Sure, racists are censored by big tech, but also hackers/security researchers (if they show exploits for example), qualified medical doctors/researchers who oppose the official position of the WHO, journalists that share disturbing news (Facebook have been long deleting records of atrocities in Myanmar for example), creators that show the method for recreating dangerous experiments, etc, etc. And that's not to mention the selective monetization and promotion as a backdoor form of censorship too.
I think this just points out a fundamental misconception that censorship only applies to the ideas you oppose to and nothing else. I believe it's fully correct for the word 'censorship' to be used in this context.
"Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban. Anyone who has lived long in a foreign country will know of instances of sensational items of news—things which on their own merits would get the big headlines—being kept right out of the British press, not because the Government intervened but because of a general tacit agreement that ‘it wouldn’t do’ to mention that particular fact. So far as the daily newspapers go, this is easy to understand. The British press is extremely centralised, and most of it is owned by wealthy men who have every motive to be dishonest on certain important topics. But the same kind of veiled censorship also operates in books and periodicals, as well as in plays, films and radio. At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals."
"One of the peculiar phenomena of our time is the renegade Liberal. Over and above the familiar Marxist claim that ‘bourgeois liberty’ is an illusion, there is now a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means. And who are its enemies? It always appears that they are not only those who attack it openly and consciously, but those who ‘objectively’ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines. In other words, defending democracy involves destroying all independence of thought."
"The word ancient emphasises the fact that intellectual freedom is a deep-rooted tradition without which our characteristic western culture could only doubtfully exist. From that tradition many of our intellectuals are visibly turning away. They have accepted the principle that a book should be published or suppressed, praised or damned, not on its merits but according to political expediency. And others who do not actually hold this view assent to it from sheer cowardice."
What this is really describing is what we now call the Overton Window[1], and how it's controlled to a degree. I think it's a mistake to think it can be controlled completely, but depending on the society and the makeup of the media control, more or less control can be exerted. China has much more control over it for their citizens than the United States or the media companies within it, most likely.
"Proposed preface to Animal Farm, first published in the Times Literary Supplement on 15 September 1972 with an introduction by Sir Bernard Crick. Ian Angus found the original manuscript in 1972."
The essay I linked to was written in 1945 - if you read it, it actually talks about the ongoing war etc, e.g.:
"... we are allies with the USSR in a war which I want to see won"
It wasn't published until 1972, for exactly the reasons Orwell outlines in it. Indeed, publishing Animal Farm itself was hard enough - many American and British publishers refused to do so, on the ground that the book clearly satirizes the USSR, which was then a war ally.
Yes, exactly. The outrage and cognitive dissonance that people experience when they see the censorship happening these days can only happen because they actually believed the propaganda about free speech.
How adorable! You think "propaganda" is anything more than a post-hoc reactionary label often applied by those afraid of the outcome of widespread espousal of a controversial idea.
Yes, it exists. Yes, people are far more vulnerable to it than anyone thinks they are. Free Speech, however, is an ideal exactly in that we often in reality fail to attain it, but nevertheless should strive to.
Without the ability to articulate that which is ugly and repugnant to the common sensibility, one is divested of the capability of immunizing oneself from being led astray by someone already too far gone.
We should protect the ability to speak monstrous things that we are not intellectually blinded to their existence. For they will arise whether we talk about them in polite company or not.
Propaganda does not preclude very real variability over time. It's certainly quite true that, for a while now, we have been retreating from "peak free speech" in the Western world. This doesn't imply that said peak was perfect freedom - of course not! But the trend is towards less speech overall, and even more specifically, towards privatized censorship (so as to dodge legal constraints).
> If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
>…the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.
—John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Truth is not determined by a list of approved opinions, it can only be revealed by rigorously disproving everything that opposes it.
All these calls for censorship make me think we really are doomed to repeat history forever.
Everyone always seems happy to carve out their own exceptions to freedom of expression. Freedom, except for racism. Freedom, except for transgenderism. Freedom, except for porn. Freedom, except for violence. Freedom, except for political dissent or mis-gendering or the promotion or criticism of a religion.
As someone who falls near the middle on most issues I probably detest a larger percentage of speakers than anyone who's solidly on the Left or the Right, but I have no issue understanding that my freedom depends on their freedom. If the people I despise are not free to speak then neither am I.
The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant.
It stands to reason then that if all speech is truly free eventually some speech will be censored. America doesn't allow people to say "Fuck" on public TV broadcasts, therefore all speech isn't free. No one is harmed by a curse word. Worst case a child will learn the word a few years earlier than when they usually do, and yet we censor that anyway.
Therefore, you can't say that all speech is free speech on all channels.
What you say in person may at worst get you into an altercation or ostracized, but you have the right to say it. Once your voice is amplified out of earshot you are no longer truly free to speak as you will.
You can say what you want to say, yes, but the repercussions of your words amplify with every repetition. Not everyone is aware of that, and when you are on a platform where, by words, you can incite a group to violence safely from the other side of the country, you should have your speech monitored and censored if need be.
Go and actually read Popper and you'll find he was close to a free speak maximalist his views on when you shouldn't "tolerate" intolerance was an incredibly high bar that almost nothing ever hits.
My read of Popper was that we should be prepared to even use force against intolerant people who are not willing to engage in rational debate.
What Popper didn't anticipate is that the square of public opinion would become the internet, and a big question this creates is if the internet is a place where rationale debate and proportional representation of ideas is possible or not.
If the internet were to make the public square of opinion a place of irrational debate, I think Popper would be very much against it, and would want us to do something about it.
Here's a quote from him:
> as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols
So the condition he puts forward is: can we counter the intolerants on the internet by using rational arguments? If we can, than suppression (he claims) would be unwise, but if we can't, than suppression by force (he claims) might be warranted.
To me it seems he’s clearly saying that if they decide to use force then we should be prepared to respond in kind not that we should use force to suppress irrational argument. The end of the first sentence maps to the end of the second.
How I interpret it is not that we should use force to suppress irrational argument, but that if we are failing to counter intolerance with rationale argument in the public opinion, than we should be prepared to do even more to counter it, maybe even to use force. And then he lists examples of what he'd consider cases where more than just countering with rationale argument would be justified, and those are: denounce all arguments, not willing to discuss at a rationale level, not willing to listen, believing they are being deceived, using pistols and fists.
So, I should read 25 books to verify that your one sentence claim is valid?
Why not back that up with some relevant quotes to support your thesis, friend? That seems a decent thing to do compared to the litany of homework you callously threw at me.
>> Go and actually read Popper and you'll find he was close to a free speak maximalist his views on when you shouldn't "tolerate" intolerance was an incredibly high bar that almost nothing ever hits.
> So, I should read 25 books to verify that your one sentence claim is valid?
> Why not back that up with some relevant quotes to support your thesis, friend? That seems a decent thing to do compared to the litany of homework you callously threw at me.
Your snark isn't warranted. The Wiki article you yourself cited says where Popper introduced the concept and even speaks about what his limitations were.
I will let you read that again to find them, rather than providing a quote.
Honestly, given the comment being replied to started with "go and actually read" I think the snark is warranted if they want. Also, for what it's worth I think they were trying to modulate that snark a bit by using "friend".
If it's truly easy to realize what is being asked, a pointer in the right direction is useful. If it does require a lot of work, then providing some evidence to at least get someone started if not an actual reference would be called for.
In any case, I'm not sure a comment that boils down to "if you actually read X, you'd know that what you just said is wrong" is worth defending, regardless of whether you think it's factually correct or not. You could have just pointed out that there was evidence of this position and left it at that.
For what it's worth, I only bothered to reply because you're not the only person that took the comment that way. The strongest possible interpretation of the prior comment is "This isn't helpful to me. If you're going to state I'm wrong, please provide more information on how so I can address that usefully" which I think is a vary valid complaint to what it was responding to. Interpreting snark where it doesn't necessarily exist or providing additional snark in your own in response (not that you did this) isn't a useful way to move the discourse forward.
> The internet sucks for nuance, but "friend" in this context doesn't read as modulation to me, it reads as sarcasm (and thus intensifies the snark).
It does suck for nuance. The safest and most useful thing to do here (as a place that tries to keep things civil) is to assume it's not snark and treat it as sincere. If it was sincere, treating it as if it's not is causing more of a problem, and if it's not, treating it as if it is leads to useful responses.
> I don't think that's the case. There are a couple of other comments that read the GGP as unnecessarily snarky.
I think perhaps you misread me? I chose you as a representative comment to reply to because there were a few along similar lines. If it was just one, I probably wouldn't have bothered.
> The only thing I did that was unique was note that he didn't have to search through "25 books" to get the answer, because his own source gave it directly.
I'll just say that if that information was known to the original replier, it should have been included, and if it wasn't, perhaps the reply should have been reworded?
That you actually provided useful info is another reason I bothered to reply to yours. As one that actually provided value to the discussion, I hoped to steer any additional eyeballs responses might draw to a useful comment, rather than a useless one.
I don't want to clutter this discussion too much with meta forum etiquette stuff, which I'm already prone to do at times, so I'll try to refrain from any additional responses on this.
> I think perhaps you misread me? I chose you as a representative comment to reply to because there were a few along similar lines. If it was just one, I probably wouldn't have bothered.
When I use the word friend with a stranger, I mean it to say, "I have no ill intentions towards you". I'll look for a better way to express that in the future if the intent isn't coming through.
Maybe using the word "callous" made it seem that way, but that is an accurate depiction of what their response was, rough, without thoughtfulness, the reflexive expression of an above average mind unconcerned with how their message was received.
Just look up where he wrote about this paradox of tolerance? It was in a footnote. (To guard, I'd guess, against people deliberately misinterpreting his words in the main text and going "Ha, look at this doctrinaire free-speech absolutist." I've read the book that was in.)
Why does where it was written matter? Saying that it being written in the footnotes invalidates the argument is the logical fallacy of poisoning the well.
You would actually need to refute the argument directly for your assertion to have any weight to it.
- People make a big deal about renowned philosopher Karl Popper warning us of the danger and incoherence of tolerance towards free speech. I think this misuses his rep.
- The one-paragraph quote on the Wikipedia page linked above was Popper's full writing on this. You don't need to look further for it.
Others were already addressing the object-level arguments.
That's such a weird reply. You claimed, were told that it's not accurate, and then went on the offense with a slightly nicer version of "why should I read about the things I claim? How about you prove that it's not as I read on that one meme on imgur.com".
I didn't ask why I should read it. I asked for what to read. If they so much as selected the single book they're basing their claim on that would cut down their homework assignment by 96%.
I don't need chapter and verse, just a homing beacon would suffice.
Besides, we're roughly adults here. Someone saying "Nuh-uh" to an oft-quoted article has the gravitas of damp toast. Why shouldn't I question their response?
Because you haven't read the source you're basing your claim on, you've only read about it from other people who haven't read it and are parroting it because it fits their agenda.
What the hell kind of response is this? You try to puppet Popper's work, I tell you that's not at all what he said, you affirm you never read any of it and complain it's unreasonable to expect you to read it.........
Well, you're the first person I've encountered who has said that the well-known and oft-quoted bit of his work that I even provided a link to in wikipedia with quotes taken directly from is completely false in all regards.
You followed that up with a command to read more of his work without narrowing down out from which of his 25 books would provide any context to back your assertion up.
I just want a little more context than a single sentence from some person on the internet to re-evaluate my hypothesis. That shouldn't be too much to ask. Especially since you're asserting that you know more about the subject than the people who authored the Wikipedia page and every person who has written an article about it.
No, it doesn't. Went to the Supreme Court, and that is not free speech. "the phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" has become synonymous with speech that, because of its danger of provoking violence, is not protected by the First Amendment."
> Went to the Supreme Court, and that is not free speech.
No, it didn't go to the Supreme Court.
> "the phrase "shouting fire in a crowded theater" has become synonymous with speech that, because of its danger of provoking violence, is not protected by the First Amendment."
While the phrase may be used that way, its referencing nonbinding dicta (expressions in a ruling that are not germane to the decision rule for the case actually before the court) that does not reflect preexisting law from a case that has since been almost entirely overruled and is widely recognized as being an aberration that (in its actual binding holding) allowed extensive government regulation of core protected political speech.
It reflects neither the law before the decision, the binding case law created by the decision, nor the state of the law after the decision was rejected.
Okay, but how do you reconcile that with the fact that hate speech and propaganda has been a part of almost all atrocities ever done in the past?
Or put some other way, how do you reconcile that your freedom can be affected by someone's else's freedom? Like what if I use my freedom to turn others against you and have them hate you and berate you and bully you and ridicule you and refute you, and potentially have them vote for laws that take actions against you, or possibly have them commit hateful acts towards you, etc.
Not the OP, but basically you are complaining about humans. I am not convinced that by banning certain expressions you get any security against future oppression.
Stupid hateful people might get trapped by anti-hate-speech laws, but the smarter ones, precisely the ones you need to be careful about, are fairly good at avoiding them and may even use the threat of prosecution to raise sympathy from the part of population that dislikes the incumbent government.
Most European countries have vibrant extremist movements (left, right, Islamic) even though their freedom of speech is much more limited than the U.S. standard.
I see your point, and I think that needs thoughts for sure.
I think most people (including myself) don't know why some harbor hateful resentment and intolerant ideals. And it isn't clear how to deal with it. It's very possible that we need to resist the temptation to try and simply brush those people aside. But I think one thing that isn't clear is if one of the cause for this increase is related to the internet providing bigger megaphones to those smart ones who like to recruit members to their ranks.
And part of that for me is how recommendation algorithms on Twitter and Facebook and YouTube operate, it seems to be tuned towards sensationalized and hateful content. So it does give you the impression that those platforms are failing to educate people with values of tolerance, liberalism, freedom, and individual rights which the USA is founded on.
It's a great question though, you probably don't fight intolerance with intolerance, but at the same time, you might need to be ready to fight it if it comes to that. But how do you avoid having it reach this point?
I have no issue with people turning against, hating, berating, bullying, etc. me. These are simply matters of feeling and opinion. I do have a problem when other people feel entitled to escalate such conflicts by reacting to these unwelcome points of view with real, actual violence, including government censorship. Even, and perhaps especially, when these people are purporting to act in my defense.
Ok, but what are you referring too? Because I'm not sure I'm seeing any government censorship (except for maybe the voter suppression and the child protection laws as well as some of the anti-protest forces deployed by the government in recent protests like BLM). And I'm mostly seeing violence driven by hate speech, like the various shootings happening.
I would be very against government censorship or interventions against constitutional rights of free speech and right to assemble and protest, and right to vote.
Maybe I just don't have the data you have, but right now I'm not too sure I follow you.
I would posit there's little correlation between hate speech laws and hate crimes.
For example, the United States has no hate speech laws. In 2017 there were 2,024 anti-Semitic incidents in the United States. Germany has very strong hate speech laws, both applying to private citizens and obligating online networks to censor them. In 2020 there were 2,032 anti-Semitic hate crimes in Germany. Despite restrictions on hate speech, Germany has four times the per-capita anti-Jewish hate crimes as the US, a country with no hate speech laws.
How about the UK? They have strong hate speech laws. You can get arrested there for teaching a dog the Nazi salute. In 2018 there were 1,201 Islamophobic attacks in the UK. Despite having a rabidly Islamophobic president at the time, the US only had 223. That's over twenty-six times the per-capita Islamophobic hate crime rate.
Always in tandem with propaganda I feel. So it would censor criticism of the regime, and any opposite viewpoint, while replacing all voices with the pro-regime voices instead.
I'm not sure this is the same as letting one freely voice their hate of another and propagate lies and falsehoods about them.
I guess you see it as let's just all use propaganda and defamation against each other, and hopefully that evens out where we all meet in the middle through constant bi-directional propaganda and hatred.
But I see it more as let's not allow the use of propaganda and hate anymore, because those things are at the detriment of other people's freedom, and you should only be free to do what doesn't take away freedoms from others as well, unless it has been agreed between both parties through a contract and a system of laws.
I don't really have a proof that one would have better outcomes over the other, but personally I find having a civil debate in good faith with rational arguments is more pleasant than to have a demagogue debate in bad faith using appeal to prejudice, emotions, desires, falsehoods and defamation. So I'd rather we as a society needed to engage respectfully, rationally and in good faith, and I wouldn't mind this to be enforced both culturally and by law.
I've heard the "slippery slope" and the "what if that just radicalizes demagogues even more" arguments, and the latter one I find more possibly valid. I feel the slope isn't that slippery personally, like the slope would only slip if the person in power was again a demagogue ruling in bad faith, and at that point it be too late anyways, since they'd already be in power.
Now the argument that it could radicalize demagogues further, by giving them more ammo to justify themselves, I think that's a more plausible prediction. I'm not too sure about this bit yet, so I could be convinced here, but I'd need to also be convinced that letting demagogues continue to have large public reach isn't itself a bigger threat.
In that case lets apply your principal evenly to all rights.
Freedom of movement: heading somewhere we don’t agree with, ok but you aren’t allowed to use public roads since we own those. Good luck getting to the voting station.
Freedom of assembly: we don’t support your protests cause, stay off public property, go hold your protest at your own house.
Freedom of conscience: fine think whatever you want but if you attempt to record it in any way we’ll block you.
A right without the means to act on it is nothing at all. You’re arguing for a society built like a prison. You should be ashamed.
YouTube, as well as other major Internet companies, have a near-monopoly over their sectors which leaves them lacking any competitive drive to be better, do better, or for people to go elsewhere.
Without realistic alternatives it is spontaneous (even if erroneous) to think about the implication of private infrastructure over public rights. But the real matter is an issue of scale.
I am convinced that sooner or later governments will wake up and that the tech giants will be broken up or severely limited: the European GDPR and the Chinese crackdown on the sector are only the first signs.
This is a slippery slope fallacy. Just because you can see a flaw with a system does not mean there is a flaw.
Sometimes the flaw is with you & or your line of thought.
In this case, equating "not being allowed to post far-right propaganda on every concourse of communication" is not the same as being harassed at your own home because people are allowed to protest.
Isn't the root problem here is the near monopoly held by god-tier corporations? Shouldn't FB/Goog have the right to moderate their content as they see fit? Shouldn't their network effect de facto monopolies be regulated so that there is room for other voices?
An illusion of truth can be created by repeatedly stating falsehoods by agents with an agenda to push. The question isn't about censorship, but rather how we can make our liberal democratic societies resistant to this type of manipulation, which inevitably results in terminal decline.
What I've come to realize is this asks far too much of the average person. Ideas do not win on their logical merits. Rationality is not the driving force of opinion for the majority of people. The alternative is probably worse, as some sort of totalitarian regime, but I just don't think billions of humans are capable of ensuring their own survival as a species
People have a right to speak, but they don't have a right to have their speech amplified by others. There is no right to broadcast. Mill would agree with this, assuming you could explain to him how broadcast media works, which didn't exist in his time.
Mill wasn’t talking about rights; he was talking about the propensity to suppress unpopular speech, why that’s dangerous, and accordingly, and the moral necessity (and implications) of open discourse.
(So we've already given up on "Truth is not determined by a list of approved opinions, it can only be revealed by rigorously disproving everything that opposes it" then. Fine. Truth is relative.)
No, what I'm really asking is, "What happens if innocent people start being hurt by the lie?"
What happens if you are seriously injured in an accident but cannot get medical help because the intensive care facilities are full of people who disagree with the truth? Thoughts and prayers?
> No, what I'm really asking is, "What happens if innocent people start being hurt by the lie?"
That would suggest we might benefit from a better mechanism for establishing the truth.
The best mechanism we’ve come up with so far is open and vibrant debate.
Do you have a better suggestion?
> What happens if you are seriously injured in an accident but cannot get medical help because the intensive care facilities are full of people who disagree with the truth?
The Rolling Stone story positing the above turned out to be entirely fabricated.
How would you propose we stem misinformation like that Rolling Stone article?
> Thoughts and prayers?
Open and vibrant debate.
> Does freedom come with any responsibility?
Sure it does, though assessing culpability is often a nightmarish impossibility, especially a priori.
Should we establish prior restraints on individual’s freedoms to enforce correct speech and beliefs?
"The best mechanism we’ve come up with so far is open and vibrant debate.
"Do you have a better suggestion?"
I do not. But open and vibrant debate only works when people are capable of determining when the debate has been settled, at least for the moment. And are willing to accept the settled decision.
Have you ever had a serious chat with a creationist? Of course, there is no positive evidence that can disprove the young earth theory, any more than you can disprove solipsism. The creationist argument ultimately fails because of the implications of its own flexibility. I've known people who claim that the faster they drive, the better they drive. Or that they are perfectly safe to drive stoned or drunk. fortunately, in those cases culpability is, as you point out, is easy.
Anti-intellectualism comes in many varieties. Someone can be so skeptical that they do not accept any argument because, say, Big Media and The Man are out to oppress them...somehow. Someone else can be so un-skeptical as to believe the first comforting story that comes along in spite of any facts suggesting that reality is harsher.
Open and vibrant debate is the only way to establish the truth, but truth is not established by popularity, nor by who yells the loudest.
"The Rolling Stone story positing the above turned out to be entirely fabricated.
"How would you propose we stem misinformation like that Rolling Stone article?"
I have no idea what Rolling Stone article you are talking about. Is it one of these:
Not really an answer to my question, but I'm sure it's very comforting to intensive care patients spending hours to days on gurneys in hospital hallways.
Freedom is easy if it doesn't come with responsibility, precisely because culpability is often a nightmare to identify. How many people are you willing to injure or kill in the name of freedom?
Should we just get used to the fact that there are no limits on lies and an idea just dreamed up by some rando on the internet is just as true as something from a so-called expert?
Marx was almost right: "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."
Postmodernism, the first time around, was the comedy.
It's sad that that was your instant thought. My experience so far with Odysee has been pretty good. It's no YouTube, but for the channels I follow, it's good enough. I hope it continues to to build momentum.
It definitely is sad, but the sad part is that it's a true comment on human nature. Every other application that advertises in this way has eventually ended up being primarily used for racism, glorifying violence, and spreading falsehood. What happens is that even if they attract good natured users early on, they are eventually discovered by people who have been run off of other platforms after publishing actually awful things, and then the good intentioned early users leave because they don't want to be associated with that newly dominant crowd on the platform. It's a constant pattern.
the only thing sad is that its the reality of the situation. Tor started off with some pretty pie in the sky ideals and now over half of its active use is for illegal activity. Tech censorship doesn't even register on the scales of stuff that is de-platformed from social networking platforms.
Given that CSA, human trafficking, etc. and political extremism were/are rife on Tor, I would say that just because you bought some weed from Tor, doesn't make it a paradise
This is not so far from the truth. In the past, censorship usually only happens to people doing something illegal, meaning copyright infringement, radical political content or other disturbing content (usually porn or violence-related). So most of those people have seek for alternative platforms where they are free.
But more and more the line is shifting, and we see censorship happening with far tamer content. Youtube specifically seems to crack down on security-related content for a while now. I've seen similar things happening over trivial content in the past. Things which nobody working in the business would consider as problematic, like how to setup VPN and firewalls. It's not really clear why this is happening. People at Youtube are claiming the content seems to be ok, but system says nope.
And people opposing powerful institutions, and people who are concerned they may be censored in the future, and people who love free speech and want to enrich any medium that promotes it, and people who have unpopular opinions, right or wrong... and some racists too. That's the way freedom works: some people use it to do good stuff, and some people don't. I believe it's worth it, even if some people might hurt others' feelings.
> We should probably stop using this phrase as a feature
> Instant thought was "ok so other than this channel it's all racism"
If you want to be in a place where only approved thoughts are allowed, there's plenty of places in the world and on the net that would accommodate you right now.
No need to turn every place into an arm of Mini-truth.
Fan fiction has a lot of problems with censorship as well.
Recently, Games Workshop went after all fan animations on Youtube based on the fictional sci-fi setting it owns; Warhammer 40,000.
I see you are getting a lot of pushback and I think its unwarranted. I agree with you, the phrase is becoming tainted. I would like a way to differentiate between places that are wary of the whims of power and places where opinions are so appalling they can't be a part of polite society. We currently talk about them the same, and there has been an uptick of the latter recently that makes being able to differentiate more relevant.
As a side note its sort of interesting to me how your un-popular, perhaps controversial yet not particularly offensive opinion is going to be censored from this discussion in which people are opposing your perhaps reasonable association with the phrase 'resistant to censorship'. "how dare they voice a dissenting opinion!" they might tell themselves, as they press the little button that will make your words fade away.
I gotta say thats something I really enjoy, being publicly wrong about something and getting educated, or some one else doing it for me and getting the chance to read some thoughtful stuff.
Normally I wouldn't consider downvotes to be worth mentioning, but I thought the irony here was special and worth observing :D
I'm the asker of the original question, and I actually agree with you on a lot of this. As soon as I read @fragileone and @iotku's excellent answers to my question my heart sank a little at the thought of a site even more racist than YouTube. Almost every site that pops up claiming an anti-censorship position is quickly filled with pretty abhorrent content. Downvoting someone on HN for pointing it out doesn't make it untrue.
It gets filled with all kinds of content, of which racism and other far-right talk is merely the most visible part because it's in the spotlight. But it's not just far right that's getting "deplatformed". Even politically, there are plenty of leftist groups that were wiped out from e.g. Facebook during the recent purges. All those people also have to look for other platforms.
I'm not saying there aren't other valid uses, just that racism is pretty much guaranteed on a no-censorship site. It _should_ be something that we can all agree on as being "bad", even when dressed in its Sunday best from the likes of Jordan Peterson.
We can agree on it being bad, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we have to censor it, and especially so when such censorship has an already-demonstrated tendency to quickly expand in scope.
Yeah, sounds like an unregulated place for all the people who were thrown out by those with at least some ethics left.
update: yeah, downvotes, whatever... "censorship" these days is often enough because people tell other people to use horse dewormer or drink bleach. It's not because they're having highly sophisticated discussions about global politics, but simply because they're actively harming people, spreading hate and whatnot. platforms should be able to decide whether they want to "poison" their living room by giving a platform to such content.
And the folks downvoting you would probably call themselves "free speech advocates".
Which in my experience means they speak from a position of high privilege to not see the massive negative effects of the hate speech they strive to protect. Or that their purpose on this site is to spread division and hate.
US guy detected. Go travel to Russia, China, Middle East and other funny countries, you would find a lot of interesting things which you can be jailed for, not just banned by gov request on social media platform.
If you talk about international platforms, you should kinda think about that.
And I think it's fair that people in Germany are not allowed to deny that the Holocaust has happened. Call it whatever you like but remembering this monstrosity is the least thing we can do and far-right idiots don't need to have a platform for telling otherwise.
We should probably stop using this phrase as a feature
Instant thought was "ok so other than this channel it's all racism"