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Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF

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Re: Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF

#231

Post by 24gttghh »

melling wrote: post #179
24gttghh wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we please stop comparing treatment of gays and treatment of nazi's like they're some kind of equivalent? Gay people from most accounts were born that way, and just want to remain being alive and gay. Nazi's should be given no safe harbor, as they want to opress and/or kill gay people along with everyone else who don't want nazi's to have power.

"If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." - Noam Chomsky

I do not believe in free expression to promote/commit violence.

Re: Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF

#232

Post by devmunchies »

watty wrote: post #159
koolba wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> While I definitely don't support the people they're booting off... A bit off topic but how many bytes are spent on prefaces like this on responses to this topic? I assume that the vast majority of people on the planet don't support Nazis or anything related. I find it interesting that any discussion of them has to include that line lest the speaker/writer be labeled as one (which happens quite a bit anyway but that…

So true. I had to create a separate Reddit account to have these discussions about internet freedom and refusing service because people assume I'm a white supremacist / Nazi. I'm not, I just think it opens up some interesting discussion as to what we can or can't discriminate against.

> "I'm not, I just..."

There it is again. Wow, this is a really interesting social phenomenon we're seeing.

Re: Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF

#233

Post by randomstudent »

Sacho wrote: post #194
randomstudent wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude is naïve to the extreme... You're surely aware that prolonged suppression of certain ideas can and often does decrease the prevalence of such ideas in the population? And that such suppression might even make certain people change their minds? I'm not arguing that this is the right strategy, only that it is often extremely effective.

I only have a cursory knowledge of history, so I'm not aware of this. All the cases I can think of where a certain set of ideas were suppressed usually ended up in failure, e.g. Christianity, Protestantism, various heresies, civil rights movements like Gandhi and MLK...

Counter-examples: Nazism (I guess you might argue that after being suppressed it's making a comeback, but that's tenuous at best), dozens of Christian heretic faiths you've never heard about, the genocide of the Native Americans (where's their culture now?), the pre-colombian civilizations of South and Central America, the Roman Empire, Egyptian monotheism under Akhnaten...

Keep in mind that listing the ideas and ways of life that were suppressed and utimately survived is a textbook case of survivorship bias: you remember the ones who survived, and forget the ones that didn't. Some of them no one knows about because they left no records.

EDIT: the dangerous sentence here is: "All the cases I can think of". Those are not an unbiased sample of the real world cases.

Re: Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF

#234

Post by Quarrelsome »

randomstudent wrote: post #187
Quarrelsome wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like love is a better tool than hate in trying to affect social change. Remember its not "them" we need to convince and get back onto the straight and narrow, its the people listening, the children and those waiting to make their own decisions on the subject. To give those people a persecuted underdog to sympathise with isn't going to improve the next generations ways of thinking. Racism isn't like polio, we c…

> I feel like love is a better tool than hate in trying to affect social change. Please do not argue for this position based on "feelings"... In my own country, most social change was the result of war, credible threats of violence and technological progress. Natuarally, I "feel" the opposite. Since we're discussing the US, I'd wager that's probably true there too: white culture became dominant over Native America cu…

I get your point (I'd argue that velvet revolutions are longer lasting on average though) but you can't kill racism like this. It is the default state of homogenised communities. Its not like Muscovy killing off the Great Horde and purging or exiling the Mongols so the people of Rus could rule themselves.

Racist nationalism is within every one of our children and is only expelled through individual education or positive exposure to people that are different. You cannot kill it off like you can Polio.

Re: Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF

#235

Post by OscarCunningham »

colanderman wrote: post #46
corobo wrote: post #13

While I definitely don't support the people they're booting off I do have to agree with the EFF here. For example, "And music streaming services offered by Google, Deezer and Spotify have said they would remove music that incites violence, hatred or racism." Now these services have put it out there as policy someone has to define what's violent, hateful or racist in music. Racism? Ok nobody's really going to bat an e…

If music streaming services should not be free to police their content, what about text hosting services (i.e. forums)? What about record labels, should they be forced to sign acts they find offensive (protected classes aside)? Not arguing one way or the other but "music streaming services" is not too different from many other services which people expect to police content. Perhaps considering whether the company hol…

I'd say that streaming services should be legally free to police their content, but that they shouldn't police their content.

Just as I think that songs should be legally free to espouse racism, but that they shouldn't espouse racism.

Re: Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF

#236

Post by 24gttghh »

averagewall wrote: post #226
24gttghh wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we please stop comparing treatment of gays and treatment of nazi's like they're some kind of equivalent? Gay people from most accounts were born that way, and just want to remain being alive and gay. Nazi's should be given no safe harbor, as they want to opress and/or kill gay people along with everyone else who don't want nazi's to have power.

Choice vs born-with-it isn't a valid reason. If science discovered a way to change your sexuality, would you be OK discriminating against gays after-all? Religion is also protected and nobody is born with a particular religion. Country of birth is something that people are born with but we heavily discriminate against that - a Syrian can't just get the plane to America and go set up home there. You Americans will alm…

Nice strawman. We should be able to discriminate against those who seek to discriminate in the ultimate (ie deny nazi's/violent religious extremists/radical communists/etc a platform to promote discrimination/violence).

Re: Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF

#237

Post by bmelton »

mantas wrote: post #224
bmelton wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By your definition, true freedom of speech would force me to open my home to Nazis so that they could come in and yell at me about how much they hate my consorting with Jews. In the real world, freedom of speech is generally free enough as it is, and in the example above, is in tension with my right to freedom of association. Yes, the Nazis are allowed to yell at me, just as I'm allowed to distance myself from them.…

At least in my country, there're laws for disturbing public. Even if you shout "I love political correctness" too loudly and too long, you can be taken to custody and fined. If Nazis are such a big problem, secret service and whatnot should start looking into them. It's not a job of private company to enforce it's own point-of-view on the society. Wether it's correct not, but a private company cannot hold a a fair tr…

To be fair, in America we have "time, place and manner" restrictions for that sort of thing as well.

> I'd rather have a pissed off bakery serving gay cakes and coffeeshop serving nazi teaparty than letting a private company apply censorship.

I'd rather have bigoted companies free to be bigots, so that at least I could know who they are, and to avoid patronizing their business at all costs. The alternative is that they are forced to pretend to be not-bigots, I give them my money, and then they donate it to bigoted charities.

Re: Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF

#238

Post by Blackthorn »

Fifer82 wrote: post #40
corobo wrote: post #13

While I definitely don't support the people they're booting off I do have to agree with the EFF here. For example, "And music streaming services offered by Google, Deezer and Spotify have said they would remove music that incites violence, hatred or racism." Now these services have put it out there as policy someone has to define what's violent, hateful or racist in music. Racism? Ok nobody's really going to bat an e…

I was pretty embarrassed by it all to be honest. Nothing makes me cringe more than everyone responding ultra PC. It is bad enough with the commoners, but it is a disgrace when companies get involved with PC statements for no other real reason than to favor the brand. I may be the same as you only I was a 90s rap kid, the entire directory of music I have collected since the 00s could be considered violent and hateful.

Google and other companies have long been removing content from, for example, Islamic terrorists. Why is it only a problem now when they are removing content from white people?

Re: Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF

#239

Post by ZoeZoeBee »

cleansy wrote: post #150
ZoeZoeBee wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you apply this logic to the bakery who refused to bake the cake for a gay wedding last year? The issue of freedom of speech when it relates to businesses is a pretty good hypocrisy litmus test. Last year the Left was outraged when a business refused service based on moral grounds, while the Right sided with the business, and we have the opposite in this case.

IANAL - but that's a different deal. You are (afaik) not allowed to discriminate against gender, sexual orientation etc. as a business or private person. Whereas Freedom of speech is just about what the gov' can and can't do to you. Edit: so it's not quite comparable in this way.

Not really. The Federal Civil Rights Act only prevents discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Sexual Orientation was never included in the legislation, though some states do have legislation with respect to sexual orientation and political affiliation. California being one of the states which does not allow discrimination on sexual orientation or political affiliation. As detestable as they are one could easily argue that the Neo-Nazis are a political group and should be afforded equal protection.

As a side note, the Bakery case is being looked at by the Supreme Court, in terms of whether or not you can force an artist to make something they don't want to.

Re: Google's stance on neo-Nazis 'dangerous', says EFF

#240

Post by randomstudent »

Icedcool wrote: post #139
randomstudent wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This attitude is naïve to the extreme... You're surely aware that prolonged suppression of certain ideas can and often does decrease the prevalence of such ideas in the population? And that such suppression might even make certain people change their minds? I'm not arguing that this is the right strategy, only that it is often extremely effective.

I present the Streisand effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect That prolonged suppression only works specific environments where control is total. The USA is not that, and censorship attempts often provide further platform for the information.

Hm... Interesting :) Is there any research about this? It does seem likely, but I can certainly imagine a world in which most attempts at suppression work and we celebrate the cases where it doesn't because it's ironic. Is there any evidence that the effect is not just a case of survivorship bias?
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