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RIP Culture War Thread

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Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#231

Post by KozmoNau7 »

livueta wrote: post #94
npsimons wrote: post #46

As to the "no comments section" policies, I'm gonna be honest: I don't blame them one bit. No one owes anyone a platform, and considering how easy and cheap it is to host your own content, why should anyone be forced to broadcast someone else's opinion? The truth of the matter is there are more trolls these days - see especially "The Card Says Moops" ( https://youtu.be/xMabpBvtXr4 ) as to one reason why. If you say "…

> As I pointed out above, anyone can get a website and domain name. I wish this were true, but I don't think it is anymore. If you post or host anything remotely controversial, expect to have your site DoS'd off the internet. How can that be avoided? Well, mostly through the help of one of the big boys (Cloudflare, Google Project Shield, etc). What happens if they decide you're a despicable, e.g. Stormfront? You're p…

With the way corporate control of the internet is further consolidated every single day, I fully expect (and hope for) a parallel mesh internet to be established, completely open source based, no corporate or business interests involved.

As the DRM and content filtering noose tightens, it becomes more and more annoying to be a freely moving and freely acting person online. Encrypted channels on the current internet are only a stopgap measure, far too many people have their traffic sniffed by proxy servers and the like, if not outright spyware on their devices or in their routers.

I envision a global mesh network, built on open standards, fully encrypted, resilient against DDOSing and similar attacks, with no central control, no central points of failure, an uninhibited flow of information, for the people, by the people. Warts and all.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#232

Post by KozmoNau7 »

humanrebar wrote: post #196
helen___keller wrote: post #125

I think the internet is just an awful place to have a "national discussion" honestly. Arguments you encounter are not representative of opinions actual people hold, both because of bad faith internet trolls & because of vocal minorities. I think people have started learning this, which is why so few people care about social media censorship and the lack of open debates on the internet. Most people have probably had e…

In my experience, actually having conversations about meaningful and controversial subjects is impolite and a good way to lose friends. At least on the internet, the other party can just stop talking when they're done. They won't feel like they're cutting off or abandoning a friend.

If you can't have conversations and even discussions about meaningful or controversial subjects with your friends, I would say they were never actually your friends.

I am friends with some people whom I wildly disagree with on a number of subjects, especially politics. But we have common ground in shared interests (music and whisky), and we use that as a basis for civilized discussion. We might disagree wildly and be political "enemies", but we are still more alike than we are different.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#233

Post by barrkel »

rayiner wrote: post #193
closeparen wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The social norm under discussion here is exactly when and to what degree those ostracism campaigns ought to be waged. If the answer is “never” we are going to see a lot of pedophilia, Nazism, and spam. If the answer is “whenever people disagree” then we are going to be a world of mutually unintelligible and isolated factions. The correct setpoint is an interesting and non-obvious question, and the limited scope of th…

Yes, but that question has nothing to do with the Internet. The correct set point of that social norm is whatever it is in the rest of society, because the Internet (at least in the US) now includes almost everyone. My point is that the folks that founded the Internet, even if they believed in techno libertarian ideas like that mentioned by OP (which I’m not sure is true—the Internet was built by a bunch of defense c…

It sounds like you want to have an internet universally suitable for both your mom and your child, which is ludicrous - but I'm having a hard time understanding your point if that isn't what you're saying.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#234

Post by barrkel »

nullc wrote: post #219

This is a really over the top one sided presentation. The thread being mourned was continually full of really shockingly horrible stuff. Straight faced technobabble laden arguments for genocide and such. A reliable go-to for "oh-shit,-humanity-is-screwed" porn. It was impossible to tell how much of it was actually awful people earnestly advancing awful ideas vs screwed up performance art with people intentionally pos…

My sampling of the posts linked in the article seem to indicate otherwise. What is your evidence?

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#235

Post by barrkel »

komali2 wrote: post #190
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what's the point of claiming "white people didn't invent slavery?" I can't think of any reason that doesn't involve a blanket statement about either white people or some other race I could easily say that in response to a claim that white people invented slavery, in total innocence that somebody would read me as racist. I am somewhat naive, in my defense.

I would agree with you. There's no point in the statement I can see unless one is about to make a prejudiced remark. I'm happy to be shown why I may be wrong.

You're tone policing. It's not actually taboo opinions you are trying to censor; but opinions that you don't think are "right-on" due to talking in a way that you think is outgroup, that belongs to the people you despise.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#236

Post by barrkel »

mikeash wrote: post #106
komali2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>is that some people have good faith beliefs, respectfully expressed, that are nevertheless so repugnant to others that you will be tarred for not censoring them. I'm skeptical of this - I've never seen a polite racist argument, for example, or a polite homophobic one. The closest I've seen is a post riddled with condescension - something along the lines of "you don't understand, I'm trying to save your soul from the…

Part of the problem is that too many people think “polite” just means “no profanity or name-calling.” It is impossible to respectfully argue for a racist or homophobic position. The very nature of what you’re arguing for is that some people are inherently less than others, which is the opposite of respect. But if you state such an argument without using naughty words, a lot of people will misinterpret that as respect…

That just moves the locus of disagreement to a different place, to whether the argument is respectful or not. And the risk is it will be less intellectually honest.

For example, what if I argued in favour of racial segregation of schools because it would give a better environment for children to learn in, being around role models they could easily identify with and not get sucked into cultural traps like thinking being academically excellent means you're acting white.

I think this is a racist position. It explicitly discriminates on the basis of race. I also think it could be an honest argument. Is it respectful? I personally think it is.

(To be clear, I'm not in favour of racial segregation of schools. The "acting white" thing is overdone and normalizing a binary division isn't good.)

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#237

Post by makomk »

dmode wrote: post #91
silisili wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just 'companies', it's people. Reddit has become beyond frustrating because of how siloed subreddits have become. I have to visit a mix of politics, news, and yes, the_donald, to even begin to get a breadth of happenings and news. This was never more apparent than this whole Smollet case. After it was found that it was a hoax, not only were all threads pointing out it was a hoax removed, but also all previou…

I had the opposite experience with the Smollet case. I actually never heard or cared about Smollet till it started popping up as the #1 and #2 stories in r/news. As someone who is on the left of political spectrum and politically fairly active, I don't of know anyone who really thought Smollet was some representation of the political left. The fact that he was actively "brigaded" and "upvoted" in r/news and r/conserv…

A whole bunch of prominent Democrats - I think possibly even the entire slate of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, but certainly close to it - publicly and loudly stood behind Smollet's claim of being attacked. Most of the news covered it too. Even here in the UK, both his original claims and him calling accusations he faked the attack racist and homophobic made the front page of the BBC and probably a bunch of other sites. If you only saw it on r/news that probably says more about where you get your news from than anything.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#238

Post by wetpaws »

ufmace wrote: post #14

This highlights some very troublesome trends on the internet these days. We once envisioned the internet as a place of revolutionarily open discourse, where any idea under the sun could get posted somewhere and read, no matter how crazy or bad it seemed, with the worst ridiculed and dismissed, but still able to be read, and the best rising to the top. It seems like we're moving in the opposite direction these days, w…

The problem is not with tech companies, the problem is with sjw's

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#239

Post by barrkel »

dx87 wrote: post #79
komali2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>is that some people have good faith beliefs, respectfully expressed, that are nevertheless so repugnant to others that you will be tarred for not censoring them. I'm skeptical of this - I've never seen a polite racist argument, for example, or a polite homophobic one. The closest I've seen is a post riddled with condescension - something along the lines of "you don't understand, I'm trying to save your soul from the…

I saw it happen on the thread posted yesterday about companies pulling their advertisements from YouTube over pedophilia concerns. The user made a comment that as disgusting as it was, the people sharing timestamps and playlists of public videos of underage girls shouldn't be punished, since they aren't harming anybody and they didn't choose to be attracted to children. The post seemed like it was made in good faith,…

Child pornography convictions have increasingly relied on the concept of psychic harm to the victim from knowing other people are getting off on the material. It is reiterated that viewing child porn rather than producing or buying it, is not victimless.

It's only a small step from there to get to viewing innocent videos turns children into victims if the interest is sexual; if, one day, the children (possibly now adult) find out about the creepy people on the internet, they will suffer the harm.

Re: RIP Culture War Thread

#240

Post by avinium »

makomk wrote: post #237
dmode wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the opposite experience with the Smollet case. I actually never heard or cared about Smollet till it started popping up as the #1 and #2 stories in r/news. As someone who is on the left of political spectrum and politically fairly active, I don't of know anyone who really thought Smollet was some representation of the political left. The fact that he was actively "brigaded" and "upvoted" in r/news and r/conserv…

A whole bunch of prominent Democrats - I think possibly even the entire slate of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates, but certainly close to it - publicly and loudly stood behind Smollet's claim of being attacked. Most of the news covered it too. Even here in the UK, both his original claims and him calling accusations he faked the attack racist and homophobic made the front page of the BBC and probably a bunch o…

Eh, I have literally no stake in the US political landscape/culture wars (non-American, largely apolitical, don't actively seek out US current affairs).

I was made aware of the Smollet case via reddit frontpage. I recall the majority of comments from the get-go were very skeptical of the story.

Make of that what you will.

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