Intuitively I always assumed that deplatforming works (and similarly that the Streisand effect doesn't actually work, it's just survivor bias). My issue is that I don't trust Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and other SV CEOs to decide what should be deplatformed. We see a lot of media around why white people are racist, bad and immoral people. Why don't we see that much media around how the wealthy class are greedy, bad and immoral? My guess is because while BLM, antifa and the like are promoted by most of the major media channels, groups like occupy wall street are being quieted.
We see a lot of media around why white people are racist, bad and immoral people.
That seems horribly racist. I personally haven't seen such dumb arguments even on the internet. I've seen plenty of arguments about why "the system" is racist (or not) but that's not the same.
Why don't we see that much media around how the wealthy class are greedy, bad and immoral?
I don't think many people think that way to begin with.
But there's plenty of class-based content on social networks. I cannot say I've ever seen them being deplatformed though.
You're right that it is horribly racist, but could you have not seen it? In left-leaning, democrat-favouring american media (which is most of it), it's everywhere.
> I personally haven't seen such dumb arguments even on the internet.
A Critical Race Theory lecturer teaching that "All white people are racist" and "white people are born into not being human": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nupaP3IQwM Critical Race Theory is not just on the internet but receives government funding and is taught in schools.
It's interesting that "white people are not human" doesn't seem to violate any content moderation policies, or perhaps it's merely selective enforcement. This makes it very hard to believe that censorship is anything other than a power grab for political purposes.
We're closer than we've ever been to an ideal of racial equality. The last thing we need is a New Racism that glorifies racial hatred and segregation.
> My issue is that I don't trust Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey and other SV CEOs to decide what should be deplatformed
I don’t either. Which is an argument for breaking at least one of those up.
That said, as long as we have freedom of assembly, and as long as political views are not a protected class, this will be a thing. The best protection against it running wild is a vocal minority who question it each time it’s done, to hopefully swing the majority when it goes overboard.
> while BLM, antifa and the like are promoted by most of the major media channels, groups like occupy wall street are being quieted
Was it? I thought it got lots of coverage. I went down to see it a few times, and from the in-person perspective, the whole thing was cute but loopy. Nobody in charge meant zero coördination or sense of direction or priority.
Antifa is a bit like that, which is why you don’t see much policy coming out of it. There isn’t a policy ask. BLM, on the other hand, has identifiable founders and identifiable local leaders in many cities. That keeps it focussed and effective.
Why not introduce regulations for social platforms ? laws like "deplatforming is forbidden unless ordered by a proper court". I think it's a judge's job to decide on this kinds of issues
> laws like "deplatforming is forbidden unless ordered by a proper court"
Courts censoring speakers would run afoul of the First Amendment.
This is the social media is a utility argument. I’m not sympathetic. If Instagram and WhatsApp weren’t under Facebook, and Vine hadn’t been quashed by Twitter, we would have real competition between platforms. And utilities tend to be heavily politically exposed and controlled.
> Do you still have freedom of assembly during covid?
I’m in America, so: yes.
Joking aside, regulating pandemics is a court-tested limit on freedom of assembly. As is anti-discrimination statute on the basis of protected classes.
> We see a lot of media around why white people are racist, bad and immoral people. Why don't we see that much media around how the wealthy class are greedy, bad and immoral?
Normally a submission like this would be much better presented as a blog post rather than a string of tweets. But given the content, Twitter does seem to be the right place to publish this. Still, for the sake of easier reading: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1348147867739975681.html
Why must every single tweet posted in HN have (usually multiple) comments like this? It's a different way to communicate, just get over it, skip twitter submissions, or use one of many thread unroll apps.
Does such a thing exist? What is objectively bad about twitter's interface? I just think it's made for one thing (close to real-time communication), and you think it's should be good for another (review of old content).
I think even more than deplatforming ISIS was the physical defeat of ISIS in the real world. If ISIS was still having success like it had when it started with quickly overrunning Iraq and establishing a "Caliphate" all the deplatforming in the world would not have mattered all that much.
In the same vein, with regard to the alt-right, the big event that happened was that Trump both lost the election and the attack on Capitol Hill was a spectacular failure. The Senate and House voted overwhelmingly to certify the election. Joe Biden is going to be the next President.
I imagine that if Trump had won re-election, or that somehow Congress had managed to nullify Biden's electoral votes and send it to House delegations that made Trump the winner, all the deplatforming would be pointless.
Deplatforming combined with demoralizing defeats is probably synergistic and effective.
Implicitly comparing a terrorist organisation like ISIS with a large chunk of the US electorate (more people have voted Trump the second time round compared to the first) it's pretty damn dangerous, nothing good can come out of it.
Is that what's being done? For that to be the case you'd have to believe that all of the people who voted for Trump are in favor of the actions of the minority who stormed the Capitol and call for violence on platforms like Parler. That doesn't seem likely to me.
Ignoring their terrorist record, 'democratically elected' in that case means 'one man, one vote, one time, and no elections ever since 2006'. We don't call people who win one elections and never allow another 'democrats'.
If Mexicans shot back causing 23 times the casualties on the other hand, they clearly would not be terrorists though, as they just defended themselves.
No, if a group of Republicans decided to go on a lynch (maybe while dressed in white cloths) I would consider them a terrorist organization, even if they only targeted the race of people who attacked their race
That was not a coup attempt and that is not how a coup works. No matter how often CNN repeats that it was.
A coup attempt is when an armed force (the army and/or rebels), preferably with the help of politicians/lawyers/outside money/big business and the media, deliberately and violently organize to throw over and take over a government for the long term.
How can you even? Jeez, the brain washing is mind blowing to be honest. I find the media and the people who eat it up to be about a 1000x scarier than a bunch of dressed up unorganized people taking selfies inside the capitol.
The video where the woman was shot trying to enter the corridor leading to where where politicians were hiding has two people trying to smash down the door to get to them.
There is also a picture of a fully masked person carrying zip ties designed for tying hands and feet.
There is another video where a police officer is being crushed against a door.
A police officer died from injuries sustained from, if I recall correctly, being hit by pipes.
The police had found and siezed Molotov cocktails.
There was also a pipe bomb found at the DNC and RNC. (People were saying Mike Pense is a traitor, if you weren't aware)
These events aren't just some unorganised people taking selfies and were widely reported.
Which news outlets did you follow that didn't mention this?
It is my understanding that terrorists weren’t in the business of making coups, otherwise our history books would have been full of terrorism-sympathizers, from Washington to Bolivar. Call it a coup (like you correctly do), not a terrorist attack.
If you don't do anything at all it still would get worse. Look at the 1923 Beer House Coup in Germany and the lax response of the German Kaiserreich to calm Hitlers supporters.
Conspiracy theorists who are calling for violence against elected officials and an an abandonment of democratic processes are being deplatformed.
What I would love to finish with is "That second group is only a small percentage of the first". Sadly, that's actually not the case.
Well, then we must fall onto another maxim. Truth and reality does not have a political bias. Regardless of how many tens of millions of Americans believe that Trump is the real winner of the 2020 election, it doesn't change reality.
A comparable tens of millions believe in angels, do not think that humanity has any role in climate change, and that vaccines cause autism.
What is and what is not protected speech has been pretty clearly defined over the years. Honestly though it doesn't matter because these are private companies.
Parler has failed to moderate extremist content and is acting as a platform for radicalizing new users.
Apple, Google, Amazon, and Twitter have a decided independently that the lost revenue and maga tears are worth not having to host far right terrorists.
Parler can host itself if it wants, nobody has made it illegal to be a gaping asshole.
Choosing not to host it because of the content. Of course it is censorship. That people can perhaps publish their opinions somewhere else does not imply that it is not censorship.
Free speech is freedom from the government not private companies.
It's just pure entitlement.
Users can install alternative app stores or apps directly on Android phones. Or even they could buy a Linux phone like the PinePhone and install whatever they want.
But no, they want the audiences built by private companies.
It's funny how those who decry communism so much want state control of businesses.
> Apple and Google are private companies. It is their platform.
Long ago the same applied to water suppliers, electricity suppliers, railroad networks, phone networks.
Each and every time, once these private companies accumulated disproportional amount of power over people, these private companies were forcibly split, nationalized, and/or heavily regulated. This happened on behalf of the people who elect governments to do so.
Do you think modern Apple and Google are very different from Bell System in 1982?
The argument that it must be good because the government was elected by the people is not a good one. People elected fascists in Germany. They elect socialist regimes on a regular basis. It's not automatically good because the majority looks for it.
I'd argue that democracy can only work if there are mechanisms to protect the minorities from the majority. Because otherwise democracy always ends up as oppression.
That was OK. Happened in 1932-1933, and it was not a landslide victory, with only 33-44% of votes. The Holocaust and WW2 were not OK, but they happened in 1941-1945 and 1939-1945 respectively, long after the democratic institutions in Germany were dismantled in 1933-34.
> I'd argue that democracy can only work if there are mechanisms to protect the minorities from the majority.
Not sure I follow. Do you think Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Jack Dorsey and other shareholders of FB/Alphabet/Twitter are a minority who need protection from being oppressed?
"Not sure I follow. Do you think Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Jack Dorsey and other shareholders of FB/Alphabet/Twitter are a minority who need protection from being oppressed? "
All I am saying is that "the elected government did so" does not automatically make it OK or the right thing to do.
Personally I am not a fan of government intervention in private companies.
Many people in this discussion have made the point that for example Parler could simply move their servers elsewhere. Likewise, nothing forces people to use Google, Facebook or Twitter.
> Parler could simply move their servers elsewhere
They can, and they probably will. Gonna take time. Pretty sure they did not expect a coordinated attack from Amazon, Apple and Google at the same time.
> nothing forces people to use Google, Facebook or Twitter.
You’re commenting on hacker news. This means you’re using a PC, or maybe a phone or tablet. Some (likely private) company is selling you electricity you use to power these devices.
Would you be happy if that company cuts your electricity because they don’t like your political views?
If no, what do you think is the key difference from Google, Facebook or Twitter doing their censorship?
A key difference would be that it is easier to replace the services of Google, Facebook and Twitter than of power providers. But even that doesn't seem impossible.
I never said Apple or Google are not entitled to censor stuff.
I fully support the rights of private companies to do that.
People are also entitled to be critical of such moves and to look for alternatives. That's all.
What if Google would openly support fascism. Would you also defend their right to do so, because they are a private company? Would you happily continue to use their products? Or would you prefer to have an alternative?
100% sure that is bullshit. It is already illegal to call for somebody to be killed. If that was a major thing on Parler, it would be a case for the police, not for the Google mods.
Edit: with "universal free speech" I just mean it has to be legal to say things. I am not generally in favor of regulating companies. At the moment they are mostly regulated to censor stuff, though. While I think it also agrees with their own ideology (see Zuckerberg's personal statement), governments have also threatened the social networks if they don't cenor according to the wishes of the governments. (I know about the hate speech laws in Germany, not sure what is the current state of affair in the US).
Parler was set up specifically to provide a place where Trump supporters could discuss sedition, terrorism, and make plans to prevent a handover of power in the case that Trump lost the election.
It is common for people to get banned from Parler for things as simple as questioning the evidence “supporting” various conspiracy theories.
So don’t complain when the entire site gets taken offline due to breaching various terms of service regarding “do not use our platform for terrorism.”
To be clear, ISIS deplatforming was ~6 years ago. This is in the context of ~200,000 republicans being banned from twitter.
So placing context where due. This person is asserting republicans ~= ISIS.
Though I do also realize Biden outright called Senator Cruz and some other senator Geobells. Senator cruz is a nazi propaganda minister. Which obviously makes Trump = Hitler.
Just say no to these attempts to post long form content as a series of tweets. What an abysmal UX. This is unreadable.
It’s a shame because given the cognitive dissonance of the most diehard Trump supporters (eg anything to do with QAnon) the parallels to ISIS aren’t out of place as you might think.
And is I think we have reached the point off deplatformatizing this particular brand of extremism and conspiracy theories.
