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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)

#201

Post by LudvigVanHassen »

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…

And it's a damning realization at that. Nevertheless, it seems to be true.

How do we maintain the emphasis on free speech with our higher fragmented population who have WIDELY varying beliefs and little shared culture?

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

#202

Post by kitsunesoba »

BobbyJo wrote: post #127
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…

Define 'works'. This subject is an easy one in which to conflate goals. The goals of the platform are different than the goals of the public, lawmakers, etc. which is what the article is about. The goal of the platform is to pull in more users. Having less abusive language and users is a means to that end, as is appeasing general public outcries for more moderation. The goal of the public and lawmakers is, hopefully,…

I suspect that for reddit specifically, homogenous opinion and lack of meaningful discourse has more to do with the voting/karma system and its inability to scale well.

Nuance gets crowded out because posts and comments presenting polarized opinions are much more likely to get acted on by readers than their more nuanced counterparts are. Posting and voting becomes more about the dopamine hit from the gained karma and sense of being correct than it is about discussion.

This is why while it still isn't perfect, one can often see higher quality discussions in smaller niche subreddits where there's no critical mass to push dominant opinions. In those communities, posting extreme comments just makes one look like an attention seeking troll.

So in my view, moderation or lack thereof is almost orthogonal to an online community's propensity for quality discourse. That seems more related to the designs of and incentives given by the software these communities run on.

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

#203

Post by _bfhp »

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…

Neither of your assertions are related to what is being discussed. Nuclear bombs "work" and bad people would do horrible things with them, but that doesn't say anything about if we should use them.

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

#204

Post by LudvigVanHassen »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #140
foobarian wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if we would be better served with a NPR-like publicly funded platform for video hosting that puts a lot more resources into content moderation. The private platforms get away with the bare minimum by throwing black box AI at the problem which leads to problems like the anti-vax censorship chilling effects etc. There should be an easily reached human in the loop with transparent decisions, and levels of appea…

Sadly, NPR is a bad example because they are hardly publicly funded and their content is pretty biased (I'm a moderate liberal and NPR definitely feels like it's left of me, even if they're typically more civil than other media outlets).

Agreed. NPR it VERY left biased and it's damn evident.

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

#205

Post by mullingitover »

PerkinWarwick wrote: post #63
nescioquid wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chris Hedges sometimes remarks that he finds people turn towards superstitious, religious, or conspiratorial world views when they find they have no control over their lives. I suspect that if the US somehow changed so that economic security were increased for most people, there would be much less unreason and general discourse wouldn't be so mean.

That's an interesting theory, although I doubt that 19th century US farmers, among the most self-sufficient people in history, were lacking in religion, superstition, or conspiracies.

Farmers through all of history and to this day are absolutely never self-sufficient. They are at the mercy of 'the gods', aka the weather, at all times. One bad flood, one freeze, one week of ill-timed rain, and they are destitute. That's the perfect environment to breed superstition.

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

#206

Post by rsj_hn »

LudvigVanHassen wrote: post #201
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…

And it's a damning realization at that. Nevertheless, it seems to be true. How do we maintain the emphasis on free speech with our higher fragmented population who have WIDELY varying beliefs and little shared culture?

> How do we maintain the emphasis on free speech with our higher fragmented population who have WIDELY varying beliefs and little shared culture?

We cannot. Diversity, Freedom, Centralization. Pick two.

What has kinda worked in some countries is splitting up into different areas and letting them run their own affairs -- e.g. swiss style cantons.

But that type of arrangement is very fragile given the organizational advantages of centralization and countries like Switzerland are notable because of their exceptionality.

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

#207

Post by jessaustin »

PerkinWarwick wrote: post #63
nescioquid wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chris Hedges sometimes remarks that he finds people turn towards superstitious, religious, or conspiratorial world views when they find they have no control over their lives. I suspect that if the US somehow changed so that economic security were increased for most people, there would be much less unreason and general discourse wouldn't be so mean.

That's an interesting theory, although I doubt that 19th century US farmers, among the most self-sufficient people in history, were lacking in religion, superstition, or conspiracies.

19th century US farmers

They were self-sufficient in the sense that there was no one coming to help in case of emergency. That doesn't mean they ever felt secure. Entire families regularly died for one or more of dozens of causes: starvation, freezing weather, tornadoes, human sickness, livestock sickness, crop failure, drought, dangerous animals, Indian attack, crime, etc. Some of them might have pretended at a "control over their lives", but few modern Americans would trade places with them.

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

#208

Post by throwaway946513 »

icyfox wrote: post #184
idiotsecant wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced we should think it's acceptable for you or I to decide who does and does not get exposed to information that will 'radicalize' them because you and I may have wildly different opinions of what constitutes a radical opinion. Humans sometimes develop stupid opinions, and that is OK. They're allowed to do that. They aren't allowed to act on those opinions in a way that constitutes a crime, which is why…

I define a radical group to be some collection that seems to be consistently peddling false material for their own ends, with an overly provoking tilt that makes it easy to go viral. Some specifics out of the past year would be vaccine misinformation, prejudice that incites racial violence in Myanmar, organizing an occupation to the capital in the US. Shouldn't we put a stop to these communities if they sway people t…

Not that I disagree with you - but "can't yell fire in a crowded room" is slightly misconstrued. As those aren't the original words from the U.S. Supreme Court case. [0]

Additionally, the idea of 'clear and present danger' has been modified within the past 100 years since the said court case. The Supreme court since then has stated: "The government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is 'directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action'". Said definition has changed and depends upon situations, where some action is imminent or "at some ambiguous future date".[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shouting_fire_in_a_crowded_the... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action

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

#209

Post by cratermoon »

chroem- wrote: post #189
cratermoon wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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...

The speech in your post is oppressing me right now. Cease and desist your verbal oppression or else I will use state-sponsored violence to end your oppressively free speech.

Shouting 'fire' in a crowded theater has never been protected speech.

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

#210

Post by Pils »

hartator wrote: post #176
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…

> http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf This paper is trash. On defining hate speech, "we focus on textual content that is distinctively characteristic of these forums", so, yes, banning specific subreddits resulted in less of that content in the overall Reddit. Did it make Reddit a more friendly place? Probably not as tensions have never been higher.

> Did it make Reddit a more friendly place? Probably not as tensions have never been higher.

Did allowing hate speech make 8chan/Voat friendlier? There are plenty of unfriendly communities that lack overt racism/fatphobia, but I can't think of any friendly ones that do.

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