Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Banned British far-right figures return to Twitter within hours of takeover

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 94 posts

Re: Banned British far-right figures return to Twitter within hours of takeover

#31

Post by qull »

boston_clone wrote: post #22
vinyl7 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People hold views, so what? Why can't we just accept that people have differing views, and just agree to disagree? Why do we have to force everyone to have the same belief system? People get angry when religious people proselytize, but other topics are okay to force on people? I have differing political/social/economic opinions than other people, but I have no desire to force my opinion on other people are make them…

"People hold views that other beings should be enslaved or exterminated, so what?" The kind of sentiment you're expressing often comes from people who are either ignorant of fascism / authoritarianism and how it affects societies, or are apathetic towards those outcomes. You must understand that there are people out there primarily driven by fear and hatred, that, once given positions of power, will use that power to…

Thats a grade school level strawman. You may not be wrong but your argument is.

Re: Banned British far-right figures return to Twitter within hours of takeover

#32

Post by qull »

kibwen wrote: post #26
vinyl7 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People hold views, so what? Why can't we just accept that people have differing views, and just agree to disagree? Why do we have to force everyone to have the same belief system? People get angry when religious people proselytize, but other topics are okay to force on people? I have differing political/social/economic opinions than other people, but I have no desire to force my opinion on other people are make them…

> People hold views, so what? Why can't we just accept that people have differing views, and just agree to disagree? This is nonsense. Just because people have the right to believe what they want doesn't mean that lies have the same value as truths.

The issue is, who determines truth? Without that mystical all seeing arbiter, we must abide both.

Re: Banned British far-right figures return to Twitter within hours of takeover

#33

Post by Overtonwindow »

The solution is to allow people to one-click filter their feeds. If a person does not what to see the word "Trump" or any vulgarity, slurs, anything, they can one-click, or very simply, block those.

What has always bothered me about the Twitter censorship war is that the people most angry are the ones wanting to silence speech. I say let speech be free, identify the people, groups, and ideas you don't want, and block it out. Build your own town square.

Re: Banned British far-right figures return to Twitter within hours of takeover

#34

Post by kibwen »

atdrummond wrote: post #9
koof wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paradox of tolerance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

The paradox is used as an argumentative device for judging whether a tolerant and democratic society is possible (with liberal institutions ensuring intolerance doesn’t emerge) or if maintenance of tolerance would require an autocratic philosopher-king. The continual application of it to the online censorship debate makes little sense in light of its original rhetorical context. It is also constantly cited in policy…

The paradox of tolerance is not some narrow tool, it can be used in many contexts. In particular, it can be used to demonstrate that, if you want to exist in a society that has a coherent notion of "self-defense" in general, you must admit the existence of the paradox and the necessity of judging actions in the context of aggression or defense. To wit: killing someone is against the law, but killing someone who's trying to kill you may be permitted, but even in that case, the aggressor still isn't allowed to kill you just because you tried to kill them in self-defense; they forfeit the right to self-defense by being the aggressor.

Re: Banned British far-right figures return to Twitter within hours of takeover

#35

Post by Overtonwindow »

hker999 wrote: post #14

The far left extremists on Twitter are still there, spreading hate, and never got banned. Why so much attention to the far-right?

The far-left fights ideas it does not like with censorship and cancellation. The far-right is more aggressive at defending their beliefs. One says you must be silenced, the other says come at me bro.

Re: Banned British far-right figures return to Twitter within hours of takeover

#36

Post by Ralfp »

vinyl7 wrote: post #12
fragmede wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's gonna do that debunking though? You? For every young man that manages to receive the message that the Holocaust didn't happen and it's all lies, and decides to hear that garbage as gospel; you're volunteering to deprogram each and every one of them? Because that's the issue, the lack of debunking. We couldn't even get people to hear there aren't microchips in the vaccine, or that we've been to the moon. More st…

People hold views, so what? Why can't we just accept that people have differing views, and just agree to disagree? Why do we have to force everyone to have the same belief system? People get angry when religious people proselytize, but other topics are okay to force on people? I have differing political/social/economic opinions than other people, but I have no desire to force my opinion on other people are make them…

Because we have enough empirical proof from last 100 years that right people at right time can convert your country into one where you can be sentenced to death, labour camp or any of those based on your ethnicity, religion, world view or even fact of wearing glasses.

Re: Banned British far-right figures return to Twitter within hours of takeover

#37

Post by tablespoon »

hker999 wrote: post #14

The far left extremists on Twitter are still there, spreading hate, and never got banned. Why so much attention to the far-right?

> Why so much attention to the far-right?

Because elite media is left-ish, and has great power to focus attention on some things but not on others.

Re: Banned British far-right figures return to Twitter within hours of takeover

#38

Post by vinyl7 »

boston_clone wrote: post #22
vinyl7 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People hold views, so what? Why can't we just accept that people have differing views, and just agree to disagree? Why do we have to force everyone to have the same belief system? People get angry when religious people proselytize, but other topics are okay to force on people? I have differing political/social/economic opinions than other people, but I have no desire to force my opinion on other people are make them…

"People hold views that other beings should be enslaved or exterminated, so what?" The kind of sentiment you're expressing often comes from people who are either ignorant of fascism / authoritarianism and how it affects societies, or are apathetic towards those outcomes. You must understand that there are people out there primarily driven by fear and hatred, that, once given positions of power, will use that power to…

> You must understand that there are people out there primarily driven by fear and hatred, that, once given positions of power, will use that power to denigrate or otherwise erode the humanity of people they simply don't like.

Sounds like both current-day US political parties, so we're not doing a very good job at preventing this.

Re: Banned British far-right figures return to Twitter within hours of takeover

#39

Post by motohagiography »

Twitter had become a platform not for discourse, but for passing judgment instead of disagreeing. I prefer to ignore peoples judgmentalisms, but unfortunately, they seem to have militated to enforce them.

At the risk of being a bit too cheeky, if these users are really that concerned about unregulated opinion, maybe they should build their own platform or buy one of the struggling ones out? They have the advantage that people want to be around them because of their personal qualities, and there's no danger of them losing their bank accounts, or having their ISPs threatened with unrelated litigation, and I hear the fediverse is pretty cool. I would love to read their collective wit on Mastadon.

Beyond cheek, it's a good test of the argument. Instead of suffering on twitter, why not just move to a platform that is more welcoming to their judgments?

Re: Banned British far-right figures return to Twitter within hours of takeover

#40

Post by tablespoon »

soared wrote: post #19
amadeuspagel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine your comment, but with the link replaced with this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shootin... What would your reaction to this be? Would you maybe be a bit concerned about how easy it might be to claim that some speech you see as important in some way leads to violence, and must therefore be censored?

My comment would remain the same - there is extremist media on both sides.

> My comment would remain the same - there is extremist media on both sides.

But "extremist" and "extremism" aren't really neutral terms anymore. They're now also euphemisms coded to mean conservative/right-wing extremists.

Post reply on HN