[_bxg1]

> "Cancel culture" [is an important tool] to defend against these bad faith exploitive uses of public communication

I would say it's more like a social cytokine storm. If distrust in general is an immune-system, we're reaching a point of autoimmune disease.

But I do think deplatforming is an important tool. At the risk of stretching the metaphor, it's more like antibiotics. It reduces inflammation instead of increasing it, and while some non-destructive entities may get caught up in it, they're generally nonessential, it's generally a small portion, and they'll recover.

[picometer]

Thank you for this metaphor - it brings clarity and refocuses the discussion on the dynamics of the whole system.

Of course there are a few key differences between cells and modern humans: (a) we have empathy, and (b) we are are much more interconnected. This means that if a non-destructive entity is harmed, e.g. an unjustly deplatformed person, this produces a signal that propagates to others who were not deplatformed, through the story being shared and empathized with. So the antibiotic-like harm is much less containable.

If we want to use “deplatforming” as a tool, don’t think it’s even possible to effectively do. The high connectivity of human social relations means that there will always be another “platform” for their message to propagate. This is especially true with social technology (printing press, digital social media) although I suspect it was also true beforehand. Not even, say, executing someone is guaranteed to suppress their message. (Extreme example: Jesus/Christianity.)

[ajhurliman]

If we're using an autoimmune disease as the metaphor, may I suggest steroids as the analog to deplatforming instead of antibiotics?

[_bxg1]

But steroids only decrease the inflammation, they don't combat the original problem. If the inflammation is there because of a real pathogen, steroids are dangerous. Antibiotics decrease inflammation by tackling the original problem without a need to also increase inflammation.

(It is at this point I'd like to point out that I don't have a medical background and may be going out of my depth for the sake of analogy :P)

[lliamander]

Steroids are a typical treatment option for auto-immune conditions. The steroid Dexamethasone has proven effective at decreasing the mortality rate among COVID-19 patients who experience a cytokine storm leading to severe respiratory illness. Sure you may want to use antivirals/antibiotics alongside, but I don't know if it's always necessary.

I don't have a medical background but from what little I do understand, the cytokine storm is the result of a secondary immune response kicking into high-gear when the primary immune response fails to respond in a timely manner (perhaps due to poor health). Suppressing the secondary immune response enough to keep it from killing the organism allows the primary immune response to catch up and defeat the infection.

In other words, clamping down on cancel culture will grant reasoned discourse a chance to convince people to abandon right-wing ideologies without imposing severe economic penalties.

Of course, this assumes that right-wing ideology is a pathogen that is uniformly harmful to the body politic (which it may not be) but all metaphors have their limitations.

EDIT: I should clarify that I see the deplatforming as the cytokine storm. I.e. an unhealthy immune response that is damaging to our social organism.

[_bxg1]

> this assumes that right-wing ideology is a pathogen that is uniformly harmful to the body politic (which it may not be)

In the context of the discussion I was treating "bad-faith participants" as the pathogen, which I would absolutely say are uniformly harmful to the discourse. Of course subjectively the far right seems to take this approach more often than the far left, but that's not at all clear-cut and isn't the point I'm trying to make here.

[lliamander]

> In the context of the discussion I was treating "bad-faith participants" as the pathogen

Oh, I see. Fair point.

[santoshalper]

That's a very interesting analogy.

[_bxg1]

I've used this analogy in my head between bodily inflammation and social unrest for a long time. It's been very useful. And it explains some contradicting viewpoints that different people have on, say, riots.

If social unrest is inflammation then it's easy to see how it's neither good nor bad without context. It incurs a cost, but in many cases that cost is worth the change that it creates. But not always. A fever can help kill an infection, but it can also kill or otherwise damage the host if it goes too far.