>De-platforming works very effectively

It does, and it is wonderful if those platforms are following along with the same narrative as you at a given point in time.

Google, Reddit et al. have shown themselves to pretty flexible when it comes to their morals though, particularly when it comes to the needs and wants of the Chinese government and their investors, so while you may be clapping your hands to your ideological opponents being "de-platformed" today, it could very well be you tomorrow.

I want to believe you. If you know this to be true, please share.

I remain skeptical. Evidence still seems mixed.

Yes, it seems social medias are effective incubators and accelerators for social pathogens, dominating the attention economy.

But there's also evidence that attention doesn't change minds. If I read this correctly, StarSlateCodex is making the case that media attention about Creationism didn't move the needle about beliefs.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/05/28/creationism-unchalleng...

I really want someone to explain what's going on.

8chan, Gab, and goat are all for very out of the mainstream opinions.

The POTUS has a strong support base, including multiple major media outlets that share information about him. It’s a totally different story. I think he could easily stand up a huge social media network if he needed to, perhaps in collaboration with Fox News.

I'm not so sure that he could to be honest. From an advertising PoV I don't think they'd have much luck - I listened to Ben Shapiro's podcast for a few weeks out of curiosity a while back and his advertisers are really bottom of the barrel stuff. If you've ever checked out Breitbart then.. yea. I doubt you could sustain the server costs. TBH I doubt the Daily Wire would be profitable from its advertising alone, and they don't have nearly the server or personnel costs a huge social media network would. I don't think a Trump affiliated social network would do any better with advertisers.

My thought would be that it might be funded by his campaign, similar to his other campaign apps and website. Completely hypothetical of course but they could either just make it owned by the campaign, or stand it up at arms-length and have it funded by dark money donations from trump supporting billionaires, kind of like a super PAC? Or just have the campaign buy millions of ads itself on the site to fund server costs.

The campaign or Trump's personal wealth could definitely pay for a social media network for some time, I'd agree. I just think the real money coming into right wing media is based on them being able to get loads of views on Facebook/YouTube and spread things widely, and a pro-Trump social media network is really a dead end for that. Without that I don't think you could make it profitable.

Deplatforming internet racists is categorically different from deplatforming the president himself. TD, 8chan? Most people who support the president don't even know what these are, and maybe have a vague idea about Reddit. I would be surprised if Reddit overall had more influence on the election than talk radio, and it doesn't come close to the bully pulpit now that he's president.

I disagree. I think de-platforming is rarely ever effective, and is very often counter-productive and achieves the opposite of the intended effect. 8chan, Gab, Voat, other imageboards, and distributed semi-private things like Discord servers continue to grow in popularity and continue to further radicalize people far beyond where they were before they first came to those places.

I recommend this post: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/07/22/freedom-on-the-central...

Key excerpt: "There’s an unfortunate corollary to this, which is that if you try to create a libertarian paradise, you will attract three deeply virtuous people with a strong commitment to the principle of universal freedom, plus millions of scoundrels. Declare that you’re going to stop holding witch hunts, and your coalition is certain to include more than its share of witches."

If you have relatively moderate people looking to discuss non-mainstream things without being censored, and they can't do that, then you're forcing them into the witches' dens, where they'll probably become increasingly less moderate and increasingly more paranoid and polarized. They feel like the other side hates them and is out to get them... and in this case, their point is being proven. This is exactly why Trump won in 2016 and why he'll probably win again.

Sure, it certainly isn't profitable or fun to run 8chan, Gab, or Voat if you're the owners, but this is just about the users who don't particularly care what site they're using. They'll just use whatever site won't get rid of them. (Also, it isn't even profitable or fun to run reddit, either.)

And this isn't even getting into the possible ethics of de-platforming and censorship and what should and shouldn't be permitted; just the practical effects. Practically speaking, I don't think it's an effective tactic, if the effect you want is to disempower your opponents. It empowers them and energizes them.

Yes.. Censorship is wonderful

and make no mistake "de-platforming" is censorship

We make value judgements all the time. Reddit puts a NSFW spoiler on violence, porn, etc. Is that considered censorship?

Is it really censorship if r/t_d had violated numerous Reddit ToS rules? Rules which all users agreed on when signing up.

Make no mistake, it's a no brainer to ban a community that is both outwardly hateful, and regularly abuses the rules of the site they're hosted on.

>>Reddit puts a NSFW spoiler on violence, porn, etc. Is that considered censorship?

yes and no. It is lesser because it empowers the user to self select if they want to see NSFW items. That is the key.

I put the quarantine on the same level as this, so I have less of an issue with that than if they just banned it outright.

>Is it really censorship if r/t_d had violated numerous Reddit ToS rules?

yes, let me be clear Reddit is perfectly in its legal rights to censor anything they want. They can censor directly all Republicans if they want.

They however can not magically make it not censorship simply because they add a line in their ToS.. that is not how free expression works.

a Website that only allows car related topics censors all speech not related to cars

The problem for Reddit is for years they advertised themselves as a Open Access forum for all topics and discussions, the point 6 font terms of service not with standing.

If reddit has a BIG BOLD header on the HomePage that reads "Conservatives not welcome here" then it would be a different discussion for me

>> outwardly hateful,

Ahh the old "hate speech" non-sense. I reject this premise as "hate speech" is such a subjected term that if you ask 10 people what qualifies as "hate speech" you will get 30 different answers based on context and other things

Further Reddit ignores their own policy on hate speech and promotion of violence provided the speaker is the "correct" political affiliation and that target is the "wrong" political affiliation

The Reddit ToS has always had restrictions on communities that brigade and abuse other communities. They didn't need to add an exception for r/t_D. Instead, they made an exception to keep the subreddit around, because it was driving lots of traffic to the site.

I implore you to go to ceddit.com/r/the_donald and look at the mod log. See how many slurs and calls to violence you see being manually approved by their mods.

>>The Reddit ToS has always had restrictions on communities that brigade and abuse other communities.

Reddits content policy, by their own admission today, is subjective and poorly defined.

Further it is beyond denial that admin moderation and crack downs on subreddits is often politically biased. for example it has been shown many times Admins will crack down on "calls to violence" in conservative or "right" subreddits but are hands off in progressive or "left" subreddits.

You ask me to go to ceddit or mod logs to see violence and racism, but what about the left subreddits that have it on display with out having to visit an external site or mod logs?

I would argue that "de-platforming" is the platform owner's use of speech/protest.

Platforms shouldn't have the power to completely squash voices but monopoly power and such is a different issue.

in away you are correct, and honestly my biggest problem I have with reddit (and other tech companies) is the double speak they employ.

If they come out with a clearly defined OBJECTIVE set of rules that is UNIVERSALLY enforced then my objections would disappear

Instead they have a vague subjective list of rules that they selectively enforce largely based on a political bias they continue to publicly deny exists

They claim their site is open to all political leanings and views, if they want to have a liberal version of thedonald.win then more power to them, put up a banner that says "Democrat Supporters Only, This is Reddit. Our community is a high-energy Democrat rally. There are no exceptions." then my objections, and the objections of many would disappear, of course reddit would lose most of its value and traffic, which is why they want to speak out of both sides of their mouth. Reddit is only of high value if it has a large cross section of the public participating.