this isn’t about “offense” or whatever. its specifically about people calling for other people to be removed from society. when is stopping the spread of that specific conduct ever a bad thing. i broadly agree that decentralized platforms are a good thing overall, but we can’t ignore the many ways in which poor moderation make spaces hostile to people, right? or the very real problems that unmoderated, anonymous spaces have with bigotry, CSAM, and other bullshit. i don’t fuckin’ like 4chan, places like that suck balls. not every aspect of our social lives should be governed by some blanket approval for saying whatever the fuck you like whenever the fuck you want, no actual real life social situation plays by those rules. if a person consistently talks about killing jews, or other bigoted bullshit, i don’t want to occupy the same social space as that person, and i want there to be mechanisms in place to stop people like that from bothering people.
this isn’t about “offense” or whatever. its specifically about people calling for other people to be removed from society.
Well, I’ll give you an example of exactly when that is a problem:-
i want there to be mechanisms in place to stop people like that from bothering people.
Your very own statement could be considered a “call for other people to be removed from society”. Specifically, you were calling for “anti semites” to be forced to “stop bothering people”.
Now, you and I might agree that anti-semites don’t bring much of value to the table, but in calling for them to be silenced, we are likely going to impact Palestinians, for example, who arguably have a legitimate grievance that could also be classified as anti-semitism.
The Germans believed they were protecting society when they rounded up Jews, and other undesirables. They raised the same arguments you have. They didn’t believe at the time that they were the mustached man in the comics.
The allies believed they were protecting society when they continued to imprison the homosexuals that Hitler had arrested. They raised the same arguments you have. They didn’t believe at the time that they were the mustached man in the comics.
If we are appalled at what Mustache is saying and doing to the people he considers his enemies, we must refrain from saying and doing the same things to those who offend us. We cannot assume that our adversaries are completely wrong. We each have to consider that we might be the ones wearing the mustaches.
you’re wrong? you’re just wrong. the Nazi’s called for death. i am not. they spoke their desire to see the extermination of millions of people, and then they did it. saying that bigots shouldn’t be able to speak hate on a public platform and saying that people should die are NOT even remotely similar, and are extremely easy to distinguish from one another. we are not, at all times, at risk of becoming fascists because we don’t want people to try organizing pogroms in the modern era.
you’re flattening speech down into this binary choice, where we can either allow everybody to say anything or we cede our right to speech entirely. that has always, and will always be a falsehood. there has never been, at any point in human history, the kind of free speech you seem to think is an intrinsic right. it simply is not how the world has ever worked. if you make threats at people in a public place, you can be made to leave. if you attend a party and scream racist slurs at a guest, you can be made to leave. if you join a club and can’t stop yourself from ranting about jews, you can be made to leave. it is not wrong or authoritarian to expel anti-social weirdos from the places where you socialize.
no community of people is obligated to tolerate bigotry, hatred, and threats, and communities that do tolerate such things are usually shitty places only assholes like to hang out in. it is not some great miscarriage of justice that we are implementing ways of removing assholes from our digital spaces, in the same way we have done so in meatspace since before we had agriculture, and it is not a sign that we’re sliding into fascism. what is a sign that we’re sliding into fascism is platforms empowering extremists to speak their desire to do harm to others into being, allowing them to say their bullshit without meaningful consequence.
the Holocaust started with words. it started with speeches and books and pamphlets, and it culminated in the extermination of millions of human beings. words are powerful, and we must treat them as such. that being said, i am generally opposed to corporate middlemen monopolizing the social spaces we inhabit, that’s why we’re having this conversation here instead of elsewhere. i just think this whole idea, that we ought not ban people from platforms for being bigots, ought not have codes of conduct for our social spaces, is fundamentally at odds with any sort of functional, friendly, welcoming community, and i don’t want to have to sort through racist screeds every time i go on the internet.
the reality is, if you want to cultivate a space that accommodates bigotry and hatred, expect to find only bigots and racists to hang with, because all the nice people are not going to want to visit your Nazi bar.
this isn’t about “offense” or whatever. its specifically about people calling for other people to be removed from society. when is stopping the spread of that specific conduct ever a bad thing. i broadly agree that decentralized platforms are a good thing overall, but we can’t ignore the many ways in which poor moderation make spaces hostile to people, right? or the very real problems that unmoderated, anonymous spaces have with bigotry, CSAM, and other bullshit. i don’t fuckin’ like 4chan, places like that suck balls. not every aspect of our social lives should be governed by some blanket approval for saying whatever the fuck you like whenever the fuck you want, no actual real life social situation plays by those rules. if a person consistently talks about killing jews, or other bigoted bullshit, i don’t want to occupy the same social space as that person, and i want there to be mechanisms in place to stop people like that from bothering people.
Well, I’ll give you an example of exactly when that is a problem:-
Your very own statement could be considered a “call for other people to be removed from society”. Specifically, you were calling for “anti semites” to be forced to “stop bothering people”.
Now, you and I might agree that anti-semites don’t bring much of value to the table, but in calling for them to be silenced, we are likely going to impact Palestinians, for example, who arguably have a legitimate grievance that could also be classified as anti-semitism.
The Germans believed they were protecting society when they rounded up Jews, and other undesirables. They raised the same arguments you have. They didn’t believe at the time that they were the mustached man in the comics.
The allies believed they were protecting society when they continued to imprison the homosexuals that Hitler had arrested. They raised the same arguments you have. They didn’t believe at the time that they were the mustached man in the comics.
If we are appalled at what Mustache is saying and doing to the people he considers his enemies, we must refrain from saying and doing the same things to those who offend us. We cannot assume that our adversaries are completely wrong. We each have to consider that we might be the ones wearing the mustaches.
you’re wrong? you’re just wrong. the Nazi’s called for death. i am not. they spoke their desire to see the extermination of millions of people, and then they did it. saying that bigots shouldn’t be able to speak hate on a public platform and saying that people should die are NOT even remotely similar, and are extremely easy to distinguish from one another. we are not, at all times, at risk of becoming fascists because we don’t want people to try organizing pogroms in the modern era.
you’re flattening speech down into this binary choice, where we can either allow everybody to say anything or we cede our right to speech entirely. that has always, and will always be a falsehood. there has never been, at any point in human history, the kind of free speech you seem to think is an intrinsic right. it simply is not how the world has ever worked. if you make threats at people in a public place, you can be made to leave. if you attend a party and scream racist slurs at a guest, you can be made to leave. if you join a club and can’t stop yourself from ranting about jews, you can be made to leave. it is not wrong or authoritarian to expel anti-social weirdos from the places where you socialize.
no community of people is obligated to tolerate bigotry, hatred, and threats, and communities that do tolerate such things are usually shitty places only assholes like to hang out in. it is not some great miscarriage of justice that we are implementing ways of removing assholes from our digital spaces, in the same way we have done so in meatspace since before we had agriculture, and it is not a sign that we’re sliding into fascism. what is a sign that we’re sliding into fascism is platforms empowering extremists to speak their desire to do harm to others into being, allowing them to say their bullshit without meaningful consequence.
the Holocaust started with words. it started with speeches and books and pamphlets, and it culminated in the extermination of millions of human beings. words are powerful, and we must treat them as such. that being said, i am generally opposed to corporate middlemen monopolizing the social spaces we inhabit, that’s why we’re having this conversation here instead of elsewhere. i just think this whole idea, that we ought not ban people from platforms for being bigots, ought not have codes of conduct for our social spaces, is fundamentally at odds with any sort of functional, friendly, welcoming community, and i don’t want to have to sort through racist screeds every time i go on the internet.
the reality is, if you want to cultivate a space that accommodates bigotry and hatred, expect to find only bigots and racists to hang with, because all the nice people are not going to want to visit your Nazi bar.