And when you ban misinformation on your platform, that "anti-vaxxer" instead goes to 8chan where by your argument might inspire them to shoot people up.
I can guarantee that there are plenty of evil doings on Reddit and Facebook.
One argument, and a more honest one, that people can make is that (a) social media is toxic and (b) it should be made illegal generally. Bingo bango, no mass shootings I guess.
I want reddit to adopt the public square's policy of allowing any content that isn't illegal, which also happens to be pretty much synonymous with 8chan's policy.
Do you consider the town square (which has the policy of allowing content that is not illegal) a center of inspiration for mass shootings? Could it be that the public square is not viewed as a place for inspiration of mass shooting, have anything to do with integration of many ideas and the fact that someone bringing bad ideas might actually be challenged in an environment where they are exposed to the general ideas of the community rather than an echo chamber of fellow nazis or whatever?
The nazi hall may have the same moderation policy as the town square, that doesn't mean I expect the same inspirations to come out of the nazi hall. The issue with the nazi hall is the powder-keg full of people reinforcing bad ideas, whereas a nazi in a more "normal" place like the public square might have some chance of being shamed or convinced their anti-social ideas are undesirable (despite the nazi hall and public square having same moderation policy). I don't want to shove more people into the nazi hall by banning them from the public square (especially when they're only being banned from the square because they have unconventional views on vaccines.)
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In the censor's world, the people with undesirable ideas in the public square are kicked into 8chan where instead of their ideas being challenged they all end up in a self reinforcing chamber. The proportional amount of people wanting a mass shooting may be tenfold that in the public square, leading to more compressed exposure including by other people who were originally just anti-vax or whatever. And the people running the public square turn around and say "see, 8chan allows any ideas, and that's what happens when you do that!"
"Do you consider the town square a centre of inspiration for mass shootings"
This idea that unfettered speech in the public town square, even if it isn't directly inciting violence, can't lead to pathological outcomes just doesn't hold up.
This isn't even an argument for government censorship. It's merely me recognizing that these type of outcomes can come about.
Nowadays almost all extremist speech is online, because that's where there is distribution and anonymity, so the analogy breaks down.
"where they are exposed to the general ideas of the community rather than an echo chamber"
Moreover you have to recognize that these isolated echo chambers would naturally self-segregate on Reddit if given free reign, and so in practice you haven't changed anything aside from giving these ideas more distribution. It's not like /r/88 or whatever would be interacting with the rest of Reddit thus helping their members deradicalize.
I believe quite the opposite. It has been a place for the public to plan self defense, both to organize themselves in defense from natural disaster, hostile forces, wildfires, and anyone who seeks to do them harm. It is a place for the public to engage in the marketplace of ideas and inspirations, which ultimately leads to the saving of lives, prosperity, security, and bonding of the populace. Harmful ideas can be shamed and those espousing bad ideas have a chance of learning the holes in their ideas. The mass shooter espousing violent ideas in the public square is as likely to have alerted his neighbor to be alert for any evidence of crime, as he is to convince the general populace of his nutjob ideas.
I don't buy your hypothesis that Hitler came to power because of free speech, and quite frankly it is laughable to think banning Hitler from Reddit (were it to exist in his day) would have any effect whatsoever. You seem quite ignorant of the factors precipitating Naziism, including the economic situation of Germany at that time. It's also worth noting that Hitler was quick to stifle certain speech that went against his ideas, meaning he found free speech at odds or even dangerous to Naziism.
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>How did Osama Bin Laden recruit extremists who were willing to put a bomb into the WTC basement? Propaganda, speech.
Bin Laden attempted to blow up the WTC basement with bombs, not free speech. Bin Laden lived in Muslim nations with more limited speech regulations than Reddit.
>Moreover you have to recognize that these isolated echo chambers would naturally self-segregate on Reddit if given free reign, and so in practice you haven't changed anything aside from giving these ideas more distribution. It's not like /r/88 or whatever would be interacting with the rest of Reddit thus helping their members deradicalize.
Some may, some may not. I've stopped using reddit because I was banned because I simply said things like I didn't believe forcefully shutting down a restaurant is an appropriate way to deal with coronavirus. Now maybe that is a very wrong and bad idea, but I'm willing to debate with others on it and learn their perspectives. Instead these communities said fuck you, you're banned, and now you have to go to some echo-chamber where everyone agrees with it. I'm not interested in an echo chamber, I'm interested in engaging with others so my bad ideas can be brought to light and shown to be bad, or my good ideas can be integrated. Your argument sounds more like one against having subreddits.
The belief that sunlight is the best disinfectant is nothing more than empty sloganeering and it flies in the face of everything we know about social contagion and the willingness of humans to be led astray by tribal hatred.
Town square offline speech didn't lead specifically to mass shootings historically only because this particular medium of terrorism is a modern fashion trend, so it follows that it's a phenomenon that's going to be motivated online more than offline in the modern context.
I provided examples of speech in the old town square leading to pathological outcomes, but we are in a very different regime now and analogizing too much isn't helpful.
>You're trying to draw analogies between modern technology and the old town square.
No I'm trying to find out how you want to apply moderation strategies to "reduce the likelihood" (my apologies if I misquoted your deleted comment) of democratic election of those who some censors decide have the wrong political views or speech.
>You should stop doing that because instant distribution to a billion people isn't the same thing as a speech to a thousand.
Are you also one of those that thinks the first amendment doesn't apply to the internet because the founders never imagined something that distributes so much faster than the printing press could exist? I know this is a straw man but I can't help but think this is where this is leading.
>And your argument is that if the venues hosting Hitler's speeches had Reddit's moderation policies then Hitler would not have been elected?
The fact that you didn't answer this question (well you did, but you deleted it) really is an damning answer of itself.
There's three possibilities:
(1) No moderation at all, beyond what's illegal.
(2) Private voluntary self-regulation.
(3) Government censorship.
In my opinion, (2) is the lesser evil, which isn't to say that it doesn't have its own pitfalls. (1) is infeasible due to the 8chan experience, and our understanding of social contagion and human tribalism. (3) has a much bigger slippery slope risk.
> The fact that you didn't answer this question
I deleted my answer because these analogies are too tenuous. You're trying to compare modern social media with how information spread 90 years ago. How can I map "Reddit's moderation policies" onto 1920s beer halls and Der Sturmer and newspapers? You can't do it. We're in a new regime and we need to reason about this new regime from first principles.
> How can I map "Reddit's moderation policies" onto 1920s beer halls and Der Sturmer and newspapers?
The same way the first amendment is applied to both beer halls and the internet. There's not a single rule in Reddit's content policy that cannot be applied to a beer hall [0]. If you fail to find a way to apply these rules you're either not putting in any effort or you're a lot dumber than you sound (methinks the former).
Given that what you advocate for is virtually identical to that under the Weimar Republic, I assert your chosen policies would have little to no effect on the election of Hitler.
[0] https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy
[1] Ritzheimer, Kara L (2016). 'Trash,' Censorship, and National Identity in Early Twentieth-Century Germany. Cambridge University Press.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27865484
"My understanding is that pre-Nazi Germany had hate speech laws, and it didn't seem to work there?"
I abandoned my views on this question for a few reasons:
- The Weimar Republic laws either weren't effective at preventing distribution or they weren't actually enforced. The continued circulation of Der Sturmer is evidence of this. The judiciary was known to be heavily biased in favor of the far-right, where less than 10% of far-right political killers were convicted and the majority of far-left political killers were convicted.
- Online censorship is far less likely to create martyrs than the visual/emotional imagery of imprisoning people.
- Online censorship is far more effective at preventing distribution.
- Failing to censor online leads to automatic mass-distribution due to the consolidation of eyeballs in a small number of venues. Failing to censor offline does not. There is less scale to be had offline.
- Online censorship that we're talking about is private and voluntary. It is not in the same category as government censorship as far as downside risk is concerned.
> Given that what you advocate for is virtually identical
It is not "virtually identical". As I've said, the context is extremely different. You can't draw an analogy as much as you keep trying.
What? The anti-semetic expressions crime thing is a fact, not an argument (I am against censorship laws!). I was honestly completely knocked cold fthat you came to the conclusion I was making your argument. The takeaway isn't that hate speech laws work, it's that they don't. I'm pro hate speech and anti-censorship. I don't like it, but I'm pro allowing it. I'm making your counter argument. In fact you seem to be listing many of the reasons why hate speech laws don't prevent Naziism.
>I abandoned my views on this question for a few reasons:
I'm surprised you chose not to learn from your responses and realize the folly of restricting "hate speech." It doesn't seem you abandoned anything, it seems you double downed.
>It is not "virtually identical". As I've said, the context is extremely different. You can't draw an analogy as much as you keep trying.
You can bury your head in the sand if you like, but no matter how hard as you keep trying to think they aren't virtually identical, they still will be. What you advocate is extremely similar and you are oblivious and disconnected to the reality of the similarity between our current censorship laws and those of the Weimar Republic. I'm not drawing an analogy, I'm saying you are literally advocating for the policy of the Weimar Republic under which Hitler was elected, with only the slightest of differences (their laws were ever so slightly more restricted due to some spottily enforced hate speech laws). The Weimar's Republic policy was literally free speech, sans some poorly enforced hate speech laws, plus private and/or voluntary censorship, which is your option (2). In fact your precise option (2) was free speech + private/voluntary regulation, but you admitted that Weimar's hate speech laws were essentially useless.
The internet is just another media of communication. That's it. You said yourself hitler reached over half of voters with his speech. That's probably a greater voter penetration than even what reddit reaches. You make some arguments why hate speech laws weren't very effective at the speeches but then you think they will be even more effective at something with even lower voter distribution than these speeches that you say went to more than half of voters.
>Having said that, it's true that for some people no amount of reasoning or persuasion will work
Some people are their own soothsayer. Have fun in your censored future insulated from reality and the opinion of others, left to the discretion of whatever "private" entity believes is allowed truths.
"I was honestly completely knocked cold fthat you came to the conclusion I was making your argument. The takeaway isn't that hate speech laws work, it's that they don't."
"What you advocate is extremely similar and you are oblivious and disconnected to the reality of the similarity between our current censorship laws and those of the Weimar Republic."