[Nursie]

> "Finally, censorship is always bad, for a variety of well understood reasons that we don't need to repeat here. But in the case of some types of content, it has special dangers. When you censor a web site based on the extreme or dangerous views of its creator(s), you haven't stopped those people from thinking that way. You haven't made them go away. You certainly haven't stopped the people who hold those views from doing whatever else they do when they're not posting on the Internet. What you've actually done is given yourself a false sense of accomplishment by closing your eyes, clapping your hands over your ears, and yelling "Lalala! I can't hear you!" at the top of your voice. Pretending a problem doesn't exist is not only not a solution, it makes real solutions harder to reach."

I no longer believe this, when cesspits of alt-right, racist assholes use such grandiose ideals to spread their hatred, which then bubbles out into the real world.

The idea that good ideas will win, and that common sense and rationality will take the day, are not really supported by what we see around the net. Instead the greater internet fuckwad theorem holds more true, and the spread of vile, violent ideologies is enabled.

Freedom of speech is a protection from government, but I think those providing speech platforms, such as hosting companies, should probably take more responsibility for what they propagate.

[djsumdog]

There was a time when the cesspit were all the people promoting the debauchery of homosexuality, or the idea that blacks were somehow equal to whites in intelligence and genetic disposition. These were greatly offensive statements at one time. People were ridiculed and deplatformed for having them.

Translate the Bible into a barbaric language like German or English? That caused great offense. People were excommunicated and even killed for that (like Wycliffe).

The book "The Coddling of the American Mind" goes into this concept that ideas and speech are not violent. We do a huge disservice to young people today by teaching them to fear ideas and block speakers at Universities they don't agree with. Listening to other viewpoints and challenging them makes us better thinkers. By banning speech is to say, "I agree people are too stupid to make their own decisions. Let's make the world 'safe' for them and ban ideas I don't agree with."

I highly recommend Brendan O'Neill's video on offensiveness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtWrljX9HRA

[Nursie]

> "By banning speech is to say, "I agree people are too stupid to make their own decisions. Let's make the world 'safe' for them and ban ideas I don't agree with."

1. People are stupid. Really, really stupid. Especially when given the means to surround and reinforce themselves with other idiots. See for example - antivax and alt-med in general, chemtrails any number of ridiculous conspiracy theories that propagate through the web.

2. These people are not thinkers, they are not open to having their viewpoints challenged and reason will not move them from their course.

I agree, this whole area is massively subjective, I'm not saying I have a solution. But this black and white idea that censorship is always bad, and the notion that we have a functional marketplace of ideas which people re-evaluate based on reason is ... well it's a fantasy.

[dlivingston]

> People are stupid. Really, really stupid.

But thank god you and I are smart - really, really smart. So smart, in fact, that we should take it upon ourselves to police the thoughts and words of the 'lessers'.

[Nursie]

Not what I claimed, I'm not saying I have a solution here, or that anyone should be empowered to arbitrate. Merely that the idealist position is also pretty wrongheaded.

[viklove]

> I'm not saying [...] that anyone should be empowered to arbitrate.

> I think those providing speech platforms [...] should probably take more responsibility for what they propagate.

Hmm... It seems like that's exactly what you said earlier. Walking it back now?

[Nursie]

> Hmm... It seems like that's exactly what you said earlier. Walking it back now?

Nope.

First one is in reference to government, I'm not suggesting that the government should have the power to shut people down, as I've said in multiple places, I'm not sure what a good solution looks like.

The second one is about platform owners, who are not governments, but should take some more responsibility for spreading (for instance) hate by providing their platform to people.

[mr_spothawk]

> These people

I'm not sure what group of people you just Other'd, but I am suggesting that you re-read your post and consider:

a) whether you still hold the view you espoused 13 minutes ago that some group of humans are non-thinking.

b) whether the message you're trying to make could be more clearly articulated.

to me, it reads like you're making really broad statements which you believe to be immune to any challenge or reasoning.

[Nursie]

> I'm not sure what group of people you just Other'd,

Then try re-reading my comment.

> a) whether you still hold the view you espoused 13 minutes ago that some group of humans are non-thinking.

I said they are not thinkers, and they aren't, they aren't interested in competing ideas or what's factual, and as such high ideals as the marketplace of ideas coming true in the end are at best naive.

> b) whether the message you're trying to make could be more clearly articulated.

I was pretty clear - a lot of people are very stupid. Look at how they hurt themselves and each other, look at reality tv, look at ... hell you don'[t have to look very far.

Again, I'm not claiming to be the smartest guy in the room, neither am I claiming to have a solution. I'm just trying to point out that these abstract ideals about ideas being allowed to propagate and compete, about allowing and supporting the dissemination of hatred from your platform in order to better fight it in the open, that when you do fight them with better arguments, people will listen... these ideas are pretty demonstrably flawed.

[throwaway8879]

People ought to have as much a right to be as stupid as they want, as you have the right to be as smart as you clearly are.

[Nursie]

Really? So we should sell 'em bombs and to hell with it if they blow up the neighbourhood?

[egypturnash]

I have come to the point of view that what radical free speech people deride as "censorship" is often better described as "an immune system".

When you catch a cold, it is because viruses have used a bunch of subtle hacks to convince some of your cells to stop being part of you and start making more viruses instead. Your immune system comes in and stops them from doing this. Sometimes it makes mistakes, sometimes it can be co-opted and used as a viral host itself (see HIV for instance), but on the whole it keeps your cells busy being a part of you rather than striking out on their own agenda, whether it's one they arrived at by random mutations like most cancers, or one that crawled in under their normal defenses like a virus.

Running a platform that gives a voice to anyone and everyone, up to the limits of "whatever gets the platform-runner hauled into court and fined for more money than they make off of spreading the view that got them in trouble", is like actively providing places for diseases to grow.

[luckylion]

To keep the analogy: if you live in a quarantined clean room to protect your immune system from the bad germs, viruses etc, you're going to end up with a very weak immune system. If you expose your immune system to the world, it's going to learn how to fight specific threats it'll encounter.

[saalweachter]

And yet for the really virulent stuff -- the polio, the smallpox, the measles -- we don't rely on random exposure, we innoculate with dead and fragmented pieces of the virus while working to exterminate it in the wild.

[luckylion]

That would be the illegal stuff, I think. We're dealing with that on a societal basis. I suppose the extent depends on the trust we place into the ability of citizens to not collectively fall for something just by being exposed. If we all had very frail immune systems, doing our very best to extinguish the common cold would make sense. Since we don't, let's keep those reasonably safe that are in danger and let the rest deal with it.

For anything else, it may quickly become problematic if those that get scared or upset the most over news stories are in charge of declaring when to quarantine people, neighborhoods or states.

[mar77i]

No, wait.

Just because someone thinks the world is flat, doesn't mean I have to disagree with them on most issues, except MAYBE on space exploration, and certain academic fields connected to it. Believing the earth was flat takes nothing at all away from their ability to judge humans, celebrate traditions and reciprocate favors. I do not buy into "getting spooked" by ideas I don't identify with, because if I draw a line in the sand that keeps moving towards me, maybe it indeed moves because of my own bad reasoning.

[ulzeraj]

But who decides and points out what should be removed. What is “far right” from the point of view from someone who is “far left”?

It began with Alex Jones and that kinda made sense but now the same people and institutions are asking for the head of individuals like Phillip DeFranco.

The thing about censorship is that it never stops where you think it should.

[munificent]

> it never stops where you think it should.

Friendly reminder that "slippery slope" is a fallacy.

100% censorship is obviously bad. It remains to be shown that 0.1% censorship inevitably leads to it.

[DuskStar]

> Friendly reminder that "slippery slope" is a fallacy.

It's a fallacy when there isn't a plausible mechanism that allows each step along a path to make future steps easier. Lots of things actually are slippery slopes. Censorship is almost certainly one of those things. From a comment I made last week regarding YouTube's "let's ban hacking videos" decision:

> ... "slippery slope" holds when each change makes it easier to enact further change in the same direction, and that seems to be the case here. "censor CP" + "censor porn" is an easier sell than the original "censor CP" step was, thanks to infrastructure already being in place. Adding copyright on top of that was easier still. And then violent content, and then aid to terrorism, and then politics we don't like, and gun repair videos, and ammo reloading, and...

[harimau777]

It is a fallacy to say that the slippery slope will always occur. However, that does not mean that it is invalid to argue that in a given situation a slippery slope is likely to occur. In cases such as this I think we can reasonably assume that the "never" in "it never stops where you think it should" is not meant to be taken literally but is instead being used as a figure of speech for "very unlikely".

[all2]

A logical fallacy, sure, but in terms of political ideologues "a little at a time" is a methodology for making massive changes. See "Rules for Radicals" and the Hegelian Dialectic.

Waving your hand and declaring "Fallacy!" isn't really a refutation. It's a cheap way to avoid actually addressing the argument.

[captainredbeard]

Fallacies are sometimes correct, e.g. “with this therefore because of this” isn’t a bad starting point when triaging. Relying upon a fallacy as your sole argument is a problem.

[mar77i]

Speaking of fallacies... Beware of potential recursion. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Fallacy_fallacy

[klyrs]

> ...now the same people and institutions are asking for the head of individuals like Phillip DeFranco.

I'm fairly lefty, and haven't heard of this Phillip DeFranco before. Surely if I consult my biased google bubble, it will show me the dirt on him? Well, not really:

> “Hey, writer here,” Roose responded. “This collage is just a sample from his viewing history. Some far-right, some not.” [1]

And reading the original NYT article... they aren't asking for anybody's head. And this is where it gets really interesting from a free speech perspective. Phillip got offended because he was in a collage of somebody's viewing history. He might have been a step along somebody's slippery slope, whose politics are/were too extreme for his comfort -- or it might just be correlation without causation. The article didn't dig into Phillip and denounce him.

In fact, the thrust of the NYT article is that YouTube's recommendations take folks from moderate content, and send them on a spiral to more extreme content.

You're free to describe all of that as 'asking for heads,' but that really doesn't seem to be the case here.

[1] https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/youtuber-philip-defran...

[stcredzero]

You're free to describe all of that as 'asking for heads,' but that really doesn't seem to be the case here.

It's a staple of the Far Left in 2019, to vilify purely through association. For example, every time I've asked for proof that Tim Pool is "Alt-Right," I've only ever received vilification through association as "proof." The same pseudo logic is used to claim that Ben Shapiro (a devout yamaka wearing adherent of Judaism and arguably a top target of the Alt Right) is "Alt-Right."

In fact, the thrust of the NYT article is that YouTube's recommendations take folks from moderate content, and send them on a spiral to more extreme content.

As far as I can tell, this is just more of the tactic of moving the Overton Window left, by re-labeling the center as "Far Right." It's dishonest and manipulative. I say this as a lifelong Democratic voter and someone who tests center-left on the Political Compass test.

[misterdoubt]

What? Who is "asking for the head of" Philip DeFranco?

[Timpy]

> Finally, censorship is always bad, for a variety of well understood reasons that we don't need to repeat here.

I agree that uncensored speech is good, but when I read this I knew it would come up as problematic. I think we've all seen a lot of bad arguments sneak their axioms into the conversation with a line like this (but again, I agree with what's written here). Does uncensored speech fall into the category of "it goes without saying"? Perhaps I should learn more about censorship so I can effectively advocate against it, just like the article says.

[captainredbeard]

“The idea that good ideas will win, and that common sense and rationality will take the day, are not really supported by what we see around the net.”

Maybe you’re wrong?

[chipotle_coyote]

And maybe they aren't. It's going to be hard to look around the net and draw a conclusion either way that everyone -- or possibly even most people -- will accept as definitive. There's an increasing number of studies that show exposure to fringe and extreme views consistently is more likely to foster extremism rather than inoculate against it, and as much as I wish that weren't so, I reluctantly find them rather convincing.

I find NearlyFreeSpeech.Net's position on hosting "really offensive content" to be well-reasoned and thoughtful. I'm just not convinced it's ultimately true. The web has brought unparalleled good to the world in the mere quarter century it's been with us. It's also arguably been the prime mover in bringing back flat earthers, Nazis, and measles. When you ask "don't the anti-vaxxers, climate change denialists, and white supremacists deserve great web hosting, too?", maybe the answer is "no, not really."

[Nursie]

Tell that to the people gunned down in NZ with a rifle covered in 'chan slogans ... ?

I'm not saying censorship is good, let's go full-on NewSpeak here, or even that I have any sort of solution to propose.

I just don't think this ideal, that censorship is necessarily always bad and that the best, only way to fight evil ideas is with discussion and better ideas ... I don't think holds up to scrutiny in the face of reality.

[djsumdog]

Do you blame 4chan? Really? An emotionally disturbed person may have more input today in the Internet age, but the majority of 4chan users don't go out shooting mosques.

This was one fucked up Australian, from a country of over 30 million; and the first Aussie to commit a mass shooting since 1996.

I do not think it's right to place the blame on a bunch of random people saying things. They didn't murder all those people. Speech is not violence. Violence is violence, and that one guy decided to take it off the computer, hop across the pond, somehow get a ton of firearms in a country where they are heavily restricted, and then shoot up a bunch of innocent civilians.

There are millions of other Aussies and Kiwis who probably chat on the same networks he was on, and never take up violence. They may speak up against things they think are wrong or that they don't like, either online or in public spaces, but there is a big difference between speech/saying things and murder.

[Nursie]

The atmosphere of open denigration of others certainly seems to be contributing to the rash of violent alt-right and white-supremacist incidents we're seeing yes.

Do I 'blame' 4chan? Not in any absolute sense, especially as he did his live broadcast to 8chan. But I'm willing to say that I think participation in these online communities contributed, yes.

[Frondo]

Speech leads to violence, and even a somewhat limited reading of the history of genocides in the 20th century ought to make it difficult to dispute that.

If the Hutus hadn't been broadcasting anti-Tutsi sentiment for a few hundred days before the violence, it's tough to say that the Hutus would've suddenly risen up to kill about 70% of the Tutsi population there all of a sudden.

[djsumdog]

Speech also leads to civil rights, Gandi's campaign to free Indian from the Raj .. and sure you can say, "Well that speech didn't advocate violence."

What about The American Revolution? or unions/strikes? There are times in history where speech lead people to push through those tipping points, and sometimes they resulted in violent revolution and others in non-violent revolution. (and we're generally okay with the violent revolutions, so long as the 'right' side wins).

Even in your Hutus/Tutsi example, you're suggesting the Hutus used speech to persuade their people to commit violence? It's still the choice of the individuals, and eventually the group, to act violently.

Unless you're saying that with enough advertising, you remove peoples' agency. That in the face of constant advertising, individuals have less of a choice and subscribe more to group think.

Maybe freewill is an illusion and you can get people do do whatever you want with enough speech, propaganda and averts. But that's a much bigger issue of human will than speech.

[captainredbeard]

There were racist atrocities before the net. Arguably far more!

[captainredbeard]

Additionally, winning doesn’t mean the absence of any departing views. The actions of a single person do not add weight to your argument.

[UnFleshedOne]

This might be true. Your logic applies to all such cases though. Right to vote suffers from exactly the same drawbacks as right for speech. And authoritarianism has the same tempting benefits as censorship -- you can stop people with bad ideas from messing things up. And, just like with censorship, one day you might end up on the wrong end of the system, and not necessarily because your ideas are bad.

[mayniac]

>The idea that good ideas will win, and that common sense and rationality will take the day, are not really supported by what we see around the net. Instead the greater internet fuckwad theorem holds more true, and the spread of vile, violent ideologies is enabled.

The anti-vax movement and climate change deniers are better examples of this than Nazis and similar shitheads, IMO. There's easily accessible, scientifically sound evidence that both these groups are completely wrong. It's not at all open to debate. If the "free marketplace of ideas" worked then these groups would have disappeared long ago, yet the former group has led to almost ten thousand preventable deaths and the latter may result in far more. Maybe the truth will eventually reign supreme and both groups will become a footnote in history, but there are real consequences in letting groups like these spread their views online.

There's a good Contrapoints video on the limits of free speech, which you will probably enjoy (NSFW): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBUuBd5VRbY

[stcredzero]

The anti-vax movement and climate change deniers are better examples of this

The Anti-Vax movement is a prime example of the Free Marketplace of Ideas working!

https://slate.com/technology/2019/06/measles-outbreak-anti-v...

Nazis and similar shitheads are in the same boat. I would agree that Climate Change Deniers are an example of the Free Marketplace of Ideas not having worked yet. However, suppressing them just gives them ammunition. Best to just keep debunking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugwqXKHLrGk

(Re: The potholer54 video: If you dislike Steven Crowder, you should be glad he's a Climate Change Denier. That's just about the biggest hole in his hull!)

[Frondo]

I used to be much more of a free-speech absolutist. It wasn't til I started reading about how genocides start that that started to change for me.

There is a pretty direct line drawn between speech and violence against out-groups; anyone who says otherwise would do well to read about the Rwandan genocide and their 200 days of public radio broadcasting demonizing the Tutsis prior to the genocide itself.

After all, if there wasn't power in speech, none of this would matter; there would be no restrictions on speech anywhere if it didn't threaten someone.

Even in free-speech absolutists, there's often agreement that direct incitements to violence should be off-limits, and why? Because speech moves people to act.

I haven't often seen the position that incitements to violence should also be protected speech, though I'm sure those people are there -- the question to them for me would be, what are you trying to advance or protect against with that position?

The question I'd also ask is: if you want to say that speech such as calls to genocide should also be protected, how is that advancing society, especially for the targets of that? The marketplace of ideas doesn't seem to do a good job protecting them, so...what's the solution there?

[rthrowayay]

Controlling speech in order to prevent violence does not work when the people carrying out the violence control the institutions. In your Rwandan example the Rwandan government could not be trusted to censor their own goals. The situations where this works are much rather and smaller because it is about preventing violence that doesn't have major backing.

[UnFleshedOne]

Violence is one solution to a given problem. Sometimes problems are worse than violence needed to fix them. Ideally a non violent solution is found instead (changing system from within, peaceful activism, etc). But non-violent solutions are only viable if speech is unrestricted. You have to convince enough people that things need change for society to flip on the issue and eventually fix it. By keeping speech free you are preserving the option. Otherwise you are left with 2 choices: violence or status quo.

Free speech is a tool for reducing need for violence. That's why direct incitement to violence is usually not protected -- it goes against the whole point.

If you want a tech solution to misleading speech and outright lies though, then mandate all publications of debunked speech to publish links to rebuttals, without having to remove original content.

"Those Three Shocking Ways Vaccines Cause Mice Tails To Fall Off Will Shock You!!! [Five Factual Claims This Article Gets Wrong <link>]"

[stcredzero]

There is a pretty direct line drawn between speech and violence against out-groups; anyone who says otherwise would do well to read about the Rwandan genocide and their 200 days of public radio broadcasting demonizing the Tutsis prior to the genocide itself.

If you're concerned about the "pretty direct line drawn between speech and violence against out-groups" then you should be paying keen attention to the normalization of political intimidation and violence in the past several years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC4u1zo6OpQ

The fact that the media have been giving groups tacit support, by not or minimally covering their assaults and vandalism, while even giving them positive spin, should raise some concern.

I haven't often seen the position that incitements to violence should also be protected speech

They should not be. "Punch a Nazi" -- despite the vileness of the purported targets -- shouldn't be allowed. "Milkshaking" is incitement to assault. The fact that Twitter allows those to continue shows a groupthink bias at operation there.