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“It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

warzel.substack.com

31–40 of 116 posts

Re: “It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

#31
post #2

In her case it was not cancel culture seeking her out to ruin her life. Assumedly no one doxxed her, sent death threats, or attempted to get her fired from her job and made a pariah so she can never support herself again. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. In before it's just holding people accountable. If you want to go that route there was no red scare. Joe McCarthy was just holding people accountable.

You're addressing people who haven't replied to you yet.

Re: “It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

#32
post #7

Implicitly, this piece is making an argument for a return to gate keepers/taste makers of yore. I'm not sure that's better. For better or worse, would the BLM movement have the power and reach it does today if it were filtered through establishment news sources?

My greatest worry is that the freedom of speech lasted for so long because people were careful about what they used it for.

Re: “It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

#33
post #2

In her case it was not cancel culture seeking her out to ruin her life. Assumedly no one doxxed her, sent death threats, or attempted to get her fired from her job and made a pariah so she can never support herself again. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. In before it's just holding people accountable. If you want to go that route there was no red scare. Joe McCarthy was just holding people accountable.

You're addressing people who haven't replied to you yet.

I've seen enough of the bad faith "accountability" arguments in favor of cancel culture to know the common refrain.

Re: “It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

#34
post #2

In her case it was not cancel culture seeking her out to ruin her life. Assumedly no one doxxed her, sent death threats, or attempted to get her fired from her job and made a pariah so she can never support herself again. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. In before it's just holding people accountable. If you want to go that route there was no red scare. Joe McCarthy was just holding people accountable.

Re: “It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and. Twitter being a nationally unified space of gossipy people, with journalists who actually write the narrative being addicted to the gossip as well... There were multiple actual news stories about this stupid Alien tweet! Sure, they weren't front page at the NYT but this stuff is melting the brains of all the journalists, who then go on to melt the normies brains with it.

Journalists using it for a source of news was strange to me until I happened upon a journalism job posting for Post Media, a major news chain up here in Canada. The job required 5 stories a day. So you basically need at least one piece that takes a half hour to write and Twitter is good for that.

[deleted]

Re: “It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

#36
post #2

In her case it was not cancel culture seeking her out to ruin her life. Assumedly no one doxxed her, sent death threats, or attempted to get her fired from her job and made a pariah so she can never support herself again. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. In before it's just holding people accountable. If you want to go that route there was no red scare. Joe McCarthy was just holding people accountable.

Yes those are good examples of cancel culture. What point are you trying to make or are you just making assumptions about me?

Re: “It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

#37
post #18
post #9

I think the issue here is human socialization and not twitter or technology. People love to play the "did you see what so-and-so said?" game in all its variants, and as far as I can tell this has been true for millenia. It has nothing to do with a trending topics feature I feel like there are many articles and books that attribute basic elements of human interaction to whatever platform the author was using to observ…

I think technology is changing which kinds of gossip get spread. It used to be either things you heard directly from the people in your circle, or on tv / newspapers / magazines. Now it's algorithmically determined to be the stuff that's most likely to be shared out of a giant planet of random gossip. Algorithms reinforcing these kinds of vices make it far more extreme.

There are people who wake up and say "I'm gonna get involved in some gossip today". I'm not sure how much the algorithms create this behavior, or just facilitate them doing what they already wanted to do

Algorithms don't choose stories that appeal to the lowest common denominator. People do that. The algorithms just reflect what people are already talking about

Re: “It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

#38
post #9

I think the issue here is human socialization and not twitter or technology. People love to play the "did you see what so-and-so said?" game in all its variants, and as far as I can tell this has been true for millenia. It has nothing to do with a trending topics feature I feel like there are many articles and books that attribute basic elements of human interaction to whatever platform the author was using to observ…

I think you are absolutely right, but that unfortunately means it's Twitter that has to change. We certainly aren't going to alter the design of humans within the time span of one generation. So we should build communications platforms that account for human nature.

Building better will put lots of daylight on Twitter.

Maybe just building better is the right thing to do.

Re: “It's Not Cancel Culture – It's a Platform Failure.”

#39
post #7

Implicitly, this piece is making an argument for a return to gate keepers/taste makers of yore. I'm not sure that's better. For better or worse, would the BLM movement have the power and reach it does today if it were filtered through establishment news sources?

Assuming BLM is a force for good.

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