Oh here, let me try based on what I learned from the reddit/cp discussion that took place here, what, last week:
- slippery slopes don't exist, they're apparently some sort of imaginary fallacy
- If you argue that Tumblr shouldn't remove content at their own arbitrary discretion, that must mean you want people to have eating disorders and commit suicide. I will call you disgusting and imply that even having a discussion about censorship or suppression of content is akin to defending child porn, I mean, suicidal content.
On a less sarcastic note, I really do want to hear how people are going to tell me this isn't a slippery slope. "“that actively promotes or glorifies self-injury or self-harm.”". My [imaginary] Tumblr talks about how I deprive myself of sleep working long hours, use marijuana for stress relief and recreation and how I don't like to wear my helmet when I ride my motorcycle, better find a new blog (or whatever Tumblr is) platform.
There is no "slope" when it comes to private establishments. Just like McDonalds reserves the right to not serve you if you aren't wearing shoes or a shirt, Tumblr reserves the right to limit whatever content they see fit.
Freedom of speech does not apply when participating on a private organization's platform.
Why does the term "slippery slope" only apply to public rights? Again, no one is making this a legal thing. No one here is saying that Tumblr is legally required to let me blog about my suicide. We're saying that it's concerning as a [potential] user to see a provider like this arbitrarily suppressing content.
Sorry, I'm surely abusing the proverbial "we". I just feel that your attempting to discredit anyone who dissents as using "free speech" when this really (as you point out) isn't about free speech at all.
For the record, I do use my own platform and don't really ever use Tumblr. The sorts of things I write about don't really attract the "repost"/"like" style of Tumblr and I don't think the audience would be relevant anyway. I can say that if I ever decided to start a photography blog or something where mass audiences and such were important, I would be much less likely to use Tumblr knowing that this is their policy.
I guess I feel like your defending Tumblr from some sort of attack by me. Like I said, Tumblr is free to do whatever they want and their users can leave or stay. I just think this policy is a turn-off and I wouldn't be shocked if in 3 months we see "Tumblr bans tumbles(?) about drugs/rock-n-roll, etc" posts.
I don't think this is necessarily a slippery slope.
AFAIK (I may be wrong though) this isn't due to external pressure or some PR fiasco (coughreddit), this is something Tumblr has decided did not reflect their company ethic, and wants off their platform.
The difference between this and reddit's last run-in with offensive content is that Tumblr has shown no weakness here, whereas Reddit more than proved that a sufficiently large PR catastrophe is all it takes to change site policy.
What Reddit has encouraged is more boycotts and more PR shitstorms from 3rd parties hoping to affect change on the site. Tumblr, by acting proactively, has not opened these doors (yet). They are still their own arbiters of good taste, as opposed to opening the floodgates of mob-rule.
Inventing a new company policy in response to something you found distasteful and then enforcing that upon your existing user base screams slippery slope. Especially given there is even less of a brightline standard of what violates Tumblr's policy than when we were considering reddit. It's much easier (not to trivialize it) to determine if something is child-related and sexual of nature than the entire realm of things contained in "self-injury".
As I implied in my other comment, things like "self-injury" are very arbitrary and vary person-to-person. (Not that I should have to disclaim this, but I don't think things like suicide or eating disorders are "good" or healthy).
Sure, but the point of this is that Tumblr is the ultimate arbiter of what falls into and out of the content policy. And honestly, I expect "Tumblr staff" as a group to be a lot more focused and a lot less fickle than the internet community at large.
Compared to a reactionary response to external pressure, a la reddit, where you've essentially handed the reigns to third parties.
By acting proactively instead of reacting to PR pressure, Tumblr has basically drawn a line where their content policy lies, and they shown that they will determine what does and does not violate it - not some angry blog, community vote, or other mob-based "democracy".
Giving a small group of people editorial control is unlikely to lead to a slippery slope. Giving everyone editorial control certainly does, as special interests emerge and find out they can play the system.
>By acting proactively instead of reacting to PR pressure, Tumblr has basically drawn a line where their content policy lies, and they shown that they will determine what does and does not violate it - not some angry blog, community vote, or other mob-based "democracy".
I don't think you understand how/why the reddit decision went down. Reddit was under pressure because users were trading CP behind the scenes or asking for it in comments. They responded by simply saying "No more sexual pictures of any nature under 18, child pornography or otherwise". Still a new policy being implemented on their user base, but at least there is something somewhat defined in terms of criteria for disallowed content. Ultimately, "We will ban anything we deem self-injury" is far from a bright line in my opinion.
The fact that Something Awful started the reddit discussion and Tumblr did this themselves is barely important in my opinion, at least from the angle I'm coming from. I'm obviously no more happy with a mob in charge of determining "appropriateness", but then again, I'm not really happy at all with someone arbitrarily telling me what is or isn't appropriate to say. Hence why I host my own blog.
It's a far brighter line than "we will ban anything that presents a PR threat".
Let's back up and clarify. The traditional claim of slippery slope is that today we're going after suicide blogs, tomorrow we'll be going after offensive lyrics, talk about drugs, and we will continue sliding down the slope of banning ever more and more types of content.
I just don't see this happening here. There is some play in the way the policy has been defined, but it certainly isn't a wide gaping hole. The definition of "self-harm" can only be stretched somewhat before you hit its limits.
Compare with what Reddit has been dealing with - which is in my view a real slippery slope problem. They've basically announced to the world that they will alter site policy to ban any content that can muster a large enough PR catastrophe. This creates a huge incentive to groups to do exactly that and see their pet peeve content types banned. And indeed we saw that - no sooner had the CP subreddits disappeared did people start calling for the banning of dead baby pics, talk about beating women, etc.
Reddit has lost that game, permanently. The line between acceptable and unacceptable is now drawn by a community of millions, instead of the focused judgment of a few, and is subject to movement based on the whims of the masses. Tumblr doesn't suffer from this.
I agree with you in regards to reddit and I very, very much feel the same way. The phrase I used and use is that it was "disappointing". I think you're right in your concern about reacting to the mob mentality, I guess for me, it's like politics. Do I want a king telling me I can't do anything that offends him? Or a scorned Senate telling me what I can/can't do? (Neither :P) I don't think the "mob" is better necessarily, but maybe I just mistakenly feel like it gives me a microscopic modicum of influence on it. Or I guess I feel that increasing the number of people that have influence on the decision decreases the chances of their being something "arbitrary". Does that make sense? As another example, if a subreddit has one moderator that goes around banning people he doesn't like, versus a panel of mods that provide checks on that.
I don't consider myself a creative person, but I can already think of a decent list of things that people consider "dangerous" that I don't (and vice-versa). I mean, pick any random social-political issue and it's not hard to think of things that one side or the other considers offensive or cruel to say. I won't keep going because I think we probably agree a lot here, but I've discussed a few examples in my other replies on this thread.
You're right, but I think your point is aside from the issue of slippery slope.
A king may be a jackbooted oppressor, but he's consistent and more or less unwavering. A mob of peasants protesting the color of the flag is unlikely to get him to change anything. That's the point I was trying to make - Tumblr is the king, and is unlikely to change their tune dramatically, and thus, little risk of this new policy creating ever more new ones.
Is it desirable to have this much power in one place? Maybe. Maybe not. But whether or not this is a desirable or fair system is quite separate from whether or not this system is easily susceptible to slippery slope attacks.
Keep in mind that Tumblr is also not almighty here. Tumblr rules over a kingdom where people can emigrate effortlessly. It may not be democratic, but this presents a natural check on its power.
> "Or I guess I feel that increasing the number of people that have influence on the decision decreases the chances of their being something "arbitrary"."
I think this is where our philosophies diverge. The more cooks in the kitchen, the more arbitrary the meal is going to be, as each one is out to craft their perfect meal.
This might be ok if every person has equal influence on the decision, maybe (cue argument about tyranny of the majority, etc), but in a community-driven voice-driven case, it's less about community consensus and more about which tiny minority can rally the strongest army.
Interesting. I find myself agreeing with you almost 100% but I guess ultimately I think a slippery slope has a fine chance of existing even with a monarch, to continue our analogy. Maybe "slippery slope" is the wrong word for it, but ultimately issues will come up and it will be up to one entity to determine whether its acceptable on their platform. I mean, eventually something else is going to get added to that last because someone at Tubmlr deems it "cruel enough". It may not be a STEEP slope, but it is still one in my opinion. That, and what will happen if Tumblr continues to grow and Good Morning America does a bit on the "drug Tumblrs that your kids may be looking at!"? Maybe I'm being alarmist, I don't mean to. Either way, I appreciate your comments, it's fun discussion and I'm enjoying this mental image of a reddit mob attacking some castle ruled by a Tumblr king.
There are two things here that I wish were not socially accepted: the demonization of even small amounts of body fat, and banning content you dislike "for their own good".
It's not for their own good. It's for the good of the impressionable and emotionally unstable teenagers that would have found these communities and latched onto them as their negative impulses were validated.
You're right, of course. I must have spent thirty or forty seconds looking for a more accurate phrase, but settled on "for their own good" because it flowed better.
Now, those pro-anorexia blogs are creepy and disheartening; I looked through some a while back, and they really are as sad as they sound. If Tumblr's goal is to prevent more teenagers from latching onto that subculture, there are a few things they might try. They could stick warning banners up on the blogs in question, visibly registering their protest without going so far as to remove content. Or they might shrug regretfully and say there's not much they can do, since they hardly have a monopoly on the blogging platform market, which would be true. Setting themselves up as censors was not their only option, and as far as I'm concerned, it should have been pretty far down on the list of ideas.
In general, I'm uncomfortable with the impulse to try to stop people from saying messages that you don't want others to hear.
I, too, am uncomfortable with such things. The slippery slope does exist, although to a lesser degree when the entity does not hold a monopoly (don't want to drive users away to more permissive options). However, the slipperiness of the slope should not preclude people stepping out onto it. It is less comfortable out there, less simple, less black-and-white than settling at one extreme or another. To take the example from the other direction, consider zero-tolerance policies for weapons at schools. I don't think many people would find it reasonable for a young student to be expelled for bringing a swiss army knife his grandfather gave him to school. Doesn't matter, says the school district. Slippery slope. Where do we draw the line?
As rational individuals, we can decide where to draw the line. This vastly increases the surface area of critical attacks - the line will seem arbitrary, and there will always be boundary cases which could go one way or the other. "Why this and not that?" will be heard often. It's an easy target. So yes, the easy answer is that all discourse should be allowed.
But really, I don't want people advocating that bullshit to teenagers.
I think that every advocate for censorship that I've ever heard has said some subset of the following things:
1. Freedom of speech is important, but this is a special case.
2. This stuff really is harmful. I don't want bad people exposing children to sex/communism/homosexuality/anorexia/witchcraft/whatever.
3. We're only going to censor $TOPIC_OF_THE_DAY. This is not a slippery slope.
4. Be reasonable.
Of course in this case, the stakes aren't that high, since it's easy for censored blogs to move away from Tumblr. This policy is more about social signaling than about seriously trying to help anyone.
I feel like censoring it would be unethical, while refusing to host it would simply be poor form.
Livecasting of own suicide: freedom of expression + freedom to make choices with regard to own life.
Edit: This is not to imply that Tumblr is not entitled to do whatever they damn please with their own website. But, should someone build a website specifically for livecasting suicides I would very much disagree with its censorship.
I consider suicide extremely sad, and would not feel particularly inclined to watch the video. Why are we even thinking about censorship in this hypothetical scenario? What good would censoring the video do?
Put a warning on it saying that it's NSFL, maybe run a free banner ad next to it for a suicide prevention hotline. Those things are reasonable, productive responses. Censorship of the video would be as symbolic as waving a flag, and about as useful.
Yea, it almost always works this way. Some entity in power thinks it's for the greater "good" to censor content from people and the slippery slope of censorship begins. Why can't Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, or any of these other social media outlets have enough faith in humanity to allow people to make their own informed decisions? Boggles my mind how these sites preach freedom of expression yet censor anything they don't agree with.
"Slippery slope" is not a rhetorically valid argument. (just sayn')
I agree with you, it's awfully two faced of the popular organizations. Historically, if you really wanted freedom of speech, you pretty much had to own the printing press. I think the same thing is largely true now. You gotta own the server that hosts the blog. no one out there will protect you.
Are you arguing that setting a precedent of censoring some views Tumblr considers harmful does not make them more likely to extend that to other controversial opinions? Or did you just see the phrase "slippery slope" and assume that any argument containing them must be fallacious?
Any argument following the slippery slope form - if you choose to do X then you must choose to do Y is fallacious. You have the choice both before X and before Y.
Tumbler may choose to censor other stuff, they will not choose to censor other stuff simply because they chose to censor this. They will censor other stuff because the other stuff is offensive (or not, they still have choices to make).
Also, i saw the phrase slippery slope and dismissed that part of the argument. It's meme-ridden fuzzy thinking at best. the "for the greater good" is imho suspect because of the Orwellian emotional ties to big brother.
> Any argument following the slippery slope form - if you choose to do X then you must choose to do Y is fallacious. You have the choice both before X and before Y.
Well obviously. That's not the form of the argument here, though. The argument is that, once Tumblr gets used to censoring one view they consider harmful, they're more likely to censor others. The claim being made is not one of logical implication, but of conditional probability.
There will certainly be folks that decry this move as limiting freedom of speech, but the reality is this:
Freedom of speech does not apply when you participate on a private organization's platform.
For those that strongly oppose these types of policies from social networks, I'm very much in favor of you starting your own social network to cater to tastes and generes that suit what you feel is appropriate for your community.
Isn't that an argument for asking people to leave their axes at home? Rather than bringing it to work and saying, "I own this company so all my users are going to have the same ideas of morality and appropriateness as me."?
That's true. You can't talk politics in the mall. OTOH if you actively encourage loitering then get pissed off when people loiter - you're a hypocritical asshole, and i think your property rights should be diminished.
It takes about 5 seconds to find import generic drugs spam on tumbler. http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/generic-drugs Reimporting drugs is out and out illegal, but they don't seem to be cracking down on that.
Personally, I'm really torn. Perhaps being vocal on tumbler will encourage friends to help self mutilators get help. Perhaps the act of public expression is really damaging. Without a lot more information, i'm ok with tumblr doing whatever they feel is best.
The thing i hate is the out and out hypocrisy. Share anything. To me, that means: this is a free and open place. be who you are, tell the world.
I'm not picking out some random line in some pr statement. This is the first line of the about page. This is content that should be vetted, that really matches the company's values.
I think you're being a bit too liberal in your understanding of the word 'anything'.
I am all for free speech, but there is a long list of things like child porn, state secrets, copyrighted material, etc that I think we would all agree is not in Tumblr's best interest to not be shared effortlessly.
Which are all illegal, thus (in my mind) it is implicit. In fact, bans on the things you've listed have probably been in their Terms of Use since they turned their server on. I mean, those aren't allowed anywhere, they're almost completely out of the realm of this discussion which is explicitly about banning things simply because someone doesn't like them.
Who brings up free speech? The only time I see free speech in these discussions is when someone is trying to discredit opponents before they even chime in. No one argued against reddit for "free speech". It was about implementing arbitrary new policies because something was deemed "inappropriate" by a sole authoritative source, which is what has happened here as well.
Tumblr is free to do whatever they want. Users are free to ditch Tumblr because "self-injury" isn't defined and Tumblr gets to be the sole decider of what is or isn't allowed based on their arbitrary rulings.
(Hm, downvoted for pointing out that the only person here who brought up free speech... is someone who preemptively and unnecessarily argued against using free speech as an argument. Literally, no one here is saying Tumblr is required to allow this for free speech reasons.)
You americans get way to hung up on this freedom of speech thing, it's not some all trumping right that overrides everything else.
Libel laws for example, limit our free speech. Another definition of rights is set out in the UDHR, article 5 states:
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
The case can be made that promoting eating disorders and other forms of self harm is a cruel and degrading way to treat your fellow humans. Even if the perpetrator believes themselves to be acting in everybody's best interests.
So we should hire you to help us censor all of our user content that you deem "cruel"?
Is it cruel to find a gay kid's tumblr and tell him to kill himself? What if I simply say gay teen should kill themselves? How about that they're sinners and are going to hell? What about simply saying that I think marriage is between one man and one woman? Where does untasteful become cruel enough to ban?
Please don't try to inject nationalism into the discussion. At the very least, it's rhetorically rude.
(I know this isn't a reply to your actual argument, but I don't have the authority to delete epistemically dangerous posts, so I figured posting this was more appropriate than trying to get myself set up as a censor. :-) )
(Also, is there a commonly agreed-upon way of putting a :-) emoticon at the end of a parenthesized region? The apparent paren mismatch bothers me.)
1) Perhaps I should have said proportionally. More importantly, online speech didn't exist 40 years ago. And it's all happening on someone else's privately owned infrastructure to some degree.
2) We live in a world where community events are now happening in malls. Formerly publicly owned halls have been sold off. Parks have been turned into condos with civil planning concessions of 'public' play areas and child care provisions. This should be increasingly apparent where population density is higher and/or the funds to maintain public spaces is harder to come by.
I don't see how that's a problem. If I had a vegetable garden and this year was a bumper year for carrots I wouldn't be complaining that there's proportionally less potatoes.
And the pity is, there are very less private spaces online. Even if you buy your own domain name and host your own site, you are still only leasing the name. And the domain and the site could well get seized when you start speaking things that the powers don't like.
Now they should also ban start-up founders who brag about working without sleep continuously for days. It also promotes living disorders and there could be teens out there that would copy this and put their health in danger.
Edit - Working sleepless nights may seem normal in the HN community. But, this is also something that puts the health in danger (sometimes even more than eating disorders). Now who is going to decide what is bad and what is not bad ?
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[ 23.2 ms ] story [ 116 ms ] thread- slippery slopes don't exist, they're apparently some sort of imaginary fallacy
- If you argue that Tumblr shouldn't remove content at their own arbitrary discretion, that must mean you want people to have eating disorders and commit suicide. I will call you disgusting and imply that even having a discussion about censorship or suppression of content is akin to defending child porn, I mean, suicidal content.
On a less sarcastic note, I really do want to hear how people are going to tell me this isn't a slippery slope. "“that actively promotes or glorifies self-injury or self-harm.”". My [imaginary] Tumblr talks about how I deprive myself of sleep working long hours, use marijuana for stress relief and recreation and how I don't like to wear my helmet when I ride my motorcycle, better find a new blog (or whatever Tumblr is) platform.
Freedom of speech does not apply when participating on a private organization's platform.
Just because these platforms have huge audiences doesn't mean they are appropriate for your individual message.
For the record, I do use my own platform and don't really ever use Tumblr. The sorts of things I write about don't really attract the "repost"/"like" style of Tumblr and I don't think the audience would be relevant anyway. I can say that if I ever decided to start a photography blog or something where mass audiences and such were important, I would be much less likely to use Tumblr knowing that this is their policy.
I guess I feel like your defending Tumblr from some sort of attack by me. Like I said, Tumblr is free to do whatever they want and their users can leave or stay. I just think this policy is a turn-off and I wouldn't be shocked if in 3 months we see "Tumblr bans tumbles(?) about drugs/rock-n-roll, etc" posts.
AFAIK (I may be wrong though) this isn't due to external pressure or some PR fiasco (coughreddit), this is something Tumblr has decided did not reflect their company ethic, and wants off their platform.
The difference between this and reddit's last run-in with offensive content is that Tumblr has shown no weakness here, whereas Reddit more than proved that a sufficiently large PR catastrophe is all it takes to change site policy.
What Reddit has encouraged is more boycotts and more PR shitstorms from 3rd parties hoping to affect change on the site. Tumblr, by acting proactively, has not opened these doors (yet). They are still their own arbiters of good taste, as opposed to opening the floodgates of mob-rule.
As I implied in my other comment, things like "self-injury" are very arbitrary and vary person-to-person. (Not that I should have to disclaim this, but I don't think things like suicide or eating disorders are "good" or healthy).
Sure, but the point of this is that Tumblr is the ultimate arbiter of what falls into and out of the content policy. And honestly, I expect "Tumblr staff" as a group to be a lot more focused and a lot less fickle than the internet community at large.
Compared to a reactionary response to external pressure, a la reddit, where you've essentially handed the reigns to third parties.
By acting proactively instead of reacting to PR pressure, Tumblr has basically drawn a line where their content policy lies, and they shown that they will determine what does and does not violate it - not some angry blog, community vote, or other mob-based "democracy".
Giving a small group of people editorial control is unlikely to lead to a slippery slope. Giving everyone editorial control certainly does, as special interests emerge and find out they can play the system.
I don't think you understand how/why the reddit decision went down. Reddit was under pressure because users were trading CP behind the scenes or asking for it in comments. They responded by simply saying "No more sexual pictures of any nature under 18, child pornography or otherwise". Still a new policy being implemented on their user base, but at least there is something somewhat defined in terms of criteria for disallowed content. Ultimately, "We will ban anything we deem self-injury" is far from a bright line in my opinion.
The fact that Something Awful started the reddit discussion and Tumblr did this themselves is barely important in my opinion, at least from the angle I'm coming from. I'm obviously no more happy with a mob in charge of determining "appropriateness", but then again, I'm not really happy at all with someone arbitrarily telling me what is or isn't appropriate to say. Hence why I host my own blog.
Let's back up and clarify. The traditional claim of slippery slope is that today we're going after suicide blogs, tomorrow we'll be going after offensive lyrics, talk about drugs, and we will continue sliding down the slope of banning ever more and more types of content.
I just don't see this happening here. There is some play in the way the policy has been defined, but it certainly isn't a wide gaping hole. The definition of "self-harm" can only be stretched somewhat before you hit its limits.
Compare with what Reddit has been dealing with - which is in my view a real slippery slope problem. They've basically announced to the world that they will alter site policy to ban any content that can muster a large enough PR catastrophe. This creates a huge incentive to groups to do exactly that and see their pet peeve content types banned. And indeed we saw that - no sooner had the CP subreddits disappeared did people start calling for the banning of dead baby pics, talk about beating women, etc.
Reddit has lost that game, permanently. The line between acceptable and unacceptable is now drawn by a community of millions, instead of the focused judgment of a few, and is subject to movement based on the whims of the masses. Tumblr doesn't suffer from this.
I don't consider myself a creative person, but I can already think of a decent list of things that people consider "dangerous" that I don't (and vice-versa). I mean, pick any random social-political issue and it's not hard to think of things that one side or the other considers offensive or cruel to say. I won't keep going because I think we probably agree a lot here, but I've discussed a few examples in my other replies on this thread.
A king may be a jackbooted oppressor, but he's consistent and more or less unwavering. A mob of peasants protesting the color of the flag is unlikely to get him to change anything. That's the point I was trying to make - Tumblr is the king, and is unlikely to change their tune dramatically, and thus, little risk of this new policy creating ever more new ones.
Is it desirable to have this much power in one place? Maybe. Maybe not. But whether or not this is a desirable or fair system is quite separate from whether or not this system is easily susceptible to slippery slope attacks.
Keep in mind that Tumblr is also not almighty here. Tumblr rules over a kingdom where people can emigrate effortlessly. It may not be democratic, but this presents a natural check on its power.
> "Or I guess I feel that increasing the number of people that have influence on the decision decreases the chances of their being something "arbitrary"."
I think this is where our philosophies diverge. The more cooks in the kitchen, the more arbitrary the meal is going to be, as each one is out to craft their perfect meal.
This might be ok if every person has equal influence on the decision, maybe (cue argument about tyranny of the majority, etc), but in a community-driven voice-driven case, it's less about community consensus and more about which tiny minority can rally the strongest army.
This is Tumblr as a company applying its morality upon the blogs it hosts. And in doing so it is completely within its rights.
Now, those pro-anorexia blogs are creepy and disheartening; I looked through some a while back, and they really are as sad as they sound. If Tumblr's goal is to prevent more teenagers from latching onto that subculture, there are a few things they might try. They could stick warning banners up on the blogs in question, visibly registering their protest without going so far as to remove content. Or they might shrug regretfully and say there's not much they can do, since they hardly have a monopoly on the blogging platform market, which would be true. Setting themselves up as censors was not their only option, and as far as I'm concerned, it should have been pretty far down on the list of ideas.
In general, I'm uncomfortable with the impulse to try to stop people from saying messages that you don't want others to hear.
As rational individuals, we can decide where to draw the line. This vastly increases the surface area of critical attacks - the line will seem arbitrary, and there will always be boundary cases which could go one way or the other. "Why this and not that?" will be heard often. It's an easy target. So yes, the easy answer is that all discourse should be allowed.
But really, I don't want people advocating that bullshit to teenagers.
1. Freedom of speech is important, but this is a special case.
2. This stuff really is harmful. I don't want bad people exposing children to sex/communism/homosexuality/anorexia/witchcraft/whatever.
3. We're only going to censor $TOPIC_OF_THE_DAY. This is not a slippery slope.
4. Be reasonable.
Of course in this case, the stakes aren't that high, since it's easy for censored blogs to move away from Tumblr. This policy is more about social signaling than about seriously trying to help anyone.
Livecasting of own suicide: freedom of expression + freedom to make choices with regard to own life.
Edit: This is not to imply that Tumblr is not entitled to do whatever they damn please with their own website. But, should someone build a website specifically for livecasting suicides I would very much disagree with its censorship.
Put a warning on it saying that it's NSFL, maybe run a free banner ad next to it for a suicide prevention hotline. Those things are reasonable, productive responses. Censorship of the video would be as symbolic as waving a flag, and about as useful.
Censoring the video may actually have prevented the suicide, because viewers were egging him on. It's hard to know.
I agree with you, it's awfully two faced of the popular organizations. Historically, if you really wanted freedom of speech, you pretty much had to own the printing press. I think the same thing is largely true now. You gotta own the server that hosts the blog. no one out there will protect you.
Tumbler may choose to censor other stuff, they will not choose to censor other stuff simply because they chose to censor this. They will censor other stuff because the other stuff is offensive (or not, they still have choices to make).
Also, i saw the phrase slippery slope and dismissed that part of the argument. It's meme-ridden fuzzy thinking at best. the "for the greater good" is imho suspect because of the Orwellian emotional ties to big brother.
So, i'll say both clauses of your or are true.
Well obviously. That's not the form of the argument here, though. The argument is that, once Tumblr gets used to censoring one view they consider harmful, they're more likely to censor others. The claim being made is not one of logical implication, but of conditional probability.
Freedom of speech does not apply when you participate on a private organization's platform.
For those that strongly oppose these types of policies from social networks, I'm very much in favor of you starting your own social network to cater to tastes and generes that suit what you feel is appropriate for your community.
edit very first line from http://www.tumblr.com/about
"Tumblr lets you effortlessly share anything."
which is a bold faced lie.
It takes about 5 seconds to find import generic drugs spam on tumbler. http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/generic-drugs Reimporting drugs is out and out illegal, but they don't seem to be cracking down on that.
Personally, I'm really torn. Perhaps being vocal on tumbler will encourage friends to help self mutilators get help. Perhaps the act of public expression is really damaging. Without a lot more information, i'm ok with tumblr doing whatever they feel is best.
The thing i hate is the out and out hypocrisy. Share anything. To me, that means: this is a free and open place. be who you are, tell the world.
I'm not picking out some random line in some pr statement. This is the first line of the about page. This is content that should be vetted, that really matches the company's values.
I am all for free speech, but there is a long list of things like child porn, state secrets, copyrighted material, etc that I think we would all agree is not in Tumblr's best interest to not be shared effortlessly.
Tumblr is free to do whatever they want. Users are free to ditch Tumblr because "self-injury" isn't defined and Tumblr gets to be the sole decider of what is or isn't allowed based on their arbitrary rulings.
(Hm, downvoted for pointing out that the only person here who brought up free speech... is someone who preemptively and unnecessarily argued against using free speech as an argument. Literally, no one here is saying Tumblr is required to allow this for free speech reasons.)
Libel laws for example, limit our free speech. Another definition of rights is set out in the UDHR, article 5 states:
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
The case can be made that promoting eating disorders and other forms of self harm is a cruel and degrading way to treat your fellow humans. Even if the perpetrator believes themselves to be acting in everybody's best interests.
Is it cruel to find a gay kid's tumblr and tell him to kill himself? What if I simply say gay teen should kill themselves? How about that they're sinners and are going to hell? What about simply saying that I think marriage is between one man and one woman? Where does untasteful become cruel enough to ban?
(I know this isn't a reply to your actual argument, but I don't have the authority to delete epistemically dangerous posts, so I figured posting this was more appropriate than trying to get myself set up as a censor. :-) )
(Also, is there a commonly agreed-upon way of putting a :-) emoticon at the end of a parenthesized region? The apparent paren mismatch bothers me.)
1)Increasingly the only places to talk are privately owned.
2)Private interests can control and prevent speech if in their domain.
Also, just wondering if Tumblr is going to be removing Tumblr blogs that have their own domains?
What public places did we have to talk in forty years ago that we don't have now?
> 2)Private interests can control and prevent speech if in their domain.
If you own an newspaper/magazine/website/whatever you have a right to exercise editorial control over it. That's always been the case.
2) We live in a world where community events are now happening in malls. Formerly publicly owned halls have been sold off. Parks have been turned into condos with civil planning concessions of 'public' play areas and child care provisions. This should be increasingly apparent where population density is higher and/or the funds to maintain public spaces is harder to come by.
I don't see how that's a problem. If I had a vegetable garden and this year was a bumper year for carrots I wouldn't be complaining that there's proportionally less potatoes.
Um, pass the potatoes?
Edit - Working sleepless nights may seem normal in the HN community. But, this is also something that puts the health in danger (sometimes even more than eating disorders). Now who is going to decide what is bad and what is not bad ?