Let aside the Trump part, but the rest is a big blow to the validity of the research. Why hide science? That aside, I do think deplatforming may have negative effects. For example, the fact that...
Gadde, who, along with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, met with President Trump to discuss the "health of the public conversation" on Twitter last month, said Twitter is working with external researchers on the work, but declined to name them, and added that the researchers are under non-disclosure agreements (NDAs).
Let aside the Trump part, but the rest is a big blow to the validity of the research. Why hide science?
That aside, I do think deplatforming may have negative effects. For example, the fact that Gab is disconnected to the rest of the world might have enabled more radicalisation than otherwise. Or the isolation of incel forums might have similarly radicalised more people to more extreme stances.
There is a counter melody to this tho: deplatforming these individuals helps mainstream platforms to not become recruiting grounds for these hate and/or misinformation organisations; and this way they don't pollute the communities that have the biggest reach.
Personally, I think that such a ban is eventually desirable for all platforms. The rate at which extremists(-to-be) can be converted could not be as great to render their inclusion in mainstream platforms worth it, IMHO. But that is not enough, we should figure out, as a society, once we confine these groups to obscurity, what to do to extinguish their anger, for if we don't, they express it in destructive ways. And their demi-sapient ill-willed leaders or free-speech-utopian naïve entrepreneurs won't help.
the problem with people who take lines like this is that one of the big reasons these sites are able to radicalize people like they do is because they aren't marginalized, and therefore they can...
That aside, I do think deplatforming may have negative effects. For example, the fact that Gab is disconnected to the rest of the world might have enabled more radicalisation than otherwise. Or the isolation of incel forums might have similarly radicalised more people to more extreme stances.
the problem with people who take lines like this is that one of the big reasons these sites are able to radicalize people like they do is because they aren't marginalized, and therefore they can prey on vast swathes of people. alex jones was able to propagandize to people for years with no bar for entry, making it incredibly easy for people to get sucked into his web of bullshit and conspiracy; the moment social media sites decisively fucked him and deplatformed him, literally half of his audience disappeared because now to hear him, they had to go to infowars instead of youtube or facebook or twitter, which isn't a high bar for entry itself but makes it that much harder for people to get sucked in unintentionally. the people already in the ecosystem definitely do get kinda fucked in a schema like that, but ultimately as you say it greatly slows down the ability of people to be radicalized, which is why there's value in doing it.
Because they want to be able to make whatever decision they make regardless of what the evidence points to. In fact, it's possible they'll do as the oil companies did in the 70s. They knew climate...
Why hide science?
Because they want to be able to make whatever decision they make regardless of what the evidence points to.
In fact, it's possible they'll do as the oil companies did in the 70s. They knew climate change was going to be an issue before anyone, but they just used this knowledge to get a head start on spreading FUD about the science.
That's an interesting tack, comparing it to an oil company. Twitter is this massive industrial conversation pumper, and they are willing to look the other way on safety regulations just to pump...
That's an interesting tack, comparing it to an oil company. Twitter is this massive industrial conversation pumper, and they are willing to look the other way on safety regulations just to pump deeper and wider for engagement because if you start putting down ground rules, then all that growth metric goes away, and all those rotten people they would otherwise not give the time of day, they still look at ads.
Do we know the opposite to be true? That not being isolated causes these groups to moderate their stances? It's very easy to operate both a public and a private presence, in fact it's what both...
That aside, I do think deplatforming may have negative effects. For example, the fact that Gab is disconnected to the rest of the world might have enabled more radicalisation than otherwise. Or the isolation of incel forums might have similarly radicalised more people to more extreme stances.
Do we know the opposite to be true? That not being isolated causes these groups to moderate their stances? It's very easy to operate both a public and a private presence, in fact it's what both Stormfront and ISIS recruiters tend to do: use more public spaces to seek out marks, then draw them into more radical spaces.
i would imagine that on some level it does, since most hate and extremism of the sort we're talking about is based in some sort of irrationality, ultimately. if you're surrounded by ordinary gay...
Do we know the opposite to be true? That not being isolated causes these groups to moderate their stances?
i would imagine that on some level it does, since most hate and extremism of the sort we're talking about is based in some sort of irrationality, ultimately. if you're surrounded by ordinary gay people all the time and you're homophobic for example, that stance will probably moderate (especially if you're not being exposed to something like anti-gay propaganda constantly) because if nothing feeds into your hatred, it becomes increasingly hard to reconcile that hatred with what you're observing. we basically had a thread on an effect like this yesterday, actually.
now, that being said, these effects might not be enough to shake some people from their bigoted beliefs, especially not if those beliefs are particularly extreme--i don't anticipate that doing something of the sort would really help with someone like dylann roof or anders breivik, for example. but in general, with people who aren't so deep into beliefs of the sort, definitively cutting them off from what is radicalizing them and exposing them to counter-examples which contrast with what they've been told seems to eventually begin to de-radicalize them. (the hard part of this is of course doing all that in a way that sticks, especially with the internet.)
I don't know if this is really the same. Because the problem often is that people are pulled further out of moderate or mixed spaces into the radical sections of internet communities. If anything...
if you're surrounded by ordinary gay people all the time and you're homophobic for example, that stance will probably moderate (especially if you're not being exposed to something like anti-gay propaganda constantly) because if nothing feeds into your hatred, it becomes increasingly hard to reconcile that hatred with what you're observing. we basically had a thread on an effect like this yesterday, actually.
I don't know if this is really the same. Because the problem often is that people are pulled further out of moderate or mixed spaces into the radical sections of internet communities. If anything cutting off the recruitment pipelines and forcing them to stay within moderated spaces might work better at that point.
If anything cutting off the recruitment pipelines and forcing them to stay within moderated spaces might work better at that point.
...that's basically what i just said, though:
but in general, with people who aren't so deep into beliefs of the sort, definitively cutting them off from what is radicalizing them and exposing them to counter-examples which contrast with what they've been told seems to eventually begin to de-radicalize them. (the hard part of this is of course doing all that in a way that sticks, especially with the internet.)
Being in the public eye doesn't prevent radicalization. Look at reddit - there are tons of vehemently pro-genocide subreddits (like r/the_donald). As long as people are somewhat anonymous, they'll...
That aside, I do think deplatforming may have negative effects. For example, the fact that Gab is disconnected to the rest of the world might have enabled more radicalisation than otherwise. Or the isolation of incel forums might have similarly radicalised more people to more extreme stances.
Being in the public eye doesn't prevent radicalization. Look at reddit - there are tons of vehemently pro-genocide subreddits (like r/the_donald). As long as people are somewhat anonymous, they'll be their true selves. People will isolate themselves into bubbles on social media, you can't force them to interact with or view non-radicalized groups.
How, then, can we bring them in contact with what is good, and reduce their numbers? Are most of these people lost causes? Should we be on the defensive side, or should we go on "missions"? (None...
How, then, can we bring them in contact with what is good, and reduce their numbers? Are most of these people lost causes? Should we be on the defensive side, or should we go on "missions"?
(None of those questions are rhetorical BTW, all sincere.)
People who claim we should "tolerate the intolerant" generally fail to grasp what the purpose of tolerance is. Tolerance is not an end until itself. We push for tolerance in order to make a better...
People who claim we should "tolerate the intolerant" generally fail to grasp what the purpose of tolerance is. Tolerance is not an end until itself. We push for tolerance in order to make a better world for everyone. Nazis and White Supremacists actively fight against that goal, desiring (what they assume will be) a better world only for themselves and their in-group. Not tolerating them aligns with the goal that tolerance is supposed to serve.
In any event, tolerance is generally for accidents of birth and circumstance, not belief systems.
Is this true? Is it okay in the west today to be intolerant of non-radicalized Islam? I've had a hard time having this discussion with a number of people who want "tolerance at all costs". The...
In any event, tolerance is generally for accidents of birth and circumstance, not belief systems.
Is this true? Is it okay in the west today to be intolerant of non-radicalized Islam? I've had a hard time having this discussion with a number of people who want "tolerance at all costs". The problem is that most of us have difficulty deciding who's worthy of tolerance. I can say "I feel all Christianity is ultimately toxic" but if I switch that statement to be about Islam, the same people that agreed with me previously have a hard time agreeing again because it feels hateful to their sensibilities. I don't think it's as cut and dry as you're making it out to be. There is a large contingent of Twitter that is overly willing to label all conservative views as hate or intolerance regardless of nuance, and I think that's where the problem lies for Twitter. Are neo-nazis shit stains? Yes, of course. But unless we can clearly explain what makes them different than the marginal case of expression that doesn't get banned, a lot of personal assumptions about tolerance get coded into algorithms that essentially dictate the global public discourse. Violence is obviously a clear line, but "hateful" speech that doesn't solicit it feels more complicated to me.
the reason for that is probably because almost all of the people who talk about how islam is toxic and cancer or whatever do it as dogwhistling, or because they think we need to glass the...
Is this true? Is it okay in the west today to be intolerant of non-radicalized Islam? I've had a hard time having this discussion with a number of people who want "tolerance at all costs". The problem is that most of us have difficulty deciding who's worthy of tolerance. I can say "I feel all Christianity is ultimately toxic" but if I switch that statement to be about Islam, the same people that agreed with me previously have a hard time agreeing again because it feels hateful to their sensibilities.
the reason for that is probably because almost all of the people who talk about how islam is toxic and cancer or whatever do it as dogwhistling, or because they think we need to glass the mudslimes because they want to rape and murder westerners, or because they think most muslims are icky brown people who are breeding white people into nonexistence. comparatively, you do not see the same sort of rhetoric from the majority of people espousing the view that christianity is toxic (which is honestly extremely fringe, speaking as an Extremely Online Twitter Person--i have literally never seen someone blanket call all of christianity toxic), and where you do it is nowhere to the extent of what gets thrown at islam.
that's not to say that there aren't valid reasons to dislike islam--it's just, almost all the people who talk about how shitty islam is aren't doing it because they dislike islam and its teachings and want to reform them or whatever, they're doing it because they dislike brown people (or want to wage holy war, or think that the sum of all of islam is wahhabism, or whatever else). we can absolutely talk about how islamic countries are dogshit to LGBT people because that is a real problem with islam, but that's not the conversation most people who are "concerned" about islam want--they almost always want a conversation about how muslims are inferior, why they are inferior, and why we need to civilize them or some other bigoted shitheadery like that, and they just use the issues islam is shit on to justify having that conversation.
Ha! You should try using reddit sometime. I suspect we all have different instincts on what different groups "really think" about any given topic based on the communities we frequent most.
i have literally never seen someone blanket call all of christianity toxic
Ha! You should try using reddit sometime. I suspect we all have different instincts on what different groups "really think" about any given topic based on the communities we frequent most.
i literally do. where do you think i came from, the void? hell, i have multireddits set up for a massive number of political subreddits, and i have never seen someone genuinely be like this in any...
Ha! You should try using reddit sometime. I suspect we all have different instincts on what different groups "really think" about any given topic based on the communities we frequent most.
i literally do. where do you think i came from, the void? hell, i have multireddits set up for a massive number of political subreddits, and i have never seen someone genuinely be like this in any subreddit, be it far-left, centrist, libertarian, or whatever else. in fact, i literally share discord servers who actively disdain the abrahamic religions because they're anarchists and hate hierarchy, and they're not like that either, they just reject the hierarchical nature of abrahamic religion. maybe your experiences are different, but i feel pretty comfortable standing by my statement and i think most of the people here would agree with my experience.
Don't we all? Gotta keep my bases covered. In my experience, extreme disdain for Christianity is a prevalent mindset among the /r/atheism crowd, and those users don't only stick to that subreddit....
where do you think i came from, the void?
Don't we all? Gotta keep my bases covered.
In my experience, extreme disdain for Christianity is a prevalent mindset among the /r/atheism crowd, and those users don't only stick to that subreddit. I don't notice it quite as much as the comically-extreme anti-muslim rhetoric, but the Christianity vitriol is definitely there. I'll concede that the atheism/anti-theism groups on reddit are generally more accepting of outside views than right-leaning or far-right communities.
I was raised Christian (though I no longer practice it) and have a lot of good memories of it, so it could be that I'm just more aware of those comments when I see them. I don't know anything about you though, just trying to make sense of how our experiences could be so different despite using the shit out of that website.
I think Twitter wants maximum plausible deniability, because they know this is a hot topic right now and are afraid of backlash hurting their bottom line. When Patreon banned Lauren Southern from...
I think Twitter wants maximum plausible deniability, because they know this is a hot topic right now and are afraid of backlash hurting their bottom line. When Patreon banned Lauren Southern from it's platform they immediately had a response to her criticism of it, and it helped stabilize the negative press. If they can prop up their own "research" into a question that's, as you said, already answered they can claim that this is out of their hands and they did what they had to do.
Libraries have to grapple with the idea of holding books like Mein Kampf. Do they put it on the shelves with everything else? Do they keep it behind the counter so people have to ask for it? Do...
Libraries have to grapple with the idea of holding books like Mein Kampf. Do they put it on the shelves with everything else? Do they keep it behind the counter so people have to ask for it? Do they co-operate with law enforcement who stroll in and say "has anyone checked out the Nazi books?" Do they co-operate with law enforcement who come in with valid court orders requesting names of people who've checked out the Nazi books?
On of the problems of SV companies is that they think everyone else is a fucking idiot and that the regular way of doing things is dumb, so they throw it all out to re-implement their solution, and don't realise that they've missed all the edge cases and lost all that institutional memory.
Although I guess libraries haven't had to grapple with the problem of people wanting to hold a Nazi book club in the library, promoting Nazi ideals and seeking to exclude wide ranges of other groups from the library.
Do libraries really struggle with that? My perhaps naive idea was that it's pretty broadly settled that you put Mein Kampf on the shelf with all the other books and politely decline any law...
Do libraries really struggle with that? My perhaps naive idea was that it's pretty broadly settled that you put Mein Kampf on the shelf with all the other books and politely decline any law enforcement inquiries that aren't accompanied by a warrant.
Old copies of the offending tome are kept in a secure “poison cabinet,” a literary danger zone in the dark recesses of the vast Bavarian State Library. A team of experts vets every request to see one, keeping the toxic text away from the prying eyes of the idly curious or those who might seek to exalt it.
“This book is too dangerous for the general public,” library historian Florian Sepp warned as he carefully laid a first edition of “Mein Kampf” — Adolf Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto of hate — on a table in a restricted reading room.
Some countries don't make this material freely available.
Let aside the Trump part, but the rest is a big blow to the validity of the research. Why hide science?
That aside, I do think deplatforming may have negative effects. For example, the fact that Gab is disconnected to the rest of the world might have enabled more radicalisation than otherwise. Or the isolation of incel forums might have similarly radicalised more people to more extreme stances.
There is a counter melody to this tho: deplatforming these individuals helps mainstream platforms to not become recruiting grounds for these hate and/or misinformation organisations; and this way they don't pollute the communities that have the biggest reach.
Personally, I think that such a ban is eventually desirable for all platforms. The rate at which extremists(-to-be) can be converted could not be as great to render their inclusion in mainstream platforms worth it, IMHO. But that is not enough, we should figure out, as a society, once we confine these groups to obscurity, what to do to extinguish their anger, for if we don't, they express it in destructive ways. And their demi-sapient ill-willed leaders or free-speech-utopian naïve entrepreneurs won't help.
the problem with people who take lines like this is that one of the big reasons these sites are able to radicalize people like they do is because they aren't marginalized, and therefore they can prey on vast swathes of people. alex jones was able to propagandize to people for years with no bar for entry, making it incredibly easy for people to get sucked into his web of bullshit and conspiracy; the moment social media sites decisively fucked him and deplatformed him, literally half of his audience disappeared because now to hear him, they had to go to infowars instead of youtube or facebook or twitter, which isn't a high bar for entry itself but makes it that much harder for people to get sucked in unintentionally. the people already in the ecosystem definitely do get kinda fucked in a schema like that, but ultimately as you say it greatly slows down the ability of people to be radicalized, which is why there's value in doing it.
Because they want to be able to make whatever decision they make regardless of what the evidence points to.
In fact, it's possible they'll do as the oil companies did in the 70s. They knew climate change was going to be an issue before anyone, but they just used this knowledge to get a head start on spreading FUD about the science.
Sadly that's what I think, too. And even more sadly, that's what the article suggests IMHO.
That's an interesting tack, comparing it to an oil company. Twitter is this massive industrial conversation pumper, and they are willing to look the other way on safety regulations just to pump deeper and wider for engagement because if you start putting down ground rules, then all that growth metric goes away, and all those rotten people they would otherwise not give the time of day, they still look at ads.
Do we know the opposite to be true? That not being isolated causes these groups to moderate their stances? It's very easy to operate both a public and a private presence, in fact it's what both Stormfront and ISIS recruiters tend to do: use more public spaces to seek out marks, then draw them into more radical spaces.
i would imagine that on some level it does, since most hate and extremism of the sort we're talking about is based in some sort of irrationality, ultimately. if you're surrounded by ordinary gay people all the time and you're homophobic for example, that stance will probably moderate (especially if you're not being exposed to something like anti-gay propaganda constantly) because if nothing feeds into your hatred, it becomes increasingly hard to reconcile that hatred with what you're observing. we basically had a thread on an effect like this yesterday, actually.
now, that being said, these effects might not be enough to shake some people from their bigoted beliefs, especially not if those beliefs are particularly extreme--i don't anticipate that doing something of the sort would really help with someone like dylann roof or anders breivik, for example. but in general, with people who aren't so deep into beliefs of the sort, definitively cutting them off from what is radicalizing them and exposing them to counter-examples which contrast with what they've been told seems to eventually begin to de-radicalize them. (the hard part of this is of course doing all that in a way that sticks, especially with the internet.)
I don't know if this is really the same. Because the problem often is that people are pulled further out of moderate or mixed spaces into the radical sections of internet communities. If anything cutting off the recruitment pipelines and forcing them to stay within moderated spaces might work better at that point.
...that's basically what i just said, though:
Being in the public eye doesn't prevent radicalization. Look at reddit - there are tons of vehemently pro-genocide subreddits (like r/the_donald). As long as people are somewhat anonymous, they'll be their true selves. People will isolate themselves into bubbles on social media, you can't force them to interact with or view non-radicalized groups.
How, then, can we bring them in contact with what is good, and reduce their numbers? Are most of these people lost causes? Should we be on the defensive side, or should we go on "missions"?
(None of those questions are rhetorical BTW, all sincere.)
People who claim we should "tolerate the intolerant" generally fail to grasp what the purpose of tolerance is. Tolerance is not an end until itself. We push for tolerance in order to make a better world for everyone. Nazis and White Supremacists actively fight against that goal, desiring (what they assume will be) a better world only for themselves and their in-group. Not tolerating them aligns with the goal that tolerance is supposed to serve.
In any event, tolerance is generally for accidents of birth and circumstance, not belief systems.
Is this true? Is it okay in the west today to be intolerant of non-radicalized Islam? I've had a hard time having this discussion with a number of people who want "tolerance at all costs". The problem is that most of us have difficulty deciding who's worthy of tolerance. I can say "I feel all Christianity is ultimately toxic" but if I switch that statement to be about Islam, the same people that agreed with me previously have a hard time agreeing again because it feels hateful to their sensibilities. I don't think it's as cut and dry as you're making it out to be. There is a large contingent of Twitter that is overly willing to label all conservative views as hate or intolerance regardless of nuance, and I think that's where the problem lies for Twitter. Are neo-nazis shit stains? Yes, of course. But unless we can clearly explain what makes them different than the marginal case of expression that doesn't get banned, a lot of personal assumptions about tolerance get coded into algorithms that essentially dictate the global public discourse. Violence is obviously a clear line, but "hateful" speech that doesn't solicit it feels more complicated to me.
the reason for that is probably because almost all of the people who talk about how islam is toxic and cancer or whatever do it as dogwhistling, or because they think we need to glass the mudslimes because they want to rape and murder westerners, or because they think most muslims are icky brown people who are breeding white people into nonexistence. comparatively, you do not see the same sort of rhetoric from the majority of people espousing the view that christianity is toxic (which is honestly extremely fringe, speaking as an Extremely Online Twitter Person--i have literally never seen someone blanket call all of christianity toxic), and where you do it is nowhere to the extent of what gets thrown at islam.
that's not to say that there aren't valid reasons to dislike islam--it's just, almost all the people who talk about how shitty islam is aren't doing it because they dislike islam and its teachings and want to reform them or whatever, they're doing it because they dislike brown people (or want to wage holy war, or think that the sum of all of islam is wahhabism, or whatever else). we can absolutely talk about how islamic countries are dogshit to LGBT people because that is a real problem with islam, but that's not the conversation most people who are "concerned" about islam want--they almost always want a conversation about how muslims are inferior, why they are inferior, and why we need to civilize them or some other bigoted shitheadery like that, and they just use the issues islam is shit on to justify having that conversation.
Ha! You should try using reddit sometime. I suspect we all have different instincts on what different groups "really think" about any given topic based on the communities we frequent most.
i literally do. where do you think i came from, the void? hell, i have multireddits set up for a massive number of political subreddits, and i have never seen someone genuinely be like this in any subreddit, be it far-left, centrist, libertarian, or whatever else. in fact, i literally share discord servers who actively disdain the abrahamic religions because they're anarchists and hate hierarchy, and they're not like that either, they just reject the hierarchical nature of abrahamic religion. maybe your experiences are different, but i feel pretty comfortable standing by my statement and i think most of the people here would agree with my experience.
Don't we all? Gotta keep my bases covered.
In my experience, extreme disdain for Christianity is a prevalent mindset among the /r/atheism crowd, and those users don't only stick to that subreddit. I don't notice it quite as much as the comically-extreme anti-muslim rhetoric, but the Christianity vitriol is definitely there. I'll concede that the atheism/anti-theism groups on reddit are generally more accepting of outside views than right-leaning or far-right communities.
I was raised Christian (though I no longer practice it) and have a lot of good memories of it, so it could be that I'm just more aware of those comments when I see them. I don't know anything about you though, just trying to make sense of how our experiences could be so different despite using the shit out of that website.
I said "generally" solely because there are always going to be some cases that don't fit.
I think Twitter wants maximum plausible deniability, because they know this is a hot topic right now and are afraid of backlash hurting their bottom line. When Patreon banned Lauren Southern from it's platform they immediately had a response to her criticism of it, and it helped stabilize the negative press. If they can prop up their own "research" into a question that's, as you said, already answered they can claim that this is out of their hands and they did what they had to do.
Libraries have to grapple with the idea of holding books like Mein Kampf. Do they put it on the shelves with everything else? Do they keep it behind the counter so people have to ask for it? Do they co-operate with law enforcement who stroll in and say "has anyone checked out the Nazi books?" Do they co-operate with law enforcement who come in with valid court orders requesting names of people who've checked out the Nazi books?
On of the problems of SV companies is that they think everyone else is a fucking idiot and that the regular way of doing things is dumb, so they throw it all out to re-implement their solution, and don't realise that they've missed all the edge cases and lost all that institutional memory.
Although I guess libraries haven't had to grapple with the problem of people wanting to hold a Nazi book club in the library, promoting Nazi ideals and seeking to exclude wide ranges of other groups from the library.
Do libraries really struggle with that? My perhaps naive idea was that it's pretty broadly settled that you put Mein Kampf on the shelf with all the other books and politely decline any law enforcement inquiries that aren't accompanied by a warrant.
They don't struggle with it now, but they did in the past. Look up the history of librarians who go to jail to protect the rights of book lenders.
https://www.thenation.com/article/librarians-versus-nsa/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/mein-kampf-reissued-is-adolf-hitlers-book-too-dangerous-for-the-general-public-10069694.html
Some countries don't make this material freely available.