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Comment by robertwt7 | Hacker News Reader

I don’t really understand the law, and I agree that big tech shouldn’t be able to regulate online speech. However one thing that I’m confused is, what about some dangerous stuff like radicalisation which then will produce terrorists or extremist? Other than that, I agree that no one should be censored for any reason

I guess it is a hard topic to define which one is the limit of freedom of “speech”

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> However one thing that I’m confused is, what about some dangerous stuff like radicalisation which then will produce terrorists or extremist?

It is questionable whether or not censoring such views actually brings any benefit at all. One counterargument would be that people who are censored actually feel empowered to pursue their ideals more strongly, since it reinforces their belief that there is some conspiracy that they're fighting against. I believe that a similar effect has happened during Covid censorship.

On the other hand, censoring everyone else has many negative consequences on a free society, making it less free. One example would be the skewed image of the public opinion. If you go on Reddit, a majority of all (US) political posts seem to be blues. I'm fairly sure that reds are not a minority in the US (since they managed to win the election 2017), yet their public image is being distorted. And Reddit is big enough to actually influence masses' opinions.

The question is just whether or not the global censorship is a reasonable tradeoff. To me, personally, it doesn't seem so.

I think psychology and history is quite clear that sunlight isn't the best disinfectant. Ideas are like viruses, the more exposure they get the more they spread, irrespective of their truth value. Repetition and social proof directly cause idea contagion.

  "negative consequences on a free society, making it less free"

This is an overly myopic and ideological view of freedom, in many respects. It privileges negative freedoms (right to spew hatred) at the expense of positive freedoms (right to not be genocided when hate speech consumes a society). And it ignores that bandwidth is limited, so kicking off crackpots can actually improve the negative freedom of everyone else to communicate.

> I think psychology and history is quite clear that sunlight isn't the best disinfectant

It doesn't seem quite clear to me. Would you care to provide some more information on the topic?

> And it ignores that bandwidth is limited, so kicking off crackpots can actually improve the negative freedom of everyone else to communicate.

And who exactly should have the authority to decide which ideas are allowed and which are not?

I agree with what you said mostly

> And who exactly should have the authority to decide which ideas are allowed and which are not?

This is the scariest part, because in the end everyone has their own bias.

However, don’t you agree that things like speech can soon become an ideology at some point? Which we already blocked anyway i.e communism, nazism

It is indeed a hard problem to solve and hard decision for the leader of big tech companies tbh

  "It doesn't seem quite clear to me. Would you care to provide some more information on the topic?"

There are a few areas of study that tease this out. The study of social contagion primarily. Studies of memetics. Studies of influence and persuasion that show the impact of social proof and repetition. Cultural histories that look at how fact-free mind viruses (such as nationalism or antisemitism) shaped societies. Studies about the neurological underpinnings of what kind of content people seek out (it's a part of the brain that's involved in pain). Studies into human tribalism and how our beliefs just mimic that of our in group.

  "And who exactly should have the authority to decide which ideas are allowed and which are not?"

There's no easy risk free way to draw a line, but at the same time drawing no line poses incredibly large downsides, so I'd say something like Canada's approach where democratically elected people decide is the best.

I think the most reasonable argument against "What about radicalization?" is that we already allow radicalizing content. Both sides of the political spectrum, the lgbt communit, blm, everyone and their dog uses radicalizing content.

> I'm fairly sure that reds are not a minority in the US (since they managed to win the election 2017)

The election in 2017 tells us almost nothing about whether reds are a minority in the US, since that year only saw the counting of electoral votes, which it was possible to win with 27% of the popular vote, or 23% in 2012 (assuming we're talking about the presidential vote).[0]

If you mean the presidential (non-binding) popular vote in 2016, then the blues won by 66 million to 63 million.[1] That may not be a big enough difference to explain the bias you think you're seeing on Reddit, but it's worth considering that there was less than 56% turnout in that election, and it's possible that non-voters are over-represented on Reddit (not least because Reddit users may not be old enough to vote).

[0] https://www.npr.org/2016/11/02/500112248/how-to-win-the-pres...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia...

>what about some dangerous stuff like radicalisation which then will produce terrorists or extremist?

Is this the millennial version of boomers' "3d shooter games create school shooters"? "Tweets with bad words create terrorists"?

I thought this BS (both versions) has been disproved countless times. But here we are and the nu-conservatives (who call themselves liberals) are at it again.

Games let you pretend to do a terrorist attack. Twitter lets you plan to do one.

yeah, so does pen and paper. I guess those should be banned, too?

I feel like I’m not grokking the point you’re trying to make. Twitter can be used to plan crimes. So can iMessage and Tor and gnupg and WhatsApp and IRC.

Can you clarify what you’re proposing is the right path forward?

And Parler let you prepare January 6th. But also let the FBI to know weeks in advance what was planned. And supposedly let them convince some of the most radical people to not participate after all. (I'm still baffled though why the police was so unprepared, it should have been a fort of police shields and water cannons...)

>I'm still baffled though why the police was so unprepared

Most police is just incompetent and lazy.

Even assuming that this cliché holds, I wouldn't have expected it to hold at the highest level of police (the ones that should have given the orders to build the "fort").

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