry of Love.

- Performative Hate Speech Acts. Perlocutionary and Illocutionary Understandings in International Human Rights Law: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334199177_PERFORMAT...

- Oppressive Speech: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/000484008023703...

- Why We Should Ban Oppressive Speech Acts: https://publicseminar.org/essays/why-we-should-outlaw-oppres...

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