In spite of the fact that Gab is a known cess pool (cis pool?), I funded it because we need more alternatives to the big social networks. I would have funded Tor and 4chan had I the opportunity many years ago.
Not too long ago this was a classical liberal position. Today free speech is passé. Guess I'm just old fashioned.
I'm happy to see that Gab is switching to Mastodon. I think it will increase the survivability of the platform. They've struggled under the engineering challenges of scaling a social network. Mastodon fans should be happy that this may mean an influx of hosts and developers.
Why are free speech absolutists only supporting fascists?
Where are the people advocating for the destruction of intellectual property rights, for widespread declassification of state communications, for suffrage rights for felons, and for unionization and striking rights? I don't exactly see the gab users advocating for laws permitting sympathetic striking.
Because those opinions are not being banned by existing social media platforms. Whereas so-called "fascists" (who are not really fascists) are.
No one is banning those opinions on gab, there is simply no point in them being there because they are free to post those opinions on twitter (and others) with impunity.
Are you hoping no one here has visited gab, or have you never visited gab? Because if you're claiming that site isn't full of literal fascists, it can only be one of the two.
> Why are free speech absolutists only supporting fascists?
They aren't. You're totally free to advocate instituting a Marxists state, the execution of the bourgeoisen masse, and forming a communist society on Gab. Gab has the blanket policy that any legal speech is okay on their platform (and yes, calling for the execution of the bourgeois is legal in the US. Non-specific threats of violence are legal as per Brandenburg v. Ohio). There's nothing fascist about that in and of itself. The fact that Gab is filled with fascists is because of displacement. Fascists got banned from all the major platforms, so the only ones that don't ban them like Gab and 4chan are full of them.
Free speech absolutists are disproportionately made of up right wingers these days, likely because the right wing is being subject to harsher censorship. I think it's unambiguously true that most big tech platforms are overtly biased in their policing. People are getting banned for tweeting "learn to code" to journalists (in mockery of how some suggested that laid off coal miners should learn to code). And by comparison, verified leftist Twitter users outright advocated for the doxxing and violence of the Covington high school students with no apparent repercussion. This podcast with Jack Dorsey, Twitter's global lead for trust and safety, and Tim Pool gives some good insight into the situation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZCBRHOg3PQ
> Where are the people advocating for the destruction of intellectual property rights, for widespread declassification of state communications, for suffrage rights for felons, and for unionization and striking rights? I don't exactly see the gab users advocating for laws permitting sympathetic striking.
This is pure whataboutism. What do any of those things have to do with free speech? Why do you assume that support for freedom of speech should needs to be coupled with destruction of intellectual property rights? Is it not possible to staunchly believe in free speech but also believe that patents are an effective way of incentivizing innovation by allowing innovators to monetize their work? Why does freedom of speech have anything to do with unionization or letting felons vote?
> so the only ones that don't ban them like Gab and 4chan are full of them.
To be fair, you see just as many if not more socialist and black bloc anarchist content on /pol/ as you do nazi content. It's a meme and most of it is posted by the same people.
Heck, I know one of the more prolific white supremacist troll /pol/lacks and he's Pakistani.
While I don't think it should be considered lightly, a lot of the reporting about that board comes from journalists that know better and deliberately deceive the public because it gets hits.
> I would have funded Tor and 4chan had I the opportunity many years ago.
> Not too long ago this was a classical liberal position.
I'm not sure who or what you're thinking of, but the classical liberal position would be to support something like the Cambridge Union, Cleveland City Club, or some other free speech and debate forum where social norms exist.
The classic liberal position was also to support the rights of Nazis to march down a Jewish neighboorhood.
Regarding free speech, the classic standard is "content neutrality", which means that, regardless of the media, the decision on allowing certain speech cannot be based on what the speech is.
> Not too long ago this was a classical liberal position. Today free speech is passé. Guess I'm just old fashioned.
It's not old fashioned, it's just that people differentiate free speech in principle from paying the server bills. Just as freedom of the press never meant the newspaper had to publish your op-ed, free speech online doesn't mean Twitter has to give anyone server space to post Nazi stuff.
(I agree that there should be more platforms, but that's why I've supported other Mastadon instances instead of Gab.)
True, they may not have the same reach as everybody else, but they can have their own decentralised space to air their views and build their own stuff rather than relying on the mainstream social networks, free from censorship.
All the big sites face government pressure to censor. In addition anyone inside these companies that would support free speech has to walk on eggshells not to be fired for creating an unsafe environment - again the government's hand this time indirect.
Imagine the conversation: this is fake news, we should remove it. No it isn't fake. You're making me feel unsafe, ill have the government put you in a cage.
The problem is that Twitter's definition of "nazis" basically is "anyone we don't like, which isn't exactly useful for the overall benefit of humanity. Sort of like how FB recently said that they are going to deplatform white supremacists. Why not all supremacists, while you're at it, or don't pretend that you are doing something for any kind of greater good...
According to their hipster in chief though, actually doing ethnic cleansing is perfectly fine though, if you are Burmese... That's rather hypocritical -- either ban all nazis, or don't pretend that you are not picking sides. And speaking of sides, if you ban nazis but not the equially murderous communists then I don't see how you can claim any high moral ground. And I haven't heard of any communist purges in the social media platforms.
They recently deplatformed infamous anti-semite and black nationalist Louis Farrakhan. And before anyone says this guy has always been a crank: he was actively being courted by Repulicans like Jack Kemp in the 1980s back when his anti-communist views were deemed politically useful.
> And before anyone says this guy has always been a crank: he was actively being courted by Repulicans like Jack Kemp in the 1980s back when his anti-communist views were deemed politically useful.
Maybe such a claim is useful to you but it really doesn't hold up to scrutiny. I grew up in the 80s, in a conservative household, and in New York City - Jack Kemp's home turf.
His political career was effectively over by 1982, taking 6 years to really die and I don't think I heard his name mentioned a single time in the 15 years I grew up having to listen to conservative talk radio all day every day.
What I did have to hear though, starting from the beginning of Bob Grant's era through Sliwa's morning and Limbaugh's afternoon shows, was what a threat to American society Louis Farrakhan was. He literally was enemy number one in the crosshairs of right-wing talk radio hosts for nearly 20 years.
Dole lost badly as I recall and Clinton regularly reminded people of Dole's age during his campaigning. Dole was widely thought to be too old to serve two terms and maybe not even a whole first term. Literally nobody wanted Kemp to be president were that to happen.
Not too long ago this was a classical liberal position. Today free speech is passé. Guess I'm just old fashioned.
I'm happy to see that Gab is switching to Mastodon. I think it will increase the survivability of the platform. They've struggled under the engineering challenges of scaling a social network. Mastodon fans should be happy that this may mean an influx of hosts and developers.