You can’t take away the internet from the users of sites like this, but there is value in making it harder for them to be found by new members and legally punishing the worst actors
The point is network effects. The reason people use Twitter is not because its functionality is better than any other site, it's because there is an audience. Censoring people off Twitter means that they are basically talking to themselves, which is why goodthink types are so eager to do so.
Censors also point out that Twitter is a private company (although Twitter and other tech giants censor at the behest of and in cooperation with government organs) and doesn't owe you a platform. That said, natural monopolies such as the electric company cannot cut off your service, even if you say things that they don't like, such as opposing the latest rate hike.
Finally, censors claim that denial of Twitter access isn't really "censorship" since you can take your message elsewhere. The whole point of speech is to be heard. By that logic, you also had freedom of speech in the Soviet Union, as long as you were entirely alone.
I really believe in freedom of speech, even for detestable speech, as long as it doesn't seem to be causing an immediate physical threat to others. Even for really rotten people. I would *rather* they be talking and communicating, rather than actually *doing* rotten things. And the more these sites get closed down the more they get built back up again in secret/encrypted ways, where we can't even monitor what the rotten people are up to.
Hear hear Freddie. Spot on, sorry to say. Hate lives in the heart. Can’t police that. Yes, as you say, offer better alternatives. But sometimes, haters gonna hate. Alas.
Wasn't the whole thing with Kiwi Farms that they weren't just talking about stuff, they were coordinating doxxing and swatting campaigns against specific individuals, leading to multiple suicides over the years?
I think you're right that it is in practice impossible to ban hateful communities from forming in the dusty corners of the internet. But it seems to me like it ought to be totally possible to annihilate hate communities foolish enough to expose themselves through high profile real-world action.
There are two issues with trying to "moderate" (read: censor) content:
(1) You pointed out this, but I'll go a step further and suggest that by "banning" these groups, you give them a legitimacy they did not have. People think that "deplatforming" people removes their legitimacy, but it doesn't. Among certain groups, if you're "deplatformed" that simply means that you are exactly what you portray yourself to be: the person that speaks the truth the amorphous they don't want the masses to hear. This is because . . .
(2) Censorship (even if it's given the harmless sounding title of "content moderation") has, no matter how well-intentioned it started out, always been turned on people who are actually speaking the truth the amorphous they don't want the masses to hear. In the case of the US, we started off by "deplatforming" Alex Jones, and the next thing you know we're kicking people off of Twitter for telling the truth about a laptop simply because it was a story that would have destroyed the media's favored presidential candidate and telling the truth everyone knew about masks, lockdowns, and the vaccines regarding COVID. The "truth" could sometimes be as simple as the government collected data that Twitter claimed someone might "misinterpret," which meant "interpret accurately but not in a way we want." And that is why people will default to the side of the moderated and not the moderators. We've seen this pattern endlessly repeated.
As I said, even when well-intentioned (and really, in the US, the intentions have never been anything but self-serving, so they're not even good), "moderation"/censorship will always and without exception be used as a political weapon or a weapon to control the masses for the interests of the elite. And anyone with a brain and any sense of self-preservation should demand that everyone be allowed to speak, no matter how vile what they say is because honestly the bigger threat is the "power of moderation" ending up in the wrong hands.
"You either address the problem at its foundations by presenting more appealing alternatives or you don’t."
Well, they don't have any appealing alternative. Progressives can't actually answer the criticisms of the reactionaries because they don't understand what they are deconstructing and destroying. And if you can't win an argument, silencing is the only alternative.
I don't like calling these sites "hate speech". Whatever is on them, they are outside of the official narratives. This is their great sin.
The oligarchy doesn't want they narratives and mind control questioned by anyone. They hate memes, which can spread subversive thoughts easier than a 10,000 manifesto.
Just weigh the relative power of the banned and the ban imposers and decide if you want to support the oligarchy or those who oppose it.
Very much on board with the overall sentiment, but it's not quite this simple.
Obviously, the publication of some content has to be banned -- child porn, snuff films, personal bank account information, etc. And surely some examples of doxxing and harassment fall into that category. I’m not sure exactly where the red line is (and I don’t trust either law enforcement or public opinion to draw it), but there is one somewhere.
I do think it is true that left-ish / liberal attempts to Stop Internet Hate via aggressive censorship are both bad on the merits and doomed to fail. I personally think the red line of censorship should be way, way far out there — that we should allow for public discussion of all kinds of wacky, disturbing, offensive, stupid and dangerous ideas. But there’s gotta be regulation and enforcement at some point.
Is it a whack-a-mole game? Sure, but so is combating things like tax fraud and theft and pollution and murder. It’s not an existential fix; those don’t exist. It’s just part of the humdrum process of maintaining a society.
One thing to add: There are countries, such as China, that have more or less effectively controlled the internet; extremism, mainstream-ism, and everything in between. I'm not saying that we should do that in the US (please, let's not) but I am saying that it can be done via combinations of AI, cheap labor, tightly controlled apps, and authoritarian censorship policies. I'd imagine that as the world and the internet marches forward (or is it backward?) that China's ways of handling expression on the internet will become a kind of template. Here's to hoping that Western democracies can find a better way.
Kiwi Farm seems awful, but I am fundamentally uncomfortable with internet infrastructure companies banning sites hosting legal (or even legal gray area) content.
Once you are in the business of banning sites, you are in the business of banning sites and that is a sticky business. I don't think that there is a clear line (at least in a lot of people's minds) between KF and Truth Social, the GOP or even Substack (which has repeatedly come under criticism for hosting topics which shall-not-be-named here). It's one thing for Cloud Flare to say we are not in the business of banning sites. But once they do, they are going to be subject to pressure to ban a lot of other things. This includes Ted Cruz calling hauling them before a congressional committee to complain that they haven't also kicked BLM or whatnot off the internet.
Also, the fact that CloudFlare can kick KF off the internet suggests that it has something like monopoly power over internet access. If you have monopoly power, or near monopoly power over something as essential as internet access, I think you kinda have to act as a common carrier, and if you don't voluntarily, Congress should make you.
I'll add that some of the stories about what KF has done do seem pretty awful. The fix for it probably is to beef up/create laws relating to internet harassment, esp. where it spills over into real life, even if I do have some concern that Congress could draft such laws and/or that such laws would be enforced in non-troubling ways.
I think it's interesting that this site allied Marjorie Taylor Greene with trans-activists. That Venn diagram intersection has to be the tiniest ever. (evidently MTG was swatted twice - seems like we need some serious SWAT response reform).
"address the problem ['the existence of extremist feelings within the populace'] at its foundations by presenting more appealing alternatives"
The word "appealing" is being made to bear more weight here than it is capable of. The problem with "extremist" views is not that they aren't "appealing." Such views are clearly powerfully appealing to some people. The problem (if there is a problem) with such views is that they are both false and dangerous - and all the more dangerous for being superficially "appealing."
As for "presenting an alternative" there is certainly no shortage of institutions and platforms delivering the official, mainstream narrative. But for some reason the "extremists" don't find that narrative appealing. They would rather have an alternative.
Kiwi Farms is a museum of our internet culture.
Sorry to see it go.
Take a big helping of safetyism and a Do Something attitude, and you’ll be playing the internet extremism whackamole banning game forever.
You can’t take away the internet from the users of sites like this, but there is value in making it harder for them to be found by new members and legally punishing the worst actors
The point is network effects. The reason people use Twitter is not because its functionality is better than any other site, it's because there is an audience. Censoring people off Twitter means that they are basically talking to themselves, which is why goodthink types are so eager to do so.
Censors also point out that Twitter is a private company (although Twitter and other tech giants censor at the behest of and in cooperation with government organs) and doesn't owe you a platform. That said, natural monopolies such as the electric company cannot cut off your service, even if you say things that they don't like, such as opposing the latest rate hike.
Finally, censors claim that denial of Twitter access isn't really "censorship" since you can take your message elsewhere. The whole point of speech is to be heard. By that logic, you also had freedom of speech in the Soviet Union, as long as you were entirely alone.
I really believe in freedom of speech, even for detestable speech, as long as it doesn't seem to be causing an immediate physical threat to others. Even for really rotten people. I would *rather* they be talking and communicating, rather than actually *doing* rotten things. And the more these sites get closed down the more they get built back up again in secret/encrypted ways, where we can't even monitor what the rotten people are up to.
Hear hear Freddie. Spot on, sorry to say. Hate lives in the heart. Can’t police that. Yes, as you say, offer better alternatives. But sometimes, haters gonna hate. Alas.
Wasn't the whole thing with Kiwi Farms that they weren't just talking about stuff, they were coordinating doxxing and swatting campaigns against specific individuals, leading to multiple suicides over the years?
I think you're right that it is in practice impossible to ban hateful communities from forming in the dusty corners of the internet. But it seems to me like it ought to be totally possible to annihilate hate communities foolish enough to expose themselves through high profile real-world action.
There are two issues with trying to "moderate" (read: censor) content:
(1) You pointed out this, but I'll go a step further and suggest that by "banning" these groups, you give them a legitimacy they did not have. People think that "deplatforming" people removes their legitimacy, but it doesn't. Among certain groups, if you're "deplatformed" that simply means that you are exactly what you portray yourself to be: the person that speaks the truth the amorphous they don't want the masses to hear. This is because . . .
(2) Censorship (even if it's given the harmless sounding title of "content moderation") has, no matter how well-intentioned it started out, always been turned on people who are actually speaking the truth the amorphous they don't want the masses to hear. In the case of the US, we started off by "deplatforming" Alex Jones, and the next thing you know we're kicking people off of Twitter for telling the truth about a laptop simply because it was a story that would have destroyed the media's favored presidential candidate and telling the truth everyone knew about masks, lockdowns, and the vaccines regarding COVID. The "truth" could sometimes be as simple as the government collected data that Twitter claimed someone might "misinterpret," which meant "interpret accurately but not in a way we want." And that is why people will default to the side of the moderated and not the moderators. We've seen this pattern endlessly repeated.
As I said, even when well-intentioned (and really, in the US, the intentions have never been anything but self-serving, so they're not even good), "moderation"/censorship will always and without exception be used as a political weapon or a weapon to control the masses for the interests of the elite. And anyone with a brain and any sense of self-preservation should demand that everyone be allowed to speak, no matter how vile what they say is because honestly the bigger threat is the "power of moderation" ending up in the wrong hands.
"You either address the problem at its foundations by presenting more appealing alternatives or you don’t."
Well, they don't have any appealing alternative. Progressives can't actually answer the criticisms of the reactionaries because they don't understand what they are deconstructing and destroying. And if you can't win an argument, silencing is the only alternative.
I don't like calling these sites "hate speech". Whatever is on them, they are outside of the official narratives. This is their great sin.
The oligarchy doesn't want they narratives and mind control questioned by anyone. They hate memes, which can spread subversive thoughts easier than a 10,000 manifesto.
Just weigh the relative power of the banned and the ban imposers and decide if you want to support the oligarchy or those who oppose it.
Very much on board with the overall sentiment, but it's not quite this simple.
Obviously, the publication of some content has to be banned -- child porn, snuff films, personal bank account information, etc. And surely some examples of doxxing and harassment fall into that category. I’m not sure exactly where the red line is (and I don’t trust either law enforcement or public opinion to draw it), but there is one somewhere.
I do think it is true that left-ish / liberal attempts to Stop Internet Hate via aggressive censorship are both bad on the merits and doomed to fail. I personally think the red line of censorship should be way, way far out there — that we should allow for public discussion of all kinds of wacky, disturbing, offensive, stupid and dangerous ideas. But there’s gotta be regulation and enforcement at some point.
Is it a whack-a-mole game? Sure, but so is combating things like tax fraud and theft and pollution and murder. It’s not an existential fix; those don’t exist. It’s just part of the humdrum process of maintaining a society.
One thing to add: There are countries, such as China, that have more or less effectively controlled the internet; extremism, mainstream-ism, and everything in between. I'm not saying that we should do that in the US (please, let's not) but I am saying that it can be done via combinations of AI, cheap labor, tightly controlled apps, and authoritarian censorship policies. I'd imagine that as the world and the internet marches forward (or is it backward?) that China's ways of handling expression on the internet will become a kind of template. Here's to hoping that Western democracies can find a better way.
Kiwi Farm seems awful, but I am fundamentally uncomfortable with internet infrastructure companies banning sites hosting legal (or even legal gray area) content.
Once you are in the business of banning sites, you are in the business of banning sites and that is a sticky business. I don't think that there is a clear line (at least in a lot of people's minds) between KF and Truth Social, the GOP or even Substack (which has repeatedly come under criticism for hosting topics which shall-not-be-named here). It's one thing for Cloud Flare to say we are not in the business of banning sites. But once they do, they are going to be subject to pressure to ban a lot of other things. This includes Ted Cruz calling hauling them before a congressional committee to complain that they haven't also kicked BLM or whatnot off the internet.
Also, the fact that CloudFlare can kick KF off the internet suggests that it has something like monopoly power over internet access. If you have monopoly power, or near monopoly power over something as essential as internet access, I think you kinda have to act as a common carrier, and if you don't voluntarily, Congress should make you.
I'll add that some of the stories about what KF has done do seem pretty awful. The fix for it probably is to beef up/create laws relating to internet harassment, esp. where it spills over into real life, even if I do have some concern that Congress could draft such laws and/or that such laws would be enforced in non-troubling ways.
I think it's interesting that this site allied Marjorie Taylor Greene with trans-activists. That Venn diagram intersection has to be the tiniest ever. (evidently MTG was swatted twice - seems like we need some serious SWAT response reform).
"address the problem ['the existence of extremist feelings within the populace'] at its foundations by presenting more appealing alternatives"
The word "appealing" is being made to bear more weight here than it is capable of. The problem with "extremist" views is not that they aren't "appealing." Such views are clearly powerfully appealing to some people. The problem (if there is a problem) with such views is that they are both false and dangerous - and all the more dangerous for being superficially "appealing."
As for "presenting an alternative" there is certainly no shortage of institutions and platforms delivering the official, mainstream narrative. But for some reason the "extremists" don't find that narrative appealing. They would rather have an alternative.