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

Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

frenchpress.thedispatch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 366 posts

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#281

Post by Jtype »

jacquesm wrote: post #232

The assumption here is that there ever was a state of cultural health to begin with. I really do not believe that that was ever the case, and if you start out from such a broken premise I really wonder if the decisions you make will move you in the right direction. The bigger question for me is whether or not absolute free speech and true democracy are fundamentally compatible or not and I have not seen proof of that…

That sounds like a pedantic discussion of the meaning of the word "health." What the author is referring to is the cohesion of society. The "health" is the ability for us to get along and reduce the infighting.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#282

Post by rossdavidh »

throwawayboise wrote: post #82
rossdavidh wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well in the example given, Stephen Douglass was free to speak to a small group, but not to a (for the times) large one. Your criterion is exactly the one that would legitimize censoring Stephen Douglass.

Frederick, not Stephen. Stephen Douglas was Lincoln's opponent in the 1860 presidential election.

Ha! Correct you are, thanks.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#283

Post by sleepingadmin »

glial wrote: post #280
sleepingadmin wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But, again, in practice, the people in power do not allow free speech. And this is fundamentally different from most examples of cancel culture. Here in Canada we actually removed freedom of speech. Hate speech laws are tremendously vague and are really not used to prevent anything bad. Sure the Westboro baptists have their 'god hates canada' stuff but realistically speaking it's never used to prevent anyone who is…

> It seems like this flag was counter protesters trying to label these Indian truckers as white supremacists. That's quite a claim to make w/out providing evidence.

>That's quite a claim to make w/out providing evidence.

There's literally 3 links providing evidence in my post.

Furthermore, the onus is on the claimant. The claim being made that these Indian truckers are white supramacists and nazis; or that their friends and fellow protestors are nazis? That literally doesnt make any sense.

Sorry but the yellow journalism or, might i even say it, the propaganda asserting these protestors are nazis is a failed narrative.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#284

Post by ladyattis »

I'm going to say that censorship itself has never been a bug in society but rather a feature of how societies organize their ideologies formally and informally. In the case of Fredrick Douglas' speech being censored by a violent mob and the police bowing to the mob in the end are examples of how societies function in this case. I'm not saying censorship is good or bad but imagining the United States is separate from other societies in having a legal norm of free speech doesn't eliminate the social norms (formal and informal) that violate the spirit and law of free speech.

And there's not been much effort in the years between the highlighted event and now that has changed this behavior in the United States or elsewhere. More than ever, we're seeing all societies turning to censorship and self-selection to avoid conflict even if said conflict is inevitable and that maybe heated discussions and insults would be kinder than bullets and fists. The real problem here is how do we break the social norms that induce censorship? The law itself isn't sufficient and making a "mandatory free speech" kind of law seems contradictory since the right to speak comes with the implied right to not hear the speaker. So I'm all ears on what everyone here thinks we can do to resolve the matter.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#285

Post by rossdavidh »

vorpalhex wrote: post #172
tomlockwood wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah totally totally. But then, its very funny to me that some of the people who complain the most about the censorship of "Right Wing" content by leftist big tech, are also, violently, over-my-dead-body, opposed to many kinds of community/government/centrally-owned collectivist platforms that wouldn't be under the influence of advertising. The Libertarian platforms that we have are the way they are precisely because…

The government has a pretty bad history of free speech. My preference would be many small communities that have different support models. Let some communities be ad driven, others pay to subscribe, others yet donation based. These all have pros and cons. The mistake is thinking there is a single solution.

I think the issue is that the "network effect" makes them intrinsically prone to becoming oligopolies. We know how to have a free market without getting oligopolies; you need to break up anything that gets too powerful. What we lack is the political will to do it.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#286

Post by dTal »

pjc50 wrote: post #225
jimmygrapes wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would add that when doing this recon, steelman their ideas. Try to justify them, however horrible they seem to you. Drop your guard and prejudices enough to understand why they have those ideas. You don't have to accept them in the end, but you'll never know how to make amends or talk to somebody you refuse to understand.

I used to do this. Over the 20 years I've been doing "discourse" on the internet. In recent years I've seen a marked collapse in the willingness of the other side to do the same - or even, in many cases, to make an argument that I could actually understand. For example, back in the days of campaigning against gay marriage there were people claiming that it would be bad for straight marriage, none of whom bothered to…

I can pinpoint when I gave up on this. It was 2016. In that year I made many frustrated attempts to communicate with an ideology whose contradictions I no longer felt I understood. It was made uncomfortably and repeatedly clear to me that communication, compromise, dialog, and indeed principles were no longer on the menu - that concession of any sort was regarded as a sucker's game, and the only consistent terminal value amongst the lot of them was "liberal tears". They didn't care if I understood. They just wanted me to be unhappy. I realized then that the civil war - a culture war - had already begun.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#287

Post by Clubber »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #209
raxxorrax wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook and Twitter ban for political reasons, which is entirely different than banning spam. Banning spam is a strawman in this discussion. I don't think there is constructive discussion on that basis. Free speech protects good faith debates.

> Banning spam is a strawman in this discussion. I don't think there is constructive discussion on that basis. It's not a strawman, as many people assert that platforms should just let anything not-illegal stay up. You may not believe this, but there are others who I've seen assert it. > Facebook and Twitter ban for political reasons, which is entirely different than banning spam. It's not the same, but the issue is…

>to bad blatant misinformation

This is also dangerous. Imagine what the government of Mississippi or Indiana during the Jim Crow era would label as blatant misinformation.

Also, in a recent court case, Facebook admitted their fact checking was opinion and therefore protected from defamation. So to put those together, Facebook is censoring because of their opinion disagrees with the opinion of the censored.

https://nypost.com/2021/12/13/facebook-bizarrely-claims-its-...

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#288

Post by belorn »

vimy wrote: post #266
belorn wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Rwanda civil war was partially the outcome of colonialism by Germany and later Belgian administration, creating a class society where the rich minority group of Tutsi ruled supreme over the more poor Hutu. Belgium introduced identity cards classifying each individual as Tutsi, Hutu, Twa or Naturalised. Pretty obviously, such state of affairs wasn't stable. After world war 2 there were several riots and violence,…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Lib...

The civil war predated the radio station by several years, and the colonialism that shaped the conflict occurred 50-100 years before the radio station was built.

This seems a bit like blaming the atom bomb for causing world war 2.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#289

Post by Jtype »

Pxtl wrote: post #100

The reason 21st century young people have come around against free speech is quite simply because they've experienced it in its purest form: the 2000s internet. The upside: we all pirated a crapload of good music. The downside: new era of fascism. And it's worth noting that the piracy, which is in itself a form of speech, was shut down... But the racism wasn't. Like, if I copied and pasted the above Dispatch article…

Ah yes, the Fascism boogeyman. Any slightly authoritarian thing my ideological "enemy" supports is fascism and it's taking away our freedoms. So we need to strike first to remove those freedoms to prevent fascism.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#290

Post by zozbot234 »

ladyattis wrote: post #284

I'm going to say that censorship itself has never been a bug in society but rather a feature of how societies organize their ideologies formally and informally. In the case of Fredrick Douglas' speech being censored by a violent mob and the police bowing to the mob in the end are examples of how societies function in this case. I'm not saying censorship is good or bad but imagining the United States is separate from…

> The real problem here is how do we break the social norms that induce censorship?

This is what Marcuse invented his "Repressive Tolerance" for. Platform censored, unfashionable ideas everywhere, irrespective of their underlying merits - and strive to deplatform fashionable, censorious ones. The point was not to defend society against anything inherently problematic, contrary to what's sometimes claimed - but merely to push the very notion and social norm of a "managed", fad-driven discourse to its breaking point. It's pretty much the trollish 4chan model under a different name.

Post reply on HN