Comment by mahranch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mahranch | Hacker News Reader

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> Y'all gotta get off tumblr. Yeah, there's a handful of misguided activists who read malice into everything. But they're the minority

But isn't the problem the fact that if nobody speaks out against them that they'll eventually continue to grow? I mean, a minority opinion graduating into the opinion of a majority isn't exactly improbable or unprecedented.

And if that doesn't happen, you'll possibly have something even worse; you'll end up with what's been going on with Muslims where people think all muslims are extremist terrorists who hold radical views (because of a minority). Obviously that's not the case but many people really do think like that. Not helping matters is their most prominent leaders remain silent on those extremist views. Sure, you'll have a few leaders here and there putting in PR time while speaking out against extremism, but there's no conviction and it's not backed up by actual actions. The moderates and their leaders should be the fiercest fighters of that extremism and that's just simply not the case.

>But isn't the problem the fact that if nobody speaks out against them that they'll eventually continue to grow?

No. Tumblr-style "social justice activists" (scare-quotes because Tumblr activists have comparatively little to do with serious professional activism) are insane, unpersuasive, and prone to triggering strong backlashes against their own views.

I think the issue is not so much that they'll continue to grow -- I don't anticipate a majority of the United States, for example, becoming ideologically identical to the "SJW"-type people on Tumblr.

The issue is that a very small but loud group of online activists are becoming able to have disproportionate influence. It's easy for online mobs to form on sites like Twitter or Tumblr, which have messaging systems that promote reblogging/retweeting/"signal boosting" and are neither good for nuanced discussion nor corrections. Companies and organizations depend so heavily on Internet social media for their PR that they quickly bow to mob pressure in terms of self-censorship or firing "problematic" employees.

So it's not so much that the "social justice activists" will spread in terms of population, it's that they can have a chilling effect where the other side doesn't speak out, out of fear of the nuclear option of online shaming being used against them. This can lead to one side dominating the conversation despite being unpersuasive.

>This can lead to one side dominating the conversation despite being unpersuasive.

There is no conversation. They don't converse with those holding conflicting opinions. In fact, with Twitter, they've built out the BlockBot to automatically censor all and any deemed to have dissented against the narrative.

When you've a movement that is based on very flawed statistics and that places emphasis on hypersensitive feelings over reality, dissent containing reality or fact is a threat. It's far easier to censor the dissent than to engage it.

BlockBot doesn't censor anyone, does it? All it does is prevent the person who uses it from seeing output from the people they are opting to filter - they can continue to talk, rant, abuse, write poems, whatever they do with impunity.

"Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins" is a good analogy, I think.

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