[HN Gopher] An Illustrated Guide to Post-Orwellian Censorship
___________________________________________________________________
An Illustrated Guide to Post-Orwellian Censorship
Author : anarbadalov
Score : 193 points
Date : 2021-08-26 15:47 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (thereader.mitpress.mit.edu)
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| Not a single line about the state of censorship in Brazil. Odd.
| anonleb4 wrote:
| Not really, it's a piece for US readers about the US current
| views of who's "bad", they're not going to criticize their
| political and economic partners. There's nothing about Saudis
| either, see.
| elmo2you wrote:
| Or about the situation regarding censorship in the USA, which
| makes this a rather blatant political propaganda piece by
| itself.
|
| For those who feel like censorship in the USA is less
| problematic, because it's not state controlled (that is, if
| it actually isn't) .. consider this: If business can
| introduce arbitrary censorship, regardless of justification,
| on platforms that are widely used by many, is this not far
| more dangerous than any state controlled censorship?
|
| While any governments can of course ignore their supposed
| accountability for their behavior, business have far less of
| that accountability to begin with. Although, if the USA was
| true state of law (not a powerful banana republic
| pretending), it should hold those companies accountable for
| limiting the freedoms of citizens regarding what should be
| allowed according and protected by law. But heck, almost all
| (emerging) fascistic systems have started (and flourished) on
| a collusion between corrupt business and an equally criminal
| government, with a shared interests in each expanding their
| own powers and influence.
|
| Almost funny to see articles like these coming from the USA
| these day, knowing in which direction the country is
| currently moving. Somehow "the emperor has no clothes" comes
| to mind.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| > Friction is about making it harder and less convenient to
| access unapproved material.
|
| And of course Google, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, et al would
| never do anything like that, would they?
| merpnderp wrote:
| Big Tech was censoring people last year who were saying things
| Congress is saying this year. But don't worry, I'm sure they
| learned from their mistakes with censoring people.
| pawn13 wrote:
| "Modern authoritarian regimes". Authoritarian regimes are pretty
| obvious and easy to deal with. Hey I grew up in soviet union,
| everyone knew media/authorities lie, nobody took it serious and
| all information was taken with a grain of salt.
|
| What is much more dangerous is countries where people they live
| under a democracy but once some information about people in power
| pop up it could be silenced, flooded with disinformation, you may
| disappear, you may hide for rest of your life in some embassy
| like Assange. Anything can happen. And people with money and
| power have total control. They just often use indirect, hidden
| measures to achieve that. We don't even know who are those
| people, they don't have to be public figures like dictators etc.
| This is much more scary.
|
| And KGB, stasi, etc never ever dreamed of such control on people
| and survivlence modern social networks and technologies provide.
| And western 3-letter agencies have much more power those could
| even dream of.
|
| And you know what is more scary? That nobody give a f*. Even if
| information about some really scary stuff appear in media
| everyone would just forgot about that next day. Or media would
| even make a show out of it. Like that episode in a black mirror.
| Everyone knows their phones are spying on them but keep using
| them. It's not just convinient, I can't order a taxi anymore
| without a smartphone. Few years ago I could just catch a car not
| anymore. You can't take a subway or a bus without being seen on
| 100 CCTV cams with facial recognition. And if you question if
| that's normal you would be asked "what you have something to hide
| or what?". Maybe I'm just not an exhibicionist.
| grillvogel wrote:
| you can definitely see "Flooding" on all the major social media
| platforms these days
| jl6 wrote:
| It's not just "these days". Flooding is the bread and circuses
| spoken of nearly 2000 years ago:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses
|
| We're talking about the distraction and daily grind that
| occupies the otherwise-idle hands for which the ruling class's
| devils might make work.
| slibhb wrote:
| > As Antonio Gramsci understood, rules achieve hegemonic
| domination when they are able to cloak their coercion with the
| consent of the ruled.
|
| If something has the consent of the ruled, can it be coercive? If
| it can, what even is consent?
| csomar wrote:
| A possible analogue: a Ponzi-scheme. The actors do consent (by
| lack of understanding of how the scheme works), but the outcome
| is against their expectations. Of course, the guys running the
| scheme have ways to explain their shortfall (the
| governments/banks don't want you to get rich) and people do
| fall for/believe that.
| Animats wrote:
| _a Ponzi-scheme. The actors do consent_
|
| Yes. SEC staff have had to face angry haters after shutting
| down Ponzi schemes. Not from the people running them. From
| the suckers, who were hoping that if it went on a little
| longer, they'd come out ahead.
| mostertoaster wrote:
| Our consent is cloaked because even when we democratically
| elect a ruler, they then say see we have the consent of the
| people to do xyz, even though they were elected saying they
| would do abc.
|
| Most people just say well next time I'll elect my other side
| and they'll do abc that I would consent to. And the process
| repeats.
|
| Still in some sense if there is true consent by an individual
| then it isn't necessarily coercive though it could be
| manipulative.
|
| Also the consent of two saying I don't mind if you take/abuse
| from the one can be totalitarian.
|
| If we think Trump was bad, I think people might be horrified at
| how hard the pendulum swings back the other way. Many people
| hate much of the policies going on under Biden (even if just
| out of partisan reasons and not principles), and one party
| acting like they can do whatever they want because they have
| the presidency and a tie in a senate doesn't change there are
| like 50 million people who feel like they're being "oppressed".
|
| Just as dubya seemed less bad once we had Trump, the next guy
| might make Trump look the same in comparison.
|
| All done with "consent of the ruled"
| mistermann wrote:
| > Our consent is cloaked because even when we democratically
| elect a ruler, they then say see we have the consent of the
| people to do xyz, even though they were elected saying they
| would do abc. > Most people just say well next time I'll
| elect my other side and they'll do abc that I would consent
| to. And the process repeats.
|
| An interesting aspect of this is: full blown direct democracy
| is one thing, but simple finer grained continuous high
| quality polling of public sentiment (however imperfect) is
| rarely discussed, and isn't particularly technically
| challenging.
| freddybobs wrote:
| "Continuous democracy" was something attempted by Tony
| Blair in the UK (apparently originating in the US) - the
| terms meaning there is somewhat different to your
| description. In this scenario continuous democracy was
| achieved using focus groups of members of the public. This
| is different from what you describe - as it is using a
| 'proxy' for actually asking the public.
|
| That an underlying idea here was that all the government
| needs to do is act upon the feedback of these groups. The
| government didn't have to lead.
|
| That didn't work out very well in practice though. I don't
| believe the issue was around the statistical methods, or
| some kind of bias, although they could add extra issues.
|
| More that the problem is just asking a random collection of
| members of the public what to do is _not_ in general what
| the public wants, or not when it comes to be enacted. As
| the general public does not have the time or the
| inclination to dig deep on issues and possible results. It
| 's in effect government by 'hot take'.
|
| I bring this up - because whilst not the same, the
| continuous democracy you describe may also have some of
| these issues.
|
| This is touched on in an Adam Curtis documentary - probly
| All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace
|
| https://thoughtmaybe.com/all-watched-over-by-machines-of-
| lov...
| mostertoaster wrote:
| That would probably be an improvement over how things go
| now. The issue is even if public sentiment across a nation
| is a strong majority like 60%, 40% is still a huge number
| of people, and different people have somewhat different
| values depending on where they are.
|
| I feel like local communities this would work well, since a
| majority overriding a minority might not be as egregious as
| say a majority of rural folk having their will done over
| city folk and vice versa.
|
| What I wish we could do is let's say the federal government
| says in accordance with majority sentiment, masks are
| required for children in school. The state of Texas though
| has the ability to override it or leave it in place, but
| then the city of Austin could then override what Texas
| overruled and so on. I don't know something where the will
| of more people is being followed.
| mistermann wrote:
| > That would probably be an improvement over how things
| go now. The issue is even if public sentiment across a
| nation is a strong majority like 60%, 40% is still a huge
| number of people, and different people have somewhat
| different values depending on where they are.
|
| Oh I agree...but I'm not even making a claim that this
| will affect change, I am simply suggesting that broad
| increased awareness of ~true public sentiment (as opposed
| to largely baseless *claim of public sentiment that we
| are fed on TV) would be interesting, and maybe even
| useful. I believe it would decrease the level of delusion
| in society.
|
| > What I wish we could do is let's say the federal
| government says in accordance with majority sentiment,
| masks are required for children in school. The state of
| Texas though has the ability to override it or leave it
| in place, but then the city of Austin could then override
| what Texas overruled and so on. I don't know something
| where the will of more people is being followed.
|
| I'm not opposed to this in principle, but I am leery of
| claims of "in accordance with majority sentiment" under
| the current mode of measurement, and information
| distribution that precedes polling. I believe the whole
| system is rotten.
| mostertoaster wrote:
| Yeah that's a great point.
| pc86 wrote:
| It can still be unethnical to have policies and laws that have
| 50.001% approval. I agree though that I think the word
| "coercive" here is a bit confusing.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| This is the perpetual pull between "right" being the will of
| the people, "right" being the laws we set for ourselves that
| are placed outside the people's direct control by appeal to
| some higher ideal (such as a Constitutional government that
| provides authority to reject laws because they do not align
| to that Constitution), and "right" being a pure, objective
| correctness, justice, etc. (that may or may not actually
| exist).
|
| Every society eventually wrestles with these things.
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| The "coercion" is _cloaked_ with the "consent of the ruled".
| It's not actually the consent of the ruled, it is coercion
| wearing a disguise.
|
| If a 10,000-strong anti-skub march happens in my town, but the
| nightly news doesn't mention it at all and instead airs man-on-
| the-street interviews with smiling middle-class people who all
| quite like skub, what just happened? Are the populace for or
| against skub? It doesn't really matter if any anti-skub
| organizations can be made to appear to be ineffectual or
| aberrant or insane or invisible.
| lindseymysse wrote:
| Hey, this reminds me of all the anti-war marches I did in the
| 2000's and 2010's!
| slibhb wrote:
| Your example is straightforward cocercion, it's not what
| Gramsci was talking about. He argued that culture and
| religion instill bourgeois values.
|
| It's very tricky to tell people that their desires, beliefs,
| culture, and religion are merely ruses to further domination.
| It blurs the line between coercion and consent. It seems to
| suggest, paradoxically, that people can only consent to
| things that they ought to consent to, according to the
| beliefs of the person making the judgement (in this case a
| Marxist intellectual).
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| >Your example is straightforward cocercion
|
| Why do you think that? Keep reading the article. The West
| doesn't really need Fear (except against whistleblowers
| etc), but uses Friction and Flooding extremely effectively.
| The "mysterious" coordination of the increasingly-
| consolidated media helps provide Friction against
| organizing effectively against skub, and a steady insistent
| Flood of pro-skub messaging ensures those without much
| investment in skub either way suffer the mere-exposure
| effect and think skub is normal (those man-on-the-street
| interviews, skub showing up in movies and TV, ads for skub,
| weirdly patriotic messaging about skub).
|
| >It seems to suggest, paradoxically, that people can only
| consent to things that they ought to consent to, according
| to the beliefs of the person making the judgement (in this
| case a Marxist intellectual).
|
| I think it suggests that people should make decisions based
| on unadulterated information, rather than that which is
| spoon-fed to them by authoritarians. Did you read the rest
| of the article? "Marxist" is an analytical lens, not
| indicative of someone who wants to give your toothbrush to
| the revolution.
| slibhb wrote:
| There's no such thing as unadulterated information.
|
| You're making the same mistake as Gramsci. You decide
| what the correct beliefs are and the fact that other
| people don't have those beliefs is evidence of their
| coercion.
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| >You decide what the correct beliefs are and the fact
| that other people don't have those beliefs is evidence of
| their coercion.
|
| No, the subjects of the article decide that. I'm just
| some asshole commenting on it.
|
| Relatedly, it's weird that you're directly asserting that
| I'm doing something that I'm not doing -- you've decided
| it, thus it is so. You'd think that you could quote the
| bit where I'm deciding what the correct beliefs are. I
| suspect you're inferring it from my suggestion that an
| increasingly-consolidated mass media decides what's
| normal and presents it to us. If so, I have a short
| educational video [0] on the topic.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE
| slibhb wrote:
| I don't care whether the argument is yours or the
| article's, I'm addressing the argument.
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| > I don't care whether the argument is yours or the
| article's, I'm addressing the argument
|
| Sure, by baselessly asserting that I, or Gramsci,
|
| >>decide what the correct beliefs are and the fact that
| other people don't have those beliefs is evidence of
| their coercion.
|
| Have I missed something? You wrote that "[i]t's very
| tricky to tell people that their desires, beliefs,
| culture, and religion are merely ruses to further
| domination", which suggests that I, or Gramsci, make that
| argument. I don't think I did; he doesn't seem to be.
| Should I infer that the three Fs outlined again and again
| in the article are in fact the desires, beliefs, culture,
| and religion of the people being oppressed?
| slibhb wrote:
| You're missing something all right
| revolvingocelot wrote:
| I imagine you're still addressing the argument?
| mc32 wrote:
| So every *ism is coercion. Capitalism, Communism,
| Socialism, Buddhism, etc., except it's not coercion if
| you're looking inwardly, I guess.
| dabbledash wrote:
| Yes, because an action against a minority by a majority can be
| coercive. I think American history demonstrates this pretty
| clearly.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| If it is consent, then it is manufactured consent.
| hirundo wrote:
| There have been times and places where slavery had majority
| consent, even considering the opinions of the slaves. In all of
| those cases, I would say that the slavery was still coercive.
| So yes, you can have the consent of at least the majority of
| the ruled and still be coercive. Almost nothing wins the
| consent of everyone, so almost any rule is coercive to someone.
| judge2020 wrote:
| The real thing to gauge is human suffering, which isn't easy
| to measure so it often isn't measured.
| gootler wrote:
| Yeah, even here on "hacker news" bullshit assholes in new york
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > Fear of punishment works on most bosses of news media outlets
| and internet platforms. If they slip up and allow the wrong
| content to reach the public, they may not be sent off to do hard
| labor in a detention camp, but they could be demoted and their
| day docked
|
| Can't help but note that Twitter declined to deplatform Trump for
| years - long before he was elected president - because he was
| good for business. When they finally did kick him off (yes, yes,
| as is their right to do as a private organization), they defended
| their actions by insisting that they were afraid that he might do
| or say something that the _government_ might hold them legally
| liable for. AWS said effectively the same thing when they kicked
| the _service_ Parler off of their servers because - a degree of
| separation away - Trump might do something on Parler that AWS
| might end up in _legal_ trouble for.
| mrkramer wrote:
| This reasoning doesn't make sense since every person or company
| using any public platform or any public cloud infrastructure
| can do bad. Person who does "bad" is liable for it not
| underlying platform.
|
| For example politicians who don't like Bitcoin say something
| like "Bitcoin is used for drugs" yea but dollars and euros are
| used for drugs as well so it makes no sense to say Bitcoin is
| bad or declare any person using public service as good or bad.
| ManBlanket wrote:
| So equating banning a user to the rights of a private
| organization might be a _little_ disingenuous? Some might say a
| straw man for the fact Twitter did so out of fear of liability
| pursuant of a government which deemed that user's opinions
| offensive? Would Twitter have removed the authors of the US
| constitution for fear of legal liability from the Crown? Isn't
| that, like, the reason the first amendment even exists? So does
| the government have constitutional ground to stand on for
| deciding what is misinformation or illegal speech, private
| platforms or not? Evidently so. Because... private company?
| mrkramer wrote:
| >So does the government have constitutional ground to stand
| on for deciding what is misinformation or illegal speech,
| private platforms or not? Evidently so.
|
| Courts have constitutional ground and duty to judge and
| decide upon laws and constitution.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| In Machiavellian terms, what better way to help ingratiate your
| company with the incoming administration? Especially since the
| outgoing one will no longer be able to retaliate.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Unfortunately this article isn't criticism, it's an instruction
| manual for groups that organize and co-ordinate using projection.
| Essentially anything groups aligned to authorities accuse
| outgroups of doing is a way of signalling and establishing
| consensus on what they plan to do next. They aren't projecting
| because they are stupid, they are projecting because they're
| coordinating. It only takes about 6-8 years to go from street
| riots to camps and gulags, and in Canada and Australia, we're
| about 60% of the way down that road. The only meaningful
| political question right now is how much civilization we must
| give up to isolate and remove a totalitarian movement that has
| subverted and taken root in our institutions, while they used
| other more legitimate movements as cover.
|
| Complaining about censorship, or any signal of skepticism or
| belief in principle at all just gets you on a list of being among
| the first to stop applauding. Who really thinks someone who uses
| the cynical realpolitik of deception and censorship is going to
| be swayed by a principled argument? The only thing nihilists
| understand is power and conseqeunces.
|
| If you are really concerned about censorship, the most valuable
| act of defiance now is to build close personal networks of
| friends and family that do not depend on the platforms, and which
| are immune to the relentless official propaganda disgorged by
| tech companies.
|
| This all sounds very dark, but really, if you can't countenance
| it, you aren't going to be innoculated to it, and you are going
| to be subject to it.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| I've come to the same conclusions with the added step that I
| believe we should focus our efforts on creating platforms and
| protocols to protect anonymity, encrypted communication,
| alternate payment mechanisms, and freedom of speech. As a
| conservative I've seen all of these things attacked in order to
| control what is allowed to be said and who is allowed to be
| compensated.
| clairity wrote:
| > "As a conservative..."
|
| you had a good comment going until you tribalized yourself
| (with a false dichotomy, to boot). the pull of the tribe will
| always subvert independent thinking.
|
| that's not to say we can exist devoid of identities, but that
| we should always be cognizant of the bias they introduce, and
| actively reduce the attack surface of that bias by not
| adopting identifying ideologies needlessly. you can for
| example be amenable to many "conservative" ideas without
| considering yourself a conservative, and especially without
| joining an ideological party (like the republicans).
|
| the goals you mention are not ideological, so why bring
| ideology into the conversation?
| gnarbarian wrote:
| Because the brunt of this phenomena in the US has been
| directed at conservatives ever since 2016. It happens
| literally every day now, someone I follow is disappeared
| from a platform.
| clairity wrote:
| yah, that's exactly the bias talking. 2016 isn't special.
| the rhetorical heat has been rising for decades because
| more and more people are realizing that moneyed interests
| are corrupting our shared prosperity, and getting a fair
| shake is becoming less and less realizable for more and
| more people. heated rhetoric ("censorship") in turn tries
| to squash, or at least shout down, dissent, but that's
| mostly misdirected at each other rather than toward the
| moneyed and powerful, who have distracted us and
| subverted our common rules and norms over the last 70
| years. it's not special to the times or a particular
| ideology (and especially not a particular ex-president
| and his fans).
| seph-reed wrote:
| Something similar happened with terrorism when the US
| started bombing. People joined because they were losing
| friends and seeked both revenge and solidarity.
|
| I still don't think it's a great idea to find too much
| solidarity within the two party system, no matter how
| sweet the revenge could be. That's why I don't consider
| myself a modern liberal.
| pyronik19 wrote:
| Look how quickly the comments section turned on you
| because "as a conservative", where as you say, the brunt
| of all censorship is focused. Really goes to show how
| effective it is that even in a threat discussing the
| topic, the prevailing "othering" affect is demonstrated.
| gnarbarian wrote:
| I fully expected it. These people have no idea what it's
| like from the other side and it's specifically why I
| mentioned it.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > It only takes about 6-8 years to go from street riots to
| camps and gulags, and in Canada and Australia, we're about 60%
| of the way down that road.
|
| Didn't the current premier's father (for Canada) do pretty much
| the same thing (suspend constitutional rights) in the 70's
| for... dubious reasons to say the least? He was also the man
| who paved the way to normalize relations with China and Cuba,
| two nations known for their respect of human rights.
| neither_color wrote:
| For me the creepiest thing about 1984 wasn't the degradation of
| language or the censorship. What I found most concerning was
| Winston risking his life for a resistance movement that turned
| out to be fake. There are two well-known groups of violent
| protestors that the opposing side believe keeps getting away with
| reprehensible behavior that the authorities seemingly could stop
| at any time but choose not to. It didn't click with me until the
| doc "Social Dilemma" alluded to it with the "extreme center"
| protests. I think many would-be freedom fighters are falling for
| that trap.
| dantheman wrote:
| The "Social Dilemma" is pure propaganda and manipulation,
| there's very little facts or stats stated in that film that
| aren't heavily misleading.
| zwkrt wrote:
| What about it is propaganda? From who and for what purpose?
| Certainly not any large corporation or government, all of
| whom benefit from a populace that is always online.
| mdoms wrote:
| Can you provide examples?
| dantheman wrote:
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200928/11452045401/soci
| a...
| mistermann wrote:
| Are you referring to QAnon perchance? I've always found the
| "advertised risk" of QAnon to be inconsistent with the apparent
| lack of investigation (and lack of curiousity about a lack of
| investigation) a bit curious, as compared to say the Unabomber
| scenario.
|
| It could be nothing of course, but then it could also be
| something.
| krapp wrote:
| Lack of investigation into what?
|
| Plenty of investigation has been done conducted into QAnon,
| their beliefs and their claims. Everything has turned out to
| be spurious.
| mistermann wrote:
| > Plenty of investigation has been done conducted into
| QAnon, their beliefs and their claims. Everything has
| turned out to be spurious.
|
| Oh, it sounds like you are referring to QAnon's _ideas_ - I
| am referring to QAnon _the organization_ , including its
| leadership, if any.
|
| We regularly hear (perhaps not so much lately now that the
| election is over) about how dangerous QAnon is, my thinking
| is that if this organization is so dangerous, why does no
| one do anything about it, and why do journalists not wonder
| why no one does anything about it.
| krapp wrote:
| QAnon was dangerous (I don't know how dangerous they
| still are) because of the support given to them the
| President of the United States and their shared
| conspiratorial beliefs potentially gaining the power of a
| mainstream political movement. When the leader of your
| country believes in a secret conspiracy of leftists
| undermining him at every turn and a millions-strong cult
| believes his political enemies are literal baby-raping
| demons that he's been sent by God to cleanse the country
| of, that has the potential to create political
| instability to put it lightly. In other countries, a
| group like QAnon would become the leader's personal
| secret police.
|
| But QAnon members have been investigated by the FBI and
| have been arrested and charged with various politically
| motivated crimes and attempted crimes including murder,
| assassination, kidnapping, bombings, disruption of ballot
| counting in various states and of course the White House
| insurrection.
|
| I don't know what else you would expect to happen.
| exporectomy wrote:
| Probably because calling things dangerous is a way to
| rile up hate which is what journalists do.
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| it's a honeypot. my father was involved with a left wing party
| in the 80's in Brazil - not guerrila, just regular election-
| oriented stuff. He used to tell me that whenever someone showed
| up in gatherings with very extremist views people would be
| suspicious because that person was probably an agent trying to
| identify people with subversive behavior (by seeing who would
| agree with him).
| the-dude wrote:
| In The Netherlands, the Communist Party was infiltrated by
| the security service up to the point they were writing the
| monthly magazine.
|
| The party visited CCP and had a group photo opportunity with
| the leader du jour. A picture which includes one or more of
| the spooks.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| In eastern germany, there were many anti-government meetings
| and plans, and sometimes, literally all of people there were
| different stasi members reporting on other stasi members.
| cafard wrote:
| At some point in the late 1950s, the FBI had so thoroughly
| infiltrated the Communist Party of the USA that it could
| have taken it over. J. Edgar Hoover considered doing so,
| but apparently thought it would be more trouble than it was
| worth.
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| that's a great plot for a comedy sketch
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| See "The Man Who Was Thursday" by G. K. Chesterton.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| So like that Spideman meme where there's a dozen copies
| pointing at each other? Except in real life?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| On the book it's much more than a honeypot, the regime
| depended on such extremists to exist, so it created them.
|
| Of course, the regime on the 60's to 80's in Brazil didn't
| have that problem, because they had no shame from practicing
| the violence themselves and claiming it was from the other
| side when extremists failed to appear. It looks much more
| reliable to me.
| laurent92 wrote:
| We still create extremist personas, that don't exist in
| real life. I know in France this tactic is used very often
| to trigger a demonstration of "the good guys". When you
| interview the opponents, they're 1 for 10.000
| (=insignificant).
|
| For example with feminism, when asked precise questions,
| you notice they are afraid of people that don't exist
| (meanwhile the actual rapists are still free to roam).
| jccc wrote:
| Orwell's concern was Us, not Them:
|
| "[Nineteen Eighty-Four] was based chiefly on communism, because
| that is the dominant form of totalitarianism, but I was trying
| chiefly to imagine what communism would be like if it were firmly
| rooted in the English speaking countries, and was no longer a
| mere extension of the Russian Foreign Office."
| bwship wrote:
| Meanwhile the spokesperson for the Islamic Emirate has 360K
| followers on Twitter.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Ideologically it troubles me that political opponents are
| censored in USA (Trump) even though I vehemently disagree with
| every thing he has to say and I understand it's damaging to the
| society through incitement of violence.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Trump was live for millions of people just last week. I'm not
| sure how you could say Trump is censored. He can get on TV
| and talk whenever he wants.
| the_doctah wrote:
| What other label would you give to the action of banning
| his Twitter account?
| AgentME wrote:
| Is it bad censorship every time when anyone gets banned
| on a forum?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| It's a smooth spectrum from average joe to a political
| opponent and ex-President.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Yes, I understand that Twitter is a private platform and
| it's not censorship through government. I still have a
| problem with this. It doesn't sit well. Big Tech is a proxy
| for official communications of Gov and banning a political
| opponent is just so wrong. The timing of this ban was so
| blatantly obvious - as soon as Biden took oath, Trump was
| booted off.
|
| Other part of me thinks "Twitter is so much better without
| Trump". I'm with you all.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > The timing of this ban was so blatantly obvious - as
| soon as Biden took oath, Trump was booted off.
|
| There may have been another event that occurred right
| about the same time which had more impact on Twitter's
| decision to boot him from the platform.
| [deleted]
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Trump was removed from Twitter and Facebook on January
| 6th, not January 20th.
|
| There are few things that can dampen First Amendment
| protections (to say nothing of Section 230 protections).
| Incitement to violence or insurrection is one of them
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imminent_lawless_action),
| and on January 6th, Twitter and FB made the judgement
| call that it was too likely that's what the President was
| doing. Perhaps if one turns one's head and squints, one
| could consider it government censorship because the CEOs
| of those companies didn't want any risk at all they'd be
| hauled into a Congressional oversight (or a court) over
| the use of their platforms in aiding and abetting an
| insurrection, but it's a strange type of government
| censorship that censors the President, isn't it? It's not
| entirely out of the realm of possibility in the US, given
| that Congress and the Courts are independent branches;
| perhaps one could make a claim that Congress can apply
| indirect pressure to shape what a President may say.
|
| (There is, perhaps, more to be said on the topic in terms
| of why he's _still_ banned from those sites).
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| > I'm not sure how you could say Trump is censored.
|
| Did you not read the article? Its whole point is the new
| authoritarians are a lot more flexible than the old ones.
| They are about reducing the spread of dissenting thought,
| rather than eradicating it altogether. As the article says:
|
| "Friction is about making it harder and less convenient to
| access unapproved material."
|
| Banning Trump from Twitter doesn't make it _impossible_ to
| access what he says, but it does make it _harder_. You are
| less likely to read what he says, unless you specifically
| go looking for it. Twitter 's censorship of Trump means a
| lot fewer people will know what he says, which is its goal.
| krapp wrote:
| >Banning Trump from Twitter doesn't make it impossible to
| access what he says, but it does make it harder. You are
| less likely to read what he says, unless you specifically
| go looking for it.
|
| Oh noes. Anyone who wants to know what Trump is saying
| has to experience the momentary and minor inconvenience
| of discovering a URL on the open internet. Once then
| bookmarking it or something. The horror.
| myko wrote:
| The key thing here isn't that trump was a political opponent
| of Twitter/Facebook, but he was encouraging his supporters to
| overthrow the Democratically elected government of the US and
| put him in the office of POTUS.
|
| It makes sense for US companies to ban people trying to
| overthrow the US.
| pyronik19 wrote:
| "overthrow the Democratically elected government of the US
| and put him in the office of POTUS."
|
| That already happened with the "mOsT SeCuRe ElEcTiOn EvaR"
| adamrezich wrote:
| normally when people try to overthrow governments, they
| bring weapons
| myko wrote:
| Not in every case:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_coup
|
| though in this case I'd argue it was a combination of
| both, there were folks involved in the insurrection
| attempt on the 6th that brought weapons:
| https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/jul/13/donald-
| tru...
| adamrezich wrote:
| I'm less troubled that the censorship actually happened, as
| much as I am troubled by the increasing _demand_ for such
| censorship. social media networks give you all the tools you
| could possibly want to prevent you from seeing posts you don
| 't want to see, but that's not good enough--people are
| _demanding_ that people get deplatformed for speech.
| ubiquitous smartphone and social media access brought about
| the slow death of the "libertarian free speech haven" aspect
| of the Web, and there's no reason to think those ideals will
| come back into vogue anytime soon.
| sureglymop wrote:
| Those "ideals" absolutely exist on the internet... they
| just don't have a place in mainstream media. For example, I
| often use Mastodon and other platforms like it. Now while
| popular Mastodon instances obviously don't want to federate
| with "free speech" instances, those instances still exist
| and stand on their own. I still remember a discussion some
| time ago, about federating with what I think was called
| Gab.
|
| At the end of the day, free speech doesn't mean that a
| platform like twitter has to let you on to their platform,
| but should you want to create or host your own alternative
| to Twitter? Well you can, so you're not restricted in your
| free speech.
| Clubber wrote:
| >At the end of the day, free speech doesn't mean that a
| platform like twitter has to let you on to their platform
|
| Perhaps in law, but certainly not spirit. I understand
| the dilemma. Twitter doesn't want the KKK on their site,
| but they've gone way too far. It's nothing more than a
| thinly veiled self-serving propaganda machine anymore, as
| is all the other large social media sites. The original
| dream of internet freedom is dead.
| Pxtl wrote:
| To me it stems from a basic central problem: verifiable
| fact has value, but it is not defended by our institutions
| meaningfully.
|
| You can spread all the harmful lies you like as long as
| your victims are diffuse and lack the standing for a
| lawsuit.
|
| We have plenty of forms of censorship available through the
| courts - people can be punished for perjury, filing a false
| report, defamation, false advertising, fraud, uttering
| threats, etc. But in all those cases, you only face
| punishment if you target somebody with the standing and
| means to retain a lawyer, or you target the machinery of
| justice itself.
|
| What happens when you target something like "climate
| change"? Or vaccines? Or the history of the 2020 election?
| Nothing. Nobody has standing to sue so the act is not
| punished.
|
| So why is Hulk Hogan more worthy of protection from harmful
| speech than Climate Change?
|
| And letting falsehoods go uncorrected plainly hasn't
| worked. The "Marketplace of Ideas" has done jack squat
| about Q or climate change denial or antivaxxers or
| whatever, and now we're facing real catastrophic impact of
| those problems. Significant thought-leaders in these
| communities can be caught over and over again in easily-
| verifiable lies and supporting extremist and hateful
| content... and face no consequences in terms of losing
| support through the normal mechanisms of the platform.
|
| You can see what happens to platforms without substantive
| moderation or censorship - they're gradually consumed by
| obsessed extremists who simply _exhaust_ all the normal
| people until they leave.
|
| So, with the total failure of a government policy to tackle
| the problem, is it any wonder that people are looking to
| the owners of the platforms to tackle the issue? They have
| the means, and can be influenced through threats of
| boycotts.
|
| Until reality itself can sue for defamation, we have to
| come up with a decent alternative. The stakes are high and
| the impact is real.
| adamrezich wrote:
| why assume that our institutions have all of the
| verifiable facts? verifiable by whom? the institutions
| themselves?
|
| and which institutions? the elected federal government?
| the appointed federal government? the intelligence
| agencies?
|
| who is the authority on truth, and what gives them that
| authority?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| The platforms are the authority on truth _on their
| platform_.
|
| I question whether they should want to be such an
| authority, or whether they are competent to be such an
| authority, but they have the power (both technically and,
| currently, legally) to be the authority... on their own
| platform.
| bwship wrote:
| Yes exactly. You should be allowed to disagree with that
| person still being able to talk. The whole deplatforming of
| Trump seemed overly orchestrated.
|
| [EDIT} this is getting downvoted, but him magically being
| removed from Twitter and Parler being shut down didn't just
| happen in a vacuum. We are in full censorship mode as a
| country. It is sad to see.
| keewee7 wrote:
| Considering how fast Reddit is growing I think people should keep
| an eye on the moderators of r/worldnews and r/news. The
| viewership of these subreddits is several times bigger than their
| subscriber count because both subreddits are regularly featured
| on r/all and r/popular. It's also no secret that many journalists
| use these subreddits to gauge which topics interests people.
|
| It's possible that in a few years all an authoritarian regime has
| to do to shut down bad publicity is to get a moderator on
| r/worldnews.
| ep103 wrote:
| In the future?
|
| Mods of the major subreddits have been on payrolls for years.
| Its a topic that used to come up with regularity ~6 years ago.
| I would be absolutely shell-shocked if it wasn't commonplace
| now.
| Covzire wrote:
| My thoughts as well, /r/worldnews is for a long while already
| an echo chamber dominated by one political perspective that,
| to use a courtroom analogy, act exclusively as prosecutors
| against populists, centrists and conservatives or they act as
| defense attorney's for those they already vote for, depending
| on the hot issues of the day.
| screye wrote:
| r/worldnews
|
| The sub has gone to hell a good few years ago. If your opinions
| are anywhere right of woke, you get banned straight up. It is
| often considered a badge of honor to get banned from
| r/worldnews. A sign that you haven't fully given in to the hive
| mind. Funnily enough, the best world news subreddit right now
| is reddit.com/r/anime_titties (SFW). It started as a joke
| subreddit satirizing r/neutralpolitics being taken over by
| porn, but has somehow managed to be the best world news
| subreddit despite the tongue-in-cheek name.
|
| A lot of innocuous subreddits implement sweeping bans for
| participation in any black-listed subreddit. r/offmychest is
| famous for a huge ban hammer (I'm a victim). Honestly, every
| subreddit that has a r/trueSubreddit version has run into this
| exact problem at some point.
|
| Honestly, most of the default subs are pretty much hard-
| censored already. The election year has to led to the complete
| deterioration of wat used to be well-moderated subs like
| r/science and r/ask_historians.
|
| Then there are the geographical subs. The default country subs
| are almost all hard-censored. r/India is so bad, that there's
| conspiracies about it being run by an ISI operative. Sadly, the
| reaction to r/India's polarization was the formation of another
| heavily polarized subreddit in r/india_speaks. So now we have 2
| uniquely bad subreddits. In the US, I have noticed a similar
| thing happen to r/seattle and r/seattleWA around views on
| homelessness, but to a lesser degree of mutual deterioration.
|
| Any time I step into the real world, I squarely fall into the
| urban atheist liberal mould. Yet for some reason, the exact
| same views warrant complete ostracization on a lot of these
| internet front pages. The insularity of the echo-chamber is
| mind-boggling.
| keewee7 wrote:
| >r/India
|
| More than a year ago I was banned from both r/worldnews and
| r/India for a comment about how the US and Pakistan funded
| and armed the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
|
| I'm a Danish guy and I have never posted anything in r/India.
| Someone who mods both r/worldnews and r/India doesn't like
| criticism of Pakistan.
|
| Pakistani nationalists becoming mods of both r/India and
| r/worldnews is just the tip of the iceberg of what is wrong
| with the mods on reddit.
| Animats wrote:
| _banned from both r /worldnews and r/India for a comment
| about how the US and Pakistan funded and armed the
| Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1980s._
|
| Which is no secret, and is not disputed. There's even a
| movie, "Charlie Wilson's War", with Tom Hanks. "And then we
| blew the endgame."
| gnarbarian wrote:
| I've completely quit reddit after 15 years and my life is
| better for it.
| spiderice wrote:
| I've been very aggressively filtering out problematic
| subreddits from r/all, and it's helped tremendously.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >It started as a joke subreddit satirizing r/neutralpolitics
| being taken over by porn, but has somehow managed to be the
| best world news subreddit despite the tongue-in-cheek name.
|
| I routinely find that the best content is on the subs that
| are parodying the subs you'd think would have that content.
| Plasmoid wrote:
| /r/neoliberal is a surprisingly informed and nuanced take
| on a lot of issues
| falcrist wrote:
| > If your opinions are anywhere right of woke, you get banned
| straight up.
|
| I hear this from people on the right, but there are plenty of
| right-wingers in there every time I visit.
|
| Go into a thread about Afghanistan, and there will be people
| blaming biden arguing with people blaming trump.[1]
|
| Go into a thread about Isreal and Palestine. People are
| arguing about which one is the true evil.[2]
|
| Go into a thread about climate change. People are openly
| downplaying climate change.[3]
|
| The subs I most often see suppressing speech are generally on
| the right, so it sounds a lot like projection when I hear
| people making these accusations.
|
| [1] - https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/pbzuye/larg
| e_exp...
|
| [2] - https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/nimqkg/tens
| _of_t...
|
| [3] - https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/pbkpqt/atmo
| spher...
| screye wrote:
| You make my case for me right here
|
| Every example you give here is of intra-left debate within
| a tiny overton window. Opinions around palestine haven't
| yet crystallized, because WW2 wounds of the holocaust are
| still fresh. Similarly, Biden was the most hated of the
| democratic choices on the left. The far-left is still
| trying to squareoff between their opinion of biden vs
| hatred of trump vs hawkish liberal empire building vs
| mistreatment of afghans by Taliban. The opinions around
| these topics have still not concretized in the culture war.
| That being said, I certainly see the direction in which the
| winds are blowing.
|
| __________
|
| On the surface social propaganda dynamics function in a way
| that is wonderfully elaborated on this post :
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20183001 (I Can
| Tolerate Anything Except the Outgroup)
|
| However, under the surface, real propaganda emphasizes the
| an insidious ostracization of another community member :
| the in-group-contrarian. (IGC) (read more here -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23596617)
|
| Propaganda mods will often allow the stupidest of opinions
| on climate change and racism to stay on. In part, because
| the community does their job for them by heavily downvoting
| these opinions.
|
| But, the IGC is far more dangerous. They start making too
| much sense (are usually thoughtful & polite), have a proven
| 'correct' identity (can't easily be dismissed with
| adhominems) and have some level of credibility
| (professional stature in the correct circles). Classic
| examples of IGCs would be black conservatives (Glenn
| Loury), Anti-woke academics (Jordan Peterson) or atheist
| ex-muslims (Ayaan Hirsi Ali). Don't read too much into the
| examples, I don't endorse or even totally agree with most
| of these people. (The fact that I feel a need to say this,
| shows the soft fear I have of being called an islamophobic
| transphobic trump-lover by association, despite aligning
| with none of those groups)
|
| The IGCs are treated far far worse than any outgroup
| member. Classic gives are that they get called stupid,
| opportunist, sell-outs,self-help shills and the like. I
| have heard some vicious anti-semitic and racist stuff being
| thrown at IGCs by the left-woke establishment, to shut them
| down before they get too big. The fear of these people is
| palpable. I feel like I got insta-banned due to having the
| trappings of a prospective IGC.
|
| If a member is too prominent at the time of them expressing
| an IGC opinion, then they get de-platformed (Bari Weiss,
| Matt Yglesias). The smartest IGCs know to sandwich their
| IGC view a ton of qualification, express IGC views as a way
| to point guns in the direction of common ideological enemy
| and express it sparsely enough to not aggravate too many
| people. (Contrapoints, John McWhorter). The most dangerous
| IGCs are those that cannot be deplatformed by a minority,
| whose ethical compass and merit cannot be dismissed, and
| are practically pillars of their community ( Total Biscuit
| RIP, Noam Chomsky, Scott Alexander, Chapelle, Paul G to a
| lesser degree). This last group is a total pain in the ass
| to deal with for propagandists.
| falcrist wrote:
| > You make my case for me right here
|
| You were specifically talking about bans and "hard-
| censorship". Now you've shifted to talking about
| downvotes.
|
| I'm not going to try to hit a moving target.
|
| You asserted that "If your opinions are anywhere right of
| woke, you get banned straight up."
|
| I dispute this claim. Can you show me evidence supporting
| the claim?
|
| Once we've covered that idea, then I'd be open to talking
| about whether a system of downvotes and upvotes
| suppresses the outgroup.
|
| EDIT: If you're going to keep adding to your comment, you
| can't reasonably expect me to respond to it...
| kodah wrote:
| With regards to being an IGC, I can say you won't always
| get banned. In fact, usually it's the folks on the
| extreme end of the homogenous group that end up doing the
| enforcement and driving people out. Is it censorship,
| bullying, harassment, or is this the system working as
| intended? I guess that's what people have to decide.
|
| One anecdotal example I have was from a Slack I was part
| of years ago. These two men who identified as "allies"
| went around trying to address what they called "micro-
| aggressions". At the time they were heavily focused on
| "gender neutral language". To them, this term was well-
| defined and solidified because in their group it
| undoubtedly was. The problem was, the wider community had
| not decided what "gender neutral language" meant to it.
| There were outstanding questions like, "Is dude okay?",
| "am I required to observe this massive list of
| alternative pronouns?" (at the time, pronouns were much
| more expansive than they are today). It fell short of
| low-hanging fruit like not assuming everyone is a man on
| the internet by default. These folks were pestering and
| ventured into their own system of micro and macro-
| aggressions. At one point I remember a Norwegian man was
| berated and micro-corrected for using the term "ladies".
| A full on lecture was dumped into a thread where he was
| trying to tell a story of his own. My chief observation
| in this specific incident was that not everyone agreed
| that "ladies" is dated language (including women). This
| caused people to join camps, the camps fought, and
| inevitably the primarily tech oriented (and progressive
| oriented) cultural homogeneity won out, driving out both
| the people they sought to defeat like actual misogynists
| but an overwhelming trove of normal people who just
| didn't agree with specific things. The thing I noted
| about cultural homogeneity at the time was that it
| inspires people to think in terms of camps, which makes
| good people odd bedfellows with bad people (and I mean
| that on both sides of this particular issue). To this day
| I do not view "ally" men as trustworthy by default.
|
| In other groups I had been a part of similar things
| happened, but the folks seeking homogeneity attached
| themselves to Codes of Conduct or Guidelines that became
| highly prescriptive, and at times, exclusive. They'd seek
| to moderate one side of this debate but not the other,
| and with a quickness that was hard to match. They
| developed a lot of abstract language about systems and
| power, and ironically enough, used it to boost themselves
| into power.
|
| I've since distanced myself from any group that has
| overly prescriptive COC's or has a history of them. What
| makes that interesting is that I'm not someone who
| opposes gender neutral language, but I disliked how they
| enforced it. They weren't positive change agents, and
| they made the assumption everyone who spoke up was an
| apologist or some more serious label. I hadn't seen these
| problems for a while, because I really only hang out on
| specific IRC networks or HN as a result, both of which
| have fairly reasonable guidelines that prevent a wide
| spectrum of abuse.
| falcrist wrote:
| So are you saying "If your opinions are anywhere right of
| woke, you get banned straight up." is an incorrect
| statement?
|
| The last comment tried to shift the goalposts from being
| "banned straight up" to being suppressed through voting.
| Now you're trying to shift to a sometimes ban... there's
| also talk about not banning the people on the extreme
| right or not banning the "idiots" so they make the right
| look bad.
|
| Again, I'm not going to try to hit a moving target.
|
| The rest of your comment looks like it's trying to push
| the conversation off topic.
|
| I'm neither asking for anecdotes nor looking for a
| diatribe about your experience on Slack. A specific claim
| was made about censorship in a particular subreddit. I've
| heard that claim before, but never seen it substantiated
| in any way.
|
| Can you substantiate the claim?
|
| I'm asking because it sure _looks_ like conservatives are
| just angry about being downvoted. That 's a valid, but
| very different concern.
| kodah wrote:
| > So are you saying "If your opinions are anywhere right
| of woke, you get banned straight up." is an incorrect
| statement?
|
| Yeah, uniform rules are rarely reality. I do think people
| right of woke get ostracized with fairly regular tempo,
| sometimes that's bans, sometimes that's through other
| means.
|
| > The last comment tried to shift the goalposts from
| being "banned straight up" to being suppressed through
| voting. Now you're trying to shift to a sometimes ban...
| there's also talk about not banning the people on the
| extreme right or not banning the "idiots" so they make
| the right look bad.
|
| It seems like you're expecting me to have much more
| concrete thoughts and feelings around this subject. I
| don't. I have my experiences, if you're willing to value
| them then great, if you're the kind of person that thinks
| anecdotes are useless then our discussion is over. I
| didn't sit around writing down all the details around
| everything I ever saw that rubbed me the wrong way over
| years (nearly a decade now) of internet based discourse.
| That's to say, I can provide you a lens to look through,
| I can't make you see anything you don't believe exists.
|
| > I'm asking because it sure looks like conservatives are
| just angry about being downvoted. That's a valid, but
| very different concern.
|
| I am not a conservative. I also think the two are
| problems likely in the same domain based on what I've
| read of other replies.
| falcrist wrote:
| > I do think people right of woke get ostracized with
| fairly regular tempo, sometimes that's bans, sometimes
| that's through other means.
|
| Again. I'm talking about one specific claim. You guys
| keep trying to move the goalposts.
|
| Can you substantiate the claim?
| kodah wrote:
| > You guys keep trying to move the goalposts.
|
| I don't have a "goal post" to even move. I came here to
| dump some insight into the overall problem the other user
| was describing.
|
| Substantiate _what_ claim? That right of woke users are
| _always_ treated with a ban? No. I already said that
| doesn 't happen, I also said I don't think the problem is
| that binary.
|
| Anyway, you make having a conversation on the internet
| completely exhausting. Good luck figuring out whatever it
| is that you're trying to figure out.
| falcrist wrote:
| > If your opinions are anywhere right of woke, you get
| banned straight up.
|
| This is what I was disputing. That's the goalpost.
|
| The conversation is exhausting because everyone wants to
| dance around this claim rather than simply addressing it
| directly. From my end it feels like pulling teeth.
|
| I don't see evidence of the statement.
|
| I don't see evidence that the the statement is applied
| inconsistently.
|
| I don't see evidence of moderates being targeted with
| bans.
|
| I don't even see evidence that bans are politically
| motivated in the first place.
|
| I've seen this complaint a lot, but it never gets
| substantiated. It's just thrown out there like we should
| all automatically agree with it.
|
| Well I don't automatically agree. Please forgive my
| single-mindedness on this topic, but I'd like to see
| something substantiating the claim being made.
|
| Once we can agree whether this is happening, then maybe
| I'd be willing to move to a different conversation (like
| voting).
| screye wrote:
| I'm sorry about that. My keyboard glitched out, so I
| posted half my comment at that point. Then continued
| writing it.
|
| My bad. I appreciate you putting in effort to reply and
| find good sources to refute my claims.
| lordloki wrote:
| I clicked on each of these and while there seem to be a few
| "right of woke" comments they are massively buried. It
| could be that most non-woke commenters have either already
| been banned or now avoid it. This doesn't disprove the
| original comment.
| falcrist wrote:
| There are _plenty_ of "right of woke" comments in there,
| but as far as proof, what would you like to see?
|
| There are plenty of folks who haven't been banned, so
| clearly it's not everyone. Do you have records of all of
| the people who have been banned so we can directly test
| the assertion I'm responding to?
| burnished wrote:
| could you give some examples of these opinions? My experience
| is that posts like this are usually hiding some pretty ugly
| opinions that get dressed up as "right wing opinions", and
| I'd love to see a counter example where a very reasonable and
| respectful position is being banned/excluded. Links instead
| of descriptions if you don't mind.
| seph-reed wrote:
| Every sub reddit has its golden calf. If you're somewhat
| left leaning, you're going to end up in places that have
| leftist golden calfs.
|
| If you're not brain-washed, you'll likely have some amount
| of critique of every single thing in the world including
| their golden calf.
|
| So when people say: this is perfect and we're the good guys
| and they're the bad guys and look how stupid they are, you
| might say something nuanced or somewhat understanding and
| now you're a trump supporting, racist, misogynist, nazi
| incel.
|
| Or, more likely, you'll get downvoted to oblivion and the
| only people who will comment will have some shit like that
| to say.
|
| Personally, I've had plenty of reddit users actively tell
| me I'm a piece of shit for trying to understand what sort
| of psychological trauma it is that leads to people shooting
| up schools, or raping, or joining hate groups. Which
| "humanizes" them too much for most peoples tastes.
|
| Basically: trying to understand "the enemy" or raise
| awareness about issues in "the plan" are totally off limit
| topics in most places.
| burnished wrote:
| I see a lot of examples of "I got banned over nothing!"
| that after examination it becomes clear they got banned
| over.. everything. If something fits that mold I get
| suspicious. Which is why I ask for counter-examples.
| Cause its never really nothing, right?
|
| But I think I'm picking up what you're putting down. It
| just hasn't been my experience that moderation teams are
| that polarized, it has been my experience that people
| blame a polarized environment for their own poor behavior
| though.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Doesn't this just mean you have the same ideological
| inflexibility these moderation teams do? I'm trying to
| understand what actual counterpoint you have made here.
| screye wrote:
| I really don't like the assumption of guilt being thrust
| upon me, but I'll play along. I assume a lack of anonymity
| in general, so I'll share my profile. You can always dig
| through my HN profile too. But in the interest of good
| faith, please don't go around doxxing/stalking me.
|
| The comments that got me banned on r/worldnews are here
| (That's the day I got banned, hadn't posted for a while
| before that):
|
| https://camas.github.io/reddit-
| search/#{%22author%22:%22scre...
|
| They have all been deleted from the subreddit (hard
| censorship), but the internet is forever.
| falcrist wrote:
| I mean... it just looks like that whole branch of the
| conversation was nuked, including everyone disagreeing
| with you and the whole discussion about whether Modi
| should be called a Nazi.
| burnished wrote:
| Thank you! I've grown used to claims like yours that I
| was responding to, specifically "If your opinions are
| anywhere right of woke, you get banned straight up" to be
| a smoke-screen and usually casual inspection would reveal
| that the person making the claim wasn't guilt-free to put
| it lightly. I couldn't see anything ban-worthy in there,
| so I am glad to be wrong, in the sense that the pattern I
| was seeing was almost too glib to be true.
|
| Can you tell me why you think you were banned in there
| though? Like, what attitude or opinion crossed the line?
| I don't really understand the politics under discussion,
| but your comments seemed substantive enough that some one
| could come and meaningfully disagree with you, which I
| would have anticipated to be a good thing (even if many
| people disagreed with you).
|
| Anyway, thanks again.
| thowpol wrote:
| I am indian (part of the society that benefits the most
| from Modi's economics and politics) but I just made this
| account (also another exhibit of how far-right my
| government is) to say that I read the conversation and I
| really think you gotta dig deeper into the social fabric
| of the indian culture to realise how far-right the
| organization (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashtriya_Swa
| yamsevak_Sangh) behind the government (from which Modi
| comes) is.
|
| They have an entirely different image of the Indian
| subcontinent (based on this guy's vision of "Hindutva"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinayak_Damodar_Savarkar).
| This image roughly includes three parts (https://en.wikip
| edia.org/wiki/Hindutva:_Who_is_a_Hindu%3F): 1. Religion
| 2. Culture (Caste etc) 3. National Identity Now the
| problem is that the government might actually not be
| really into building the one nation, one religion Indian
| subcontinent presented in the vision (yes that includes
| Myanmar, Pakistan, Afghanistan) but the millions of kids
| being trained by the RSS since forever in thousands of
| schools kinda do want that. The problem with Modi is not
| that he's a nazi or not. The problem is with a sizeable
| population in India who support him because they think
| he's their guy and will do to Muslims and other lower
| caste people what the Nazis did to others. Hitler is
| considered a strong military leader amongst that
| population. The last part is of course anecdotal (the
| sample size was around 50 people through out my life
| spread over different socio-economic-geographic factors.
| TL;DR This is going to be a problem in the long term for
| the world
| screye wrote:
| It's funny you say this.
|
| The people who criticize Modi are currently at the top of
| every english-speaking institution I know off. If
| anything, criticizing Modi is the easiest way to make you
| way up the ranks of any English-speaking institution in
| India. Also, please refrain from using Wikipedia on
| politically fraught matters. It is the biggest echo
| chamber of them all, in such areas.
|
| I actually had the inverse journey. I grew up in housing
| the exact same "RSS are Nazis", "Savarkar wanted Aryan
| supremacy" opinions that get thrown around in my circles.
| It actually took a LOT of digging before I even started
| to wrap my head around the level of institutional
| propaganda against these persona non gratas of the Indian
| establishment.
|
| I still dislike RSS, but my opinion of everyone in the
| Gandhi/Nehru families has plummeted. (Indira was
| surprisingly candid, but went completely batshit during
| her emergency). It requires painful digging through of
| first sources though.
|
| Vikram Sampath's 2 books paint the most detailed image of
| Savarkar yet, warts and all.
| (https://smile.amazon.com/s?k=savarkar-vikram-sampath).
| Also, you should listen to speeches given by the RSS head
| himself (first sources), especially their annual year
| review speech. It is surprisingly inclusive. It is quite
| tame for India's Nazis. Urban folks like us do not
| realize just how much work the RSS does in rural areas on
| India. It took going to university in a smaller town and
| meeting people from poorer communities to hear about how
| favorably RSS was viewed as a social-welfare NGO.
|
| > National Identity Now the problem is that the
| government might actually not be really into building the
| one nation, one religion Indian subcontinent presented in
| the vision (yes that includes Myanmar, Pakistan,
| Afghanistan) but the millions of kids being trained by
| the RSS since forever in thousands of schools kinda do
| want that
|
| Source ? If anything, Indian Convents and Madras
|
| > other lower caste people
|
| The BJP has been far more inclusive of the lower castes
| in their power structure than the Congress ever has. Modi
| himself is lower caste. A substantial portion of the
| lower castes are voting for Modi too. Your claims are not
| backed up by data.
|
| At the same time, the recent Pew research survey shows
| that Indians highly value diversity of religions and
| preservation of the diversity and freedoms to do so.
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/06/29/key-
| finding....
|
| Hell, more Muslims want India to be 1 mega-subcontinent-
| nation-state than Hindus. https://www.pewforum.org/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/7/2021/06/...
| [deleted]
| throwawaypolit wrote:
| Both your links pew research links have this actual
| content in it: 1. More muslims believe that the partition
| shouldn't have happened. That is completely different
| from what I said about Hindus. If anything, it proves
| Hindus wanting a hindu nation and Muslims feeling that
| the partition that divided the nations along religious
| lines shouldn't have happened. 2. The second pew link is
| full of multiple results showing: a. Hindus believe being
| "hindu" is an essential part of being Indian. b. Mulsims
| and other minorities feel insecure about being their own
| religious selves.
|
| Honestly, either your perception is fundamentally
| different from what the literal words in the links said
| that you're willing to misinterpret them to any length OR
| this was a very cleverly disguised attempt at formulating
| your argument using the anti-thesis of your argument as
| the links themselves. Secondly, I agree with you on the
| Nehru/Gandhi thing. (Another interesting moment is Indira
| Gandhi talking about population control as a cover in
| this british documentary:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCI_KhfED2k)
|
| Last please read sarvakar's treatise "Hindutva (Who is
| Hindu?)" in which he equates being hindu has being indian
| in addition to the three parts I mentioned earlier.
|
| Now I am going to stop replying to you for my sanity.
|
| BTW, try not misquoting the links you give. It will lead
| people astray.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Since trump, most of the subreddits have been taken over, and
| the rest quarantined or removed.
| sschueller wrote:
| You can add r/videos to that list. They suppress anything
| relevant. If 9/11 happened today you would not know going on
| r/videos. You have to go to r/publicfreakout which wouldn't
| even be the relevant subreddit but at least they don't censor
| reality even if there is a lot of astro turfing going on.
| meowkit wrote:
| The inability for users to police mods on reddit is becoming a
| serious problem in my opinion.
|
| An additional problem is that most mods enable the rapid
| development of echo chambers through often well intentioned
| rules that become draconian when enforced by the right mod(s).
| commandlinefan wrote:
| As long as people keep using reddit, nothing is a problem
| (for reddit).
| TMWNN wrote:
| >It's possible that in a few years all an authoritarian regime
| has to do to shut down bad publicity is to get a moderator on
| r/worldnews.
|
| Too late.
|
| After the Orlando nightclub massacre in 2016, /r/news and
| /r/worldnews completely shut down postings about it because a
| Muslim was the killer. /r/askreddit and, yes, /r/the_donald
| opened up discussion threads because _there was no alternative
| on Reddit_.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Reading this I had a realization. The "soft fear" is alive and
| well in the USA.
|
| A huge fear right now is slipping up in life and falling off the
| capitalist progression. There is no safety net here, so if you
| screw up and end up homeless because you didn't work hard enough
| or save enough money, your chances of climbing out are almost
| nill. So rather than sending someone off to a Gulag or prison
| camp, the gulags are the ghettos patrolled by the police
| departments.
|
| Here, we say to ourselves, "We don't have gulags," but in the
| same breath, "if you are 'lazy' it is not our fault that you
| ended up in the projects." And then the system works to keep you
| there, from all sides.
|
| By disguising this oppression as a side-effect of "not working
| hard enough" or "not picking the right career" we can look away
| and say it is not our problem; yet we live in fear that if we
| lose our jobs we might end up in these hopeless places. And many
| will blame themselves because that is the narrative.
|
| Clever, and insidious: the prisons are all around us, just
| without walls and barbed wire.
| luckylion wrote:
| > "We don't have gulags," but in the same breath, "if you are
| 'lazy' it is not our fault that you ended up in the projects."
|
| But that's like saying "we don't have torture, but if you don't
| help, you're not getting any cake". Yes, living in social
| housing isn't great because of your neighbors. But it's much
| better than being homeless. And it's much, much, much, much
| better than being in a labor camp.
|
| Nobody is stopping you from walking out of the projects. Guess
| how that works out in a Gulag when you say "thanks, I'd rather
| live in the forest".
| [deleted]
| laurent92 wrote:
| > By disguising this oppression as a side-effect of "not
| working hard enough" or "not picking the right career" we can
| look away and say it is not our problem
|
| Actually, this is the definition of ideology, and you are not
| identifying it. Ideology starts when they accept victims in
| pursuit of their goal. When you accept negative side-effect
| that would be considered offsetting whatever good you are
| trying to provide in any other ideology.
|
| - Capitalist ideology: We accept human victims as a side effect
| of meritocracy, whereas we wouldn't accept human victims under
| Christian ideology,
|
| - Christianity: Caring for poor people; White supremacist
| ideology: Accepting that we do not care for migrants while we
| care about local people.
|
| - Feminist ideology: Accepting male victims, for example
| suicide or work, while rejecting non-life-threatening
| difficulties for women. (whereas under any other ideology, the
| two genders' issues would be treated equally).
|
| - Communist ideology: Accepting to shoot up a head of state in
| the pursuit of the greater good for all other citizen.
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(page generated 2021-08-26 23:01 UTC)