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Re:Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went priv... by atoav on Thursday January 28, 2021 @06:05AM (#25940489)
I have worked as a tutor at university. The best and most "free" discussions I experienced were all happening in a space where everybody was after finding some sort of insight.

This delicate balance was at times destoyed by a single person that started attacking people aggresively for who they were rather than attacking the argument they made in a way that makes them understand. Allowing that person to freely speak was reducing the classes freedom over all, because that person wanted to dominate the discussion so much, they fostered a climate were all other discussion was not possible anymore and free speech was prevented from happening.

In that case throwing someone out is a totally acceptable option. In fact this is the reason why discussion on this very site work out: because we are after insight and we punish behavior that is pure sophistry, aggressive, snarky, etc.

I am convinced that to speak freely as a collective, sometimes we must stop certain individuals from abusing their freedom of speech within our forums.

Re:Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went priv... by bjourne on Thursday January 28, 2021 @06:24AM (#25940597)
Not everyone shares your ideas about what the "best" and most "free" discussions are. Apparently, the crowd at this Discord channel were ok with calling each other gays, autists, retards, or whatever. It may not be the highbrow enough for some, but that is no reason to shutdown their community.
Re:Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went priv... by atoav on Friday January 29, 2021 @02:05PM (#25960991)
Sure, but most people agree on what makes a discussion worse. E.g. if one person constantly interrupts others and leads agressively voiced monologous with no real substance, most people might agree that person might not improve the climate of the discussion to much
Re:Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went priv... by belorn on Thursday January 28, 2021 @07:16AM (#25940902)
I have seen a few times now what happen when optimistic people goes with such rationale and attempt to apply it universally. To be more precise, people have tried to ban generalizations of group of people, banning the usage of gender where specifying gender is unnecessary, and of course banning the attacking people for who they were rather than attacking the argument. I have yet to see one community where it worked.

The outcome of such experiments always end up the same. People want to generalize about groups of people when its against the right group of people. We want to specifying gender when it is unnecessary, as long it not in the wrong situation. And we want to attacking people for who they were rather than attacking the argument, if its against people which is socially accepted to attack and dismiss.

People just love violence when its done for the right reasons and abhor it when it done for the wrong reasons. At the same time we try to apply principles like freedom of speech and find it completely incompatible with our split view on violence.

Re:Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went priv... by atoav on Thursday January 28, 2021 @03:49PM (#25948975)
Unless we rise above it. Certain things are never okay. But being intolerant and demanding tolerance is a shitty move as well. And it is nowhere near as clever as the people who try this think it is.

The discourse about whether and how much we should tolerate the intolerant is old and has be well discussed by post WWII philosophy. If we want to defend the freedom of all, we need to restrict those freedoms for the people who try to get rid of them.

Or as a neo nazi once said to me: "we want to establish the old power again, so we can silence you. until that happens, we want free speech".

Re:Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went priv... by belorn on Friday January 29, 2021 @07:20AM (#25956512)
Being consistent and avoiding hypocrisy is not the same thing as tolerating the intolerant. Our most common tool to do so are laws that governments everyone equally, and which enforcement is designed for consistency.

The trouble comes back to the issue when a community and places such as universities tries to mimic laws without actually consider the problem of consistency, and at the same time wanting to believe in principles that they then don't apply to everyone. The result is inconsistency, hypocrisy, and often in order to escape the fact, removal of transparency.

Re:Discord bans r/WallStreetBets server, subreddit went priv... by betwixthewires on Thursday January 28, 2021 @04:31PM (#25949565)
>This delicate balance was at times destoyed by a single person that started attacking people aggresively for who they were rather than attacking the argument they made in a way that makes them understand.

I'm sorry I don't understand, are you arguing on behalf or against Discord who called the wsb crowd a bunch of white supremacist Nazis? I'm not being snarky, I genuinely can't tell if you're defending the open discussion about stock trading or the people that came in and called them names and got them shut down.

I am all for a discussion focused group having rules and expecting participants to adhere to them and booting them out if they don't. What I am opposed to is businesses that market themselves as places to freely discuss, wait til they have market control, then change their terms and kick people out based on tenuous accusations, in this case for the apparent reason of protecting hedge funds from the market. It is egregious what Discord did.