A bit off topic but how many bytes are spent on prefaces like this on responses to this topic?
I assume that the vast majority of people on the planet don't support Nazis or anything related. I find it interesting that any discussion of them has to include that line lest the speaker/writer be labeled as one (which happens quite a bit anyway but that's a different topic).
We all have to be careful to pay our tributes, or we'll be ostracized. Can you think of any other reason for such widespread repetition of these useless words?
(And of course I must, too. I'm speaking here from a completely abstract standpoint which shouldn't be construed as support for neo-nazis or anything vaguely like them.)
It's a bit more than that. Trump has had no problem condemning Antifa thugs and violent radical Islamists, so it is noteworthy when he equivocates on violent white supremacists, especially when some of them are claiming that he supports them.
This is par for the course for Trump, who (only when under extreme political pressure from his own party) will belatedly condemn right-wing extremists with one corner of his mouth, but give them a verbal wink with the other.
(Corollary: arguing for the removal doesn't make you a violent Antifa Communist.)
Condoleeza Rice, an African American woman with political clout and experience, has argued we should keep the statues. Others have made a strong case for removing statues of people who committed treason.
But whatever your view, this should be done legally and peacefully. No mobs tearing down statues, no pitchfork-wielding defense of statues. We live in a democracy. Exercise it.
President Trump equates the alt-right racists and the Antifa violent Communists for political purposes. President Obama equated Israelis and Palestinian terrorists for political purposes[0].
People find it hard to condemn violence when their side is doing it; they point out wrongs in the other side to soften or excuse their side's violence.
[0]: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/227669/re-cairo-speech...
Also they are used to how politicians typically do whatever necessary to appease their constituents till the horse is dead. Not saying this is bad, but that's the expectation and one he doesn't follow.
I also think he's not attuned to people's sensitivity toward race.
I said no new taxes. No new taxes. No taxes. I won't raise taxes. Taxes will not be raised. Over and over and over and over.
Not being a pol hurts him here in that he does not get that aspect of governing.
You don't just do what you think is right, you have to continuously signal your intention, otherwise your intention is suspect.
I'm not, I just think it opens up some interesting discussion as to what we can or can't discriminate against.
I'm glad there's a place like Hacker News where people who disagree can still speak to one another civilly.
Not that HN karma matters, but it's very well possible that that is already going on.
The only civic discussion forum I know of is the extropy chat email list.
Edit: Can't even post now. Saying this place is "no better than Reddit" may actually be a little insulting to Reddit.
> But what's the end game? Do service providers have to morally support those who they provide service to? Because that's how things are looking.
And what do you know. That's exactly what's happening.
Apparently the concept that providing your services to Nazi's could be thought of as evil totally escaped their thoughts.
It seems like quite a lot of people have deeply internalized the opinion that "Free Speech" is an unalloyed good, and are confused by anyone who sees this as a matter of shades of gray.
I'd argue, the people looking at things in black and white are the ones' being ridiculous here. Is child porn free speech? Is a direct threat free speech? Is copyright infringment? etc. No matter how hardcore a free speech advocate you find, there's going to be a line for them. But apparently anyone who draws their line one step to the side of that is evil and/or stupid because that is the point where the slippery slope starts, conveniently just to the side of their own line, which is on firm and solid ground.
Not accidentally letting a few slip through, not being overwhelmed by scale and doing a crappy job, but as a point of principle not following the rules you are trying to enforce.
free speech must be absolute, so yes, in this case it is black and white, sorry you don't see it that way.
There it is again. Wow, this is a really interesting social phenomenon we're seeing.
While well some people might put disclaimers on everything others are simply giving up. This started during the Trump campaign where everybody was called racist. The same with anti-semitism, especially against the current president who has a Jewish daughter. When people sling these around just as general insults and as a way to say you're wrong, then they lose their power.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/intense-emotions-and-st...
It is why I've argued that the current toxic atmosphere is adding to the problem.
I thought that was profound, but I struggle to fit overuse of the word Nazi online into the same framework, indeed I find it much easier to fit the kind of opinions and behavior that people might refer to as 'Nazi'-like into this framework:
https://lakesideconnect.com/anger-and-violence/the-link-betw...
"Gilligan notes literally dozens of synonyms for shame: feelings of being slighted, insulted, disrespected, dishonored, disgraced, disdained, slandered, treated with contempt, ridiculed, teased, taunted, mocked, rejected, defeated, subjected to indignity; or, experiencing feelings of being weak, ugly, inadequate, incompetent, a failure, losing face; and being treated as if one were insignificant or worthless.
Based on his research and other expert opinions, Gilligan concludes that “the most potent stimulus of aggression and violence, and the one that is most reliable in eliciting this response is not the frustration per se, but rather, insult and humiliation (page 32).” In other words, the most effective, and often the only way, to provoke someone to become violent is to insult them."
That got me accused of being a sympathizer.
Now imagine if it was filled with accusations of being a racist, I'd probably just be curled up in a ball under my desk waiting for the fallout to end.
What I meant was that the meaning of terms like "white supremacist" and "racist" has changed dramatically in recent years. To the point where it's very difficult to speak clearly about these types of things.
As long as we keep up this attitude, we're going to continue - and deepen our political divides.
I'm from South Carolina and after seeing all of the conflicting historical information on the internet since the Dylan Roof shooting, I decided to pick up a bunch of books on the subject from both sides. My main driving force was a strong belief that people are inherently good and I had a really hard time believing that all of my ancestors were the evil scum of the earth portrayed in assorted narratives.
As it turns out, there's some critical details left out and now that I understand the build up to the war better I can at least rest easier. It's virtually impossible to have a conversation about though.
Sure there were economic factors at play and those are interesting in their own right, but in the south the biggest thing that people fail to understand is the element of fear. I don't want to do a historic nose dive, but the 3 things you can read about to understand that better are The Haitian Massacre of 1804, John Brown, and The Cherokee Declaration of Causes.
Of those three, only John Brown is mentioned on the Wikipedia timeline. The other two provide context.
It's fascinating to read about though.
What I've found is the easiest way to find where there are holes that need to be explored is just by asking "Why?" anytime you hear of an event. If you're given history and just told, "this happened, then this happened..." the quickest way to get an answer to something is to simply ask "Why did they do that?"
That simple question will point you in the right direction more often than not. When you start answering enough of those questions, everything that happened makes a lot more sense.
Although it's popular to bash "there's no single truth" people, the more and more I look into history, the more I think that's true. Everyone has a very complicated history which is a product of what did or even didn't happen. Which results in totally different point of views and everybody see truth differently. It's truly fascinating to see how different timelines merge and separate and the today's politics and policies they cause.
Apparently the vast majority of people on the planet aren't enough to stop fascists from threatening, beating, and murdering people.
In order to actually stop people from doing those things, society would have to give up a lot of freedom to prevention through force ("stopping"). In a free society, the focus is usually on prevention through dissuasion (influence) or through reactive means (punishment, rehabilitation).
What are your thoughts on how society could physically prevent these actions while maintaining freedom for all its citizens ?
If not, I believe taking it down would do more harm than good.
Apparently the post that identified some of the bands is here: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/08/14/white-supremacis... Googling a few, they do seem to be strictly "national socialist" / white nationalism oriented bands.
The trouble is, this easily can lead to a very slippery slope on one hand, and charges of "double standards" on the other.
There is a lot of music that directly depicts violence (hip hop and metal in particular are loaded with violent imagery). In most cases, the people making it are not directly involved in said violence. Sometimes, the violent imagery is actually there for anti-violent reasons, even.
That being said, there is also some music is made by people with actual criminal histories and/or nasty opinions. This includes well known figures in genres such as black metal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varg_Vikernes) and hip-hop (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Shmurda). Even on simple "racism", you'd definitely be excluding certain music from a well known country musician (the infamous, IMHO mostly cringe-worthy, "underground" albums from David Allan Coe.)
The few bits of music I've heard that trade heavily in white nationalism is very poor quality -- which of course seems quite the likely outcome to me. Such music is atypically metal or punk, genres which are considerably influenced by the blues. Most of the best musicians keep an open mind to all sounds; rock and roll (which historically was a fusion of "hillbilly music" and R&B) doubly so.
So I think removing these obscure white nationalist bands does more harm and good. Such makes them "more underground" and probably more appealing to those "rebelling" for whatever reason. In contrast, keeping the music around lets most people see just how awful and cringe-worthy these type of bands typically are.
Sadly that is a bold assumption that the facts do not necessarily support.
So while the "freedom to speak, whatever" side has a point, they're also being naive.
Besides - You think the other side is having a conversation in the first place?
No they are not. They're busy making in roads and winning audiences.
People thinking this is a discussion are under a mistaken impression.
It's a popularity contest. Has been for decades.
It's over.
You can't win a propaganda and disinformation war with polite conversation.
I may be the same as you only I was a 90s rap kid, the entire directory of music I have collected since the 00s could be considered violent and hateful.
Thanks to progressivism we can finally judge people by the content of their character.
(/s, Let's face it, everyone can see this is politically motivated and the demand for empathy and charity only ever goes one way. Apparently it's ok to set cars on fire and smash people's heads in for political reasons, just as long as you loudly explain that you're _against_ fascism and nazis while doing so.)
You've got this all backwards. We should be most concerned about censorship of political beliefs, however wrongheaded they are.
'Race nationalism' is certainly political. I suspect most people would associate that with 'racism' in at least some way.
Music is up to interpretation. One of my favorite songs is Sublime's April 29th, 1992. You could easily say it incites violence, glorifies looting and rioting, and should be removed. But my interpretation of the song makes me think it's more about understanding the mindset of the people who were looting and rioting, and not condoning the violence.
How could anyone impartially decide what should and shouldn't be published?
Take "music that incites racism" (what do you put into Pandora to get that genre?) for example. If you have users listening to it (because before Charlottesville you thought it was okay!) and you remove it telling them their music is basically banned aren't those users just going to listen to it someplace else and feel more empowered by its message?
The more persecuted these groups feel online, the more justified they will feel in their real-world actions.
I would love to see everyone stand up and deplore gang violence with the same aggressiveness considering people are dying in cities daily.
Not arguing one way or the other but "music streaming services" is not too different from many other services which people expect to police content.
Perhaps considering whether the company holds a monopoly or near-monopoly on that media gateway is relevant.
Bear too in mind they are removing content. Before this blew up in the media, did they have a problem hosting the stuff they're now removing?
I'm not convinced there's an argument that the right of a political cause to have its music distributed by a particular company trumps the right of a company not to distribute it or the right of the public to pressure the company into not distributing it.
If one is to impose upon on the freedom of actions of media distributors or the potentially-boycotting public (I'm not sure the latter is even possible), there had better be something pretty amazingly special about the cause that means their right to be heard trumps others' rights not to be the amplifier. I'm not sure any remotely compelling argument exists for neo-Naziism being a cause deserving of such special privileges or music distribution services being the sort of thing one should have an inalienable right to.
Just as I think that songs should be legally free to espouse racism, but that they shouldn't espouse racism.
Not so long ago, less than 50 years ago, there was little to no distinction between LGBTQ people and paedophiles. They were one and the same (look up the term nonce, British slang used against both LGBTQ people and sex offenders for one example, or the case of Alan Turing for another).
Some very brave people fought against the perceived wisdom of the majority, even when through association alone they would be considered to be paedophile supporters themselves. These rights for LGBTQ people are still being fought around the world today. People died over this fight. People are still dying over this fight.
I understand the desire to limit hurtful speech, but in doing so we hand over the power to set limits to an arbiter. An arbiter who may feel that today's moral majority view outweighs that of others.
What you feel today about people of colour, about LGBTQ people, others may feel about animal rights, human genetic engineering and AI rights in the future amongst others. If you limit the boundaries of free expression it is no longer free. You are taking those rights away from those seeking to fight injustice in the future.
It's not hard to hate Nazis. It's harder to see the consequences of our actions through the red mist. The British Government has the official position that censoring the Internet is something that must be done. Even the EU is starting to think this could be a good thing. If you think this stops with Naziism, then you're wrong. If you think this won't come to America, you're wrong.
By the same token they would need to remove all the content that promotes communism in multiple countries.
In my country it's illegal as is the case with nazism.
I don't hold much hope Google, Spotify etc. would actually walk that road.
In the United States, it seems the Communist Party might be technically banned (although it exists): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Control_Act_of_1954
Poland seems to ban "promotion of .. communist .. ideology", and Romania seems to ban "totalitarian .. actions of a communist .. nature". Countries that seem to ban communist symbols include Ukraine, Lithuania, and Latvia. Countries that previously passed similar laws include Moldova, Czechoslovakia (1991), Poland, and Hungary.
Apparently, some countries like Albania, Czechia, Germany, Italy, and Slovakia ban "totalitarian ideology".
There are probably more bans worldwide.
We need a real balance, otherwise, we are pushing the world towards the war.
There is also the fact that all these companies already have arbitrary censorship in place, so this isn't an argument about the principles: that one is long lost. This is an argument about the existing excemption racism has.
"WARNING/GUARANTEE: This album contains material which a truly free society would neither fear nor suppress. In some socially retarded areas, religious fanatics and ultra-conservative political organizations violate your First Ammendment Rights by attempting to censor rock & roll albums. We feel that this is un-Constitutional and un-American. As an alternative to these government-supported programs (designed to keep you docile and ignorant). Barking Pumpkin is pleased to provide stimulating digital audio entertainment for those of you who have outgrown the ordinary. The language and concepts contained herein are GUARANTEED NOT TO CAUSE ETERNAL TORMENT IN THE PLACE WHERE THE GUY WITH THE HORNS AND POINTED STICK CONDUCTS HIS BUSINESS. This guarantee is as real as the threats of ther video fundamentalists who use attacks on rock music in their attempt to transform America into a nation of check-mailing nincompoops (in the name of Jesus Christ). If there is a hell, its fires wait for them, not us."
https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-history-taking-stand-free-sp...
We seem to keep forgetting what "Freedom of Speech" means.
[Update: Added Chomsky quote]
"If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." - Noam Chomsky
This wouldn't be a problem without the Citizens United ruling. Corporations should not be considered people, especially when doing so comes to the harm of real people.
"Because internet intermediaries, especially those with few competitors, control so much online speech, the consequences of their decisions have far-reaching impacts on speech around the world."
Can I refused to make a wedding cake for a gay marriage? You can always go somewhere else.
- Noam Chomsky
I do not believe nazi's or any other group have any right to promote hate and violence against others.
> right to promote
You just did. Promotion is speech.
The issue of freedom of speech when it relates to businesses is a pretty good hypocrisy litmus test. Last year the Left was outraged when a business refused service based on moral grounds, while the Right sided with the business, and we have the opposite in this case.
It would be funny if in another 1000 years we'll all agree that the current US popular leftist morals turned out to be the right ones: It's wrong to discriminate against someone because of their race, religion, sex, or sexual preferences (as long as it's one of a few predefined types) but it's right to discriminate against someone because of their political views, alternative sexuality (outside the list of predefined types), ugliness, height, location of birth, or anything else you don't like. These classifications are so arbitrary and transient, why does anyone stand by them so vehemently? When they're old they might become the new racist uncle - hating the wrong people that the next couple of generations decide shouldn't be hated anymore.
Honestly, that's what's got me concerned. Political mores are changing so fast and so constantly, and people are being so black-and-white about them, that it seems like the only "acceptable" position to some people is getting pretty close to a full-throated condemnation of everything and everyone that happened before they were born.
If it wasn't so easy to fail the purity tests, maybe fewer people would become Nazis (either out of ostracization or to troll purity the testers).
This difference isn't hard to understand.
Edit: so it's not quite comparable in this way.
As a side note, the Bakery case is being looked at by the Supreme Court, in terms of whether or not you can force an artist to make something they don't want to.
Cite please, I genuinely curious.
I enjoy some of these bands and would not want them censored. Just as I would not want Shakespeare plays to be censored either.
Keep downloading your music and your movies. You will never be able to trust your streaming services.
This seems like, basically, all of the rap I grew up listening to in the 90s could be arbitrarily censored here.
"Big dicks in ya mouth is bad for your health" comes to mind, alongside NWA's "Fuck the Police", and even songs by the relatively higher-minded Public Enemy could be construed as racist, or incitations to violence -- if one were predisposed to a puritanical cleansing of our media. More obviously, rap from musicians like Immortal Technique, The Geto Boys, Cypress Hill are just begging to be censored under such criteria.
Of course, this is Google we're talking about, and they control much more than music and videos. It's not a big jump from determining the Wu-Tang Clan to be too controversial to ruminating over whether or not all those casual mentions of the word 'nigger' in Mark Twain's works is appropriate.
Sadly, we appear to be living in interesting times.
Similar for incenting violence and "Pumped up kicks".
Edit: They could also add misogyny to the list and wipe out large swaths of entire music genres :)
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bs-ed-anthem-letter...
For example, "And music streaming services offered by Google, Deezer and Spotify have said they would remove music that incites violence, hatred or racism."
Now these services have put it out there as policy someone has to define what's violent, hateful or racist in music. Racism? Ok nobody's really going to bat an eye at that disappearing.
Violence and hatred though? As an off again on again heavy metal listener.. almost literally every track could be described as violent or hateful. That's the genre. The same could be said for other genres and their sub-genres. Rap comes to mind. Is Eminem next on the chopping board?
Music was the easy example, there's other examples available for the other services (registrar, DNS, hosting, CDN) as to why making this policy is a bad idea. Now anyone needs to do is convince someone at the corresponding target that a site is similar enough that it should be taken down.
South Park had a two-parter that addressed this exact problem [1][2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon_Wars_Part_I [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon_Wars_Part_II