It's increasingly uncomfortable to realize that a handful of tech companies are in many ways more powerful than the government. I don't like the direction anything is headed in.
It's even more frustrating when people supposedly loving freedom say that freedom of speech was only meant to protect from government and private companies can discriminate as they wish.
I'm 99.99% certain if freedom of speech was formulated today, it would include private companies as well.
Which "freedom of speech" does? European Freedom of speech has quite a few caveats too.
There were cases where people lost their jobs for their extracurricular legal activities that were hate speech according to someone. Like in US, private companies seem to give in much quicker than government that tries to follow the law to the letter.
Usually because that's the only place it's really codified into law or any other legitimate document in the US. The Supreme Court has limited the scope of the first amendment, but that's all just implicitly codified via past decisions and opinions - a less discoverable format I've yet to find.
Yes, like all those conservatives fighting for Hobby Lobby to not provide contraception support for it's employees because "first amendment" and all those mom and pop shops that don't want to serve gay people in the South because of first amendment rights.
Seriously, conservatives in America want to have their cake and eat it too. "We meant freedom for corporations-as-people but only when it helps us".
Which is not good either. IMO, any business shall serve any customer regardless. Unless said customer is breaking a (sane) law.
For the record, I'm not American. I grew up in ex-USSR country that was just recovering from total censorship. What is going on today in the world is sickening me. A lot of rhetoric in the West is too similar to USSR craziness. I'll be happy to be offended and keep my right to offend you. The other way ain't pretty.
> any business shall serve any customer regardless
Amazon blacklists people who abuse their service, like return policy. They are not breaking the laws, but blocking these bad customers is not only a moral choice but also a rational one, since it protects the sellers and other customers. Likewise, if you are making a scene in a private space, if it disturbs the usual operation, the owner should have the right to kick you out, because you are damaging their business.
So I say otherwise, any private business owner should have the right to refuse offering their service to people who they consider harmful to their interests.
Google could argue, hosting those hateful content draw negative attention from the media which tarnish their image thus hurt their business interests.
The one and only problem is, Google is too big and too powerful, their decision carries significant impact which should not be taken lightly.
What is gay couple is making a scene in a private space and demanding a cake? And the bakery happens to be by the church and having gays hand-in-hand would severely hurt their business? What if instead of gays it's cyclists in undersized lycra? I'd rather not have either of them kicked out.
I'm pretty sure abuse of return policy is covered by some kind of law. On the other hand, blacklisting customers who just use advertised return policy to it's full extent is not moral either. False advertisement is breaking of the law too.
> and all those mom and pop shops that don't want to serve gay people in the South because of first amendment rights.
Citation? This seems like a clumsy attempt to bash the south. Considering that the two largest cases for violating public accommodation laws hail from Oregon (Sweet Cakes) and Colorado (Masterpiece), with other cases from Las Vegas (Walmart) and Ohio (Take the Cake), it seems ... off.
Surely you can be free to say whatever you want but a business doesn't have to do business with you. For example I could wear a Nazi T-Shirt with "Hang all Niggers" emblazoned in it, and a shop could quite rightly refuse to admit me to their store or refuse to serve me if I did go into their store. So why is it different for Google or Facebook to say "we don't want you as a customer"?
By your definition, true freedom of speech would force me to open my home to Nazis so that they could come in and yell at me about how much they hate my consorting with Jews.
In the real world, freedom of speech is generally free enough as it is, and in the example above, is in tension with my right to freedom of association. Yes, the Nazis are allowed to yell at me, just as I'm allowed to distance myself from them. If I own property, I can go one step further by going home and locking the door.
I don't like Nazis, but Google's censorship here is giving me pause. Yes, of course they have every right to refuse to do business with whomever they like. Thankfully, so do I. If I don't care for Google's censorship, I'm free to use Spotify, or Pandora, or whatever other company (hopefully) makes a principled stand against censorship.
At the end of the day, it's their house, and if they want to lock the door to keep Nazis out, I can't imagine any fair world that would force them to open those doors.
At least in my country, there're laws for disturbing public. Even if you shout "I love political correctness" too loudly and too long, you can be taken to custody and fined.
If Nazis are such a big problem, secret service and whatnot should start looking into them. It's not a job of private company to enforce it's own point-of-view on the society. Wether it's correct not, but a private company cannot hold a a fair trial. And censorship without one is just wrong. I'd rather have a pissed off bakery serving gay cakes and coffeeshop serving nazi teaparty than letting a private company apply censorship.
To be fair, in America we have "time, place and manner" restrictions for that sort of thing as well.
> I'd rather have a pissed off bakery serving gay cakes and coffeeshop serving nazi teaparty than letting a private company apply censorship.
I'd rather have bigoted companies free to be bigots, so that at least I could know who they are, and to avoid patronizing their business at all costs. The alternative is that they are forced to pretend to be not-bigots, I give them my money, and then they donate it to bigoted charities.
Or they'd fly certain flags high to attract certain clientele and make sure people they don't like don't come. Yet if you're in need, they'd serve you.
I'm not talking about making everybody pretend to be not who they are. That's totally fine by me. If a bakery wants to fly a Nazi flag - so be it. But if gay couple wants a selfie drinking smoothies by said flag - that's fine.
The problem is really that a very few private companies have become core infrastructure providers on the Internet, effectively acting as the government of the net, however they face little to no regulation or accountability - Google, for example, is too firmly entrenched for consumers to realistically move to an alternative.
So the question is, at what threshold (of size, competitors, etc) should free speech move from the corporation's policy to decide to the customers'? At one end of the spectrum, we've got corner stores, where there are a million options, and policy is decided by whoever's working at the time; on the reverse side, there are governments, who must inherently be monopolies, with policy decided by the voters. Google, cloudflare, godaddy, all fall somewhere in between, with the concern being that they fall too close to government in terms of power, while decisions remain made by internal managers, without user accountability.
But you are not being prevented from using the Internet, the shop is not preventing me from buying, just from coming in whilst wearing the t-shirt, take it off and I can shop freely. The Nazis can use the internet, they are not being barred from it, they are just not allowed to use Google or Facebook to display their message.
I think that something like ifps.io may partially solve this issue as the Nazis could host their own site and individual nazis could provide storage and bandwith to keep it online.
> they are just not allowed to use Google or Facebook to display their message.
I think the concern is, what if Google and Facebook can be thought of as essentially being the internet. It's certainly true that the internet has gotten far less decentralized in the past decade. Google essentially has a monopoly on how people find information.
Really? You think that you could make private individuals carry water for ideals that conflict with their own? And that people, far and wide, would just be openly accepting of this idea?
I’ve heard “freedom of speech” defined as a natural right, but this idea is the most unnatural way for people to act.
Private individual getting paid is not so private anymore. Especially once "protected classes" are brought in. Either go all in and allow anybody to refuse service to anybody or make everybody serve everybody. I don't see middle ground in there. It'd always result in he-said, she-said.
Point in case - people bringing up the gay cake in mentioning of google memogate.
Is a bus company right to refuse service to protesters going to a protest? Can a train company cancel trains specifically on a day of event they don't like for some reason? Can cellphone carrier shut down service for people they don't like for some reason? Can gas station refuse selling gas to skinheads on a roadtrip? What if they're just going to work on a regular workday?
There’s ways to convolute any of those scenarios, but let me just explain why I think there are notable differences:
1. Protected classes are defined by a history of prejudicial treatment and blocked access to essential services, and they exist as a class of people defined by biological markers. So you can control being black or being gay, and you can’t access any bus service or use the same water fountain anywhere. This is very different than holding an opinion, and not being serviced by an add-on provider.
2. There are great differences between being denied a voice and being denied an amplification platform for that voice. We never mandated that newspapers print every letter to the editor, or even provide equal time to classes of opinions (although that did happen in a natural way).
If you tried to get a cake plastered with swastikas, that would not be protected free speech and could be denied service. You have to go find a Nazi baker or append the speech yourself. This is very different from being black and you can not get any cake from any baker, and they’ll know too, because you can’t exactly hide the fact that you’re black.
"Protected classes" as currently defined is an insult to freedom of speech. Once "protected classes" collide, we got oppression olympics.
Christians have enough of hard time for their believes in quite a few places. Why are they less protected than gays? Why is their freedom of speech is worth less than gays?
One could argue that gay cake is not biologically defined marker. For example, by christian believe, marriage is to make babies. Gays can't make babies. Thus gay marriage is not biologically even possible.
Then we step into another issue. Frequently "protected class" is taken as free pass to do anything rather than being protected for their specific attribute. For example, people being called racists for rightfully calling out black person for his bad behaviour.
A private individual providing public accommodations has many additional responsibilities than a private individual.
We see this in the offline world, ADA compliance can be expensive, but is a cost of doing business. Providing services to someone you find morally repugnant can be emotionally expensive, but you may not be able to legally refuse them service, while servicing others. It's not clear to me why it's ok to pick and choose customers because of their (terrible) political beliefs, offline or online. If their content is illegal, let a court decide that and issue an order requiring it to be taken down. The domain registration, and associated NS records are unlikely to be illegal.
But wouldn't you limit the speech of a person that way, I mean it is also the freedom of association that is given to those companies and they choose not to associate with them.
Not only that, but the companies you have listed are all to eager to get in bed with the Chinese government and then for efficiency reasons, they start moving everything to that least common denominator of free expression. We definitely have a problem here. I'm thoroughly disgusted with tech companies right now--these are not the brave risk-takers that made me so hopeful for the 21st century.
Our communications must be decentralized as much as possible, if we want to avoid the dominance of any kind of thought police. Maybe it's the best time to start rolling out wireless peer-to-peer networks everywhere and to switch to software that doesn't rely on Google or Facebook datacenters.
This is a facet of American culture that I've always found interesting...
Self determination is a very core part of what I, an outsider, see as American-ism. But self determination only seems to apply to government interference, not private.
For example, in the US organisations like HOAs (Homeowners Associations) and employers are allowed to encroach on what from my perspective I consider personal freedoms, but people accept it in the US because they're non-governmental in origin.
Here in Europe, freedom is freedom. It is irrelevant who is telling you you cannot paint your home orange be it local government, a private entity, or your next door neighbour. But in the US freedom only applies to government, private entities are allowed to violate people however they want under the guise of "choice."
What I've found in my life is that choice is a perk of the wealthy. The poor often lack choice.
I agree, in that it sucks that it's a literal handful, but on the flip side it's nice to know the government is set up in such a way that it isn't by default the most powerful entity in every imaginable way. The people themselves, private companies, etc have a chance to be more powerful than the government in a variety of ways.
I'm a pro-government liberal who is extremely wary of the power of global corporations, but I still take some solace in what this says about our system.
The problem is the government is supposed to keep the private sector in check for such things.
But since we've basically given up on stopping monopolies and mega-mergers the companies and now so big and control so many things they have power without competition to keep it in check.
>on the flip side it's nice to know the government is set up in such a way that it isn't by default the most powerful entity in every imaginable way. The people themselves, private companies, etc have a chance to be more powerful than the government in a variety of ways.
That's been the case before, it's not a great thing. In the late 18th and early 19th century, a few magnates were arguably more powerful than the US government. They certainly ran the US government. A lot of the protections we have today are a response to that time period
I mentioned that I'm uncomfortable with how few companies have so much control. It's far better now than it was in the pre-Trust-busting days, for sure. However, it's trending the wrong direction.
Show me examples of corporations mass murdering people, though? Your faith in big government is completely misplaced. The truth is, you can't trust any entity with consolidated power to be forthright and favor humanity over all other considerations.
>Show me examples of corporations mass murdering people, though?
United Fruit Company in Guatemala, Shell Oil in Nigeria, BP in Iran... there are countless examples of corporations paying off people to do their dirty work for them
The entire point of my comment was to say that while I would generally be considered a "pro-government liberal", I do NOT trust "big government" and prefer to see power be more diffuse.
What did you think my point was, I'm interested to see how I could be more clear in the future.
There is a big difference between the government and a private organization. The government can throw you in prison and strip you of your constitutional rights. Private organizations cannot (unless hired by the government, which is should not be happening)
Well sometimes it works out in our favor. Like when Apple fought the FBI trying to get legal precedent for compelling them to create a backdoor for their own devices / software.
As strange as it is, who else but a huge powerful tech company could do that?
>"Because internet intermediaries, especially those with few competitors, control so much online speech, the consequences of their decisions have far-reaching impacts on speech around the world."
Maybe it's just me but I think enabling hate-speech and bigotry is much worse than failing to maintain 100% neutrality.
There's nothing stopping these maniacs from starting their own intermediaries to host the content(trash) they want to peddle.
We are all incapable of coming to a consensus about what is acceptable. This is pretty much the same as saying there are always disagreements in politics.
Whatever you permit to be used against your opponents is certain to be used against your friends as well.
Without ISP-level neutrality, the opposite would be true. Here's the scenario in that case:
1) Google, Facebook, Twitter, CloudFlare, GoDaddy, and a few other actors ban a certain flavor of hate speech.
2) The pro-hate-speech crowd tries to start their own "Facebook for white nationalism" but can't, because they don't have "premium" peering arrangements with all the eyeball ISPs.
When you say pro-hate-speech, do you include Marxist rhetoric in there? I only ask because anyone who has suffered through communism will tell you who the truly brutal and destructive monsters in this world are. I can think of no fascist regimes in the world today, but I can name quite a few far left ones where I would not want to reside.
Whether or not something is really hate speech is beside the point of my argument. The big tech companies could decide to block speech that disparages Bugs Bunny and the point would still hold. Without ISP-level neutrality, competition doesn't provide a check on the existing "big tech" companies foisting their moralism users who disagree with it.
> Why couldn't you say the same about net neutrality?
Starting your own ISP can require MASSIVE capital investment if you want to have a hope of competing and take years. There's a reason there are only a handful of really competitive ISPs in the US.
Changing DNS hosts is a mild inconvenience. They can find someone who will host their records. Google shouldn't be forced to do it.
But if I don't like the only ISP in my town blocking some stuff I don't the kind of money Google had to waste to start a new ISP for me and others in my town.
Google also removed the Gab app from it's app store. Setting up a DNS host is simple, but starting your own Google/Android/CDN requires an equally massive investment.
Where I grew up, websites used to be blocked by my government because of blasphemy and morality reasons. Criticism of Islam, pro secularism, and yes also porn. I used kazaa to get "God delusion" and "satanic verses", books that would have gotten me into serious trouble.
Please don't let that happen in America. Making up hate or blasphemy reasons is very easy.
This is the challenge. It's easy to argue speech you don't like is "encouraging violence" and should be censored.
However, you create a path for the next person to use the same argument to censor other speech. Maybe they'll be riots over the next war involving the US and it'll be for "the good of society, to prevent violence" and it'll get censored as well.
Not saying that I agree, but some people say that the best way of making sure what you describe doesn't happen to America is by stopping the Nazis right now. Yes, you loose the high ground of supporting absolute free speech but supposedly you gain a more restricted form of free speech that is more likely to stand the test of time.
This is assuming that there is some nazi uprising, but the thing is, there aren't any powerful nazi groups in the US. There is no point in wasting your time in "stopping the Nazis". Everyone keeps shouting about nazis but its such a small threat, and is only gaining traction because people are obsessed.
In case anyone is unfamiliar, a major thing to understand about The Satanic Verses is that it isn't even some kind of anti-Islam screed, just a historical fantasy novel that uses the history and lore of Islam as a framing device, much like several of Dan Brown's novels do with Christianity (though Rushdie is apparently a much better writer).
Anyway, we've had this sort of thing in America, but we've probably largely forgotten the history (Lady Chatterly's Lover, Fanny Hill, and so on) and haven't really paid attention to the small-scale occurrences that are still ongoing (e.g. public school libraries are often pressured to remove "controversial" books).
Nobody is trying to give the government power to censor. Everyone is saying that private companies have no moral obligation to materially support neo-Nazis.
Yes, there are concerns about concentrated, oligopolistic markets, but those are solved by breaking up the major players -- not by legislating some requirement of fair service for literal swastika-waving, Roman-saluting Nazis.
People are not entitled to claim freedom of speech for posting Nazi trash on their own private website, and then claim freedom of speech from other private entities refusing to do business with them. Everyone has a negative right to express Nazi views. Nobody has a positive entitlement to demand material resources from private actors to express Nazi views.
The disgusting thing here is that, for many years, if we on the Left pushed for a universal basic income, or for single-payer health-care, we would have the difference between positive and negative freedoms kindly explained to us by the political center and Right. Now a bunch of (again) literal Nazis have a sad, and that we have to quietly listen to the center and Right tell us there's no more distinction, that Nazis have a positive entitlement to be Nazis? It's completely disingenuous!
Or should the Communist Party file a lawsuit to demand a stipend from tech companies for spreading communism?
In a bit of irony The Communist Party is illegal in the US.
Communist Control Act, 50 U.S. Code § 841
>The Congress finds and declares that the Communist Party of the United States, although purportedly a political party, is in fact an instrumentality of a conspiracy to overthrow the Government of the United States. It constitutes an authoritarian dictatorship within a republic, demanding for itself the rights and privileges accorded to political parties, but denying to all others the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.
That's actually more-or-less my point. All this high-minded talk about Freedom of Speech isn't all that high-minded at all. Somehow it always leaves aside the fact that the Left is always repressed with state power and vigilante violence, and the Right (at least, the non-Nazi Right) always gets to switch out philosophies like a damned shell game to justify whatever it wants.
If we stand for the "right" of Nazis to compel private actors to do business with them (and holy shit does that violate the typical libertarian-capitalist positions of the American Right!), why don't we stand for the actual right of Communists, revolutionary socialists, democratic socialists, and anarchists to operate openly at all?
> In a bit of irony The Communist Party is illegal in the US
AFAICT, while the near total lack of government enforcement (and lack of appeals in the few relevant cases that have gone to court) have prevented many or high-level court decisions on the overall constitutionality of the Communist Control Act, the only federal court to rule on that issue ruled it unconstitutional, and the only Supreme Court decision relating to the Act held that the Act did not prevent the Communist Party from participating in the New York State unemployment scheme.
So, it's not clear to me that the Communist Control Act has any substantive legal force, and it's pretty clear that whatever it seems to say on its face, the force it does have is not actually outlawing the Communist Party.
Suppose tomorrow Google unfairly marks your speech as hate speech, how do you recover? These companies (especially YouTube) make mistakes and appeals are often just as error prone.
You have no recourse! Technology and corporate consolidation have made free expression a dangerous game in the 21st century. It's another example of how technology is completely value neutral and can have extremely unintended consequences. Ask a librarian about all this digital crap sometime--it's a nightmare and it's just gotten started!
silencing people is never a good idea. let them speak their mind. only through interaction can a person's mind change. caging them in and then being surprised they did something awful is probably about as bad idea as the ones they have.
This attitude is naïve to the extreme... You're surely aware that prolonged suppression of certain ideas can and often does decrease the prevalence of such ideas in the population? And that such suppression might even make certain people change their minds?
I'm not arguing that this is the right strategy, only that it is often extremely effective.
Hm... Interesting :) Is there any research about this? It does seem likely, but I can certainly imagine a world in which most attempts at suppression work and we celebrate the cases where it doesn't because it's ironic. Is there any evidence that the effect is not just a case of survivorship bias?
There's nothing naive about it--what is naive is assuming there is some entity out there with the godlike power to determine what speech is good and what is bad. It's either all on the table or none of it is. What we can't do is succumb to the lowest elements of society and that includes not only bigots, but reverse-racists (@see: South Africa), and this idea that low-information/low-intelligence people are somehow intellectually equivalent and all deserve the same respect. I don't mean to sound elitist, but come on--we had a mob destroy a statue of Lincoln in Chicago because apparently all statues are bad now?
The point is, there's some really dumb stuff going on and it's time to take back intellectualism from the ideologues and demand and end to the childish behavior and that might as well start with the baseless mistreatment of the Trump family as well as the baseless mistreatment of all conservatives, moderates, and other non-far-left, non-progressives.
I only have a cursory knowledge of history, so I'm not aware of this. All the cases I can think of where a certain set of ideas were suppressed usually ended up in failure, e.g. Christianity, Protestantism, various heresies, civil rights movements like Gandhi and MLK...
Counter-examples: Nazism (I guess you might argue that after being suppressed it's making a comeback, but that's tenuous at best), dozens of Christian heretic faiths you've never heard about, the genocide of the Native Americans (where's their culture now?), the pre-colombian civilizations of South and Central America, the Roman Empire, Egyptian monotheism under Akhnaten...
Keep in mind that listing the ideas and ways of life that were suppressed and utimately survived is a textbook case of survivorship bias: you remember the ones who survived, and forget the ones that didn't. Some of them no one knows about because they left no records.
EDIT: the dangerous sentence here is: "All the cases I can think of". Those are not an unbiased sample of the real world cases.
Nazism has only been suppressed in Germany as far as I know(how effective has it been?). Was it ever suppressed in the US? One of the crowning moments of the ACLU's support for civil rights was to stand up for a Nazi march - it's hard to call that suppressed. Can you compare Germany to the US and see whether suppressing and not suppressing Nazism has had a significant effect? Or perhaps there is a roiling Nazi sentiment in each country, which isn't affected in a significant way by suppression? I am honestly not sure.
> dozens of Christian heretic faiths you've never heard about
These were usually expelled from the country or genocided
> the genocide of the Native Americans (where's their culture now?)
genocide
> the pre-colombian civilizations of South and Central America
genocide?
> the Roman Empire
Not really suppressed
I think I'm seeing a pattern, and it's one of the things that frustrates me in this discussion. People talk about suppressing Nazis, but they claim they are interested in just suppressing speech(which has plenty of negative effects already!). The rationalization to ignore those negative effects is what you proposed - Nazis are so dangerous that eradicating them will be a net good. However, all the examples of successful suppression you're giving me are genocide, or at least go way way beyond mere speech restriction - in all of them the people who had the suppressed ideas were hunted down and killed.
Is just suppression of speech actually effective? If I agree to it, swallowing all my concerns about the negative effects, and it fails to work, will we be looking towards more suppression, with a possible end-game of hunting down and killing the Nazis?
Yes, I thought it was obvious from the context. The original version of Nazism was suppressed by invading their country, killing 7 million people in the process, hunting their leaders, etc.
> the Roman Empire
Hm... They were conquered by foreigners, and the empire desintegrated, but it's debatable whether the real change in culture was internal or not. You're right and it doesn't fit here.
> Is just suppression of speech actually effective?
This is a different question then... You're asking if suppression of speech with tactics you deem acceptable is actually effective. I don't know.
I do know that killing people who hold certain ideas is often effective, and that was the point I was trying to make. Merely putting people in jail for violating the free speech laws might not be enough (I don't think just imprisoning dissidents without the threat of capital punishement or outright genocide has ever been tried at scale).
So maybe we don't disagree as much and we were actually arguing for different views, right?
If they are doing something illegal then they should be prosecuted using whatever avenues are available. If they haven't broken any laws, why would we want companies punishing them unilaterally?
> There's nothing stopping these maniacs from starting their own intermediaries
The Internet is commercial, top to bottom. The same kind of public sentiment (or if you lack the appropriate sentiment, outraged news) would prevent anyone from agreeing to be their DNS registrar or their VPN host. Should they start their own ISP, who will agree to peering with them? Should they bypass DNS and have a well-known static IP, will other networks agree to route traffic to that IP?
> There's nothing stopping these maniacs from starting their own intermediaries to host the content(trash) they want to peddle.
Who decides on what is and isn't trash?
The article states "And music streaming services offered by Google, Deezer and Spotify have said they would remove music that incites violence, hatred or racism."
Does this mean they will remove things like 'Fuck tha police' or 'Smack my bitch up'?
I don't like such music and would consider it trash, it also falls quite clearly under inciting violence and hatred.
As much as I don't like that music though, I like even less having a handful of companies being the arbiters of what content is and isn't available.
Every person or entity called in to relay material that isn't a regulated utility, arm of the state, common carriers, or otherwise deprived of or restrained in the exercise of free speech rights.
"Fuck tha police" is from an album which was recently selected for preservation by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically, or artistically significant". The album was also rated the 144th best album of all time by Rolling Stone magazine.
Exactly! And that's why it's a good thing that I'm not the arbiter of what can and can't be listened to on the Internet.
Who would you give that power to though? And can you be sure that the people you give it to will agree with you on everything that should and shouldn't be allowed?
'Fuck tha police' talks about slaughtering cops, using sniper rifles to take them out, a bloodbath of cops dying and so on. Can you trust that a company that says it will remove all music that incites violence and hatred to allow such a song to be available online?
Can you trust that once a company has set a policy of removing things that incite violence and hatred that other people won't come along and petition to have such songs removed on those grounds?
I might not like that song but I'm not going to try and ban it, because I accept that it's ok for people to like things I personally find distasteful. If I don't like it, I have the freedom to choose not to listen to it.
I am worried though when I hear companies talk about banning things with such large umbrella terms that can be arbitrarily enforced.
Refusing to tolerate the intolerant, when their intolerance _may_ be an imminent threat to society (e.g. neo-nazis in the US being defended by the current president) is paradoxical and distasteful, but not inconsistent with a liberal position on tolerance.
That's the exact kind of thing we need more of in response to this: love and kindness can literally extinguish the hate in people. Unfortunately, that takes way more courage and strength than it does to engage in a twitter witch hunt.
Is that really a paradox in the US? Popper talks about unlimited tolerance, but this is not the case in the US or really any country. There's not even unlimited tolerance of speech, as we're well aware of narrow exceptions to the FA - defamation, obscenity, fighting words...
It seems to be by the time intolerant people become an imminent threat, they would have already broken the tolerance levels in the US - e.g. physical violence.
I find it more ironic that last week people applauded Google for firing James Damore and saying "there's no room for that here", and this week Google is threatening free speech by removing real threatening content.
Are you sure they are stopping just maniacs and crazies? Do you trust them? I don't know, maybe growing up in Soviet Union made me skeptical of "let us censor this for you to keep you safe" claims.
Some people believe that stopping the maniacs and crazies right now is the best way to make sure the West doesn't turn into a new Soviet Union. Whether you agree or not, it's certainly a defensible position.
Yes, you can argue that the Soviet Union didn't happen because the Tsar failed to censor enough, I'm just trying to say that thare is some substance to the argument for stopping the maniacs.
I think the opposite is true. Russia was among the countries where spreading communist ideas was punished the most. Marx and Engels were free to write in Britain, yet there was never a communist revolution there.
Reddit decided that pro-health subreddits that spoke out against obesity were "hate speech". It quickly goes too far. And yes, these are private companies, but many are doing this out of fear of government prosecution.
If their hateful conduct and ideas are hidden from you, how will you know to fight back?
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
We should not be afraid that our ideas will lose if all sides are heard. We must win this war of ideas, there is no other way. But we cannot win unless we can point to what is wrong with their ideas. For us to achieve that, they must not be hidden.
It seems that history did not end. Every generation has to win their incarnation of this war, again and again, unfortunately. The beginning of our struggle is drawing nearer and nearer.
While I don't agree with your first statement, I do agree with your second.
If a company controls so much of the internet that they are able to silence an entire group of people, that's probably not a good thing. Where they draw the line today may be different from where they draw the line in a decade. Once the line is drawn what does that mean for other content that Google doesn't agree with?
Companies like Google and Facebook control access to so much content that, with the tweak of an algorithm, they could make it appear that there is no one else in the world that shares a controversial viewpoint that you might have.
That being said, Google is a private company and should be free to block whatever they want. If enough people don't agree with them, over the course of time, other competitors will rise.
It's just you. The answer to speech and acts you don't like is more speech, not censorship. It's not like white nationalism is on the rise in the US--that's a complete media fabrication in an attempt to discredit the Trump Administration and it is a completely ridiculous allegation, quite frankly. Each side of of the political spectrum has its fringe elements and there's no getting away from that.
So while I agree that what they spew is reprehensible, what worries me is, who get's to decide what's worth banning? Where is art limited and where is it not? Rap and Hip-Hop and Metal have been accused of inciting violence and hate. Grand Theft Auto and other games has been accused of glorifying violence against women. Where does it stop and who gets to decide? I loathe those people that push and peddle their bigotry but if we want to be free don't we always need to err on the side of freedom? Banning their speech and being hypocritical, is that really how we want to beat them?
It's interesting considering how this is related to Net Neutrality (they aren't the same, but they are related). While I agree with the EFF, that this is happening, I hope, raises awareness around the importance of Net Neutrality.
While I definitely don't support the people they're booting off I do have to agree with the EFF here.
For example, "And music streaming services offered by Google, Deezer and Spotify have said they would remove music that incites violence, hatred or racism."
Now these services have put it out there as policy someone has to define what's violent, hateful or racist in music. Racism? Ok nobody's really going to bat an eye at that disappearing.
Violence and hatred though? As an off again on again heavy metal listener.. almost literally every track could be described as violent or hateful. That's the genre. The same could be said for other genres and their sub-genres. Rap comes to mind. Is Eminem next on the chopping board?
Music was the easy example, there's other examples available for the other services (registrar, DNS, hosting, CDN) as to why making this policy is a bad idea. Now anyone needs to do is convince someone at the corresponding target that a site is similar enough that it should be taken down.
South Park had a two-parter that addressed this exact problem [1][2]
But that was the state stopping Nazis from marching, this is a private company refusing to do business with someone. Free speech is a right guaranteed by the state, so you won't go to prison for stating your beliefs. But no one should be obliged to help you air those beliefs against their will.
I think the article sums up the problem quite well:
"Because internet intermediaries, especially those with few competitors, control so much online speech, the consequences of their decisions have far-reaching impacts on speech around the world."
Can I refused to make a wedding cake for a gay marriage? You can always go somewhere else.
Can we please stop comparing treatment of gays and treatment of nazi's like they're some kind of equivalent? Gay people from most accounts were born that way, and just want to remain being alive and gay. Nazi's should be given no safe harbor, as they want to opress and/or kill gay people along with everyone else who don't want nazi's to have power.
I don't think you understand 'freedom of speech', when you start saying 'I believe in freedom of speech for only X kind of speech, because the other kind abhorrent'.
Choice vs born-with-it isn't a valid reason. If science discovered a way to change your sexuality, would you be OK discriminating against gays after-all? Religion is also protected and nobody is born with a particular religion. Country of birth is something that people are born with but we heavily discriminate against that - a Syrian can't just get the plane to America and go set up home there. You Americans will almost unanimously agree to stop him for no other reason than an accident of birth.
Nice strawman. We should be able to discriminate against those who seek to discriminate in the ultimate (ie deny nazi's/violent religious extremists/radical communists/etc a platform to promote discrimination/violence).
Did you apply this logic to the bakery who refused to bake the cake for a gay wedding last year?
The issue of freedom of speech when it relates to businesses is a pretty good hypocrisy litmus test. Last year the Left was outraged when a business refused service based on moral grounds, while the Right sided with the business, and we have the opposite in this case.
IANAL - but that's a different deal. You are (afaik) not allowed to discriminate against gender, sexual orientation etc. as a business or private person. Whereas Freedom of speech is just about what the gov' can and can't do to you.
Not really. The Federal Civil Rights Act only prevents discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. Sexual Orientation was never included in the legislation, though some states do have legislation with respect to sexual orientation and political affiliation. California being one of the states which does not allow discrimination on sexual orientation or political affiliation. As detestable as they are one could easily argue that the Neo-Nazis are a political group and should be afforded equal protection.
As a side note, the Bakery case is being looked at by the Supreme Court, in terms of whether or not you can force an artist to make something they don't want to.
Sexual Orientation, like Political Affiliation, is only protected in certain states. The Federal Anti-Discrimination Law does not protect against discrimination by sexual orientation, you might want to read up before claiming to understand something
Yes. People who defer to the legal definition of protected classes and insist that members of them must be protected and everyone else be damned are the showing clear hypocrisy.
It would be funny if in another 1000 years we'll all agree that the current US popular leftist morals turned out to be the right ones: It's wrong to discriminate against someone because of their race, religion, sex, or sexual preferences (as long as it's one of a few predefined types) but it's right to discriminate against someone because of their political views, alternative sexuality (outside the list of predefined types), ugliness, height, location of birth, or anything else you don't like. These classifications are so arbitrary and transient, why does anyone stand by them so vehemently? When they're old they might become the new racist uncle - hating the wrong people that the next couple of generations decide shouldn't be hated anymore.
> When they're old they might become the new racist uncle
Honestly, that's what's got me concerned. Political mores are changing so fast and so constantly, and people are being so black-and-white about them, that it seems like the only "acceptable" position to some people is getting pretty close to a full-throated condemnation of everything and everyone that happened before they were born.
If it wasn't so easy to fail the purity tests, maybe fewer people would become Nazis (either out of ostracization or to troll purity the testers).
When private companies obtain near-monopoly status, they become a significant danger to the public interest and the government rightly scrutinizes their every move. I still think WalMart should have been compelled to stop altering music CDs in the 90s. And I still think any "too big to fail" company should be broken up under antitrust proceedings.
This wouldn't be a problem without the Citizens United ruling. Corporations should not be considered people, especially when doing so comes to the harm of real people.
So now it becomes a regulatory issues, ie should they be regulated and treated like utilities in that access should be available to all regardless of race, wealth or political persuasion.
"WARNING/GUARANTEE: This album contains material which a truly free society would neither fear nor suppress. In some socially retarded areas, religious fanatics and ultra-conservative political organizations violate your First Ammendment Rights by attempting to censor rock & roll albums. We feel that this is un-Constitutional and un-American. As an alternative to these government-supported programs (designed to keep you docile and ignorant). Barking Pumpkin is pleased to provide stimulating digital audio entertainment for those of you who have outgrown the ordinary. The language and concepts contained herein are GUARANTEED NOT TO CAUSE ETERNAL TORMENT IN THE PLACE WHERE THE GUY WITH THE HORNS AND POINTED STICK CONDUCTS HIS BUSINESS. This guarantee is as real as the threats of ther video fundamentalists who use attacks on rock music in their attempt to transform America into a nation of check-mailing nincompoops (in the name of Jesus Christ). If there is a hell, its fires wait for them, not us."
Even 'racist' music can be tricky business. There are lot's of Swedish and Polish metal bands that would call themselves 'nationalist' but have a great 'nazi' following for example.
I enjoy some of these bands and would not want them censored. Just as I would not want Shakespeare plays to be censored either.
Keep downloading your music and your movies. You will never be able to trust your streaming services.
Yes! Richard Wagner was an anti-semite - no argument! He's been described as 'one of the most virulent anti-Semites in modern history as well as being Adolf Hitler’s most revered cultural role-model'. He also happened to be a musical genius. Do we bann performances of the Ring Cycle or Tristan & Isolde?
Intent is difficult to judge as well. The lyrics for the Rolling Stones' Brown Sugar are pretty clearly racist (among other things). It's not clear, however, if it's meant to promote racism.
Similar for incenting violence and "Pumped up kicks".
Edit: They could also add misogyny to the list and wipe out large swaths of entire music genres :)
This seems like, basically, all of the rap I grew up listening to in the 90s could be arbitrarily censored here.
"Big dicks in ya mouth is bad for your health" comes to mind, alongside NWA's "Fuck the Police", and even songs by the relatively higher-minded Public Enemy could be construed as racist, or incitations to violence -- if one were predisposed to a puritanical cleansing of our media. More obviously, rap from musicians like Immortal Technique, The Geto Boys, Cypress Hill are just begging to be censored under such criteria.
Of course, this is Google we're talking about, and they control much more than music and videos. It's not a big jump from determining the Wu-Tang Clan to be too controversial to ruminating over whether or not all those casual mentions of the word 'nigger' in Mark Twain's works is appropriate.
Sadly, we appear to be living in interesting times.
I was pretty embarrassed by it all to be honest. Nothing makes me cringe more than everyone responding ultra PC. It is bad enough with the commoners, but it is a disgrace when companies get involved with PC statements for no other real reason than to favor the brand.
I may be the same as you only I was a 90s rap kid, the entire directory of music I have collected since the 00s could be considered violent and hateful.
Google and other companies have long been removing content from, for example, Islamic terrorists. Why is it only a problem now when they are removing content from white people?
It isn't alright under any circumstance. Given that my music is 99% black artists and I am white, the race card is ill placed here. I firmly believe that all adults should make their own choices. It is bad enough with government telling you what you can and cannot do, without self proclaimed goody two shoe companies declaring a PC line and imposing additional limits.
If music streaming services should not be free to police their content, what about text hosting services (i.e. forums)? What about record labels, should they be forced to sign acts they find offensive (protected classes aside)?
Not arguing one way or the other but "music streaming services" is not too different from many other services which people expect to police content.
Perhaps considering whether the company holds a monopoly or near-monopoly on that media gateway is relevant.
The external pressure comes from public outcry. Fewer people paid attention to neo-Nazis a week ago, hence fewer questions about the stuff they hosted.
I'm not convinced there's an argument that the right of a political cause to have its music distributed by a particular company trumps the right of a company not to distribute it or the right of the public to pressure the company into not distributing it.
If one is to impose upon on the freedom of actions of media distributors or the potentially-boycotting public (I'm not sure the latter is even possible), there had better be something pretty amazingly special about the cause that means their right to be heard trumps others' rights not to be the amplifier. I'm not sure any remotely compelling argument exists for neo-Naziism being a cause deserving of such special privileges or music distribution services being the sort of thing one should have an inalienable right to.
I don't know. Racism certainly helped Zionists build the state of Israel. Perhaps more people should be racist so they can found and enjoy their own private Zion.
No, but it's closely upstream of certain political beliefs and the Left has attacked our ability to talk sensibly about these issues by conflating the two.
I assume that you will agree that racism has two common definitions[1]:
1. a belief about facts: that there are distinct human subspecies that differ biologically from each other in various ways
2. a description of behaviour: favouring one human subspecies over another in certain matters
An example of the first kind would be the observation that Kenyans, particularly from the Nandi subtribe of the Kalenjin tribe seem to outperform every other ethnic group on distance-running, and the hypothesis that "favorable somatotype" (i.e. an innate biological characteristic of this group) may be contributing to this.
An example of the second kind would be the factual observation that (at least in the US), increased ethnic neighbourhood diversity is correlated with decreased with lower trust in others and lower neighbourhood social cohesion[4]. Another example would be the theoretical observation (based on agent-based modeling) that diversity and a sense of community are incompatible community properties[5].
Now the point I want to make is that while racism as defined above (either a statement of fact, or a description of human racial preferences) is not in itself a political belief, it can very certainly form, contribute to, or be the basis of certain political beliefs.
As I hinted at with the start of this comment, I think your statement is a symptom of broader confusion on the Left about racism caused by lack of clear definitions and eagerness to overuse "racist" as a slur and as a catch-all for people or ideas they don't agree with[9]. Here's a list of mistakes that many on the Left make and that combine to make it really hard to address these issues clearly and without hysteria. Hopefully it will help clear up some confusion and provide opportunity for some exchange of thoughts:
1. Conflating the two definitions given here. For example, by assuming that those who think there are biological differences between certain human subspecies (first definition) also think discrimination based on these group characteristics (second definition) is okay.
2. Conflating beliefs about biological differences (first definition) between human subspecies with beliefs about the supremacy or inferiority of certain human subspecies. That's why the terms "racism" and "white supremacy" are often seen to be used almost interchangeably.
3. Conflating favouring one human subspecies over another (second defition) with the supremacy of one's own subspecies. For example, Enoch Powell opposed mass immigration to Britain, but also regarded "many of the peoples of India as being superior in many respects [...] to Europeans."[6]
4. Believing that whoever opposes or is skeptical about multiracial/multiethnic societies is doing so on racist grounds (as defined above, so either because he believes certain human subspecies are less well adapted to life in some society, or because he believes people have a natural preference for more or less monoethnic societies and that it therefore makes pragmatic political sense to favour monoethic societies). For example, someone may oppose it because he values and wishes to maintain human racial diversity and believes (not unreasonably so[8]) that multiethnic societies are eroding racial diversity.
5. Believing that opposition to multiculturalism is racist. This is self-explanatory and should be obvious regardless of whether you oppose or support multicultural or multiethnic societies.
[2] Tucker, Ross, Vincent O. Onywera, and Jordan Santos-Concejero. “Analysis of the Kenyan Distance-Running Phenomenon.” International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance 10, no. 3 (April 1, 2015): 285–91. doi:10.1123/ij...
Boilerplate ideological talking points are off topic on Hacker News. We ban accounts that people create for that purpose and have banned this one. Would you please not create such accounts here?
For to sake of clarity and proper context, scrollaway's comment read "Racism is not a political belief" and was changed to "How can you call racism a political belief?" after some replies.
How many tiki-torch demonstrations is worth one Auschwitz, in terms of events actually happening? You know, let's just put things in QALYs or utils or something and use good old-fashioned consequentialism.
I'm not sure this kind of policy even has whatever the intended effect is, seems how it appears to be a reaction to Charlottesville events.
Take "music that incites racism" (what do you put into Pandora to get that genre?) for example. If you have users listening to it (because before Charlottesville you thought it was okay!) and you remove it telling them their music is basically banned aren't those users just going to listen to it someplace else and feel more empowered by its message?
The more persecuted these groups feel online, the more justified they will feel in their real-world actions.
Absolutely. Neo Nazis have been a fringe group for decades and never caused much trouble. Now I actually feel some affinity to them because I see them as an underdog being beaten down. That's how you get supporters - get oppressed. In fact that's how the original Nazi movement started in the first place - a vent to Germans' frustrations at being oppressed by the winners of WWI.
What’s also interesting is the media’s concerns with “how could these group of white males form these groups, what would motivate them to do it?” Totally miss the point that the same social-economic stressors and cultural resentment are what lead to the growth of gangs And radicalism terrorist groups.
I would love to see everyone stand up and deplore gang violence with the same aggressiveness considering people are dying in cities daily.
Facilitating the organisation of neo nazis is likewise dangerous, to the point that people die regularly. That is the other, just as real danger, that you are trading the dangers of censoring eminem with.
There is also the fact that all these companies already have arbitrary censorship in place, so this isn't an argument about the principles: that one is long lost. This is an argument about the existing excemption racism has.
> While I definitely don't support the people they're booting off...
A bit off topic but how many bytes are spent on prefaces like this on responses to this topic?
I assume that the vast majority of people on the planet don't support Nazis or anything related. I find it interesting that any discussion of them has to include that line lest the speaker/writer be labeled as one (which happens quite a bit anyway but that's a different topic).
Yup, I expected more of a backlash and I'm not good with words under mob pressure. I prefaced it to avoid the "oh so YOU'RE a racist too huh??" potential retort.
Well, when we're at a place where asking where someone is from is considered an example of white supremacy, then it seems we need to couch everything we say with strained deference to social justice. Those are the times we're in, and I blame the left for its obsessive dismantling of our language.
See here's a great example of why I prefaced my message. Sorry but I'm lacking in either English language skills or politics but I haven't got a clue what you're saying. I'm ill-equipped to respond to this sort of reply. I'm not even sure what side of the fence you're debating for here.
Now imagine if it was filled with accusations of being a racist, I'd probably just be curled up in a ball under my desk waiting for the fallout to end.
I couldn't even imagine how stressful it must be to enter into this kind of conversation when English isn't your first language. I feel for you.
What I meant was that the meaning of terms like "white supremacist" and "racist" has changed dramatically in recent years. To the point where it's very difficult to speak clearly about these types of things.
I realized that even here I wasn't very clear. What I was saying was that you shouldn't have to say that you don't support racists before every single statement. But because of how our language has shifted, you now have to, and it's unfortunate.
I don't think this is a language problem at all. It's because of a stupid binary us vs them mindset. Any time you offer a criticism, it's automatically perceived as support of the other tribe. Any admission that your own tribe might not be as pure as the new-fallen snow, or that the other tribe isn't always completely evil, is enough to brand someone as a pariah.
As long as we keep up this attitude, we're going to continue - and deepen our political divides.
Try having a conversation about civil war history. You reference any historical information that makes views on the war less cut and dry, you'll gain the label immediately.
I'm from South Carolina and after seeing all of the conflicting historical information on the internet since the Dylan Roof shooting, I decided to pick up a bunch of books on the subject from both sides. My main driving force was a strong belief that people are inherently good and I had a really hard time believing that all of my ancestors were the evil scum of the earth portrayed in assorted narratives.
As it turns out, there's some critical details left out and now that I understand the build up to the war better I can at least rest easier. It's virtually impossible to have a conversation about though.
Ehh...it's not so much controversial as it is just details that are normally left out. Once you're aware of them and take the time to verify the citations you immediately notice when other people leave them out.
Sure there were economic factors at play and those are interesting in their own right, but in the south the biggest thing that people fail to understand is the element of fear. I don't want to do a historic nose dive, but the 3 things you can read about to understand that better are The Haitian Massacre of 1804, John Brown, and The Cherokee Declaration of Causes.
Of those three, only John Brown is mentioned on the Wikipedia timeline. The other two provide context.
You're welcome. The most important thing to remember is that this was a huge conflict with over 100 years of build up.
There's a lot of complicated history that makes things ugly all around.
It's fascinating to read about though.
What I've found is the easiest way to find where there are holes that need to be explored is just by asking "Why?" anytime you hear of an event. If you're given history and just told, "this happened, then this happened..." the quickest way to get an answer to something is to simply ask "Why did they do that?"
That simple question will point you in the right direction more often than not. When you start answering enough of those questions, everything that happened makes a lot more sense.
Totally agree on that. This is how I approach my country's and surrounding region history.
Although it's popular to bash "there's no single truth" people, the more and more I look into history, the more I think that's true. Everyone has a very complicated history which is a product of what did or even didn't happen. Which results in totally different point of views and everybody see truth differently. It's truly fascinating to see how different timelines merge and separate and the today's politics and policies they cause.
For a long time, it seemed it was only Tumblr types who were calling everyone nazi. Recently, even people I've known for 20 years, who I thought were normal, have been posting/tweeting to the effect of either you're loudly proclaiming your opposition to nazism, or you're on their side.
I saw a thread where trolls were rejoicing, saying: they kept calling everybody a Nazi so some of us actually became Nazis.
While well some people might put disclaimers on everything others are simply giving up. This started during the Trump campaign where everybody was called racist. The same with anti-semitism, especially against the current president who has a Jewish daughter. When people sling these around just as general insults and as a way to say you're wrong, then they lose their power.
Interesting, I recently saw a quote from a prison psychologist that suggested the root cause of most violence was shame.
I thought that was profound, but I struggle to fit overuse of the word Nazi online into the same framework, indeed I find it much easier to fit the kind of opinions and behavior that people might refer to as 'Nazi'-like into this framework:
"Gilligan notes literally dozens of synonyms for shame: feelings of being slighted, insulted, disrespected, dishonored, disgraced, disdained, slandered, treated with contempt, ridiculed, teased, taunted, mocked, rejected, defeated, subjected to indignity; or, experiencing feelings of being weak, ugly, inadequate, incompetent, a failure, losing face; and being treated as if one were insignificant or worthless.
Based on his research and other expert opinions, Gilligan concludes that “the most potent stimulus of aggression and violence, and the one that is most reliable in eliciting this response is not the frustration per se, but rather, insult and humiliation (page 32).” In other words, the most effective, and often the only way, to provoke someone to become violent is to insult them."
It's insane. I had posted some very interesting articles that I thought were very insightful as to examples in regards to deescalation of violence and possible non-violent means to resolve some of these issues.
Yes, it's stupid. But that's the place we're at in the culture war. Pres. Trump is being crucified right now precisely for failing to provide such a statement.
We all have to be careful to pay our tributes, or we'll be ostracized. Can you think of any other reason for such widespread repetition of these useless words?
(And of course I must, too. I'm speaking here from a completely abstract standpoint which shouldn't be construed as support for neo-nazis or anything vaguely like them.)
Pres. Trump is being crucified right now precisely for failing to provide such a statement.
It's a bit more than that. Trump has had no problem condemning Antifa thugs and violent radical Islamists, so it is noteworthy when he equivocates on violent white supremacists, especially when some of them are claiming that he supports them.
He has multiple times condemned the kkk and neo nazi's as well as the groups you mentioned. What I don't understand from media coverage is why is what he said not treated like condemnation for those groups or that his words weren't strong enough or that it needs to be repeated at every news conference.
Part of the issue is people are used to simpler statements. One enemy at a time. One condemnation at a time.
Also they are used to how politicians typically do whatever necessary to appease their constituents till the horse is dead. Not saying this is bad, but that's the expectation and one he doesn't follow.
I also think he's not attuned to people's sensitivity toward race.
I said no new taxes. No new taxes. No taxes. I won't raise taxes. Taxes will not be raised. Over and over and over and over.
Not being a pol hurts him here in that he does not get that aspect of governing.
You don't just do what you think is right, you have to continuously signal your intention, otherwise your intention is suspect.
Congratulations, you're not paying any attention. He notably refused to condemn them initially, then released a textual statement condemning them days later in response to criticism, immediately walked back his condemnation in a press conference, before condemning them again. If you read that as "He condemned them! Twice!", I don't know what to tell you.
Not only that, he then went on to complain[1] about the removal of "beautiful" Confederate statues, effectively siding with the Neo-Nazis, who were in Charlottesville specifically to protest the removal of a Confederade statue.
This is par for the course for Trump, who (only when under extreme political pressure from his own party) will belatedly condemn right-wing extremists with one corner of his mouth, but give them a verbal wink with the other.
Arguing against removal of Confederate statues is not siding with neo-nazis.
(Corollary: arguing for the removal doesn't make you a violent Antifa Communist.)
Condoleeza Rice, an African American woman with political clout and experience, has argued we should keep the statues. Others have made a strong case for removing statues of people who committed treason.
But whatever your view, this should be done legally and peacefully. No mobs tearing down statues, no pitchfork-wielding defense of statues. We live in a democracy. Exercise it.
President Trump equates the alt-right racists and the Antifa violent Communists for political purposes. President Obama equated Israelis and Palestinian terrorists for political purposes[0].
People find it hard to condemn violence when their side is doing it; they point out wrongs in the other side to soften or excuse their side's violence.
While reading a TelePrompter, some people in his administration got him to stay on the script, but when he went off the script in the next press conference it got even uglier.
Sadly, The Nazis do identify with the GOP, Not the democrats. For example US Nazis/Alt-right types are trying to actively infiltrate local GOP chapters. (As seen in tweets published online)
As long as they self identify as belonging only to the GOP, than stickers like that will happen.
It seems to come especially from (apart from actual supporters, obvs) people who think that neonazis are interested in the same sharing of information and arguments in good faith that the majority are. That hasn't ever been so.
So while the "freedom to speak, whatever" side has a point, they're also being naive.
So true. I had to create a separate Reddit account to have these discussions about internet freedom and refusing service because people assume I'm a white supremacist / Nazi.
I'm not, I just think it opens up some interesting discussion as to what we can or can't discriminate against.
For the topics it covers, the discussion at SlateStarCodex.com and its matching reddit are of extremely high quality, both in terms of the thought that goes into comments, as well as the civility of participants.
I don’t think that service providers have to suppport them. Just not find them morally entirely repugnant. There's quite a lot of ground between those two points.
Someone in that thread, unironically, said that Google etc. had to allow Nazi's to use their services. And then immediately said "Whatever happened to "Don't be evil"?".
Apparently the concept that providing your services to Nazi's could be thought of as evil totally escaped their thoughts.
It seems like quite a lot of people have deeply internalized the opinion that "Free Speech" is an unalloyed good, and are confused by anyone who sees this as a matter of shades of gray.
I'd argue, the people looking at things in black and white are the ones' being ridiculous here. Is child porn free speech? Is a direct threat free speech? Is copyright infringment? etc. No matter how hardcore a free speech advocate you find, there's going to be a line for them. But apparently anyone who draws their line one step to the side of that is evil and/or stupid because that is the point where the slippery slope starts, conveniently just to the side of their own line, which is on firm and solid ground.
Unless the platform that hosts it, has made the same uncompromising decision, then of course. It would be like hosting an app that freely declares it will host viruses on your platform that scans for viruses. They're telling you upfront that they have no intention of following your platform rules.
Not accidentally letting a few slip through, not being overwhelmed by scale and doing a crappy job, but as a point of principle not following the rules you are trying to enforce.
the difficulty with shades of gray wrt to free speech is that what is intolerable is a matter of opinion and I don't trust ANYONE to make that decision for me.
free speech must be absolute, so yes, in this case it is black and white, sorry you don't see it that way.
The vast majority of people on the planet aren't enough to stop a person (regardless of their ideological beliefs) from threatening, beating, and murdering people in a free society.
In order to actually stop people from doing those things, society would have to give up a lot of freedom to prevention through force ("stopping"). In a free society, the focus is usually on prevention through dissuasion (influence) or through reactive means (punishment, rehabilitation).
What are your thoughts on how society could physically prevent these actions while maintaining freedom for all its citizens ?
The trouble is, this easily can lead to a very slippery slope on one hand, and charges of "double standards" on the other.
There is a lot of music that directly depicts violence (hip hop and metal in particular are loaded with violent imagery). In most cases, the people making it are not directly involved in said violence. Sometimes, the violent imagery is actually there for anti-violent reasons, even.
That being said, there is also some music is made by people with actual criminal histories and/or nasty opinions. This includes well known figures in genres such as black metal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varg_Vikernes) and hip-hop (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Shmurda). Even on simple "racism", you'd definitely be excluding certain music from a well known country musician (the infamous, IMHO mostly cringe-worthy, "underground" albums from David Allan Coe.)
The few bits of music I've heard that trade heavily in white nationalism is very poor quality -- which of course seems quite the likely outcome to me. Such music is atypically metal or punk, genres which are considerably influenced by the blues. Most of the best musicians keep an open mind to all sounds; rock and roll (which historically was a fusion of "hillbilly music" and R&B) doubly so.
So I think removing these obscure white nationalist bands does more harm and good. Such makes them "more underground" and probably more appealing to those "rebelling" for whatever reason. In contrast, keeping the music around lets most people see just how awful and cringe-worthy these type of bands typically are.
Wow, I almost missed that part of the article. There's so much music that could fall under that rule...
Music is up to interpretation. One of my favorite songs is Sublime's April 29th, 1992. You could easily say it incites violence, glorifies looting and rioting, and should be removed. But my interpretation of the song makes me think it's more about understanding the mindset of the people who were looting and rioting, and not condoning the violence.
How could anyone impartially decide what should and shouldn't be published?
Wow. That production story would be the best Shouth Park plot ever. It's complete, with even nobody caring about the censorship and talking about how they criticize Family Guy.
I believe "music that incites violence, hatred or racism." Is defined as: any music that makes a lot of people upset on any given day, esp. when it is trending on Facebook or Twitter.
Exactly, so do we expect that Google / Spotify will remove Chief Keef's "Bang Bang"? Lyrics for example: https://genius.com/Chief-keef-bang-bang-lyrics -- If we don't remove that for "music that incites violence" then its a scary double standard we are building and we are now at the whim of the "PC Thought Police"
I couldn't agree with you more about the Cartoon Wars episode; either it is all fair game or none of it is. I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
Poland seems to ban "promotion of .. communist .. ideology", and Romania seems to ban "totalitarian .. actions of a communist .. nature". Countries that seem to ban communist symbols include Ukraine, Lithuania, and Latvia. Countries that previously passed similar laws include Moldova, Czechoslovakia (1991), Poland, and Hungary.
Apparently, some countries like Albania, Czechia, Germany, Italy, and Slovakia ban "totalitarian ideology".
It's quite simple. Eminem is white and male, that means he's a hateful misogynist and homophobe. Azealia Banks is black and female, that means she's empowered by rapping about cunts, bitches and catching a nigga's warm goo in your do-rag.
Thanks to progressivism we can finally judge people by the content of their character.
(/s, Let's face it, everyone can see this is politically motivated and the demand for empathy and charity only ever goes one way. Apparently it's ok to set cars on fire and smash people's heads in for political reasons, just as long as you loudly explain that you're _against_ fascism and nazis while doing so.)
I saw plenty of evidence that Nazis are doing the same in charlotesville and else where. There was an old Nazi by the name of Tubbs, who was actively directing skirmishes.
<30 seconds of googling can help you factually on this.
I can't wait 'till other entities hold this incident over said companies' heads when trying to black hole whatever random content that some group, nation, or entity doesn't like (coughcough China).
It's not just hatred that we have to worry about. It's any view that's considered abhorrent today.
Not so long ago, less than 50 years ago, there was little to no distinction between LGBTQ people and paedophiles. They were one and the same (look up the term nonce, British slang used against both LGBTQ people and sex offenders for one example, or the case of Alan Turing for another).
Some very brave people fought against the perceived wisdom of the majority, even when through association alone they would be considered to be paedophile supporters themselves. These rights for LGBTQ people are still being fought around the world today. People died over this fight. People are still dying over this fight.
I understand the desire to limit hurtful speech, but in doing so we hand over the power to set limits to an arbiter. An arbiter who may feel that today's moral majority view outweighs that of others.
What you feel today about people of colour, about LGBTQ people, others may feel about animal rights, human genetic engineering and AI rights in the future amongst others. If you limit the boundaries of free expression it is no longer free. You are taking those rights away from those seeking to fight injustice in the future.
It's not hard to hate Nazis. It's harder to see the consequences of our actions through the red mist. The British Government has the official position that censoring the Internet is something that must be done. Even the EU is starting to think this could be a good thing. If you think this stops with Naziism, then you're wrong. If you think this won't come to America, you're wrong.
All these things remind me the old days when the Soviet government had a list of "not recommended" music bands. E.g. Black Sabbath - violence, religious obscurantism; Kiss - neofascism, punk, violence; Scorpions - violence, etc. Here is a full list translated to English http://i.imgur.com/Aj9wYpN.gif
I don't think private-sector companies have any obligation to host anything. The problem is we in the tech community have watched with only minor concerns as the web grew increasingly centralized and left the power to these companies. The Daily Stormer has no right to an domain name or search results or ad revenue, no site does. The Daily Stormer has every right to exist, but it doesn't have a right to be served fast and conveniently(no, I'm not advocating against net neutrality, any host for the Daily Stormer should treat it exactly as they treat all their other customers). I think despicable sites like the Daily Stormer have a right to exist, but I'd rather they be hosted on a personal computer with a non-static address and every now and then the dial up connection get's interrupted when the site admin has to call David Duke about when the next Klan rally is.
Ah, agreed. I was confused by the use of the word right in "has no right to an domain name", but English isn't my first language.
I agree that a private company does not have to host any neo-nazi materials (or anything really, for that matter). I would do the same if it was my company and I would rather work with such a company as a customer.
I'd rather a political litmus test not be part of getting access to basic information society services.
"I think despicable people have a right to talk, but I'd rather they be forced to string together two tin cans than be able to own cellphones or audio amplification equipment."
"I think despicable people have a right to eat, but I'd rather they be forced to dig roots and vegetables out of the ground than be able to buy processed foods from a supermarket."
Where is that line, exactly? And what is the rationale for drawing it there?
Where is the line? Before the internet you had to work hard to distribute your literature if you didn't have a publisher. Letters to the editor aren't a right.
>"I think despicable people have a right to eat, but I'd rather they be forced to dig roots and vegetables out of the ground than be able to buy processed foods from a supermarket."
OH you mean like segregation that the US is barely just getting away from. I had grade school teachers that told me about their experiences with segregation. We can't even figure out how to be nice enough to eachother to make cakes for gays in 2017. http://www.denverpost.com/2017/06/26/us-supreme-court-colora...
Businesses are not obligated to serve anyone, and it goes both ways and maybe the people making the choices not to do business with customers who have different opinions, sexual orientations, or skin colors should experience what it is like that it goes both ways.
"And music streaming services offered by Google, Deezer and Spotify have said they would remove music that incites violence, hatred or racism."
That sounds like a big job, and one filled with ambiguity. Classifying forum posts is one thing, but trying to determine intent with music is going to be tricky.
There's never been anything conservative about the far-right. Comparing Chesterton and Pinochet is an insult to Chesterton, let alone comparing him to Hitler!
I think the genesis of this can be traced back to Reddit deciding that an anti-obesity subreddit couldn't be hosted there because it hurt people's feelings.
But back then, pre-Trump, they seemed to have no problem with extreme neo-Nazi subreddits, which Pao kept.
Millions of people had no idea Daily Stormer existed until GoDaddy, Google, and CloudFlare kicked them out. Each one only added to their growing pile of free publicity. I guess Google never Googled "Streisand Effect"? First Damore and now this.
Edit: Also kind of ironic that my comments are now being buried on HN because I posted some unpopular opinions. Maybe we should throw HN in the mix too.
Edit2: Aaaaand now I'm not even allowed to post. HN is at least predictable in their censorship tactics, if nothing else.
HN has always had trigger-happy moderators who abuse their power to silence people they don't like, including PG himself. Just Google 'Hacker News Shadowban' sometime.
Some percentage of people learned the site exists. Some other percent learned there are still a lot of people (relative to what they thought) that believe in nazi principles.
This attention would only be bad in my eyes if the first group was bigger than the second.
But again, now the rest of America is more cognizant of the existence of those people.
People with a persecution complex are going to view anything that way. Get kicked off? Fits their narrative (or is approval). Ignored? Fits their narrative. Told what they're doing is wrong? Fits their narrative.
So if you think this is stupid what would have accomplished the goal of making life harder for them?
I find it odd that websites seem to either harbor a slowly growing extreme right wing, or choose to seek and destroy it.
It seems like the extreme rights' method of gaining control is to be provocative while the extreme left lobbies admins to remove the provocateurs (see: reddit, youtube). This ends with the tech companies complying with the left. Why isnt it the other way around?
Edit: apparently today okcupid banned a nazi as a publicity stunt. Maybe im looking too much into this
The far-right is trying to be "counterculture", in an effort to make hate speech "cool". The people lobbying for the removal of the hate speech and its enablers are far more mainstream than "extreme left". People who are victims of hate speech don't have to be extreme anything to prefer that sites choose not to enable harassment.
I'm not even sure who counts as "extreme left" any more, there are very few people trying to do revolutionary communism or actual Maoism in the West.
I'm not sure about "extreme left" as a movement but there are definitely positions I'd attribute to the "extreme left". Universal Basic Income. Replacing the police force with a comparably sized and empowered army of social workers and therapists. Outlawing fossil fuels. Banning GMO.
The extreme right is mostly underground, and stay on these platforms a long, long time quietly. Only when they start getting loud and provocative do they get a response. They stay and thrive on these platforms until then.
Because the right has all the facts in its corner.
I'm not talking "preponderance of evidence." I'm talking people who come over to the right shaking their heads, like someone awaking from a dream and saying, bewildered, "How did I never see all this, right in front of my eyes?"
Every molecule of oxygen in the debate arena belongs to us. We own the realm of reasoned discourse. That's why the left must break so many of its own rules to continue the fight.
It must be said that the "extreme right" is hardly unified.
I'm sure some of the groups labeled in this way actively seek to gain new adherents or to influence public discourse. Others still probably simply want to cater to some preexisting audience. I'd like to see more analysis about the different groups involved.
Why are big companies banning this? Surely Google, GoDaddy and Cloudflare, even Spotify aren't going to be hurt by any public backlash. GoDaddy is already widely despised as a bad actor. I can understand a small startup at risk of being destroyed by an internet mob for supporting Nazis, but not these.
Are they afraid of legal consequences? Aren't they safe to just wait till the police asks them to take it down before doing so?
The Stormfront is a well known FBI honey pot. Why would people with "moral values" try to interfere with the FBI trying to infiltrate and arrest nazis?
It may be that they are worried about getting punished by advertisers in the future. Youtube took a hit when news stories started claiming that extremists were making money off videos on the site.
It's the opposite - they believe that banning them will get them GOOD publicity, and it has. Look at how many people are talking about OkCupid today for banning that Nazi in the Vice video.
If recent events have shown anything, it is that we need to do a lot MORE to stop neo-Nazism. I'm not saying doxx all neo-Nazis and whites, supremacists. But we need to name them. Make them known.
Don't support their businesses. Don't let them have domains or websites. Kick them off Google platforms, Facebook, even OKCupid. All private companies need to take action now and make sure none of them can use the internet to spread their hate, or really use any service.
I think it is time to organize contacting car dealerships working next to deny selling any automobiles to them. Eventually we can get the DMV to deny licenses to these dangerous individuals, or at least put them on a registry so the feds can check in on them.
There are a few hundred neo-nazis in the US. There are 50,000 in Austria and they have seats on the European Parliament from Austria, Greece, and Germany, despite the much harsher rules there.
You should educate yourself because what you ask for is basically what happened to jews in the third reich. Not even something toned down or a "behind the curtains" deal, by doing this you are not better than the nazi's themselves, you stoop to their level.
Insert point about the slippery slope fallacy here.
There is no debate amongst the vast majority of our society that neo-Nazis are provocateurs of hate, racism, and violence. Their beliefs (the suppression and murder of Jews, people of African descent, etc) cannot be tolerated in a civilised society.
The same debate about the role of Islam in terrorism in the Middle East and here in the US is nowhere near as settled. Therefore, I am not sure the slippery slope can be claimed here.
I feel like love is a better tool than hate in trying to affect social change.
Remember its not "them" we need to convince and get back onto the straight and narrow, its the people listening, the children and those waiting to make their own decisions on the subject.
To give those people a persecuted underdog to sympathise with isn't going to improve the next generations ways of thinking.
Racism isn't like polio, we can't eradicate it because its the natural condition of homogeneous communities.
Oh and the false positives for the solution you offer are terrifying by putting the judgement into the hands of everyone. Imagine being wrongly accused of being a neo-nazi?
> I feel like love is a better tool than hate in trying to affect social change.
Please do not argue for this position based on "feelings"... In my own country, most social change was the result of war, credible threats of violence and technological progress. Natuarally, I "feel" the opposite.
Since we're discussing the US, I'd wager that's probably true there too: white culture became dominant over Native America culture because the Native Americans were wiped out, and the survivors were sent to barren reservations.
Slavery was brought to an end because its supporters were defeated in a literal war. Also, the social change that gave rise to salvery was based on the forceful kidnapping of people, too.
Worker rights are the result of strikes and often literal violence.
Were I familiar enough with the History of the US I think I could bring up other situations.
(If I'm wrong on any of these historical points I'll be happy to be corrected)
I get your point (I'd argue that velvet revolutions are longer lasting on average though) but you can't kill racism like this. It is the default state of homogenised communities.
Its not like Muscovy killing off the Great Horde and purging or exiling the Mongols so the people of Rus could rule themselves.
Racist nationalism is within every one of our children and is only expelled through individual education or positive exposure to people that are different. You cannot kill it off like you can Polio.
I'm not at all comfortable talking about 18th and 19th century social issues through a 21st century lens. It's not going to be productive at all.
Slavery ended in the Northern US states without any war. It's an oversimplification to say the US Civil War ended slavery--it ended the southern plantation culture that supported slavery, but that's about all it did and the effects lingered until at least the early 1960s! Had there been no war, the abolitionist argument probably would have eventually won out and social change may have been more rapid.
As far as Native Americans go, they were not viewed as noble savages as they are today. Again, in a 19th century struggle for resources, the more technologically advanced culture won out. We are looking at the actions of whites and trying to apply 20th and 21st century principles to their behavior and I don't think you can.
I just visited The Little Bighorn and did a lot of reflecting on these issues. If nothing else, I am not to blame for whatever several generations past did to others and I feel no guilt over it whatsoever. I can only control my own behavior. As an intellectual, I value the diversity of ideas as superior to the identity diversity being promulgated by those with a political axe to grind.
If anyone wants to wage war against me or my family, expect to receive an equivalent amount of force applied in response.
Where am I looking at this through a 21st century lens?
I'm just saying that in all of these cases, the strong won and imposed their will on the weak, thus suppressing their ideas and culture... Love doesn't seem to have been very important in any of this.
I don't understand your criticism, sorry.
> Had there been no war, the abolitionist argument probably would have eventually won out and social change may have been more rapid.
Maybe, I'm not comfortable speculating about such things. I don't know nearly enough to even start :)
1. A Reasonable Position is expressed, in this case - 'Nazi's are very bad'. The Reasonable Position often involves an Enemy that must be stopped. Most reasonable people will agree with the Reasonable Position.
2. The Reasonable Position becomes the overriding factor in any situation that involves it. All other factors and considerations are dwarfed by it and forgotten.
3. Because the Reasonable Position comes to dominate the thinking of the Extremist - who often means well - they come to believe one can only ever be for or against the Reasonable Position. There is no room for moderate positions that try to balance the Reasonable Position with other important considerations and values - in this case, freedom of speech.
4. In order to show support for the Reasonable Position, third parties are forced to action in accordance with the world view of the Extremist. If they try to balance other considerations against the Reasonable Position, they are seen by the Extremist as sympathizing with the Enemy.
5. The fervor of extremism charges through society, trampling on other values and considerations.
(Edit/disclaimer, the sister post's examples of mcarthyism et al. are far better than my ken-burns-biased analogues) Prohibition comes to mind. Washingtonians and other early groups were based more in abstinance than prohibition; but the dogma shifted under a mix of social/religious pressures from the dominating voices in that fight to result in an all or nothing approach which, while it succeeded, had disastrous effects in the longer term.
This. Over the past few days I've been called a Nazi-supporter or KKK-defender simply for disagreeing with people. The 'logic' seems to be that Nazis are their enemy, and me not 100% supporting them means I too am the enemy, thus I'm actually trying to undermine them to help the Nazis.
My last post on Reddit was simply saying that dehumanising people and denouncing pacifists as sympathisers only creates further radicalisation. Currently at -350 points as it's clearly a controversial statement.
I agree but only in part. The real problem isn't that Google is able to shutdown a site as a registrar it's the fact DNS as designed needs a hierarchy to make it scale. This is the real problem with DNS and trying to shame Google to not cover its bottom line on such matters isn't going to work when you have a government that may decide they're too big for their britches and decides to go after them.
Instead, I wish EFF and other organizations would fund the development of a replacement for DNS rather than trying to legislate its use. Computers aren't like other kinds of technology where the implementation has to follow the physical structure, especially when considering the idea of domain names which are human readable to bind to IP addresses (which aren't human readable enough). That way, you get around corporate and government interventions entirely.
I think an important aspect that is often missed here is how conservative most tech companies are when it comes to legal boundaries.
I would posit that each of these companies is arguing internally (at least in part) in favor of removing neo-Nazi and other violence inducing content from their services to distance themselves from fault when that content results in legal harm.
Why don't people get upset like this when companies refuse to carry pornography? That's been really common for a long time, even if not universal, and I don't recall ever hearing a peep about it from the likes of the EFF. Maybe I missed it?
I agree with your sentiment but I only realise it now after having given it some thought.
The reason I disagree with the silencing of nationalist speech but didn't consider porn to be effectively suffering from the same issue is because I simply never considered censoring porn to be a speech issue. I had never thought of it as an idea, which is what I think of when it comes to political ideologies.
I think the difference here is more related to whom is doing the censoring. Google or MS don't censor porn on their products, Facebook only partially removes some related imagery so I don't see it as a concerted attempt to blocking the people's access to it, which is what I see as being the current trend when it comes to these more controversial topics. It's all my bias of course.
So to be clear, you think "Heil Hitler! Enslave the blacks and exterminate the Jews!" is a more socially important sort of speech than, "Fuck me harder, I love it!"?
I don't want to live on this planet anymore, with the bizarre reversals in basic sense of priorities here.
>Why don't people get upset like this when companies refuse to carry pornography?
Because it's not about freedom of speech. It's about making sure that the political Right and far-right get as much platform as they need to spread their message, and damn all other principles.
They do get upset. In fact, both Google's and EFF's responses are results of people getting upset. There's people upset that Nazi imagery exists, and Google wants those people as customers, so they have made the decision to ban Nazi imagery. There's people upset that this ban is overbroad and poorly applied, and that it sets a dangerous precedent, and the EFF is voicing that fear. Youtube, Facebook, etc ban pornographic content due to social pressure.
Google did not arbitrarily decide to ban Nazi speech on its whim, with no social support. This is a social war and it's why I find all the arguments unpersuasive - "private companies should do what they want"(except in cases when we don't like it, e.g. employment laws, denying service to minorities..) or "private companies should be forced to do what we want"(what happened to freedom of association?).
The underlying issue is that we're split on the importance and effects of tolerating hateful speech. The private companies are trying to navigate the social climate, which has become increasingly polarized. Boycotts, "with us or against us" demands is what is forcing their hand. It's not Google that's evil in this case, it's us. We are forcing them to take a stand on this social rift, and they have, and no one should really be surprised by it. Freedom of speech advocates have a long history of losing to moral panic.
I think you misread my comment. Obviously people are getting upset about this Nazi stuff. My point is that similar censorship of porn is a time-honored tradition and these organizations don't seem to care about that.
The EFF has addressed porn when it comes into their purview - e.g. the recent string of anti-"revenge porn" laws. But you answered your question yourself - censoring porn is a time-honored tradition(it's an exception in the FA), while censoring political speech is not(there are wide-ranging protections for political speech). In this sense, the EFF is championing its primary cause - the application and effectiveness of laws as they pertain to the digital world. The issue of private companies and public spaces for free speech has been controversial(http://law.justia.com/constitution/us/amendment-01/54-quasi-...) and the EFF has usually fought on the side of expanding the concept of public places, as far as I know.
People do get upset and frustrated over those sort of content restrictions too. It's just not currently a red-hot issue because it's been status quo for so long.
Maybe it hasn't raised to EFF's radar before, but it does flare up every now and then. The PMRC drama culminating in Explicit Content Advisory as sales restriction was probably the biggest one in recent memory. The MPAA moving rating system got some heat around the release of This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006). The EFF did get involved in the SCOTUS case Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, but I hate to even mention that for the tangential connection because I don't want start another gov't vs private censorship wankfest where everyone misses the fucking point.
But in general, the people who do care find themselves spending time on other priorities, or locked in a flamewars with people who show no morals beyond bland acquiescence to the status quo; and nothing ever changes.
I'm glad to see the EFF making the point I'be been trying to make all week; at the cost of multiple downvotes: "Because internet intermediaries, especially those with few competitors, control so much online speech, the consequences of their decisions have far-reaching impacts on speech around the world."
It's not really a free speech issue. It's a monopoly issue. Google should be protected from government interference in their right to exercise free speech just like every other individual and company in the US.
The fact that they are a near monopoly is a problem that has side effects, but the real issue to focus on is the monopoly.
> Google should be protected from government interference in their right to exercise free speech just like every other individual and company in the US.
If Google wants those rights, it could surrender its monopoly (through a voluntary break-up).
I think the hypothetical that people like me on the left need to consider is the following. Our current vice president is extremely anti-abortion. It's no stretch of the imagination to see that portion of the country growing in strength to be there dominant view in power within ten years. In their view abortion doctors are literal baby killers, websites arguing the benefits of abortion are literally advocating the killing of babies. In their eyes, this is literally as bad as Hitler. If you set the standard at "ban everything that the populace deems to be as bad as Hitler" then today we get rid of Nazi sites and tell KKK members they can't use our gyms, but tomorrow who will be condemned? (Note that this isn't even a slippery slope argument: it's saying that who gets to define the slope changes.)
The other argument is that if Google and co have never ever bowed to political pressure to remove something except as required by law, that gives them a great argument to push back against some of the less progressive governments which they must work with. If Assad starts demanding that internet companies in Syria ban his political opponents, then Google could reply "we didn't even ban Nazis, why the hell would you expect us to ban anyone for you?"
And in case this all seems hypothetical, remember that the current US government recently requested all visitor logs for an anti-Trump website.
The missing distinction here is between a public utility with monopoly privileges (more like Google) and just some business (GoDaddy or some gym).
Nazis should be able to use public utilities, but the thing is, if we decide Google is a public utility, then so should communists, pornographers, drug dealers, criminal gangs, et al. And in fact, great, let's do that! Let's pass those statutes, let's break up the internet monopolies, let's decentralize and encrypt everything we can, all the time.
But let's also make sure that up until the very moment those statutes pass, we're not giving Nazis special favors.
> If you set the standard at "ban everything that the populace deems to be as bad as Hitler" then today we get rid of Nazi sites and tell KKK members they can't use our gyms, but tomorrow who will be condemned?
You should count the number of bombings of abortion clinics over the last decade or two, count the number of laws restricting access to abortion in the last 5, and then decide whether inaction today will prevent action tomorrow.
What is the causal relationship of this argument? If I condemn nazis today, and say the nazis come into power, does my past action magically make it easier for nazis in power to be, well nazis? If I don't stand against nazis today and they come into power, will that magically shield me? Rhetorical consistency has no physical power.
> Google could reply "we didn't even ban Nazis, why the hell would you expect us to ban anyone for you?"
Or they could just do it anyway. Being rhetorically consistent has never been a requirement for taking actual action. Just remember that the United States government has already colluded with business leaders to suppress political beliefs [1]. After the Fowley Square Trial, the United States government actually disbarred and jailed any attorney who defended the communists they charged. They then passed a law forbidding picketing of courthouses. The ACLU supported that law.
Pandora's box has already been opened. It's always really funny how it's the far right who have their rights vociferously defended by centrists but those very same centrists always stood by while communists were rounded up and exterminated. By the way, this happened too in Germany. All of the people who publicly opposed the Nazis before they came into power were condemned with the same exact centrist "both sides are wrong" rhetoric we hear today.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. These very exact arguments were being made in the 1930's. They were being made back in the days of Usenet, BBS and vBulletin forums. They will be made so long as there exist people who want to maintain some abstract virtue at the cost of other peoples' material safety. So long as someone is not directly materially threatened by the white nationalist political program, they will indefinitely stave off any concrete opposition to that program.
On the other hand you have people who are not materially threatened by white nationalism deciding to kick the hornets nest because they're in a bad mood. That was bullshit and should be condemned. The far right's persecution complex is directly tied to their violence and oppression against more vulnerable groups, so when some tech CEO validates that complex needlessly it really is counterproductive and harmful. The position of "don't pull this bullshit because it comes back on us" is not abstract, although the people who pulled the bullshit might not be the ones who see it come back around.
Ideological consistency and abstract virtue are things for the far-left/right almost by definition. If a centrist is protesting or standing around doing nothing it's for another reason. That might span from "actually believes it protects peoples' material safety better" to "is completely clueless" or "doesn't want to speak up and face extermination themselves", etc. You're basically calling it virtue signalling but that is often just a way to dismiss someone's authentic concerns or motivation.
> The far right's persecution complex is directly tied to their violence and oppression against more vulnerable groups, so when some tech CEO validates that complex needlessly it really is counterproductive and harmful.
The far right has had a persecution complex for decades. It is a self sustaining social phenomenon. Again, there's this extravagant counterfactual claim that if no one materially opposed the nazis, the nazis wouldn't be as nazi as they are, which is such an extraordinary claim that it requires extraordinary evidence which is never provided. It is always stated blithely as some sort of obvious truth.
Nazis have already validated their persecution complexes. They are already fully invested in it. That's what got them to dress up as nazis and march about being a nazi and screaming "jews will not replace us". You're literally just repeating the same argument I called into question as if you have supported it with any new facts.
> Ideological consistency and abstract virtue are things for the far-left/right almost by definition.
Oh god please read a history book [1] [2]. Ideological inconsistency and irrationality are hallmarks of fascism. Both Nazis in Germany and Fascists in Italy constantly changed their beliefs and allegiances. They never at any particular moment had a cogent internally consistent ideology let alone an externally consistent one. The only predictable thing about fascism is it's brutality once it has triumphed over those who oppose it. And, historically speaking (please read a book), that triumph occurs because centrists actively sabotage their opponents and stand aside while they entrench their power.
Like, you literally don't know what you're talking about. That is what's so absolutely frustrating about centrists. They presume that they know either by osmosis, pop history, or the propagandistic pseudo-history that's taught in secondary school how these political movements happen. You actually don't know how fascism works but the ideological structure of the west has put it in your mind that you do know, and you know exactly how to combat it, and that so happens to be milquetoast support for vague principles and the status quo.
It's so frustrating because it's so easy to just pick up a decent secondary source and actually gain a detailed, coherent view of the early 20th century which A) provides a real, actual, empirical model for the behavior of fascism and how it was resisted; and B) a parallel history that can be checked to see what is the same and what is different about material conditions this time around.
Now you might want to completely dismiss me because of my combative tone that clearly confirms to yourself what you already knew: that those damned people who hold to a political position outside the Overton window are a bunch of fatuous lunatics who should be dismissed. But at least look at these books that are written by extremely reputable and rigorous scholars. On many things I think it is obnoxious to dismiss a discussion with a demand that the other be more educated, but on this particular subject I need to make my position clear. I'm only aggressive about this because I think it's the most important conversation of our generation and currently it is an exact repeat of the conversation that led up to the very worst terror in human history. The only ingredient missing that really propelled the Nazis rise to power (they languished for about a decade before they really started picking up steam) is a global economic crisis. I wonder when the next one will come?
As an example of how much events today rhyme with events then, Lügenpresse [3].
[1] Robert Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism. Relatively recent book with universal acclaim from all across the political spectrum, from socialists, liberals, and conservatives.
That's a false analogy. You can't compare the freedom rights of the oppressed to these of the oppressor. The context in which rights are granted or taken plays a big role here. If it wouldn't, someone on HN would long ago code a moral bot that just answers "of course" every time you ask it "is it okay to say X?".
I used this same quotation back in the '90s for something. It's become kind of trite, like the Ben Franklin quote about liberty and safety. Yes, we know the Jews suffered, it's been drilled into your psyches over and over again. Not the blame the victims, but Germany's Jews are the perfect example of why you don't believe in government benevolence and why you never let anyone conduct mass civil disarmament.
Stalin proved that the Germans were right to go after the Socialists who were trying to undermine Germany. Not defending what the Germans did, it was horrifying. Both sides ended up being brutal and completely evil. Look at the Spanish Civil War, no real winners there and that was the prototype for WWII--fascism rose as a counter to communism. Again, not trying to excuse it, it's just reality.
"Dark web network Tor has said it has no plans to stop the Daily Stormer from using its technology." This straight after having talked about various other services having banned Daily Stormer. It implies Tor is a service controlled by the Tor project who could actually kick Daily Stormer if they wanted. While it could be accidental incompetence I worry this is a deliberate attempt to paint tor negatively in the public’s mind.
Even more disturbing to me is that youtube has started banning UFO research channels like Steve Greer's CSETI. I don't really bother watching these channels and consider the UFO thing a bit of a quasi-religion, but they aren't inciting violence or hate against anybody.
Has Google decided they are now the truth police? Is Google taking it upon themselves to be like the Chinese censorship bureaus except for the whole world?
397 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 283 ms ] threadHowever, when entities like Google, Apple, FB have such impact on the population and spread of information, they can become the "great firewall".
This is very dangerous and google should not be in the position to become the thought police.
I'm 99.99% certain if freedom of speech was formulated today, it would include private companies as well.
Freedom of speech already does. Unfortunately Americans tend to conflate the broad concept with the US First Amendment.
There were cases where people lost their jobs for their extracurricular legal activities that were hate speech according to someone. Like in US, private companies seem to give in much quicker than government that tries to follow the law to the letter.
Seriously, conservatives in America want to have their cake and eat it too. "We meant freedom for corporations-as-people but only when it helps us".
For the record, I'm not American. I grew up in ex-USSR country that was just recovering from total censorship. What is going on today in the world is sickening me. A lot of rhetoric in the West is too similar to USSR craziness. I'll be happy to be offended and keep my right to offend you. The other way ain't pretty.
Amazon blacklists people who abuse their service, like return policy. They are not breaking the laws, but blocking these bad customers is not only a moral choice but also a rational one, since it protects the sellers and other customers. Likewise, if you are making a scene in a private space, if it disturbs the usual operation, the owner should have the right to kick you out, because you are damaging their business.
So I say otherwise, any private business owner should have the right to refuse offering their service to people who they consider harmful to their interests.
Google could argue, hosting those hateful content draw negative attention from the media which tarnish their image thus hurt their business interests.
The one and only problem is, Google is too big and too powerful, their decision carries significant impact which should not be taken lightly.
I'm pretty sure abuse of return policy is covered by some kind of law. On the other hand, blacklisting customers who just use advertised return policy to it's full extent is not moral either. False advertisement is breaking of the law too.
More powerful companies (like Google) need to constrained in ways that less powerful companies (like Joe's Cake Shop) don't.
Citation? This seems like a clumsy attempt to bash the south. Considering that the two largest cases for violating public accommodation laws hail from Oregon (Sweet Cakes) and Colorado (Masterpiece), with other cases from Las Vegas (Walmart) and Ohio (Take the Cake), it seems ... off.
In the real world, freedom of speech is generally free enough as it is, and in the example above, is in tension with my right to freedom of association. Yes, the Nazis are allowed to yell at me, just as I'm allowed to distance myself from them. If I own property, I can go one step further by going home and locking the door.
I don't like Nazis, but Google's censorship here is giving me pause. Yes, of course they have every right to refuse to do business with whomever they like. Thankfully, so do I. If I don't care for Google's censorship, I'm free to use Spotify, or Pandora, or whatever other company (hopefully) makes a principled stand against censorship.
At the end of the day, it's their house, and if they want to lock the door to keep Nazis out, I can't imagine any fair world that would force them to open those doors.
If Nazis are such a big problem, secret service and whatnot should start looking into them. It's not a job of private company to enforce it's own point-of-view on the society. Wether it's correct not, but a private company cannot hold a a fair trial. And censorship without one is just wrong. I'd rather have a pissed off bakery serving gay cakes and coffeeshop serving nazi teaparty than letting a private company apply censorship.
> I'd rather have a pissed off bakery serving gay cakes and coffeeshop serving nazi teaparty than letting a private company apply censorship.
I'd rather have bigoted companies free to be bigots, so that at least I could know who they are, and to avoid patronizing their business at all costs. The alternative is that they are forced to pretend to be not-bigots, I give them my money, and then they donate it to bigoted charities.
I'm not talking about making everybody pretend to be not who they are. That's totally fine by me. If a bakery wants to fly a Nazi flag - so be it. But if gay couple wants a selfie drinking smoothies by said flag - that's fine.
So the question is, at what threshold (of size, competitors, etc) should free speech move from the corporation's policy to decide to the customers'? At one end of the spectrum, we've got corner stores, where there are a million options, and policy is decided by whoever's working at the time; on the reverse side, there are governments, who must inherently be monopolies, with policy decided by the voters. Google, cloudflare, godaddy, all fall somewhere in between, with the concern being that they fall too close to government in terms of power, while decisions remain made by internal managers, without user accountability.
I think that something like ifps.io may partially solve this issue as the Nazis could host their own site and individual nazis could provide storage and bandwith to keep it online.
I think the concern is, what if Google and Facebook can be thought of as essentially being the internet. It's certainly true that the internet has gotten far less decentralized in the past decade. Google essentially has a monopoly on how people find information.
I’ve heard “freedom of speech” defined as a natural right, but this idea is the most unnatural way for people to act.
Point in case - people bringing up the gay cake in mentioning of google memogate.
Is a bus company right to refuse service to protesters going to a protest? Can a train company cancel trains specifically on a day of event they don't like for some reason? Can cellphone carrier shut down service for people they don't like for some reason? Can gas station refuse selling gas to skinheads on a roadtrip? What if they're just going to work on a regular workday?
1. Protected classes are defined by a history of prejudicial treatment and blocked access to essential services, and they exist as a class of people defined by biological markers. So you can control being black or being gay, and you can’t access any bus service or use the same water fountain anywhere. This is very different than holding an opinion, and not being serviced by an add-on provider. 2. There are great differences between being denied a voice and being denied an amplification platform for that voice. We never mandated that newspapers print every letter to the editor, or even provide equal time to classes of opinions (although that did happen in a natural way).
If you tried to get a cake plastered with swastikas, that would not be protected free speech and could be denied service. You have to go find a Nazi baker or append the speech yourself. This is very different from being black and you can not get any cake from any baker, and they’ll know too, because you can’t exactly hide the fact that you’re black.
No, that's totally wrong. Religion is a protected class in many cases.
http://www.hr-guide.com/data/G714.htm
Christians have enough of hard time for their believes in quite a few places. Why are they less protected than gays? Why is their freedom of speech is worth less than gays?
One could argue that gay cake is not biologically defined marker. For example, by christian believe, marriage is to make babies. Gays can't make babies. Thus gay marriage is not biologically even possible.
Then we step into another issue. Frequently "protected class" is taken as free pass to do anything rather than being protected for their specific attribute. For example, people being called racists for rightfully calling out black person for his bad behaviour.
We see this in the offline world, ADA compliance can be expensive, but is a cost of doing business. Providing services to someone you find morally repugnant can be emotionally expensive, but you may not be able to legally refuse them service, while servicing others. It's not clear to me why it's ok to pick and choose customers because of their (terrible) political beliefs, offline or online. If their content is illegal, let a court decide that and issue an order requiring it to be taken down. The domain registration, and associated NS records are unlikely to be illegal.
Self determination is a very core part of what I, an outsider, see as American-ism. But self determination only seems to apply to government interference, not private.
For example, in the US organisations like HOAs (Homeowners Associations) and employers are allowed to encroach on what from my perspective I consider personal freedoms, but people accept it in the US because they're non-governmental in origin.
Here in Europe, freedom is freedom. It is irrelevant who is telling you you cannot paint your home orange be it local government, a private entity, or your next door neighbour. But in the US freedom only applies to government, private entities are allowed to violate people however they want under the guise of "choice."
What I've found in my life is that choice is a perk of the wealthy. The poor often lack choice.
I'm a pro-government liberal who is extremely wary of the power of global corporations, but I still take some solace in what this says about our system.
But since we've basically given up on stopping monopolies and mega-mergers the companies and now so big and control so many things they have power without competition to keep it in check.
That's been the case before, it's not a great thing. In the late 18th and early 19th century, a few magnates were arguably more powerful than the US government. They certainly ran the US government. A lot of the protections we have today are a response to that time period
United Fruit Company in Guatemala, Shell Oil in Nigeria, BP in Iran... there are countless examples of corporations paying off people to do their dirty work for them
A democracy is structured to be open and conflict is embedded to force decision-making by consensus and compromise.
Corporations are structured to be closed, authoritarian structures.
We're lucky there isn't much history of corporations having state-like scale + monopoly on legitimate violence. Super lucky.
If it has the latter, it is, by definition, the State. Irrespective of scale (and state-like scale is meaningless.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company
The East India Company, Pinkerton Investigations...
What did you think my point was, I'm interested to see how I could be more clear in the future.
Like the right of free speech? Or free initiative, by blocking money transfer?
The difference isn't that big anymore, and that is the problem.
[0] https://ipfs.io/
As strange as it is, who else but a huge powerful tech company could do that?
Maybe it's just me but I think enabling hate-speech and bigotry is much worse than failing to maintain 100% neutrality.
There's nothing stopping these maniacs from starting their own intermediaries to host the content(trash) they want to peddle.
Why couldn't you say the same about net neutrality?
Whatever you permit to be used against your opponents is certain to be used against your friends as well.
1) Google, Facebook, Twitter, CloudFlare, GoDaddy, and a few other actors ban a certain flavor of hate speech.
2) The pro-hate-speech crowd tries to start their own "Facebook for white nationalism" but can't, because they don't have "premium" peering arrangements with all the eyeball ISPs.
3) There is no step 3, it's game over.
Starting your own ISP can require MASSIVE capital investment if you want to have a hope of competing and take years. There's a reason there are only a handful of really competitive ISPs in the US.
Changing DNS hosts is a mild inconvenience. They can find someone who will host their records. Google shouldn't be forced to do it.
But if I don't like the only ISP in my town blocking some stuff I don't the kind of money Google had to waste to start a new ISP for me and others in my town.
Please don't let that happen in America. Making up hate or blasphemy reasons is very easy.
However, you create a path for the next person to use the same argument to censor other speech. Maybe they'll be riots over the next war involving the US and it'll be for "the good of society, to prevent violence" and it'll get censored as well.
Anyway, we've had this sort of thing in America, but we've probably largely forgotten the history (Lady Chatterly's Lover, Fanny Hill, and so on) and haven't really paid attention to the small-scale occurrences that are still ongoing (e.g. public school libraries are often pressured to remove "controversial" books).
Yes, there are concerns about concentrated, oligopolistic markets, but those are solved by breaking up the major players -- not by legislating some requirement of fair service for literal swastika-waving, Roman-saluting Nazis.
People are not entitled to claim freedom of speech for posting Nazi trash on their own private website, and then claim freedom of speech from other private entities refusing to do business with them. Everyone has a negative right to express Nazi views. Nobody has a positive entitlement to demand material resources from private actors to express Nazi views.
The disgusting thing here is that, for many years, if we on the Left pushed for a universal basic income, or for single-payer health-care, we would have the difference between positive and negative freedoms kindly explained to us by the political center and Right. Now a bunch of (again) literal Nazis have a sad, and that we have to quietly listen to the center and Right tell us there's no more distinction, that Nazis have a positive entitlement to be Nazis? It's completely disingenuous!
Or should the Communist Party file a lawsuit to demand a stipend from tech companies for spreading communism?
Communist Control Act, 50 U.S. Code § 841
>The Congress finds and declares that the Communist Party of the United States, although purportedly a political party, is in fact an instrumentality of a conspiracy to overthrow the Government of the United States. It constitutes an authoritarian dictatorship within a republic, demanding for itself the rights and privileges accorded to political parties, but denying to all others the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/841
If we stand for the "right" of Nazis to compel private actors to do business with them (and holy shit does that violate the typical libertarian-capitalist positions of the American Right!), why don't we stand for the actual right of Communists, revolutionary socialists, democratic socialists, and anarchists to operate openly at all?
AFAICT, while the near total lack of government enforcement (and lack of appeals in the few relevant cases that have gone to court) have prevented many or high-level court decisions on the overall constitutionality of the Communist Control Act, the only federal court to rule on that issue ruled it unconstitutional, and the only Supreme Court decision relating to the Act held that the Act did not prevent the Communist Party from participating in the New York State unemployment scheme.
So, it's not clear to me that the Communist Control Act has any substantive legal force, and it's pretty clear that whatever it seems to say on its face, the force it does have is not actually outlawing the Communist Party.
I don't think private companies have an obligation to support hateful websites.
I'm not arguing that this is the right strategy, only that it is often extremely effective.
That prolonged suppression only works specific environments where control is total.
The USA is not that, and censorship attempts often provide further platform for the information.
The point is, there's some really dumb stuff going on and it's time to take back intellectualism from the ideologues and demand and end to the childish behavior and that might as well start with the baseless mistreatment of the Trump family as well as the baseless mistreatment of all conservatives, moderates, and other non-far-left, non-progressives.
Keep in mind that listing the ideas and ways of life that were suppressed and utimately survived is a textbook case of survivorship bias: you remember the ones who survived, and forget the ones that didn't. Some of them no one knows about because they left no records.
EDIT: the dangerous sentence here is: "All the cases I can think of". Those are not an unbiased sample of the real world cases.
Nazism has only been suppressed in Germany as far as I know(how effective has it been?). Was it ever suppressed in the US? One of the crowning moments of the ACLU's support for civil rights was to stand up for a Nazi march - it's hard to call that suppressed. Can you compare Germany to the US and see whether suppressing and not suppressing Nazism has had a significant effect? Or perhaps there is a roiling Nazi sentiment in each country, which isn't affected in a significant way by suppression? I am honestly not sure.
> dozens of Christian heretic faiths you've never heard about
These were usually expelled from the country or genocided
> the genocide of the Native Americans (where's their culture now?)
genocide
> the pre-colombian civilizations of South and Central America
genocide?
> the Roman Empire
Not really suppressed
I think I'm seeing a pattern, and it's one of the things that frustrates me in this discussion. People talk about suppressing Nazis, but they claim they are interested in just suppressing speech(which has plenty of negative effects already!). The rationalization to ignore those negative effects is what you proposed - Nazis are so dangerous that eradicating them will be a net good. However, all the examples of successful suppression you're giving me are genocide, or at least go way way beyond mere speech restriction - in all of them the people who had the suppressed ideas were hunted down and killed.
Is just suppression of speech actually effective? If I agree to it, swallowing all my concerns about the negative effects, and it fails to work, will we be looking towards more suppression, with a possible end-game of hunting down and killing the Nazis?
Yes, I thought it was obvious from the context. The original version of Nazism was suppressed by invading their country, killing 7 million people in the process, hunting their leaders, etc.
> the Roman Empire
Hm... They were conquered by foreigners, and the empire desintegrated, but it's debatable whether the real change in culture was internal or not. You're right and it doesn't fit here.
> Is just suppression of speech actually effective?
This is a different question then... You're asking if suppression of speech with tactics you deem acceptable is actually effective. I don't know.
I do know that killing people who hold certain ideas is often effective, and that was the point I was trying to make. Merely putting people in jail for violating the free speech laws might not be enough (I don't think just imprisoning dissidents without the threat of capital punishement or outright genocide has ever been tried at scale).
So maybe we don't disagree as much and we were actually arguing for different views, right?
The Internet is commercial, top to bottom. The same kind of public sentiment (or if you lack the appropriate sentiment, outraged news) would prevent anyone from agreeing to be their DNS registrar or their VPN host. Should they start their own ISP, who will agree to peering with them? Should they bypass DNS and have a well-known static IP, will other networks agree to route traffic to that IP?
Who decides on what is and isn't trash?
The article states "And music streaming services offered by Google, Deezer and Spotify have said they would remove music that incites violence, hatred or racism."
Does this mean they will remove things like 'Fuck tha police' or 'Smack my bitch up'?
I don't like such music and would consider it trash, it also falls quite clearly under inciting violence and hatred.
As much as I don't like that music though, I like even less having a handful of companies being the arbiters of what content is and isn't available.
Every person or entity called in to relay material that isn't a regulated utility, arm of the state, common carriers, or otherwise deprived of or restrained in the exercise of free speech rights.
Who would you give that power to though? And can you be sure that the people you give it to will agree with you on everything that should and shouldn't be allowed?
'Fuck tha police' talks about slaughtering cops, using sniper rifles to take them out, a bloodbath of cops dying and so on. Can you trust that a company that says it will remove all music that incites violence and hatred to allow such a song to be available online?
Can you trust that once a company has set a policy of removing things that incite violence and hatred that other people won't come along and petition to have such songs removed on those grounds?
I might not like that song but I'm not going to try and ban it, because I accept that it's ok for people to like things I personally find distasteful. If I don't like it, I have the freedom to choose not to listen to it.
I am worried though when I hear companies talk about banning things with such large umbrella terms that can be arbitrarily enforced.
>intolerance toward those who hold different opinions from oneself.
Quite an ironic comment.
Refusing to tolerate the intolerant, when their intolerance _may_ be an imminent threat to society (e.g. neo-nazis in the US being defended by the current president) is paradoxical and distasteful, but not inconsistent with a liberal position on tolerance.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/black-man-daryl-davis... http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/black-woman-recalls...
That's the exact kind of thing we need more of in response to this: love and kindness can literally extinguish the hate in people. Unfortunately, that takes way more courage and strength than it does to engage in a twitter witch hunt.
It seems to be by the time intolerant people become an imminent threat, they would have already broken the tolerance levels in the US - e.g. physical violence.
Yes, you can argue that the Soviet Union didn't happen because the Tsar failed to censor enough, I'm just trying to say that thare is some substance to the argument for stopping the maniacs.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
We should not be afraid that our ideas will lose if all sides are heard. We must win this war of ideas, there is no other way. But we cannot win unless we can point to what is wrong with their ideas. For us to achieve that, they must not be hidden.
It seems that history did not end. Every generation has to win their incarnation of this war, again and again, unfortunately. The beginning of our struggle is drawing nearer and nearer.
For example, "And music streaming services offered by Google, Deezer and Spotify have said they would remove music that incites violence, hatred or racism."
Now these services have put it out there as policy someone has to define what's violent, hateful or racist in music. Racism? Ok nobody's really going to bat an eye at that disappearing.
Violence and hatred though? As an off again on again heavy metal listener.. almost literally every track could be described as violent or hateful. That's the genre. The same could be said for other genres and their sub-genres. Rap comes to mind. Is Eminem next on the chopping board?
Music was the easy example, there's other examples available for the other services (registrar, DNS, hosting, CDN) as to why making this policy is a bad idea. Now anyone needs to do is convince someone at the corresponding target that a site is similar enough that it should be taken down.
South Park had a two-parter that addressed this exact problem [1][2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon_Wars_Part_I [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartoon_Wars_Part_II
https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-history-taking-stand-free-sp...
We seem to keep forgetting what "Freedom of Speech" means.
[Update: Added Chomsky quote]
"If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." - Noam Chomsky
"Because internet intermediaries, especially those with few competitors, control so much online speech, the consequences of their decisions have far-reaching impacts on speech around the world."
Can I refused to make a wedding cake for a gay marriage? You can always go somewhere else.
- Noam Chomsky
I do not believe nazi's or any other group have any right to promote hate and violence against others.
> right to promote
You just did. Promotion is speech.
The issue of freedom of speech when it relates to businesses is a pretty good hypocrisy litmus test. Last year the Left was outraged when a business refused service based on moral grounds, while the Right sided with the business, and we have the opposite in this case.
Edit: so it's not quite comparable in this way.
As a side note, the Bakery case is being looked at by the Supreme Court, in terms of whether or not you can force an artist to make something they don't want to.
Cite please, I genuinely curious.
This difference isn't hard to understand.
It would be funny if in another 1000 years we'll all agree that the current US popular leftist morals turned out to be the right ones: It's wrong to discriminate against someone because of their race, religion, sex, or sexual preferences (as long as it's one of a few predefined types) but it's right to discriminate against someone because of their political views, alternative sexuality (outside the list of predefined types), ugliness, height, location of birth, or anything else you don't like. These classifications are so arbitrary and transient, why does anyone stand by them so vehemently? When they're old they might become the new racist uncle - hating the wrong people that the next couple of generations decide shouldn't be hated anymore.
Honestly, that's what's got me concerned. Political mores are changing so fast and so constantly, and people are being so black-and-white about them, that it seems like the only "acceptable" position to some people is getting pretty close to a full-throated condemnation of everything and everyone that happened before they were born.
If it wasn't so easy to fail the purity tests, maybe fewer people would become Nazis (either out of ostracization or to troll purity the testers).
Hilton discriminating on race: wrong.
Google discriminating on politics: wrong.
Doctor refusing circumcision: OK.
Bakery refusing gay wedding cake: OK.
Musician refusing to play in $religious_building: OK.
Especially if a large business is a monopoly.
This wouldn't be a problem without the Citizens United ruling. Corporations should not be considered people, especially when doing so comes to the harm of real people.
"WARNING/GUARANTEE: This album contains material which a truly free society would neither fear nor suppress. In some socially retarded areas, religious fanatics and ultra-conservative political organizations violate your First Ammendment Rights by attempting to censor rock & roll albums. We feel that this is un-Constitutional and un-American. As an alternative to these government-supported programs (designed to keep you docile and ignorant). Barking Pumpkin is pleased to provide stimulating digital audio entertainment for those of you who have outgrown the ordinary. The language and concepts contained herein are GUARANTEED NOT TO CAUSE ETERNAL TORMENT IN THE PLACE WHERE THE GUY WITH THE HORNS AND POINTED STICK CONDUCTS HIS BUSINESS. This guarantee is as real as the threats of ther video fundamentalists who use attacks on rock music in their attempt to transform America into a nation of check-mailing nincompoops (in the name of Jesus Christ). If there is a hell, its fires wait for them, not us."
I enjoy some of these bands and would not want them censored. Just as I would not want Shakespeare plays to be censored either.
Keep downloading your music and your movies. You will never be able to trust your streaming services.
Similar for incenting violence and "Pumped up kicks".
Edit: They could also add misogyny to the list and wipe out large swaths of entire music genres :)
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bs-ed-anthem-letter...
This seems like, basically, all of the rap I grew up listening to in the 90s could be arbitrarily censored here.
"Big dicks in ya mouth is bad for your health" comes to mind, alongside NWA's "Fuck the Police", and even songs by the relatively higher-minded Public Enemy could be construed as racist, or incitations to violence -- if one were predisposed to a puritanical cleansing of our media. More obviously, rap from musicians like Immortal Technique, The Geto Boys, Cypress Hill are just begging to be censored under such criteria.
Of course, this is Google we're talking about, and they control much more than music and videos. It's not a big jump from determining the Wu-Tang Clan to be too controversial to ruminating over whether or not all those casual mentions of the word 'nigger' in Mark Twain's works is appropriate.
Sadly, we appear to be living in interesting times.
I may be the same as you only I was a 90s rap kid, the entire directory of music I have collected since the 00s could be considered violent and hateful.
Not arguing one way or the other but "music streaming services" is not too different from many other services which people expect to police content.
Perhaps considering whether the company holds a monopoly or near-monopoly on that media gateway is relevant.
Bear too in mind they are removing content. Before this blew up in the media, did they have a problem hosting the stuff they're now removing?
I'm not convinced there's an argument that the right of a political cause to have its music distributed by a particular company trumps the right of a company not to distribute it or the right of the public to pressure the company into not distributing it.
If one is to impose upon on the freedom of actions of media distributors or the potentially-boycotting public (I'm not sure the latter is even possible), there had better be something pretty amazingly special about the cause that means their right to be heard trumps others' rights not to be the amplifier. I'm not sure any remotely compelling argument exists for neo-Naziism being a cause deserving of such special privileges or music distribution services being the sort of thing one should have an inalienable right to.
Just as I think that songs should be legally free to espouse racism, but that they shouldn't espouse racism.
You've got this all backwards. We should be most concerned about censorship of political beliefs, however wrongheaded they are.
'Race nationalism' is certainly political. I suspect most people would associate that with 'racism' in at least some way.
I assume that you will agree that racism has two common definitions[1]:
1. a belief about facts: that there are distinct human subspecies that differ biologically from each other in various ways 2. a description of behaviour: favouring one human subspecies over another in certain matters
An example of the first kind would be the observation that Kenyans, particularly from the Nandi subtribe of the Kalenjin tribe seem to outperform every other ethnic group on distance-running, and the hypothesis that "favorable somatotype" (i.e. an innate biological characteristic of this group) may be contributing to this.
An example of the second kind would be the factual observation that (at least in the US), increased ethnic neighbourhood diversity is correlated with decreased with lower trust in others and lower neighbourhood social cohesion[4]. Another example would be the theoretical observation (based on agent-based modeling) that diversity and a sense of community are incompatible community properties[5].
Now the point I want to make is that while racism as defined above (either a statement of fact, or a description of human racial preferences) is not in itself a political belief, it can very certainly form, contribute to, or be the basis of certain political beliefs.
As I hinted at with the start of this comment, I think your statement is a symptom of broader confusion on the Left about racism caused by lack of clear definitions and eagerness to overuse "racist" as a slur and as a catch-all for people or ideas they don't agree with[9]. Here's a list of mistakes that many on the Left make and that combine to make it really hard to address these issues clearly and without hysteria. Hopefully it will help clear up some confusion and provide opportunity for some exchange of thoughts:
1. Conflating the two definitions given here. For example, by assuming that those who think there are biological differences between certain human subspecies (first definition) also think discrimination based on these group characteristics (second definition) is okay.
2. Conflating beliefs about biological differences (first definition) between human subspecies with beliefs about the supremacy or inferiority of certain human subspecies. That's why the terms "racism" and "white supremacy" are often seen to be used almost interchangeably.
3. Conflating favouring one human subspecies over another (second defition) with the supremacy of one's own subspecies. For example, Enoch Powell opposed mass immigration to Britain, but also regarded "many of the peoples of India as being superior in many respects [...] to Europeans."[6]
4. Believing that whoever opposes or is skeptical about multiracial/multiethnic societies is doing so on racist grounds (as defined above, so either because he believes certain human subspecies are less well adapted to life in some society, or because he believes people have a natural preference for more or less monoethnic societies and that it therefore makes pragmatic political sense to favour monoethic societies). For example, someone may oppose it because he values and wishes to maintain human racial diversity and believes (not unreasonably so[8]) that multiethnic societies are eroding racial diversity.
5. Believing that opposition to multiculturalism is racist. This is self-explanatory and should be obvious regardless of whether you oppose or support multicultural or multiethnic societies.
[1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/racism
[2] Tucker, Ross, Vincent O. Onywera, and Jordan Santos-Concejero. “Analysis of the Kenyan Distance-Running Phenomenon.” International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance 10, no. 3 (April 1, 2015): 285–91. doi:10.1123/ij...
Take "music that incites racism" (what do you put into Pandora to get that genre?) for example. If you have users listening to it (because before Charlottesville you thought it was okay!) and you remove it telling them their music is basically banned aren't those users just going to listen to it someplace else and feel more empowered by its message?
The more persecuted these groups feel online, the more justified they will feel in their real-world actions.
I would love to see everyone stand up and deplore gang violence with the same aggressiveness considering people are dying in cities daily.
There is also the fact that all these companies already have arbitrary censorship in place, so this isn't an argument about the principles: that one is long lost. This is an argument about the existing excemption racism has.
A bit off topic but how many bytes are spent on prefaces like this on responses to this topic?
I assume that the vast majority of people on the planet don't support Nazis or anything related. I find it interesting that any discussion of them has to include that line lest the speaker/writer be labeled as one (which happens quite a bit anyway but that's a different topic).
Now imagine if it was filled with accusations of being a racist, I'd probably just be curled up in a ball under my desk waiting for the fallout to end.
What I meant was that the meaning of terms like "white supremacist" and "racist" has changed dramatically in recent years. To the point where it's very difficult to speak clearly about these types of things.
As long as we keep up this attitude, we're going to continue - and deepen our political divides.
I'm from South Carolina and after seeing all of the conflicting historical information on the internet since the Dylan Roof shooting, I decided to pick up a bunch of books on the subject from both sides. My main driving force was a strong belief that people are inherently good and I had a really hard time believing that all of my ancestors were the evil scum of the earth portrayed in assorted narratives.
As it turns out, there's some critical details left out and now that I understand the build up to the war better I can at least rest easier. It's virtually impossible to have a conversation about though.
Sure there were economic factors at play and those are interesting in their own right, but in the south the biggest thing that people fail to understand is the element of fear. I don't want to do a historic nose dive, but the 3 things you can read about to understand that better are The Haitian Massacre of 1804, John Brown, and The Cherokee Declaration of Causes.
Of those three, only John Brown is mentioned on the Wikipedia timeline. The other two provide context.
It's fascinating to read about though.
What I've found is the easiest way to find where there are holes that need to be explored is just by asking "Why?" anytime you hear of an event. If you're given history and just told, "this happened, then this happened..." the quickest way to get an answer to something is to simply ask "Why did they do that?"
That simple question will point you in the right direction more often than not. When you start answering enough of those questions, everything that happened makes a lot more sense.
Although it's popular to bash "there's no single truth" people, the more and more I look into history, the more I think that's true. Everyone has a very complicated history which is a product of what did or even didn't happen. Which results in totally different point of views and everybody see truth differently. It's truly fascinating to see how different timelines merge and separate and the today's politics and policies they cause.
While well some people might put disclaimers on everything others are simply giving up. This started during the Trump campaign where everybody was called racist. The same with anti-semitism, especially against the current president who has a Jewish daughter. When people sling these around just as general insults and as a way to say you're wrong, then they lose their power.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/intense-emotions-and-st...
It is why I've argued that the current toxic atmosphere is adding to the problem.
I thought that was profound, but I struggle to fit overuse of the word Nazi online into the same framework, indeed I find it much easier to fit the kind of opinions and behavior that people might refer to as 'Nazi'-like into this framework:
https://lakesideconnect.com/anger-and-violence/the-link-betw...
"Gilligan notes literally dozens of synonyms for shame: feelings of being slighted, insulted, disrespected, dishonored, disgraced, disdained, slandered, treated with contempt, ridiculed, teased, taunted, mocked, rejected, defeated, subjected to indignity; or, experiencing feelings of being weak, ugly, inadequate, incompetent, a failure, losing face; and being treated as if one were insignificant or worthless.
Based on his research and other expert opinions, Gilligan concludes that “the most potent stimulus of aggression and violence, and the one that is most reliable in eliciting this response is not the frustration per se, but rather, insult and humiliation (page 32).” In other words, the most effective, and often the only way, to provoke someone to become violent is to insult them."
That got me accused of being a sympathizer.
We all have to be careful to pay our tributes, or we'll be ostracized. Can you think of any other reason for such widespread repetition of these useless words?
(And of course I must, too. I'm speaking here from a completely abstract standpoint which shouldn't be construed as support for neo-nazis or anything vaguely like them.)
It's a bit more than that. Trump has had no problem condemning Antifa thugs and violent radical Islamists, so it is noteworthy when he equivocates on violent white supremacists, especially when some of them are claiming that he supports them.
Also they are used to how politicians typically do whatever necessary to appease their constituents till the horse is dead. Not saying this is bad, but that's the expectation and one he doesn't follow.
I also think he's not attuned to people's sensitivity toward race.
I said no new taxes. No new taxes. No taxes. I won't raise taxes. Taxes will not be raised. Over and over and over and over.
Not being a pol hurts him here in that he does not get that aspect of governing.
You don't just do what you think is right, you have to continuously signal your intention, otherwise your intention is suspect.
This is par for the course for Trump, who (only when under extreme political pressure from his own party) will belatedly condemn right-wing extremists with one corner of his mouth, but give them a verbal wink with the other.
[1] - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-40965029
(Corollary: arguing for the removal doesn't make you a violent Antifa Communist.)
Condoleeza Rice, an African American woman with political clout and experience, has argued we should keep the statues. Others have made a strong case for removing statues of people who committed treason.
But whatever your view, this should be done legally and peacefully. No mobs tearing down statues, no pitchfork-wielding defense of statues. We live in a democracy. Exercise it.
President Trump equates the alt-right racists and the Antifa violent Communists for political purposes. President Obama equated Israelis and Palestinian terrorists for political purposes[0].
People find it hard to condemn violence when their side is doing it; they point out wrongs in the other side to soften or excuse their side's violence.
[0]: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/227669/re-cairo-speech...
So while the "freedom to speak, whatever" side has a point, they're also being naive.
Besides - You think the other side is having a conversation in the first place?
No they are not. They're busy making in roads and winning audiences.
People thinking this is a discussion are under a mistaken impression.
It's a popularity contest. Has been for decades.
It's over.
You can't win a propaganda and disinformation war with polite conversation.
I'm not, I just think it opens up some interesting discussion as to what we can or can't discriminate against.
I'm glad there's a place like Hacker News where people who disagree can still speak to one another civilly.
Not that HN karma matters, but it's very well possible that that is already going on.
The only civic discussion forum I know of is the extropy chat email list.
> But what's the end game? Do service providers have to morally support those who they provide service to? Because that's how things are looking.
And what do you know. That's exactly what's happening.
Apparently the concept that providing your services to Nazi's could be thought of as evil totally escaped their thoughts.
It seems like quite a lot of people have deeply internalized the opinion that "Free Speech" is an unalloyed good, and are confused by anyone who sees this as a matter of shades of gray.
I'd argue, the people looking at things in black and white are the ones' being ridiculous here. Is child porn free speech? Is a direct threat free speech? Is copyright infringment? etc. No matter how hardcore a free speech advocate you find, there's going to be a line for them. But apparently anyone who draws their line one step to the side of that is evil and/or stupid because that is the point where the slippery slope starts, conveniently just to the side of their own line, which is on firm and solid ground.
Not accidentally letting a few slip through, not being overwhelmed by scale and doing a crappy job, but as a point of principle not following the rules you are trying to enforce.
free speech must be absolute, so yes, in this case it is black and white, sorry you don't see it that way.
Edit: Can't even post now. Saying this place is "no better than Reddit" may actually be a little insulting to Reddit.
There it is again. Wow, this is a really interesting social phenomenon we're seeing.
Apparently the vast majority of people on the planet aren't enough to stop fascists from threatening, beating, and murdering people.
In order to actually stop people from doing those things, society would have to give up a lot of freedom to prevention through force ("stopping"). In a free society, the focus is usually on prevention through dissuasion (influence) or through reactive means (punishment, rehabilitation).
What are your thoughts on how society could physically prevent these actions while maintaining freedom for all its citizens ?
If not, I believe taking it down would do more harm than good.
Apparently the post that identified some of the bands is here: https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/08/14/white-supremacis... Googling a few, they do seem to be strictly "national socialist" / white nationalism oriented bands.
The trouble is, this easily can lead to a very slippery slope on one hand, and charges of "double standards" on the other.
There is a lot of music that directly depicts violence (hip hop and metal in particular are loaded with violent imagery). In most cases, the people making it are not directly involved in said violence. Sometimes, the violent imagery is actually there for anti-violent reasons, even.
That being said, there is also some music is made by people with actual criminal histories and/or nasty opinions. This includes well known figures in genres such as black metal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varg_Vikernes) and hip-hop (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Shmurda). Even on simple "racism", you'd definitely be excluding certain music from a well known country musician (the infamous, IMHO mostly cringe-worthy, "underground" albums from David Allan Coe.)
The few bits of music I've heard that trade heavily in white nationalism is very poor quality -- which of course seems quite the likely outcome to me. Such music is atypically metal or punk, genres which are considerably influenced by the blues. Most of the best musicians keep an open mind to all sounds; rock and roll (which historically was a fusion of "hillbilly music" and R&B) doubly so.
So I think removing these obscure white nationalist bands does more harm and good. Such makes them "more underground" and probably more appealing to those "rebelling" for whatever reason. In contrast, keeping the music around lets most people see just how awful and cringe-worthy these type of bands typically are.
Sadly that is a bold assumption that the facts do not necessarily support.
Music is up to interpretation. One of my favorite songs is Sublime's April 29th, 1992. You could easily say it incites violence, glorifies looting and rioting, and should be removed. But my interpretation of the song makes me think it's more about understanding the mindset of the people who were looting and rioting, and not condoning the violence.
How could anyone impartially decide what should and shouldn't be published?
By the same token they would need to remove all the content that promotes communism in multiple countries.
In my country it's illegal as is the case with nazism.
I don't hold much hope Google, Spotify etc. would actually walk that road.
In the United States, it seems the Communist Party might be technically banned (although it exists): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Control_Act_of_1954
Poland seems to ban "promotion of .. communist .. ideology", and Romania seems to ban "totalitarian .. actions of a communist .. nature". Countries that seem to ban communist symbols include Ukraine, Lithuania, and Latvia. Countries that previously passed similar laws include Moldova, Czechoslovakia (1991), Poland, and Hungary.
Apparently, some countries like Albania, Czechia, Germany, Italy, and Slovakia ban "totalitarian ideology".
There are probably more bans worldwide.
Thanks to progressivism we can finally judge people by the content of their character.
(/s, Let's face it, everyone can see this is politically motivated and the demand for empathy and charity only ever goes one way. Apparently it's ok to set cars on fire and smash people's heads in for political reasons, just as long as you loudly explain that you're _against_ fascism and nazis while doing so.)
It's worse! You Americans are now dealing with the fall out from the consolidation of vote banks and the Fox News effect.
Decades ago, when Fox News was created I watched shocked as the first assaults - the first "alternate view points" on normal events were initiated.
Soon you saw assaults on climate change.
I thought "oh, science will win."
But no! Fox News cultivated cranks, gave them a platform, and after building it up, for scientists to come on their shows.
Scientists had studiously avoided talking to cranks - it would have given them more space and then credibility.
But with Fox News behind them? And it's audience which was much larger than anyone else's?
Climate denial became a force in its own right.
Anyway - those scientists went ahead to debate on Fox News.
Except it was never a debate. It was spectacle in the old roman sense. There was no debate, just derision.
And that was the first time I was truly worried for reason and logic itself.
And then America gave birth to creationism.
I couldn't believe it. American market dynamics found a way, to convince millions that evolution was a debated topic.
Imagine that!! People are debating whether evolution occurs!
Anyway, once the net came, even Fox News was found wanting. Those techniques could be reapplied and enhanced - and you got breitbart and the rest.
And now America has president trump, who just made up stuff about permits, and then brought up the concept of the alt left.
It's so unfortunate that the only thing left to do is despair.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Marseillaise#Lyrics
We need a real balance, otherwise, we are pushing the world towards the war.
Not so long ago, less than 50 years ago, there was little to no distinction between LGBTQ people and paedophiles. They were one and the same (look up the term nonce, British slang used against both LGBTQ people and sex offenders for one example, or the case of Alan Turing for another).
Some very brave people fought against the perceived wisdom of the majority, even when through association alone they would be considered to be paedophile supporters themselves. These rights for LGBTQ people are still being fought around the world today. People died over this fight. People are still dying over this fight.
I understand the desire to limit hurtful speech, but in doing so we hand over the power to set limits to an arbiter. An arbiter who may feel that today's moral majority view outweighs that of others.
What you feel today about people of colour, about LGBTQ people, others may feel about animal rights, human genetic engineering and AI rights in the future amongst others. If you limit the boundaries of free expression it is no longer free. You are taking those rights away from those seeking to fight injustice in the future.
It's not hard to hate Nazis. It's harder to see the consequences of our actions through the red mist. The British Government has the official position that censoring the Internet is something that must be done. Even the EU is starting to think this could be a good thing. If you think this stops with Naziism, then you're wrong. If you think this won't come to America, you're wrong.
(I assume GoDaddy only pulled their DNS service, Daily Storm still owns the domain. If this is wrong please correct me)
I agree that a private company does not have to host any neo-nazi materials (or anything really, for that matter). I would do the same if it was my company and I would rather work with such a company as a customer.
"I think despicable people have a right to talk, but I'd rather they be forced to string together two tin cans than be able to own cellphones or audio amplification equipment."
"I think despicable people have a right to eat, but I'd rather they be forced to dig roots and vegetables out of the ground than be able to buy processed foods from a supermarket."
Where is that line, exactly? And what is the rationale for drawing it there?
>"I think despicable people have a right to eat, but I'd rather they be forced to dig roots and vegetables out of the ground than be able to buy processed foods from a supermarket."
OH you mean like segregation that the US is barely just getting away from. I had grade school teachers that told me about their experiences with segregation. We can't even figure out how to be nice enough to eachother to make cakes for gays in 2017. http://www.denverpost.com/2017/06/26/us-supreme-court-colora...
Businesses are not obligated to serve anyone, and it goes both ways and maybe the people making the choices not to do business with customers who have different opinions, sexual orientations, or skin colors should experience what it is like that it goes both ways.
That sounds like a big job, and one filled with ambiguity. Classifying forum posts is one thing, but trying to determine intent with music is going to be tricky.
But back then, pre-Trump, they seemed to have no problem with extreme neo-Nazi subreddits, which Pao kept.
Millions of people had no idea Daily Stormer existed until GoDaddy, Google, and CloudFlare kicked them out. Each one only added to their growing pile of free publicity. I guess Google never Googled "Streisand Effect"? First Damore and now this.
Edit: Also kind of ironic that my comments are now being buried on HN because I posted some unpopular opinions. Maybe we should throw HN in the mix too.
Edit2: Aaaaand now I'm not even allowed to post. HN is at least predictable in their censorship tactics, if nothing else.
the downside to them being down is that there's no more proof they were more than just white trolls.
HN has always had trigger-happy moderators who abuse their power to silence people they don't like, including PG himself. Just Google 'Hacker News Shadowban' sometime.
This attention would only be bad in my eyes if the first group was bigger than the second.
Mission Accomplished?
When I look at trending political stories today, all I see is mind-boggling stupidity on both sides.
People with a persecution complex are going to view anything that way. Get kicked off? Fits their narrative (or is approval). Ignored? Fits their narrative. Told what they're doing is wrong? Fits their narrative.
So if you think this is stupid what would have accomplished the goal of making life harder for them?
Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
It seems like the extreme rights' method of gaining control is to be provocative while the extreme left lobbies admins to remove the provocateurs (see: reddit, youtube). This ends with the tech companies complying with the left. Why isnt it the other way around?
Edit: apparently today okcupid banned a nazi as a publicity stunt. Maybe im looking too much into this
I'm not even sure who counts as "extreme left" any more, there are very few people trying to do revolutionary communism or actual Maoism in the West.
Seriously considered and nearly implemented by famous leftist Richard M. Nixon: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/05/richard-nixon-ubi-basic-i...
> Outlawing fossil fuels.
A fossil fuel phase out eventually is a requirement, both to deal with depletion and global warming. It's just the schedule that's reasonable to argue over. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/08/g7-leaders-agr...
> Banning GMO.
Mainstream position in the EU: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28283-more-than-half-...
I'm not talking "preponderance of evidence." I'm talking people who come over to the right shaking their heads, like someone awaking from a dream and saying, bewildered, "How did I never see all this, right in front of my eyes?"
Every molecule of oxygen in the debate arena belongs to us. We own the realm of reasoned discourse. That's why the left must break so many of its own rules to continue the fight.
Are they afraid of legal consequences? Aren't they safe to just wait till the police asks them to take it down before doing so?
Because they are owned and run by humans with moral values, not financial return maximizing automatons?
Don't support their businesses. Don't let them have domains or websites. Kick them off Google platforms, Facebook, even OKCupid. All private companies need to take action now and make sure none of them can use the internet to spread their hate, or really use any service.
I think it is time to organize contacting car dealerships working next to deny selling any automobiles to them. Eventually we can get the DMV to deny licenses to these dangerous individuals, or at least put them on a registry so the feds can check in on them.
When the left's pets - Muslims, immigrants, Communists, minorities - kill someone, that's a loner acting alone.
When someone dies in the vicinity of the left's opponents, that's a manifestation of inherent violence.
There is no debate amongst the vast majority of our society that neo-Nazis are provocateurs of hate, racism, and violence. Their beliefs (the suppression and murder of Jews, people of African descent, etc) cannot be tolerated in a civilised society.
The same debate about the role of Islam in terrorism in the Middle East and here in the US is nowhere near as settled. Therefore, I am not sure the slippery slope can be claimed here.
Oh and the false positives for the solution you offer are terrifying by putting the judgement into the hands of everyone. Imagine being wrongly accused of being a neo-nazi?
Please do not argue for this position based on "feelings"... In my own country, most social change was the result of war, credible threats of violence and technological progress. Natuarally, I "feel" the opposite.
Since we're discussing the US, I'd wager that's probably true there too: white culture became dominant over Native America culture because the Native Americans were wiped out, and the survivors were sent to barren reservations.
Slavery was brought to an end because its supporters were defeated in a literal war. Also, the social change that gave rise to salvery was based on the forceful kidnapping of people, too.
Worker rights are the result of strikes and often literal violence.
Were I familiar enough with the History of the US I think I could bring up other situations.
(If I'm wrong on any of these historical points I'll be happy to be corrected)
Racist nationalism is within every one of our children and is only expelled through individual education or positive exposure to people that are different. You cannot kill it off like you can Polio.
Slavery ended in the Northern US states without any war. It's an oversimplification to say the US Civil War ended slavery--it ended the southern plantation culture that supported slavery, but that's about all it did and the effects lingered until at least the early 1960s! Had there been no war, the abolitionist argument probably would have eventually won out and social change may have been more rapid.
As far as Native Americans go, they were not viewed as noble savages as they are today. Again, in a 19th century struggle for resources, the more technologically advanced culture won out. We are looking at the actions of whites and trying to apply 20th and 21st century principles to their behavior and I don't think you can.
I just visited The Little Bighorn and did a lot of reflecting on these issues. If nothing else, I am not to blame for whatever several generations past did to others and I feel no guilt over it whatsoever. I can only control my own behavior. As an intellectual, I value the diversity of ideas as superior to the identity diversity being promulgated by those with a political axe to grind.
If anyone wants to wage war against me or my family, expect to receive an equivalent amount of force applied in response.
I'm just saying that in all of these cases, the strong won and imposed their will on the weak, thus suppressing their ideas and culture... Love doesn't seem to have been very important in any of this.
I don't understand your criticism, sorry.
> Had there been no war, the abolitionist argument probably would have eventually won out and social change may have been more rapid.
Maybe, I'm not comfortable speculating about such things. I don't know nearly enough to even start :)
1. A Reasonable Position is expressed, in this case - 'Nazi's are very bad'. The Reasonable Position often involves an Enemy that must be stopped. Most reasonable people will agree with the Reasonable Position.
2. The Reasonable Position becomes the overriding factor in any situation that involves it. All other factors and considerations are dwarfed by it and forgotten.
3. Because the Reasonable Position comes to dominate the thinking of the Extremist - who often means well - they come to believe one can only ever be for or against the Reasonable Position. There is no room for moderate positions that try to balance the Reasonable Position with other important considerations and values - in this case, freedom of speech.
4. In order to show support for the Reasonable Position, third parties are forced to action in accordance with the world view of the Extremist. If they try to balance other considerations against the Reasonable Position, they are seen by the Extremist as sympathizing with the Enemy.
5. The fervor of extremism charges through society, trampling on other values and considerations.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_witch_trials
My last post on Reddit was simply saying that dehumanising people and denouncing pacifists as sympathisers only creates further radicalisation. Currently at -350 points as it's clearly a controversial statement.
Instead, I wish EFF and other organizations would fund the development of a replacement for DNS rather than trying to legislate its use. Computers aren't like other kinds of technology where the implementation has to follow the physical structure, especially when considering the idea of domain names which are human readable to bind to IP addresses (which aren't human readable enough). That way, you get around corporate and government interventions entirely.
I would posit that each of these companies is arguing internally (at least in part) in favor of removing neo-Nazi and other violence inducing content from their services to distance themselves from fault when that content results in legal harm.
The reason I disagree with the silencing of nationalist speech but didn't consider porn to be effectively suffering from the same issue is because I simply never considered censoring porn to be a speech issue. I had never thought of it as an idea, which is what I think of when it comes to political ideologies.
I think the difference here is more related to whom is doing the censoring. Google or MS don't censor porn on their products, Facebook only partially removes some related imagery so I don't see it as a concerted attempt to blocking the people's access to it, which is what I see as being the current trend when it comes to these more controversial topics. It's all my bias of course.
I don't want to live on this planet anymore, with the bizarre reversals in basic sense of priorities here.
Because it's not about freedom of speech. It's about making sure that the political Right and far-right get as much platform as they need to spread their message, and damn all other principles.
Google did not arbitrarily decide to ban Nazi speech on its whim, with no social support. This is a social war and it's why I find all the arguments unpersuasive - "private companies should do what they want"(except in cases when we don't like it, e.g. employment laws, denying service to minorities..) or "private companies should be forced to do what we want"(what happened to freedom of association?).
The underlying issue is that we're split on the importance and effects of tolerating hateful speech. The private companies are trying to navigate the social climate, which has become increasingly polarized. Boycotts, "with us or against us" demands is what is forcing their hand. It's not Google that's evil in this case, it's us. We are forcing them to take a stand on this social rift, and they have, and no one should really be surprised by it. Freedom of speech advocates have a long history of losing to moral panic.
Maybe it hasn't raised to EFF's radar before, but it does flare up every now and then. The PMRC drama culminating in Explicit Content Advisory as sales restriction was probably the biggest one in recent memory. The MPAA moving rating system got some heat around the release of This Film Is Not Yet Rated (2006). The EFF did get involved in the SCOTUS case Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, but I hate to even mention that for the tangential connection because I don't want start another gov't vs private censorship wankfest where everyone misses the fucking point.
But in general, the people who do care find themselves spending time on other priorities, or locked in a flamewars with people who show no morals beyond bland acquiescence to the status quo; and nothing ever changes.
The fact that they are a near monopoly is a problem that has side effects, but the real issue to focus on is the monopoly.
If Google wants those rights, it could surrender its monopoly (through a voluntary break-up).
The government is however allowed to break up monopolies, which is why we should focus on the real issue, and the real solution.
Google is not a monopoly on domain registration.
The other argument is that if Google and co have never ever bowed to political pressure to remove something except as required by law, that gives them a great argument to push back against some of the less progressive governments which they must work with. If Assad starts demanding that internet companies in Syria ban his political opponents, then Google could reply "we didn't even ban Nazis, why the hell would you expect us to ban anyone for you?"
And in case this all seems hypothetical, remember that the current US government recently requested all visitor logs for an anti-Trump website.
Nazis should be able to use public utilities, but the thing is, if we decide Google is a public utility, then so should communists, pornographers, drug dealers, criminal gangs, et al. And in fact, great, let's do that! Let's pass those statutes, let's break up the internet monopolies, let's decentralize and encrypt everything we can, all the time.
But let's also make sure that up until the very moment those statutes pass, we're not giving Nazis special favors.
(I know, I know, but God forbid we all admit when we really do have common goals?)
You should count the number of bombings of abortion clinics over the last decade or two, count the number of laws restricting access to abortion in the last 5, and then decide whether inaction today will prevent action tomorrow.
What is the causal relationship of this argument? If I condemn nazis today, and say the nazis come into power, does my past action magically make it easier for nazis in power to be, well nazis? If I don't stand against nazis today and they come into power, will that magically shield me? Rhetorical consistency has no physical power.
> Google could reply "we didn't even ban Nazis, why the hell would you expect us to ban anyone for you?"
Or they could just do it anyway. Being rhetorically consistent has never been a requirement for taking actual action. Just remember that the United States government has already colluded with business leaders to suppress political beliefs [1]. After the Fowley Square Trial, the United States government actually disbarred and jailed any attorney who defended the communists they charged. They then passed a law forbidding picketing of courthouses. The ACLU supported that law.
Pandora's box has already been opened. It's always really funny how it's the far right who have their rights vociferously defended by centrists but those very same centrists always stood by while communists were rounded up and exterminated. By the way, this happened too in Germany. All of the people who publicly opposed the Nazis before they came into power were condemned with the same exact centrist "both sides are wrong" rhetoric we hear today.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. These very exact arguments were being made in the 1930's. They were being made back in the days of Usenet, BBS and vBulletin forums. They will be made so long as there exist people who want to maintain some abstract virtue at the cost of other peoples' material safety. So long as someone is not directly materially threatened by the white nationalist political program, they will indefinitely stave off any concrete opposition to that program.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act_trials_of_Communist_...
Ideological consistency and abstract virtue are things for the far-left/right almost by definition. If a centrist is protesting or standing around doing nothing it's for another reason. That might span from "actually believes it protects peoples' material safety better" to "is completely clueless" or "doesn't want to speak up and face extermination themselves", etc. You're basically calling it virtue signalling but that is often just a way to dismiss someone's authentic concerns or motivation.
The far right has had a persecution complex for decades. It is a self sustaining social phenomenon. Again, there's this extravagant counterfactual claim that if no one materially opposed the nazis, the nazis wouldn't be as nazi as they are, which is such an extraordinary claim that it requires extraordinary evidence which is never provided. It is always stated blithely as some sort of obvious truth.
Nazis have already validated their persecution complexes. They are already fully invested in it. That's what got them to dress up as nazis and march about being a nazi and screaming "jews will not replace us". You're literally just repeating the same argument I called into question as if you have supported it with any new facts.
> Ideological consistency and abstract virtue are things for the far-left/right almost by definition.
Oh god please read a history book [1] [2]. Ideological inconsistency and irrationality are hallmarks of fascism. Both Nazis in Germany and Fascists in Italy constantly changed their beliefs and allegiances. They never at any particular moment had a cogent internally consistent ideology let alone an externally consistent one. The only predictable thing about fascism is it's brutality once it has triumphed over those who oppose it. And, historically speaking (please read a book), that triumph occurs because centrists actively sabotage their opponents and stand aside while they entrench their power.
Like, you literally don't know what you're talking about. That is what's so absolutely frustrating about centrists. They presume that they know either by osmosis, pop history, or the propagandistic pseudo-history that's taught in secondary school how these political movements happen. You actually don't know how fascism works but the ideological structure of the west has put it in your mind that you do know, and you know exactly how to combat it, and that so happens to be milquetoast support for vague principles and the status quo.
It's so frustrating because it's so easy to just pick up a decent secondary source and actually gain a detailed, coherent view of the early 20th century which A) provides a real, actual, empirical model for the behavior of fascism and how it was resisted; and B) a parallel history that can be checked to see what is the same and what is different about material conditions this time around.
Now you might want to completely dismiss me because of my combative tone that clearly confirms to yourself what you already knew: that those damned people who hold to a political position outside the Overton window are a bunch of fatuous lunatics who should be dismissed. But at least look at these books that are written by extremely reputable and rigorous scholars. On many things I think it is obnoxious to dismiss a discussion with a demand that the other be more educated, but on this particular subject I need to make my position clear. I'm only aggressive about this because I think it's the most important conversation of our generation and currently it is an exact repeat of the conversation that led up to the very worst terror in human history. The only ingredient missing that really propelled the Nazis rise to power (they languished for about a decade before they really started picking up steam) is a global economic crisis. I wonder when the next one will come?
As an example of how much events today rhyme with events then, Lügenpresse [3].
[1] Robert Paxton's The Anatomy of Fascism. Relatively recent book with universal acclaim from all across the political spectrum, from socialists, liberals, and conservatives.
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
Stalin proved that the Germans were right to go after the Socialists who were trying to undermine Germany. Not defending what the Germans did, it was horrifying. Both sides ended up being brutal and completely evil. Look at the Spanish Civil War, no real winners there and that was the prototype for WWII--fascism rose as a counter to communism. Again, not trying to excuse it, it's just reality.
Has Google decided they are now the truth police? Is Google taking it upon themselves to be like the Chinese censorship bureaus except for the whole world?