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

You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

freddiedeboer.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

781–790 of 863 posts

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#781

Post by yongjik »

CyberRabbi wrote: post #778
bavila wrote: post #772

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I truly love this exchange. Any rational person, upon hearing a suggestion that Jews are responsible for starting forest fires by using laser beams from space, would quite naturally dismiss the claim as nonsense. And the claim is so ludicrous on its face that a rational person would, quite justifiably, assume that it could only ever be offered as a strawman. Yet, here we are--with a duly elected congresswoman of the…

As insane as that idea is, we have a democracy to effectively allow the public litigate the acceptability of holding such ideas. If her district finds no fault with her holding that opinion, then it matters not what others think. Democracy doesn’t mean politicians that you don’t elect can’t hold opinions you don’t like, however disparate from your own. If you disagree with that then you simply do not believe in democ…

> If her district finds no fault with her holding that opinion, then it matters not what others think.

You know, this is literally what the infamous poem warned about:

"Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out --- Because I was not a Jew." (Also, it wasn't my district.)

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#782

Post by Hitton »

hef19898 wrote: post #707
Hitton wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you realize that whole Asia and majority of Africa is in northern hemisphere?

Yes. So? How much anti white (male) racism is happening in these regions?

You tell me, you suggested first it might be different in Asia(northern hemisphere) or Africa(majority in northern hemisphere) compared to northern hemisphere. I don't claim to be geography or racism expert like someone, but I know that for instance anti anything non-Japanese racism isn't uncommon in Japan (I wanted to link the well known "whitu piggu go home" video, but sadly youtube deleted it because of hatespeech).

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#783

Post by nonford150 »

sokoloff wrote: post #437
jstrong wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

Textually, that can be read as a fancied-up version of "all lives matter". Semantically at the time, it most certainly did not have an everyday lived reality that all people were equal. At the time, women couldn't vote, Black people could be owned, and all people could be indentured servants, which significantly undermines the "Thomas Jefferson said 'All Lives Matter' almost 250 years ago" argument.

But the Constitution has been amended to correct those issues. Why use the past when the present supports OP's statement?

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#784

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

caslon wrote: post #103
dmingod666 wrote: post #17

My reading from the outside is, the left needs to realize (I'm sure it applies to the right equally as well) that scolding people into guilt is not a viable approach to affect action or to change perceptions when you're dealing with adults. Neither does boxing people into this, that and that category do any good. Like if all you want to do is dehumanize those guys so you can happily insult / hurt them without hurting…

The winning approach is obviously in waiting for the other side to die off; the left is currently the majority, and the right is, on average, old. In this regard, it's absolutely a "viable approach": By making it low-status to be right-wing, or even by not carrying right-wing views on popular private platforms, it makes the right-wing destined to lose out somewhere along the line simply due to the youth not wanting t…

> "The winning approach is obviously in waiting for the other side to die off..."

Seems doubtful. Rural and poor areas remain strongholds for conservatism and that seems unlikely to change. The urban left may increasingly outnumber rural conservatives but that doesn't necessarily give them more power thanks to the way that the electoral system and government in the United States is structured.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#785

Post by [deleted] »

DubiousPusher wrote: post #111
vbezhenar wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course you can do it in theory. The question is, whether you can do it today and whether those attempts will turn out more dangerous than helpful. IT achievements allows for extremely easy exchange of the information throughout the world. You can easily circumvent many kinds of blocking. You have E2E conversations available to masses, so you can't effectively censor anything centrally. Whether that's good or bad i…

> Of course you can do it in theory. The question is, whether you can do it today and whether those attempts will turn out more dangerous than helpful. Allow me to restate my position more precisely. I believe the supresion of information has worked in the past. And based on this I will need very compelling evidence to convince me that we live in a special time when it is impossible and no longer is effective. I'm ha…

[deleted]

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#786

Post by yeetawayhn »

DanHulton wrote: post #252
ctdonath wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Try saying, with genuine honest neutrality, “all lives matter”, “it’s ok to be white”, or “capitalism doesn’t care about race/gender” and see what happens.

Because there is no "genuine honest neutrality" behind those phrases. They're shibboleths. They're commonly understood slogans, used to indicate what side you're on (or at least what side you're opposed to) while SOUNDING innocent. The people who know, will KNOW what you mean when you say them. (And in the incredibly unlikely situation where you'd somehow been exposed to enough of the discourse to come up with these…

Is Hispanic Lives Matter a shibboleth? How about Asian Lives Matter?

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#787

Post by s__s »

anonymouswacker wrote: post #626
unethical_ban wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your assertion lacks any evidence, supporting argument, or sense. It also offers no solution beyond "some different kind of Internet" but don't describe anything beyond, essentially, decentralization. And that the United States will actually collapse in the near term because Twitter is mismanaged.

You're right. I could spend the hours of time to write a thesis here, as if it will make any difference, but I prefer to just play the contrarian while I blow off from work for a few. Take it with a grain of salt, or just mark it as spam, etc. I wonder at what point I will just have this account banned off HN. Big Corporations and centralization of power in the hands of few is bad, and should be obvious. I didn't thi…

> These are advertising companies deciding what is truth.

This seems to be lost on so many.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#788

Post by aaroninsf »

Deplatforming is not censorship.

It is declining to sell someone a megaphone.

In particular: it is declining to assist in the amplification of targeted and tuned disinformation.

Our society has very few tools against weaponized big data.

Declining to amplify disinformation is one that is actually effective and easy.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#789

Post by aaroninsf »

Lammy wrote: post #742
claudiawerner wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Now imagine the opposite, someone with some slightly bad opinion suddenly finds themselves shut out of the main platforms because of hate speech rules. They now become more radicalized. This is a bad argument; it is a fact, for example, that child pornography by being censored creates a taboo around it. It's also true that some people will seek it out because of its taboo nature - something it would not be (or only…

> it presupposes that free speech is so good and basic that it overrides all other rights. Yes. Speech is not action :)

No. Weaponized disinformation is no more speech than an AR15 is a musket.

Modern threats require modern constraints.

Re: You can't censor away extremism or any other problem

#790

Post by sokoloff »

nonford150 wrote: post #783
sokoloff wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Textually, that can be read as a fancied-up version of "all lives matter". Semantically at the time, it most certainly did not have an everyday lived reality that all people were equal. At the time, women couldn't vote, Black people could be owned, and all people could be indentured servants, which significantly undermines the "Thomas Jefferson said 'All Lives Matter' almost 250 years ago" argument.

But the Constitution has been amended to correct those issues. Why use the past when the present supports OP's statement?

If OP’s point was that Thomas Jefferson said something close to “All Lives Matter” 250 years ago in the Declaration of Independence, therefore it’s not a reaction to “Black Lives Matter” today, it seems most reasonable to examine the contemporaneous context of the original words.
Post reply on HN