I'm reminded of Daryl Davis, and the way he de-radicalized KKK members. He did it by talking to them, engaging them in speech. It feels like hate speech censoring could actually lead to more radicalization as people feel persecuted and become even more radical than if you had let them talk. It's a hard problem because you can get radicalization if you allow people to create their own echo chambers of hate. How do you balance trying to avoid creating these kinds of echo chambers, versus creating radicals by pushing them to other sites where there are no restrictions?
This is a bad argument; it is a fact, for example, that child pornography by being censored creates a taboo around it. It's also true that some people will seek it out because of its taboo nature - something it would not be (or only to a lesser extent) if it weren't illegal. The fact that people will download and masturbate to child porn because it is illegal is not a good argument against child porn laws.
We (justifiably, I think) do not allow speech for the purposes of terrorist recruitment. The fact that someone is mistakenly banned for terrorist recruitment and later becomes radicalized is not a good argument to allow terrorist recruitment.
The argument is fundamentally self-defeating; it presupposes that free speech is so good and basic that it overrides all other rights. However, it also supposes that people in general lack sufficient ability to introspect after being censored - people are thought of here not as rational beings to use their rights of speech to engage in democratic deliberation, but as animals who when poked by a stick become enraged.
>He did it by talking to them, engaging them in speech.
Why should it be society's burden to deradicalize people? Does this work at scale? What of all the people who heard Davis or his ideas but were not persuaded? Is the number of people he failed to convince known?
Finally, what of the people who, according to your theory, only become more 'radicalized' when they encounter the position that their views are wrong or harmful?
There's just as good of a chance that one hundred Daryl Davis' trying to deradicalize people will actually cause radicals to dig in their heels. Maybe these hypothetical Davis' don't have a welcoming tone. Maybe the radical doesn't want to listen to a hypothetical Davis because of his race. Maybe the radical actually publicises the exchange and uses it as a megaphone to gish-gallop with 'radical' ideas. Maybe the radical convinces a hypothetical Davis that actually the radical and hateful ideas are correct. Doesn't honest and open dialogue, after all, permit both sending and receiving?
I feel as though the Daryl Davis approach has a lot more risk and a lot less going for it empirically than you suppose.
Because your neighbor's problem eventually becomes your problem. Cases in point: Saudi Arabia helps 9/11 terrorists; US meddling in South American politics promoting fascists, death squads, and the War on Drugs fueling powerful gangs and cartels; Western-caused climate change refugees fleeing Africa, the Middle East, and South America; Dec 8, 1947.
> Does this work at scale?
No. It doesn't matter if something is difficult or not if it is a moral duty to counter. "I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists." ― Chris Hedges." It is a moral imperative for anyone and everyone in a potential capacity of mentorship to dispel and debunk faulty ideas that neighborhood youth get involved with. No one can be an island onto themselves and local community is essential (although all-but-dissolved in most modern city life). (Boston Marathon Bombers)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - The Friends of Voltaire by Beatrice Hall
When you start editorializing an individual's speech rather than debating them, it's a slippery-slope down the road to censorship and fascism. There are some costs to having an open society, like the risks of being open. You might hear some idea you might not like, or find absolutely repugnant. Having venues that can debate and debunk bad ideas with better better ones is preferable to preaching to the choir. Someone can't influence or the change minds of people they refuse to talk or listen to. Society will eventually come to a head if there become separate, hermetically-sealed ideological camps persist for much longer; this is a very dangerous phenomenon for social stability.
But those arguments rested on so many assumption that the internet has disproved.
“When you editorialize instead of debate...” for example - There are ways to configure sentences that they will parasitically thrive on debate, without actually being debated. Like a virus that targets the immune system.
This happens all the time - cranks, nazis, racists of all stripes will want to start a discussion on “IQ” or some seemingly innocent facet so that they can appear to be a victim and radicalize minds which don’t have an anti virus pre installed.
I forget the original saying, but agitators deign to argue with you. They don’t really think your ideas or rebuttals are material, instead you are simply a backdrop for them to perform their recruitment drives.
This is an argument for doing something, not necessarily for putting a burden on individuals to counter extremist and murderous ideology - especially those who are most likely to be targeted by it. It may be a moral imperative, but moral imperatives really are sensetive to a variety of individual circumstances to exercise, because they only work by way of moral obligations and moral responsibilities - both of which are only parts of rational decision making.
Someone who has had a strong past of experiencing racism may balk at the idea of starting a dialogue with an extremist whose entire ideology is founded on the view that he is not even worthy of consideration as a civilized person.
I firmly believe that most people lack the capacity of mentorship, or if they have it, then they are not terribly experienced with it. The fact that professional mentors take so much time and effort to nurture someone who they know is already receptive and still fail should be a testament to a significantly worse ability in the common person to do that, especially when, as I mentioned, communication is a two way street. What makes you think the mentors will be any less susceptible to radicalization than the people they are mentoring?
The biggest problem is that most people do not have the requisite knowledge to be such mentors. They may know racism is wrong, but maybe they can't explain it sufficiently well. They may appeal to humanity, but it may not get far to do so with someone whose ideology for the past two decades has been the fundamental inhumanity of the person they're talking to. Needless to say, all this completely leaves out the fact that I really don't think most extremists are keeping an open mind in the first place.
>When you start editorializing an individual's speech rather than debating them, it's a slippery-slope down the road to censorship and fascism.
Slippery slopes need to be justified, not merely supposed. The mechanism needs to be explained and the risk made clear. For example, the mechanism that one form of speech (like hate speech, defined stringently) can be banned. It is not at all obvious that this leads to other ideas being banned; the legislature, for instance, need not and generally does not work on the basis of precedent. Superior courts can override precedent. Similarly, the fact that a hate speech law can be abused is not a good argument; plenty of laws can be abused, including, say, anti-terrorism laws. This does not mean that anti-terrorism laws should be done away with.
>Having venues that can debate and debunk bad ideas with better better ones is preferable to preaching to the choir.
This assumes the debating and debunking works and wins out over rhetoric. We're not dealing with pure ideas, we're dealing with two forms of expression of those ideas: firstly, hate speech which is a generally non-argumentative and derogatory expression of the idea designed to be hurtful; secondly, speeches, texts, videos, music, etc. which combines rhetoric and argumentation. Debate does nothing for the first category. It may do something for the latter category, but it's unclear if it does so at the scale or effectiveness to satisfy the moral obligation you pointed out.
>Someone can't influence or the change minds of people they refuse to talk or listen to.
The point of the laws discussed is not to change peoples' minds, it's to hobble the spread of their ideas.
> Similarly, the fact that a hate speech law can be abused is not a good argument; plenty of laws can be abused, including, say, anti-terrorism laws.
False equivalency, red herring, and two wrongs don't make a right. Laws can be written across a continuum of vagueness and precision. Laws must be continually updated and oversight assured so that policy underpinning is implemented in good faith and appropriately. Crafting particular words for a law alone is insufficient to accomplish the presupposed objectives. The real world doesn't work like that.
> What makes you think the mentors will be any less susceptible to radicalization than the people they are mentoring?
Did your professor allow this kind of crap to fly?
> This is an argument for doing something
You proved my point for me. Tragedy of the Commons makes everyone's responsibility no one's responsibility. No one else is likely to do something just because you talk about it but don't walk the walk. "Be the change you seek" because waiting for Godot is a terrible idea. Take ownership yourself and do it.
> Debate does nothing for the first category.
I suggest taking another look at history [0]; ethos, pathos, and logos; and, finally, hate deradicalizers, often former believers.
0: Rhetoric was a popular form of live entertainment for centuries, if not more. "The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher" - Derby Applegate (2006) re: touring abolitionism speech performer, and his sister's book likely being one of the final proverbial straws that broke the camel's back regarding the Civil War.
Saudi Arabia, regardless of many other concerns in the Kingdom, has an entire department in the MoI that has processed thousands of now former Jihadi's. [1]
1: https://www.cfr.org/expert-brief/saudi-deradicalization-expe...
Dereck Black changed his mind after 2 years of Shibbat dinners. [2]
2: https://bunewsservice.com/can-a-white-supremacist-be-deradic...
> speeches, texts, videos, music, etc.
content
> hobble the spread of their ideas
Cartoons of Muhammed plus the Quran is better than burning and banning the Quran, because that reinforces an adversarial and underground dynamic rather than dialogue. Who decides which ideas are "good" or "bad?" You? Verizon? Dept of Safe Ideas? Censorship/hobbling powers never end well. "Absolute power..."
I think I'm done here because you've stopped listening and went off into the weeds rather than be honest.
I very much agree; the law should be evidence-based and continuously under review to ensure scientific and philosophical argumentation gets a look-in to the results.
>"Be the change you seek" because waiting for Godot is a terrible idea. Take ownership yourself and do it.
I still agree that indvidual action can work well, but this says nothing of whether individual action is sufficient to accomplish the aims of the moral obligation you outlined.
>Saudi Arabia, regardless of many other concerns in the Kingdom, has an entire department in the MoI that has processed thousands of now former Jihadi's.
This is fantastic, but it does not prove the supremacy of individual action - it only proves that state counter-speech can work in certain instances. That's admirable in itself, and it can work very well. My only qualm is that it is unclear whether it should be the whole solution or only part of it. Naturally, I prefer legislation that does not restrict freedom - to restrict it as little as possible to accomplish the aims therein. However, this says nothing about the cases that fail, and the cases that fester. My point about mentorship has gone unaddressed - you proposed a system where people could individually take it upon themselves to persuade others, as an alternative to the state. I think it can work, but I'm still skeptical about the scale it can work at. You mentioned moral obligations, and you also said that difficulty is irrelevant to whether we should try our best to fulfill them. It seems here that freedom of speech and the moral course of action may be in conflict, doesn't it?
>Cartoons of Muhammed plus the Quran is better than burning and banning the Quran, because that reinforces an adversarial and underground dynamic rather than dialogue.
I agree! But I neither suggested banning the Quran nor did I even suggest banning Das Kapital - what I suggested was a restriction on hate speech. I think this preserves the thought/speech dichotomy, something which even liberals should be convinced of.
>Who decides which ideas are "good" or "bad?" You? Verizon? Dept of Safe Ideas?
It's not about goodness and badness, it's about harm. I'm not imposing some moralistic framework on law here (although that has been gaining steam recently). Rather, I am proposing that even if we abide by the harm principle and we keep up with modern neuroscience and philosophy, we end up with harm from certain speech. The legislature, through debate and consideration of the peer-reviewed scientific conclusions, will decide how the law should be crafted. The law will also be read over through special debate and involve the consultation of various interest groups, from the people it's supposed to represent to the legal scholars who are experts on the topic. I realize this is an 'ideal', but it's how I'd like it to be done in order to accept it. I'm sure that if you agreed with me, you'd have it done the same way.
>Censorship/hobbling powers never end well.
They do; an upstream commenter mentioned post-WWII Germany, and arguably threats, libel, child pornography, and assault work just fine. We have censorship, we don't have unlimited freedom of speech on any country on earth. The question is not whether to draw the line, but where to draw the line - something I argue should be considered through scientific and political debate.
Put that aside, first principles, how can you hold a robust scientific debate on a topic that’s censored? The historical and common sense evidence strongly indicates it’s not possible.
Yes. Speech is not action :)
Modern threats require modern constraints.
This is incorrect; we would surely say that a hypothetical person who cannot communicate at all, only absorb information, has thoughts, even if he has no speech. Further, thoughts are abstract, quite literally figments of the imagination. Speech is concrete as something we do with thought.
Just because someone is prohibited from, say, shouting that Jews should be rounded up and shot in a Jewish neighborhood it does not mean he cannot think it or even express the idea in other contexts. Speech is expressive in that it takes an abstract idea and makes it concrete through the action of speaking. Only certain forms of the expression of that idea, in certain contexts, would be prohibited.
A baseball player will get in trouble for swinging his bat on a busy street. He may still swing it at the stadium without any trouble. The act of swinging the bat hasn't been prohibited, only its specific 'expression', provided by its context as determined by time and place and who is around him. The player has freedom of bat-swinging. We have freedom of thought.
The idea that speech is not action is a relic of the doctrine of mind-body dualism, in which the effect of words on a listener is so substantially different that they are deemed lesser harms, because they affect the mind, not the body. Advances in neuroscience and philosophy have put dualism in hot water[0]. The law in several non-speech related areas has for a long time realized dualism is false, such as with the issue of the insanity defence and voluntary manslaughter.
[0] https://scholarship.law.wm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1... [1] http://www.susanbrison.com/files/B.16.-speech_harm_and_the_m...
Surely it's the other way around. It is censored because there is a taboo around it. The taboo comes first.
Pithy, but I say it after being a big fan of using him as an example.
Persuasion has moved from the cottage industry of human interaction to industrialized consent manufacturing.
Fox and cable television were the steam engine, social media is the industrial revolution. Human scale approaches such as Daryl’s are akin to using buckets to drain a sea.
They numbers are tiny and politically they are impotent.
And none of that change required hate speech laws.
The KKK is effectively a non-entity today in modern society, sure. That's partly because "they" became Proud Boys, Patriot Front, etc. etc. As with the broader societal trends of transitioning away from traditional pre-digital power structures and groups, a rich ecosystem of new white nationalist groups have sprung up in the digital age to feed off the same hate that the KKK used to organize around.
There’s a list of extremist groups now that never existed before.
And At no point in the recent past has there been a breach of security in the capitol like in Jan this year.
How do you downplay "a few people" saying one thing, without giving even a single example of your imaginary opposite?
A "slightly bad opinion" has to be more than "slightly bad" to break hate speech rules.
If you feel a platform is overzealous in enforcing hate speech rules, don't use it. Or maybe ask yourself some questions before moving out.
EDIT: the rain of downvotes is telling as usual.
You suggest that people subject to social stigma and censure should "maybe ask [themselves] some questions". Do you think the reaction you are receiving should cause you to question your own position?
If there was a clear accusation of hate speech on my behalf I would certainly do.
Would you?
Now, if I'm wrong about some point of fact, I am more than willing to be corrected. And that's all it should take.
If someone feels the need to go beyond merely arguing my claim is false and use the accusation of hate speech, I'm going to seriously doubt that person is intellectually serious or acting in good faith.
Questioning our own positions is the opposite of bigotry, after all.
Now here you are asking for reasons before you reevaluate your own position when we claim you are in error. Do you not see the hypocrisy?
You are welcome to expect arguments before you change your mind. You can be "innocent until proven guilty". That's all the rest of us ask. Telling others to assume fault when you yourself do not is a rather poor way to argue.
The opinion of an independent adjudicator like the platform you're on with hopefully unbiased hate speech rules should be considered evidence in a way that the bad faith arguments of the person you're arguing with is not.
That is, I should not necessarily take your accusation of hate speech at face value, because you've proven to be willing to try and use it to win an argument. But if dang said that I was doing something that broke the rules, I would be more introspective. This is, yes, technically an argument from authority, but so is basically everything in the world of social dynamics.
So the burden of proof for you and the burden of proof for hacker news as a platform may be different, but that has nothing to do with me vs. you.
So I'll repeat what the other user said: if dang@ came along and asked you to stop engaging in hateful rhetoric, would you take a moment to introspect on that, or would you first reaction be to argue and demand proof?
Mine would be to try and figure out what he was referring to, and then probably to do less of it. And indeed, when chastised by him, that's more or less what I've done.
>> EDIT: the rain of downvotes is telling as usual.
> You suggest that people subject to social stigma and censure should "maybe ask [themselves] some questions". Do you think the reaction you are receiving should cause you to question your own position?
That's twisting what he said. What he actually said is that people who are bothered by "hate speech rules" should "maybe ask [themselves] some questions." He didn't say anything about downvotes should lead to similar self-questioning.
As the original article itself pointed out, "hate speech" is an amorphous term that can refer to any socially unacceptable speech. Actual "hate speech rules" and "downvotes" are merely different mechanisms for enforcing social stigma and censure.
The real question is at what point should a person reevaluate their opinions in light of social pressure. The commenter I was responding to seems to think it should only happen when the opinions in question are ones he disagrees with.
EDIT: additionally, complaining about downvotes is also against the rules of this site. For someone to do that while extending no charity to those who break other content moderation policies is...interesting.
> As the original article itself pointed out, "hate speech" is an amorphous term that can refer to any socially unacceptable speech. Actual "hate speech rules" and "downvotes" are merely different mechanisms for enforcing social stigma and censure.
No, you're blurring things to the point of meaninglessness. For instance, "first post" competitions would clearly be unacceptable speech here, yet I doubt anyone in good faith would actually call such posts hate speech.
Also, downvotes are an opaque mechanism. Did your post get downvoted because you said something widely regarded as offensive, are this guy [1], or because you just had too many typos? You can speculate, but that's not very good basis for self reflection. However, if you're mad you can't post speech that (for instance) directly attacks some race as being inferior [2], you have a pretty clear thing to reflect on.
[1] https://www.csmonitor.com/World/2015/0701/What-happened-to-t...
[2] https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/objectionable_co...
No, but if you think "hate speech" is a clear and definite term with no room for abuse you are deluding yourself.
> Also, downvotes are an opaque mechanism.
The person I responded to clearly knew why he was being downvoted. He presented an unsophisticated and (on this forum) unpopular view of hate speech rules.
> If you're mad you can't post speech that (for instance) directly attacks some race as being inferior [2], you have a pretty clear thing to reflect on.
Insisting that people who are critical of hate speech rules are white supremacists is not a constructive take.
That's actually not an uncommon situation for a term, such is human language. Most terms have fairly established meanings with a bit of fuzziness around the edges. That doesn't mean they're meaningless, arbitrary, or not useful.
> The person I responded to clearly knew why he was being downvoted. He presented an unsophisticated and (on this forum) unpopular view of hate speech rules.
It was certainly unpopular with some, but I wouldn't say it was unsophisticated.
> Insisting that people who are critical of hate speech rules are white supremacists is not a constructive take.
I made it clear that was an example, not a general characterization of any group. You'll also notice I didn't specify any particular race, so you're basically putting words in my mouth.
The other commenter was insisting others take certain accusations or forms of disapproval at face value, yet was hypocritically quite defensive when challenged and down-voted.
The idea that "hate speech" accusations form some sort of special category where they should be taken at face value is absurd.
It was a rhetorical attempt to bully someone into submission that failed because most people here recognized it for what it was. And then he whined about people not approving.
Who decides if Nazis are allowed to put signs with Nazi slogans on your lawn?
Twitter and Facebook are common carriers[0], not private residences.
Edit: 0: By which I mean that are common carriers in practice, not that they are legally recognized as such.
Except they aren't actually common carriers. Some people are of the opinion they should be, but having an opinion doesn't make it so.
I think (based on this) that you mean they aren't legally recognized as common carriers (which isn't what I said, but fair enough; edited to clarify).
A few private platforms have stopped selling those books -- not all of them, neither all platforms nor books.
You can still find those books, you just won't be able to buy official reprints from the copyright holder.
I am not sure where you'll draw the line if you insist that copyright holders continue to issue reprints or if you insist that private platforms continue to offer trade in things they don't want on their platforms.
Would that rule apply to ebay, but not a physical retail store where space is at a premium and people have to make choices about what not to sell every day? And would that rule compel ebay to sell nazi memorabilia or pre-American civil war slave memorabilia (which, afaik, they do not sell)?
The Seuss stuff is something I really can't wrap my head around, because what is it people really want? Just the estate to be compelled to keep printing and selling them, that ebay be compelled to keep allowing them to be sold?
Or some broader rule where any copyright holder of some (contemporarily) objectionable material be compelled to keep offering it, and every store be compelled to keep trading in it? All of those put limits on people's freedoms to choose in ways that make me uncomfortable.
The production of an instant moral consensus - so that everyone, all at once, decides freely that it would be incompatible with their values to do what they were doing yesterday - is an exercise of a kind of power. “It’s just private entities doing what they want to do” doesn’t mitigate that.
Yes, Seuss's family pulled a few books from production but I don't recall anyone decrying them.
That's a bizarre assertion to make.
At best it's an annoying distraction; at worst it makes people feel like shit for needing to constantly justify their existence.
But in this case, my understanding is that the distinction of sex and gender is essential to the concept of transgender in the first place. Is insisting (perhaps somewhat pedantically) on using those terms in a consistent fashion really an offense?
Now, they are free to exclude people for whatever reason they want. Sub-reddits are not supposed to be all things to all people. But the statement does not strike me as obviously offensive to trans people (I've even seen them make the same distinction).
That... depends? I mean, consider that "male" and "female" (as buckets people are assigned to at birth) do a pretty bad job of describing actual biology in many cases, often with harmful results. And that's before we even get to the topic of gender identity! You can be a trans woman while you still have a penis, because being trans isn't just about having surgery. (Consider that the term "transsexual" has fallen out of favor, in part because "transgender" covers the idea that your birth-assigned sex or biological features don't always accurately describe your identity.)
Anyway, consider what the parent originally said:
> > I was banned from r/asktransgender for telling a girl in a relationship with a pre-transition MtF person that it doesn’t make sense to call herself a lesbian (since sexual orientation is based on sex and not gender)
That's.. just not correct at all. Who was the parent to decide that "lesbian" = "biological female in relationship with biological female"? If someone identifies as female and is in a relationship with someone who identifies as female, they are perfectly justified in calling themselves lesbians, regardless of what reproductive parts or hormonal levels they have. Disagreeing with that is just meaningless, because this is how the word "lesbian" is used in the real world, and fighting against reality is generally not a winning move.
> Is insisting (perhaps somewhat pedantically) on using those terms in a consistent fashion really an offense?
If you're someone who's tired of outsiders telling you how you're supposed to describe yourself, yes, it probably is an offense. It's even worse when said outsider doesn't know what they're talking about and is insisting upon something that's incorrect.
> Now, they are free to exclude people for whatever reason they want.
I don't know why the parent got banned, of course. It could have been because they offended people, or it could have simply been because they were being an annoying pedantic (incorrect!) language lawyer who was sucking the life out of discussions. Either, in my mind, is a valid reason for a ban.
> But the statement does not strike me as obviously offensive to trans people (I've even seen them make the same distinction)
"Trans people" is not a monolithic block of people all with the same attitudes and tolerances. One trans person may not be bothered by it (though I would hope they'd be bothered by the parent's statement, since it's incorrect), but another may be. That's just life. And regardless, it doesn't matter if it strikes you or me as offensive to trans people, unless we're trans people. (I'm not, and I assume based on how you've framed this discussion that you aren't either.) It only matters if actual trans people are offended, and perhaps some number of them were. And if you are a trans person, I would hope that you'd agree that you probably don't speak for all trans people.
Essentially, the idea that a person could be attracted to the body of the sex they aren’t attracted to is the same idea behind conversion therapy. Anecdotally, I’ve spent way too much time trying to change my “genital preference” for me to think it’s true.
It has nothing to do with your sexual preferences. It's because you went onto a message board for trans people to complain about trans people to other trans people.
Then when they refused to put up with your bullshit you tried to spin it into a grand censorship narrative, rather than bog-standard asshole behavior.
btw the term “sexual preference” is cause for cancellation now (see ACB incident) so you’re still not woke enough to please the mob. Do better.
1. Daryl Davis is literally the only person ever mentioned in this context. If you don't have another example, this doesn't even qualify as an anecdote anymore.
2. Over the course of multiple decades Davis has, via intense 1:1 work and personal connection and at great risk to himself, deradicalized something like 4 dozen people. Gab alone had something like 400k accounts.
https://www.persuasion.community/p/lessons-of-a-black-pionee...
You are basically saying there is no power in integration and that the only effort for reform here should be negative consequences which generally isn't viewed as a liberal perspective on how to reintegrate people into society.
This an extremely uncharitable reading of my comments. I said a structural problem needs a structural solution, not a personal one. To invoke Chisholm as a counter-argument is offensive.
I think that what Chisholm did and what Davis did are in the same category. Personal outreach. You said Davis was the only example so I gave you others.
I don't think racism is structural problem Its a personal problem solved by individuals. The legacy of racism and its former codification may be structural and addressed in a structural way but they are fundamental different.
E2 80 8A
By aggressively removing it to limit how many people are exposed, and ban those who continue to share it despite being warned.
That handful of people you find on a forum more devoted to whatever the topic or niche is than everybody else. The people that are there, every day all day immersing themselves in it.
They're fairly far and few between and wherever you are, you'll find a handful of them.
The rest of the more vocal people tend to be the 'hanger ons'. The ones that are into it as long as a bunch of others are, but will lose interest if the community fades.
Then there's the flyby people. The people who just kinda pop in from time to time, but aren't really all that into it.
People seem to forget, we call it 'extremism' because it's at the extreme end of what humans consider acceptable. Most people in general are not 'extremists' with anything otherwise we wouldn't call it extreme. It would just be normal.
Everyone seems to just label someone as an extremist for a tweet, or an idea, or some words, where in reality a good majority of people being labeled as such are more than likely just normal people saying some dumb shit.
Everybody's done it, nobody's perfect anywhere, everybody believes ridiculous things from time to time, everybody's said things they shouldn't, it's just a part of being human. It doesn't mean they're this, that or the other kind of extremist.
It's a shame that the "public square" became privately owned. Google/Twitter/Facebook/etc all have advertisers to answer to and they'll pull the plug on someone not by any fair means of measure but how it affect their public image (and really their bottom line.
Honestly, I'd rather the "deplorables" do their thing in public rather than in their private channels. At least in public they'd have to defend their ideas against the general public and I do think their ideas would not hold muster.
And that the United States will actually collapse in the near term because Twitter is mismanaged.
Big Corporations and centralization of power in the hands of few is bad, and should be obvious. I didn't think one would need to provide evidence that Big Tech/Media is canceling conservatives, libertarians, liberals, greens, and surmise that it is not just because of benevolence or public safety. These are advertising companies deciding what is truth. That some people still cheer as more people that disagree with them are wiped off the de facto public forums on the internet should be scary to the masses who are just one wrong idea from being similarly muzzled. US Government is bought and paid for by these interests, so the logical hope would be for a technical solution by neoanarchists and other disenfranchised groups. It's just a hope, sure... but with the growth of crypto for decentralizing infrastructure (Filecoin, for instance) it seems all but inevitable.
This seems to be lost on so many.
They convinced me that information should be free, that it was my right to download and share anything digital, and that the internet was a borderless utopia of knowledge, limited only by our imaginations.
Now, I see the error of my ways and the harm I, and those who thought like me, caused to content creators and distributors.
I understand that the internet is safer, more secure, and better when suckled through the benevolent teat of large corporations, whose wisdom and foresight allows it to be restricted, filtered, and repackaged into a socially beneficial form.
Don't make the same mistakes I did! Trust in the system.
\s
If you ban extremist speech, then what you've done is create incentive to label everything as extremist.
Sounds reasonable, but the real fun begins when you add: "Everyone who disagrees with us is a Nazi."
We have to call things as we see them. And build a consensus around what's core values and within the normal range of debate, and what's beyond that into dangerous, destructive, and even murderous.
This is a type of speech, and there's no reason all speech should be regulated uniformly, just as speech and actions should presumably not be regulated uniformly. We could just prevent actions without bothering with speech at all, but (for instance) it seems similarly doable to ban certain forms of speech that cause unreasonable harm while leaving other forms alone.
An argument could be made that this would be yet another slippery slope, but I think at some point every law falls into that category and a society must decide whether the benefits are worth the tradeoff of starting down this path.
Except that the article is dedicated to explaining why it's not doable and is a bad idea in general
The article does not address whether it's a bad idea, rather its entire premise is built upon the fact that whether it's a good or bad idea is preceeded by a question of whether it works. Several commenters in this thread have pointed out that it does work, and is used to this day, from China's authoritarian implementation to the implementation at other points in history.
I think it's reasonable to make the statement: assuming that it does work (and maybe the article is correct - perhaps it doesn't work), would it still be a good idea? What number of people would it need to work on to be a good idea?
An idea that won't work is a bad idea (to me, at least). From the author's point of view, it won't.
> Several commenters in this thread have pointed out that it does work, and is used to this day, from China's authoritarian implementation to the implementation at other points in history. > I think it's reasonable to make the statement: assuming that it does work (and maybe the article is correct - perhaps it doesn't work), would it still be a good idea? What number of people would it need to work on to be a good idea?
Depends on your definition of works, I suppose. Unfortunately, even if the main objective could be achieved, there are drawbacks. I would not call CCP's implementation a success. Sure, in some ways they have squashed extremist speech, but at what cost? They have also severely curtailed speech which criticizes them. They have created a culture of fear where people self-censor. Eventually, I believe something will have to give. It is simply too early to call it a success or failure at this moment.
Someone: Extremism is bad.
You: What is extreme is subjective.
The next step would be for you to try to give counter points of what you think is extreme that others consider not, or better, what you think is not extreme that others consider so.
"Who am I to say if it's wrong to believe people should be killed and enslaved for their skin color? Next thing you know, someone may think I'm extreme for what coffee I drink!"
Your argument is inane.
We wouldn't be having this conversation if the things labeled extremism and thus banned from platforms was limited to ISIS and literal Nazis. It's been far more far-reaching than that. That's probably due to the incentives, not due to actual extremism.
So if extremism is subjective, it will be leveraged in that manner and you can't stop that behavior without removing the incentive. That's the point, not what is or isn't labeled as extremism today, that's just dragging the conversation back into the political gutter.
I don't think that's the next step. I think the point is that what is extreme will always be subjective, and there is danger in allowing some group of people to decide what speech is acceptable and what is not.
That's true, but it also seems to effectively hold for the originals, only with conformity rather than contrarianism:
> Someone: Extremism is bad.
Regarding your parent post's objection to "redeemable", it's not used in religious contexts exclusively.
That's not to even get into the fact that all to often these terms like "fringe websites" are used by entities to shame users into not using their competition, which further degrades the integrity of any anti hate message.
source?
It does? Any evidence to support this?
https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/GabLeaks https://ddosecrets.com/wiki/Parler
The problem you ignore or quash never goes away. It just gets harder and more distributed.
Blonde, sure, but IDK if I'd call her hair straw.
Any rational person, upon hearing a suggestion that Jews are responsible for starting forest fires by using laser beams from space, would quite naturally dismiss the claim as nonsense. And the claim is so ludicrous on its face that a rational person would, quite justifiably, assume that it could only ever be offered as a strawman.
Yet, here we are--with a duly elected congresswoman of the United States House of Representatives subscribing to (or at least passively entertaining) said strawman.
There are, perhaps, too many well-intentioned, good-natured, level-headed people out there who are simply far too sheltered from the outright insanity that is permeating throughout our society. They are far too quick to assume that human nature tends toward the same pursuits of truth, justice, and liberty which they value--and that merely offering a level playing field for ideas to compete will inevitably result in the triumph of those which are most noble.
While this bright-eyed and bushy-tailed approach to life is certainly tempting to adopt, it is quite disconnected from the world around us. Rationality and competence are under siege by people who do not adhere to an evidence-based view of reality. One cannot be reasonable with unreasonable people. Moderation and ostracization are perfectly valid tools for dealing with such individuals.
You know, this is literally what the infamous poem warned about:
"Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out --- Because I was not a Jew." (Also, it wasn't my district.)
>In light of the revelations, the Democratic-controlled House took the unusual step of voting to force Greene to be removed from her committee assignments on Thursday after GOP leaders failed to act on the matter themselves. Democrats were joined by 11 Republicans who voted to strip Greene of the assignments.
https://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-has-average-...
That's a lot of "they came for the [...] and I did nothing" and not a lot of straw in the "straw-congresswoman".
And I don't mean in the sense that you see less of what you think there should be less of online, because then of course it's gotten better if that's the variable being minimized. I mean, do you think the state of extremism and political unity has improved via marginalizing views held by enormous portions of the population?
I'd say it has exposed incompetence in general.
You don't see too much pro-Al-Qaeda or ISIS material on Facebook or Twitter. Somehow, we've managed to censor that extremism away.
Because the responses seemed heavily skewed towards "Yeah, but..." responses that sort of ignore the article's main point.
Whereas I don't actually see that as a problem. In any given population, about ~10% of it is going to be sympathetic to fascism. That is what it is. It's an appealing ideology for a lot of people.
The problem is when you get closer to 40%, or 50%, and unabashed fascists start making their way onto first, and second-rate political party tickets, as opposed to ineffectively screaming into the void on third-rate ones. We've just had a bit of a brush with that, here. Not interested in repeating it.
If you go down the path of "censorship", you better get it right. Otherwise you'll probably be worse off in the end.
I recently thought of a great example: If the goal is to reduce extremism, one of the lowest-hanging fruit would be to censor all videos of police misconduct. There is no question that seeing the George Floyd video radicalised a number of people. If your solution is that a few tech giants should have memory holed that video as it began to go viral, I'd love to hear you explain yourself.
People talk as if the question of whether to censor is identical to whether there are viewpoints that are harmful. That's the wrong question IMHO, of course some viewpoints are harmful. Harmful enough that it would be better if they weren't shared, we can all imagine some. Censorship is like torture, we shouldn't swear it off because it doesn't work, but because the benefit we gain from using it is miniscule compared to the harm received when it's used on us.
The George Floyd video is a clear case in point. How many people who were happy to see #45 removed from social media would have been dismayed if the George Floyd video had been similarly removed for the sake of public order? How much benefit did they gain from their enemy being off the platforms compared to the harm it would have done to them if the same tool had been used against them?
Society progresses in proportion to the number of uncomfortable conversations. Because they are uncomfortable, we can all be tempted by people flattering us that we don't need to have them. Therefore, it's a tool that tends to be overused. As such, it should be one that reasonable people of all tribes can agree is a sign of hypocrisy, an opportunity for grandstanding when employed by the other side and soul-searching when employed by our own.
So bribes, threats, falsehoods, abuse need to be exposed for what it is.
Not to mention how the "good guys" are usually just whomever manages to last/survive
In the 50's-70's, the US tried it's hardest to censor/hide/destroy Marxism, it's ideals, and derivatives (Socialism) - yet it still exists today.
You cannot disappear ideas by silencing the individuals that believe them. Instead of trying to hide them away, the ideas need to be exposed publicly and discussed openly. If one side truly is righteous, it will prevail through open discussion and logic.
Just like in the 50's - what we have today is a weaponized notion of censorship to destroy our political enemies and those who do not think the same way we do. That's certainly not what "Good Guys" do.
Unfortunately that is not always how it works out.
In Germany in the 1930s the idea that Jews/non-Arians have conspired against Germany and should be retaliated against was discussed openly - and accepted. Obviously it was not righteous.
In several US states in the 1980s the idea that homo sapiens was created by God and creationism should replace evolution in school textbooks was discussed openly - and accepted. Was it righteous?
These are two very different examples, but both ask the same question: What do we do in the case where truly righteous ideas do not prevail?
Nobody pretends Nazism never happened - that would be Censorship. Instead, you can buy, find, read about Nazism - including Mein Kumpf and more.
Creationism is not a dominating idea in the US either - nobody censored Creationism (even to this day you can find private schools that teach it!). Instead, Creationism was defeated by questioning it's teachings, and exposing it's logical flaws.
I do believe you have very eloquently proven my point. Censorship never works.
Now, let me ask you this - are you okay to sacrifice your life for a righteous idea? So why should 10 million Jews, Polish, Czechs, Russians, gays, disabled etc.?
Unless you are willing to do so, there is no point to be proven here. History has shown again and again that the righteous ideas do not always prevail (you could even argue that it's a defining human quality).
Every single democratic society is built upon common beliefs of what should/should not be censored. Claiming "censorship never works" is running away from a difficult conversation and not face human reality.
That's not how ideas work... (see US Civil War and racism, as just one clear example)
"the US Army continued its efforts to denazify Germany through control of German media. The Information Control Division of the US Army had by July 1946 taken control of 37 German newspapers, six radio stations, 314 theaters, 642 cinemas, 101 magazines, 237 book publishers, and 7,384 book dealers and printers."
Nonetheless, it's arguable these efforts were futile, likely misguided, and likely drove some to extremism as a result. You cannot simply compel a population to think a certain way.
Instead, you must allow the "bad" ideas to be exposed in the public forum, and win over the population through logical arguments. Hiding them away does nothing to disappear them.
Regardless, it's pretty well established the average German citizen didn't believe in the extremes the Nazi party had gone to anyway.
Not only did West Germany have denazification programmes, but things like denying the holocaust are still illegal in Germany today, as the article discusses.
It's a bold claim to argue this was "futile" or "likely drove some to extremism" when the context was a reaction to the last war so extreme that it resulted in mass public support for a guy who blamed the Jews and geared up for a second war. Failing to defeat those arguments with logic drove an entire country to extremism, and there were a lot more people who still believed in those extremes in 1946 (even after suffering for them) than express sympathy for Germany's much watered down far right today. I doubt that would radically alter if they relaxed holocaust denial laws today, but there was certainly a time when public debate about whether the Holocaust was real or a big lie would have been useful to anyone wanting to follow in Hitler's footsteps and cast Germany as the victim.
Of course, on the other side the GDR absolutely failed in its attempts to force people to love its state and not realise their friends and family in the West were richer and free-er than them. There were limits to the effectiveness of censorship in achieving those goals, even when the censorship itself was almost unparalleled in its pervasiveness and harshness.
But sometimes not facilitating the discussion terrible niche ideas is much more effective at preventing them from going mainstream than debating them
You can be a Nazi in the US, UK and I'm sure pretty much anywhere in the world (except Germany) - and not go to jail, etc. So no, the Allies did not make Nazism illegal. Instead, they attempted to squash Nazism through propaganda (both domestic and foreign), and through spreading the truth about what Nazism had accomplished (Holocaust, among other atrocities). There's Holocaust Deniers roaming the streets of the US today - although they are in the extreme minority due overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
In the end, the evils of Nazism led to it's demise, and the free trade of that information championed over censorship.
As an aside, making Holocaust Denial illegal has accomplished nothing - we have Genocide occurring around the world today, including openly in China - the very same country US companies like the NBA and Disney are falling over each other to do business in. China, of course, denies it's a Genocide...
I can buy Nazi paraphernalia today, read about Nazism on Wikipedia, purchase newly printed copies of Mein Kumpf, watch Hitler's speeches on Youtube, and more.
The ideals of Nazism were defeated by openly exposing, and combating them with freely available information.
Censorship would have been to pretend Nazism never happened, and banning of anything that might encroach upon "Right Think".
And think what would happen if someone made Nazism illegal? What would that mean? What about some new group that calls themselves Izan's, but shares all the same ideas of Nazism? Would that be illegal too?
You cannot ban ideas - someone else, at some point in time, will have the very same idea even if they do not know someone else had it first.
Instead, you must fight with logic and exposure - expose bad ideas for what they are, and prove them wrong with logic.
And funny enough, we Germans are usually hammered by the right for over working on our historical gilt. Especially by the German right wing.
Which is say one should be cautious about exercising rights if you want to keep them.
The parent post asserted the Allies propaganda campaign after the war was censorship - it's flatly not, particularly since everywhere else in the world you can freely call yourself a Nazi with no repercussions. At no point was it illegal anywhere outside Germany to possess a copy of Mein Kumpf, even if it was signed by Hitler himself.
I don't think outlawing Nazism in Germany was a good thing, nor productive. Nazism could be (and very successfully was) destroyed through exposing it's ideals for what they were.
We often forget there was a Nazi movement here in the US leading up to the war - that was also stamped out not by censorship, but through exposing the evils of the Nazi regime.
Then, at the arbitrary age of 18, we (the US, other countries differ) decided they can participate in, create, and distribute as much self-pornographic material as they want.
The entire LEO world dedicated to combating child pornography revolves around the exploitation of children and how wrong that is.
That's not quite the same as banning ideas, books, etc, simply because some find the words objectionable.
* Here on HN we censor each other.
* The US censors basic nudity.
* Germany censors denying the Holocaust.
* The patent office censors inventions.
* Scientists have devised a peer-censorship system.
* The police censors your attempts to distribute illegal material.
* Banks censor your funds to ISIS.
... the list goes on and on and on.
It's tiring hearing the "megaphone" meme. It's a loaded term and means more than its literal meaning.
There are extremists on the left and the right. If you only only target extremism on the right, you might think you're doing a service, but in fact you're going to make the problem worse.
Here come the downvotes.
1. Because you're not actually removing right-wing extremism (which would be nice), you're pushing people into the corner. You can't legally or morally prevent people from having extremist views among themselves, having conversations, and in an Internet age you're going to play wack-a-mole if you try to chase after things, monitor and shut things down. Not to mention the overreach inherent in a real crackdown. By punishing them publicly, you feed into conspiracy theories, you feed into the idea that they are victimized, you feed into the idea of bias, and in the end you make people, more, not less radicalized.
edit: two more (I think) good arguments. One, the U.S. has less extremism than Germany or France, with regards to right-wing extremism, and yet those countries have hate speech laws and ban books and fine people with extremist views. Yet, the FN in France and the AFD in Germany have power locally and possibly nationally. Two, people will use innuendo and implication and code. Thus, you have to ban the code and innuendo. Is that the path you want to go down, banning and evaluating interpretations of speech that is constantly changing as one thing gets banned and a new one sprouts?
This is not new, and we already know this, and we know this from over a century of extremist views. It's not in 2015 that magically extremism started to exist.
The correct way to combat right-wing extremism is to let people be lunatics, make it obvious that they are lunatics, reply to the lunatics with logic and reason, and don't infantalize viewers are being influenced by bad views.
The "megaphone" theory being espoused by mainstream pro-censorship tech people is a cover for the underlying assumption: I know what's good for you, and I feel if I hide content from you, then I can prevent you from being influenced, in short, I, tech censor, protect you from yourself.
I cannot get behind that, and I hope the question that should be on everyone's mind is, who decides what's extremism.
2. Absolutely. Where do you want to start. I could go to Twitter and spend a few minutes to find some, but that would be awkward and appear like cherry picking. There were and still are many posts asking for abolishing of government, of authorities, of institutions. That's been extremist since the 19th century. With regards to racist speech, I offer to you Sarah Jeong (editor from the NYT) tweets which were deleted and apologized (ish) for, but had the editorial board stand behind her and no warnings from Twitter itself.
Or, y'know, practically (short of lobotomizing them).
1. We should ban extremist views
2. The centrist GOP is extremist (since the Front National and the AfD are agreed extreme)
so obviously:
3. We should ban the GOP from Twitter and other places discussed in this thread.
^^ is anyone else seeing this?? Is anyone but me very very scared that people like this are possibly getting hired in Facebook and Twitter and Google?
Banning the GOP would be good for democracy? I've never voted GOP in my life, but the view you've espoused is extremist.
And yes, according to European standards, people like Ted Cruz are found in the AfD and FN. If you disagree, please share examples where AfD / FN positions differ from the GOP, meanin where these two parties are farther right then the GOP.
And plenty of irrational ideas that became widely held.
Communism is intended to produce "a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs."
Socialism is "a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."
Socialism means the public owning or regulating everything. Communism is definitely about the public owning everything. And socialism is not necessarily about allocating by need the way Communism is supposed to be.
Maybe that's the National Socialists in Germany called themselves that. The State didn't own everything but it did try to control everything. For the good of the people. Well, some of the people. The definition of Socialism doesn't address that detail.
The problem is that this is a very slippery slope. Who gets to decide what's OK and what's not?
People usually shut that down in a way that makes it clear they haven't considered the point and don't respect the opinion. It does not make me question that opinion, it makes me despise them more. Where twitter to stop permitting discussion of drug laws, I would not change my mind.
I don't understand why everyone is saying this. There is not extremist content in north korea.
This is such a terrible idea. All this accomplishes is causing extremists to find echo chambers where they will never actually know what they're doing is wrong. It's much better to keep extremists in mainstream platforms so they can be called out and atleast informed that they are wrong. Your solution is totally backwards and accomplishes the opposite of what you're hoping for.
> This is such a terrible idea. All this accomplishes is causing extremists to find echo chambers where they will never actually know what they're doing is wrong. It's much better to keep extremists in mainstream platforms so they can be called out and atleast informed that they are wrong. Your solution is totally backwards and accomplishes the opposite of what you're hoping for.
It's not that simple:
1. It's totally believable that someone might follow a neo-Nazi on twitter, if the neo-Nazi avoids Nazi iconography and mainly tweets about Nazi-adjacent topics, but have second thoughts about joining an actual neo-Nazi website.
Not all extremists will seek out a fringe echo chamber. Some will, but others will not. The result is likely one where the most-extreme core gets separated from its recruitment opportunities, disrupting the first step in the recruitment funnel. That core may get more extreme in its echo chamber, but its overall movement could end up being smaller and weaker.
2. Counterintuitively, people tend to dig in to their existing beliefs when they're "called out." Also, I'm sure every neo-Nazi has been informed many, many times that they're wrong. Extremism is not a problem of lack of information.
This is precisely the problem. That core will certainly get more extreme because there's no cross pollination between it and other more moderate groups.
I would rather have more people with less extreme views than fewer people with more extreme views, because it's much more likely the more extreme people are a greater danger to society than the less extreme people.
> Extremism is not a problem of lack of information.
True, but it's more complicated than that. Extremism almost always results when you disenfranchise or ostracize a community. It's much better to integrate it so there's crossflow of information and empathy still. Dehumanizing groups of people also dehumanizes yourself.
History proves otherwise. All wars, massacres, tyrannies required extreme views to become popularized enough to achieve momentum.
But the question is how much? I'm highly skeptical that "cross pollination" moderates hard-core neo-Nazis to any significant degree, for instance. They might get a little more extreme in an echo chamber, but I don't think it will be that much more.
In fact, I think the "cross pollination" mainly goes the other way, by spreading extremist ideas to moderates that are vulnerable to them. Let them spread enough, and they could even become normalized.
> I would rather have more people with less extreme views than fewer people with more extreme views, because it's much more likely the more extreme people are a greater danger to society than the less extreme people.
I think the better way of thinking about this is "total quantity of extremism." You're always going to have a hard core, so the question is more about how big will that core be, and how many adjacent supporters will it have.
Let's say you keep neo-Nazis on twitter, and that leads to a hard-core that is 10% less Nazi, on average, but that's also ten times larger. You now have a far more dangerous situation on your hands.
> True, but it's more complicated than that. Extremism almost always results when you disenfranchise or ostracize a community. It's much better to integrate it so there's crossflow of information and empathy still. Dehumanizing groups of people also dehumanizes yourself.
Maybe in some cases, but not others. For instance, neo-Nazis extremists weren't created by disenfranchising some kind of "moderate" natural neo-Nazi community.
sources[0]: I was susceptible to extremist thought (not actions, fortunately) when I was younger. The sense that I might get into trouble if I participated in fringe websites kept me from going further down the rabbit hole. I kept reading mainstream news and sites, and while I would give a lot of things an extremist spin in my mind, eventually the narrative stopped making sense.
sources[1]: https://twitter.com/iyad_elbaghdadi (can't find the specific Tweet, but he went through a similar experience, and almost became a full-blown extremist Muslim, before the sites he used to frequent were taken offline).