Let's prod at this:
- Should ISIS recruitment videos and propaganda be allowed (nay, encouraged) because deplatforming them will make them put their recruitment pamphlets elsewhere? Where else do they put their recruiting materials?
- Should we publicly and loudly encourage people to self harm, ideate suicide, etc. because if we don't, they'll just find secret places to do it?
- Should we consider white supremacist recruiting materials "dialogue" at all? If we're talking about dialogue, as in a formal debate between Richard Spencer and pretty much anyone else, one on one, that's potentially interesting (also embarrassing for Spencer). On the other hand, a video posted by a white supremacist isn't dialogue. It's even less dialogue when they can delete comments they can't aptly respond to, and when the people there are already interested (Richard Spencer videos weren't ever going to cross my feed). You're calling this dialogue, but it's really a one sided dog and pony show with maybe some unlucky sacrifices. Perhaps we shouldn't ban dialogue between white supremacists and normal people, but you're not advocating for dialogue, your advocating for Facebook (and whomever else) to support (distribute, platform, etc.) white supremacist propaganda and theater.
>I don't want to live in a society where what can and can't be said is strictly regulated either by force or by general consent.
How do you propose to create a society where people aren't allowed to dislike you? That's what you're asking for, essentially. "Freedom from consequences" is the common way of putting this, but really what you're asking for is an infringement on my freedom of association. If you piss enough people off, that'll come back to bite you. What's the alternative? That people can't hold you accountable for your previous words? That quickly devolves into a society of 4chan, which, well, I'm not sure why you'd want to live in that.
>For example, the opinion I'm expressing now used to be a lot more common than it is today.
How certain of this are you? Did black people or women have the freedoms you suggest 100-150 years ago in the US? Was anyone advocating for that?
How do we define "white supremacist recruiting materials? A significant number of people have said to me, un-ironically, that opposition to immigration is an instance of white supremacist speech. Same with opposition to affirmative action (they even called a crowd full of mostly Asians opposing affirmative action white supremacy in action). And I live in Bay Area, same place where Facebook is headquartered. That's the problem with trying to define ideological blacklists. Once you put a category onto the blacklist, everyone will try to push their political opponents into that category. This is how you get things like "learn to code" becoming a ban-worth offense (but only when directed to journalists).
Nowhere on the page linked in the original post does Facebook define "white nationalism" or "white separatism".
Do they define ISIS? That didn't seem to cause as much concern.
As for the rest of your post, I'm baffled that you somehow think that "preventing people from trying to kill people" is somehow a negative thing that should be criticized.
I also think that if I were consistently being mistaken for a white supremacist, I'd think about why that were happening, and probably try to distance myself from the things that were causing those mistakes. Your view appears to be that it's better to just prevent people from voicing their confusion.
ISIS is (or was) an explicit political group, an organized proto-state. It literally called itself a State. It was very clearly defined.
> As for the rest of your post, I'm baffled that you somehow think that "preventing people from trying to kill people" is somehow a negative thing that should be criticized.
"Preventing people from trying to kill people" was already against their terms of service. The whole point of this announcement is to announce the fact that Facebook is expanding their prohibited categories beyond "preventing people from trying to kill people".
> I also think that if I were consistently being mistaken for a white supremacist, I'd think about why that were happening, and probably try to distance myself from the things that were causing those mistakes. Your view appears to be that it's better to just prevent people from voicing their confusion.
As I stated earlier, multiple people have told me that desiring stronger border security and building the border wall is white nationalist. Others have told me that supporting any expansions of immigration restrictions is white nationalist. A few have even told me that opposition to affirmative action (even among groups in which Asians are the ones primarily opposing it) is white nationalism. I did not get the sense that they were saying these things ironically or in jest. Are these views tantamount to "preventing people from trying to kill people"? I live in San Francisco, which while not exactly the same environment as Menlo Park, is still in the same metro area as Facebook's HQ. There's a significant possibility that folks with similarly liberal definitions of white nationalism exist at Facebook.
Also the way you say you would "probably try to distance myself from the things that were causing those mistakes" really makes it sound like the chilling effect this has on discussion is a feature, not a bug. As significant number of people suspect that tech companies' expansions of prohibited speech is becoming a means of partisan manipulation. Statements such as yours likely reinforce this belief.
> Your view appears to be that it's better to just prevent people from voicing their confusion.
I am not trying to prevent anyone from voicing anything. The issue is that a significant number of people do confuse (or deliberately label) mainstream political views with "white nationalism" and "white separatism". Thus, Facebook's banning of these things is very likely to be seen as - and perhaps actually be implemented as - a means of suppressing legitimate political discussion. It probably would have been better to keep their prohibited categories the same, and perhaps more aggressively police certain circles and keep their policy - as you put it - "preventing people from trying to kill people"
There's already enough suspicion that Facebook is acting in a partisan manner, and more stuff like this is going to inspire ever greater calls to enforce stiffer regulation on tech companies and perhaps even breaking them up. This announcement seems like a shot in the foot for Facebook.
Are you suggesting that groups like the daily stormer, the national policy institute, etc. are not organized political groups? The national policy institute is quite literally a lobbying organization.
>As I stated earlier, multiple people have told me that desiring stronger border security and building the border wall is white nationalist.
Like I said, if I were being confused with a white nationalist with any regularity, I would take steps to correct that perception, perhaps by trying to understand why people think such things. Through conversation, directly, with those people, or on my own with research. Not by trying to appeal to some higher ethics that the people who think I might be a white nationalist are wrong.
Something about everywhere you walk smelling like shit and all.
Facebook's announcements do not specify these groups in particular, and do not seem to indicate that its definition of "white nationalism" and "white separatism" will be nearly as clearly defined as banning recruitment to the Caliphate.
> Like I said, if I were being confused with a white nationalist with any regularity, I would take steps to correct that perception, perhaps by trying to understand why people think such things. Through conversation, directly, with those people, or on my own with research. Not by trying to appeal to some higher ethics that the people who think I might be a white nationalist are wrong.
> Something about everywhere you walk smelling like shit and all.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but calling people white nationalists almost certainly isn't going to change their views. Quite the opposite, all it accomplishes is lessens the severity of these terms and makes it such that people roll their eyes when they see the label thrown around. And it further alienates people like me, who do support immigration and affirmative action etc, but are increasingly turned off by the every diminishing threshold at which terms like these get thrown around. Furthermore, it makes it even harder to distinguish between actual white nationalists and legitimate views that people are trying to make socially acceptable by painting them with the white nationalist brush.
Something about crying wolf and all.
After that, the damage has been done and trust in Facebook will have been diminished. And there is a very big difference between "crying wolf" (as in, actually mislabeling something benign as something dangerous) and voicing concern based on previously observed behavior. Calling opposition to immigration white supremacy is the former, saying that there's a distinct probability that Facebook's enforcement of these rules will impact non-white-supremacist views is the latter.
> Sure, but there are few enough white nationalists now that I don't particularly need to worry about them. The issue is if their mindshare grows. And calling them out keeps it that way.
You seem to be missing the core point I've been making. The issue is not with actual white nationalists which, as you point out, are few and far between. The issue is with mainstream views getting consistently labeled as white nationalist which introduces several issues. One, it makes distinguishing between the former and the latter more difficult making it very likely that mainstream views get banned under the label of white nationalist. And two, it makes it so that people are less concerned with claims of white nationalism thus making it more acceptable for the actual white nationalists to operate openly.
> See, I know a lot of people, and the only ones who ever say things like this are ones on the internet. I've never met a real actual human who is so concerned at the thought of someone calling someone else a name that they're going to stop supporting immigration reform or affirmative action.
You're right, but you're refuting a straw man. Alienation doesn't mean ceasing support for particular issues. More often than not it means refusing to identify with political groups. This isn't speculation, this is backed up by evidence. Record numbers of people don't identify with either Democrats or Republicans [1].
> Like I said, you seem really, really concerned about not being called a white nationalist. If you really do support things like affirmative action and reasonable immigration policy, I'm not sure why you have such a concern. Either no one is calling you a white nationalist, in which case, again, why do you care about the nonexistent strawpersno who might do so? Or, the one person who is is so fringe as to be easily ignored.
Yet again, you're talking about things I never wrote. I do not get called white nationalist and I don't think I ever have been called as such. But I do see co-workers and former classmates call mainstream views white nationalists, and I do see how it makes political discussion toxic and non-productive. These aren't strawmen, these are people I go to work with every day that are adopting stances that make it impossible for them to engage with people with opposing political views beyond hurling insults. Even though they aren't calling me a white nationalist, they're still calling my conservative family members and friends white nationalists when they say things like supporting the border wall makes someone a white nationalist. This isn't healthy for a democracy and it makes me not want to identify with the groups that they are a part of.
And to circle back to the original point that was made, the prevalence of mainstream getting called white nationalist makes it a real possibility that Facebook will start banning mainstream political views. If "build the wall" starts getting banned as white nationalist as many of my co-workers want it to be then Republicans are going to be very eager to bring down the regulatory hammer on Facebook and perhaps big tech companies in general.
> https://news.gallup.com/poll/225056/americans-identification...
So, you have historical evidence of facebook mislabeling things that are clearly not white supremacist as white supremacist?
If not, then yes, you're absolutely crying wolf, because you're ascribing the behavior of some entity to some unrelated entity, apparently based on geographic location (fun fact, the people enforcing FB's policies are probably in Austin or Phoenix[1], not MPK).
Also, your poll is outdated[2]. The numbers are back up. And looking at broader trends, more people identify as liberal than ever before[3], so all of this stuff that you think is causing this shift towards conservatism, or at least away from identifying as a democrat, isn't, since people are more willing to identify as Democratic and liberal now than in 2016 or 2012. I don't think these are related, but since apparently you do, I hope that this helps you understand that your reaction appears to be the minority reaction, and that this public shaming that you so despise is working.
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebo...
[2]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx
[3]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/245813/leans-conservative-liber...
In a village there exists a boy that is tasked with protecting a flock of sheep by shouting "wolf!" if he sees a wolf, to alert the townsfolk to come to his aid. Out of boredom (or self-satisfaction of his ability to get a reaction out of the townsfolk, depending on the variation) he shouts "wolf!" despite not seeing any wolf. After a couple instances of false alarm, the townsfolk no longer heed the boy's alarm and do not come to his aid when a wolf really does attack the flock.
The boy knew that there was no wolf attack, but claimed that a wolf was attacking the sheep anyway. I am doing no such thing.
Facebook as only just announced this policy, so no one has any observation of how they are enforcing it. This is obvious. The post itself states that the policy will only go into effect next week. That you are asking me if I have historical evidence regarding a policy that has yet to go into effect does not indicate that the original post was read in much detail (though it does make your previous statement that this announcement is about "Preventing people from trying to kill people" a lot less surprising).
I am not, and have never, claimed that Facebook is using the guise of white supremacy to ban mainstream politics. Again, this policy isn't even in effect yet. I am, however, highlighting the fact that a significant segment of Facebook's work force (tech workers in the Bay Area) espouse a view of white supremacy that does categorize things like opposition to affirmative action and immigration as white supremacy. Will this impact the enforcement of their views? I don't know, but my take on this situation is that it's a significant risk.
Also, I'm not sure why you're claiming that my data is outdated. My data was from 2018, at which point independents were at 44%. The latest figure on your linked Gallup poll is 42% - not very far off. It's still significantly above the historical average of the mid 30s.
On the other hand, banning white nationalism as a whole would be more like banning Salafi Islam as a whole, instead of specifically ISIS, al-Qaida, al-Shabab, Boko Haram etc.
This is not correct. It is not illegal to be a member of, or recruit for, Atomwaffen. Its illegal to commit crimes. But associating with a group isn't a crime (for good reason!). That doesn't mean that we shouldn't take steps to keep people from associating with people who will cause them to commit crime.
Or like, should we just go whole hog and encourage MS-13 to post recruitment videos on youtube too.
As for salafism, no that's akin to something like the WBC, which while reasonably considered a hate group, hasn't been banned from anywhere as far as I know.
\* Which did stir up some controversy, but is not all that surprising. The precedence for this dates back to the US Civil War, it would be ridiculous to claim that the Union Army criminally murdered hundreds of thousands of US citizens on the battlefield without trial when the latter were fighting for the Confederacy.
1. Get exposed to $radical_group on social media
2. Go searching for $radical_group because their ideas are intriguing/edgy/whatever
3. Find the actual site of $radical_group, and now they control the entire process.
Think of it this way: you see a poster for some cool band that says "RadicalPandas's music will change your life. We have concerts, but they're secret and we can't tell you where they are because the man wants to keep us down". If anything, that sounds even more edgy and intriguing. So instead you just have to tear all of the posters down.
The actual planning and such happens on private sites with secret forums.
As a real-world example, a Danish right-wing nationalist network called ORG was exposed in 2011, after having allegedly been active since the mid-80s. Its members counted a number of well-to-do individuals, as well as members of the police and known violent white nationalists. The group ran and had control over several sports clubs, including martial arts and gun clubs, which they used for training members in street fighting and tactics.
They ran a database of basically every politician and public figure who ever espoused left-wing views, and thousands of ostensibly left-wing citizens as well, labeling them as "traitors" to be "dealt with".
At least one of their members was from the armed forces in some security-related capacity, and they had reasonably good opsec procedures in place.
I have no doubt that even after being exposed and having its members publicly named, the group or a new equivalent still exists, with new secret sites and a heightened level of paranoia towards possible infiltrators.
By deplatforming these people and driving them further underground and paranoid, we limit their ability to attract people through social media, for fear of exposure.
And somewhat related, does this mean you have as dismal a view of humanity as it seems, that you don't want people exposed to dangerous ideas? This all seems necessarily paternalistic. EDIT I can't imagine, for instance, trusting in democracy with such a view.
In fact, we humans already form a decent system for weeding out bad ideas/opinions, we just don't listen to our own past experiences on the matter. We found out that fascism is putrid and yet now we try to come up with a new system that will weed it out instead of just chucking it into the garbage bin and moving on.
It's not paternalistic or a dismal view of humanity or that "humanity cannot be trusted with such a dangerous idea", it's because the people advocating for it constantly lie about it and intentionally trick/indoctrinate others into following. Under the right circumstances of me growing up, I fully believe someone could have deceived me into believing it, so I don't think I'm better than anybody who got sucked in. We can trust in democracy as long as we take proper precaution against things that prey on the freedom of expression and association in order to remove those rights from others.
Put another way, what real benefit is there to "freedom of speech, except for advocating fascism" as opposed to "freedom of speech, no exceptions"? The US already doesn't have pure unrestricted free speech because there are exceptions made for outlier situations where free speech is not protected in efforts to secure the safety of others. That hasn't led to total collapse or censorship.
Personally, I feel there should be legal protections for all speech, but not protections from social ramifications. By this logic, I am totally fine with the idea of punching fascists. Which itself could be hit with assault charges, but then, how many juries would disagree with the reasoning for the violence? Let the masses decide for themselves, basically. It's what bothered me about the firing of James Gunn and Roseanne both despite their polar opposite politics. The companies that employed them cared so much about what the public thinks or feels that they couldn't be bothered to let the public decide for themselves to support either celeb or not. (And I know Gunn has since been rehired, but this happens so often, my point stands.)
I lean towards anarcho-communism myself, generally close to the original communist definition of libertarianism. So my answer to which authority should run things is "none". Facebook runs their own ship and are free to choose which content they will platform. While I would prefer a complete absence of hierarchy in all aspects of life, I think we can agree that this is probably not going to happen at FB.
I also strongly support anarchistic deplatforming and generally hindering fascists, nazis, racists and other bigots from spreading their noxious views. We have to realize at some point that some views simply aren't worth spreading.
Do you have any evidence to support that statement? Would you expand on why you think so? I would estimate that by driving them more underground, you make them seem more cool in the eyes of angry teenagers. You also make them more radical because underground their opinions are not exposed to contradicting views. In my opinion, we should do exactly the opposite - we should give them platform to speak and oppose them. Isn't that what open society is about?
There are a few studies in this thread that conclude similar.
The whole sunlight is the best disinfectant trope is only a trope, not a truth.
See also any conspiracy theory and the amtivax movement. When groups appeal to fear, not logic, as a recruiting tool, you can't logic people away.
With regards to ISIS, if their recruitment videos are publicly available, then people can contest them publicly too. They can explain why this viewpoint or whatever might be appealing to certain demographics, but look at this evidence for what happens to those people once they join.
The self-harm / suicide question is harder for me. I still think it's a good idea to have this happen in the public sphere so people can expose those who encourage such things in other people. However, if an individual is being targeted specifically then maybe there should be a line there. I don't know.
As for white supremacy, yes, I said "dialogue" when what I really meant was "speech". I don't know who Richard Spencer is, but if he's blocking comments then people can still post rebuttals in other videos.
I guess my main point is that it's better to confront such things openly then to try to hide them under the rug.
There also seems to be this idea that ISIS and white supremacists and whoever can magically infect others with their dogma as a form of mind control or something. The danger, in my opinion, lies in trying to bury it. Then when people stumble upon them, or are recruited and given a login somewhere, they have access to only one side of the argument and are effectively in a bubble. In the public sphere where this plays out openly, they have ready access to conflicting information on the same platform.
I don't want a society where people aren't allowed to dislike me. I don't quite get where you're coming from. I want a society where people can say what they think and not get censored for it for the most part. It requires that we all come to terms with the fact that some people hold different opinions that we really hate.
I wasn't alive 100 to 150 years ago. However, growing up 40-ish years ago, I remember hearing such things as "I don't agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it". Not something you hear much, any more.
At scale, this is exactly the case. If the probability of the average person becoming radicalized is greater than the probability of the average radical de-radicalizing, then open discourse will, on average, increase the number of radicals until those probabilities equalize.
So now I ask you: how successful have you seen discourse at deradicalizing Jihadis, white nationalists, westboro baptist church members, anti-vax parents, or flat-earthers? Is it more, or less, successful than those groups at radicalizing new people?
>I want a society where people can say what they think and not get censored for it for the most part. It requires that we all come to terms with the fact that some people hold different opinions that we really hate.
Someone says "I want to diddle your kid". You tell them to never speak to you again. They say it to someone else. That person blocks them too. The same person keeps telling everyone that they're interested in child molestation. Free association says that we should all be able to shun that person because yikes.
But you say something different. That we shouldn't shun the potential kid-diddler. We should continue embracing them and their views, because shunning them censors them. And all views should be cherished and protected.
Or maybe you aren't saying that, but then its very tricky, because if everyone blocks them on facebook, they've been deplatformed. So why is that okay if facebook banning the person isn't? Or maybe it's that proclaim support for child molestation isn't okay, but proclaiming support for genocide is. In which case we're right back where we are now, just that your definition of "for the most part" is "expression of child molestation is bad, but white supremacy is fine". This brings me to my final point:
>I don't agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it
This only works when what you're saying isn't a threat to me. See how willing people 30-40 years ago were to defend to the death the right of black power groups to call for black empowerment. (hint: people got so scared the republicans banned guns)
If I start saying "we should kill all free-speech absolutists", how long are you going to defend my ability to say that? Only as long as I don't have power. Once I have the ability to actually carry out my threats, say, if I'm the president, do you really want me saying I'm going to kill some subset of society? Are you going to defend my right to say that? What if you think I might actually carry out what I'm claiming?
As long as the speech isn't a threat, people are okay with defending it. This is why no one really cares about flat-earthers, they aren't killing anyone, they're just the easy butt of jokes. Same with, until very recently, anti-vaxxers. Jenny McCarthy is kooky and their stuff is nonsense, but what's the worry? Well, measles, the loss of herd immunity, etc -> hmm, maybe we should stop this kind of thing.
Sometimes its possible to make the fix reactively. Kicking unvaccinated children out of school stops much of the harm that unvaccinated children cause, and in many cases forces parents to vaccinate their kids despite their views.
Unfortunately for explicitly violent groups, there isn't an easy reactive solution. You can't un-shoot someone.
As soon as people are threatened, they stop. "Expression of white supremacy is acceptable, but child molestation isn't" is just an expression of what you find threatening. What you're seeing is actually a shift toward more people speaking. Those who were voiceless before are speaking out and saying hey, this was really shitty before, let's not go back, and all the people saying otherwise are actually, truly threatening to me, so perhaps lets have them not say these things.
And on the other side you're seeing people threatened by this change in how people are considering speech, and feeling threatened, and saying "hey actually let's legislate these platforms so that I can keep spewing my garbage". White supremacists feel threatened by censorship, black people don't. That should tell you all you need.
If we are to judge by social media companies past behavior [1] it’s regular conservative and liberal opinions that will be considered hate speech or white supremacy
[1] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.foxbusiness.com/technology/...
To pre-address your other comment, neither white nationalist propaganda nor ISIS propaganda necessarily includes calls to violence. So the incitement of violence standard applies to neither.
If not, what differentiates ISIS from White nationalists? Both are violent groups that wish to kill people different from them. As far as I can tell, one just looks a lot more like me. They're both dangerous, and we shouldn't let either recruit people on facebook. What is the flaw in that line of reasoning?
As for that case, it was dismissed earlier this month[1], apparently because the plaintiffs didn't actually have any examples of wrongdoing on the part of companies, and just filed the suit to raise awareness of freedom watch's advocacy[2].
[1]: https://www.pacermonitor.com/public/case/25495855/FREEDOM_WA...
[2]: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/distric...
On the other hand what is being called alt right and white supremacisrs by mainstream organizations is bullshit:
- The economist called Ben Shapiro alt right today https://mobile.twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/1111248348114...
- The guardian says Jordan Peterson is supposedly alt right https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/science/201...
- Bret Weinstein is supposedly alt right
And ridiculously enough Ben Shapiro is a Jew that is the biggest hate target of the alt right, and Jordan Peterson is hated by the alt right such as Richard spencer and Vox Day.
White supremacists also advocate violence against other races often to subjugate them. This is highly similar to isis.
Or are you claiming that all members of the alt right are white supremacists?
SPLC also say they are the same: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideo...
The opinions of SPLC and ADL is especially relevant because mainstream media and social media companies such as Facebook seem to have relationships with them as well as similar orgs to define actions against people.
So no, we are taking about the same poorly defined term because these orgs is an authority to Facebook.
The reason it’s bullshit is that these orgs doesn’t relate it to truth and evidence, use their power to slap this label onto anyone that disagree with them and punish people for things they didn’t do.
Unless you're of the opinion that "racism" and "white supremacy" are synonymous, the ADL does not define them as the same.
>So no, we are taking about the same poorly defined term.
To be clear, the "alt right" isn't white nationalist, it is, however, a white nationalist recruiting tool. Sort of like how you don't just start out as a random person and then the next day you become Jihadi Jane. You're slowly radicalized. The alt right to full-on white supremacist pipeline is the same way.
You start off interested in self help, so you read 12 rules for life; then get caught up in Peterson's weird ideas about western culture; then pretty soon you're seeing not just his youtube lectures, but other lectures about western culture; and then videos about the decline of white/western culture; and then you're watching Richard Spencer; then you shoot up a church.
Now absolutely, granted, not everyone follows the entire path, very few people end up radicalized, but while I'll absolutely agree with you that Peterson isn't a white supremacist, he's absolutely a useful idiot for them.
But again, let's stick to people who have been accused of being "White Supremacists" since you're the one using the term alt-right, not Facebook. Which innocent people are getting accidentally confused for "white supremacists" specifically?
> White supremacist Richard Spencer, who runs the National Policy Institute, a tiny white supremacist think tank, coined the term “Alternative Right”
Or from the SPLC source:
> The racist so-called “alt-right,” which came to prominence in late 2015, is white nationalism’s most recent formulation
Both clearly use them in the same breath.
We can argue semantics about one being the tool for the other etc etc. But that doesn't change the fact that they are being tightly related by organizations that is an authority to Facebook.
SPLC and ADL is very aware of its power, and has related much of the prominent dissenters of wildly different ideologies to what they claim is alt-right; Maajid (an arab muslim, they lost a lawsuit on this one and apologized), Jordan Peterson (an individualist liberal), Ben Shapiro (a pretty normal conservative), Dave Rubin (a classical liberal) etc etc.
SPLC and ADL are by this evidence too often bullshitters that don't relate what they say to truth, but instead relate it to their ideology that is not preoccupied with truth-seeking. It is really a shame their views are elevated like this as a justification for Facebooks and other organizations abuse of power.
Again, Facebook didn't use the word already right. They're talking about white supremacists. You're arguing that these are the same thing. So if that's the case, you should have ample examples of people calling Jordan Peterson a white supremacist also.
If not, then maybe they aren't the same thing, and your equivocation is unwarranted and you should stop attempting to confuse the subject.
I've also shown that even the authoritarian sources Facebook trusts use alt-right and white supremacist in the same breath when defining the terms. These articles are no accident, this is what they believe.
This is not fear mongering. This is people that don't mind using their power to accuse viewpoint opponents for things they didn't do and with no evidence claiming they hold reprehensible viewpoints.
Edit: can't reply due to message depth limit, but the debate here is about facebook suppressing people like Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro, Dave Rubin using arguments made by SPLC and ADL such as the one in [1,2]. Why do they have the right to suppress other peoples viewpoints on dubious grounds with no recourse?
It is pretty clear from your arguments that you agree that they are related or as you say "a white nationalist recruiting tool" regardless of how you otherwise view them. The process facebook institute will therefore suppress these viewpoints based upon no evidence and by subjectively mischaracterizing their viewpoints, with no recourse for this power abuse.
[1] https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/06/07/prageru%E2%80...
[2] https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/08/25/whose-alt-rig...
Once more: please give an example of someone calling Jordan Peterson a white supremacist, or admit alternatively admit that no one has done so and you were fearmongering.
Not saying jbp associates with white supremacists, or serves as a useful idiot for white supremacists. That's all well known. You claimed that people called Jordan Peterson a white supremacist. You still haven't justified that claim, and that's because, quite simply, it's false.
You're fearmongering. No one has called Jordan Peterson a white supremacist. That's just a factually incorrect statement. They've said he unintentionally helps white supremacists, he occasionally associates with them, take selfies with them sure, but for all your trying, you still haven't been able to find someone actually call jbp a white supremacist.
So perhaps, just maybe, your worry is misplaced.
I certainly do, but evidence (e.g. historic enforcement patterns) indicates that Facebook does not.
Note that my opinion on this isn't global and without nuance. There are things that Jordan Peterson does and says that aren't, at all, controversial and are even occasionally interesting and thought provoking. Not everything he does radicalizes people. Same with, I assume, Rubin and Shapiro, although I don't pay them enough attention to know or care either way.
However, that's all beside the point. Facebook *doesn't appear to thing that they're worth censoring. I'm not sure why my opinion is at all relevant.
You still haven't given me that example, by the way.
You really don’t need hate speech and white supremacy policies to prohibit speech that is already illegal, but you need it to suppress speech that some people might disagree with when they want to abuse their power to suppress it.
How do you think about the false positives?
SPLC also say they are the same: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideo...
These orgs provide the best definition we can get right now due to Facebook relying on others to define it instead of providing clear definitions, and these orgs is an authority to Facebook. If there was ever an attempt at using power while abdicating responsibility that is it.
The reason while any action build upon this is bullshit is that these orgs doesn’t relate it to truth and evidence, use their power to slap this label onto anyone that disagree with them and punish people for things they didn’t do.
To figure out if we disagree where it matters the most, do you think it is justified to ban or suppress content on social media from people that SPLC/ADL view as part of the radicalization process? Eg jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro and Dave Rubin.
Shouldn't the same argument apply to the videos that radicalized those murderers?
Does that answer your question?
That's not only wrong it's highly offensive.
I googled for "extremism murder statistics": This is only the US [1], and I have not looked at methodology, but it supports GPs claim, not yours. Please discuss, but do so using substance, not master suppression techniques.
Just to give you another source from the same people which seems to agree with Wildgoose's parent atleast with its reasoning (albeit by making a few qualifiers on the dataset that bend it to be in favor of that reasoning) [2] from 2001-2016 in the US.
[1](pdf): https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_IdeologicalMotivationsO... [2]: https://www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START_ECDB_IslamistFarRightHo...
Unfortunately trying to control others viewpoints hurts yourself as much as anyone else because you are making yourself and what you can learn from others less adaptive to reality.
Marketplace of ideas is not about throwing out unfounded claims and with a high likelihood have others treat them like a proposition founded in truth seeking. Rather it will be treated as the bullshit it most likely is unless you supply evidence to the claim.
That's a win in this case. It already festers somewhere else. White nationalists would like to spread their ideology outside of their normal bubble. They often talk about "redpilling normies." It's harder for them to do that if "normal" people have to explicitly seek out that kind of speech.
excluding people from a conversation doesn't help them learn why/how they think is wrong.. those "hidden" places that let the wrongthink fester only create more actions brought by wrongthink (guess what they talk about? wrongthink).
i dont understand the logic of removing someones ability to converse if they dont understand why they're wrong.. they cant ask questions
someone explain to me how banning content/people = deradicalizing
I've been in fb group chats with holocaust deniers etc. (mans literally inboxed me a youtube video, I never bothered clicking the links he sent but it was funny)
"banning white nationalist content" is a cute headline but doesn't hit the problem of seemingly benign normal users that would never "reveal their power level" slowly radicalizing their friends with content not on their site lol
The Rhetoric Tricks, Traps, and Tactics of White Nationalism https://medium.com/@DeoTasDevil/the-rhetoric-tricks-traps-an...
the overt white nationalism content you think of doesn't really exist, i guess maybe if ur a boomer it still lingers? idk
its less orchestrated and just friendly until a point
I don't think I've ever seen someone already radicalized reason their way out of it through conversing on the internet. I'm guessing the calculus is that exposing this content to people makes it easy to be suckered in, but we don't see the opposite affect.
That said, I think I generally agree that conversion via social media is unlikely. Still, I’m also not sure about my position on banning people. But the above article is a great read.
thats how quick it can take to slowly expose people to content and how useless it is to "ban white nationalist content"
v cute headline tho
Is that true? Would we have the anti-vax movement if it weren't for Facebook & co.?
And if it were banned, they'd just spin it as the pharma companies paying to suppress the truth. It would only further confirm their beliefs.
Through all of mankind we had strong mechanisms to form consensus, including social repercussions. Those don't work anymore, since what would have become outcasts in earlier generations can now easily (for example on facebook) find like-minded communities and fulfill their social needs/get approval/etc. It'll be interesting in how different realities people can believe in before society breaks apart. I'd prefer we wont let that happen.
The question is what actually works. Censoring them might reinforce their believe, but I can accept giving up on some if it does effectively stops the spread.
This is a dangerous, dangerous path to go down to if you belong to any kind of enlightment inspired ideology. What kind of things were supressed the hardest? Sexual Deviancy. questioning authority. Questioning relgion. You really want this kind of society? I think maybe we can stand some antivaxxer ...
Mechanisms to form consensus does not necessarily mean rule by mob, quite the opposite. Positive consensus mechanisms can be trust in the scientific method, institutional credibility, and acceptance of reason. These mechanisms can support an enlightenment ideology, not prevent it.
"Freedom of speech" is not an accident. Enlightenment thinkers have been pondering this for 200 years and more and objections have been successfully adressed over and over again. It's as much of the type of consensus you describe as we will ever have. 'But computers' is not sufficient to just do away with it.
Make them pay a material cost: link vaccination to welfare benefits/family tax rebates, works well in Australia (search no jab, no pay). Also make an up to date vaccination record a requirement for enrolment into schools.
They will complain and might keep on spouting shit, but at the cost of ~$10k/child/year they'll change their actions pretty quick.
So, you're saying this mechanism is a good thing? Because mechanisms that reinforce the current social consensus, whatever it might be for that era, tend to maintain the status quo. And a desire to maintaining the status quo is a big chunk of the philosophy of, yep, that's right, ... conservatives.
I've often said progressives aren't liberals because they don't agree with liberal philosophical values of the Enlightenment. Their "maintain the current societal consensus" argument is the strongest evidence of that yet.
And throughout history people lived to be 30 and died of plague wallowing in their own excrement thinking the devil did it.
If your ideology needs thought control to work it needs to be taken out at the back of the sheds and shot. The second a society stops discussing ideas openly is the second it starts sliding towards a new dark age.
https://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/articles/history-a...
But what actually happened were those numbers were inflated by his followers and without the echo chamber of the larger base he had on YouTube his numbers eventually plummeted. Instead of being a regular in the news he occupies a small corner of the internet without access to the larger impressionable ever refreshing base he once had.
He has now resorted to trying to sneak videos back on to you tube.
And people should be okay with his persecution by the people who had the political upper hand in that era? No? Then why should anyone be okay with deplatforming Alex Jones (as bad as he is) by whoever has the political upper hand at the moment?
Because one was a indispensible paragon of civil rights and an avatar of anti-racism and the other is a shrieking whackjob entertainer peddling freeze-dried survivalist food while spreading lies, mental illness and grief to families of murdered kids.
Hey, you're the one who brought up history.
Hey, you're the one who failed to think things through. The tired old "b-but deplatforming will only ever by used against _bad_ people" argument is exactly a failure to appreciate the lessons of history, of which MLK is an excellent example.
No, I'm the one who corrected an utterly insane equivalence drawn between a commercial figure who drives grieving fathers of murdered kids to suicide and a man who was literally killed for his demanding equal treatment for all people. Again: if you bring up history, you are now forced to deal with historical results and categories. Deal with them. Don't just pretend you are.
It's ironic that, on a site where the UNIX philosophy is widely appreciated, that so many fail to appreciate the wisdom of the old quote "UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever things.". So too, with Alex Jones, MLK, and freedom of speech.
“Most of your peers consider this post racist neonazi propaganda.”
That isn't so clear: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=139661
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread...
It's not clear how to preserve a forum for free expression while spammers or trolls seek to suck up all the available bandwidth for their messages. You can end up with a sort of spectrum allocation problem, where if everyone is allowed to crowd the same frequency then communication on it becomes impossible. But once you start moderating content, it's really hard to find a satisfying balance. And on the margins, some trolls are indistinguishable from some people with really unbelievable opinions.
I don't know what the answer is, it seems like a really complicated problem.
I also oppose it on general grounds in that I'm a big proponent of freedom of expression. Facebook can do what they want, we're not talking about the government here and I understand that, but I would rather they didn't go this route. I don't want to live in a society where what can and can't be said is strictly regulated either by force or by general consent. I seem to be one of the few that feels that way, though, any more.
There is also the practical concern of what happens if the ideas of what is acceptable and what isn't changes over time? Who knows which opinions that you hold now might become anathema at a later date. For example, the opinion I'm expressing now used to be a lot more common than it is today.