Everytime this is coming up, I wonder why people were always okay with banning nudity but now that hate speech (that undeniably agitates people and leads to hate crime) gets banned, they oppose content blocking.
Nudity is banned on television, youtube, facebook, twitch, and any public place in the US. None of those had significant outcry when it was banned, and people bat an eye so little at that status quo that I apparently had to write this comment to remind you.
Please feel free to point us to the evidence of HN howling with outrage about the chilling consequences of our digital overlords succumbing to activist and advertiser presssure to ban porn (and presumed porn) on their platforms. When Tumblr banned porn, the general reaction was "lol, they're not going to have any audience left" and the one person that raised it as a speech violation (as opposed to a bit of a shame for kinky people) was downvoted to nothingness.[1]
Compare and contrast with how this thread, instead of focusing on "lol, algorithms and context!" has turned into questioning whether the real problem is advertisers signalling they don't want to attach their brand to racist videos (and let's not get started on how angry much of HN was when companies decided to manually enforce policies against hate speech). It's difficult to conclude that most US "free speech" advocates don't believe that banning [perceived] racial hatred is somehow more dangerous to humanity than banning [perceived] adult content (which parallels Supreme Court rulings on what speech does and doesn't deserve protection). Given the respective consequences of racial hatred and pornography, I see this simultaneous presumption in favour of the former and against the latter as very hard to justify.
IME few creators on youtube are willing to risk their channels by taking any risks in that regard.
For example, I'm told the character creator in 'Cyberpunk 2077' offers adjustable penis size - but many streamers and reviewers won't risk showing it. Even comedy channels that love creating zany characters.
After all, would you trust Youtube to detect whether nudity is pornographic context, when they can't even tell if 'white threatens black' is in a chess context?
And even that isn't universal, depending on what type (e.g. many will be fine with self made 17 year old nudes, far less with forcible rape of a six year old).
The main purpose of free speech is to ensure the ability to criticize the government. It never meant pornography, free speech and obscenity laws always coexisted together in Europe and US. It's easy to construe the criticism of politicians as hate speech, while construing it as nudity would require some higher level of mental gymnastics.
The problem is that the other guy is saying the same thing you are. The radical left and the radical right both think each other's points are dangerous. And the moderates are pointing at both sides and claiming the same thing. From their respective viewpoints, they're in the "right", just as you think you are.
There's a slippery slope here, and I feel it's one so large that we can't even tell we're already sliding on it.
The obvious answer is a well-informed populace that isn't easily swayed by emotion and fear, and has the time and inclination to do their own fact checking. Trouble is, that's obviously a pipe dream. Other ideas, such as Facebook's new governing body are interesting, but I fear will be troublesome in other ways. Still, it's an experiment in the right direction I believe.
>The obvious answer is a well-informed populace that isn't easily swayed by emotion and fear, and has the time and inclination to do their own fact checking. Trouble is, that's obviously a pipe dream.
The other trouble is that one side is actively opposed to a "well informed populace" and unironically calls secondary education "liberal brainwashing camps".
If you want a well informed populace, you have to privilege the side attempting to get there.
Well... the "other side" would oppose informing the populace that the equality dogma is false (or at least unproven), so it isn't just the far right that likes their myths.
Attemps to ban things that are false runs into the difficulty that you need to first determine what is false, which is hard to do if one of the answers might contradict an important value.
I should stop replying to political posts with more politics. :/
More or less the belief that we are all equal with equal potential (it's more or less a consequence of egalitarianism). That if little Timmy just tries hard enough and is given enough support he'll be able to master differential equations.
Do you have an example of where this belief is expressed? Because the common trope afaik is "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".
What would be the difference in public policy anyways if after-the-fact results differ?
Well, some public policy differences would be continuing to invest ever increasing amounts of money on the worst performers in schools in an attempt to get them up nearer the average.
Another might be seeing the lack of women plumbers (or whatever) and deciding that this is both bad and fixable and investing a bunch of money into advertising how awesome plumbing is to girls in school.
> Well, some public policy differences would be continuing to invest ever increasing amounts of money on the worst performers in schools in an attempt to get them up nearer the average.
I'm not sure I follow. Are you suggesting that we, as a society, should not invest in worst performers? How would we even know beforehand? And how would withdrawing such funding from "bad" schools not affect the opportunity of all of the children of that school?
What's your point about the gender ratios of certain occupations? That it's a waste of money to try to alter?
I'm not actually advocating for this here. Just pointing out potential policy differences that come from a non-equality worldview.
I don't have the time to give an in depth discussion on education etc the attention it would need.
Though to elaborate on the education policy difference, you can invest variable amounts into the bottom performers, even eventually giving up on them. As I understand it, schools currently have various legal obligations towards students that lead to them spending disproportionate resources on the least performant.
Even with accepting that rather cynical view, I don't understand how you could even accurately determine who is a "hopeless bottom performer" without at the same time removing peoples equal opportunity.
Well, yes, everyone feels that way, but whose feelings are well-founded and whose aren't?
This is the difference between "we are banning substance X because we did a controlled experiment and found it to be carcinogenic", and "we are banning X because we are afraid of ghosts".
> whose feelings are well-founded and whose aren't?
This is the gist of it and is really hard to tell, even though some people claim it’s easy.
I would measure what side makes sense based on their recommended interventions. For example, if one side is so certain they want to ban speech that contradicts them then they are probably wrong.
It takes pretty clear evidence for what is right and wrong and lots of effort to determine. So it’s usually hard to dedicate those resources to topics.
Of course there are lots of sides and not just two so it becomes harder and harder.
> This is the gist of it and is really hard to tell, even though some people claim it’s easy.
It seems to me that people are nearly universally assuming that this is easy, and that obviously their side is always absolutely correct, and questioning that is basically heretic. This is how we end up always blaming the evil other side, and with "you're either with us or against us".
I used to think this was easy until I had to implement even really simple versions for small populations. They devolve quickly and aren’t very valuable compared to other activities.
That and as much as people complain, there’s a magical thinking that technology can do anything they see in sci-fi or an AI consultant has told them is possible.
So I would like to hear back from people after they’ve tried for a while.
> The problem is that the other guy is saying the same thing you are.
The other guy is also claiming that Trump won the election, global heating is a hoax, COVID-19 is a hoax, Obama is a Muslim from Kenya, and his wife Michelle is a man.
> And the moderates are pointing at both sides and claiming the same thing.
Sorry, this just isn't so.
Your answer boils down to this: "There is no truth. If one person says Michelle Obama is a transsexual man, and the other says she isn't, then both truths are equally good."
Have you personally seen Michelle Obama's sexual organs that you can 100% be certain with your claims?
Every since the ban on free speech, I really haven't followed what the conspiracies are. What I do hear is 3rd party reports on what those conspiracies are and what 'they believe'.
You listed off a bunch of nonsense - do you really think people actually believe that crap or are you the one fooled into thinking someone actually believes that? The more outlandish they sound, the better case for censoring, right? These cases just sound like a reporter went on 4chan, decided they dont like this so they must be the 'other side'. And it was enough to convince the majority that censorship is the way.
Better phrased, let's stop giving attention to a desperate media who's only function in this past decade is cancelling culture they don't approve. (culture censorship)
Both sides are extremely polarized, only one side seems to be able to share their opinion online. One side believes this is proper because they answer to the 'science'. What does the science say about censorship? We've seen it before.
> You listed off a bunch of nonsense - do you really think people actually believe that crap or are you the one fooled into thinking someone actually believes that? The more outlandish they sound, the better case for censoring, right? These cases just sound like a reporter went on 4chan, decided they dont like this so they must be the 'other side'. And it was enough to convince the majority that censorship is the way.
I personally know someone who believes about half of that. It sure doesn't feel unusual.
GP identified 3 groups of people, each defined by a belief. You have announced that you subscribe to one of those beliefs. You haven't disagreed with the argument.
Many of those things have pretty neat analogues in the extreme left - the extremists didn't accept that 2016 was legitimate, they've been fighting the science on nuclear power for 50 years and they wasted a lot of everyone's time trying to argue that Trump was a Russian asset.
Neither wing of politics is a shining example of sane ideas.
The problem is that the other guy is saying the same thing you are.
Then I hope I win. Cause the other guy really likes firearms and believes Bill Gates is some sort of satanic reptilian timelord.
Facebook's new governing body are interesting, but I fear will be troublesome in other ways.
I don't see that model making anyone happy because I believe true impartiality is impossible. The honest and less bureaucratic approach for FB to take is to admit the process is subjective.
You seem to be conflating racists with believing Bill Gates is a lizardman. While there may be some overlap I don't think that's an accurate look at the world.
We don't disagree there. I wanted to echo the 'other guy' phrase in the comment to which I was replying, but 'other guys' would be less ambiguous. On social media today, there are several different potentially violent movements that concern me.
I'm not on either side. I don't even live in the United States.
But one side, the Republican side, is batshitinsane and believes things that are provably untrue - Obama is a Muslim, climate change is a Chinese hoax, COVID-19 is the flu, that sort of thing.
The Democrats are just run-of-the-mill, low-energy centrist politicians.
I have a hard time lumping in swathes of people into these tiny slivers of beliefs. How is it not obvious that one side did a better job of demonizing the other? I'm pretty sure I can comment 'And would like to be able to eat babies' and I will be seeing it on similar posts as yours by tomorrow.
The media did one hell of a job this past election cycle, I wonder what batshitinsane things we will be allowed to talk about on the next one. I doubt much.
Now that we haved moved censorship officially online as well, I can only hope some wonderful people are busy building the next workaround medium.
I'm sympathetic to that, but by 'Then I hope I win' I certainly wasn't thinking in those terms. The 'side' I was thinking of is reasonable people, not all of whom are left-wingers, let alone Democrats.
Yes, as a general thing saying the other side is wrong and my side is right is just silly, because the other side is saying they're right and your side is wrong, but in the specific case where one side is demonstrably wrong then it isn't silly anymore.
But the other side believes they are demonstrably right too, just as strongly as you do. The way to "win" is to argue against the opponent's viewpoint and persuade the general population of the strength of your argument. To do that you need a platform for open speech. This is Democracy 101.
What you are arguing for is not democracy but "safetyism". You seek a shortcut whereby you can persuade a powerful gatekeeper to silence your oppositon and make you feel better.
The point I had in mind is that ideology is well and good, but sometimes pragmatism is better.
If a desire for free speech, to pick a contemporary example, leads to defending the 'right' of the Myanmar military to use Facebook for their coup to oppress the Burmese, pragmatism is probably better.
Consider Qanon people, or NeoNazis, or Boogaloo Boys, etc. It is impossible to prove beyond any doubt that are more dangerous or more wrong than 'normal' people. But if we're being pragmatic, there isn't a reasonable doubt.
There isn't enough substance in that comment for me to rebut. People often spout platitudes about liberty and democracy without understanding either. With apologies, I will assume that is the case here.
How is that accurate? More, like, exaggerated to make a point but missing it by a mile.
Soviets did not give airtime to pro-party ideologues to validate their position. There was no competition between ideologues to get more airtime. The program was _dictated_ by the powers that be.
It's still a bad analogy, but it puts fewer words in my mouth. If there is a line from 'Youtube deleted my video' to 'the government rounded me up and threw me in a sanitarium' it's not a direct one.
Yes but that won't stop you from drawing/rationalizing _any_ conclusions from a set of facts. Not all of them will be right and fewer even will make any sense.
Which is indeed your prerogative until you mess with the laws of physics and start believing that because you move your arms very quickly you can fly, and that will stop you from falling off of a cliff.
There is a five-whys strategy to go to some bottom of an issue but even this strategy will fail you when you cherry-pick the answers to your convenience.
I think there's a misunderstanding? The comment 'Soviets put their dissidents into mental hospitals' was a reply to a comment by me. I provided an example (with which I, naturally enough, disagree) of a criticism of my original comment that would be, at least, somewhat fair.
I think I replied to assimilation of the idea of totalitarian regime institutionalizing otherwise mentally healthy people for dissidence to merely not letting them vent on radio.
Indirect lines explaining seemingly unrelated concepts are everywhere. They even made some shows about that.
However, linking these two particular concepts together is strange.
