There are a huge number of people who claim they support the Confederate flag in honor of those who lost their lives under it.
Okay. It was a racist and oppressive government, but I can understand that logic. People gave their lives, and even sacrifice in favor of an unjust cause is sacrifice.
That said... if that's what it's really about for them, then why didn't those folks say something when the flag was claimed by racists and white supremacists? Why didn't they defend it from those who would appropriate the symbol?
Silence carries its own liability.
And a lot of 8chan-style behavior that isn't guilty of outright instigation is certainly guilty of immoral silence.
Source: living in a southern US state
I don't hear much about the Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy loudly denouncing racism.
If you're tangential to violence and hate, and you don't denounce it strongly and frequently, people are going to wonder.
The classic extremist play is to patiently gnaw at the edges of acceptability. Subtle digs at Jews, blacks, Hispanics, muslims or non-muslims (you can insert any group here, really) pave the way for innuendos about their morals, work ethic, intellectual capacity etc.
You can gaslight perfectly normal, upstanding citizens into doubting their strongly held ethical convictions, first enough that they don't argue against e.g. racist loudmouths, then to the point that they don't argue for equal treatment of "out" groups. As this process plays out, it starts to seem dangerous to defend the maligned against violence, and eventually enough citizens will have had their sense of normal behaviour pushed far enough that atrocities become possible.
I don't know how to break that cycle. I do think the root causes need to be addressed, because poverty and social decline provide fertile ground for demagogues pointing fingers.
I don't think I'm an idiot, and I would like to think that I'm normally a pretty decent human, and yet I was still able to be persuaded by morons on Youtube like Sargon of Akkad and Thunderf00t, and I spread the stupid memes along with most of my friends; I can easily see the alternate universe where I didn't realize I was wrong, and went further down the rabbit hole watching idiots like Stefan Molyneux or something.
I think people like to pretend that they and everyone they care about are immune to propaganda.
People voice their trashy opinions there - which is totally fine - but there are so few balancing/calming opinions. Especially if you have some conspiracy affine news site/YT video, these balancing/calming opinions are just not present.
My conclusion at the moment is that more balanced people (no, not bots :)) should visit these sites and write calming/positive comments. Dialogue has become pretty unfashionable in 2019, monologues seem to have become the norm unfortunately although I think there is hope.
I agree in principle with what your suggesting, but at this point those boards are echo chambers, not spaces for discussion.
I recently got an account at a more or less alt-right news website and the comments there were all just rants that stood for themselves.
Period.
I continue to be surprised at the level to which people misunderstand this.
That's probably because you are actually the one misunderstanding. The argument it sounds like you're making (I apologize if I'm reading you wrong) is the often made one that "Freedom of speech only protects you from the government". This argument equivocates the idea of freedom of speech with the First Amendment.
Many Americans, and freedom loving folks internationally, believe that freedom of speech is critical for a liberal democracy to exist. Many of the American founders believed in the idea and enshrined it in our Bill of Rights to make sure the Government can not violate it. They did not, however, create he idea of freedom of speech, which existed long before the Bill of Rights, exists outside of America and outside of the context of Government and Citizens.
Think of it like murder. People do not find murder reprehensible because it is illegal. It is illegal because it is reprehensible, and most people would not support it regardless of its legal status (I hope). The idea of murder and the legality of murder are related but separate.
Your argument is therefore taking as narrow a scope of the idea of freedom of speech as possible and then arguing against that, which is a type of straw man argument. I hope that clarifies the logic fallacies involved in your argument and helps you better understand those you disagree with.
It's granted that people are within their rights to throw out speech they dislike and that there's a world of difference between severing a voluntary business relationship and the deployment of state force, but the implications of an anxious, PR-sensitive set of internet infrastructure providers is certainly fair game for discussion.
If we get into the habit of shutting down every site that attracts a spate of negative attention, it still has the aggregate effect of chilling free discourse. If a shooter came onto HN and posted a manifesto here, would it withstand the mainstream media onslaught?
I think that 8chan is terrible and I would rather it not exist, but at the same time, I would be pretty against denying its owners water or something, since we've decided that utilities don't get to take sides.
I'm not saying I disagree with you, evidently; the line in which we draw "utility" is a discussion that I really don't know that I have a good viewpoint. Are you entitled to having a soapbox to shout off of? I'm genuinely not sure.
What do we even do, besides sit and watch? I've totally shifted the way I browse the web to reduce my exposure to toxic information, and I think that the whole corporate banning of Alex Jones was a net positive, but what happens when a voice I agree with gets shunned in the same way?
What a messy problem
It isn't "misunderstanding" it is willfully ignoring to push a narrative. I sincerely doubt most of the people here calling this a violation of free speech are doing so in good faith.
It is a pretty basic set of logical steps to determine that a private business refusing to serve a customer is perfectly okay and should be encouraged. Arguing that a private business should be forced at gunpoint by government goons to do business with nazis or racist assholes doesn't make any sense at all.
All the attempts to derail into minutia like "cloudflare is a utility" is simply done to wear you out.
there have always been hyper-radical idiots. with 8chan and such, you can see them.
you're not getting rid of anything, you're just sticking your head into the sand.
Sure, I'm aware that the KKK existed before the internet.
> you're not getting rid of anything, you're just sticking your head into the sand.
I didn't claim I was getting rid of anyone or anything. I didn't really claim much at all in my post, but there's a difference between "getting rid" of stuff and deplatforming it.
For that matter, how does your logic make any sense? If I hire a hitman to kill someone, could my defense in court be "Well he was going to kill somebody anyway! You're just sticking your head in the sand by blaming me for it!"
Is your argument that rhetoric, delivered consistently enough and effectively enough, can't possibly influence people to do reprehensible things?
I just wonder with all the technology we have at our disposal, how is it these people continue to slip through the system undeterred to escalate this type of violence?
It's very easy to shout the mantra of "Free speech!!! OMG!!!" but we gain nothing by acting like there aren't natural consequences to it. By having a liberal free-speech system, you are going to expose glitches in the "marketplace of ideas", and demagogues and radicals are going to be able to exploit it.
It might still be worth it (I haven't made up my mind yet on where we draw the line in censorship).