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707 points patd | 9 comments | | HN request time: 1.059s | source | bottom
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falcolas ◴[] No.23322696[source]
Free speech is not just an American constitutional right; many countries throughout the world consider free speech to be a human right.

So, yeah, many of us get a bit worked up when people are kicked off platforms, because they are being silenced, sometimes to the point of being shut out of the modern internet entirely (when their rights to a DNS address are comprehensively removed).

Hate speech and lies are terrible, but they’re not the only thing being silenced.

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ianleeclark ◴[] No.23322837[source]
> So, yeah, many of us get a bit worked up when people are kicked off platforms, because they are being silenced, sometimes to the point of being shut out of the modern internet entirely (when their rights to a DNS address are comprehensively removed).

Why is it bad that were refusing to let something like stormfront operate in polite society? Your free speech absolutism is dangerous.

You can't debate an inherently bad-faith interlocutor, so dealing with Nazis points "out in the open," "in the marketplace of ideas," will not work. It will only legitimize their viewpoint as one worthy of consideration, thus debate. It's cool and good what happened to them.

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1. AnimalMuppet ◴[] No.23325888[source]
You debate an inherently bad-faith interlocutor, not to win the debate with them, but to win the audience. The thing is, something like stormfront is out there, whether twitter or whoever carries them or not. I'd like their drivel to be clearly exposed as drivel, and clearly understood to be drivel by everyone, so that when they get exposed to it in some unexpected way (they follow an innocent-looking link or whatever), then they take one look, think "Oh yeah, that garbage. Yeah, they make it sound good, but it's still trash." That happens when the stuff is publicly challenged and refuted, not when it's hidden away.
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2. three_seagrass ◴[] No.23328251[source]
Jean-Paul Sartre called this out half a century ago when faced with the alt-right of his time:

>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.

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3. neaden ◴[] No.23328513[source]
Yeah, that's not how it works at all. People who start watching the Qanon videos in their Youtube reccomendations aren't going to then get swayed by your eloquent speech, they are going to get sucked into a whole alternate world where your arguments are just dismissed as part of the conspiracy.
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4. magicalist ◴[] No.23328541[source]
This is the opposite of what your parent comment is arguing...
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5. AnimalMuppet ◴[] No.23328794[source]
My point was that they should be exposed to why this stuff is garbage before they start watching Qanon, so that, when they stumble onto a Qanon video, they aren't swayed by the video's eloquent(?) speech or dazzling(?) logic.
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6. AnimalMuppet ◴[] No.23328862{3}[source]
Not entirely. I think you can interact with people doing what Sartre describes, and do so in a way that other people can see what is going on - can see the phoniness and gamesmanship of the anti-Semite.

You're not going to persuade people who are playing that game. They're just going to keep playing the game, and enjoy the fact that they're "winning" (in their own terms). But I think you can make it so that they lose in the battle for hearts and minds.

7. neaden ◴[] No.23329258{3}[source]
How do you do that though? If someone doesn't know what QAnon is why would they watch a video debunking it? If you have mass media doing take downs of it that will just inspire a certain segment of the population to believe it because "Look how THEY don't want you to know this!" The sad thing is that tech, especially Youtube and Facebook, have through their algorithms promoted these conspiracy theories since QAnon conspiracy theorist watch a lot of videos and comment a lot which are the metrics they promote.
8. ianleeclark ◴[] No.23329407[source]
I'm going to point you to the entire European history as a counter point. Take your pick of any pogrom, forced relocation, or whatever, and you'll always find people speaking out against it. It didn't do any good.
9. ianleeclark ◴[] No.23329544{3}[source]
> My point was that they should be exposed to why this stuff is garbage before they start watching Qanon

You're effectively calling for some sort of cultural revolution that stamps out anti-Semitism through proper education. Seriously we've tried this with other topics, all they're going to do is say you're indoctrinating children, then you'll inevitably fall into a defensive position where you feel like you have to back it up with numbers and eloquent arguments. Bam, they've won because there will always be a first movers advantage with information: your opponent can now make an outrageous claim that people see, internalize, and then never see your rational follow-up to. You're all so incredibly terrified of censorship when the real terror is right in front of your eyes: a torrent of information, engagement, and half-consumption.

This is so incredibly tedious. I see the same thing that I'm describing here happen with any number of semblance of social progress: homosexuality, trans rights, even marijuana legalization. This cyclic pattern has to be hell, I can't fathom any other possible explanation for such a thoroughly trained helplessness.