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

You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

freddiedeboer.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 863 posts

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#101

Post by ephimetheus »

refurb wrote: post #84
justbored123 wrote: post #54

According to the authors logic, we should stop censoring child grooming, fraud, false advertisement, defamation, doxxing, false testimony, etc. because "it doesn't work" and "erodes free speech". This is clearly nonsense. It works, and it should be done, the only question as with all laws is were the line should be. We restrict freedom in general when it hurts other people (slavery, rape, killing, trespassing,etc) an…

But Alex Jones - Sandy Hook case wasn't censorship (he was free to say what he said), he was sued for defamation. We already have laws on that and all the other stuff you mention child grooming, fraud, false advertisement, doxxing, false testimony, etc. The point is - we have laws for speech that enters the criminal realm.

So how is Volksverhetzung, which is defined by law, any different?

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#102

Post by safothegreat »

Look, we need to factor in that humans are social creatures. And that our ideas secure themselves through the help of validity from others. Hate speech that occurred on Reddit in a community was validated and encouraged that eventually lead to a man carrying out a terrorist attack in Toronto. https://www.vice.com/en/article/bjwdk3/man-accused-of-toront...

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#103

Post by caslon »

dmingod666 wrote: post #17

My reading from the outside is, the left needs to realize (I'm sure it applies to the right equally as well) that scolding people into guilt is not a viable approach to affect action or to change perceptions when you're dealing with adults. Neither does boxing people into this, that and that category do any good. Like if all you want to do is dehumanize those guys so you can happily insult / hurt them without hurting…

The winning approach is obviously in waiting for the other side to die off; the left is currently the majority, and the right is, on average, old.

In this regard, it's absolutely a "viable approach": By making it low-status to be right-wing, or even by not carrying right-wing views on popular private platforms, it makes the right-wing destined to lose out somewhere along the line simply due to the youth not wanting to associate with them.

It's a waiting game above anything, and on a long enough scale it looks like the winner is clear here, for better or worse.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#104

Post by bubble_net »

It's embarrassing to admit, but with my ban today from /r/science, I'm now banned from three major subreddits, with the other two being /r/politics and /r/worldnews.

While I'm highly opinionated, I've always followed these subreddits' rules because I do believe rules are important for functional forums. These subreddits are also not some niche forum catering to a select group; they're major forums around topics of very general interest, so they really should have very high tolerance for unorthodox viewpoints.

All the bans I received were entirely politically/ideologically motivated.

In /r/politics I was permanently banned for saying something like 'I don't think little girls should be forced to share change rooms with little boys who identify as girls'.

For that I was accused of transphobia and permanently banned. The mod who imposed the ban wouldn't even quote the offending statement or try to explain what was transphobic about it. In private messages, they just stuck to their guns and stonewalled me on my requests for elaboration.

The /r/science ban was due to a comment I posted which contained a harsh criticism of the authors of a posted article. These authors were not forum members, so there was no subreddit rule violation, as far as I'm aware. I strongly suspect the real motivation for the ban was that in the comment, I also criticized the study's premise, that observing "racial blind ideology", was by definition, "anti-Black".

This is the article in question:

https://academictimes.com/belief-in-white-jesus-linked-to-ra...

I really think there is a significant amount of extremism coming from the establishment nowadays, and the attempts to silence opposing viewpoints is a symptom of that.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#105

Post by BaseS4 »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #4

Like most of these rants against "censorship" they skip over people's rights to restrict speech as a form of speech itself: there is no moral (or legal) right to give people you disagree with a forum or audience to express their view. Calling to silence others (that is, encouraging them to take your view of not giving them an audience) is fine as long as people have a choice on how to respond. If there is some notion…

And you don't have the freedom to measure the presumed audience reach of someone's speech.

Furthermore, your calculation of someone's reach isn't entitled to be the standard of how reduction of reach is to be applied.

In fact, you don't even own the audience or the platform that you claim you have the right to deny others from using.

You have absolutely no say, sway, or stake in anything you are discussing. You're just hiding behind a Google lobbyist's buzzphrase and pretending you are targeting people you don't like.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#106

Post by jimmygrapes »

pii wrote: post #63
ycombigator wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, just makes it edgier for the kids. Takes longer to crystalise but crystallises harder.

so if we don't have "actual nazi's" right now, in 20 years we 100000% will, and it will be "the left's" fault?

Yes.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#107

Post by NaturalPhallacy »

Zardoz84 wrote: post #27

You can't dialog with fascist.

Nevermind that Daryl Davis has literally converted over 200 KKK members: https://www.rt.com/viral/371340-meet-black-man-kkk/

THAT is how you beat fascism. Not censorship.

Lazy programmers trying censor via bits and bytes are never going to accomplish in a million years what Mr. Davis already has.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#108

Post by blockmarker »

Bud wrote: post #65
TameAntelope wrote: post #7

> Look: the most powerful governments, militaries, and intelligence services in the world have in recent decades tried to prevent the communications of terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS, using the most sophisticated digital means possible and with the full backing of various publishing and social media platforms. And yet those organizations effortlessly shared their propaganda and their rhetoric and coordina…

These are very good examples, but we just witnessed an even better one: Trump has been, for all practical purposes, entirely silenced, simply because Twitter deplatformed him.

Because he didn't go anywhere else. He could have joined Parler or Gab and continued drawing attention.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#109

Post by SiVal »

dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #4

Like most of these rants against "censorship" they skip over people's rights to restrict speech as a form of speech itself: there is no moral (or legal) right to give people you disagree with a forum or audience to express their view. Calling to silence others (that is, encouraging them to take your view of not giving them an audience) is fine as long as people have a choice on how to respond. If there is some notion…

By that argument, the US "monopoly or near monopoly" phone company AT&T during the Vietnam War could have decided that anyone who spoke on the phone about their opposition to the Vietnam War was unpatriotic and canceled their telephone service, and leftists who so often now make the argument you're making would have supported their right to do so. "The private phone companies should be allowed to enforce their terms of service prohibiting anything they consider 'hate speech' against America," explains Noam Chomsky, adding that "I don't share their opinions about the war, but it's not as if the govt-run postal service is doing it, so I don't see the problem."

The two major credit card companies that dominated could have canceled anti-war "haters'" credit cards in the name of patriotic support of the just cause, banks closed their checking accounts, the major airlines refused to fly them, and so on, and those on the left with your principled commitment to the right of "monopolies and near monopolies" to enforce their political preferences would have had no major objections--as long as it really is a general principle and not just a pretense.

Is the government or some other absolute authority censoring wrong? Yes. Are powerful monopolies (or near monopolies) wrong to censor? No, because they have the same speech rights as others

And yet I suspect that this support for the "freedom" of the most powerful to silence, control, and enforce their will is not really the general, politically neutral commitment to everyone's freedom of choice that it pretends to be.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#110

Post by jimmygrapes »

jackjeff wrote: post #62

I know the article spends its time describing how anti hate speech laws in Western Europe are not working. But frankly they’re not enforced. I think this is why they don’t work. I see censorship has putting dirt under the carpet. People will try again. There’s no accountability. Social media censorship would ban flashing boobs with the same enthusiasm as Nazi propaganda. The latter is not a breach of terms and condit…

> a Trump quote

Not so much. You weaken your argument with such blatant falsehoods.

Post reply on HN