I find this to be a pretty important question when news organizations like Fox News are literally aiming to help the Republican Party to stay on power, CNN and MSNBC promote centrist candidates and media aggregators ranging from r/the_donald to r/chapotraphouse banning anyone who opposes them. Thing is, these are the most well known examples. How could we tell faulty media sources and aggregators apart from good ones in mass? Do you think that's possible?

I'm reading about the latest Gitlab shakeup, about (not?) filtering customers on moral grounds. Yesterday, it was Github's decision to continue to support ICE. There's Twitter's decision to allow politicians to (somewhat?) violate its own rules about threats and harrassment. Blizzard banned a star video game player for speaking out about the Hong Kong protests.

I'm on Mastodon, and while it's faded from the headlines a bit, the Gab-war still rages there, with the Tusky-v-Fediverse debate over apps blocking domains, and instances blocking other instances over their support for yet other instances.

Yada.

I'm thinking a lot these days about the "slippery slope". Mastodon, Twitter, Facebook, Github/lab, etc ... these are all business(-like) entities, privately controlled, which are nonetheless approaching the status of public infrastructure ... at least, sort of.

PG&E intentionally shut off power to millions of Californians last week, to prevent hypothetical fires. You see where I'm going with this.

When/As smart capabilities for power grid, ISP, etc emerge, do racists, white supremacists, get Internet? Electricity? Hospital/Ambulance service? Where is that line?

Is reverse discrimination appropriate? "We don't rent to racists..."?

Not sure what I'm expecting here. Just starting the thread, see where it goes.

ETA: A really interesting, thoughtful 2-minute excerpt from a Rogan podcast

Edit #2: The Hacker News thread that prompted me to start this thread.

(Let me make this clear before you continue reading, I don't know any good solutions)

Recently, all over the internet, I feel like I am seeing more and more companies filtering out content that are considered hate speech. I personally do not like this for two reasons.

1. I think it is a band-aid solution. People who have their voice taken away from themselves are not suddenly going to change their mind.
2. In a way, it is a form of removing freedom of speech. Now, I understand that a lot of the companies that are censoring hate speech are doing it primarily for the sake of sponsors, but I mean this in a more broad scope.
3. It is effectively hiding societal problems.

I think one argument for the increased censorship is: even if it doesn't combat hate speech, it stops the spreading of hate speech. By spreading, I mean more people believing that hate speech. Though at first this could be a good idea, I think it is the wrong way to go about it. I really don't know what exactly is the right way to deal with this issue. Maybe more inclusion of different communities? Maybe education? Learn how to think critically?

Here are a couple other things I have been thinking about, but I am not too sure about. I do not know if they are true or not, but if any of you could provide more insight, I would like to know more:

1. Hate speech is actually lower than ever. The reason why some people feel like it is higher is because the hate speech is entering to people's bubbles through the internet. Before the internet, there was still that kind of talk, it was just in a different medium.
2. Though not hate speech, but in a way related, with Anti-vax, the people who are most susceptible to converting to an anti-vaxxer, are parents. A lot of times these are the people who didn't grow up with the internet, the way they view the internet is not exactly how younger people view the internet. There is more doubt in what we see online between younger people than older.

And I have had people say I must be a white upper class person to have these kinds of opinions. No. I am not white. Not upper class. I have dealt with racism in one way or another for all of my childhood, less so as an adult.

Personally, free speech to me means that while platforms like Facebook and YouTube are not required to host it, if they so choose to host it they should be able to do so. Speech should not be restricted because it is offensive or because it is viewed as immoral. This applies doubly so to political speech, which terrorism is the most extreme form.