America's internet is splitting along party lines • Hacker News Board

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#21

Post by jaegerpicker » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 1:19 PM UTC

JasonFruit wrote: post #11

k__ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this. There are well-known arguments for not tolerating intolerant people. Do those who advocate for tolerating intolerant people act in good faith, or are they simply part of them?

Would you want a corporation or government to decide for you which of your neighbors you shouldn't tolerate, without letting you get to know them, or would you like to make an informed decision yourself?

No Corporation has decided anything like that. Corporations are responding to their customers requesting those users to not be tolerated. This isn't Twitter banning anyone because they want to. It's Twitter deciding that enough users have decided that tolerance has run its course. They were in response to campaigns of users to deplatform those who we consider harmful.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#22

Post by grapeskin » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 1:21 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #6

tedajax wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just conveniently ignoring the content of these sites/services that gets them banned in the first place...

I don't understand this. There are well-known arguments for not tolerating intolerant people. Do those who advocate for tolerating intolerant people act in good faith, or are they simply part of them?

I accept the right of others to say things I find absolutely abhorrent because I recognize that I sometimes say things I believe to be perfectly rational and someone else finds intolerable.

Fighting disagreeable speech with more free speech is harder than just banning it, but generations that follow will be better off for it.

Just seeing the Russia v Ukraine conflict and seeing how one country can enforce a narrative by law and arrest people as being sympathizers of an “intolerant” regime should be enough to make people aware that regulating verbal “intolerance” is a bad idea.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#23

Post by throwmeariver1 » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 1:22 PM UTC

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #8

tedajax wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just conveniently ignoring the content of these sites/services that gets them banned in the first place...

If it's illegal, the governments should take care to punish the reponsible ones via the court system. If it's legal, the service provides should have no say. This is like christan toll-bridge operator not allowing people to pass the bridge, if they drove in from the direction of a brothel.

Yeah, you don't want that because if they get regulated that either their user must be identifiable or that they are responsible for what's written on the platform there won't be a platform for much longer or with serious restriction on what you can topics are allowed on these platforms and as long as corps have one incentive alone and that's maximising profits they will subdue unpopular but loud minorities.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#24

Post by throwaway82652 » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 1:22 PM UTC

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #13

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, but censors (on both sides) cheer for this, because it's not them... yet.. atleast not on 'that' platform.

Sadly, even on HN we have people arguing for that. You are labeled 'absolutist' if you argue against censorship. It is fascinating really.

You won't find any sympathy for that position here because nobody complaining about social media is actually arguing against censorship, they're arguing against moderation. HN is also not an unmoderated forum. You don't get to post whatever you want here. I also don't get to post whatever I want here, and I'm willing to make that compromise so nobody ruins the place with toxicity and spam and conspiracy theories. You can very easily witness the consequences of not doing that, by taking a look at 8chan or Parler.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#25

Post by ajsnigrutin » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 1:22 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #14

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's illegal, the governments should take care to punish the reponsible ones via the court system. If it's legal, the service provides should have no say. This is like christan toll-bridge operator not allowing people to pass the bridge, if they drove in from the direction of a brothel.

> the service provides should have no say Who’s the censor in this conversation again? I’m having a hard time squaring the idea of free speech maximalism with “a certain group of people should have no say.”

Service providers should act as an utility, such as roads, waterworks, sewers, etc.

We have laws set in place where we decide who can drive on roads using which kinds of vehicles, and road operators and owners (not sure how road system works in USA, in my country, some roads are country-owned, some are owned by the municipality, and some private ones can join the road system - eg. the long road from the main street to the IKEA entrance), and if the driver has a licence and a stret legal vehicle, s/he can drive on all those roads, even if he carries gay porn and anal dildos, and the municipality is full of christian/muslim radicalists.

So, as long as the content is legal (regarding the laws of the country), no service provider should be allowed to block you from using that service and/or connection to view that content.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#26

Post by esotericimpl » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 1:23 PM UTC

JasonFruit wrote: post #11

k__ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this. There are well-known arguments for not tolerating intolerant people. Do those who advocate for tolerating intolerant people act in good faith, or are they simply part of them?

Would you want a corporation or government to decide for you which of your neighbors you shouldn't tolerate, without letting you get to know them, or would you like to make an informed decision yourself?

No post body was provided.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#27

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 1:24 PM UTC

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #8

tedajax wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just conveniently ignoring the content of these sites/services that gets them banned in the first place...

If it's illegal, the governments should take care to punish the reponsible ones via the court system. If it's legal, the service provides should have no say. This is like christan toll-bridge operator not allowing people to pass the bridge, if they drove in from the direction of a brothel.

[deleted]

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#28

Post by zozbot234 » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 1:25 PM UTC

k__ wrote: post #6

tedajax wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just conveniently ignoring the content of these sites/services that gets them banned in the first place...

I don't understand this. There are well-known arguments for not tolerating intolerant people. Do those who advocate for tolerating intolerant people act in good faith, or are they simply part of them?

There are also arguments for avoiding the breakdown of communication by expressly favoring the most strongly censored and unfashionable ideas at any given time and striving to platform them everywhere, even irrespective of their actual merits. This is what Herbert Marcuse calls for in his Repressive Tolerance. The point there is not to defend society against anything inherently problematic, but merely to push the very notion and social norm of a "managed", fad-driven discourse to its breaking point. It's a "chaos monkey" approach to the whole problem of communication 'filter bubbles' and 'echo chambers', or pretty much the trollish 4chan model under a different name.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#29

Post by jandrewrogers » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 1:25 PM UTC

Half of Americans do not identify with either major party. They are not nearly as "split" as the partisans that try to control the political discourse.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#30

Post by chasd00 » Tue, Apr 05, 2022, 1:25 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #15

At least we have an Internet. Imagine the bad old days of the 1980s when everyone had to get their news from CNN! For all the bellyaching conservatives do the fact is that information is freer today than it was in the past. Ultimately we all found out about Hunter Biden’s laptop notwithstanding the Facebook and Twitter blackout. (And when it turned out to be real, I’m sure the Facebook and Twitter censors felt shame,…

so, yet again, the censors were wrong. I've said it before, if you're going to censor you better be right 100% of the time. The moment you get it wrong all credibility and benefit-of-the-doubt is gone and now you must censor by authority and not out of good will.

The first case i recall is the lab leak theory censoring and now the laptop thing. The platforms should stop censoring except for content defined as prohibited by law.