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YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

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Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#591

Post by GrayTextIsTruth »

danudey wrote: post #548
devmunchies wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not a free society. there are lots of laws and regulations in place. Saying this is a free country is a useless platitude. Gab (twitter alternative) was just blacklisted by Visa last week. There is no recourse. What, should these people build their own consumer credit company too? https://news.gab.com/2020/06/19/gab-blacklisted-by-visa/

Aw, the poor white supremacists can't find anyone who's willing to work with them because of their hateful ideology. I shall shed a single tear for them. I'm really upset that the site, which was started to host neo-nazis and violently racist mass-murderers, founded by a person who was kicked out of ycombinator for harassing and threatening other founders, can't find anyone else willing to stand alongside them to fig…

> white supremacists

most are actually white separatists, but labelled "supremacist".

Its not about hating other cultures, but about preserving your own, like how Native Americans have exclusive spiritual rituals that outsiders are not allowed to attend.

Imagine calling jews who want to have their own country in Israel "jewish supremacists".

Your post used the words "supremacists", "hate", "nazi", "racist", and "toxic". BINGO!

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#592

Post by skinkestek »

empath75 wrote: post #523
skinkestek wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is a win for the far-right to have y'all here on HN "disagree with them but still believe they should be here and not on the fringe". Just FTR we are pretty far from accepting the far right here on HN: tptacek shared some interesting research he'd done a couple of hours ago and it might be of interest to everyone here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23681929

People reliably will come out to defend white nationalists in every topic it comes up here. And people denouncing white nationalists will be voted down.

Can this be because your group of "white nationalists" is getting very big and possibly includes a good number of innocent people?

Someone wrote something really interesting here somewhere a couple of days ago:

every time a non-racist says something not correct enough or God forbid even wrong (e.g. on twitter), they are ejected into the other camp. Eventually the other camp's grown from a fringe phenomenon to being noticeably large and everyone laments.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23664418

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#593

Post by haberman »

toiletfuneral wrote: post #147
chrisco255 wrote: post #22

It's a purge. It won't stop with these three. The censorship will continue to get worse and be disproportionately applied to those on the right until all is left with the world. Conservatism has a place in society. I'm not endorsing any of these guys viewpoints nor am I associating them with conservatism in general, because it's a broad group of over 100 million people in the U.S. with a diverse range of opinions tha…

You know they banned leftist subs too, but as always with free-speachers, those never count. Like where were you guys when Arkansas literally banned Howard Zinn? What about when South Carolina banned the words 'climate change'? Sorry but you all just don't come across consistent enough to be taken seriously. -- [1] https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/ark-bill-introduced... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news…

I'm what you might call a "free speecher" and I think both of these are wrong.

Luckily the "ban Howard Zinn" bill was never actually passed, and actually led to far more people reading him (Streisand effect there):

> Rep. Kim Hendren’s bill to prohibit use of the late Howard Zinn’s books in Arkansas public schools died quietly in committee, of course, but it had great unintended consequence: Some 700 copies of Zinn’s book, “A People’s History of the United States,” were sent free to teachers and librarians throughout Arkansas thanks to the controversy.

https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2017/04/04/how-kim-hendre...

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#594

Post by cryptoz »

empath75 wrote: post #523
skinkestek wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is a win for the far-right to have y'all here on HN "disagree with them but still believe they should be here and not on the fringe". Just FTR we are pretty far from accepting the far right here on HN: tptacek shared some interesting research he'd done a couple of hours ago and it might be of interest to everyone here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23681929

People reliably will come out to defend white nationalists in every topic it comes up here. And people denouncing white nationalists will be voted down.

This is my experience here.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#595

Post by jturpin »

rickbutton wrote: post #444
iratewizard wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be crazy if mega corporations could be used as tools to circumvent the first amendment? If Visa could tell Stripe who they're allowed to do business with when people in power get a little worried about what's being said? And when did the first amendment stop protecting (some) dehumanizing speech? It definitely still protects dehumanizing progressive speech. How long before we have a list of types of speec…

You didn't read a single thing I said. This has nothing to do with the first amendment. The first amendment does not grant you the right to a platform. It simply doesn't. If you want to grab a megaphone and spew white-supremacist garbage from your drive way then feel free, the government cannot, and should not, stop you. However, if your neighbors refuse to interact with you, that's your own fault. The megaphone sell…

> The first amendment does not grant you the right to a platform. It simply doesn't.

This feels a little hand-wavy: in the past there have been "designated free speech zones" that are of course critized organizations like the ACLU as a form of censorship and denying free speech. I don't think it's too crazy to say that speech without a platform isn't speech at all. I'm not saying we should force sites to accept content they don't like but we are going to have to address the privatization of speech sooner rather than later.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#596

Post by AgentME »

stx wrote: post #447
dwaltrip wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Private companies can't (mechanically, not legally) determine who has a moral right to speak. Of course not, no one is claiming they are the ultimate arbiters of morality. But they do have the right to decide who can use their platform (as long as they don’t discriminate against protected groups). The broader public can then judge them positively or negatively for these decisions.

The thing is are these companies platforms like a phone company or are they publishers? Social media companies have argued that they cant be held liable for things posted to their platforms in the past and have tried to position themselves at neutral platforms. When they start to become the arbitrators of what is and is not to be posted they are no longer neutral platforms like the phone company. I do not recall a ti…

>Social media companies have argued that they cant be held liable for things posted to their platforms in the past and have tried to position themselves at neutral platforms. When they start to become the arbitrators of what is and is not to be posted they are no longer neutral platforms like the phone company.

Social media companies don't become more liable just because they moderate. They all do that already. There's no sudden legal line between moderation involving messages with spam or bigotry.

I think anyone amplifying messages on a large-scale in a one-to-many manner, between people that aren't equally engaged in a conversation together, should be considered to start accruing responsibilities over the content of what they're participating in amplifying, in a way that a phone companies largely don't have. I think social media companies have been largely shirking that responsibility by phrasing it as a free speech issue and letting anything go.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#597

Post by Karunamon »

baddox wrote: post #570
pjc50 wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly .. people will come out to defend "free speech". But somehow the cause in question is nearly always far right.

Lots of people seem to conflate how bad someone's speech is with how "free" it is.

There's an entirely innocuous reason for that: free speech isn't a concern for things that nobody is bothered by.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#598

Post by chipotle_coyote »

Karunamon wrote: post #498
chipotle_coyote wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't use the word "dehumanize," did I?

No, but you replied to GP in defense of "denouncing hatred and bigotry" (something they didn't even argue against) without directly addressing a pretty important point, i.e. dehumanization (which they did). Was there another way I should have read your comment with that in mind?

I suppose I am just very weary of a particular style of argument in this debate, which -- in addition to the tactic I called out -- frequently seems to include restating what the other person said as something worse, and then arguing against that restatement. And with all respect, that's what I think is happening here.

The person who wrote "Dehumanization is alive and well, even among progressives" was responding to someone who wrote "But that policy is not even talking about racism, however defined; it's talking about hate. Hate is hate, no matter who it's directed to. Prejudice is prejudice." (That is literally the entirety of their comment.) So at least the way I read this thread, "dehumanization" was introduced as a rhetorical device to equate "prejudice is prejudice" with "dehumanize your opponents."

Given that I'm being downvoted repeatedly, I guess others don't see it that way, but I'm going to be blunt. I just reread the thread and I do not think I'm the one giving things an unfair reading. I don't see a call for "dehumanization" here, and if folks are going to come down on me for failing to address an argument that isn't being made, I don't know what to say. ("Have you stopped beating your wife yet?")

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#599

Post by AlexandrB »

gambiting wrote: post #456
bassman9000 wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this sarcasm? Because I can give you a couple examples of well documented, savage, systemic oppression of white people. Are you one of those that thinks history begins in the US 250 years ago?

Even if it did, he's forgetting that US was incredibly racist towards the Irish, and they are as white as they come. Racism is racism, no matter who does it towards whom.

It’s convenient to omit that the Irish were not considered “white” when they were being discriminated against. They were instead considered their own, distinct race. In most contexts, “white” implicitly meant “normal” and anyone you want to discriminate against got their own, separate label (see also the Jews and the Romani). That’s the crux of the problem.

Re: YouTube bans Stefan Molyneux, David Duke, Richard Spencer for hate speech

#600

Post by golf1052 »

rickbutton wrote: post #517
chrischattin wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to agree with someone to think it's wrong to censor them.

Do you think it is correct or incorrect to deplatform white supremacists? Do you think white supremacists deserve a platform? Edit: I've asked variants of this question several times in this thread, all without response. I can safely assume that those who won't freely answer this question are (attempting) to hide their bias.

Yeah it's kind of shocking to see people defend white nationalist speech on private platforms. Of all the marginalized groups out there why does the group that advocates for the discrimination, removal, or even genocide of historically discriminated and murdered people (black people, indigenous people, Jewish people) need defending?
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