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The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

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Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only people who would have cis used to "delegitimize" them would be ones who are saying something innacurate about trans people and are being told that they do not have relevant frame of reference for that comment. Describing cis as a slur is... Wow.

It was created for a couple of purposes: - Add an unnecessarily complex psuedo-intellectual layer to the discussion in order to catch normal people off guard and make them feel "uneducated" so that they can be "educated". - Decouple the idea of normal from heterosexuality, which is, frankly, normal due to it being the most common state for of existence for people. Overall it is a purposeful attack on the status quo.…

> Decouple the idea of normal from heterosexuality

Um, no, other than arguably being wrong on the broad kind of motivation in either case, you seem to have also confused the word “cisgender” (or “cis” for short) with the word “heterosexual”.

Transgender people can be heterosexual or homosexual or asexual or any other sexuality, and the same is true of cisgender people; having a term to refer to people who do not deviate from the until-recently-in-our-society culturally obligatory stereotypical relation of gender identity and sex characteristics at birth does nothing to reduce heteronormativity of language compared to just referring to them as “normal” (and then, depending on context, elaborating further on the axis of normality and possibly whose norms are being referenced), to the extent that having a word does that, its the word for people who don’t deviate from the until-recently-in-our-society culturally obligatory stereotype of sexual preference for partner gender based on their own gender.

But, independent of undermining the norms involved, its sometimes useful to be have a convenient concise term, which both “cisgender” and “heterosexual”, in their respective domains, provide.

Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People voluntarily leaving is not removing voices. This is naive. If a Klan bar doesn't literally throw out Black people, they still are preventing Black people from being there by making the environment so unpleasant they cannot remain.

Doesn't this make it a race to see how everyone can be like the peasants in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. "Help Help I'm being oppressed! Come see the violence inherent in the system!"

You understand that the joke there was that the peasants were being oppressed, and the king was totally blind to it, right?

Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#423
post #200

Babylon Bee seems pretty harmless. I find right wing humor to be fairly low-IQ, but they should be able to joke about trans women without getting banned. I'm a recovering alcoholic and bipolar, so I have to put up with jokes about drunks and manic street preachers. Why should trans get a pass? Heck, I even tell jokes about drunks and manic street preachers myself.

Just because you have to put up with jokes doesn't make it right. Those people get it all the time and it adds up. While you might be comfortable with it others are not. Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9n_UPyVR5s and tell me you don't see the parallels

I'm a big fan of "right to listen", so people with different comfort levels can all be more comfortable. It's as unfair for people with low comfort levels for jokes to make everyone else uncomfortable with overbearing censorship as it is to constantly be bombarded with triggering jokes. People should have the right not to have to deal with reading stuff they don't want to. People should also have the right to not be censored, and anyone who wants to read those jokes should be able to. These two issues don't have to be in conflict, theoretically.

It sounds like a technology problem if you dig deep enough. Somehow flipping moderation from banning people outright(except for illegal content and spam) to categorizing the content by possible triggers, then letting people subscribe to certain moderation lists that hide things they don't want to see. As long as it's optional on the listener's end, it's not censorship.

Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding Paradox of Intolerance: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance#What_Popp... See section "misuse"

A valid refutation, if a little weak. I think the last paragraph of the "What Popper actually Said" section is just as important to note: > It makes sense, doesn't it? Free speech is all fine and dandy, but let's stretch that to the limit. A and B are promoting their ideologies. A-ism is based on reasoned arguments — they may not yield correct conclusions, or they may, but A is speaking in good faith. B-ism is based…

There is a line drawn somewhere, through two centuries of judicial precedent: https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/about/faq/which-types-...

Namely (for this case); true threats, fighting words, soliciting crime and/or imminent lawless action. The last two are in clear violation of this principle (3. soliciting crime 4. imminent lawless action), and whether or not speech is in violation of that can be determined in court. When people advocate "free speech" they're really advocating freer speech, as circumscribed by exceptions to the first amendment.

For the first two, the "[not written to cause violence but may cause it by misinterpretation]" argument is a problem to me. Intent matters, the writer is not responsible for nut jobs. Calls to violence & coercion are already impermissible by the law. I absolutely support these rules in real life.

It gets difficult when you consider that anonymity online means people will behave worse, since they have no reputation to protect or real-life consequences (just look at 4chan). Social media is not a great platform for Popper's 'reasoned debate', yet >48% of Americans receive news from it. Persistent, non-anonymous comments raise other problems, since it's a new phenomenon that everyone can essentially know every view you've ever expressed and attempt to get you punished for it. It's tricky, and I see the censors' point somewhat. I'd err on the side of free speech with a mechanism like anonymous accounts can't interact with verified, real humans. This should reduce bigotry & hate to the level experienced in real life (or perhaps lower), which is protected speech, but not what a reputable person would ever say.

Social media to me, really has become a public square - where politicians campaign, news orgs post articles, people & activists have discussions. 500 million tweets are sent per day. Once most discourse moves to these platforms, it should be necessary to allow controversial views, even if it is a private company. As such, censorship of "possibly false" information shouldn't be permitted, especially when this has been at the request of government officials, and some of it has later been confirmed true.

Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is watching Fox News or Newsmax counts as touching grass? Many of my sources touched grass and came to the opposite conclusion than you. Criticizing Hunter Biden is not specifically hate, but then again people are not criticizing him, they are spreading conspiracy theories about him. It is yet to be proved that he committed any crime, but his privacy has been already thoroughly violated. Steve Bannon famously said th…

>Is watching Fox News or Newsmax counts as touching grass? It is the exact opposite. I think this proves my point that you need to get out. Please provide me some Fox or Newsmax links promoting hate and violence though. I would be interested in seeing what you call violence and hate. >Many of my sources touched grass and came to the opposite conclusion than you. I was suggesting you touch grass not people you listen…

> violence is relatively low and things are OK

[1] disagrees with you.

[1] https://prochoice.org/national-abortion-federation-releases-...

Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#426
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is a highly engaged set of authoritarian activists who will assassinate your character and get you fired. Other groups don't have the equivalent of a Red Guard to enforce their ideology or religion.

I’m pretty sure trans people are a protected minority in most jurisdictions. So you are wrong. The judicial system has evaluated that—for some valid reason; according to our laws—mocking trans people is worse then mocking cis people.

> "I’m pretty sure trans people are a protected minority in most jurisdictions. So you are wrong. The judicial system has evaluated that—for some valid reason; according to our laws—mocking trans people is worse then mocking cis people."

lol I don't know what "jurisdiction" you're living in, but "mocking trans people" is in no way a legal matter in the U.S. I can mock "trans" people as much as I want and there's not a damn thing you or the government can do about it as long as I am doing it on my own dime and on my own time.

Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if you purposefully misgender a cis person on Twitter, the same rule applies. Not sure what your issue is

The obvious response is that that that shouldn't result in a ban either. There's a right not to be physically threatened, but there is and should not be no right to not be offended.

I agree. The marketplace of ideas and opinions should be protected to the greatest extent possible. Restrictions should be limited to things such as actual threats, doxxing of private information, and illegal content.

Otherwise, allow people to use the block, mute, and unfollow buttons as they see fit as a form of personal moderation.

Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people are publicly mocked on Twitter everyday. What makes "trans" people so special?

a simple example: people who get mocked for being bald don't typically get killed for their baldness. People who get mocked for being trans ARE FREQUENTLY killed for their transness. We don't need to protect bald people from mocking, because the consequences are minimal. We need to protect trans people from mocking because the consequences are _maximal_. trans people are an endangered (in the most literal sense) mino…

I don't see why you think that everyone should be blamed for what a handful of others do. Their crimes are not my crimes. That's not the way a free society works.

Also, mocking "trans" people is not a gateway to murder. I mock "trans" people all the time and I've never murdered one or even thought about doing so.

Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slurs are made by context, tone, and perception by the target. I have never been called "cis" except by people with antagonistic tones trying to get a rise out of me. Furthermore the overwhelming majority of the roughly two billion English speakers around the world who aren't trans do not self-describe as "cis". It's a slur.

> I have never been called "cis" except by people with antagonistic tones trying to get a rise out of me. I can tell you from personal experience that this says more about you than the word. The majority of people in my circle would self describe as cis, and most people I interact with would self identify as cis if the meaning was explained to them.

That's more about your social circle than everyone's elses tbh. On twitter I've almost exclusively used as mild derogative

Re: The Babylon Bee's Twitter account is no longer suspended

#430

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not allow spam? Surely the marketplace of ideas should be as free and open as possible?

Holy shit ban this troll

Hardly. The point I'm making is that any platform with user supplied content must have moderation of some speech. No platform can exist totally unmoderated at Twitter's scale.

So then the discussion is about where you draw the line, what speech you permit and what speech you prohibit. Apparently, there is a community of folks who believe Twitter should allow racism on the platform, despite it currently being disallowed. I think it's more than fair to say, "if you are allowing speech most people would find offensive and was previously banned, how far are you willing to push that needle?" Bigotry is one thing, but what else is on the table?

Elon Musk has repeatedly indicated he believes in free speech and the marketplace of ideas. I think it's more than fair to ask what his limits are.

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