This is one side of the argument. The other is that with social media, echo chambers, algos, etc we face a new risk of extremism that can cause cases like below.
I haven’t really defined my opinion on this topic one way or the other. But in general I look at seatbelts in cars - they are required by law because if not, many people would save the $500 to buy a new car without seatbelts. We need some regulation for the good of the people. What that looks like for politics and the internet, I don’t know.
What would your reaction to this be? Would you maybe be a bit concerned about how easy it might be to claim that some speech you see as important in some way leads to violence, and must therefore be censored?
Perhaps it's because right wing extremists are significantly more likely to use violence? I think it's understandable that the default image of a terrorist is someone who espouses right wing values in that case. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/08/post-911-dom...
I might be in a bubble but I very, very rarely learn about left wing attacks, while right wing ones pop up here and there.
Edit: Also, about that link GP posted above about the Congressional baseball shooting: The perpetrator attacked Republican lawmakers, who have the most power to implement right-wing policies. In contrast, the attacks mentioned in my link mostly affected random people who probably did not have much political power, and were just members of groups that are often disliked by right wing extremists.
The paradox is used as an argumentative device for judging whether a tolerant and democratic society is possible (with liberal institutions ensuring intolerance doesn’t emerge) or if maintenance of tolerance would require an autocratic philosopher-king.
The continual application of it to the online censorship debate makes little sense in light of its original rhetorical context. It is also constantly cited in policy prescription proposals of which I would be shocked if Popper agreed with.
I’ve read the Wikipedia page. I also own the copy of the book where it is mentioned, which I’ve also read. People are paying it way more attention than Popper himself did (it’s not even mentioned in the original text proper) and further treating it as some sort of immutable law, when that completely ignores the purposes for which the argument was created and that it was never a formal observation of how society actually operated.
The paradox of tolerance is not some narrow tool, it can be used in many contexts. In particular, it can be used to demonstrate that, if you want to exist in a society that has a coherent notion of "self-defense" in general, you must admit the existence of the paradox and the necessity of judging actions in the context of aggression or defense. To wit: killing someone is against the law, but killing someone who's trying to kill you may be permitted, but even in that case, the aggressor still isn't allowed to kill you just because you tried to kill them in self-defense; they forfeit the right to self-defense by being the aggressor.
The difference is that speech, even unpopular, controversial, insulting, and dehumanizing speech, isn't violence. There is no legitimate claim to self-defense aside from direct threats to one's own life or property.
But we're not talking about speech, we're talking about tolerance. Speech is just the medium. And lack of tolerance is a threat to one's life and property: men did not tolerate women receiving an education so that they could have a career; redlining housing developers in the US did not tolerate black people buying homes in white neighborhoods; Nazis do not tolerate Jews to live. Intolerance is not "just" speech, it is speech as a direct encitement to actions that are intended to have negative consequences for the targeted party.
The one thing a tolerant society can NOT tolerate is intolerance itself. If allowed to set root, intolerance will take over and destroy the tolerant society. The intolerant will be loud and aggressive, working to silence everyone else. Eventually, it's over.
Just like the fact that people who want to live self-determining lives in a self-governing democracy must be always better armed and prepared than the bullies and autocrats who want to freely plunder and run other lives & societies. If they are not better armed & prepared (either personally or by proxy of police, military, etc.), then the bullies & autocrats will inevitably take over by force at any opportune time.
(See also in economics: The bad money drives out the good, every time.)
With any good faith effort, intolerance is pretty easy to define.
But, if you are talking in bad faith, there's 1000 arguments.
All authority is not authoritarian. That is why democracy was invented. In order to provide a self-correcting system. But yes, Churchill was right when he said that "Democracy is the worst of all forms of government, except for all others that have been tried."
Total free-for-all has repeatedly been shown to rapidly devolve in every case. Can you show a single un-moderated forum that survives over time, or a single unregulated "free" society without authority that does not fail?
So, can you show one of these no-authority forums or societies, or do you have a better suggestion than to just give up?
Fascists are very good at subverting this process so I wouldn’t count on it.
I do believe visibility is good though re: the Streisand effect, and, of course, making them more visible to anti-fascists is good praxis ;)
"Debunking" requires people to be operating in good faith (where a "good faith argument" is an argument where both sides are legitimately trying to advance their own knowledge, rather than "win an argument" for its own sake). You can't "debunk" someone who isn't even playing by the rules of the game, and fascists have always exploited this.
"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."
In a former life I ran a company that had forums for our customers that could be viewed by the public. Our policy was to never delete or edit posts. It was great until we had about 2000 customers. Then we got a handful of about 10 nutjobs who formed a small clique to cause trouble. They disagreed with some of our policies & fees, which is fine - we let them have their say about it.
The problem was, instead of just leaving our service after posting their disagreements, they stayed, because they were actually making money from their business with us. But they were so bitter about fee changes, they couldn't let it go. They came to dominate the forum discussion, not because they had anything useful to contribute other than their original disagreements, but because they had a lot of energy to post the same thing over and over.
It devolved into death threats against us, believe it or not, on a forum that we were publishing. How would you handle that in a censor-free environment?
There's a difference between forums, where everyone sees the same posts, and platforms, such as twitter, where everyone chooses who to follow and block.
How should Elon Musk deal with irrate Tesla customers on twitter? If necessary, by blocking them, but not by banning them from twitter.
(Death threats of course are an extreme case, in which even banning someone from a platform can be justified.)
Who's gonna do that debunking though? You? For every young man that manages to receive the message that the Holocaust didn't happen and it's all lies, and decides to hear that garbage as gospel; you're volunteering to deprogram each and every one of them? Because that's the issue, the lack of debunking. We couldn't even get people to hear there aren't microchips in the vaccine, or that we've been to the moon. More stupid ideas, some of which lead kids to shoot up schools, are out there. Given the mass-media effect, Twitter and YouTube bans are the answer. I wish there was a better one, but we've yet to come up with it, so here we are.
People hold views, so what? Why can't we just accept that people have differing views, and just agree to disagree? Why do we have to force everyone to have the same belief system? People get angry when religious people proselytize, but other topics are okay to force on people?
I have differing political/social/economic opinions than other people, but I have no desire to force my opinion on other people are make them see things from my point of view, because it's stupid and pointless.
Just point and laugh at the tin-foil-hatter and move on. By seeing them as a legitimate problem, you give them value and authority. But just forgetting it, whatever they say loses all power and value.
"People hold views that other beings should be enslaved or exterminated, so what?"
The kind of sentiment you're expressing often comes from people who are either ignorant of fascism / authoritarianism and how it affects societies, or are apathetic towards those outcomes.
You must understand that there are people out there primarily driven by fear and hatred, that, once given positions of power, will use that power to denigrate or otherwise erode the humanity of people they simply don't like.
It's not enough to just not be racist, you must be anti-racist. It's not enough to just not be fascist, you must be anti-fascist.
> You must understand that there are people out there primarily driven by fear and hatred, that, once given positions of power, will use that power to denigrate or otherwise erode the humanity of people they simply don't like.
Sounds like both current-day US political parties, so we're not doing a very good job at preventing this.
No, it doesn't, unless you're feigning stupidity. But in case you're not and actually attempting a point, let's review some current social issues and see if you can notice any trends:
Climate change: the GOP more or less does not acknowledge this reality; former POTUS removed US from the Paris Climate Accords.
Abortion / healthcare: attempts to overturn the Affordable Care Act have almost all come from GOP affiliates; abortion is not allowed even in cases of rape and incest for many GOP-led states. Attempts to reign in pharmaceutical costs have been countered by GOP representatives.
LGBTQ+ rights: again we have GOP-led states that are not only banning gender-affirming care for transgender kids, but proposing statewide registries for these children. Additional efforts and talking points about overturning Obergefell v Hodges, as well as Loving v Virginia have already surfaced.
Immigration: GOP representatives and appointees authored a policy of intentionally separating children from families in a disgusting attempt to deter lawful migration and asylum seekers. Earlier this year, GOP officials lied to legal immigrants and transported them across the country for a political stunt.
Drug policy: no evidence supports the notion that increasing incarceration decreases drug use or recidivism. Democratic-led states were the first to make moves toward medicinal and recreational use of cannabis, massively offsetting the amount of people being unnecessarily jailed (which costs society in two ways: taxpayer money, and, if the charge is a felony offense, the individual can no longer vote).
The "but BOTH SIDES..." arguments may work on reddit or 4chan, but this is HN! We're better than that!
Because we have enough empirical proof from last 100 years that right people at right time can convert your country into one where you can be sentenced to death, labour camp or any of those based on your ethnicity, religion, world view or even fact of wearing glasses.
Consider the mind of someone who might believe conspiracy theories like Holocaust denial.
Do you think such a person would be more or less likely to believe in the Holocaust if they found out that all Holocaust deniers had been systematically silenced by the forces that be?
Advertisers force us to eat shite, that's the business model. Microtargetting means (relatively) micro budgets are all that's needed to reach particular audiences. In practice, it's all about finding the cheapest way to amplify, that's the business model of particular strains of politics.
Memes meant something before the internet, and rapid distribution on so called social media means well engineered strains will spread fast and far on small budgets; mostly others' energy.
There is nothing good about this. There are no upsides to some free speech being able to drown out other free speech. I wish people would read a tiny bit of literature on the subject and stop spreading that incorrect and harmful meme.
Advertisers force us to do nothing at all. Memes similarly force nothing. This is a bastardization of the word 'force'.
Either people have rights or they don't. We don't need the government to pick and choose how individuals express themselves in order to protect others, not because it doesn't make sense, but because there is no way to do it without a Ministry of Truth, which is arguably even worse.
Remember, freedom of speech is freedom from governmental oppression first and foremost, the kind that arises when authoritarians get to tell people what and how to think.
Nothing is black and white. People being rational is fiction. Advertisers force us to eat shit: the very existence of mass media depends on it.
In functioning democracies, the government represents the people and thus anything it enforces is by order of its people. Only in crypto dictatorships does your argument hold. My solution then is to either evacuate or improve the quality of your representation.
Many people being gullible and herd-oriented doesn't equate to them being forced to consume products.
I'm not forced to eat shit. Neither are you. If you disagree please reference the shit I'm being forced to eat, or products I'm being forced to buy. I'll then point out whether or not your statements have any standing.
Do I have to link you the scientific research that show that people who think they are not easily manipulated are one of the most easily manipulated groups, or can you manage it yourself?
At this point it seems a lot more likely you are projecting your own irrationality and helplessness onto others. Reasoning from correlation alone isn't going to get you very far.
Ever heard of Hitler?
They let him talk, and talk and talk, it ended up with most of my ancestors dead.
Some speech calls for violence and dehumanization against minorities, it should be banned.
He should tell that to his good friend Kanye.
Or Trump with his lovely dance with antisemites.
Musk doesn't want to ensure anything but his ego and his ability to influence. He cares naught for consequences on anything else.
I'm not on Twitter and yet I'm probably aware of far-right commentary on the platform. I can't say I'm aware of any "far left extremists" as you call them.
Who are the "far left extremists" that you mention? Isn't there more attention to far-right Twitter accounts due to the increase in violence taking place in the name of far-right politics?
It's not really a left vs right case, but there are many instances in both Twitter and Reddit of women openly hating men, which isn't censored, while the opposite (men openly hating women) is censored or punished.
I don't want to name individual Twitter users, but you can check the r/FemaleDatingStrategy subreddit to have an idea.
Edit: I've done a quick Google search on reddit of "I hate men" and "I hate women" and they both seem to be quite prevalent, so maybe there isn't that much of a bias in terms of banning users. Although I still believe there is bias in terms of which subreddits have been deleted, quarantined, or allowed to continue.
The far-left fights ideas it does not like with censorship and cancellation. The far-right is more aggressive at defending their beliefs. One says you must be silenced, the other says come at me bro.
Drag story hour is speech. Far right activists have been showing up and physically assaulting people to silence them, moderate right politicians are trying to pass laws against them or simply defund libraries to silence the speech they find repugnant. So called bastions of free speech: Gab, Parler, Truth: they all silence anything to the left of their worldview.
> Because elite media is left-ish, and has great power to focus attention on some things but not on others.
I wouldn't say "elite", just mainstream. And they're not leftish, just left - for a variety of reasons, many of them being valid. Such as respecting minorities, promoting equality, etc. I think the problem happens when some people go to the extreme - and this immediately causes uproar on the opposite side. Unfortunately, social media amplify this conflict between the extremes. But most people are in the middle.
Branding people left and right based on these qualities is lazy. There are people from both the left and right that exhibit these qualities. Also, there are racists that are left and right. I would even argue that “respecting majorities” is equally desired and exists for both left and right.
I keep reading about them in the national news. A quick google for "Asian hate crime" gets me articles from NBC, CNN, new york times, the guardian, CBC, the Toronto Star, PubMed, the Brookings institute, nyc.gov, and justice.gov; that's just the first page.
I'd suggest your bubble as the issue, but you're clearly aware of this somehow. Did you learn about this on a news site that convinced you that other news sources are failing to report on this issue depsite evidence to the contrary?
Never heard of this so looked it up. Dude had an argument with his ex while in a car, hit her a few times, she managed to escape, he drove into a parade some time later. The motive behind the attack is unknown. What does this have to do with the parent post?
So he was a right wing extremist who murdered several innocent people. The parent was saying that left wing extremist attacks aren't nearly as prolific.
Edit: on further thought, no motive for the attack was established. This seems more like an act of random violence fueled by rage, rather than an ideological attack.
There's certainly a greater threat from right-wing extremists, but you'd have to be living in quite a filter bubble to have missed the "fiery but mostly peaceful" protests over the last few years, or any of these:
Marxism, cancel culture, environmental cultures (eg Just Stop Oil, Degrowth) etc all seem to focus on behaviour rather than the biological traits that attract far right attention.
I'm sure there are exceptions but being a dick isn't a protected class, so people attacking you for it aren't kicked off.
The votes on this comment are a disaster. I've seen it go up to +2, and down to zero more than once. Clearly a few people think I'm wrong but a downvote doesn't tell me or others why.
I know Left and Right are tribal lines, but in the context of a conversation, consider that downvoting something because it attacks something you identify with might not be as effective as engaging in that conversation. I'm probably too late with this reply to catch anyone, but I can only hope.
The solution is to allow people to one-click filter their feeds. If a person does not what to see the word "Trump" or any vulgarity, slurs, anything, they can one-click, or very simply, block those.
What has always bothered me about the Twitter censorship war is that the people most angry are the ones wanting to silence speech. I say let speech be free, identify the people, groups, and ideas you don't want, and block it out. Build your own town square.
Twitter had become a platform not for discourse, but for passing judgment instead of disagreeing. I prefer to ignore peoples judgmentalisms, but unfortunately, they seem to have militated to enforce them.
At the risk of being a bit too cheeky, if these users are really that concerned about unregulated opinion, maybe they should build their own platform or buy one of the struggling ones out? They have the advantage that people want to be around them because of their personal qualities, and there's no danger of them losing their bank accounts, or having their ISPs threatened with unrelated litigation, and I hear the fediverse is pretty cool. I would love to read their collective wit on Mastadon.
Beyond cheek, it's a good test of the argument. Instead of suffering on twitter, why not just move to a platform that is more welcoming to their judgments?
I know it’s only been a day or so but this is bad only because they are unbanning boring posters and none of the fun ones who got banned.
Sad to see paring back of moderation happen only to groups like this.
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 157 ms ] threadLet the party members say what they like within the law. Debunk if it need be, and let adults decide for themselves what the truth is.
If authoritarians try to stop us hearing from a political party, they remove our agency. And we don’t like that.
Ever heard of the Streisand Effect?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2018_United_States_m...
I haven’t really defined my opinion on this topic one way or the other. But in general I look at seatbelts in cars - they are required by law because if not, many people would save the $500 to buy a new car without seatbelts. We need some regulation for the good of the people. What that looks like for politics and the internet, I don’t know.
so when is /r/politics going to be banned? There seems to be a strong bias as to which echo chambers are "dangerous".
What would your reaction to this be? Would you maybe be a bit concerned about how easy it might be to claim that some speech you see as important in some way leads to violence, and must therefore be censored?
But "extremist" and "extremism" aren't really neutral terms anymore. They're now also euphemisms coded to mean conservative/right-wing extremists.
I might be in a bubble but I very, very rarely learn about left wing attacks, while right wing ones pop up here and there.
Edit: Also, about that link GP posted above about the Congressional baseball shooting: The perpetrator attacked Republican lawmakers, who have the most power to implement right-wing policies. In contrast, the attacks mentioned in my link mostly affected random people who probably did not have much political power, and were just members of groups that are often disliked by right wing extremists.
The continual application of it to the online censorship debate makes little sense in light of its original rhetorical context. It is also constantly cited in policy prescription proposals of which I would be shocked if Popper agreed with.
The one thing a tolerant society can NOT tolerate is intolerance itself. If allowed to set root, intolerance will take over and destroy the tolerant society. The intolerant will be loud and aggressive, working to silence everyone else. Eventually, it's over.
Just like the fact that people who want to live self-determining lives in a self-governing democracy must be always better armed and prepared than the bullies and autocrats who want to freely plunder and run other lives & societies. If they are not better armed & prepared (either personally or by proxy of police, military, etc.), then the bullies & autocrats will inevitably take over by force at any opportune time.
(See also in economics: The bad money drives out the good, every time.)
So, you just give up?
With any good faith effort, intolerance is pretty easy to define.
But, if you are talking in bad faith, there's 1000 arguments.
All authority is not authoritarian. That is why democracy was invented. In order to provide a self-correcting system. But yes, Churchill was right when he said that "Democracy is the worst of all forms of government, except for all others that have been tried."
Total free-for-all has repeatedly been shown to rapidly devolve in every case. Can you show a single un-moderated forum that survives over time, or a single unregulated "free" society without authority that does not fail?
So, can you show one of these no-authority forums or societies, or do you have a better suggestion than to just give up?
Fascists are very good at subverting this process so I wouldn’t count on it. I do believe visibility is good though re: the Streisand effect, and, of course, making them more visible to anti-fascists is good praxis ;)
"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."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_truth_effect
The problem was, instead of just leaving our service after posting their disagreements, they stayed, because they were actually making money from their business with us. But they were so bitter about fee changes, they couldn't let it go. They came to dominate the forum discussion, not because they had anything useful to contribute other than their original disagreements, but because they had a lot of energy to post the same thing over and over.
It devolved into death threats against us, believe it or not, on a forum that we were publishing. How would you handle that in a censor-free environment?
How should Elon Musk deal with irrate Tesla customers on twitter? If necessary, by blocking them, but not by banning them from twitter.
(Death threats of course are an extreme case, in which even banning someone from a platform can be justified.)
I have differing political/social/economic opinions than other people, but I have no desire to force my opinion on other people are make them see things from my point of view, because it's stupid and pointless.
Just point and laugh at the tin-foil-hatter and move on. By seeing them as a legitimate problem, you give them value and authority. But just forgetting it, whatever they say loses all power and value.
The kind of sentiment you're expressing often comes from people who are either ignorant of fascism / authoritarianism and how it affects societies, or are apathetic towards those outcomes.
You must understand that there are people out there primarily driven by fear and hatred, that, once given positions of power, will use that power to denigrate or otherwise erode the humanity of people they simply don't like.
It's not enough to just not be racist, you must be anti-racist. It's not enough to just not be fascist, you must be anti-fascist.
Simply throwing out “logical fallacy!” when you think it occurs doesn't really drive the conversation forward.
Sounds like both current-day US political parties, so we're not doing a very good job at preventing this.
Climate change: the GOP more or less does not acknowledge this reality; former POTUS removed US from the Paris Climate Accords.
Abortion / healthcare: attempts to overturn the Affordable Care Act have almost all come from GOP affiliates; abortion is not allowed even in cases of rape and incest for many GOP-led states. Attempts to reign in pharmaceutical costs have been countered by GOP representatives.
LGBTQ+ rights: again we have GOP-led states that are not only banning gender-affirming care for transgender kids, but proposing statewide registries for these children. Additional efforts and talking points about overturning Obergefell v Hodges, as well as Loving v Virginia have already surfaced.
Immigration: GOP representatives and appointees authored a policy of intentionally separating children from families in a disgusting attempt to deter lawful migration and asylum seekers. Earlier this year, GOP officials lied to legal immigrants and transported them across the country for a political stunt.
Drug policy: no evidence supports the notion that increasing incarceration decreases drug use or recidivism. Democratic-led states were the first to make moves toward medicinal and recreational use of cannabis, massively offsetting the amount of people being unnecessarily jailed (which costs society in two ways: taxpayer money, and, if the charge is a felony offense, the individual can no longer vote).
The "but BOTH SIDES..." arguments may work on reddit or 4chan, but this is HN! We're better than that!
Hope this helps.
This is nonsense. Just because people have the right to believe what they want doesn't mean that lies have the same value as truths.
Do you think such a person would be more or less likely to believe in the Holocaust if they found out that all Holocaust deniers had been systematically silenced by the forces that be?
Memes meant something before the internet, and rapid distribution on so called social media means well engineered strains will spread fast and far on small budgets; mostly others' energy.
There is nothing good about this. There are no upsides to some free speech being able to drown out other free speech. I wish people would read a tiny bit of literature on the subject and stop spreading that incorrect and harmful meme.
Either people have rights or they don't. We don't need the government to pick and choose how individuals express themselves in order to protect others, not because it doesn't make sense, but because there is no way to do it without a Ministry of Truth, which is arguably even worse.
Remember, freedom of speech is freedom from governmental oppression first and foremost, the kind that arises when authoritarians get to tell people what and how to think.
In functioning democracies, the government represents the people and thus anything it enforces is by order of its people. Only in crypto dictatorships does your argument hold. My solution then is to either evacuate or improve the quality of your representation.
I'm not forced to eat shit. Neither are you. If you disagree please reference the shit I'm being forced to eat, or products I'm being forced to buy. I'll then point out whether or not your statements have any standing.
He has made a clear distinction that the limits of free speech should be governed by law as opposed to by opaque private interests.
Why so much attention to the far-right?
I don't want to name individual Twitter users, but you can check the r/FemaleDatingStrategy subreddit to have an idea.
Edit: I've done a quick Google search on reddit of "I hate men" and "I hate women" and they both seem to be quite prevalent, so maybe there isn't that much of a bias in terms of banning users. Although I still believe there is bias in terms of which subreddits have been deleted, quarantined, or allowed to continue.
They also complained about being treated unfairly even when they are given much more leeway then their opposition
What percentage does it take for you to consider it a problem?
Because elite media is left-ish, and has great power to focus attention on some things but not on others.
I wouldn't say "elite", just mainstream. And they're not leftish, just left - for a variety of reasons, many of them being valid. Such as respecting minorities, promoting equality, etc. I think the problem happens when some people go to the extreme - and this immediately causes uproar on the opposite side. Unfortunately, social media amplify this conflict between the extremes. But most people are in the middle.
Branding people left and right based on these qualities is lazy. There are people from both the left and right that exhibit these qualities. Also, there are racists that are left and right. I would even argue that “respecting majorities” is equally desired and exists for both left and right.
I'd suggest your bubble as the issue, but you're clearly aware of this somehow. Did you learn about this on a news site that convinced you that other news sources are failing to report on this issue depsite evidence to the contrary?
Never heard of this so looked it up. Dude had an argument with his ex while in a car, hit her a few times, she managed to escape, he drove into a parade some time later. The motive behind the attack is unknown. What does this have to do with the parent post?
This has everything to do with the parent comment’s insinuation that political extremism is only a one way street.
Also you conveniently left out the part where he murdered 6 people.
“He drove into a parade some time later.” Unreal.
Edit: on further thought, no motive for the attack was established. This seems more like an act of random violence fueled by rage, rather than an ideological attack.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shootin...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/15/brett-kavana...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_of_Aaron_Danielson_an...
Marxism, cancel culture, environmental cultures (eg Just Stop Oil, Degrowth) etc all seem to focus on behaviour rather than the biological traits that attract far right attention.
I'm sure there are exceptions but being a dick isn't a protected class, so people attacking you for it aren't kicked off.
I know Left and Right are tribal lines, but in the context of a conversation, consider that downvoting something because it attacks something you identify with might not be as effective as engaging in that conversation. I'm probably too late with this reply to catch anyone, but I can only hope.
> To be super clear, we have not yet made any changes to Twitter’s content moderation policies
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1586149451348910081
So it's not clear why these supposedly banned groups are now supposedly able to rejoin without consequence?
I suppose "not changing the policies" isn't synonymous with "continuing to enforce the stated policies".
What has always bothered me about the Twitter censorship war is that the people most angry are the ones wanting to silence speech. I say let speech be free, identify the people, groups, and ideas you don't want, and block it out. Build your own town square.
At the risk of being a bit too cheeky, if these users are really that concerned about unregulated opinion, maybe they should build their own platform or buy one of the struggling ones out? They have the advantage that people want to be around them because of their personal qualities, and there's no danger of them losing their bank accounts, or having their ISPs threatened with unrelated litigation, and I hear the fediverse is pretty cool. I would love to read their collective wit on Mastadon.
Beyond cheek, it's a good test of the argument. Instead of suffering on twitter, why not just move to a platform that is more welcoming to their judgments?