No, they also need a platform to make people aware of their existence, their views, and to recast their censorship to be in their favour. The whole point of no-platforming individuals is to make a statement that their views are seen as reprehensible and to stop them from being able to air those views to an audience.
Not all ideological disputes are about rational argumentation, many are based in a fundamental misalignment of values. Those value-based disputes cannot be resolved by open and civil discourse alone, and we know that racists have a tendency to abuse such spaces through techniques such as emotional rhetoric and Gish galloping.
The only way that this works is to exert total control of the content of all communications.
Otherwise, as in the real world until now, people find each other and network. You're talking about destroying freedom of association and expression in order to root out reprehensible people with the wrong values who could speak to people who want to listen to them.
I'm not advocating for some global censorship entity.
Ideology is not a protected class, however. In the case of Haidt, they are free to not present any research at conferences unless it advances their definition of equity, and he has no choice but to go along with it or walk away.
It's worth pointing out that they are not explicitly turning down non-equity-focused research, but that the existence of the question is his interpretation of an ideological pressure to conform.
If it even existed in the first place; there are plenty of laws that expressly allow discrimination in deference to 'religious beliefs.'
Courts, & the Supreme Court in particular, are giving far more weight to 'christian freedom' at the expense of the rest of us.
Cases include recent PrEP ruling, insane football prayer ruling that willfully ignored facts, bathroom & sports laws targeting kids. crazy ruling on prayers in court.
Adoption discrimination (de-facto govt by transitive property. we have to stop outsourcing government to contractors, especially when it makes religious orgs the only avenue).
Upcoming ruling from CO which will probably allow even more queer discrimination.
that 'pressure to conform' is and has historically been one way, giving one class the legal go ahead to discriminate in the name of some skewed idea of christian ideals
If it were not, mosques would be legally compelled to hire rabbis and churches would have to consider hiring druids for services.
Where the line ought to be drawn is nowhere near as obvious as you seem to think it should be.
But this disagreement highlights this major problem the US faces.
We live in two increasingly separate realities with different 'facts', where obvious is totally different based on your identity.
the one religious non-belief class example I gave is the football coach prayer case.
to me it's an obvious overreach and clearly breaks secular education norms (and past scotus rulings).
to such an obvious degree that the minority (on the court, majority in public opinion) broke precedence and put photos directly refuting the 'facts' the majority claim are truth.
that's also a bit spurious. i don't think anyone is arguing that churches must be forced to interview (or hire) other religions.
but the majority does believe that the state & courts shouldn't create laws that expressly allows someone to discriminate or refuse to provide service to someone else just because they are gay or trans or use different pronouns. or deny an adoption. or disallow kids from playing incredibly low states high school sports. or ban books. or not talk about gender & sexuality. i keep using queer-centric issues because that's my identity and I can speak to it better than race/trans issues. there are plenty of examples there too.
it's minority religion dictating laws that affect our lives and explicitly allowing those beliefs to take away rights from the rest of us.
Not true! Just being banned from significant swaths of social media has frequently forced many prominent Nazis/alt-righters out of business. Before Kiwifarms recently had all of their major issues, they were already finding it difficult to keep the site running as a result of continued pressure on every host they switched to.
It also introduces readers to the entirety of the uncensored internet all at once, the most 4-chan thing imaginable, which is somewhat counter to the "limit exposure to disinformation" goal being claimed by the original deplatformers.
And that substantially reduces their reach and ability to disseminate their garbage. It's good.
And yes, they're a bunch of Nazi stooges.
The problem is that people make statements like this but apply them selectively. E.g., platforms like major news networks are happy to give airtime to the claim that people alive today, who never owned slaves and are very likely not descended from anyone who did, must pay reparations to others alive today who were never enslaved and may well not be descended from slaves. These same platforms also give airtime to those claiming all societal ills stem from one ethnic group or another (as long as it's the "right" ethnic group being blamed).
This incredibly skewed double standard isn't fooling anyone.
In both cases the application thereof, while it will not assist at all with getting to the truth of any issue, will certainly allow you to manipulate those you subject to it to tell you whatever you want to hear.
Of course, as soon as they are removed the subject will typically recant, and often overcorrect in the exact opposite direction, in light of the exposure to loathed coerced manipulative strategies.
Sunlight doesn't have that problem. People may make mistakes and come to the wrong conclusion, but at least they won't double down on their erroneous position as a retributive strategy for the coercive manipulation to which they have been subjected.
But hey, maybe some ends are just so awful they justify any means in pursuit of their prevention, be it torture, censorship or whatever. Certainly lots of people these days clearly seem to think so.
He's a black guy who went out of his way to befriend KKK members, and many of them ended up leaving the KKK when they realized he didn't fit what they were told about black people.
Censorship would not have helped, they had to be shown that they were wrong. That's what "sunlight is the best disinfectant" means.
There are many case studies in the real world.
"Go find a racist podcast and see how many episodes it takes for you to start thinking that jews and black people are inferior."
Rwandan genocide being incited over radio, 1930s/1940s Germany being incited by the press and speeches, same with 1930s Japan.
Many mass shooters that targeted specific ethnicities were radicalized online. Dylan Roof. Also the recent guy that wrote the N word on his gun. These were white nationalists. The latter said it wasn't his offline world, it was purely online where he got radicalized.
You're just making assertions that it's not like this but our best understanding of ideas that they are social and contagious.
If you genuinely think listening to racists would turn you into a racist I really do encourage you to try it so you learn you don't need to fear hearing bad ideas.
Researchers and activists spend countless hours doing exactly that, listening to what racists are saying, lurking in their online communities, and analyzing their rhetoric and membership. It doesn't turn them into racists. How is it you think that they don't become radicalized? It's not because they have some kind of power that makes them immune to idea viruses.
If you're too afraid to dive deep into racist speech why not start with something a little less unpleasant and attend a religious service of a faith you don't belong to. It's fascinating to do, most places of worship are very welcoming to newcomers, and again, you really won't be magically converted.
Yes, some people who walk into a church do end up becoming members, just like some people who stumble onto racist online communities do end up joining, but in both cases it's not because exposure to the message has infected them. The actual message itself (in both cases) generally isn't terribly convincing, logical, or consistent. It's very often because they offer people who feel alone and lost a place to be accepted, something besides themselves to blame for their troubles, a clear and narrow path for how to move forward, and a comforting narrative and identity.
If you're happy with who you are and how your life is going, have friends/family who support you, and strong convictions you have nothing to fear from listening to people whose views you strongly disagree with and often you'll have a lot to gain from it.
I just gave you evidence that it does by pointing to specific case studies throughout history. You then proceed with an assertion that it doesn't, backed up by you saying that less than 100% of people who view racist material become racists (well, of course, not everyone that's exposed to a virus becomes infected). This discussion is going nowhere.
Also I don't think the Nazis and Hutus were made into racists by academic discussion of genetics, and I don't think that people who study genetic factors of IQ are more likely to be Nazi-sympathetic. It's not like the Nazis were scientific racists, they were pseudo-scientific racists - they started out racist and went on a quest for the appearance of proof.
The pro-censorship side needs to prove the science->racism pathway and then prove that "deplatforming" works to reduce overall belief in or following of that path. Censorship tends to have a whiplash effect to those who notice it which is rarely taken into account by those who preach censorship. (Which is what you'd expect if the people who were doing the censoring didn't care about the issues and were simply using them to bolster their control of the censoring mechanism...)
Yes, racism is bad for the believer and for society but there is no evidence censorship could help and a ton of evidence that it is ruinous to democracies.
I didn't just discuss that. I also discussed mass shooters who were radicalized by these ideas that they read in online forums. No orators.
> Also I don't think the Nazis and Hutus were made into racists by academic discussion of genetics
Scientific racism is just one instantiation of it. Not every bad outcome of racism is going to be traced back to scientific racism.
But I will say that scientific racism was a part of Nazi thought. And the mass shooter who wrote the N word on his barrel, and Dylan Roof, were inspired by scientific racism. You can read his manifesto for yourself, or you can see Dylan Roof's interview on Youtube.
> The pro-censorship side needs to prove the science->racism pathway
I really don't see the point of this. I'm not even talking about science or exclusively about scientific racism. You're the one who pivoted the conversation in that direction.
The whole article is about a professor being forced to politicize and limit his research, presumably because it would be used to justify wrong-think.
To restate more generally though, the censoring side needs to prove the 'reading viewpoints -> copying actions' pipeline. Would a plainly written description of Hitler's beliefs create nazis of those who read it or is it the oration and the cult tactics that do that? If a nazi quotes a book in support of their views does that mean the book would cause someone without those views to become a nazi?
Sun Tzu counsels to know your enemy, how would this work if they were censored?
But it doesn't, unless it is extensive/complete. It just seems like it does because censored media is constantly reassuring us that the censorship is working, and that all reasonable people enjoy it.
You can't destroy ideas by censoring them from the largest outlets, you have to perpetually search out the smallest outlets (e.g. open everyone's mail) to make sure that these ideas aren't still infecting people, multiplying exponentially. You can't relax anywhere, for a moment. The only surefire way to kill or silence ideas is to kill or silence the people who hold them. That means you have to have systems in place to detect stray ideas, and processes in place to eliminate them.
It's not about surefire ways to silence someone. You're setting up a burden that's too high for no good reason. It's about whether it works in practice to an extent.
Does it though? Ideas are hard to kill. Just because you stop people from saying something in public, does not mean they aren't talking about it in private. In fact, oftentimes people even assume the thing you can't talk about must be really important or else they'd let you talk about it. And in turn, it holds more powerful and spreads further. I don't think censorship is really effective at stopping ideas
You say ideas are like viruses. Since when has trying to stop viruses worked?
It also makes sense that it works given our understanding of social contagion.
You're not trying to completely kill the idea. Just reduce its prevalence.
Also we have stopped viruses before, like SARS and Ebola
The way you learn how to defend your opinion is to engage with people who have different opinions, not having affirmation parties with people who are predisposed to agree with you about everything.
Now you and I, hey we know what’s good and morale so that’d be fine. But when it’s someone else who is in control, as it will be, then the “wrong” things get censored.
Prove it.
is it just a grift?
so, censorship may be morally bad or wrong and also very effective, and its the fact that it is effective and working is why there is a very loud objection to it
thats all im pointing out
sorry if maybe we are talking past each other!
And my point is, people can make a big deal about something because they think it's wrong, regardless of whether it ultimately works.
We all have a strong moral obligation to root out "reprehensible people with the wrong values." If you think otherwise then you don't understand what the word "reprehensible" means.
Shaming is a way of silencing people who disagree with you and that only works if you do it as a mob. Otherwise you're just making yourself feel good by expressing your disapproval. Mob shaming at least accomplishes something, individual shaming is just a lazy substitute for persuasion.
People certainly can change over time, but someone's state at a given time is what that person actually is at the time.
In the spirit of fairness, should one actually no-platform everyone using emotional rhetoric?
Your favourite media outlet will almost certainly have a lot less to say if we do. Depending on your PoV, this may or may not be a bad thing.
Of course it's never good to allow bad arguments into the "marketplace of ideas", because then they'll take over the market, but unfortunately that ship has sailed, or likely never arrived.
Q: Who gets to define "relatively harmless"?
"Advocating for peace" sounds pretty harmless, yet if you dare to mention any specifics - at least this year - it seems supporting it is deemed anything but harmless. Before my time, but seems the same applied in 1964 – 1973.
I don't think there's anything wrong with advocating for peace, from a free speech aspect, especially if someone is sincere. (Even if someone is completely brainwashed by whatever propaganda. And even if peace itself is a super meaningless term. After all wouldn't a totalitarian world government bring peace? Etc, etc.)
Each of us defines this for ourselves, using our own moral compass.
Because in a liberal democracy - or anywhere for that matter - not all ideas are of equal value. The same goes for Putin's Russia as it does for, say, Finland. You have to decide what you stand for, a culture has to decide what it wants to value.
Some ideas and actions are quite obviously, objectively anti-life, pro-misery.
Two people saying the same thing or doing the same thing are not inherently achieving the same outcome, pursuing the same end goal, arriving at their ideas from the same place, and so on. All of that matters in a big way.
A liberal, human rights respecting democracy with a constitution is objectively better if human well-being is your standard, than a theocracy. We have many centuries of experimentation and result at this point, no guessing is required.
Which is to say, deplatforming two very different people that are saying entirely different things and attempting to accomplish very different end goals, is not the same thing just because they're both the act of deplatforming.
Shooting and killing an innocent person at random on the street is not the same as shooting and killing a robber that has broken into your home and is intent on harming your family, despite the fact that they both involve you shooting and killing someone. The same exact moral principle is involved in the deplatforming premise.
The problem is that you’re begging the question. You’re assuming that maximizing individual freedom is what serves well being. Most humans disagree with that premise. Studies show, for example, that Christian conservatives are both happier and have more children than other Americans. Those are “objective” measures of “human well being.” Indeed, zooming out, nearly every highly individualistic, secular western society is in decline—to the point where they can’t even take care of their elderly population without importing religious Catholics from Latin America (in the US) or Muslims (Europe). “Ability to propagate one’s culture sustainably” certainly seems like at least one measure of success at serving human well being, no? And on that measure, modern "liberal democracies" are failing.
Now of course there are other ways to measure human well being, and liberal democracies do quite well on those measures. My point is that by 2022, it should be clear that people disagree on what constitutes a good life, and societal progress. In the last two decades, we've seen country after country reject secular liberal democracy. And even in the west, reaction is on the rise. A majority of Hindus, Afghans, and Iowans agree that San Francisco isn't their dream for the future of their own society. And if you want to dismiss that as "they're wrong and we're right," what you're advocating for looks more like a holy war than "liberal democracy."
Uh...reprehensible by whom?
You do realize that what's "reprehensible" is extremely subjective, right? And the same tactics and standards that you are using to silence opinions you don't like can therefore just as easily be used against you and yours by people who find your opinions reprehensible.
That's the whole point of promoting the free and open exchange of ideas, it protects everyone's ability to speak freely. And then individuals can make up their own minds about what is "reprehensible" and choose whether THEY want to listen to it or not. In other words, people don't need you to be an arbiter of what is reprehensible for other adults.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Rational or not, it's better for bad ideas (ignoring the even more pernicious question of who decides which ideas are "bad") to be examined than have them fester in dark corners.
You're talking about whether censorship is a good idea.
Separate discussion.
I suspect that the answer is "it depends on the culture". China seems to have a lot more control over the spread of anti-CCP ideas than Iran has over the spread of anti-regime ideas, and it isn't because of Iranian censors trying less or having worse tools. But the Iranian population seems to be much less conforming and more ready to rebel.
The US has a number of natural experiments that show that censorship is effective at silencing someone. Look at what happened to Trump and Alex Jones after they were deplatformed. Their reach was cut a lot and that wasn't even state censorship.
Russia had a natural experiment after Gorbachev lifted speech codes. People described the renaissance of new ideas being spoken that were previously stifled. Censorship worked.
It makes sense that it works given our understanding of social contagion. People aren't designed to believe facts. They're designed to join a team and believe whatever stuff their team believes in. Things like taboos or censorship or blacklists are effective, however repellent they may be.
If they were invited to speak then they already have an audience. Censoring them is working against the cause of fighting their ideas.
Protest or debate them if you consider their views reprehensible.
On one hand, you are acknowledging that some values are not based on rationality, and on the other hand you think they should be imposed upon those who don't share them by censorship?
They were doing this long before the Internet if that is what you mean! If you mean a platform as in showing up at a prestigious place, well being denied entrance is just as good, you just have your group stand outside and ask "What are they so afraid of? If our ideas are so bad/crazy/etc. can't they just easily shoot them down with social discourse?" and you get all the awareness and revision of the ideas that you want!
Exactly. No platforming is a naked display of power without any pretence at principle. If you can keep the power forever, great. You win. If not, well, turnabout is fair play and if you have no attachment to free speech or the marketplace of ideas yourself and you couldn’t maintain power with the benefit of censorship you’re probably in for a bad time.
Who gets to decide what is acceptable and what isn't?
Our/society's rights and wrongs has greatly changed over time and that is only possible because of both good and bad ideas being heard.
No one person should be deciding what's acceptable for the whole of soceity. Every individual should hear different ideas, good, bad and terrible, and decide for themselves what/who they agree with.
To your point, IIRC, the impact of deplatforming has been studied. Like when that troll Milo got bounced. It greatly diminished their reach and impact.
Sadly, some trolls (Alex Jones) have enough juice to spin off their own bespoke hate machines.
In 1963, was there anyone in America left unaware of George Wallace's project to preserve white supremacy?
Why is a private institution obligated to signal boost a national leader who openly defies the law?
I'm not sure them inviting popular racists to speak against human rights is really a good look for them in that situation, nor an instant solution to centuries of systemic racism in America at that time, even if they made some really good points in the debate.
I blindly accepted your claim that Wallace was not permitted to speak at Yale. That's not true. I regret not being more skeptical. I am fail. Please accept my most humble apology.
TLDR: Yale Political Union invites Wallace. President Kingman Brewster Jr blocks. Much drama. Including local black leaders and civil rights activists, who defended Wallace's appearance per principles of free speech and academic stuff. Brewster removes block. Two student groups reinvite Wallace. Wallace declines, though he did speak at other Ivy League schools.
Described more fully p104-106 in Hentoff's book "Free speech for me--but not for thee", which you cited.
Here's 4 more articles, to round out the reality-based version of that incident:
https://yalecollege.yale.edu/get-know-yale-college/office-de...
"Free Speech, Personified" NYT [2017] https://archive.ph/LvAHn About the 1963 incident, how Pauli Murray appealed to Brewster to let the white supremacist speak, and how Yale recommitted towards and continues to uphold free speech.
Blurb from 1963 about the incident. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1963/9/27/yale-provost-br...
Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression at Yale [1974?] https://yalecollege.yale.edu/get-know-yale-college/office-de...
--
FWIW, I now don't understand your other cites. [2] Is just common sense. [3] Unrelated. [4] Might be broken.
Though I do agree with Jack Newfield that mocking racists and neoreactionaries should be avoided. We now know that right wing partisans are personally insulted when their leader is criticized or mocked. (Probably something about having their identity wrapped up in the demagogue. Who knows.) So mockery just drives those partisans further away.
For what? I don't think we conversed yet in this thread.
> I blindly accepted your claim that Wallace was not permitted to speak at Yale. That's not true.
I can see that the context changed the meaning for you. Good thing I cited the source. For me, my original comment still rings true as a summary. Wallace was disinvited and ultimately did not speak at Yale.
There are a few errors in your TLDR. Kingman was provost at the time, not president, and it was reported that two groups of law students reinvited him, not two student groups.
> Donald Kagan reported that “two groups of law students issued another invitation to Wallace, reaffirming ‘the right of students to hear speakers of their own choosing without restraint or interference from those who would like to limit the right of free expression to those whose views coincide with theirs.’
It's not clear that Provost Brewster would've allowed Wallace to speak had he accepted the new invitation from these students. Also, the book describes how Brewster, later as president, accused an established student group of "playing games" with free speech. So it's not like he had a change of heart on the subject:
> "The occasion does not warrant departure from Yale’s principles of free speech. However, the use of free speech as a game, the lack of sensitivity to others, the lack of consideration for the community, and the lack of responsible concern for the university as an institution seem to me reprehensible..."
Regardless, it does not substantially change what happened. Wallace was disinvited and ultimately did not attend. Human relations aren't so easily Ctrl-Z'ed. It doesn't surprise me that some tried to reinvite him after the backlash. As you said, many in the community stood against Brewster's decision.
These days, it is common for students to shout down undesired speakers, so it's interesting to look back at when this practice may have began. For awhile, the University of Chicago was a place where such debates were encouraged. A group of Harvard students jokingly ranked it as the least fun school, less fun than West Point, for that reason [1].
> FIRE is just another dark money funded group working on the reactionary project to roll back civil rights, assert corporate rule. and end democracy.
Wow. Just going to slip that in at the end there huh? That's quite a take down. What do you think is dark about it? They're a non-profit which makes them subject to much more scrutiny than private organizations.
As for "asserting corporate rule" and "ending democracy", I think that's a ridiculous claim. They exist to defend the free speech rights that the ACLU now declines to do, as I mentioned elsewhere [2]. If anything, they're responsible upholding democracy by encouraging people to choose words over violence.
> [4] Might be broken.
Works for me. It's the last page of their podcast listing as of now.
Oops. I initially wrote "Provost" and then changed it. I gotta learn to trust my gut more.
I stand by the rest of my reply.
> These days, it is common for students to shout down undesired speakers...
And speakers show up to be shouted down. I think all the clapping and pwnage is lame.
But what do I know?
Remember when Bernie got shouted down in Seattle? As a Bernie fan, I was confused. Why would those kids mess with the candidate closest to their own views?
I actually know one of the persons who climbed onto the stage. Afterwards, I asked the Gen Z and Y people I know, and that person on stage, about the incident.
A kid name Xander, who I respected very much, said something very interesting. Paraphrasing: "All politicians should be challenged." So he agreed with the action, despite being a Bernie fan.
I can't speak to what's happening in higher ed. And I really don't, truly don't care. All that drama is just performance art.
But clearly something has changed. Direct action and confrontation are the norms again. For better or worse.
That's right. It can be a political win for you when people don't let you speak. The audience wants to hear both sides. Anyone who acts censoriously comes off as afraid of words, as if words are violence. And that's the exact argument that many (but not all) protesters today are using, that words are violence. We can instead draw a distinction between words and violence in order to encourage civil discourse. When you don't do that, the majority naturally suppresses minority views.
> A kid name Xander, who I respected very much, said something very interesting. Paraphrasing: "All politicians should be challenged." So he agreed with the action, despite being a Bernie fan.
What happened with Bernie [1] was not as bad as other cases where violence occurred, but preventing a speaker from talking is still against free speech principles.
> I can't speak to what's happening in higher ed. And I really don't, truly don't care. All that drama is just performance art.
You don't think those protesters are genuinely expressing themselves?
I can understand how it's hard for some of them to see why blocking speakers is not a good idea. It is a bit similar to what the likes of MLK Jr. and John Lewis supported, direct action by standing in the way, as was done at the lunch counters. But I don't think either of those civil rights defenders would have supported the current movements that seek to displace speakers. They wanted their ideological opponents to speak so that they could respond with reason and win more followers.
Nonviolent direct action, in itself, is not a bad thing, but it's problematic when you use that method to prevent someone from speaking. Words are not violence, so speech should be acceptable. If it's not, then we need more speech to discover where the disconnect is. Free speech is an old idea, not a new one, and it's been proven to work. It takes some effort to understand, and I would argue that such challenging issues are the very ones worth taking the time to learn.
Just about any large group of people, whether defined by by race, religion, nationality, or creed, will have bad individuals in it. And so the bad guys can almost always point to people from the other group that "started it".
When someone from the out-group commits an atrocity, it is just more proof of how bad that group is. When someone from the in-group commits an atrocity, it is an exception.
The point is, if you are going to write of a group (presumably, the other political party) as bad beyond redemption, you better have a damn good reason to think that you are the historical exception.
Also, violence isn't the only bad thing people do which justifies some sort of retribution.
Look at marjorie taylor green's most recent insanity.
"accusation in a mirror."
and it goes far beyond a handful of loud extremists who are given megaphones from the 'less-extreme' in their party (are they really the minority then?)
the Fox news led contingent have been screaming this 'under attack' narrative.
and they are openly setting the conditions for IRL violence.
Othering trans & queer people. freaking attacking drag queens which is SO silly..
claiming we are pedo groomers who give out hormones to tweens like candy. saying your identity will no longer be people like you in the future, straight & cis.
child abusers seem to be the one class that it's still acceptable to openly wish violence upon.
telling their audience to 'take a stand' or else lose their entire existence & identity produces extremism and prods armed extremists to show up in real life.
they are bringing guns to shut down libraries, ban books, pile into vans to go attack pride, passing discriminatory laws.
not even touching on poc, immigrants, & attacks on democracy/jan 6; i'm focusing on my identity since I can better speak to it. which btw funny how there is always an eminent caravan invasion (a specifically chosen word) right before the election.
we have always been victims of violence.
but this is a much bigger boiling kettle and one group is stoking the fire.
i clearly see this fear in the eyes of a large & heavily armed group.
they think they are under attack. what will they do to 'protect themselves and save our country'? what happens when the kettle boils over?
they're pointing those guns at me.
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/xtbx7t/marjorie_t...
In the US, there is not one group trying to do that, but a multitude of groups, some who are in power and some who are not, most of whom deny that they are trying to do what you charge them with.
It’s actually godwins second law of nature. how pertinent nazis are to the topic is not relevant, Godwin’s law will be brought up and very often inappropriately as even Godwin himself has noted.
“Godwin's law itself can be applied mistakenly or abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, when fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparison made by the argument is appropriate.[12]”
“Godwin himself has also criticized the overapplication of the law, claiming that it does not articulate a fallacy, but rather is intended to reduce the frequency of inappropriate and hyperbolic comparisons“
B. This is a comment page about censorship and this thread in particular is about one party trying to end open society
So nazis are a natural comparison, and the valid comparison was attempted to be censored and avoided by bringing up an internet meme in exactly the way the originator has criticized. But hey knowing the meme is a get out of jail free card, no civil discourse needed!
Just admit that the comment would have been a valid defense of the nazi party in its ramp up. No meme-ing out of that and there’s been no attempt to deny it, just distract from it.
There is, because literally every viewpoint is an implicit repudiation of some set of values, ie. aka intolerance. The whole point of tolerance is the recognition of this fact and that resolving such differences requires dialogue (edit: resolving them without violence that is).
As Popper said, only those views that directly incite violence or cannot be kept in check by public opinion should be silenced, otherwise you put the whole enterprise of tolerance in jeopardy.
But these days, it's become commonplace to equate words (or sometimes even silence) with violence.
The alternative looks like a replay of all the worst stuff from social repression to actual nuclear war-given the misinformation propping up the Russian invasion of Ukraine and nuclear threats.
Leftists are 100% part of the problem here in the US, I'm not sure what you would need to be smoking to think otherwise.
So you beat them to it?
Roger Baldwin, founder of the now gone-astray ACLU, said this [1],
> Host: "What possible reason is there for giving civil liberties to people who will use those civil liberties in order to destroy the civil liberties of all the rest?"
> Roger: "That's a classic argument you know, that's what they said about the nazis and the communists, that if they got into power they'd suppress all the rest of us. Therefore, we'd suppress them first. We're going to use their methods before they can use it."
> "Well that is contrary to our experience. In a democratic society, if you let them all talk, even those who would deny civil liberties and would overthrow the government, that's the best way to prevent them from doing it."
There's a much shorter version of this sentiment that people loved to use during the 2020 riots: "violence is the language of the unheard"
I guess it only applies to groups they like?
This has been the rule throughout human history, and it’s unfortunate that people (some in this thread even) are discovering the first principles for the first time for why we strive to apply the same standards to everyone, and not do carve outs. Unfortunately, politics is downstream from culture, and culture is downstream from power. When elite opinion makers decide that certain things are okay, those things are okay … like mass protests and rioting during a pandemic.
Today platforms have the same choices about what to air or not. Free Speech is also about not forcing people to say things they do not want, it is also about not forcing platforms to broadcast lies.
These are not the same thing.
There's a reason we divide history into the time before and after the invention of movable type made mass publication possible. We're living in a similar transitional era now, likely an even-more profound one. The resulting intellectual and political upheaval is so extensive that some things are going to have to change, including minds. Maybe even mine.
That's largely made possible by censorship. When you counter such views in groups that support them, you are likely to be silenced without your knowledge. Social media sites have built a whole suite of tools to aid in the removal of such content [1], and such tools are available to people from all ideologies. You might think that evens things out, but the secretive nature of the tools means that only a handful of people, relatively speaking, know how it all works. That creates a new "us vs. them" mentality, and we need to find our way back to a concept of shared humanity.
> There's a reason we divide history into the time before and after the invention of movable type made mass publication possible. We're living in a similar transitional era now, likely an even-more profound one. The resulting intellectual and political upheaval is so extensive that some things are going to have to change, including minds. Maybe even mine.
Social media today, like the printing press in its infancy, is understood and managed by a small number of people. In that environment you can still take a principled stance to argue against censorship and for transparency.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/reveddit/comments/sxpk15/fyi_my_tho...
Free speech is a good idea for game-theoretic reasons. That's it. Free speech lets people fight it out with only the occasional riot and attempted overthrow of the republic. That's better than the alternative.
It might not have happened yet, but I suspect we're heading in that direction. We've seen 'speech related' bans from Paypal and crowdfunding sites.
Paypal even deplatformed the (UK-based) Free Speech Union (although they reverted that decision after the backlash)
“Just build your own bank.” “Just build your own currency.”
To develop 'Social Network' or 'Digital Currencies', you need 'Server Farm', 'Internet', and 'Power Grid', and to have those you need everything from 'Intercontintental Data Cables' to 'Semiconductor Manufacturing', and way back to extraction and refining of raw materials..
https://www.vox.com/2017/8/20/16167870/aclu-hate-speech-nazi...
I'm not aware of any group intending to overthrow a government or otherwise do harm which was allowed to recruit and spread their propaganda as aggressively and freely as possible, and which was thwarted in their aims by nothing more than civil discourse. I don't know what experience he believes to be contrary to that classic argument, but that of the Nazis and Communists ain't it.
It certainly doesn't seem to work with modern propaganda or conspiracy theory. I'm certain QAnon and anti-vaxxers have been presented with arguments contrary to their claims, and those of white supremacists and anti-semites have been litigated for a century or more, and yet not only do they persist, but are experiencing a modern renaissance.
Show me an example where this proposition that "letting them all talk" is the best way to prevent organized violence and mayhem at scale. I can raise you book burnings and gulags and death camps galore.
Yes, the famous events that come from letting everyone speak: book burnings and death camps. If we could just burn enough books, we could keep books from being burned forever. If we silence enough people, we can keep people from being silenced.
Deplatforming doesn’t forcibly prevent speech, it just pushes it to the margins. You can still publish your book in favor of book burnings, but, in a deplatforming world, no major publisher would publish it, so you’d have to do a small independent print run that would likely be ignored.
This is the way the world has always worked. Publishers (including TV channels, newspapers, etc.) have always exercised discretion over what they thought was worthy to publish. What’s different today is that the human content moderation has largely disappeared, which has allowed the marginal voices (antivax on both left and right, QAnon, etc.) to flourish.
Edit: That’s not to say this content moderation has been perfect. It allows small communities to exercise behavior that the larger society finds abhorrent, such as refusing service to people of color. And so laws are passed regulating what small communities can do, which understandably pisses them off. Human systems are messy; there’s no absolutist answer that works, either in unbridled control or unbridled tolerance.
Well you're thinking wrong.
1930s Germany actually had hate speech laws.
Didn't help.
https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/4_an/4_Anti-Semitis...
Turns out they didn't have hate speech laws:
> In its application to statements about groups, the German law of insult had a development very similar to the Anglo-American law of libel.1 The Supreme Court had decided at an early date that statements about a class of people were punishable only if it could clearly be established that they were directed against definite individuals. An insulting remark about "Jews generally" was not considered within the statute. This view was reaffirmed in 1931 in a case in which a general attack on the Jews was held to be "not directed in a sufficiently recognizable manner against individual Jews." Similarly, an attack against the "German Jews" was held not to be suffi- ciently restricted, although in a few instances persons were convicted for insulting the Jewish inhabitants of small communities
Even known extremists, posting lies about people who were targetted for being Jewish, were let off, where the same lie about any random person could have led to a year in prison:
> In one of several cases against Julius Streicher, the editor of the Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer, a fine of 400 marks (then less than $100) was levied for an article which stated that a Jewish attorney, Dr. Wassertriidinger of Nuremberg, had committed perjury. The opinion of the court was that in spite of the seri- ousness of the libel and of a prior conviction of Streicher, no prison sentence be inflicted because "the defendant is a fanatic whose statements cannot be taken too seriously." Similar tenderness in meting out punishment was frequently explained by the characterization of the defendants as zealots.
> Furthermore, the immunity of the members of the Reichstag often protected Nazi depu- ties against criminal prosecution. Those deputies became the so-called re- sponsible editors of many newspapers—frequently one deputy was the editor of several newspapers—and thus made criminal prosecution for many libelous publications impossible. Although the Reichstag could waive the immunity of its members, it did so infrequently and then only after long delays.
So it looks like we tried not censoring them, and suprisingly, it didn't work.
> "Haters in the end bury themselves if you let them talk" - Jonathan Rauch
But sure, the real problem is Psychologists trying to adress systematic racism in their field. That's worth resigning about. Because they're trying to hide the truth, but also we should let them speak, in our academic Psychological publications, because it's obvious nonsense.
Also, how do you propose to convince people of this clearly-objective “truth” that you know, if you silence them from questioning and debating it? Do you think that’s ever worked?
Another more extreme example would be the Nazis. They went through early political suppression and existed in an environment where organized political street violence was already common. Who knows what the counterfactual was, but censoring and punching Nazis did not stop their rise. The Coming of the Third Reich by Richard Evans is a good book on this. It certainly seems that extremism is fostered by such environments.
Precisely. Nadine Strossen, president of the ACLU board from 1991-2008, argues that censorship helped the Nazis [1]
> "In the Weimar Republic there were laws very similar to the anti hate speech laws that still exist in Germany today. And they were very strictly enforced, there was an umbrella of Jewish organizations in the Weimar Republic, the head of which did a study. They said that these laws are by and large being strictly enforced, the prosecutions are being capably handled, there were many convictions, including of Nazis, and the Nazis loved the propaganda. They got far more attention than they otherwise would have, became free speech martyrs, actually had posters saying, 'In all of Germany why is this one man silenced?' They gained sympathy and attention that they otherwise never would have."
https://www.thefire.org/would-censorship-have-stopped-the-ri...
> Considering the Nazi movement’s core ideology, as espoused by Hitler in “Mein Kampf,” rested on an alleged conspiracy between Jews and their sympathizers in government to politically disempower Aryan Germans, it is not surprising that the Nazis were able to spin government censorship into propaganda victories and seeming confirmation of their claims that they were speaking truth to power, and that power was aligned against them.
I don't find it particularly convincing, but it does explain the strategy of complaining about free speech and censorship by "the jews" has a long history of success, with Nazis. Everyone else thinks, "oh these people are Nazis". But Nazis think, "It's a Jewish Conspiracy to silence the truth", because they are Nazis.
Can you elaborate on what you find unconvincing about appeals to open discourse? Are you saying you think censorship is more effective?
Suggesting that anti-hate speech laws are worth bringing up in this context is like mentioning Hitler was a vegetarian or banned smoking and seems to be sourced to a cartoonist, rather than a historian.
Hitler went to jail for 'high treason' after an attempted coup.
> Goebbels' tactic of using provocation to bring attention to the Nazi Party, along with violence at the public party meetings and demonstrations, led the Berlin police to ban the Nazi Party from the city on 5 May 1927.[65][66] Violent incidents continued, including young Nazis randomly attacking Jews in the streets.[62] Goebbels was subjected to a public speaking ban until the end of October.[67]
Goebbels, the victim of oppressive laws that stop you from randomly attacking people in the street. Why have we not learned this lesson from history? If you stop them attacking people violently in the streets, and removing the government, then it's your own fault what happens next.
I don’t know if it helped them amass the numbers/backing and cement the ideology that led to the attempted coup, but it definitely didn’t stop it. You can definitely see how pre-existing political street gangs made it easier to justify forming their own street gangs.
> Host: "What possible reason is there for giving civil liberties to people who will use those civil liberties in order to destroy the civil liberties of all the rest?"
> Roger: "That's a classic argument you know, that's what they said about the nazis and the communists, that if they got into power they'd suppress all the rest of us. Therefore, we'd suppress them first. We're going to use their methods before they can use it."
> "Well that is contrary to our experience. In a democratic society, if you let them all talk, even those who would deny civil liberties and would overthrow the government, that's the best way to prevent them from doing it."
Regarding your claim that this is only "faintly" related to free speech, you should know that Jonathan Haidt is very near to that issue. He co-authored a book [2] with the current president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), Greg Lukianoff. See also: Jonathan Haidt on the moral roots of liberals and conservatives [3]
[1] https://youtu.be/ND_uY_KXGgY?t=1225
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Coddling-American-Mind-Intentions-Gen...
This is the core of your argument, and if true, it’s unassailable. However, I don’t believe it’s true. Do you have evidence that it is? I don’t mean well-crafted arguments by respected people, but actual evidence.
For my part, I’ve seen evidence to the contrary. Elsewhere in this thread, there’s a study that cites the positive benefits of deplatforming on Reddit. I’ve also observed that online forums invariably turn into cesspits if they aren’t moderated. The larger the forum, the more aggressive that moderation has to be, to the point of banning and shadowbanning. HN does it. (For that matter, downvoting is another form of deplatforming, in that it literally pushes other people’s opinions out of sight.)
So there’s two points of evidence that make me believe that deplatforming is effective: one is academic; and one is the personal observation, that I think we’ve all shared, that moderated fora work better than unmoderated fora. What evidence do you have? Please summarize rather than just posting links.
> For my part, I’ve seen evidence to the contrary. Elsewhere in this thread, there’s a study that cites the positive benefits of deplatforming on Reddit.
I'm familiar with that study and I'm pretty sure they acknowledged that they only measured activity of individuals who remained on Reddit. It's really hard to definitively say what happens when groups move to private forums where you can no longer track their conversations. Also, what people say in public vs. private can be different [1] [2], and I think periods when that is true (such as right now) should be cause for consideration about whether or not censorship contributes to that. I'd argue that state or widespread cultural censorship does contribute to self-censorship by chilling conversations, and that people's views don't change when you block them from view. It's like sending someone to prison vs. rehabilitation. You might still argue that the views can't spread as easily, and I would argue against that too.
When groups are deplatformed, they find their own ways to communicate, either by joining private groups on services like Telegram or by creating their own platforms.
Then they are outside your sphere of influence and harder to reach. We are pushing them in this direction and I think we will end up regarding that as a mistake. But it's not like this is the first time that's happened.
You can join my talk next Wednesday, October 12th [3] to learn more about what I think with sources. It's the first one listed. This particular question is not the focus, but it is related. I'd also recommend listening to free speech defenders such as Ira Glasser, Nadine Strossen, Greg Lukianoff, and Jonathan Rauch, to name a few [4]. They've all spoken at length about this via many forms of media, books, podcasts, conferences, etc. Anyone interviewed on the So to Speak podcast is also great, particularly the earlier episodes where they bring in the older generations who've been defending free speech for their entire lives.
The evidence is there, but every time there is a new technology it takes time to collect. You can instead consider a principled approach based on what you know works between individuals. Jonathan Rauch makes a great case for this in his books and speaking.
> I’ve also observed that online forums invariably turn into cesspits if they aren’t moderated.
I think this is true! Yet, the more we censor, the more concentrated the echo chambers become, both the ones you agree with and the ones with whom you disagree. So IMO we must stop regarding "ugly" forums as a bad thing to be avoided. We all have difficult conversations in the real world, and I think curating the online world to look nice and pretty only provides more evidence to the idea that our current "solution" to online disagreements isn't working and appears to be infecting the real world.
> The larger the forum, the more aggressive that moderation has to be, to the point of banning and shadowbanning. HN does it.
That is evidence that it's popular, not that it is a good idea.
> (For that matter, downvoting is another form of deplatforming, in that it literally pushes other people’s opinions out of sight.)
I agree, and I think that has the unfortunate side effect of hiding some useful rebuttals, as I mentioned elsewhere in this thread [5].
> So there’s two points of evidence that make me believe that deplatforming is effective: one is academic; and one is the personal observation, that I think we’ve all shared, that moderated fora work better than unmoderated fora. What evidence do you have? Please summarize rather than just posting links.
I'd say the jury's out on how to effectively moderate fora. We're just at the start of this era and it's been quite a bumpy ride. Moderation, at the very least, should be transparent to the authors of the content, and that's not the case across all of the major platforms, including this one.
[1] https://youtu.be/-ByRjHwknbc?t=2892
[2] https://www.axios.com/2022/08/17/americans-voters-private-be...
[3] https://truthandtrustonline.com/pre-conference-workshops/
[4] https://www.reddit.com/r/reveddit/comments/wxfjvy/im_on_a_po...
I think is the study we've been discussing: https://seclab.bu.edu/people/gianluca/papers/deplatforming-w...
This is my understanding of their analysis, based on a fairly shallow read:
> Are accounts being created on an alternative platform after being suspended?
A: Yes, 59% of Twitter users and 76% of Reddit users moved to Gab.
> Do suspended users become more toxic if they move to another platform?
A: Reddit users became more toxic on Gab. 60% of Twitter users became less toxic and 20% became much more toxic, although the most toxic posts contained hatred against Twitter and complaints that their free speech and rights had been denied. (Toxicity was determined using Google's Perspective API.)
> Do suspended users become more active if they move to another platform?
A: Yes. A manual inspection determines that at least some of that increased activity is complaints about being suspended.
> Do suspended users gain more followers on the other platform?
A: Although users tend to become more toxic and more active after they move to the alternative platform, their audience decreases.
I think you could read this either way. Deplatforming is ineffective because it "radicalizes" those have been deplatformed. Or; deplatforming is effective because it reduces the spread of toxicity. Your post above is mainly focusing on the former; my post focused mainly on the latter.
The jury's still out, as you said. Personally, I'll continue to lean in favor of moderation, if only for the selfish reason that unmoderated communities are nasty places, and I want to participate in communities that "bring me joy," to indulge in a Kondo-ism. I think we've shown pretty conclusively, though, that your argument "The point is, countering negative ideas with suppression does not work" is premature at best.
I'll let you have the last word. Best wishes.
I agree with the NYT that censorship is rooted in fear [1].
Evidence is aplenty of the benefits of open discourse. In real-world places where open discourse is encouraged, people and ideas thrive. Also, saying "you need to be protected from other people's words" is not a winning argument in the public sphere. People want to be trusted to make their own decisions about how to feel, not have the importance of speech dictated to them.
It's really only a small minority who seek protection against certain viewpoints, and they too want to be able to express themselves. Unfortunately, censorship is also used against them, often with prejudice and without their knowledge [2]. History has shown how this has happened over and over, for example in "Don't Be a Sucker" (1947) [3]. If you choose to ignore it, that is your prerogative. History is evidence.
> I think is the study we've been discussing
Thanks for linking it, that's not the one I had in mind. To expand on my previous comment about how we should accept "ugly" forums, I think measuring toxicity is problematic. For one thing, it's a subjective measure. One man's trash is another's treasure. For example, here's an article from someone making a case in favor of Kiwi Farms [4]. But also, censorship can chill what people state publicly. I already shared Axios's write-up of a recent study that shows that these days, what people say publicly does not align with what they say privately [5].
> The jury's still out, as you said. Personally, I'll continue to lean in favor of moderation, if only for the selfish reason that unmoderated communities are nasty places, and I want to participate in communities that "bring me joy," to indulge in a Kondo-ism. I think we've shown pretty conclusively, though, that your argument "The point is, countering negative ideas with suppression does not work" is premature at best.
FWIW, I think moderation is fine if the author is informed of actions taken against their content. That is not happening consistently on any of the platforms though, and hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of users are impacted. Load 10 tabs of randomly selected active Reddit users on Reveddit [6]. Five or more will have had a comment removed within their first page of recent history. Almost none of these will have been notified, and all of their removed comments are shown to them as if they're not removed. I just did it and got 7. Reddit last reported 450 million monthly active users. And, Facebook moderators have a "Hide comment" button that does the same thing:
> "Hiding the Facebook comment will keep it hidden from everyone except that person and their friends. They won’t know that the comment is hidden, so you can avoid potential fallout." [7]
It's hard for me to believe that this has had no negative impact on discourse, particularly when our recent difficulties communicating across ideologies seem to align quite well with the introduction of social media. Things like this 1998 Firing Line episode [8] simply are not happening today. The depth of conversations these days is shallow and combative.
> I'll let you have the last word. Best wishes.
I will reject (graciously, I hope) your offer. I think continued discussion is the way forward.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/10/opinion/schools-banned-bo...
[2] https://www.reveddit.com/about/faq/#need
[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23X14HS4gLk
[4] https://corinnacohn.substack.com/p/the-world-should-not-need...
[5] https://www.axios.com/2022/08/17/americans-voters-private-be...
[6] https://www.reveddit.com/random
[7] https://www.agorapulse.com/blog/hide-comments-on-facebook/#o...
It's worked incredibly well. The United States - the country with easily some of the most well protected free speech laws - continues to be one of the most diverse and welcoming countries in the world. It's one of the most desired places for people to immigrate to, and continues to have a large foreign born population. By comparison, look at how a single digit percentage influx of foreigners rattled Europe. When racists do gather it usually results in plummetting support for their causes. This was the case with the Unite the Right rally: following the rally support for the movement dropped considerably.
By what metric has Chomsky's strategy failed? You seem to be postulating this as fact, without anything backing it up.
Islam played a role in that. Europe and Islam have been on mostly fighting terms since around 700 AD. There is much smaller cultural difference between the mostly Hispanic immigration into the US and the mainstream American culture than there is between the mostly secular European cultures and people from, say, Afghanistan, who express significant support for things such as Shari'a law.
Did it?
With the small difference being that those groups did not suppress speech by refusing to invite speakers to an event. Let's not put academia memberships and pogroms in the same category.
It's also worth noting that FIRE was expressly founded to deal with free speech violations in higher education. FIRE's president often discusses this, for example in a recent interview with Nick Gillespie [1]. FIRE recently expanded to cover all free speech issues, but that is where they got started. They've taken over a role that the ACLU has largely abandoned, since they now construe rights to be in conflict with each other, as former Executive Director Ira Glasser mentions [2] with the ACLU's new guidelines [3]:
> "The guidelines are designed to assist in consideration of the competing interests that may arise when such conflicts emerge. The guidelines do not seek to resolve the conflicts, because resolution will virtually always turn on factors specific to each case."
> "The potential conflict between advocacy for free speech and for equal justice in the fight against white supremacy is especially salient, but by no means unique in presenting tensions between ACLU values."
But you're not supposed to construe rights as being in conflict with each other, as implied by the 9th amendment [4]:
> The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people
Like balancing form and function, one should not take away from another.
[1] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/greg-lukianoff-saving-...
[2] https://youtu.be/x0Lc5b8Flto?t=87
[3] https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/aclu...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_Amendment_to_the_United_...
I'm annoyed, because there are lots of people who don't realise this is literally about survival for others, not just about free speech ideas.
There's a difference between words and actions. Words fo not kill. No, words are not violence no matter how much people try to claim otherwise.
Furthermore, censoring people does nothing to reduce a groups ability to kill. Taking away someone's public voice does not take away their capacity to carry out violence. Disinviting a speaker or banning a book does not magically make people's guns disappear.
But I don't like when the vote ranks stifle good retorts, which is what has now happened here. Logged out users won't see this entire thread of replies because the comment to which you are replying is marked "dead".
What's the solution?
Have y'all considered that this is what the "talking" looks like?
I see a whole bunch of noise about "CENSORSHIP IS RAMPANT!" and I'm kind of like, no silly -- this noise IS the signal.
For example, in 1963 Yale disinvited George Wallace, who was popular in the deep south, as a speaker. As a result, observers were deprived of a chance to hear opposing speakers' arguments. To some, Yale appeared censorious. As Jonathan Rauch describes [2], that's not good for your case. Censorship is all these characters need to gain new followers. Wallace ran for president in 1968 and nearly forced a plurality which would have given him significantly more influence [3].
Early episodes of the podcast So to Speak [4] by FIRE can inform the direction that can get us talking again. Basically, open and civil discourse is the way. The podcast demonstrates, through interviews with free speech advocates, a bunch of examples showing why that is a good target to shoot for, and how to achieve it.
[1] https://archive.org/details/freespeechformeb0000hent
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0T9XSG73kY&t=4889s
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Wallace_1968_presidenti...
[4] https://www.thefire.org/category/newsdesk/so-to-speak/page/1...