The problem isn’t that the voices of hate are being banned. The problem is that the mechanisms used to lower the volume on or silence hate speech can lower the volume or silence any other form or speech. This is why the US enshrined free speech as the first amendment of the constitution.
Technical means of defying censorship, like this one, help to preserve that right.
What is concerning is that these particular companies are the main platforms used nowadays for conveying ideas and expressing thought, and there are no alternatives that offer the same level of reach. Sure, you can put your video up on another hosting platform. Nobody is going to find it like they would on YouTube.
In order to disseminate ideas widely authors have always been at the mercy of editors, publishers and distributors.
It's an impossible situation because if you force someone to publish something they find objectionable then you've stripped them of their own rights just so some arsehole can write shit about Jews/Muslims/Gays/Blacks/insert minority here.
You're right, it wasn't very charitable, I took it quite literally, and that means the 1st amendment has absolutely no bearing on preserving the right of one person when that is trampling on the publishers rights.
> Technical means of defying censorship, like this one, help to preserve that right.
I did miss the nuance there because I get angry that there appears to me an impression in the general populace that the 1st amendment applies everywhere and gives people carte blanche to say whatever they please without consequence.
"This is objectionable to me, therefore, no one should be allowed to consume or be exposed to it."
That's what bothers this particular commentor (me).
My own access habits are in practice similar to one who is banned or suspended regularly.
I have never felt like I essentially have no voice on the internet.
I understand that if some popular person with lots of followers gets banned then it seems like they would risk losing a lot of their audience that they may rely on for income etc etc etc, but that's hardly the reality of the average 10/100/1000-followers user, is it?
Just because the big social networks are really big doesn't mean that they are the only places you can find a way to have a voice on the web. I don't mean to diminish your feelings if you feel that way. If you love twitter or fb or whatever and you get kicked out, then I certainly get that would be hard. But there are other places on the web. Lots of other places. Maybe some alternative places let you have even more of a voice precisely because they're smaller and it takes less to cut through the noise.
This is completely different than, and carries higher stakes than the role that telecoms, hosting companies, and publishers have played in the past.
At core though, for me this is about protecting access to information and the importance of decentralized (uncensorable) identity, not about who private companies should or shouldn't allow on their platforms.
This is a discussion that has some serious points on both sides. I don't believe throwing judgments on the people who choose a side that differs from your own will be helpful.
But normal/regular person can be used as opposed to celebrity, or billionaire. Both Jeff Bezos and myself are natural persons. Only one is a normal/regular person :).
Shaming people sometimes makes them rebel, and sometimes makes them reform.
Maybe you drive more people into radicalization than self-reflection when you shut them down. I'm not sure I've ever seen evidence of that either way, have you?
However, it seems almost axiomatic that if a person cannot be heard (as easily) then that person cannot recruit (as easily). I would guess that this is at least part of the purpose behind de-platforming tactics. Maybe. Maybe de-platformers just want to stop hearing from their opponents.
I'm wary of de-platforming as a universal tactic though I might be convinced that it is sometimes the right approach. At any rate, if it's effective, then people will keep doing it. And it seems to be pretty effective.
I think that someone isn't hateful because they're an inherently hateful person. People are a product of their environment. If they only communicate with hateful people, it shapes their worldview.
Everyone has flaws, but somehow hateful speech is that One Thing we cannot tolerate in a person. Bob might be a racist, but he's also a good carpenter, and there's some common ground there. If you just want to get hateful people out of your feed, then ban away. If you want to reduce the number of hateful people in the world, then treat them with respect and gradually show them a better way.
I'm not a good data point, because I have never been a target of that kind of resentment/anger/hatred/etc. At the same time, I can imagine the quiet racist is easier to tolerate than the inflammatory provocateur.
I probably agree with your solution in the long term. I just don't know who is supposed to do the tolerating and way-showing. Certainly I don't think that social media/tech/publishing platforms are required to tolerate viewpoints they think could hurt their business.
For what it's worth, I can tolerate hate speech. I'm not quite a free speech absolutist maybe, but pretty close. But it's easy to tolerate it when I'm rarely if ever a real target of it.
Edit: If you feel I am unfairly calling you out by asking if you have evidence for your previous claim about banning users for content causing radicalization, then I'm sorry. That's not my intent. I really am just curious if that's been studied. I've seen similar claims but not any evidence.
Like who?
Candace Owens, a black conservative woman was temporarily banned from twitter for making the same comments NYT’snew editor made but replaced “white” with “Jewish” and all of a sudden twitter decides those are racist. She did it prove a point and twitter played right along.
Those are two examples.
"Judicial Watch has made numerous false and unsubstantiated claims, with a “vast majority” of their lawsuits dismissed"
JW is one of the only groups out there actually winning lawsuits to disclose information on the 2016 election and FBI mishandling of basically everything.
Sorry, they're real lawyers, in real cases, using actual facts that stand up in a court of law. I can see why your favorite website there doesn't like that.
ALSO... FWIW... My local news paper is EXTREMELY BIASED, and your site lists them as Neutral.
I think this is performance.
The short version is unless you follow that person already, you won't see them organically in any feeds. They could #JonathonKoren and you won't see it because they are effectively hidden unless you already followed them.
What Twitter is doing is absolutely political censorship.
EDIT: There are tools to detect the "Quality Filter" there is a hidden cam interview with an engineer from Twitter explaining it. Hardly conspiracy theory. I don't know why it doesn't seem to be an issue for you, or anything about your anecdote of not seeing it.
I’d take this a lot more seriously if this wasn’t being peddled by same folks that complain about “conservative purges” when Twitter bans a bunch of obvious bot accounts.
What makes this a conspiracy theory is the assumption of some grand covert political agenda. That’s really really hard to believe. Twitter is infamous for not enforcing their own TOS when it comes to hate speech or even calls for violence.
While I’ve never worked at Twitter, I’ve seen how fringe groups start spreading rumors of dark political agendas when it comes to these sorts of algorithms. It just doesn’t happen. It’s just spreading false outrage for clicks. It’s bullshit sold to people desperate for validation of their unpopular ideas.