I believe that Twitch has too much power/authority, but also I believe that it's reasonable to moderate speech in communities and platforms.
That said, I believe there's a material difference between examples and what was shared in the parent comment. I don't think one can generalize from "speech calling for violence should be removed from Twitch" to "all unpopular opinions will be suppressed". Yes, it was unpopular (and career limiting) to stand up for LGTBQ+ folks, and those voices rarely got mainstream airtime. Suppressing those voices was wrong, but totally different than prohibiting endorsements of mass violence.
I believe we, culturally, can evaluate the difference between "I think gay folks should have equal rights" and "America deserved 9/11" and understand why we should be open to the former and cautious about the latter.
The second statement though, was a blatant call to violence (if white redneck militia dudes...), and the author did not get banned from twitch, instead they were simply limited in their monetization options.
But "America deserved 9/11" was an ethical statement, you're right.
Saying that you feel like the situation allows for lethal violence to be used and that you would bless it is certainly, without a doubt, inciting violence.
> "If that means white redneck militia dudes mowing down dipshit protesters that think they can torch buildings at 10 PM, at this point they have my fucking blessing."
This is clearly not a call to violence: it’s an approval of people intervening in serial arson, even if that means using force against the arsonists and lamenting that the state has failed to stop the serial arson, so it may fall to a militia. You can tell that by “if [...], at this point they have my fucking blessing” rather than any call to action.
Approving of militias using force to stop serial arsonists when the state has failed to keep the peace is an ethical statement — and one much tamer than “America deserved 9/11”. Most people believe that people have the right to protect themselves when the state fails to maintain peace.
I suspect you’re being uncharitable because you personally support the arsonists’ crime spree.
What specific violent act do you believe that quote calls for?
> "mowing down dipshit protesters"
... it says it right on the tin.
> I suspect you’re being uncharitable because you personally support the arsonists’ crime spree.
We don't shoot criminals, dude. Even if you thought there were arsonists out there, you don't just invite random people to come and shoot them.
Sure we do — when society breaks down and the police can no longer maintain peace. As happened in a number of US cities this past year, when police were helpless in the face of Democrat-endorsed arsonists. Apparently, the speaker was from one of these cities that suffered from frequent, organized arson.
Regardless, we’re clearly having an ethical argument: there’s no call to violence.
> "mowing down dipshit protesters"
Your example is clearly not a call to action, it’s an example of an act the speaker would approve of if it happened — which is an ethical statement.
The speaker is not saying people should or asking people to mow down protestors: just that they’re okay with militias shooting arson gangs if that’s what’s required to stop their serial arson attacks.
Oh, will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest!
I've probably engaged way past where I should, as you aren't here to discuss calmly and rationally, but what you describe is an extremely common rhetorical technique. The streamer all but said, "will no one rid me off these meddlesome protestors?"
On the contrary, they made a clearly ethical statement you’re trying to misportray, in a way which defames the speaker.
You say “calmly and rationally”: I’ve talked about the structure of the comment and the societal breakdown/violence in which it occurred — have you?
I think understanding the violence the speaker experienced from serial arsonists is important to understanding why they’d give an exasperated endorsement of violence to resolve the situation.
> The streamer all but said, "will no one rid me off these meddlesome protestors?"
No, they didn’t — you’re just emotionally and irrationally misinterpreting them.
Since you want to talk about rhetorical techniques: defaming people with false accusations is much more common than veiled orders.
This is Destiny saying that if it takes someone committing mass murder to stop property damage, it is justified. There's no two ways about it.
Whether it is tamer or not than "America deserved 9/11" is a matter of opinion, I won't pronounce myself on it but I totally understand that opinion. It is categorically true that while "America deserved 9/11" is a statement of ethics, saying that you personally bless mass murder to prevent property destruction is incitement of violence.
Saying “America deserved 9/11” and “I’m okay with arsonists being killed by militias when the police can no longer maintain the peace” are both moral statements about mass casualty events — but neither is a call to commit a violent act.
> “if it takes someone committing mass murder to stop [serial arsonist gangs, when the police fail to stop them], it is justified”
This is clearly a statement of personal ethics — it’s discussing the cases in which the speaker believes violence is just, not calling for specific acts of violence.
I think you know that.
> This is Destiny saying that if it takes someone committing mass murder to stop property damage, it is justified. There's no two ways about it.
“If [...], then justified” is an ethical statement — and as you say, there’s no two ways about interpreting it.
You simply lack the intellectual honesty to admit your own summary of the statement plainly shows it’s an ethical statement, not an incitement to violence.
You disagree with the statement, so you’re making emotional, inconsistent arguments to try discrediting it.
The only person “weaseling” is you — who are contradicting yourself and refusing to address my points.
Please don't create accounts to do that with.
I believe that you censoring in support of defamation (knowingly false claims an ethical statement is incitement) may incur liability for HN. Incitement has a specific legal meaning (which this is not).
You seem to be directly supporting defamation on your platform, as an administrator.
If you want specific examples you could start with "Be kind" and "Assume good faith".
I can expand on this if you're really curious. The short version is that I don't think it's realistic to expect reciprocal generosity from a party that clearly has a double standard about what is and isn't censorship. But on the other hand, we can make a choice not to literally hand that party ammunition for their arguments.
We know that laws around censorship are disproportionately targeted at minority/oppressed communities. We have over 100 years of history demonstrating that fact, from the draft protests, to McCarthyism, to the mass-deplatforming and threatening of the LGBTQ+ community, to moral panics about satan worshiping and sex in mainstream media. We also know the arguments that those people use to try and further their agendas.
They will still use those arguments even if we have Free Speech principles. The difference is that neutral observers will be able to tell that they're being hypocritical. The difference is that they'll have fewer laws on the books that they can quickly repurpose to their agenda.
When you know what someone's strategy is to attack you, when you know how Republicans are going to try and disrupt protests and attack critics, you don't play into that strategy. You try to set up an environment that is hostile to their talking points. That's how Free Speech advocacy responds to bigots -- it tries to make a general social environment where, for example, the recent Florida laws trying to shut down protests look unusual and bad and repressive even to casual observers who haven't researched the issues.
We don't expect racists and homophobes to play fair, that's why we're building a set of laws and social standards that make it harder for them to argue that it's OK to pull funding from schools that teach critical race theory. These people are better at censoring than you are; if you let them set all of the rules of engagement, then they will win.
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The opposite is also true. Free Speech and Free Association are more helpful to progressive organizations than they are to regressive movements, because most of the time regressive movements are trying to shut down conversation and to stop social evolution. You can see this happening with critical race theory, you can see this happening with BLM protests, you can see it pop up with recent efforts to restrict counseling and support structures for LGBTQ+ youth. You can even see it with how much Conservatives have freaked out over company statements on voting rights and business decisions not to work with states that pass regressive laws. Regressive movements talk a big game about Free Speech, but so much of their ideology depends on nobody questioning the status quo of how we think about race, gender, and inequality, and on punishing and ostracizing anyone in their communities that listens to critics or evolves their views over time.
Sure, they'll use Free Speech to try and argue against Freedom of Association or to claim that they're being oppressed because a football player had the "audacity" to talk about race in a public setting, but they're not particularly good at that kind of rhetoric. The arguments are ultimately unpersuasive and it's relatively easy to point out how they're being hypocritical. So by creating an environment that is Free Speech friendly, not only do we make their ideas about oppression less persuasive and harder to implement -- we also play to our strengths. We create an environment where it is easier to educate people about issues like trans liberation and to showcase the radical inequalities that exist in America. I don't think it's an accident that LGBTQ+ rights have progressed faster than other historical pushes for equality in an environment where it's easier than ever before to share information about people's day-to-day struggles and experiences. So much of regressive ideology relies on people being able to block out progressive movements and to filter/mischaracterize what progressive movements say.
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So long story short, TLDR regressive/bigoted movements do abuse Free Speech to defend themselves, but it's mostly rhetoric. They are more reliant on censorship than on a free flow of information to further their goals. To the extent that they really care about Free Speech, they're mostly just arguing to get rid of Freedom of Association and to force people to stop criticizing them or kicking them out of privately owned spaces.
So when we build societies that are resistant to censorship, we're not saying that those people will play along and respect our rules. And we do accept that on the tail-end of certain movements (esp conspiracy theories), Free Speech does genuinely make our job harder. But what we're trying to do is to create a battlefield for progressivism that (overall) plays to our strengths and exploits their weaknesses.
But this isn't really how it works. Forebearance actually does have value because it changes society as a whole, shifts expectations at a broad scale, and creates moral authority to demand better from others which is persuasive and powerful.
At the end of the day, what kind of society do you want to live in? Will you contribute to making that society, or not?
To use your analogy, let's say Bob is constantly stealing from you. You urgently need some essentials, and you say, "I know, I can steal them from Bob." But somebody stops you and says, "Wait, you don't want to do that! If you steal from Bob, he'll steal from you!" You would probably not find this persuasive, because you know Bob will steal from you regardless. There probably are good arguments you can make against stealing from Bob, but that particular one doesn't jibe with reality.
You're framing this as a simple prisoner's dilemma problem with sharp-edged binary choices - but it's much more fluid than that in real life.
The fluidity non-binaryness of this is even more apparent given it's millions of people we're talking about, over time lasting generations.
If life really was a prisoner dilemma cooperation would be impossible.
Where's our freedom of privacy?
If we stop being freedom of speech absolutists, I can already tell you what's going to happen.
edit: I do not for the life of me understand why someone would downvote this. The opposite of freedom of speech is fascism, and it is a tool that can be employed by any ideology to oppress and impose.
I'm not so old to remember the arguments about how women are too emotional to be allowed to vote, or the ones about black people, but it was pretty unacceptable to come out in defense of either of those groups either.
Why in the world would I believe censorship is only going to squash the sort of stuff you list, when there's such a long history of it being used to oppress anyone who thinks they deserve the same rights as the rest of us?
Are we going to ban any pro-abortion discussions, because "suggesting we kill innocent people" is absolutely beyond the pale? Do you really think there aren't millions of people in the US drooling at that sort of censorship opportunity?