Twitter also enforces its policies very selectively, and seems to be getting away with it so far, but they are walking a tightrope. E.g. now violating the ToS is OK if it's "newsworthy" etc. Or how "Kill all X" will get you banned for some values of X but not others.
I keep reporting accounts that call black people "nic gurr" to avoid being caught dropping actual N bombs and they are almost never banned.
I guess Daily Active User KPI is more important!
Edit - For anyone wondering about Trump's place on Twitter, he's not going anywhere. Twitter is extremely proud of his account and is using him in advertising in Japan:
http://www.businessinsider.com/twitter-ads-featuring-donald-...
This is a war you'll never win, though. People will keep inventing new combinations of characters as you ban the previously used ones.
Coded language like "states rights"[1][2] sill slips by a lot of people today.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics#United_St...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/21/twitter-f...
The word "if" was probably the key factor here. Since his threat was conditional, that most likely puts it into a different category than outright threats.
Google really worked at cross-purposes with its own agenda there.
If Google's agenda is to promote a progressive worldview, then a highly-credentialed man cultivating attention for rants about how using non-traditional gender pronouns is a road to gulags makes an unlikely champion, even if some of his more nuanced and informed opinions are interesting in their own right.
If Google's agenda is primarily to make ad revenue - which is better supported by the evidence - then having a flagging system and demonetising videos by people that annoy certain sections of society enough to get flagged a lot even if you reinstate them is probably a net positive for the overall value of advertising on Google's network. (I don't think Peterson's income has exactly suffered either; quite the reverse since his Patreon account will have enjoyed the additional publicity)
At every possible opportunity, in every interview and discussion, he's stated that his problem is not the use of these words, it's the prospect of forcing their use through policy and categorizing this as a form of forcing speech.
I agree with you that overall it's ended up as a net positive for him, at least income and publicity wise.
That's the problem: his speech isn't being compelled. Bill C-16 doesn't compel* anyone[1]. It makes two changes.
1) "gender identity or expression" is added to the list of possible aggravating circumstances tha should be taken into consideration during sentencing. For this to affect anyone, they first have to be found guilty of some crime.
2) "gender identity or expression" is added[2] to a list of "identifiable groups" that might be targeted for genocide. For this to affect anyone they must [318 (2) (a)] "kill members of the group", or [318 (2) (b)] "deliberately inflict on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction". Both (a) and (b) require "intent to destroy in destroy in whole or in part any identifiable group.
If Peterson insists he could be affected, he must either be committing some other crime against trans-people or plotting their genocide. Instead, the simpler - and more plausible - explanation is that he doesn't know what he's talking about.
[1] http://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/bill/C-16/first-re...
[2] http://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/C-46/page-73.html#h-...
Your answer is an actual good faith counter to Peterson's assertions but the part where you quoted me is where I simply state what he's claimed in interviews.
I do this because people usually start out by straw-manning him, claiming he's said he's anti-this or that, whereas I'm claiming he's mainly said that his stance is against speech being compelled by law (which is fair game to argue against, as you did, if you think he's wrong).
I don't have to agree with his arguments to point out when people straw-man them
It's this same gung-ho strategy that leads to the videos of protesters approaching Peterson after shutting down his speeches and smugly asking him "about the neo-nazi" presence" at his event (he of course responds that he deplores them) as cheap way of implying guilt by any sort of implied association.
It's stunningly dishonest to try such cheap association tactics against someone who's spent their career studying and lecturing on the dark aspects of the human condition and how they lead to murderous and authoritarian movements like the Nazis and then sets out frameworks to both recognize and turn away from that darkness.
Edit: to be clear, I don't view your writings in this dishonest lens, the comment was more about the patterns I've seen creep up in general.
I suspect You're employing a little slight of hand here that reads like he's shouting "marxist!" at all professors rather than some professors, that is, the professors who he claims promote that ideology. If he suspects that some professors have that aim, he's entitled to call out what he sees without people painting it like he's screaming at shadows.
We could argue around in circles about this, although I think we might agree on what we're debating.
- He argues that using non-traditional gender pronouns is road to gulags. (paraphrasing your first comment)
vs
- He argues that compelling speech through policy is a road to gulags, and the noun issue at hand happens to be a vehicle in this particular instance.
I'm not saying that I agree with his thoughts on the nouns in question, but it seems that your focus is the hill he chose to stand on, whereas I'd argue that it's important that people stand on hills when it comes to laws that compel speech.
When you say that he argues that people don't have the right to choose their own nouns, I think it's lacking context from his lectures. He explains in his talks that he sees rights as something that become the responsibilities of other people. So in essence here he's simply repeating his assertion that his speech, and therefore his thoughts (if you accept his premise that control of speech is a tool to shape thought), shouldn't be compelled by demands of other people to control speech via policy.
I'd concede that it's not the readers fault that the context is lacking in the writing, and that leaves it open for you to reasonably argue that he didn't make that statement with this context in mind. Anecdotally from watching hours of interviews and lectures, I'd make a claim that the context is important.
I never knew what could happen by bring a stickler for traditional English. (Adds a whole new depth to 'grammar Nazi')
Thanks for the massive wakeup call... I'm going to have to move to less capricious ways to use the internet.
Weird, then, how as soon as something went wrong with his life, he joined a far-right movement. (And seems to be very well-compensated financially for doing so.)
For example, some of the far right such as DS are anti-capitalist. We wouldn't say that anti-capitalist are far right, although some far right groups align on that topic.
Lookup US obscenity law and case history. Child pornography is an easy example, 80 years ago it was any pornography, or even obscene literature, joyces Ulysses was once banned.
On general speech has only gotten freer, to think we now are at the precipe and speech won't be even freer is naive, provincial, and arrogant.
Interacial kissing was once provocative, sodomy illegal as recently as 2003, and now depictions of transexuals is edgy.
That anyone thinks its okay to limit speech, the midwife of thought -- its a debate going back to the State sanctioned murder of Socrates for 'corrupting the youth', 'making the weaker argument the stronger', and 'profaning the gods' -- its sad hilarious but those we are educated know such views are on the wrong side of history even if good people like Socrates are murdered along the way.
Let's see if I even share my speech here, I'm regularly shadow banned for no reason.
Once your speech starts to infringe on the rights of others it is no longer deserving of protection. Your rights are not more important than the rights of your fellow citizens. I don't understand why libertarians don't agree with that. I thought the whole point of the government was to protect the rights of the individual.
That is quite a chilling statement. What right do others have to silence speech? A right is not something that can be taken away due to public opinion. Otherwise it is a privilege. The entire foundation of a free society is built on free speech.
You have the right to silence speech that infringes on your rights. Someone's speech shouldn't be protected if they knowing print lies in order to ruin the career of another individual. Someone's speech shouldn't be protected if they leave a burning cross on the curb outside their black neighbor's house. Someone's speech shouldn't be protected if they are reprinting the published work of another person without permission or fair use. Someone's speech shouldn't be protected if they are threatening violence on another individual.
>A right is not something that can be taken away due to public opinion. Otherwise it is a privilege.
You don't even have to go back a decade to find that this isn't true. Prop 8 is a perfect example of how a right can be taken away by public opinion.
Some people get misled by the Declarations of Independence's whole "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights" thing that human rights are some natural phenomena. That has never been true. We bestow these rights on each other because we as a civilization have decided they are the bare minimum that every person should be guaranteed. As human history will show it is a constant struggle to help ensure that is true.
>The entire foundation of a free society is built on free speech.
By that logic no free society has ever existed before.
Most of your examples are covered by other laws. Property rights, defamation or such. However, none of this is forbidden as speech.
>We bestow these rights on each other
This is demonstrated as false because we had these rights before there ever was something we could call government or even a society. When you are born into the world alone as a living being there is nothing to silence you. Freedom did exist before civilization.
>By that logic no free society has ever existed before.
Status of a free society is not a boolean. The degree to which the society is free is strongly correlated to the degree of free speech within the society.
That is exactly my point. What do you think defamation is if isn't a limitation on free speech? What do you think copyright is if it isn't a limitation on free speech? What do you think laws against threats or intimidation are if they aren't a limitation of free speech? Those laws are created because we think some speech shouldn't be protected.
>This is demonstrated as false because we had these rights before there ever was something we could call government or even a society. When you are born into the world alone as a living being there is nothing to silence you. Freedom did exist before civilization.
There is no one stopping anyone from taking your rights away if you are born into the world alone as a living being. That is one of the primary purposes of government. The protection of its citizens' rights. If we don't have some force to protect those rights, there is nothing preventing the powerful from taking away the rights of the weak as evidenced by the entirety of human history.
>Status of a free society is not a boolean. The degree to which the society is free is strongly correlated to the degree of free speech within the society.
That is obviously true, but the r value in that correlation also isn't equal to 1. The US is at the extreme in terms of free speech but it is rarely in the top of the various freedom indices that exists to measure the freedom of a society.
Think of it this way. If I harm someone by punching them, I will not be prosecuted for improper use of my fist. I will be prosecuted for the damages. Same with these examples of speech. You are being prosecuted for damages, not violating a speech code.
So a law that forbid certain speech and allowed for prosecution without proving damages or somehow prevented me from saying something in advance would then be a limitation on actual speech.
The problem starts, when people project there wish to control the lives of others upon some vague enough person as power.
Other People need the help of government? They should stop being lazy and put their faith in the free market.
My folks need government help? Well we deserve it, give it to us, right now, don’t delay, don’t you have a heart?
Compared to the members of communist, conservative and other demanding and identity-integral idealogies, libertarians are far smaller in number and altogether weaker as an independant political force.
The thought of this terrifies me. It invites the absolute worst kind of collectivism.
The question worth exploring is how to balance individual and collective needs.
Using "collectivism" as a pejorative gets us nowhere.
It's kind of crazy that we finally agreed that the government doesn't have the right to unfairly treat two gay dudes who want to get married, but now if someone doesn't want to serve them the cake the government can force you to. No matter how righteous either act, we just traded one form of tyranny for another and made no progress in understanding the importance of the lesson. When can we just agree that telling you what to think should have never been a legitimate role of government in the first place? It is a concept fundamentally and completely opposed to democracy and individual liberty.
I guess what it comes down to is what you fear more: tyranny or some racist people with restaurants.
Human rights end at where someone else’s rights begin. It’s obvious following from this that perpetrating physical violence on the innocent is wrong and must be stopped. But what of people who glorify, encourage or publicly plan to do such a thing? Do you always have to wait until people translate toxic words into toxic actions?
Yes. Otherwise we are attempting policing through pre-crime. Also, `toxic` is always subjective. It becomes a useful vehicle by which the definition will always be expanded to include what someone dislikes.
Who are you to judge my religion and culture wrong and vane?
Some entity must then be given power to determine what qualifies as that speech. This is then the point speech is lost. Once someone has the power to determine what people can say, then that becomes the vehicle through which it will be undermined. The definition of what is acceptable will continue to change as the state will want to keep expanding its power of `public good`. This becomes a selling point to the public to support such efforts while the state will continue to silence opposition to its interests with support of the public as all will be framed in the interest of protecting the public.
The other possibility is just chaos and vigilante justice. Which is what the CEO of Cloudflare did.
Both the legal system and businesses need to draw lines. We can't pretend those lines don't exist or that 100% free speech is some ideal natural state. Once those line are drawn it is only natural for there to be debate about them. I think frequently debating and reassessing those lines is healthy.
If the restaurant benefits from special safe harbor exemptions to food safety laws because they have so many customers from all walks of life that they supposedly can't spare the resources to play hygiene police while serving everyone on time, then no.
But aren't copyright laws another way of suppressing free expression? It seems contradictory to say that it's not ok for Cloudflare to suppress the free expression of Nazis while implicitly supporting the suppression of the expression of file sharers, remixers, and other violators of copyright who want to use Cloudflare. Furthermore, you seem to be arguing that the explicitly political expression of Cloudflare's CEO should be suppressed using the power of the state (by suggesting that it should open them up to legal liability).
Are you suggesting that in order for them to be allowed to turn down Stormfront's business they must take on the legal obligation of actively screening all their content for illegal material?
I don't see the connection or justification.
As the Cloudflare CEO explained, that is not the case in this instance.
https://www.cloudflare.com/terms/
The only way they can terminate the terms is:
"Cause for such termination shall include, but not be limited to: (a) breaches or violations of the Terms of Service or other incorporated agreements or guidelines; (b) requests by law enforcement or other government agencies; (c) a request by you (self-initiated account deletions); (d) discontinuance or material modification to the Service (or any part thereof); (e) unexpected technical or security issues or problems; (f) extended periods of inactivity; (g) you have engaged or are reasonably suspected to be engaged in fraudulent or illegal activities; (h) having provided false information as part of your account; (i) having failed to keep your account complete, true, and accurate; (j) any use of the Service deemed at Cloudflare’s sole discretion to be prohibited; (k) use of fraudulent payment methods; and/or (l) nonpayment of any fees owed by you in connection with Cloudflare.com and associated Services."
Meaning "and anything else we forgot to include or think of later," so "woke up pissed off at you" is a valid reason for termination under that clause.
To to mention that "j" is broad enough to include pretty much any content-based decision.
Also, like yelling `fire` in a building is not a speech issue, it is a property rights issue in that you cause damage to the owners of the property.
The point is that it can be prosecuted, but not on the grounds of speech.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
Cloudflare's CEO has basically come out and admitted that now it was powerful well connected individuals threatening him instead.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/24/cloudflare-ceo-matthew-princ...
It's a bit surprising to hear your assertion, as I've only ever heard that "Daily Stormer" egged Cloudflare on. This was easy to accept, as it falls into the general pattern of trolling. But if this tidbit was actually malinterpreted and amplified by the media to flesh out their narrative, it gives a whole new face to the situation - don't let a good crisis go to waste and all that.
(FWIW I'm not in agreement with your specific political view here. But most people in the world are some type of asshole, and yet I still believe in their right to communicate freely).
We never made any such claim, but it is obviously irrelevant even if we had. Did we also claim that GoDaddy, Google, RU-CENTER, 101domains, Zoho, Sendgrid, Namecheap, Dreamhost, and a dozen other things I can't even remember were secretly Nazis supporting us? No, but Cloudflare dropped us with them and came up with a really fucking lame excuse to try to pretend that we were a special case.
We're not a special case. We're the only legitimate opposition to the establishment. The establishment came to him and made him an offer he couldn't refuse. If he had integrity, he would be honest about it. Now he's a bitch and a liar, whereas he could have been just a bitch.
It also hinges greatly on what you mean by "The establishment came to him and made him an offer he couldn't refuse". This reads as if you're referencing a top-down collusion to silence your type of speech, whereas I think it's more likely that these companies are worried about populist/democratic outrage affecting their image. Same result for you, same chilling effect on free speech, same dynamic where centralized communications administrators are ultimately forced to censor. But stemming from a completely different power mechanism and thus needing a very different approach to tackle.
From TFA I posted:
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/24/cloudflare-ceo-matthew-princ...
>The CEO who pulled the final plug on the neo-Nazi web site Daily Stormer said he removed it from his company's Internet service to protect his firm's business in the run-up to a potential initial public offering (IPO). >"We were worried that people would say, 'We won't work with you anymore,'" Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told CNBC.
..
>But then comments from others forced the hand of Prince, who co-founded the company with COO Michelle Zatlyn in mid-2009. >First, another CEO "whom I admire," Prince said, tweeted that Cloudlare should boot the Daily Stormer off its services, as its rivals had done.
It doesn't care at all about the mob (the same mob is right now demanding that they shut off other sites, and they are ignoring them) but rather about the enterprise clients that comprise the majority of their revenue.
Really though, this is just splitting hairs. The difference between "CF was angry that DS claimed CF supported their views," "CF was being pressured by its biggest and most valuable customers," and "CF was concerned that keeping DS as a customer would negatively impact their IPO" is just a small detail. The point is that having DS as a customer is bad for business and CF, like all those other companies, decided that it was time to protect their business. What specifically prompted that decision is not too important -- it was just the straw that broke the camel's back.
Don't play coy about the nature of your site. Almost nobody actually wants websites like DS to exist and DS is toxic to the brand of any company that does business with it. The existence DS is merely tolerated as an unfortunate consequence of free speech, something which is outweighed by the various benefits of a democratic society. Your ability to remain online at all is tolerated as an unfortunate consequence of the free and open nature of the Internet. Maybe you cannot see that, but it's not hard for the rest of us.
As to your counter claim ("We never made such a claim.") you need to understand that you are asking us to believe you rather than Cloudflare. As the Daily Stormer you have zero credibility.
What you do have is legal recourse. If you feel you've been libeled then sue Cloudflare. That is your right in a court of law. But your expectation of credence, no. Moreover, the lack of this lawsuit lowers your credibility below zero.
He's not asking us to believe anyone. Cloudflare made an accusation that should be easily provable. The fact Cloudflare and nobody in this thread has been able to come up with a single quote supporting Cloudflare's accusation is pretty damning.
You are suing for damage to your reputation such as it is. You may be able to find some law firm to take you on pro bono or for a substantial cut of the proceeds. The Berkeley Patriot found a lawyer (and they have zero money) to take on UC Berkeley [1] (who has hella money). However, if you will not protect your reputation then asking reasonable people to believe you, The Daily Stormer, well, that is a bit much.
[1] http://www.dailycal.org/2017/09/22/berkeley-patriot-files-ci...
I ask that in light of two recent HN articles that explain how IPFS works.
"The Daily Stormer then raised the stakes with a claim that Cloudflare's management was supportive of its ultra-nationalist ideology."
https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to...
>“The Daily Stormer site was bragging on their bulletin boards about how Cloudflare was one of them and that is the opposite of everything we believe. That was the tipping point for me.”
I suppose Cloudflare customers should make sure to censor what gets posted on their sites if it refers to the political opinions of Matthew Prince.
Please source it directly. Where did we make this claim? We have not removed any Cloudflare related content from any of our articles. Our site is currently up at dailystormer.cat -- you're free to search it, as well as archive sites like archive.is for dailystormer.com. We never made any claim like this. It is simply a lie on the part of Matthew Prince, trying to spin the fact that he isn't an anti-DDoS company anymore as long as the DDoS traffic comes in the form of valid SMTP from powerful individuals and SJW mobs.
Where/when did they claim that?
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/16/cloudflare_ceo_dail...
https://gizmodo.com/cloudflare-ceo-on-terminating-service-to...
>“The Daily Stormer site was bragging on their bulletin boards about how Cloudflare was one of them and that is the opposite of everything we believe. That was the tipping point for me.”
https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/
We have 1. Cloudfare has a powerful need to justify their actions, 2. The person they're making these claims against has drastically reduced ability to provide his side of the story, thanks to Cloudfare's actions, 3. They already did one thing that most people believed they would never do, in arbitrarily terminating services to a site they didn't like, are we really going to make the claim that they would absolutely never twist somebody's words to serve their own purposes?
I don't think they straight made something up, but I can certainly believe that they took a quote out of context, interpreted something creatively, or misrepresented a post on their forum as an official statement by the site owner. In what other situation with such a powerful conflict of interests would we take the word of somebody in Cloudfare's position at face value?
> 2. The person they're making these claims against has drastically reduced ability to provide his side of the story, thanks to Cloudfare's actions…
Given the clickbait / pageview drive of modern “news” online, I think that someone at the middle of a hotly debated issue such as this could find many outlets happy to quote them on a perceived scandal. It has the potential to the flames and generates yet more controversy.
Free speech is all fine and dandy until somebody says something you don't agree with.
Happens every single time.
The internet is trending towards becoming a cluster of walled gardens. Whether or not that will make a "better internet" than the one we have/had, it remains to be seen, but I'm inclining towards believing it won't. It could make it better for some things, but I think it could make it much worse for other things (freedom of speech, defending controversial ideas like gay marriage, or national security whistleblowers, etc).
I could give you the canonical example of why that's the case, but I'd trip the Godwin wire.
Today it's 'mildly sceptical over mass immigration'. Tomorrow it's 'not advocating for free healthcare'.
That being said, I personally lean towards allowing free speech without restrictions (with exceptions for things like extortion). I just wanted to remind us about the context in which the parent comment was written.
> Today it's 'mildly sceptical over mass immigration'. Tomorrow it's 'not advocating for free healthcare'.
"Neo-Nazi" is not anywhere close to the same category as "skeptical on mass immigration".
Skeptical on mass immigration represents a reasonable political position that is commonly accepted (as shown by how many Republicans with that position as part of their platform in the US).
Neo-Nazi represents a fetishism for Nazism, Fascism, and the idea that mass murder might be acceptable.
Ben Shapiro has been called a Nazi.
Do you have any proof their proclamation they are neo nazis is a lie?
You are aware it is literally named after a Nazi tabloid:
The Daily Stormer is named for the Nazi tabloid Der Stürmer, known for its antisemitic caricatures. This 1934 billboard for Der Stürmer reads "With Der Stürmer against Judea. The Jews are our misfortune".
Yes?
Including Ben Shapiro, who is a guy that "wears a funny hat".
The 2 cases you picked are poor, because in each case, there's evidence that people can use to make up their minds.
Every slope is slippery.
If you refer to peaceful methods, then look no further than Ghandi and MLK. Protest peacefully. Make them raise their fist. And record it, tell the stories, reduce their mandate.
If you come from Malcolm X's or IRA's point of view: assassinations, military-like strikes, and generally war.
I reserve judgement on which way is better.
Of course, we're assuming asymmetric warfare here. No-one honestly believes FDR was wrong to declare war on Japan.
If you can see some compassion or love in your enemy's eyes, then every time they hold up their fist to beat you you should hold up a mirror.
Gandhi was most effective when the Indian armed forces rebelled.
MLK had Malcom X.
You need a good cop and a bad cop.
/Godwin
"Where is the line" for how much we should "tolerate intolerance" is a very easy question to answer.
The line is at current, US law. Break the law with your intolerance, via engaging in violent assault, and you should go to jail.
Instead of debating this slippery slogan, better to ask people to clarify what they want to do.
Everything after a statement like that can be safely dismissed as pure bull.
From an utilitarist point of view, this isn't even a question: intolerant behavior leads to less people being happy (not even talking about hypotethical fights resulting of intolerance, just people feeling excluded), therefore it should be banned.
1) Intolerance of intolerance is tolerance.
2) Every modern philosopher agrees with #1.
Both a false statements, as far as I can see.
As for "Intolerant behavior", it's a completely subjective concept that is orthogonal to morality. In most places in Saui Arabia it's not tolerated for a woman to not appear wrapped in a bag, and considered immoral too, but I consider that kind of treatment of women completely intolerant and immoral in itself.
HS: The main issue with that, a sentence that resume an "essai" (don't have a clue about the english translation), is that people that do not know what philosophy really is. Let's be honest, if it is taught as well in the world than in France, almost nobody knows. So most people misunderstand what it really means, while some of the other use this knowledge to put people down. Even writing this, i'm pedantic, and i really don't want to be, so imagine someone who like feeling full of himself? And that way, more and ore people hate philosophy and philosopher, and get disinterested. (i wrote like a hundred lines about philosophers in French media, but i'm sure no one care so i will refrain...)
That said we shouldn’t deny them services like hosting, because maintaing a neutral hosting stance is what allows for a firm argument that protects imprortant discourse like legitimate political dissent. Once you allow for a line to be drawn, suddenly bickering over that line becomes a an endless problem that might stifle any idea.
I'd also recommend Carl Schmitt [1]
[1] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/schmitt/#ConPolCriLib
I've come to the (current) belief that these idiots have the right to free speech even if I hate it. Outlawing it won't stop their bigotry, just take it underground and give them another thing to blame on the "bad" people.
I also think although they should be able to have their rallies and websites, we also have free speech to identify and make public their identities and call their families and employers and ask them if they support these ideas too. Some people at Charlottesville were dumb founded when they got fired. I think this approach does a better job of saying this line of thinking is not accepted here but maintaining people's right to free speech. I also personally believe you aren't going hate by yelling at people that they are dumb. Cliche but you only stop hate with love and familiarity.
I also think there is a topic in this discussion that doesn't get enough mention. I personally feel this issue is as much an economic one as ideological. People don't have jobs and Trump's platform gives them someone to blame. It is the immigrants who stole your jobs and we are going to bring all the jobs back to the US. We need a wall to keep out all these "bad" people. We are going to do everything America first. This rhetoric give people a pass. People who feel they have nothing left to lose are dangerous. Even more so when someone else is giving them a target to blame.
RE legality though: meth and tabacco are basically the same level of addictiveness, but tabacco is more preponderant because it's legal.
Not to say that we should "make illegal speech" to deal with this problem, but no-platforming racists (as private citizens) likely helps fight against racism.
It's not ideologically inconsistent to be for free speech but not let klansmen into your home. And there are more than enough service providers for these people, you don't have to serve them. They found a replacement for Cloudflare quickly in this example.
You can still have free speech in the constitution while society as a whole is intolerant towards those ideas.
If whether they're getting arrested is your concern, there's no need to worry. Simply being a white supremacist doesn't get you arrested. Though it looks to me like the thread started over the question of what sort of non-government concession a tolerant society owes to white supremacists and the like.
I find that assessment difficult to swallow and was asking for a citation or example of when this happened.
I also find that idea dangerous, because in the US political power changes every 4-12 years and ideas you might hold dear may be deemed distasteful. Of course, I'm willing to discuss the merits of that idea rather than just banning it.
The point is to get everyone talking about the meme until it becomes a legitimate "side". To in introduce humans to a radical idea that is far outside what they would normally consider acceptable, you have to reframe the idea and/or their beliefs. The easiest way to do that - which marketing departments have known for a long time ("branding") - is by repeated exposure. If enough people talk about e.g. ethnic cleansing in a way that gets you to repeated argue back about how they are "obviously wrong", you will eventually believe it's a legitimate political point of view that people might have.
Look, one of the people you replied to was talking about branding and all that. The second you go on a crusade and talking about banning people with ideas, the stronger their brand becomes.
I haven't thought about Neo Nazis in 20+ years, that is until everyone started talking about banning their sites. It's not the people who tolerate their speech and ignore it that gives these people's ideas weight, it's the people who demand a moral crusade by silencing them that do.
It's true irony that in the effort to silence distasteful ideas, people are giving those ideas much more relevance than if they had done what we always do. Allow people to say stupid things, ignore them, then wave as they scurry off under the rock of which they came.
Then may I suggest doing some research on what they have been doing in the last two decades? In particular the current tactics[1] they are using?
> banning their sites
A private business refusing service is very different from a government ban. I agree that the extreme centralization of the internet has put a troubling amount of power in the hands of very few businesses. However, this is orthogonal to the fact that neo-Nazi groups have took advantage of a lot of people ignoring them for 20+ years.
> It's not the people who tolerate their speech and ignore it that gives these people's ideas weight
If everyone was actually ignoring the neo-Nazis, we wouldn't have a problem. Instead, we have people tolerating their speech and arguing against it in the neo-Nazi framing. They have been very successful at constructing a framing with blurring language and rhetoric constructed specifically to sound reasonable. So now we have people unintentionally defending fascist ideas that has been carefully camouflaged as "distasteful idea".
[1] https://twitter.com/ContraPoints/status/896823834338263041
It happened in post-WW1 Germany. Nazis were originally a fringe movement. Even though they weren't particularly competent, they were able to gain power and influence due to the ambivalence and apathy of (and tolerance by) the masses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler%27s_rise_to_power...
Yes, this is the only example I could really think of, but it isn't a good, concrete example by the simple facts that Hitler was never elected as chancellor and the Nazi party never held a majority in the Reichstag. In other words, tolerance didn't give them power, the took power. They also did a lot of things other than propose ideas to get into power.
I don't want the idea of allowing people to present and hold distasteful thoughts confused with being allowed commit crimes (including but not limited to assault, murder, carrying an illegal firearm, inciting a riot, etc).
It doesn't say that members of civil society must tolerate any and all speech without consequence or pushback.
And yes, yes that includes speech from hateful Nazis.
Please keep in mind that Nazis would absolutely harm me, if given the chance to do so. I'm quite distinctly not white.
But, the goal should be allowing even the deplorable to make use of their basic human rights. The Constitution says what the government cannot do. It should also serve as a baseline as to how we should model our society.
We should facilitate free speech, freedom of and from religion, security of our papers, innocence as the assumption, etc... Well, we should if we care about fostering a society where people can enjoy their liberties. Rights shouldn't just be allowed for those we approve of. If they are not allowed for everyone, they are privileges and not rights.
That's just shamelessly trying to get something in through the back door when it won't fit in through the front door. "Oh, the _government_ isn't oppressing you but they'll just look the other way while businesses and vigilantes do it to you instead. nudge, nudge, wink, wink"
And what will you do when the day comes that your political opponents come to power (elections haven't been that favorable to the left recently, in case you hadn't noticed) and find you've left them this nice, neat, and completely "legal" mechanism to wreck your lives?
The government's job is to enforce laws that are on the books. If someone commits a crime, whether they are a business or a vigilante group, they will be persecuted.
Attacking cops and breaking store windows are crimes.
Running over counter-protestors is a crime.
Firing people because of their religion or skin color is a crime.
Banning users for breaking your terms of service is NOT a crime. The reason is simple: no one owes you a platform from which you can express your opinions, regardless of what those opinions are.
The US has extremely strong protections for "intolerant" and "unpopular" beliefs. And it works out fine for us.
Freedom of speech, and tolerating everyone, including the intolerant, has worked out pretty well for us.
I'm not sure how anyone can look at the fucking mess the US is currently in and say that.
Personally I like this page's description of the word tolerance, which solves this word game: https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1...
You're attempting to rationalize intolerance on a linguistic loophole (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance). I know that cartoons for late-adolescents have popularized this in mass media over the past decade (ahem, South Park), but it's still childish and distracts from the legitimate concerns over the free expression of ideas in our society and world.
Yeah, sure, you have a right to engage in the expression of childish thoughts, but you should be aware you're not as clever as you think you are.
No. They are precisely who we should tolerate. That's what free speech rights exist to protect.
We shouldn't tolerate violence, but we should tolerate speech.
> See how Google/YouTube/Twitter did mass bans and ended up including people like Jordan Peterson.
But according to the left, peterson is an intolerant person.
This is why we have principles and rights. The first thing everyone used to learn in a philosophy class was that if the neo-nazis don't have free speech, then nobody has free speech.
You can disagree with neo-nazis. That's your right. But if their speech is curtailed, then nobody has speech because speech no longer is a right, it's a privilege that depends on the whims of the offended.
Yet we already don't tolerate violent speech. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_ex...
It is crazy to me that a (if I might assume) straight white non-Jewish and non-Muslim man living in a like society will speak authoritatively about what kind of speech should be allowed. Go live in a society in which you are the minority where a significant and growing segment of society hates you, and then tell me what kind of speech we should allow.
Doesn't this make us intolerant by definition?
slippery slope
Don't get me wrong, we shouldn't tolerate the intolerant (e.g. nazis/terrorists), but who decides what belongs in that category is a huge problem that shouldn't be in the hands of a private tech company.
See how Google/YouTube/Twitter did mass bans and ended up including people like Jordan Peterson.