So they waited until now to do a co-ordinated mass de-platform of a single user to happen. Until a large enough mob and media outrage develops, all these platforms execute a mass ban. As what happened to others, this sort of co-ordinated action can happen to anyone else. Immediately guilty as charged.
But it doesn't matter, it is part of the dystopian big tech ideal that if the social media mob want you banned on one platform due to a ToS violation, then you will be banned everywhere else and there is no redemption as they find more 'villains' of the week to get clicks, outrage and as many eyeballs as possible.
So you will have no say and you will be still happy. [0]
But he's completely free to set up his own website or platform. YouTube doesn't owe him the right to host his content, given he's never paid YouTube a penny, nor FB/Insta/etc. A newspaper doesn't owe him the right to print articles by him either, yet he's still free to set up his own newspaper.
There you go. They are totally clueless on how far the de-platforming can go. The domain provider, hosting companies can do the same and de-platform them as well.
Perhaps lets go far to de-platform them of their bank accounts, credit cards, etc since they are too private companies? Can we also contact their phone / energy provider(s) to shut off their electricity as well so they cannot access the internet?
So what is their response? Don't like it? "BuILd yOur Own VISa / mASteRcArD paymeNtS pLATFORM", "buIlD yOUr oWN IsP", "BuiLD YOUr oWN doMain PRoviDER", etc, etc.
As I said, creating a big tech dystopia on trying to get those you don't like to be de-platformed off of the internet which the point is anyone can get this same treatment. Not just this single user.
Is that what you will say after the Big Tech companies have de-platformed you as well? It is not just Andrew Tate, but they will do this to anyone they don't like, and they do not care and won't ever change and this was a coordinated ban. Why wait until a social media mob appears to execute this mass ban?
Like I said, this is creating a big tech dystopia on trying to get those you don't like to be de-platformed off of the internet via a mob, which the point is anyone can get this same treatment. Not just this single user and perhaps you think it's OK for the banks, payment platforms, etc to do the same?
So the next time someone you like gets the same co-ordinated mass ban; let's tell them to 'Be nice' to the big tech companies. So on to the next 'villain' of the week.
Turn your computer/smartphone off, is also good advice in a similar vein. I don't make a living from going around shouting my mouth off saying offensive and derogatory stuff about women, designed to trigger and demean them, so being deplatformed isn't a risk for me. While I'm a follower of Voltaires "I hate what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" line of libertarianism, at the same time large companies I totally understand don't have the compunction to be forced to do business with you and promote your agenda if it doesn't fit with theirs. The man in question still has the right to shout his mouth off all over the internet. It's just that now Google/FB/TikTok have realised it's not in their interest to have such a negative presence on their services. He doesn't need or deserve airtime on the monopolistic BBC or NBC either but I think you'd find it ludicrous proposition that he should be given it, free of charge, to promote whatever agenda he likes. He's still free to set up a website, stand on the street and tell people about his mysoginy, organise public meetings,you name it. The serious issue in this case is that his "it's just a bit of fun honest" get-out clause doesn't wash, because his mysoginistic talk is backed up with actual physical violence against women, and controlling and coercive behaviour toward them in the real world. So it's not a case of "OMFG platform capitalist monopolies shutting people down judge jury executioner no oversight OMFG" this is a case of real people at those companies deciding it's in everyone's interest they don't do business with him. A book publisher would do the same thing. Behind every company are people with feelings and concerns, not blank evil algorithms out to shutdown random lives with no comeback. Do you think the women working at Google/FB/TikTok were impressed with his content and want to work for companies that promote it?
"Nice" could get you in some chinese censorship. Are we back on banning magazines because they are not christian and they degrade the pure souls of human beings?
But the difference is that YouTube, FB etc. present themselves as platforms, avoiding the liability of being seen as a publisher.
If they start making value judgements on certain content, then they can't claim they act as a neutral platform, and as such should be held liable for other content.
`given he's never paid YouTube a penny` - this is not how yt gets paid. One day someone will sue them for the income yt earned off a creator they demonetize/ban. ps - never actually heard about him
I realise completely this is not how yt gets paid... but virtually everything else in the economy works on contracts and payment. YouTube says "you don't owe us money, because we're freemium and are so good at the internet we'll handle all that, just accept these terms of service and it's a deal". It's a very non-standard way of doing business. I'm sure suing them for demonetising a creator would go absolutely nowhere and likely lose pretty quickly in court, because they don't owe you the right of doing business with you, or continuing to do business with you, should you fall foul of the terms set out. YouTube could also lucratively host content like pornography but that's just not the business they want to be in. Neither is hateful speech that has become obvious enough to upset enough of their customers to the point they will complain about it.
So called "private platforms" don't exist on the internet. If YouTube really wants to be completely private, than the government should physically sever any backbone connections over public land. Let Google pay for every inch of fiber, and negotiate with every single property owner, every step of the way.
Then and only then will they actually have a private platform where they can ban anyone for any reason. Until then, they are imposing on the public, and the public has every right to require them to respect our most foundational values of freedom of speech.
Andrew Tate is definitely guilty of TOS violations on more than one platform (and a whole lot more egregious offences like quasi-legal sex trafficking but I digress) so I'm not sure that a millionaire who does not require social media to peddle his brand of fascistic garbage is the best example of big tech censorship.
I don’t think your article applies here - it seems Andrew Tate has created misogynistic content on each platform that banned him. The timing might be suspicious, but ultimately, TikTok banned Tate because of the TikTok content he made, Google banned him because of the YouTube content and Twitter banned him based on his tweets.
I am also confused about why do you refer to people like Tate as ‘villains’ in quotes. The dude is a star of incels and like-minded women-haters. The world is better off without his content.
EDIT: it seems that people have been making Tate clips and uploading them to TikTok and those are also the ones that got banned.
>TikTok has also banned an account belonging to Mr Tate as part of an ongoing investigation to remove content that violates its policies.
>A TikTok spokesperson told the BBC: "Misogyny is a hateful ideology that is not tolerated on TikTok.
>"We've been removing violative videos and accounts for weeks, and we welcome the news that other platforms are also taking action against this individual."
Even if you agree with his message, the guy is running a pyramid scheme.
The only reason he is famous, is that "Hustlers University" instructs you to spam clips of his to social media together with affiliate links to his scheme. Compound that with his Alex Jones-like talent to generate the most divisive, ridiculous, humorous and infuriating soundbites and you have a TikTok smash hit. But just like Alex, once he glows out, his shady dealings and ridiculous statements will relegate him to a subject of mockery and an argument to dismiss his ideas for the opposing side.
We can agree that inconsistency is bad, but Andrew Tate is most definitely in the banworthy category.
Instead of asking why someone was "immediately guilty as charged", one should maybe ask why it takes a coordinated effort to get social media giants to act on toxic people that are very clearly violating their terms of service. All while YouTube keeps banning LGBTQ creators from recommendations (not even just demonetization) for using words like "lesbian" in video titles. Why does HN rarely get upset about those cases?
> All while YouTube keeps banning LGBTQ creators from recommendations (not even just demonetization) for using words like "lesbian" in video titles. Why does HN rarely get upset about those cases?
Like I also said, Neither YouTube or HN cares and expecting YouTube to change is futile and it will happen to anyone. That is the point.
But then again, some believe it is not enough to de-platform or do a mass ban of these LGBTQ creators off of the internet. Why not get the payment companies and the banks to freeze their funds as well, or why not contact their energy and phone provider so that they can't access the internet or have electricity as well?
I await a giant outcry when this happens to another person and the whole of HN starts crying about the big tech surveillance dystopia they helped to create.
You're conflating minorities simply existing in public with incredibly toxic assholes choosing to be incredibly toxic assholes in these platforms. That's not even remotely the same thing.
By allowing all kinds of nastiness? I would pay for that service a lot, just let me to watch anything with no censorship and copyright issues and from any country.
I think "cheaply" word is kind of extra in your question.
Of course they do this for more convinceable lying to all their population. Of course any civilized country should block that kind of super-nasty resource, with jailing all their creators if possible.
I'm not actually sure what site you're referring to but I think you missed the point I was making.
The comment I was originally replying to was saying they'd pay for a service that had no censorship so ideally such a service would charge so "cheaply" is kind of a requirement in my question as there needs to be a cost.
Of course, taking content down for "copyright infringement" is a form of censorship (one often require by law but censorship nonetheless).
> In August 2007, Denis Kvasov, head of the company which owned AllofMP3.com, was acquitted of all charges stemming from copyright infringement prosecution
I've never heard of allofmp3.com [1] but it doesn't sound like it was sued out of existence as all of the Russia court cases went in favor of their citizens (what a surprise!). Instead anybody outside of Russia was successfully prosecuted or payment processors "illegally"[2]
stopped working with them.
I guess if Russia actually withdrawals from the WTO [3] we might see a return of allofmp3.com then. Although you probably have to buy using some form of cryptocurrency. Probably won't be that hard to convince people to use bitcoin atms to watch the Avengers for 2$.
I imagine this can be manipulated by other accounts to drive traffic. He can say something controversial and then it goes viral on the big platforms. Then he could have a watermark of his website on the clip so people know where to go to see him.
It's not a simple proposition for someone who is aggressively deplatformed.
You depend on other companies to exist on the internet and these companies don't have to do business with you. At minimum, you need a domain, you need a place to put your servers, and you need an ISP. For a business to not fail, you also need a way to earn revenue. Each one of these is a pressure point.
While these platforms are in effect the contemporary town hall, the same thing would occur if I went into the real-world Town Hall and started shouting my mouth off with speech that was offensive to 50+% of the population. I would have the right, however, to stand outside the town hall and carry on saying whatever I liked. If I was inciting hatred or violence, the people outside would also become annoyed and I'd be spoken to and told to stop, generally by someone in uniform.
I mean, there exist hundreds of pirate TV/Movie streaming websites with huge catalogs that manage to serve HD video streaming to scores of people at once.
If they can do it while being constantly hounded by publishers and DRM enforcers who have unlimited money and drive to strike them down, a random smart group of people can do it too.
Of course deplatforming works. The point is that it only works in your favour when you're privileged enough that the establishment at large agrees with your views on who the heretics are and what should be done to said heretics.
As a thought experiment I'd encourage you to think about how causes you agree with might be deplatformed, and which groups would jump at the chance to do so.
Bonus case study: censorship by various middle eastern governments
>Platforming bigots won't actually prevent bigots from deplatforming subaltern groups when they have the power to do so.
Well if you had legal protections for speech on online public spaces (twitter, youtube, FB, IG and so on) and a strong court system, that would actually protect subaltern groups from being deplatformed, yes.
It's a lot easier for the "bigots" (though I would have chosen the word zealots myself) to deplatform subaltern groups when that's an accepted method of dealing with dissent, as opposed to being something that's just not done.
The (quite common) view you're espousing of "We should censor and deplatform exactly the set of people *I* find morally abhorrent" stinks of "This is classic "I'm right, so political systems should cater to me."" type thinking.
For what it's worth I think Tate is an absolute piece of shit.
I don't believe that the court system in the US has any influence on the legal rights of gay people in Iran.
But even if we ignore the point about the middle east and focus entirely on one nation, legal defenses for majority groups have observably failed to protect subaltern groups for the entire history of the country. I do not have confidence that a strong court system protecting white male misogynists will actually consistently protect black gay women, for example. I believe that your statement about the ease of oppression is not actually supported by historical or modern evidence.
Ignoring the whataboutism about Iran (I brought up middle eastern governments as an example of the effects of deplatforming when it's organized by people with different biases to you, not to imply some kind of ridiculous tit for tat).
Clearly these are all examples of the supreme court failing to protect subaltern groups, which is why all white primaries are still the norm, schools and buses are still segregated, and interracial marriage is still illegal.
Is any court system perfect? Of course not, but the American court system is infinitely better than the court of public opinion when it comes to protecting individual rights for all individuals, regardless of identity.
What planet's history were you even referring to, again?
I'm not even American and I'm still aware of these civil rights victories. But oh no "white (well mixed-race in Tate's case) male misogynists" will also have their speech protected, so I guess these rights have got to go.
Your rights are not predicated on your identity or your beliefs, no matter how abhorrent.
The courts have indeed been part of the steps towards justice. I didn’t say the courts have never done good. I said that enabling the courts to defend virulent bigotry is not what causes them to act to defend the rights of the oppressed.
And remember, we aren’t talking about governments taking away Tate’s rights. We are talking about posting on social media.
> enabling the courts to defend virulent bigotry is not what causes them to act to defend the rights of the oppressed.
Virulent bigotry alone is not, and should never be, a crime. You are literally advocating for thoughtcrimes to be punished by the courts.
> And remember, we aren’t talking about governments taking away Tate’s rights. We are talking about posting on social media.
Well I was suggesting that governments regulate the tech monopolies to protect speech on their platforms, given that they are the de facto public square of modern political discourse. I recognize that Tate's freedom of speech was not violated by private platforms censoring him, I'm asserting that those platforms should either be regulated as public squares with the same duty to uphold freedom of (legal) speech, or have their monopolies broken up (i.e. Open APIs and interchange format, with social media monopolies ideally switching to a federated model where nobody has the power to "deplatform" someone else unilaterally).
You can have the opinion that these corporations should not be able to deplatform Tate. I disagree, but that's a fine opinion. Where I become frustrated is when people claim that there is a logical connection between platforming people like Tate and protecting the rights of oppressed groups so that we must platform Tate in order to ensure that the state does not crush gay people or whatever.
The state has happily abandoned its own stated principles used to protect white men so that it can crush women, gay people, and racial minorities countless times throughout our history.
> You don't think the main reason the US is as desegregated as it is today is because of a strong supreme court
Well ...
> Dred Scott v. Sandford,[a] 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the Court held that the United States Constitution was not meant to include American citizenship for people of African descent, regardless of whether they were enslaved or free, and so the rights and privileges that the Constitution confers upon American citizens could not apply to them.[3][4] The Supreme Court's decision has been widely denounced, both for how overtly racist the decision was and for its crucial role in the start of the American Civil War four years later.[5] Legal scholar Bernard Schwartz said that it "stands first in any list of the worst Supreme Court decisions". Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes called it the Court's "greatest self-inflicted wound".[6] Historian Junius P. Rodriguez said that it is "universally condemned as the U.S. Supreme Court's worst decision."[7] Historian David Thomas Konig said that it was "unquestionably, our court's worst decision ever."[8]
So if you mean, it's desegregated because a really racist Supreme Court decision helped precipitate a civil war that killed a lot of people, because a few rich and powerful people benefitted from enslaving other human beings and refused to give that up, despite it's obvious clash with basic legal principles, then yeah, you might be right.
No, the "establishment at large" does not even agree I should exist. Many publications (and now some US states and both likely candidates for future prime minister of the UK) constantly opine people like me would just go away if we just got talked out of it hard enough. The "establishment at large" loves to debate about which rights I should have, opines on if I should be allowed to participate in sports without being informed on the mechanics or ever caring about "women's sports" before it turned into a culture war topic, if I should be able to use public toilets safely (trick question, it's never safe). Or, DeSantis special, if my mere existence being discussed in schools constitutes grooming... I could go on all day.
TikTok and YouTube both have a policy of limiting the spread of anything they can identify as LGBT. If I choose not to censor myself on these platforms my reach will be null. So I'm directly affected.
I just don't think it's somehow impossible to draw a line of acceptable behavior on that platform. A policy of no intervention just leaves you with whatever capitalism feels like that day - and while capitalism really loves to pretend to care about diversity, it really is more of a marketing gag than a anywhere close to a true belief. But Andrew Tate can be the embodiment of toxic masculinity / incel culture / misogyny as long as it pays and nobody complains?
There already is their own youtube. Gab hasn't taken over. Parler hasn't taken over. Truth hasn't taken over. Banning extreme bigots from major content generation platforms hasn't actually led to the terrible outcomes people predict.
> hasn't actually led to the terrible outcomes people predict
I guess censorship is perfectly fine for most people, and that's the scariest outcome.
"Too bad for them, they should have been thinking like us." No wonder we descent into authoritarianism. Thanks to well meaning crowds of well mannered citizens cheering because the big bad got ousted.
I would say that authoritarianism could work two ways: a content platform revoking someone's permission to participate (by choice) or a content platform being forced (by governments) to host content despite rules violations. I think the former is clearly preferable.
A private company can do whatever they want and ban whoever from their platform.
But can a private company that's used by 99% of the population do the same? I think there's an unexplored grey area there. If HN bans me that's not necessarily censorship, but if Twitter does so, there's an argument it could be. Censorship is not a function of who does it, it's function of scale. The bigger the audience, the more important it is that free speech is upheld.
Our free speech laws have to be updated for the information and Internet era, and the era of mega corporations monopolising a huge chunk of the public space. Of course none of this would happen if open and decentralised standards were used, but that's a discussion for another time.
If a platform is too large to be allowed to self-regulate, maybe it should just be nationalized and the suggestion algorithms deleted. That'd free the platform owners from the personal responsibility of hosting objectionable content (as is the case here) and ensure the government isn't abusing its platform to elevate some speech above others.
I can't see any way to justify requiring Facebook et al to host misogynistic content at the barrel of a metaphorical gun.
> But can a private company that's used by 99% of the population do the same?
Yes, because that's how rights work. The rights being debated here are freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, be careful where you draw the line in the sand and decide those rights end, because lines in the sand can be redrawn.
Plus, Twitter isn't used by anywhere near 99% of the population. It isn't, despite what many people say, a primary means of discourse, communication, broadcast media or politics. It's popular but it isn't infrastructure. It isn't the public commons, it isn't a utility. It really isn't worth burning the Constitution over.
Telegraph companies, electric companies, bus companies, and airlines had far less of a monopoly than these tech platforms. Forcing them to respect 1st amendment values is the only reasonable thing to do.
The values of the First Amendment are explicitly that Congress cannot do the thing you're arguing is the only reasonable thing to do.
If you want the government to take over social media and coerce speech, fine, but accept that that position is explicitly the opposite of what the First Amendment stands for.
No it isn't. Freedom of speech is an essential American principle. The First Amendment is an instantiation of that. Congress should force big tech monopolies to reflect our core values.
Essentially, the first amendment is the floor, not the ceiling. People who want to minimize freedom of speech will point to the first amendment and say that restricting congress from restricting our speech is all we should have.
Big tech companies should be forced to enshrine freedom of speech into their platforms, or face still government sanctions.
I feel like this is going to be impossible but I'm going to try one more time.
The reason the First Amendment denies Congress the right to abridge speech is that freedom of speech implicitly allows freedom from speech, just as the right to assembly implicitly allows the right not to assemble and freedom of religion implies freedom from religion. The First Amendment is written the way it is to protect the right of the people, and of private enterprise, to moderate speech on their property. Their doing so isn't a violation of freedom of speech, it is freedom of speech.
>People who want to minimize freedom of speech will point to the first amendment and say that restricting congress from restricting our speech is all we should have.
First, no one here is actually making that argument.
Second, it baffles me how you can type that and not realize that allowing congress to restrict our speech more than they're allowed to makes our speech less free.
And third, I have to echo the sentiment of sascha_sl's comment here. It's telling that this outrage only ever comes out on behalf of people with a specific political bent. None of Hacker News' free speech advocates ever go to bat for LGBT or black or leftist content that gets unfairly demonetized or banned, which despite the narrative happens all the time. Only ever for the right-wingers, racists and assholes, and only after Trump's white supremacist fringe base started getting banned en masse.
This isn't about freedom of speech, and never has been. It's about one political ideology wanting the government to coerce private platforms into publishing their propaganda against their will.
> Congress should force big tech monopolies to reflect [...]
1st Amendment: Congress SHALL MAKE NO LAW [...]
Curious, isn't it?
I'm not sure why you think that Congress, which is likely near the MOST PARTISAN it's ever been, will responsibly and reasonably use this "force" to ensure viewpoint neutrality, instead of say, amplifying the voices that support their position.
Also, part of the 1st Amendment is allowing people to associate (or not) with each other. As long as you aren't discriminating for an illegal purpose, you can make whatever rules you want. If you don't like the "big tech" rules, don't participate. But if you break their rules, they can kick you out.
The first amendment means that the GOVERNMENT can't silence jerks, but is ALSO means that people who don't want to hear jerks don't have to listen.
I think you are mixing up two things here -- market dominance and free speech.
None of these companies were regulated in any way with regards to the 1st amendment.
These companies were regulated because of market dominance. It isn't efficient to have 2 electric or 2 telegraph or 2 phone companies when they were established -- so government set a reasonable profit margin and then drew up rules by which the companies had to abide to stay in their position.
(I'm guessing bus/plane was more about not crowding others out, as they don't have the sunk costs or moat that the other companies acquire by their nature.)
In my opinion its far more damaging to allow sites like youtube to become so influencial in public life yet wield the power to censor anyone they don't like.
I believe that social media should be tightly bound by the constitution so that they may not overstep the rights of the people.
They shouldn't be allowed to ban viewpoints they don't like.
They shouldn't be allowed to unreasonably collect and use data, nor come up with agreements that allow the use of important data.
Quite simply I would rather trust a government that at occasionally follows the rules than near despot oligarchs who never do.
Not only do I not believe that Tate's banning represents authoritarianism, I don't believe that preventing Tate's banning would achieve even the smallest iota against actual authoritarianism.
"Hey, we kept that bigot you like so much on YouTube" won't convince a fascist who has a gun pointed at me not to shoot.
Every platform has the ability to ban users, including HN, Stack Overflow, Slashdot, Github, etc. As do the alt sites like Truth etc. As have mailing lists and other platforms since the earliest days of the (popular) Internet.
Why do people keep making this same tired, frankly stupid, and entirely ahistorical analysis?
Fascists don't need any "martyr", even leaving aside the fact that nothing being done to Andrew Tate here is worthy of that label, because fascists are perfectly capable of fabricating a strong sense of victimhood in their own heads. The antidote to fascism is overwhelming opposition, not appeasement.
They don't respond to truth, civility, or compromise - though they may on occasion weaponize such ideas when it serves their own ends - because they don't believe in either of those things. This is just liberal brainrot. It didn't work in the Weimar republic and it certainly isn't working in the USA.
In truth, not banning people like this from society just teaches others that their sick ideas must have some sort of validity to them. Otherwise, why would it be on display?
People keep saying this because they’ve read up on history and know that never before has banning speech led to any positive outcome.
The resentment builds up over time, the bans add fuel to the fire, and the “ bad speech” only comes back later in greater numbers and even worse forms.
What’s worse is the “bad speech” goes underground and begins communicating in less obvious ways.
You’re looking at this through a 10 year lens thinking “we vanquished Alex Jones, and we will defeat the next one.”
Look at it through a 100 year lens and you might see a different picture.
Bullshit. For one, no speech has been "banned" here. Andrew Tate and others of his ilk are free to preach their hateful message but they're not free to do it off the backs of others.
As for the 100 year view, you don't have to do anything for bigots to "build up resentment" and last time it reached boiling point, we had a civil war where we kicked their ass. The biggest reason why racism prevailed so strongly in the South (and to a lesser extent, the North) had nothing to do with resentments. It was because Lincoln deciding to play the appeasment game and picking a Confederate ex-slave owner as VP who promptly halted and reversed Reconstruction post Lincoln's assassination.
No matter what time scale you view things, reality contradicts your view.
The line is incredibly simple actually. Ideas that are diametrically opposed to the freedoms of others should not get to spread off the back of the institutions that are supposed to be protecting those freedoms.
A free society isn't something that can magically sustain itself without active effort and intolerance should not be tolerated. Sure, you can paint this as a "paradox" but aside from fascists cry bullying about being oppressed (while actively salivating about acquiring the ability to oppress everyone) and naïve liberals who can't remotely imagine the idea of bad faith actors in politics, I don't think anybody is getting oppressed here.
As far as I know, there is no violation of the First amendment here so even if you think hate speech should be protected free speech (which I don't agree with), nobody's freedoms have been breached here.
How about when the idea itself is directly calling for the opposition of the freedom of others? Fascist and racist ideas are not difficult to parse and there is generally little to no ambiguity in their interpretation. If you're not even capable of understanding the surface level reading of a proposition, then I frankly don't really care about who you trust and neither should society at large.
> Fascist and racist ideas are not difficult to parse and there is generally little to no ambiguity in their interpretation.
Interpretation by who? The things I’ve seen labeled as fascist and racist in recent years have led me to believe this is not true. But then again many of the people doing the labeling not only are quick on the trigger to make accusations of fascism and racism, but also seem to see the world in very black and white terms and seem to have little interest in things like nuance or context. I suppose all ideas become easy to parse with no ambiguity in interpretation when you have zero interest in introspection or countenancing views that differ from your own.
You do realize that we are specifically discussing ideas that are so reprehensible as to warrant being kicked off platforms, right?
Also, I'd love to see examples of the things you're talking about that are simultaneously filled with nuance and context, but also elicited an internet death penalty.
I love how you claim there is no line and then almost immediately afterwards establish that you do in fact have a line - that line being if a person is a conspiracy theorist or dangerous person. Unfortunately for your argument, Andrew Tate is both of those things.
You might also have forgotten about the inconvenient fact that Tate is facing credible accusations of human trafficking which he has so far narrowly avoided facing due to being based in Romania.
The book "The Rhetoric of Reaction: Perversity, Futility, Jeopardy" suggests that when what you are arguing for is obviously bad to most people, you end up falling back on 3 main arguments.
This will make the problem worse.
This will not fix the problem.
This will hurt something unrelated.
Basically the same as FUD deployed by incumbent tech giants. You don't need to even try to claim your product is better. People are familiar with your product and know that it's crap. You just have to introduce enough uncertainty into the conversation to slow progress towards other solutions.
Nope, not even close to the truth. You should probably stop spreading FUD when it's apparent you don't know one iota about history.
When an idea is transparently horrible, it's proponents are not interested in discussion except as a means to propogate their message to others. In a reasoned debate, fascists always have to work the least because it always takes more mental effort to debunk a terrible idea than stating said idea.
Meanwhile, adhering to the rules of respectability means the fascist gets to expose far more people to their message in a format where they get to express their message without interruption.
The only reason why you should ever talk to a fascist is to ridicule them. Jean Paul-Satre put it best when talking about anti-Semites (though it really applies to all strains of fascism):
"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."
What if you get called the fascist then? Anything you say to defend yourself is just fascist mind tricks. Denials are just more evidence of guilt. I would still defend your right to call for us to be silenced.
Again, this is just more absurd hypothetical scenarios. The reality is never as ambiguous as you're painting it. What you're describing is how a fascist would conduct a confrontation, not anybody who believes in truth. Nobody here is saying "denials are evidence of guilt" and fascists are not Jedis.
Also, nobody is being silenced here either because there is no obligation built into the first amendment or even the very concept of Free speech to provide a platform for anybody.
Horrible ideas spread even when challenged, because of human failings. Terrible people will find ways to justify or simply not care what others think of their beliefs. Sunlight does not always disinfect.
Will Tate's disgusting misogyny actually go unchallenged if he isn't posting on Instagram? Are you advocating for considerably more feminist activism resisting forces like his?
false, banning only pushes those banned closer together.
this became clear as the right became more and more extreme as people had their views censored.
this stupidity only mixes the normals with the crazies forcibly.
people who like tate could soon end up moving to the same kinds of alternative sites that crazies jones now reside on.
this is a dangerous road that ends with the people who feel beaten down eventually popularizing crazy ideas.
its the irony of censorship that too much of it typically causes many of the problems it wanted to avoid.
I don't want to see the outcome of the many impressionable teens who followed tate get exposed to harmful radical ideologies because they followed him to a less savory and crazier site!
It doesn't matter if it makes him more powerful or weaker or anything.
Its extremely dangerous to let these companies become the modern public square because deplatforming people on places like youtube and social media basically ends up censoring them.
They essentially have the first amendment stripped because we put it in the hands of private companies.
I think social medias should be forced to conform to certain rules such as not banning viewpoints they don't like UNLESS they are dangerous (terrorism, extremism, etc.)
I hate seeing this kind of thing happen and I don't even like tate.
Consider that large tech corporations will literally never do anything that isn't furthering their goal of making more money. What effect does this type of banning have on the viability of competitors? It makes competitors attract those who are banned, and makes the site unusable for "normal people".
This is the real reason this stuff is banned. Don't let them convince you it's for any sort of noble reason.
Or (to use the old analogy of a UGC-based site as a nightclub/bar), they kick out people who have a bad enough rep and have pissed off enough customers that it makes them look bad and might lose them money.
I don't think they care - nor should they, really - about silencing this a-hole or another one for good. They just care about PR and business so they boot users who threaten that.
Of all of the outcomes of decisions made in the service of making more money, banning virulent bigots training other people to hate and abuse women isn't one of the bad ones.
This is a complete misunderstanding of the corporate and human motivation. Corporations are run by people, specifically by rich people who spend their time in elite circles with a set of acceptable cultural and political beliefs. Everyone in the US knows what those are, and what happens to people who are seen as supportive of "deplorables".
CEOs also, like all humans, don't want angry hoards of very online people (blue checkmarks) screaming at them, and have shown time and time again they are willing to bend to the mob to make the screaming stop.
You're right: it's all about money. If it made the site unusable for "normal people", then it would not further their goal of making money.
They're making a financial judgment call. Hostile people scare "normal people" off the platform. Somebody decides whether they'll make more money by scaring off fans of the hostile posters, and how much of that hostility the "normal people" will take before they decide the site causes more aggravation than pleasure.
Captialism famously doesn't depend on generosity, but on self-interest. They can generally be trusted to make decisions based on it. I don't know whether they're right in this instance or not, but the decision makes sense viewed in that light. The whole point of capitalism is that it doesn't need to be noble to nudge people in directions that have wide benefits.
Andrew Tate got caught sexually abusing females. YouTube banned him for that. He lives in Romania to continue his sexual abuse against females. #MeToo is why he no longer lives in America. Romania's government is controlled by outdated misogynists who live in the 20th century mentality with modern technology. So, Romania is an incel haven for Andrew Tate. Men follow Andrew Tate because they are misguided. They and Andrew are a symptom of collapsing civilization internationally. Very wealthy oligarchs are making our world destroyed while destroying families for profit. Families get destroyed by increasing wealth inequality, drug abuse, alcoholism, America's military-industrial complex, etc. Which is why the emergence of incels like Andrew Tate happens. This incel behavior is a symptom of civilization collapsing. YouTube is controlled by the very rich tyrants who make our world burn. It's just that Andrew Tate got caught by enough people to ruin his reputation. So, YouTube is making an exception by banning Andrew Tate.
No, you're just proving people have been getting dumber in every country because of very rich oligarchs that are men who also cause toxic masculinity. Which is why these incels like Andrew Tate are existing and sexually abusing females. Sexual abuse against females is a symptom of very rich oligarchs making our world burn. The same very rich oligarchs who are attacking environmentalists, activists, journalists, antiwar people, etc. YouTube IS controlled by those very rich oligarchs who attack antiwar people by demonitizing and shadowbanning YouTubers who expose America's imperialistic military-industrial complex. America's imperialistic military-industrial complex is used to keep those very rich oligarchs exclusively powerful and wealthy. Which helps them bully people into poverty, homelessness, dehumanizing jobs with slave wages, child slavery, sexual abuse, drug abuse, alchoholism, depression, suicidal ideation, etc. So, YouTube has become a platform of virtue signalling from popular YouTubers. It's only people that get caught and banned when they are not sneaky enough. This applies to Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein, Ghislane Maxwell, Andrew Tate, Bill Cosby, R. Kelly, etc. All of those misogynistic rapists I mentioned are a symptom of when society gets controlled by very rich oligarchs that are men who corrupt their slaves. Women are still treated like second-class citizens when they are paid less than men, getting abused in sweatshops, trafficked by the beauty industry, never have livable wages from fast fashion companies, etc. It's proving that abusive patriarchy is still controlling every country economically. Every country is financially supporting misogynistic sweatshops that are highly unethical overseas while their sellouts virtue signal about women's rights. So, it becomes inevitable that vile incels like Andrew Tate exist when every country normalizes misogyny economically. This is what happens when the world never gets controlled by decent people who actually care about human rights and compassion.
125 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 185 ms ] threadBut it doesn't matter, it is part of the dystopian big tech ideal that if the social media mob want you banned on one platform due to a ToS violation, then you will be banned everywhere else and there is no redemption as they find more 'villains' of the week to get clicks, outrage and as many eyeballs as possible.
So you will have no say and you will be still happy. [0]
[0] https://2ndsmartestguyintheworld.substack.com/p/wefs-global-...
I don't understand your argument at all.
Perhaps lets go far to de-platform them of their bank accounts, credit cards, etc since they are too private companies? Can we also contact their phone / energy provider(s) to shut off their electricity as well so they cannot access the internet?
So what is their response? Don't like it? "BuILd yOur Own VISa / mASteRcArD paymeNtS pLATFORM", "buIlD yOUr oWN IsP", "BuiLD YOUr oWN doMain PRoviDER", etc, etc.
As I said, creating a big tech dystopia on trying to get those you don't like to be de-platformed off of the internet which the point is anyone can get this same treatment. Not just this single user.
Like I said, this is creating a big tech dystopia on trying to get those you don't like to be de-platformed off of the internet via a mob, which the point is anyone can get this same treatment. Not just this single user and perhaps you think it's OK for the banks, payment platforms, etc to do the same?
So the next time someone you like gets the same co-ordinated mass ban; let's tell them to 'Be nice' to the big tech companies. So on to the next 'villain' of the week.
But the difference is that YouTube, FB etc. present themselves as platforms, avoiding the liability of being seen as a publisher.
If they start making value judgements on certain content, then they can't claim they act as a neutral platform, and as such should be held liable for other content.
https://review.gale.com/2021/01/13/platform-or-publisher/
Then and only then will they actually have a private platform where they can ban anyone for any reason. Until then, they are imposing on the public, and the public has every right to require them to respect our most foundational values of freedom of speech.
I am also confused about why do you refer to people like Tate as ‘villains’ in quotes. The dude is a star of incels and like-minded women-haters. The world is better off without his content.
EDIT: it seems that people have been making Tate clips and uploading them to TikTok and those are also the ones that got banned.
>TikTok has also banned an account belonging to Mr Tate as part of an ongoing investigation to remove content that violates its policies.
>A TikTok spokesperson told the BBC: "Misogyny is a hateful ideology that is not tolerated on TikTok.
>"We've been removing violative videos and accounts for weeks, and we welcome the news that other platforms are also taking action against this individual."
The only reason he is famous, is that "Hustlers University" instructs you to spam clips of his to social media together with affiliate links to his scheme. Compound that with his Alex Jones-like talent to generate the most divisive, ridiculous, humorous and infuriating soundbites and you have a TikTok smash hit. But just like Alex, once he glows out, his shady dealings and ridiculous statements will relegate him to a subject of mockery and an argument to dismiss his ideas for the opposing side.
Instead of asking why someone was "immediately guilty as charged", one should maybe ask why it takes a coordinated effort to get social media giants to act on toxic people that are very clearly violating their terms of service. All while YouTube keeps banning LGBTQ creators from recommendations (not even just demonetization) for using words like "lesbian" in video titles. Why does HN rarely get upset about those cases?
Like I also said, Neither YouTube or HN cares and expecting YouTube to change is futile and it will happen to anyone. That is the point.
But then again, some believe it is not enough to de-platform or do a mass ban of these LGBTQ creators off of the internet. Why not get the payment companies and the banks to freeze their funds as well, or why not contact their energy and phone provider so that they can't access the internet or have electricity as well?
I await a giant outcry when this happens to another person and the whole of HN starts crying about the big tech surveillance dystopia they helped to create.
For the “if U DoNt LiKe iT JuSt buiLd YoUR oWn YouTuBe” crowd, this will accelerate that outcome.
Eventually they will have deplatformed people with a big enough collective audience that some hole in the wall UGC platform might actually take off.
Of course they do this for more convinceable lying to all their population. Of course any civilized country should block that kind of super-nasty resource, with jailing all their creators if possible.
The comment I was originally replying to was saying they'd pay for a service that had no censorship so ideally such a service would charge so "cheaply" is kind of a requirement in my question as there needs to be a cost.
Of course, taking content down for "copyright infringement" is a form of censorship (one often require by law but censorship nonetheless).
I've never heard of allofmp3.com [1] but it doesn't sound like it was sued out of existence as all of the Russia court cases went in favor of their citizens (what a surprise!). Instead anybody outside of Russia was successfully prosecuted or payment processors "illegally"[2] stopped working with them.
I guess if Russia actually withdrawals from the WTO [3] we might see a return of allofmp3.com then. Although you probably have to buy using some form of cryptocurrency. Probably won't be that hard to convince people to use bitcoin atms to watch the Avengers for 2$.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AllOfMP3
[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20070823070406/http://eng.cnews....
[3]: https://www.iisd.org/articles/news/russia-plans-exit-world-t...
You depend on other companies to exist on the internet and these companies don't have to do business with you. At minimum, you need a domain, you need a place to put your servers, and you need an ISP. For a business to not fail, you also need a way to earn revenue. Each one of these is a pressure point.
If they can do it while being constantly hounded by publishers and DRM enforcers who have unlimited money and drive to strike them down, a random smart group of people can do it too.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/08/06/133861/cloudflar...
Sure, the likes of Gab, Odysee and BitChute see some traffic, but they will never ever have the same mainstream appeal again that they did before.
As a thought experiment I'd encourage you to think about how causes you agree with might be deplatformed, and which groups would jump at the chance to do so.
Bonus case study: censorship by various middle eastern governments
This isn't a real trade. Platforming bigots won't actually prevent bigots from deplatforming subaltern groups when they have the power to do so.
Well if you had legal protections for speech on online public spaces (twitter, youtube, FB, IG and so on) and a strong court system, that would actually protect subaltern groups from being deplatformed, yes.
It's a lot easier for the "bigots" (though I would have chosen the word zealots myself) to deplatform subaltern groups when that's an accepted method of dealing with dissent, as opposed to being something that's just not done.
The (quite common) view you're espousing of "We should censor and deplatform exactly the set of people *I* find morally abhorrent" stinks of "This is classic "I'm right, so political systems should cater to me."" type thinking.
For what it's worth I think Tate is an absolute piece of shit.
But even if we ignore the point about the middle east and focus entirely on one nation, legal defenses for majority groups have observably failed to protect subaltern groups for the entire history of the country. I do not have confidence that a strong court system protecting white male misogynists will actually consistently protect black gay women, for example. I believe that your statement about the ease of oppression is not actually supported by historical or modern evidence.
Really? You don't think the main reason the US is as desegregated as it is today is because of a strong supreme court that issued rulings such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_v._Allwright , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_v._Board_of_Education , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loving_v._Virginia , and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boynton_v._Virginia?
Clearly these are all examples of the supreme court failing to protect subaltern groups, which is why all white primaries are still the norm, schools and buses are still segregated, and interracial marriage is still illegal.
Is any court system perfect? Of course not, but the American court system is infinitely better than the court of public opinion when it comes to protecting individual rights for all individuals, regardless of identity.
What planet's history were you even referring to, again?
I'm not even American and I'm still aware of these civil rights victories. But oh no "white (well mixed-race in Tate's case) male misogynists" will also have their speech protected, so I guess these rights have got to go.
Your rights are not predicated on your identity or your beliefs, no matter how abhorrent.
And remember, we aren’t talking about governments taking away Tate’s rights. We are talking about posting on social media.
Virulent bigotry alone is not, and should never be, a crime. You are literally advocating for thoughtcrimes to be punished by the courts.
> And remember, we aren’t talking about governments taking away Tate’s rights. We are talking about posting on social media.
Well I was suggesting that governments regulate the tech monopolies to protect speech on their platforms, given that they are the de facto public square of modern political discourse. I recognize that Tate's freedom of speech was not violated by private platforms censoring him, I'm asserting that those platforms should either be regulated as public squares with the same duty to uphold freedom of (legal) speech, or have their monopolies broken up (i.e. Open APIs and interchange format, with social media monopolies ideally switching to a federated model where nobody has the power to "deplatform" someone else unilaterally).
The state has happily abandoned its own stated principles used to protect white men so that it can crush women, gay people, and racial minorities countless times throughout our history.
Well ...
> Dred Scott v. Sandford,[a] 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857), was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court in which the Court held that the United States Constitution was not meant to include American citizenship for people of African descent, regardless of whether they were enslaved or free, and so the rights and privileges that the Constitution confers upon American citizens could not apply to them.[3][4] The Supreme Court's decision has been widely denounced, both for how overtly racist the decision was and for its crucial role in the start of the American Civil War four years later.[5] Legal scholar Bernard Schwartz said that it "stands first in any list of the worst Supreme Court decisions". Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes called it the Court's "greatest self-inflicted wound".[6] Historian Junius P. Rodriguez said that it is "universally condemned as the U.S. Supreme Court's worst decision."[7] Historian David Thomas Konig said that it was "unquestionably, our court's worst decision ever."[8]
So if you mean, it's desegregated because a really racist Supreme Court decision helped precipitate a civil war that killed a lot of people, because a few rich and powerful people benefitted from enslaving other human beings and refused to give that up, despite it's obvious clash with basic legal principles, then yeah, you might be right.
TikTok and YouTube both have a policy of limiting the spread of anything they can identify as LGBT. If I choose not to censor myself on these platforms my reach will be null. So I'm directly affected.
I just don't think it's somehow impossible to draw a line of acceptable behavior on that platform. A policy of no intervention just leaves you with whatever capitalism feels like that day - and while capitalism really loves to pretend to care about diversity, it really is more of a marketing gag than a anywhere close to a true belief. But Andrew Tate can be the embodiment of toxic masculinity / incel culture / misogyny as long as it pays and nobody complains?
I guess censorship is perfectly fine for most people, and that's the scariest outcome.
"Too bad for them, they should have been thinking like us." No wonder we descent into authoritarianism. Thanks to well meaning crowds of well mannered citizens cheering because the big bad got ousted.
https://youtu.be/BiqDZlAZygU
A private company can do whatever they want and ban whoever from their platform.
But can a private company that's used by 99% of the population do the same? I think there's an unexplored grey area there. If HN bans me that's not necessarily censorship, but if Twitter does so, there's an argument it could be. Censorship is not a function of who does it, it's function of scale. The bigger the audience, the more important it is that free speech is upheld.
Our free speech laws have to be updated for the information and Internet era, and the era of mega corporations monopolising a huge chunk of the public space. Of course none of this would happen if open and decentralised standards were used, but that's a discussion for another time.
I can't see any way to justify requiring Facebook et al to host misogynistic content at the barrel of a metaphorical gun.
Yes, because that's how rights work. The rights being debated here are freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, be careful where you draw the line in the sand and decide those rights end, because lines in the sand can be redrawn.
Plus, Twitter isn't used by anywhere near 99% of the population. It isn't, despite what many people say, a primary means of discourse, communication, broadcast media or politics. It's popular but it isn't infrastructure. It isn't the public commons, it isn't a utility. It really isn't worth burning the Constitution over.
If you want the government to take over social media and coerce speech, fine, but accept that that position is explicitly the opposite of what the First Amendment stands for.
Essentially, the first amendment is the floor, not the ceiling. People who want to minimize freedom of speech will point to the first amendment and say that restricting congress from restricting our speech is all we should have.
Big tech companies should be forced to enshrine freedom of speech into their platforms, or face still government sanctions.
The reason the First Amendment denies Congress the right to abridge speech is that freedom of speech implicitly allows freedom from speech, just as the right to assembly implicitly allows the right not to assemble and freedom of religion implies freedom from religion. The First Amendment is written the way it is to protect the right of the people, and of private enterprise, to moderate speech on their property. Their doing so isn't a violation of freedom of speech, it is freedom of speech.
>People who want to minimize freedom of speech will point to the first amendment and say that restricting congress from restricting our speech is all we should have.
First, no one here is actually making that argument.
Second, it baffles me how you can type that and not realize that allowing congress to restrict our speech more than they're allowed to makes our speech less free.
And third, I have to echo the sentiment of sascha_sl's comment here. It's telling that this outrage only ever comes out on behalf of people with a specific political bent. None of Hacker News' free speech advocates ever go to bat for LGBT or black or leftist content that gets unfairly demonetized or banned, which despite the narrative happens all the time. Only ever for the right-wingers, racists and assholes, and only after Trump's white supremacist fringe base started getting banned en masse.
This isn't about freedom of speech, and never has been. It's about one political ideology wanting the government to coerce private platforms into publishing their propaganda against their will.
1st Amendment: Congress SHALL MAKE NO LAW [...]
Curious, isn't it?
I'm not sure why you think that Congress, which is likely near the MOST PARTISAN it's ever been, will responsibly and reasonably use this "force" to ensure viewpoint neutrality, instead of say, amplifying the voices that support their position.
Also, part of the 1st Amendment is allowing people to associate (or not) with each other. As long as you aren't discriminating for an illegal purpose, you can make whatever rules you want. If you don't like the "big tech" rules, don't participate. But if you break their rules, they can kick you out.
The first amendment means that the GOVERNMENT can't silence jerks, but is ALSO means that people who don't want to hear jerks don't have to listen.
These companies were regulated because of market dominance. It isn't efficient to have 2 electric or 2 telegraph or 2 phone companies when they were established -- so government set a reasonable profit margin and then drew up rules by which the companies had to abide to stay in their position. (I'm guessing bus/plane was more about not crowding others out, as they don't have the sunk costs or moat that the other companies acquire by their nature.)
In my opinion its far more damaging to allow sites like youtube to become so influencial in public life yet wield the power to censor anyone they don't like.
I believe that social media should be tightly bound by the constitution so that they may not overstep the rights of the people.
They shouldn't be allowed to ban viewpoints they don't like.
They shouldn't be allowed to unreasonably collect and use data, nor come up with agreements that allow the use of important data.
Quite simply I would rather trust a government that at occasionally follows the rules than near despot oligarchs who never do.
"Hey, we kept that bigot you like so much on YouTube" won't convince a fascist who has a gun pointed at me not to shoot.
Fascists don't need any "martyr", even leaving aside the fact that nothing being done to Andrew Tate here is worthy of that label, because fascists are perfectly capable of fabricating a strong sense of victimhood in their own heads. The antidote to fascism is overwhelming opposition, not appeasement.
They don't respond to truth, civility, or compromise - though they may on occasion weaponize such ideas when it serves their own ends - because they don't believe in either of those things. This is just liberal brainrot. It didn't work in the Weimar republic and it certainly isn't working in the USA.
In truth, not banning people like this from society just teaches others that their sick ideas must have some sort of validity to them. Otherwise, why would it be on display?
The resentment builds up over time, the bans add fuel to the fire, and the “ bad speech” only comes back later in greater numbers and even worse forms.
What’s worse is the “bad speech” goes underground and begins communicating in less obvious ways.
You’re looking at this through a 10 year lens thinking “we vanquished Alex Jones, and we will defeat the next one.”
Look at it through a 100 year lens and you might see a different picture.
As for the 100 year view, you don't have to do anything for bigots to "build up resentment" and last time it reached boiling point, we had a civil war where we kicked their ass. The biggest reason why racism prevailed so strongly in the South (and to a lesser extent, the North) had nothing to do with resentments. It was because Lincoln deciding to play the appeasment game and picking a Confederate ex-slave owner as VP who promptly halted and reversed Reconstruction post Lincoln's assassination.
No matter what time scale you view things, reality contradicts your view.
Which manuscripts? Claims of "reading history" are often false. The same people who support Tate also tend to hate academic historians, for example.
Where do we draw the line? Using institutions to carry out the project of silencing unwelcome ideas... is to my taste unpalatable.
A free society isn't something that can magically sustain itself without active effort and intolerance should not be tolerated. Sure, you can paint this as a "paradox" but aside from fascists cry bullying about being oppressed (while actively salivating about acquiring the ability to oppress everyone) and naïve liberals who can't remotely imagine the idea of bad faith actors in politics, I don't think anybody is getting oppressed here.
As far as I know, there is no violation of the First amendment here so even if you think hate speech should be protected free speech (which I don't agree with), nobody's freedoms have been breached here.
Nobody I'm confident in trusting, for sure.
Interpretation by who? The things I’ve seen labeled as fascist and racist in recent years have led me to believe this is not true. But then again many of the people doing the labeling not only are quick on the trigger to make accusations of fascism and racism, but also seem to see the world in very black and white terms and seem to have little interest in things like nuance or context. I suppose all ideas become easy to parse with no ambiguity in interpretation when you have zero interest in introspection or countenancing views that differ from your own.
Also, I'd love to see examples of the things you're talking about that are simultaneously filled with nuance and context, but also elicited an internet death penalty.
There is no defense, absolutely none, for allowing companies to just deplatform viewpoints they don't like in a coordinated fashion.
This wasn't a conspiracy theorist or dangerous person like alex jones, this guy was just a jerk with a knack for being rude.
We made a massive jump from banning those dangerous to banning what is unpalatable for most.
Its quite clear that soon we will see more of this and the "correct" opinion will be all thats left.
Authoritarianism often comes slow.
You might also have forgotten about the inconvenient fact that Tate is facing credible accusations of human trafficking which he has so far narrowly avoided facing due to being based in Romania.
That can't possibly be right, or the Democrats wouldn't be so focused on "reaching across the isle" /s
This will make the problem worse.
This will not fix the problem.
This will hurt something unrelated.
Basically the same as FUD deployed by incumbent tech giants. You don't need to even try to claim your product is better. People are familiar with your product and know that it's crap. You just have to introduce enough uncertainty into the conversation to slow progress towards other solutions.
The “banning works” takes such a narrow view of time it’s remarkable. There was a world before YouTube, before internet, and before television.
Horrible ideas spread when they are unchallenged, not when they are driven underground.
When an idea is transparently horrible, it's proponents are not interested in discussion except as a means to propogate their message to others. In a reasoned debate, fascists always have to work the least because it always takes more mental effort to debunk a terrible idea than stating said idea.
Meanwhile, adhering to the rules of respectability means the fascist gets to expose far more people to their message in a format where they get to express their message without interruption.
The only reason why you should ever talk to a fascist is to ridicule them. Jean Paul-Satre put it best when talking about anti-Semites (though it really applies to all strains of fascism):
"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past."
Also, nobody is being silenced here either because there is no obligation built into the first amendment or even the very concept of Free speech to provide a platform for anybody.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boomerang_effect_(psychology)
this became clear as the right became more and more extreme as people had their views censored.
this stupidity only mixes the normals with the crazies forcibly.
people who like tate could soon end up moving to the same kinds of alternative sites that crazies jones now reside on.
this is a dangerous road that ends with the people who feel beaten down eventually popularizing crazy ideas.
its the irony of censorship that too much of it typically causes many of the problems it wanted to avoid.
I don't want to see the outcome of the many impressionable teens who followed tate get exposed to harmful radical ideologies because they followed him to a less savory and crazier site!
Its extremely dangerous to let these companies become the modern public square because deplatforming people on places like youtube and social media basically ends up censoring them.
They essentially have the first amendment stripped because we put it in the hands of private companies.
I think social medias should be forced to conform to certain rules such as not banning viewpoints they don't like UNLESS they are dangerous (terrorism, extremism, etc.)
I hate seeing this kind of thing happen and I don't even like tate.
This is the real reason this stuff is banned. Don't let them convince you it's for any sort of noble reason.
I don't think they care - nor should they, really - about silencing this a-hole or another one for good. They just care about PR and business so they boot users who threaten that.
CEOs also, like all humans, don't want angry hoards of very online people (blue checkmarks) screaming at them, and have shown time and time again they are willing to bend to the mob to make the screaming stop.
They're making a financial judgment call. Hostile people scare "normal people" off the platform. Somebody decides whether they'll make more money by scaring off fans of the hostile posters, and how much of that hostility the "normal people" will take before they decide the site causes more aggravation than pleasure.
Captialism famously doesn't depend on generosity, but on self-interest. They can generally be trusted to make decisions based on it. I don't know whether they're right in this instance or not, but the decision makes sense viewed in that light. The whole point of capitalism is that it doesn't need to be noble to nudge people in directions that have wide benefits.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32371080
Downvote if you find my comments to lack substance
Other readers found it particularly insightful, it is all that matter
Sometimes you don't need to understand, that's just the way it is, otherwise my input wouldn't be needed if everyone knew
That is not useful as a base for debate. You're just spilling all your negative feelings in this post...