1. What does gab have to do with "truth social"? From a skim of the article it doesn't look like they're related, aside from them both being right wing social media apps.
2. being a hypocrite is bad, sure, but I don't see how it's a "get out of jail free card" when it comes to having integrity. If your principle is "always tell the truth", and you encounter a pathological liar that calls other people out for lying, does that mean you can suddenly start lying to the guy and still claim you're a man of integrity?
> What does gab have to do with "truth social"? From a skim of the article it doesn't look like they're related, aside from them both being right wing social media apps.
It's a proto-fascist/full-blown fascist political movement that advocates the subversion of free and democratic elections to install a dictatorship, not to mention the prevalence of racism in their views and policies.
Also, I feel that labeling this particular political movement as merely "right-wing" is a blatant attempt to white-wash extremist views and push for a "us-vs-them" mentality. What this particular political group advocates has absolutely nothing to do with the typical right-wing political tropes of fiscal conservatism, small government, individual freedom. In fact, some of the policies they advocate goes completely against some of these core right-wing values.
>It's a proto-fascist/full-blown fascist political movement that advocates the subversion of free and democratic elections to install a dictatorship, not to mention the prevalence of racism in their views and policies.
That doesn't answer the question. Even they're both doing the same unsavory things, it doesn't follow that you can accuse one of them of being a hypocrite because the other is a hypocrite.
>Also, I feel that labeling this particular political movement as merely "right-wing" is a blatant attempt to white-wash extremist views and push for a "us-vs-them" mentality.
I feel like this violates the HN guidelines:
> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
> Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
For the record, I went with the generic "right wing" label because I wasn't sure whether a more precise label (eg. alt-right) would apply to both. A quick skim of wikipedia confirms this. The page for gab straight up says it's far-right/alt-right, but the page for truth social only has a passing mention of it being "alt-tech" in the reception section.
You're trying way too hard to ascribe malice where there isn't any.
> That doesn't answer the question. Even they're both doing the same unsavory things, it doesn't follow that you can accuse one of them of being a hypocrite because the other is a hypocrite.
You're being disingenuous if you're trying to pretend that Gab and Truth Social's targeted userbase, and the political movement driving their adoption, is not the same.
Just to make it very clear, Gab was the social networking service initially adopted by this proto-fascist/fascist political movement to serve as a stopgap solution to being kicked out of Twitter due to their prevalence of hatespeech and disinformation, as well as supporting a coup to overthrow a democratically elected government to install a dictatorship.
The same political movement is now organizing themselves to adopt their leader's Mastodon-based social networking service, Truth Social, as the official social networking service.
> For the record, I went with the generic "right wing" label because I wasn't sure whether a more precise label
It's not a matter of precision, it's a matter of trying to whitewhash extremist political movements by bundling them with mainstream innocuous political groups, particularly when they have barely any ideological common ground.
> What does gab have to do with "truth social"? From a skim of the article it doesn't look like they're related, aside from them both being right wing social media apps.
They were both formed as a response to prominent users being kicked off of other platforms, they both forked Mastodon, and they're both having bumpy launches for similar reasons. Regardless of what argument you're making, it seems perfectly reasonable to bring up Gab as part of the conversation. If we were talking about Rivian trucks, I don't think it would be off topic to mention Tesla.
[originally replied to the wrong comment; reposted here]
There's an idea floating in some internet circles that because you aren't tolerant of some speech you disagree with, you're assumed to not be tolerant of all speech you disagree with. It is quite obviously fallacious.
Strong is not the same thing as absolute. One of my strong ethical values is that neo-nazis and fascists should be deplatformed to the greatest extent possible.
"strong" is a modifier for "moral and ethical principles and values", not for "consistent and uncompromising adherence". If you swore to support and defend the constitution, and then subsequently violated it to torture terrorists, I doubt you'd be called a man of integrity. This applies even if your other "strong ethical values" is "protecting the american people", or that you think that "terrorists are really bad people so they totally deserve it".
>One of my strong ethical values is that neo-nazis and fascists should be deplatformed to the greatest extent possible.
I have a feeling that's not the ethical value that OP was talking about, nor was it the ethical value f-droid founders had in mind when creating it.
Freedom of speech should include the freedom to not speak on behalf of others. And then there’s freedom of association, which one might consider far more fundamental — it’s what you lose when you go to jail.
Please don't post canned arguments to HN. They point to super-repetitive/generic places, and those usually get nasty, as indignation rushes in to fill the curiosity vacuum.
I think many people are perfectly content with being called intolerant, if that's what it takes for others to understand nuance. There is nothing wrong with not supporting hateful jerks and bigots.
> Toleration doesn't imply support. That's the whole point of toleration.
Except that in this case we're seeing people who feel entitled to everyone else's support demanding it under the guise of tolerance.
Think about it. We're talking about a federated self-hosting social networking service, and how a group renowned for a political leaning that lies somewhere between authoritarian and full-blown fascist, not to mention the significant amount of racism, is not benefiting from being able to freely connect to each and any node made available by anyone in the world. It's not tolerance that's being expected, but benefiting from having free access to everyone else's services.
Well yes. But if say Nazi Germany were annexing Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and finally France, should the USA do something about it?
Because popular opinion in the 1940s (even after France's collapse into pro-German "Vichy France") was "Stay neutral and don't join the war". That is to say, we were "tolerating" the events and trying to keep our hands clean of it, and we ultimately only joined after Pearl Harbor forced our hand.
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Its not hypothetical. There were other groups who "tolerated" the Nazis. IIRC, its a common criticism of the Catholic church for not going more anti-Nazi than they did (they were more neutral as well). Hard to criticize them IMO when the US tried to be neutral for so long though!
Eventually, there's a line that is crossed and we must become "intolerant" of other people's actions. Nazi Germany is perhaps the last example where the country truly unified itself against that threat, but... even as late as 1941 (well after the fall of France), USA was nominally neutral in the conflict. Was that the correct move? Should we have "Become intolerant" of the Nazis sooner?
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Don't believe me? Look up Charles Lindberg (yes, "Spirit of St. Louis" pilot for the first Trans-Atlantic flight). Look up the speeches he gave for the "American First Committee", a popular antiwar group in 1940 and 1941. USA was 100% willing to give up on France and Britain back then, and it was incredibly popular despite the atrocities that continued in Europe.
It all of course changed when Japan made a strategic blunder on December 7th, 1941. But remember: USA was largely reacting to Hitler's rise with a big "should we even care" ?? If it weren't for Japan, I don't think we would have joined the war in earnest.
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"Tolerance", keeping neutral, etc. etc. is the wrong answer sometimes. I think we can all look back with shame upon the US's reluctance to kick Hitler's ass. Like, we Americans make fun of Chamberlain's appeasement, but its not like our country did much about the situation until a few years later.
Because there is no principled way to draw the line.
One side says not using someone's preferred pronouns is intolerant to their gender identity. The other side says being forced to use them is intolerant to their religious beliefs. Now what? Tie goes to the one with the most guns?
If you don't allow censorship, nobody gets censored. If you do allow censorship, there will always be somebody who wants to censor you.
> Because there is no principled way to draw the line.
In this case the line is pretty clear, and very crisp.
You're talking about a political group that advocates overthrowing the results of free and fair elections aimed at subverting a democratic regime by installing a dictatorship whose supporters are very adamant in their embracing of racist world views.
Well, I'd argue that the one imposing on others more loses.
Proselytizing religions have no moral leg to stand on from an imposition point of view.
Plus, let's be honest here, your example is just people being jerks with each other. The real debates are about physical harm, economic harm, etc., in which case it's far less fuzzy figuring out who's wrong.
>One side says not using someone's preferred pronouns is intolerant to their gender identity. The other side says being forced to use them is intolerant to their religious beliefs. Now what? Tie goes to the one with the most guns?
Except the paradox of tolerance clearly states that simple disagreement isn't intolerance, nor does it prefer censorship in all cases of disagreement, so your scenario isn't a refutation of it:
In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress
the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational
argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly
be most unwise.
What the paradox of tolerance considers to be intolerance, and thus open for censorship, are views which do not allow for rational debate, or respect the existence of opposing viewpoints, but which resort to violent suppression of those viewpoints and the people who hold them:
But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it
may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational
argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to
listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer
arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.
>Any sane person would support free speech principles. Harm from restrictions of free speech far outweighs harm from hate speech, etc.
A reasonable position. And one I, for the most part, support.
However, the other side of that coin is that private actors (i.e., not the government, at least in the US) have free speech rights too. And that includes the right not to allow or support speech on their private property.
As such, if you attempt to force private actors to host/support speech they do no wish to host/support, then you are violating the principles you espouse.
Nobody argues with that. Just don't call yourself tolerant if you fight Taliban for their views. It's perfectly normal to NOT be tolerant, but simultaneously claiming to be tolerant is hypocrisy.
I don't know, and in the airless vacuum of a message board debate, that's a good question to noodle about. But in the case of Gab, it's not hard to make the call. Maybe it's more difficult in the case of "Truth" or Parler or MeWe or whatever, but we can all be pretty clear on the intolerance baked into the site on which the Tree of Life shooting was planned and cheerled. Gab is a site where even the person who posts inspirational cat and landscape photos turns out, if you scroll down far enough, to be an overt white supremacist.
The laws shouldn't be different for sites like Gab than they are for sites like Twitter. But in communities based on free association, it's praiseworthy not to associate with Gab.
This whole thing about who draws the lines as to what's acceptable speech is like saying "who decides what a legitimate political party is?" It's a good question. But regardless of the answer to it, we can all agree that the American Nazi Party is not a legitimate political party (or, if it is, we need to change our definition of "legitimacy").
I think philosophers have done an amazing job [1] already but in the end each individual and community will have to decide for themselves; there's really no alternative.
This kind of thinking requires you to absolutely set aside the human ability to make "reasonable" judgments. That free speech is so unassailable that nobody is justified in declaring an expression or utterance to be dangerous. Our justice system is built on setting standards of proof like "reasonable doubt" with the implicit expectation that humans can, in fact, make reasonable judgments and those judgments can be of what is and isn't within their legally protected freedom.
As a reasonable person, I think that overt racism, opposition to public health measures, attacks on voting and democracy and unwillingness to accept responsibility for damage to the environment we all share are simply not reasonable points of view. I think the consensus for what is unreasonable is actually quite a bit narrower than that (no one has ever been deplatformed for climate denial). A lot of pro-Trump forums have devolved into exhortations to violence that lead to a deadly insurrection. No digital platform out there wants to be responsible for something like that and it's not just because of politics.
By all measures you are characterizing something like a 4chan. Why do we put up with 4chan? I suppose they are hilarious that’s why.
Look, the alt-right has a right to spew their bullshit on the internet. I really believe this, and it’s important we protect this right. Now, if we find a case where they coordinated something like the Jan 6 capitol riots, then we also expect places like Gab and Truth to cooperate with authorities.
I’m not sure what the big deal is here. I’m never going there, and I actually never go to 4chan either. If we come to a situation where sites like these don’t cooperate with the law, we’ll handle that. But, give them a chance to exist at least.
Incoming pretentiousness:
I know human beings a little bit. They are bored, and love gossip, and shit talking, and lamenting about something. Every subgroup, subculture, this kind of thing is a cheap escape that many many people enjoy. My own mother (getting super anecdotal now) can’t stop gossiping, her friends can’t, they looove to talk shit about this and that and who.
The alt-right, like the woke-left, love this fight, like a terrible couple that has great sex. And that’s all it is mostly, a bunch of shit talkers.
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The vigilance necessary is to see that it doesn’t spill into the streets. I know what I’m advocating for is the precursor to such an event, but I really hope it’s just plain old human nature at work here. A bunch of bored assholes, on both sides, picking on each other in a digital mma fight. Neither can exist without the other. The woke-left needs this Truth app to exist.
>As a reasonable person, I think that overt racism, opposition to public health measures, attacks on voting and democracy and unwillingness to accept responsibility for damage to the environment we all share are simply not reasonable points of view.
That's a reasonable position to take, IMHO.
However, that position is irrelevant to the law in the US. In the US, the government (except in very narrow circumstances[0]) may not censor or restrict speech.
However, private actors are not restricted from censoring or restricting speech on their private property.
That's how the law in the US works. If someone doesn't like it, they can try to get the law changed. For those who advocate that, good luck -- you're gonna need it.
Actually there are a lot of restrictions and requirements when it comes to speech on private property. For example telecommunication services are treated as common carriers and must allow speech to transit even if they disagree with it. It is clear that big tech platforms behave more like utilities and should be regulated like common carriers. In this case with an open source project restricting use via its license, maybe that’s not applicable. But I would argue that F-droid, as a platform with network effects, should be subject to the same requirement to not censor.
For one, exhortations to violence are an explicit exception to free speech. And secondly the amendment only prevents laws being passed to prevent speech. Not private businesses from disallowing content.
> As a reasonable person, I think that overt racism, opposition to public health measures, attacks on voting and democracy and unwillingness to accept responsibility for damage to the environment we all share are simply not reasonable points of view.
One of these things is extraordinarily not like the others.
You don’t think it’s reason to have debate about public health measures.
That is definitely something I strongly disagree with. Now look, I’m double mRNA vaccinated against COVID19, and I gently advocate for others to do so.
Do I think governments should mandate COVID19 vaccination? Absolutely not, and there’s a massive amount of health debate to back up my, what I consider, reasonable position.
I’m Australian, so found this podcast between Canadian psychologist Jordan B. Peterson and former Australian Deputy Prime Minister from 1999 to 2005 John Anderson, intellectual heavyweights railing against mandatory vaccination and lockdowns particularly relevant
At the beginning of the pandemic the Spanish authorities literally said that masks not only were not useful but they could be harmful because they gave a false safety feeling.
Since then it has been proved over and over again that masks, even when misused, stop the spreading of the virus.
So I absolutely agree with you. We should be able to question them.
The odds are that mandating covid vaccination starting in the first month of availability would have saved somewhere between thousands and hundreds of thousands of lives including vulnerable individuals who died despite vaccination.
I don't agree that you shouldn't be able to have that conversation but I don't think its a hard argument that people ought to have been forced to vaccinate. People would have freaked out and still be bitching today but they would be alive.
No I'm not saying that. Obviously not all policies are above reproach but you know full well that a lot of opposition is based purely on disinformation. "Government mandate of COVID-19" is hopefully a typo but vaccine mandates for government employees is well within their right as are the myriad private mandates. The efficacy and safety of the various approved vaccines are well studied and the benefits to everyone far outweigh the dangers. Anyone spreading deliberately incorrect information like covid is fake or vaccines cause autism (remember that one?) are simply not reasonable.
And Jordan Peterson is a professional snowflake who makes fragile white males feel good about themselves. He is supposedly trained in psychology and has no idea what he's talking about when it comes to epidemiology but is unencumbered by his lack of expertise due to his monumental ego.
I honestly think that is the cause of half of arguments that occur, not that the same people wouldn't disagree even if they paid attention to this, but it's certainly where they seem to get stuck.