> 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...
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".
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.
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.
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...