[HN Gopher] Kanye West is buying Parler
___________________________________________________________________
Kanye West is buying Parler
Author : michaelgrosner2
Score : 373 points
Date : 2022-10-17 10:06 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| SilverBirch wrote:
| I think this makes sense from a business perspective. Social
| media is actually a surprisingly hard business to make money at -
| look at Twitter. It's only the superscale businesses that make
| good money - Facebook, Youtube, Tiktok. And the dynamic is that
| because these businesses are primarily making money through
| marketing they need to keep a fairly neutral brand in order to
| retain an advertiser friendly platform. So what's the
| alternative? The WashPo business model - find a wealthy
| benefactor who believes in the mission to fund it.
|
| It doesn't necessarily have to be super expensive to run what is
| essentially a forum, especially if it's not going to hit massive
| scale. The only problem is that I don't think owning these
| platforms will give the kind of cultural relevance that these
| wealthy far-right types are chasing. So at some point they're
| going to lose interest and then you're back to the business model
| problem.
| mikkergp wrote:
| I think the problem is that twitter is attractive _because_ of
| who is on it. Journalists, liberals. The goal isn't really to
| permit free speech, it's to make certain ideas and values more
| palatable in our society. There's no point of buying a big
| platform if you can't attract/retain the people you're trying
| to influence.
| ea550ff70a wrote:
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| gorbachev wrote:
| typeofhuman wrote:
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| I'm gonna be a contrarian here and say I'm genuinely excited to
| see what Yeezy does with the platform, assuming its not just a
| passing interest. For all his antics, his work in music and
| fashion is legit, and those two are a large reason people are on
| social media today.
|
| If we required artists be 100% free of mental illness, we would
| not have Van Gogh, Georgia O'Keeffe, Kusama Yayoi, Michelangelo,
| Brian Wilson, etc. Let him be him, enjoy what he creates, and
| take it all with a grain of salt.
| npteljes wrote:
| The argument here is not that Kanye should be "mental illness
| free". Rather it's supposed that people around him exploit his
| vulnerability.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Lol who says he's being exploited? The dude has a couple
| billion, one doesn't get that kind of money by being gullible
| and easily exploitable. He can handle himself. Do we even
| know the valuation?
| npteljes wrote:
| >who says he's being exploited?
|
| This source, for example:
| https://www.yourtango.com/2021341546/kanye-wests-
| documentary...
|
| People can be abused and be successful at the same time.
| Their success doesn't exempt them from being hurt, in fact,
| it makes them even more of a target, while they are not
| less vulnerable at all.
|
| Also I haven't implied that he's easily exploitable. The
| exploiter for example can be a real pro at it.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Man, I hope someone exploits me by buying my documentary
| for $30 million!
|
| ...but seriously folks, this article is uses the word
| "exploitation" to mean "exposure" of celebrities'
| personal lives for entertainment/gossip (e.g. Marilyn
| Monroe, UK royals, etc.) Smart celebs like Kim K and no
| doubt Kanye cash-in big-time on this exploitation... it's
| hard to think what Kim K actually does aside from making
| billions off of her own "exploitation" in some sense.
|
| Re: Parler acquisition, "exploitation" means "fleecing",
| i.e. selling an asset to him at far greater than the
| market price b/c he is mentally ill and doesn't know
| better (akin to elder exploitation.) I haven't seen a
| valuation, but Parler did a $16M Series B in Sept 2022,
| so you'd think that the valuation was probably
| benchmarked off that. Maybe he paid a small premium, but
| TBH back to my original point if he takes it seriously
| and grows it, it could be worth 10-100x what he paid.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| diceduckmonk wrote:
| There's even a word for this.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art
|
| Just learned about this at the Mori Art Museum, since your
| username is dudeinjapan.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Funny thing I just learned the same a few days ago, but I
| think through a click-chain beginning on HN. Been awhile
| since I was last at Mori Art Museum, they have some good
| stuff. Many years ago I used to volunteer there giving tours
| for learning disabled young adults.
|
| Recommend to check out the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
| (MOT), they have some killer exhibits, I've been to nearly
| every one the last few years.
| diceduckmonk wrote:
| > Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT)
|
| I was just there yesterday haha. Glad we agree.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| Nice!! You must have caught the Jean Prouve exhibit on
| its closing day then. That one was killer, I really
| enjoyed it with all the actual portable houses setup.
|
| Another highlight in this past year was an exhibit the
| making of the classic Godzilla movies, they had some of
| the miniature sets recreated.
| [deleted]
| jleyank wrote:
| Can't make private individuals or companies host your speech.
| Can't make people listen to your speech. There's no protection
| against civil (ie, non governmental) action against your speech.
| You want freedom, host it your self and be prepared to accept the
| consequences and gains.
|
| Go to Speakers Corner and have a go. Put up a website. Buy a
| TV/Radio station, or Internet provider.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| >Can't make private individuals or companies host your speech.
|
| There is no fundamental reason this is an unchangeable true. A
| lot of the noise around Section 230 repeal and other laws being
| passed in places like Texas are designed to alter exactly this
| norm.
|
| Personally I am not sure if I would change it or not, I am just
| pointing out that it is far from written in stone...
| thedougd wrote:
| They can try to disincentivize private censorship, but
| unlikely to stop it. I believe the primary argument is
| forcing these companies to publish speech is a violation of
| their own free speech.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Right now section 230 means you can censor without
| censoring perfectly and not get sued. Repealing it means
| Facebook are liable for anything posted there IF the censor
| at all. So Facebook either gives up all censorship (free
| speech!), or gives up all user driven content (unlikely).
|
| That's just civil law, the constitutional right to free
| speech doesn't cover getting sued for it. Even if it does
| apply to corporations right to censor...
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I'm pretty sure repealing section 230 would mean
| companies would be liable for _everything_ posted on
| their platforms. I would expect censorship /moderation to
| reach broadcast TV levels in that case.
|
| > At its core, Section 230(c)(1) provides immunity from
| liability for providers and users of an "interactive
| computer service" who publish information provided by
| third-party users:
|
| >> No provider or user of an interactive computer service
| shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any
| information provided by another information content
| provider.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_230
| LatteLazy wrote:
| The short answer is it's complicated.
|
| The longer answer is...
|
| There are 2 sections we care about. The first (203(c)1)
| defines platforms as not being publishers so they're not
| liable (civilly) for content. That means they don't HAVE
| to moderate.
|
| But that leaves a problem. As soon as you start
| moderating, you become a publisher whether you like it or
| now.
|
| So there is ALSO 230(c)2
|
| >Section 230(c)(2) further provides "Good Samaritan"
| protection from civil liability for operators of
| interactive computer services in the good faith removal
| or moderation of third-party material they deem "obscene,
| lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing,
| or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material
| is constitutionally protected."
|
| That lets platforms moderate and censor if they want to
| AND STILL NOT GET SUED when their moderation is not
| perfect.
|
| Platforms probably have c1 rights anyway, courts ruled on
| that before 230 was enacted (section 230 is the remains
| of a bigger law that was ruled unconstitutional because
| it didn't respect the free press aspects enough)
|
| So without section 230, platforms have 2 options: no
| moderation OR moderate but eat a tonne of liability.
|
| Section 230 let's them have the best of both worlds:
| remove things AND don't be held responsible for things
| you didn't remove.
|
| I should have been clearer that it was c2 that I was
| referring to.
|
| If c2 were repealed, most platforms would have to stop
| all moderation. HN would be gone as we know it.
|
| Messy enough?
|
| In theory we could repeal the whole thing, but that has
| much the same effect as just repealing c2: companies
| close their user created content or get sued into
| oblivion by any lawsuit happy citizen.
|
| You can see how this turns into political talking points
| and mis understandings very easily about how section 230
| is both critical the free speech and against free speech
| and stops companies and enables them depending on the
| agenda of the speaker...
| ok_dad wrote:
| Or just stop doing business in {STATE}.
|
| _Edit: I previously referred to Texas (re: the comment
| about laws being passed there, which I think refer to
| those to restrict de-platforming). What I meant with this
| comment was more like "if a state passes a law like
| Texas, it might be easier not to do business there than
| to comply," which obviously wouldn't work if section 230
| was defanged or repealed. I don't think that would ever
| happen, but who knows._
| LatteLazy wrote:
| S.230 covers the whole USA.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Yea, I edited my comment, I was talking more about those
| states which make their own laws which would affect a
| platform. One of the up-comments in this chain referred
| to that Texas law that I think is supposed to prevent de-
| platforming. Section 230 would certainly have widespread
| effects.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Ah, I see! Thanks that makes more sense.
|
| I think you're right. Basically no user content platform
| that isn't (heavily) privately subsidised could survive
| without sec 230. Facebook would either need to charge
| hundreds of dollars a month per user or close accounts.
|
| I think one of the things that limits our society is that
| we need complex laws (sec 230 is very misunderstood, the
| same is true of financial regulation though) AND laws
| have to be simple enough that voters cannot be misled
| over what they do. That's a very tight constraint, sort
| of like building the Apollo project but only 10 year olds
| are allowed to work on it...
| chatterhead wrote:
| Until you get DOS'd to death.
| asdff wrote:
| Or you can do it the old fashion way. When I was in
| undergrad, anti abortion people showing graphic imagery and
| religious fanatics would use the fact that the main quad was
| a public space to stump their opinions. Most people would
| ignore them, others would stop to argue with them, but the
| cops never did anything because legally they could not remove
| them from a public space for speaking.
| chatterhead wrote:
| That happened at my school, too. There was one guy, little
| bald and always wearing a slightly too big suit, yelling
| about gays and the immorality of anal sex. Something tells
| me he fueled more experimentation than if he hadn't been
| there.
|
| "If that killjoy doesn't like something it must be fun!"
| [deleted]
| hunglee2 wrote:
| makes sense to own the means of communication, to shape the
| narrative.
|
| Ye on Parler will present a pretty clear challenge to US norms of
| freedom of speech - he is a vocal anti-semite (whilst at the same
| time claiming to be Jewish)and I doubt very much that ownership
| of any platform will moderate his views.
| fredgrott wrote:
| But at the same time it's like the right-wing(nuts)-news in
| that not one is profitable and they always need outside money
| support.
|
| Its one of the ways we are able to identify dirty money in
| politics as when they do that its easy to track it as opposed
| to a cash infusion from the platform owner.
| flyinglizard wrote:
| And it won't do him any good because ultimately it's Apple and
| Google who truly own the platforms and will decide who gets to
| play.
| sali0 wrote:
| I know many won't like this, but I think he meant Defcon 3,
| which I'm still not sure what it implies. I highly doubt he
| meant to issue death threats the way that people are perceiving
| this.
|
| Not to excuse his actions. I'd rather like to know wtf he's
| talking about and why.he would say something like this.
| Pandabob wrote:
| OP is referring to this:
| https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/9/23395490/twitter-lock-
| kan...
| sali0 wrote:
| Yes apologies. Thought there was something else. Edited
| comment a bit.
| n4r9 wrote:
| He accused a rapper of being co trolled by Jewish people, and
| also that he'd go "deathcon3" on Jewish people.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-63198991
| [deleted]
| dsr_ wrote:
| https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/unpacking-kanye-wests-
| ant...
| sali0 wrote:
| Did not see this whole backstory. Ty for the link.
| [deleted]
| europeanguy wrote:
| > he is a vocal anti-semite (whilst at the same time claiming
| to be Jewish)
|
| You know, there's a name for this. It's called a black
| Israelite.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hebrew_Israelites
| guerrilla wrote:
| > According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), "Some, but
| not all [Black Hebrew Israelites], are outspoken anti-Semites
| and racists." As of December 2019, the Southern Poverty Law
| Center "lists 144 Black Hebrew Israelite organizations as
| black separatist hate groups because of their antisemitic and
| anti-white beliefs". Tom Metzger, a former Grand Wizard of
| the Ku Klux Klan, once remarked to the Southern Poverty Law
| Center, "They're the black counterparts of us."
|
| Interesting...
| benwad wrote:
| I think one key difference between the BHI and the KKK is
| that the BHI never killed anyone or carried out any
| terrorist attacks.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| A man associated with the BHI killed 3 people at a Kosher
| supermarket in New Jersey in December of 2019[1]. That
| said, they aren't doing this in any organized fashion.
|
| [1] https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/110723/doc
| uments/...
| stemlord wrote:
| These guys are prevalent in nyc. You can always spot a
| group of these zealots in hot spots like times sq preying
| on unknowing passersby baiting them into conversation and
| bullying them
| 999900000999 wrote:
| What if your favorite artist didn't die at 27...
|
| He becomes Kanye. Apart of this is a challenge to his audience.
| Do you STILL listen?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Or Leonard Cohen, or Elton John, or David Bowie, or Dave Grohl.
| Not every artist who gets old becomes a weirdo with bizarre
| opinions.
| raydiatian wrote:
| Can't wait to watch the Kanye West dead stick nose dive
| datavirtue wrote:
| mschuster91 wrote:
| That's one of a hell of an ableist take.
|
| People with mental illnesses are legally entitled to the same
| rights as people that have not been diagnosed with a mental
| illness, _unless_ their rights (such as to purchase assets with
| their own money) have been specifically taken away from them
| following due process.
| coinbasetwwa wrote:
| But you see, I disagree with them, so we have to take their
| rights away /s
| aetherane wrote:
| Many people can be high achieving and functional despite having
| mental health issues and pushback from people like you.
|
| Kanye has made decisions his whole life. Maybe some were bad
| but he has made it through and succeeded to a high degree.
| dd36 wrote:
| Except Brittney.
| datavirtue wrote:
| He has obviously gone off the rails and needs help (I don't
| think he was like this many years ago). I'm disappointed that
| people view his antics as entertainment. He is serious, and
| quite obviously has a progressing problem. My original
| question, which has already been down-voted, was sincere.
|
| Par for the course in America, he will probably end up jailed
| due to his mental health issues.
| adamrezich wrote:
| is anyone else completely uncomfortable with how completely
| comfortable everyone is with people playing armchair
| psychiatrist for people they've never even personally met
| these days
| coinbasetwwa wrote:
| Yes. "Everyone I disagree with is crazy" is a real thing
| and disgusting. Reading a psychology book and a couple
| pop news articles doesn't make these people psychiatrists
| or psychologists.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Psychiatry has been used as a political weapon for nearly
| as long as it has existed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiat
| ry
| P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote:
| samirsd wrote:
| 2 * 0 = 0 fyi
| P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote:
| An app with millions of users, that everyone in this thread
| knows about, is worth $0?
| etchalon wrote:
| If it doesn't make money today, and does not any path to
| profitability, yes.
| klyrs wrote:
| Looks like they're about to get a chunk of Ye's cash, so
| it's worth more than zero until the transaction closes.
| FredPret wrote:
| Criticizing an ethnic group / culture is racist. If you're
| racist against Jews, that's called anti-Semitism. It's a
| reliable indicator that someone is a nutcase, either far-right
| or far-left.
|
| It's even worse than many other forms of bigotry because Jews
| have been targeted for genocide repeatedly over the centuries,
| most recently one human lifetime ago, and in an advanced
| Western nation.
| yjgyhj wrote:
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| The whole thing reminds me of Michael Jackson.
|
| _" All I wanna say is that they don't really care about us."_
| [deleted]
| mr_gibbins wrote:
| I spent a fruitless few minutes trying to find out about the
| company 'Ye' before realising this is a person.
|
| I feel old and confused.
| citilife wrote:
| I think others may be missing the fact of why Kanye could be
| buying Parler
|
| - Kanye just had his bank account closed by JP Morgan (for what
| appears to be his beliefs)
|
| https://www.tmz.com/2022/10/13/kanye-west-bank-jp-morgan-end...
|
| - Kanye was kicked off instagram & twitter
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/kanye-west-ins...
|
| - It's still unclear exactly why both occurred. Supposedly it's
| antisemitism, but he also just wore a "white lives matter" shirt
|
| https://nypost.com/2022/10/07/kanye-west-defends-white-lives...
|
| The connection between all of this could lead someone to want to
| buy their own social media company.
| kgwxd wrote:
| He'll be in on the GloriFi grift real soon too I'm sure. Same
| bad actors involved.
| citilife wrote:
| Is there a reason you call it a grift? Or "bad actors"?
| fourstar wrote:
| The kvetching and projection intensifies when the enemy is
| over the target.
| zerocrates wrote:
| The whole JP Morgan thing happened before all this, they dumped
| him back in September. A week or so before even that he was
| talking about dropping Chase on TV, he was upset at not getting
| face time with Jamie Dimon, and he'd been mad at them on social
| media before that.
|
| The recent statements about Jews and the "white lives matter"
| thing are both after that letter. That it was instead
| retaliation for "his beliefs" is a convenient inference his
| camp is happy for people to draw though.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > - Kanye just had his bank account closed by JP Morgan (for
| what appears to be his beliefs)
|
| The article quotes Kanye on this one:
|
| > "I went to JP Morgan but of course they won't give me no deal
| flow cause Jin Ulrich is on the board of both adidas and JP
| Morgan."
|
| This sounds like an accusation of conflict of interest. How is
| this related to his beliefs?
| errantmind wrote:
| Absolute free speech platforms don't work for the majority of
| people because they have no way of constraining participants to
| the Overton Window.
|
| It may be hard to understand for some, but there are topics that
| make people highly uncomfortable. These people prefer an
| environment that 'protects' them from fringe ideas.
|
| The issue is, the 'Overton Enforcement' doesn't work when a large
| minority (say, 30% of users) has ideas considered highly
| controversial to the majority of users. Most people actually do
| want to live in a bubble most of the time so being exposed to
| these opinions undermines their sanity.
|
| A 100% free speech platform could work fairly well though if it
| was sophisticated enough to understand what a user does and
| doesn't want to see and then only occasionally expose them to
| controversial content. Kind of like TikTok's 'for you' page but
| with less censorship. Or, perhaps, let users control their
| exposure directly. Twitter doesn't have the technical capability
| to pull this off though so they are stuck with occasionally
| infuriating large minorities of users.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| It seems that the main problem is trying to force everyone into
| the same enironment and searching for a one-size-fits-all
| solution, leading to censorship of almost any topic for which
| there is a vocal enough group that wants it censored.
|
| A simple solution would be federation - let people build and
| choose their own bubbles instead of forcing everyone into a one
| giant bubble. That's how it works in real-life.
| wellbehaved wrote:
| A fool and his money are soon parted.
| chatterhead wrote:
| Yet his net worth keeps growing...
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Are we going to end up with a social network per celebrity at
| some point?
| seanw444 wrote:
| Hey guys, I have an idea: why don't we try building free-speech
| protocols rather than free-speech platforms?
|
| Humans are fallible. We like to think we could build something
| where people can talk freely, but if the ability to censor
| something we don't like is presented, at some point nearly
| everybody will take that action because they personally deem it
| necessary for some greater good.
|
| Ultimately, protocols that cannot be altered or censored (at
| least without significant and difficult amounts of effort) are
| what are necessary to obtain true free speech.
|
| There are some groups that are understanding this, and working
| accordingly. LBRY for example, says exactly this in their "what
| is LBRY" article:
|
| > Building protocols, not platforms, is the best way to secure a
| free, open internet.
|
| As long as people use centralized services that are susceptible
| to fallible human intervention, that fallibility will be acted
| upon.
|
| Centralization was adequate back when the internet was first
| brewing. Many people had common interests, people were respectful
| of others' data often enough that encrypted network protocols
| weren't deemed necessary. Now, encryption is almost required
| because so many people have bad intentions. The internet has
| grown, and so have the amount of conflicting demographics using
| it.
|
| Just as we had to adopt encryption on a wide scale to keep the
| internet usable, adopting decentralization at a wide scale will
| be too. And that includes making it easy enough for normies to
| access that they think nothing else of it, much like how they
| don't care what encryption is, as long as there's a lock icon in
| their search bar.
| triceratops wrote:
| There's plenty of free-speech protocols, at various levels of
| the networking stack. TCP/IP. BitTorrent. HTTP. FTP. IRC. As
| long as you have an Internet connection, you have a voice.
| seanw444 wrote:
| I guess my point is about the adoption of said platforms.
| Yes, lots exist. They're too clunky or confusing for the
| layperson though.
| triceratops wrote:
| Seeding a torrent isn't that clunky or confusing. Lots of
| laypeople do it. And it's practically uncensorable.
| danem wrote:
| Time has shown again and again that open communication
| protocols generally lose to walled-gardens. Open protocols
| stagnate, don't attract capital, and cater to enthusiasts.
| Most people are perfectly happy with closed platforms and
| the promise of openness isn't worth even minor
| inconveniences to them.
| have_faith wrote:
| Lay people don't interact with protocols.
| zamadatix wrote:
| Protocols to exchange free speech already exist. The hard part
| is doing something most people consider useful with them
| without turning yourself into a platform.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| "true free speech" is not something that is free of problems.
|
| Child Porn, Revenge Porn, National Defense secrets leaking,
| instructions for Chlorine Gas masquerading as instructions for
| making Play-Doh, libel and slander, weaponized disinformation,
| doxxing, harassment, threats of violence.
|
| I get there are advantages to avoiding censure, in many
| extremely important situations.
|
| But don't pretend like it doesn't also hurt people.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Life is full of hurt. That's a reality people can't come to
| terms with.
|
| "Don't let perfect be the enemy of good."
| VikingCoder wrote:
| Communication that can be censored is good.
|
| "true free speech" is the perfection you're striving for.
|
| "Life is full of hurt." Are you an arms dealer? Why not?
| It's profitable, and sure, people get hurt, but what's the
| problem with that?
| armatav wrote:
| "Communication that can be censored is good".
|
| You should be able to choose what you see, not what other
| people say.
| seanw444 wrote:
| Being able to stop bad at the expense of good is the
| perfection you're striving for.
|
| There are two different priorities here we will simply
| never agree on. Both harm someone.
| VikingCoder wrote:
| Being 100% immune to censorship is the perfection you're
| striving for.
|
| If you weren't striving for perfection then you would
| accept the status quo as good enough, not try to make
| something new.
| paxys wrote:
| Because there is no money in protocols.
| mikkergp wrote:
| There are very few people who just want to speak freely. People
| choose a platform like twitter because they want to be heard,
| and they want the opportunity to be heard by people who don't
| want to listen.
| zikduruqe wrote:
| Makes this tweet all the more relevant -
| https://nitter.net/JudiciaryGOP/status/1578174670854975491
| mrtksn wrote:
| Musk and everyone else is right that we do need a platform with
| free speech. The only problem is that all those free speech
| advocates are actually NIMBY's when it comes to free speech.
|
| I have been following self proclaimed free speech
| absolutists(because I too, believe in free speech but don't
| believe it exists) and they are totally not the kind of people
| that say "I hate what you say but I will die defending your right
| to say it". In all places, these people are curating comments and
| posts to push agenda.
|
| The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains
| so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
|
| Yet again, I like that Musk and Kanye kind of people claim that
| they want free speech because at least we can hold them
| responsible when they don't deliver it. This is in contrast with
| the pure fascist where they cannot be held responsible for
| anything because they don't claim virtue in first place. It's a
| bit like companies doing greenwashing, which can be exposed when
| they don't deliver on their claimed virtues versus companies who
| don't even claim such virtues and instead pretend that it doesn't
| matter. Those who claim virtue are better even if they ultimately
| fail.
| jonathanyc wrote:
| I don't like how "I'm a free speech absolutist" has become "I
| want to force you to read my toxic rants, even when you try to
| get away from me." You yourself say 4chan is "barely bearable."
|
| What free speech has meant historically is "I don't believe the
| government should be able to criminalize certain kinds of
| speech." It never meant "I am entitled to insert garbage into
| someone else's newspaper or book" until people started
| misappropriating the term.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| It's more that "absolutism" tends to be bad, no matter what
| you apply it to.
| stale2002 wrote:
| That is what the block button is for.
|
| Most people who are in favor of free speech, are perfectly
| fine with you personally clicking the block button.
|
| Instead, what they don't want, is a centralized platform
| preventing consenting parties from engaging with each other.
|
| See the difference?
| fzeroracer wrote:
| What exactly is the difference, again? A block button is
| prone to breaking thru numerical power. If enough people
| are responding to you and or harassing you there is no
| manageable way to block all of them, especially without
| first passively engaging with their posts in the first
| place.
|
| So instead people build addons and blocklists to manage all
| of that for them. Now you have a separate centralized
| platform for dealing with a certain subset of users.
|
| And if that doesn't work or if they don't want to put in
| that effort they just leave the platform instead. They go
| to somewhere else where the social agreement with the
| platform is to automatically filter out or remove those
| users. Hence why few people actually use the free speech
| platforms like Gab, Parker etc.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > What exactly is the difference, again?
|
| Think about 2 situations. Person A, wants to see the
| content of Person B. So person A voluntarily chooses to
| see the content.
|
| And the other situation is Person C, does not want to see
| the content of person B, so chooses not to do so.
|
| > there is no manageable way to block all of them
|
| Yes there is. Someone could choose to allow an automated
| method of blocking people that they don't want to see.
|
| As long as nobody is _forced_ to use this automated
| moderation, or can change it, while still having access
| to that platform, then it is fine.
|
| > Now you have a separate centralized platform for
| dealing with a certain subset of users.
|
| No actually, it is quite a bit different. The difference
| being that a person could _chose_ to modify this blocking
| authority. It is all fine and well to have blocking
| authorities, as long as I, the user can turn it off, if I
| choose to do so, on that platform, or otherwise modify my
| own blocklist, or add a white list.
|
| So that is the solution. Feel free to have blocklists.
| Just let me change the blocklist, for myself, if I
| disagree with it.
|
| There, everyone gets what they want.
| coinbasetwwa wrote:
| This is a weird take. Most folks are old enough to remember
| the pre trump-era internet and society where alternating
| views were allowed and engaged with as opposed to leading to
| bans and social cancellation. Conflating that with allowing
| people to shove views in your face is odd, your ability to
| tune out is distinctly different from one's ability to
| broadcast.
| mabbo wrote:
| > The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it
| contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
|
| That is what happens when speech is free from consequences.
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Free speech advocacy was trendy with the left when the right
| held more institutional power. Now it's embraced (at least as a
| slogan) by the right. In much the same way I don't trust Apple
| to give a damn about software freedom, but they backed Webkit
| and clang for their own self interested reasons. I accept that
| being "on the side of free expression" means that I will need
| to shift political allegiances now and then as power
| consolidation shifts. Along the way the tools for enabling and
| preserving free speech get better and better though. Long live
| the anti-establishment wingnut right... until they win, then
| I'll be hanging with Jimmy Dore.
| CM30 wrote:
| I think the main thing that would help there wouldn't be to
| force any particular platform to allow all speech, but to make
| it so anyone who wanted to set up such a site or platform could
| do so without fear of being bullied off the internet by an
| angry mob or moral puritanism. Web hosting services, firewall
| services like Cloudflare, payment processers like Visa and
| Mastercard and internet providers should be regulated as
| utilities like water and electric companies are.
|
| If that was done, then there would be far less issues here.
| Those who want free speech focused platforms could create them,
| and those who didn't want to use them wouldn't have to. The
| problem at the moment is that not only is there no place for
| free speech online, but any attempts at creating one can be
| bullied off the internet by an angry mob on social media
| because of companies and PR.
| tootie wrote:
| The kind of censorship that occurs on places like Twitter or
| Facebook is purely an artifact of free market capitalism. The
| existence of odious people with socially unacceptable opinions
| decrease the value of the platform. Given those kind of people
| unfettered access to a private platform when they are not
| contributing to the growth and vibrancy of the platform is
| essentially just charity. This is the "marketplace of ideas"
| functioning exactly as it's supposed to.
| coinbasetwwa wrote:
| I'm pretty sure all you need is a free speech platform with a
| tiktok style algorithm that suppresses the grimiest of
| toxicity. Such a platform would blow every other one of the
| park and have a rush of content creators. I believe as those
| engagement algorithms become more accessible we'll see a clear
| winner emerge.
| causi wrote:
| _" I hate what you say but I will die defending your right to
| say it". In all places, these people are curating comments and
| posts to push agenda._
|
| It's incredibly tiresome, not just online but in real life.
| There is no freedom vs control debate. There's just the people
| who advocate arresting those who teach their children
| inconvenient truths vs those who advocate arresting those who
| use naughty language.
| 1270018080 wrote:
| That's kind of a hilarious way to frame each side of the
| debate. Hilarious in a bad way that doesn't give you the
| benefit of the doubt on the topic.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The 2020 election was stolen isn't an inconvenient truth,
| it's not naughty language, it's a lie that the majority of
| GOP house candidates are furthering. You're
| mischaracterization of the debate leads me to believe you
| made this comment in bad faith.
| causi wrote:
| I was actually talking about CRT and the history of slavery
| in the United States. That's the inconvenient truth
| legislatures in some states are attempting to arrest people
| for teaching. Plenty of people are trying to keep election
| conspiracy theories off social media but as far as I know
| nobody is trying to pass a law against spreading them.
|
| _You 're mischaracterization of the debate leads me to
| believe you made this comment in bad faith._
|
| And there it is. Advocate for free speech in front of a
| left-leaning audience and you're a conspiracy-spewing
| Republican. Advocate for free speech in front of a right-
| leaning audience and you're a child-grooming communist.
| Like I said, tiresome.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Right, no one actually wants free speech, they're just
| mad when the moderator disagrees with them.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| We don't need a free speech platform. People need a choice as
| to how the content they see is moderated. That's what forums
| used to do, until we collectively decided to just put all the
| forums on Facebook or Twitter rather than having separate
| forums for each interest.
|
| Everyone thinking "we need free speech on Twitter" has lost the
| plot, and, as you mentioned, the revealed preference of people
| who claim they want free speech is actually toward heavier
| moderation (but moderation they like).
|
| Most of them go on Twitter for one kind of content, and on
| Parler or "Truth" Social for another kind, and they don't
| really want the streams to cross. We used to have this in the
| 90's and early 2000's. The question is how to get it back.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| You are onto something, but companies doing the moderating
| are doing what they can to ensure that:
|
| a) new entrants can't exist ( Parler, Truth.. whatever ) b)
| the rules are so generic that they ensure given platform can
| ban whatever
|
| And this is why people clamor for simple free speech slogan.
|
| If this is how we understand it, then we do need free speech.
| pclmulqdq wrote:
| The tragedy of the commons happened. The old situation had
| a few fatal flaws (mostly discoverability) that meant that
| new entrants could take almost all the oxygen out of forums
| by having a weird form of "mass appeal." It worked for a
| while, but the cracks are starting to show.
|
| Unfortunately, I doubt that we can put the cat back in the
| bag.
| [deleted]
| merely-unlikely wrote:
| Twitter et al should allow users to choose their own third-
| party moderators and feed sort. Kind of like choosing your
| preferred ad blocker. That way everyone can see their
| preferred curation.
| bobsmith432 wrote:
| How about we just go back to not using one big central social
| communication platform and go back to the spirit of using
| separate independently owned forums, chatrooms and websites
| for our little niches and communities to prevent this issue.
| themitigating wrote:
| How does this prevent the issue? You can say horrible
| things on smaller forums as well
| api wrote:
| Sure, and people who don't want to circle jerk about it
| can leave. This is exactly how it always worked. I've
| left a lot of toxic forums.
| kixiQu wrote:
| People are not necessarily all on the same side of
| defining "the issue", FWIW.
| themitigating wrote:
| The parent said this
|
| "How about we just go back to not using one big central
| social communication platform and go back to the spirit
| of using separate independently owned forums, chatrooms
| and websites for our little niches and communities to
| prevent this issue"
|
| Regardless of what the issue is how would being on a
| smaller forum prevent this?
| mancerayder wrote:
| Why are we concerned with people saying horrible things
| per se, and not with the fact that the horrible things
| are amplified on a Twitter platform? In the conversation
| above, the smaller forums idea lets people go where they
| want. If you wander into an offensive place and you get
| offended, that becomes on-you, and then we do away with
| the complaint about Twitter promoting the bad and people
| getting offended inadvertently.
|
| The idea of chasing after evil ideas is flawed from the
| outset.
|
| It's not new, either, which is why this very long hacker
| news thread bothers me. I usually like to wade on on
| these topics more extensively, but here the entirety of
| the population is applauding free speech being a shitty
| idea, without any historical conversation.
|
| Oh and it's incredibly US centric. Freedom of speech is a
| principle that was discussed in the Enlightenment and
| beyond, and fought for (first against religious
| authorities in ancient times, then against religious
| authorities in the 20th century). It happens to exist in
| the 1st amendment as a government limitation, but as a
| principle and a moral it is well beyond that.
| adamrezich wrote:
| we can't uninvent the smartphone but every day I wish we
| could
| bergenty wrote:
| I'm no longer a free speech idealist.
| sph wrote:
| > The only problem is that all those free speech advocates are
| actually NIMBY's when it comes to free speech
|
| It's unclear from your comment. Are you saying that Musk and
| West are our free speech champions and everybody else is a
| poser?
|
| Because Musk and West do not care about free speech either.
| It's the problem these rich idiots all claim to have: "I need a
| platform where my voice can be heard," while their voice
| already gets top spot on the trending Twitter page and on
| newspaper front pages.
|
| Of course Michael Spicer said it better:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrqhgTjFkLo
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Musk and West are part of "all those".
| Joeri wrote:
| I used to be free speech absolutist, but I am not any longer,
| especially when it comes to social media.
|
| The argument in favor of absolute free speech for me was
| basically "let everyone hear everything and make up their own
| mind". This presumes that people are swayed by the content of
| an argument. This is a false assumption, people are mostly
| swayed by the volume of the argument. This is well documented
| in psychological research. Now, if everyone had the same level
| of visibility for their personal speech this would just lead to
| an ersatz version of opinion democracy, where the most often
| held opinions would rise to the top, which wouldn't be a bad
| thing.
|
| But people don't have equal visibility. The reach of a wealthy
| or famous person is so much greater that in the political arena
| basically only the speech of the wealthy and famous ends up
| having enough volume to convince people, even if it starts out
| wildly unpopular and even if it is objectively false. Social
| media are especially sensitive to this thanks to the ability to
| buy access to views without the viewers even realizing, to
| micro-target audiences, and to have zero independent vetting of
| what is said. This then perverts absolute free speech into a
| weapon used by the powerful to deceive and subvert democracies.
|
| That's why I think that to protect democracies we must have
| some limits on the ability to get speech amplification through
| (social) media, but I don't have a hard and fast rule for what
| that should look like. It is far easier to say "let everything
| pass" but that is the easy way out and ultimately bad.
| MockObject wrote:
| I wonder if anyone believes their own views are too dangerous
| for broad distribution, and should be limited to protect
| demoocracy.
| morelisp wrote:
| Your last clause makes this beg the question, I think.
|
| A lot of people believe their own views are dangerous for
| democracy, and limited to protect democracy. They just also
| don't believe in protecting democracy - sometimes
| explicitly, sometimes with lip service to a "democracy"
| that's little more than nationalism.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > limits on the ability to get speech amplification
|
| Well, you're the only person I've _ever_ seen suggest that
| social media distribution be limited by author rather than
| viewpoint. Although I disagree, I 'm not quite sure how that
| could be managed, either.
| nostromo wrote:
| > This presumes that people are swayed by the content of an
| argument.
|
| Freedom is a good in and of itself. Our rights don't need to
| serve a larger purpose.
|
| Imagine asking for permission to read a book and being asked,
| "but what good would you reading this book do for society?"
| The answer of corse is that it doesn't matter -- our civil
| rights are not transactional -- they do not exist to serve
| others.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I agree, mostly. I propose methods to address these
| shortcomings instead of limiting speech.
| themitigating wrote:
| I agree with this but then you don't have free speech
| right?
|
| I assume you are referring to something like defamation but
| controlled by the state
| mrtksn wrote:
| No, I refer to things like attaching counter opinions to
| opinions of people with high visibility for example. So
| if the concern is the power of the famous, never display
| their tweets alone, display it with a few other tweets.
|
| Maybe do issue follow ups, so if someone says something
| and later it is contested prioritise the contestants
| until they get similar reach. For example, if a
| politician says he never met with someone and a photo of
| them together is revealed make sure that their claim is
| displayed together with the new photo.
|
| Things like this.
| BrianOnHN wrote:
| I like this notion.
|
| However, some sort of "fair & balanced" law would have to
| enforce this.
|
| Edit: and to respond to sibling comment about fact-
| checking being heckled...
|
| The mechanism here would have to somehow force a similar
| amount of views. For example, if a lie gets 1MM views,
| then the proof of the lie should have to gain 1MM views
| before the original author can gain leverage of the
| algorithm again.
|
| Of course the new system will eventually be abused,
| however, it's a step in the right direction. And when
| that eventually fails to be recognizable, another set of
| checks and balances must be layered on top.
| stonogo wrote:
| We had that in broadcasting; it was an FCC rule called
| the Fairness Doctrine. Reagan dismantled it, and that
| directly led to the extremist radio empires that fuel a
| lot of the misinformation online today.
| triceratops wrote:
| > I refer to things like attaching counter opinions to
| opinions of people with high visibility for example
|
| That's what fact-checking is. It's widely heckled.
| themitigating wrote:
| Is saying something is widely heckled similar to when
| someone says "we all know.." before making a
| controversial statement?
| triceratops wrote:
| I wasn't aware "many prominent people don't like fact-
| checking" was a statement that needed a citation. In any
| case, you're free to disagree with that. I don't really
| care enough to try to prove it to you.
| themitigating wrote:
| According to a Pew Research poll "do fact checkers favor
| tend to favor one political side"
|
| It's split down the middle
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
| tank/2019/06/27/republicans...
|
| As to prominent people- What do you consider prominent,
| would most people agree with that, and do you have a poll
| of these people.
|
| Saying most prominent people blah blah blah is debatable
| on two levels
| mrtksn wrote:
| The problem with fact checking is the presumption of
| authority over the truth. I don't suggest fact checking,
| I suggest equal exposure to contesting ideas.
|
| I guess NASA tweets might receive pairs who claim that
| the Earth is not a globe :) That's OK, NASA can respond
| to these with equal visibility and if people are not
| convinced I guess NASA would need more convincing
| arguments.
| triceratops wrote:
| All your "free thinkers" that are browsing these posts
| for 5 minutes while they take a dump won't be taken in by
| the mere stamp of authoritativeness on the fact-check
| posts, right? I mean, obviously all users are able to
| make good judgments and competently weigh all the facts
| on every topic. Why are you so worried? What makes a fact
| check post more authoritative than NASA?
|
| Btw I'm not advocating for active suppression of ideas. I
| just understand if a particular company chooses to do it
| on their website. I'd do the same in their place. It's
| not their job to give everyone a voice.
| n65463f23_4 wrote:
| this is not an argument against absolute free speech, its an
| argument against social media and discourse being controlled
| by algorithms
| jpadkins wrote:
| exactly. We need to go back to public discourse being
| carefully controlled by a select few.
| OrangeMonkey wrote:
| To those who espouse the idea that comments should be
| filtered for the greater good, I say 'You first.'
|
| There was a time period when the left was for free speech and
| the right was wanting to constrain it. Maybe its just a giant
| pendulum - there is no right/left difference when it comes to
| free speech - everyone wants to censor / filter the speech of
| the opposite side.
|
| If things come in cycles, then I expect the right to take
| over more and more (see the european shift) and then for them
| to slowly become in favor of censorship. Maybe then - if we
| are lucky - the left will remember that censorship is always
| the enemy even if it helps them currently.
| least wrote:
| > everyone wants to censor / filter the speech of the
| opposite side.
|
| This is mostly because the left/right spectrum is too
| nebulous to be genuinely useful at understanding most
| people's values, which tend to be more nuanced than a one
| dimensional spectrum allows for. People that want to
| censor/filter speech are authoritarians. Nothing about
| authoritarianism uniquely binds it to the left or the
| right.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Fortunately there are other dimensions.
| bergenty wrote:
| The right is still for censorship, but selectively just for
| the things they want censored. There's no pendulum, just an
| explosion in hypocrisy. The left used to rely on goodwill
| and ethical human behavior to do their "censorship" for
| them, but we've lost that at this point and people don't
| care if they're perceived as evil anymore because they have
| a large enough mutual admiration club now.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > There was a time period when the left was for free speech
| and the right was wanting to constrain it.
|
| When was this - and can you give examples of left and right
| acting the way you described in the past?
| annowiki wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Speech_Movement
|
| Mario's "Operation of the Machine" speech is pretty good.
|
| Also worth noting, often these groups were not quite as
| egalitarian as they're thought to be. SDS for instance
| had quite a bit of sexism in its operations: https://en.w
| ikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_a_Democratic_Soci...
|
| I have no position on this debate, I just thought you'd
| want a little context.
| letterlib wrote:
| There are a lot of examples of this and the left has had
| some truly great advocates for free speech. In terms of
| time period, the Red Scare and Mccarthyism was a time
| when the left was being heavily censored by the right.
| The Civil Rights movements as well with MLK during the
| 1960s and then Frank Kameny in the 1970s trying to get
| rights for gays.
|
| Other leftist advocates for free speech include Obama,
| Elenor Roosevelt, and Aryeh Neier are brilliant examples.
| sangnoir wrote:
| What counts as "free speech" tends to be subjective: was
| MLK pro-free-speech or against it? That depends on
| _whose_ speech you 're considering. I can give even
| earlier counter-examples with left/right flipped (e.g.
| abolitionist literature in the south).
|
| My initial point wasn't that it never happened, only to
| show there were never deliberate, strategic positions on
| free speech by the left or right- only messy tactical
| circumstances. Not long before McCarthyism was Japanese
| internment by a giant of the left: FDR.
|
| Obama famously called someone a "jack-ass" after they
| exercised their free speech on-stage. He also railed
| against the Citizens United ruling. Having a binary
| "for/against free speech" is reductive.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Obama famously called someone a "jack-ass" after they
| exercised their free speech on-stage.
|
| I thought that a strange comment. Disapproving of _what_
| one says is clearly not the same as condemning free
| speech.
| [deleted]
| crummy wrote:
| > To those who espouse the idea that comments should be
| filtered for the greater good, I say 'You first.'
|
| that's part of the reason why I come to HN, for well-
| moderated (or "censored" if you prefer) discussions on tech
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| > This presumes that people are swayed by the content of an
| argument. This is a false assumption, people are mostly
| swayed by the volume of the argument.
|
| That's only half the story. The other half is tone. I have
| been persuaded against several beliefs that should have won
| me over if volume were the only consideration due to the
| quality of the writing. "These people type like morons, it's
| probably a belief primarily found amidst the stupid", as it
| were.
| kibwen wrote:
| Same here. The notion of "free speech" was one of the most
| successful and liberating memes (in the original sense of the
| word) in human history. But with the advent of technology,
| overflow attacks on free speech make unrestricted speech as
| useless as no speech.
|
| It's like living in darkness, and then someone invents light,
| and everyone cries "more light", and it's great, and then
| after a while the light gets so bright that it's blinding,
| making the light useless for its original purpose of letting
| you see things, and yet we still cry "more light" because
| we're afraid of going back to the darkness.
|
| I don't know what new thing to replace the rallying cry if
| "free speech" with. Something about signal-to-noise ratio,
| but all the alternatives involve trusting people to moderate,
| which is obviously an undesirable property compared to the
| original concept, but I think it might be simply unavoidable.
| At a high enough level, free speech itself can be used to
| eliminate free speech.
| spacemadness wrote:
| Free speech to me is not going to jail for saying you think
| Hitler is a swell guy or you hate the president. It has
| nothing to do with protected algorithmic amplification of
| hate speech which is what a lot of bad actors are clinging
| to it for.
| asdff wrote:
| Exactly! Free speech is to protect you from being jailed
| or executed by the state for publicly held opinions. It
| has absolutely nothing to do with twitter, and I believe
| anyone arguing that it does is arguing in bad faith or
| out of ignorance to the actual purpose of the free speech
| clause of the first amendment.
| least wrote:
| You have this completely backwards. The first amendment
| is the US' _constitutional protection of free speech._
| Free speech itself is an inalienable right. You would
| have the right to free speech regardless of whether or
| not your government protects it (which many don 't).
| Governments do not grant rights.
|
| Free speech on Twitter is a matter of _values._ It is not
| a matter of whether or not Twitter is legally liable to
| protect free speech (they 're not) but whether they
| should protect it because it's something that is
| worthwhile protecting.
|
| Given the ubiquity of social media and its current
| massive role in communicating and share ideas, what role
| should the companies behind these services play?
| asdff wrote:
| If you have a right and the government isn't protecting
| it, do you really have a right? Sure you can get all
| philosophical and say things like every soul has a right
| to X Y and Z, but that doesn't mean anything in practice
| outside of the ivory tower if the government you are
| beholden to has a stance to the contrary.
|
| OTOH if its only about values and not about the actual
| legal idea of freedom of speech, then you can argue with
| that logic that there is also a moral value in protecting
| groups of individuals from being the subject of vitriol
| and hate speech on a forum you own. That's the position
| Twitter et al. have taken in this regard.
| least wrote:
| > If you have a right and the government isn't protecting
| it, do you really have a right?
|
| Yes, but only to the extent that you're capable of
| protecting it yourself. This is why the second amendment
| exists in the United States. I don't really care to get
| into whether or not this a valid point of view since that
| could be its entire own discussion, but that is at least
| partially the rationale behind protecting people's rights
| to procure weaponry.
|
| > Sure you can get all philosophical and say things like
| every soul has a right to X Y and Z, but that doesn't
| mean anything in practice outside of the ivory tower if
| the government you are beholden to has a stance to the
| contrary.
|
| I get what you're saying but unless the government does
| some minority report type thing where they arrest you
| before you exercise your rights, most people will still
| get to in the _real world_ exercise it at least once. A
| person doesn 't lose their right to free speech just
| because they are dumb or otherwise incapable of
| communicating their speech, either.
|
| > OTOH if its only about values and not about the actual
| legal idea of freedom of speech, then you can argue with
| that logic that there is also a moral value in protecting
| groups of individuals from being the subject of vitriol
| and hate speech on a forum you own. That's the position
| Twitter et al. have taken in this regard.
|
| This is in fact where I think the most interesting
| discussion can occur. What values should social media
| platforms be enforcing? I personally think that censoring
| speech broadly on the platform is in most cases
| inappropriate -- Twitter and the like can make tools to
| help people insulate themselves from people they don't
| wish to see or interact with. Some of these already
| exist, but they could expand them. They could even create
| features that allow users to preemptively take action on
| types of speech they find objectionable (advanced
| filtering techniques).
|
| I find this preferable because it allows the broader
| community to maintain discourse (even if some people find
| it abhorrent) and importantly grants individuals agency
| over the type of speech they engage with.
| wk_end wrote:
| It's complicated - that's Free Speech as a _right_ , but
| Free Speech as a _virtue_ has a history in liberal
| thought that goes deeper than just protection from the
| government - most notably, Mill in On Liberty. There 's
| an unfortunate but understandable tendency to conflate
| these two things.
| mc32 wrote:
| It gets further complicated so that if you tell a joke in
| poor taste or in haste without considering the future and
| other implications you can get retroactively "cancelled".
|
| So today you say something that is acceptable. But maybe
| tomorrow, after you turn 18, someone discovers your
| statement and they cancel you using today's judgements.
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| The solution is for the metaphorical adults in the room
| to stand up and proclaim "cool story; we don't care" when
| someone comes knocking at their door with evidence of
| misdoings of one of their employees. Just claim it's a
| faked screenshot and your internal review processes do
| not act on false information.
| spacemadness wrote:
| I'm not really conflating them here. The bad actors argue
| that having access to algorithmic amplification is a
| right. As an aside, how do we fit bots into JSM's
| framework?
| lancesells wrote:
| This is how I look at it as well. The government can't
| come knocking because I have opinions. It doesn't mean I
| get to espouse those opinions anywhere I please (hotel
| lobby, shopping mall, concert, stadium) where it becomes
| a public disturbance. I'm free to write about whatever my
| opinions are but I'm not free to force someone to publish
| them.
| BWStearns wrote:
| To borrow from Popehat:
|
| > If you block people on Twitter you're not truly open to
| different arguments or ideas. Similarly if you were truly
| open to trying new and different foods, you'd eat this hot
| dog I found in the gutter.
|
| I think in the context of social media the
| replacement/adjunct rallying cry is "free association",
| i.e. moderation. I don't have to engage with racist
| nonsense or the people who produce it.
|
| How exactly that's done is certainly an area for
| competition/innovation between the social networks, but
| ultimately the ability to not have to hear some categories
| of speech is the answer.
| cudgy wrote:
| So, in other words, you liked free speech until free speech
| became more prevalent when it became available to the
| masses via technology?
|
| Part of accepting free speech is being tolerant of speech
| you may find offensive.
| onos wrote:
| The concern about the algo can clearly be mitigated. Eg here
| on HN there is no personalized feed concept, and that
| prevents one from entering a thought bubble.
|
| It's not completely free speech here, but seems close and
| mostly pretty good results follow.
| klyrs wrote:
| > Yet again, I like that Musk and Kanye kind of people claim
| that they want free speech because at least we can hold them
| responsible when they don't deliver it.
|
| How do you propose to do that, if you can't hold reddit,
| twitter et al accountable for the same today?
| vikaveri wrote:
| Interesting how often "free speech" seems to equate with "free
| to be offensive jerk". If your best argument is presented in s
| way that makes it sound like "You're ruining my life! I hate
| you forever!" then maybe you should go for a timeout and come
| back when you can discuss things calmly and rationally. I
| listen to arguments, not tantrums and swearing
|
| Edit: typo
| par wrote:
| "The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it
| contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable."
|
| Yes, this is what you'll end up getting on so called 'free
| speech' platforms. Because, unfortunately, these days what
| people really mean when they say 'free speech' is actually a
| veil for them to say hateful things about marginalized groups
| of people.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it
| contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
|
| Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does wiggle its
| eyebrows meaningfully in causation's direction.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| It tells me there's places of free speech on the internet but
| what is really wanted here is forced listening.
|
| Free speech on small fringe sites somehow doesn't count
| because it's not forced on people that don't want to see it.
| It's pretty clearly not a free speech issue at this point.
| btbuildem wrote:
| That's a good observation!
|
| I get unreasonably irked when some subreddit won't let me
| post a comment / removes a comment. Like, "who do you think
| you are to limit my ability to express myself here?!"
| Deprived of context, my contribution is meaningless -- so,
| how does that interact with the freedom of speech, really?
|
| Say I'm in a crowded square where people are arguing about
| squids, and I have a squid-related revelation I'd like to
| share, but the self-appointed Guardians of the Square have
| gagged me. Is this an infringement on free speech? I'm free
| to leave the square and speak -- but what I have to say is
| relevant within the confines of the square, not elsewhere.
| AnotherGoodName wrote:
| It'd be weird and very abusable if free speech ever
| implied the right to a venue.
|
| If they couldn't stop people talking at their venue
| what's to stop someone completely sabotaging their
| agenda?
| triceratops wrote:
| You've hit the nail on the head. All these "free speech
| absolutists" actually want "gratis reach" not "free
| speech".
| Melatonic wrote:
| Exactly. And they do not understand that with free speech
| does not come freedom from consequences.
|
| There are plenty of places with free speech. You can walk
| outside and start saying some pretty insane stuff right
| now and people may hate you (consequence) but you are
| unlikely to have any type of legal consequence.
|
| The social media one gets me the most because even if you
| do get rid of all moderation it is no secret that there
| is some algo out there amplifying some voices and not
| others. And in a way that is just censorship with extra
| steps.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I believe that there is a time, a place, and a proper amount
| of just about everything, including toxicity. People who wish
| to interact with 4Chan and its culture need to understand
| what it really is. The anonymity affords unfiltered reaction
| and you should never expect your posts to be treated with the
| kind of social norms that non-anonymous and pseudo-anonymous
| platforms provide. While the default experience is to have
| your posts largely ignored, if you actually want honest and
| unvarnished opinions on your idea then 4Chan is the place to
| solicit it. As long as people go in with the understanding
| that nothing posted there should ever be taken seriously and
| that it functions as counter-cultural catharsis, the
| perceived toxicity becomes a feature, not a bug.
| mikkergp wrote:
| > if you actually want honest and unvarnished opinions on
| your idea then 4Chan is the place to solicit it.
|
| I actually doubt the kind of trolling that happens on 4chan
| can be described as honest. Unvarnished maybe.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| What's being censored currently beside hate speech and child
| porn?
|
| There's lots of things demonitized and not getting
| recommended.
|
| But what else is censored?
| dcow wrote:
| jslaD wrote:
| 4chan does not have the concept of "Internet points". Are
| you thinking Reddit?
| dcow wrote:
| No. I'm talking about 4chan.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver
| it. This is in contrast with the pure fascist where they cannot
| be held responsible for anything because they don't claim
| virtue in first place.
|
| What's the plan to do that when they censor all dissent on the
| platforms they just bought?
| impowski wrote:
| When it happens we'll call you.
| hoseja wrote:
| Probably similar to what is currently happening on all the
| other platforms censoring dissent.
| guerrilla wrote:
| What do you mean? Be a billionaire and buy the platform?
| mrtksn wrote:
| You don't actually need to be a billionaire to have a
| platform. It helps to quickly own one but you can always
| build it yourself.
|
| Those who felt censored just created their own social
| media. Some prominent figures in extreme right community
| are blue collar workers.
| rvz wrote:
| Then do what Gab, Gettr and Truth Social did and 'build your
| own platform'. If not that, then use a Mastodon instance like
| mastodon.social as an alternative?
|
| The only thing these networks censor is anything that is
| illegal in their hosted jurisdiction i.e the US.
| dagw wrote:
| _The only thing these networks censor is anything that is
| illegal in their hosted jurisdiction_
|
| Truth Social has apparently banned (and shadow banned) lots
| of people for posting anti-Trump and anti-GOP political
| messages.
| easrng wrote:
| The fediverse (network of activitypub servers, including
| mastodon) itself doesn't censor anything at all, but if you
| don't moderate your instance then other instances might
| decide to stop federating with you to protect their users.
| luckylion wrote:
| As far as I understood, they're not doing that on a case-
| by-case basis, but are using centralized block-lists
| (which every admin can choose to follow automatically).
| That's a step up from raw centralized censorship, but
| it's not a big step.
| easrng wrote:
| Most admins AFAIK don't have centralized blocklists but
| when the new bad instances pop up there tend to be
| #fediblock posts pretty fast, and they get shared pretty
| widely.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Forgive my ignorance: I thought you could basically say/post
| anything on Twitter as long as:
|
| * it was not actively illegal (CP, terrorism etc)
|
| * hacked info
|
| * deadnaming trans people
|
| Is that not the case anymore?
| kbelder wrote:
| That is not the case, and hasn't been for years.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I read the rules and the Wikipedia page and that's all I
| can find. What else is there?
| LegitShady wrote:
| https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies
|
| why would you go to wikipedia to get a copy of twitter's
| policies? Anyways based on what you've said so far you
| haven't actually been paying attention. It's been year's
| since Dorsey went Rogan's show and took one his trust and
| safety lawyers with him to do all the legal talk so he
| could maintain deniability.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| I read that. It seems to back up my point. Moderation is
| minimal outside of the specific cases I listed...
| awb wrote:
| > Yet again, I like that Musk and Kanye kind of people claim
| that they want free speech because at least we can hold them
| responsible when they don't deliver it.
|
| Really? They've never defined free speech, so how can we hold
| them accountable?
|
| The idea of a "free speech absolutist" is a complete joke
| destined for legal consequences. For example, I don't think
| they mean free speech is the ability to post obscene content,
| threats, state secrets, corporate IP, or any other legal
| restrictions on free speech:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
|
| Plus, there are all kinds of free speech reductions they could
| make, like only allowing palatable content onto top trending
| recommendations. So, you're not banning free speech, but you're
| actively restricting it based on what's attractive to
| advertisers or even the general public.
|
| If they said "all legally permitted speech on our platform will
| be given the same protection and visibility based on metrics
| that do no include the meaning of the speech", then that would
| be something concrete that we could hold them accountable to.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > the ability to post obscene content, threats, state
| secrets, corporate IP, or any other legal restrictions
|
| Free speech opponents always like to point to these examples
| when the topic of free speech comes up, but I've never seen
| free speech advocates use an example of any of these as
| examples of problematic censorship - instead, they (we) point
| out voluminous examples of unfashionable opinions being
| removed. In fact, if Kanye or Musk came out and said "free
| speech except for" and listed your (specific, easily
| definable) examples, I'd still agree with them that they were
| advocating for free speech.
| awb wrote:
| > I've never seen free speech advocates use an example of
| any of these as examples of problematic censorship
|
| Just look at some of the exceptions to free speech: https:/
| /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
|
| * Incitement
|
| * False statements of fact
|
| * Obscenity
|
| * Fighting words
|
| * Threatening the president of the United States
|
| These are all grey areas that are constantly being tested
| and censored to varying degrees on multiple Social Media
| platforms. Trump was banned from Twitter because of "the
| risk of further incitement of violence" after Jan. 6. So
| it's very much at the crux of the issue on the debate
| whether or not Trump's speech on Twitter should have been
| protected by the platform or not, which is what really
| catalyzed Parler and Truth Social's branding in the market
| place as "pro- free speech".
| hrbf wrote:
| > The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it
| contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
|
| I'd argue that every place that allows every kind of speech
| without restriction will eventually degenerate into a cesspit.
| You lose the reasonable people quickly because they don't want
| to deal with the toxicity and it's all downhill from there.
|
| > 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. Karl Popper described it as the
| seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a
| tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be
| intolerant of intolerance.
|
| Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
| brazzy wrote:
| > The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it
| contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
|
| I posit that this is the unavoidable result of free speech
| absolutism.
|
| People like their _idea_ of what absolute free speech will be
| like, but they don 't like the real thing when they see it.
| chalst wrote:
| > at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver
| it.
|
| These are people who have a track record of evading
| responsibility.
| Aloha wrote:
| Absolute free speech and anonymity is a toxic combination.
|
| Free speech in the way it was envisaged in the constitution
| presumes there is a feedback loop back to the emitter of the
| speech. Anonymity breaks that feedback loop. Anyone who tells
| you that free speech without consequences has ever existed
| pretty much anywhere is lying to themselves and to you.
|
| If you want anonymity you need some measure of bounds on speech
| in those places.
| dcow wrote:
| Exactly. Personally I'd rather see more of internet
| communities/products regulating access to anonymity. This
| opinion is intensely unpopular around here, but IMO it
| addresses the root cause. The internet made it instantly easy
| and cheap to have multiple identities. Don't get me wrong, we
| still need that tool in a modern human's toolset, but it
| shouldn't be cheap and easy to generate low value spam.
| Imagine if Twitter had a community reputation system and
| Twitter itself never removed any Tweets but just let the
| community downvote them into nonexistence, like we do here...
| Aloha wrote:
| Community reputation (mostly) works the same as a lack of
| anonymity, it means your actions are tied to your account
| (in re twitter) and some extent to your pseudonym.
|
| I'm a furry, furry is a community built around an isolation
| between our IRL identity and our online one. But the
| community is tight knit enough that your reputation will
| follow you around - the identity you created for yourself
| yes - but still your identity, and if you're too far out of
| bounds, you get quietly (or loudly) excluded from the
| mainstream of the community. It largely functions the same
| way as tying your real name to every online identity.
|
| Now take something like twitter - you start with a karma of
| say 75, anything less than 100 karma, and your tweets wont
| show up in searches, anything less than 50 and you start to
| disappear from timeline - even for followers, anything less
| than 30, you disappear from lists - effectively this
| creates an automatic shadow banning system.
|
| But a saving grace, you earn a quarter point of karma just
| by not having any negative interactions on the site, you
| could also earn positive karma by upvotes on content.
|
| You could also put some other bounds in there too, like
| limiting how much positive karma or negative karma a single
| post could earn, to prevent it from skewing the numbers too
| much (it should be based on a weighted average of
| interactions, not just on one tweet that goes viral and the
| rest of it is low effort shitposting).
|
| Ideally you'd have a cross site 'identity' service that
| would also carry along a weighted karma score from all of
| the places you interact, and allow people to see those
| links - you're still abstracted from your real identity,
| and you're always welcome to start over again, abandon your
| account and start from zero, but there is persistent
| history of your interactions.
| elteto wrote:
| Counterpoint to your anonymity argument: we've learned in
| that past few years that people are very much OK with being
| publicly identified with hateful ideologies/ideas, e.g. MAGA
| supporters. A lot of them publicly post and participate
| online under their real identities, a lot of of it on
| Facebook.
|
| Anonymity is only a deterrent when you are the odd one out.
| When the President of the US is the one spouting the insanity
| you don't have to hide anymore.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Anonymity is only a deterrent when you are the odd one
| out. When the President of the US is the one spouting the
| insanity you don't have to hide anymore.
|
| The problem with anonymous online echo-chambers is that it
| lulls those in the community that there are more of them in
| the real world than there really are, which emboldens
| people to take their online craziness into the real world.
| This goes for everything from politics to "The raid on Area
| 51"
| Aloha wrote:
| People also act differently when they're free from any
| risks of the behavior - and this holds true with money,
| social interactions, whatever.
| jpadkins wrote:
| "Social media made y'all way too comfortable with
| disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for
| it." - contemporary philosopher
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I mean, we haven't had a society that was free of violence
| either, but that doesn't invalidate the cause of nonviolence.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Mass shooter manifestoes have cited both 4chan posts and
| named newspaper, TV and radio personalities. People are quite
| capable of being terrible under their own names.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > Absolute free speech and anonymity is a toxic combination.
|
| Yes, because in the real world - if you say something hateful
| enough to the wrong person - you'll get your head knocked
| off.
|
| So people have some sort of filter.
|
| When you take that away - the trolls with no lives come out
| just to agrivate people because misery demands company.
| smcl wrote:
| But Musk _doesn 't_ want a platform for "free speech" - he
| wants a platform where guys like him can do or say what they
| like without repercussions, but where he can crack down on
| anyone he doesn't like.
|
| Like it or not Twitter is about as good a compromise as you're
| going to get. The "free speech" places like Truth Social and
| Gab will happily boot you off if they don't like you. Twitter
| have a TOS where they are _very_ forgiving - for the most part
| issuing suspensions for violations and allowing you to delete
| TOS-breaking tweets rather than banning you. The line for
| Twitter seems to be when there is actual real-world harm that
| can be directly attributed to your actions on the platform. So
| if you 're getting banned from Twitter you need to have fucked
| up _big time_
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| As much as I would like to believe otherwise, I think I
| agree. Musk is all about Musk. Everything is a tool to
| accommodate that process.
|
| I still think he is the best thing that came out of Paypal,
| but arguably that is not a tall order.
| martin1975 wrote:
| Assuming the user's comment meets the legal definition of 1A
| speech and is not porn, if you can show me a single instance
| where anyone that posted a comment that was either removed or
| censored in some way by anyone with access at Gab, I will
| personally send you USD $50 in crypto at any address you
| specify in the comment, after I corroborate your
| example/evidence with Gab's management.
|
| I've been on Gab since its inception - the only type of
| comments/users that get booted are those who engage in
| illegal speech. Illegal speech !=
| distasteful/hateful/politically-
| charged/racist/sexist/divisive/etc.
|
| https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-
| re...
|
| Is hate speech right? In most cases, probably not unless
| you're saying things like "f..k all pedophiles who rape
| children", then it's righteously motivated. Is it legal? Yes.
| This is a very important distinction and what gives the USA
| its unique character and distinguishing trait among ALL other
| nations who do not have these types of freedoms codified in
| their constitutions...in fact, in many countries you'd be
| sacked quietly for saying the "wrong" thing - where "wrong"
| is defined by whomever happens to be in power (e.g. Russia,
| China come to mind)
| enragedcacti wrote:
| User 3 in this article was banned for "spam" which as far
| as I am aware is not illegal. Gizmodo received a response
| from Gab saying "spam is not free speech."
|
| https://gizmodo.com/even-the-freest-free-speech-site-
| still-b...
|
| Also, HN user encryptluks2 says he was banned "for making a
| post asking how are all the domestic terrorists Trump
| supporters doing after the capitol riot." They may be able
| to give you the info to verify.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26339259
|
| Also, any form of sexual content is banned on gab which is
| also generally protected free speech. I'm not aware of
| anyone having been banned for it but I'm sure they are out
| there, and if not it is easy enough to test.
| martin1975 wrote:
| I can't message that guy directly nor can I reply to his
| comment to ask for more info. That kind of speech
| definitely falls into legal 1A speech. It also seemed
| like he was baiting - which is as you pointed out, not
| illegal speech.
|
| I'd also like you to consider another possibility -
| people on the internet lie and distort the truth. A lot.
| Eg. he may have gotten banned, but not for what he says
| here on HN. Or he may not have been banned at all but
| knows he'll get upvotes on HN if he bashes Gab, which was
| initially backed by YCombinator....until it wasn't. I'll
| let you figure out why they stopped supporting them.
| jpgvm wrote:
| These places with less free speech aren't even as far away
| as Russia or China. Hate speech is illegal in Australia for
| instance.
| martin1975 wrote:
| Didn't peg Australia for a repressive country/government.
| If this is really the case, meaning, laws are codified
| against "hate speech", it's pretty much the beginning of
| the end of them, IMHO. Free expression should be as close
| to absolute as possible, everywhere....
| tgv wrote:
| Why do we need an absolute free speech platform? What good does
| it do?
|
| > The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it
| contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
|
| Sounds like a hint to me. There are more free speech sites,
| e.g. saidit.net. I would wholeheartedly recommend staying away
| from it: it's a cesspool, like the other reddit wannabes. Voat
| also comes to mind. Freedom of speech on such sites only serves
| to say the worst of the worst, and that will predictably
| include escalating aggression towards other users.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I think the problem lies in the impunity, not in the free
| speech itself. IMHO people should be allowed to say
| everything but they must accumulate the reputation for saying
| it.
|
| If someone is a racist bigot, they shouldn't be physically
| restrained(deleting posts is like physically covering
| someones' mouth) from being bigots but they should definitely
| be known for it. Then it's up to the community to decide how
| to interact with those people. That's how we do it in real
| life and works pretty well.
|
| Another thing is the amplification: people pretending to be
| multiple people. This is also an issue, giving wrong
| impression about the state of the society and must be solved.
|
| Lastly, we need some kind of spread management. We have the
| problem of BS getting huge traction and the correction
| getting no traction. Maybe everyone exposed to something
| should be re-exposed to the theme once there's a new
| development. For example, when people share someone's photo
| as a suspect and it turns out that the person in the photo is
| not the suspect, the platform can say "remember this Tweet?
| Yeah, there are some doubts about it. Just letting you know".
| The implementation of it wouldn't need a ministry of truth
| but an algo to track theme developments.
|
| IMHO if Musk manages to solve these few problems, which I
| think he can, a free speech social media is possible.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Please, deleting a tweet is hardly being 'physically
| restrained'
|
| > Than it's up to the community to decide how t interact
| with those people.
|
| Twitter is a private company, and it chooses to run it's
| service how it wants. The government avoids _actually_
| physically restraining racist bigots, and lets the
| community decide how to deal and interact with those
| people. Some may chose to harbor them (Parlor, 4chan, etc),
| and others (like twitter) may opt to not host them.
|
| It's not a huge social injustice if you're not allowed to
| tweet. Feel free to go to one of the millions of other
| websites, or your start your own (it's easier to do this
| than ever!) and see who's interested in what you have to
| say.
|
| > Maybe everyone exposed to something should be re-exposed
| to the theme once there's a new development.
|
| You're just reinventing content moderation!
| mrtksn wrote:
| I don't accept that content deletion is a way to go. When
| an offensive content is deleted we lose the ability to
| jude it for urselves. The content must remain but be
| strictly attached to a persona so the persona can be
| "judged" rightfully. In real life, when we deal with
| these people we want to know what they did. It gives
| fidelity, unlike "the person said something that violates
| rule 4 section 3". We should stop pretending that we are
| not humans and embrace the human ways of dealing with
| human problems. There's nothing human in undoing speech.
|
| And no, attaching follow up to organic content is not
| moderation.
| andsoitis wrote:
| In real life, unless you're recorded, there isn't a
| record of what you say. Moreover, people who do hear
| first hand what you say will recall different aspects and
| also forget detail over time.
|
| This allows people to evolve and to not be beholden to
| something they said/thought a decade ago and no longer
| think.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I don't see any value in spending my time judging content
| saying that trans people are degenerates or that black
| people are an inferior race. I've already judged those
| ideas in my life and don't need to see them anymore.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Well you can judge people that say those things as people
| who don't deserve your respect and attention. Then don't
| hang around places that interact with those people,
| that's how we do it in real life.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| In an online world with no moderation it is impossible to
| not hang around places with these people. They can just
| show up unannounced to spew hate speech wherever they
| want.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > Then don't hang around places that interact with those
| people
|
| We've just come full circle to why twitter choses to
| moderate. They don't want to keep up content that drives
| people away.
| smcl wrote:
| How do you feel about HN's approach - flagged or heavily
| downvoted comments are invisible if you are not logged in
| or if you have not changed "showdead" from the default
| unchecked state (at which point they're rendered in a
| hard-to-read colour)?
| godshatter wrote:
| I'm not the person you're responding to, but I myself
| prefer giving the users the moderation tools that affect
| only their view of the content. Users trying to save
| other users from posts they personally disagree with, in
| my opinion, can lead to echo chambers just by itself. Let
| me configure my account so that I can block or mute
| specific users or highlight keywords I can add to a list
| or allow users to tag posts. That way others can express
| their opinions in more ways than just commenting and I
| can use that data to determine if I want to read the
| existing comments or not.
|
| I do think HN is one of the better moderation systems
| since this is one of the saner places on the internet and
| you can still configure things so you can at least see
| all the content, though you can't interact with it all. I
| would just prefer it if I was in charge of saving myself
| from bad opinions or whatever motivates people to down
| vote posts into oblivion.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Nobody wants to reinvent moderation and have a list of
| keywords and such that they have to maintain.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I don't like it when it's due to low score, it is an
| oppression of unpopular opinions.
|
| I like it when it's about flagged posts. I have the
| option enabled to show these posts and I would vouch if
| there's something worthy in it. So spam and other BS is
| "removed" but I still can take a look at it and see it
| for myself.
|
| Overall, I think HN is one of the best moderated online
| places.
| smcl wrote:
| So this is unusual to me, because flagging feels more
| open to abuse than the comment score. Indeed this very
| thing happened to me recently:
|
| - user A says vaguely racist thing
|
| - user B calls person out for racist thing
|
| - user A cannot downvote a reply, so they flag it instead
| - making it disappear
|
| So both can silence someone, but in one case _many_
| people need to disagree with someone and in the other you
| just need one person (or one person with an alt account
| if you want to go and revert a "vouch"). So if anything
| flagging is more prone to abuse than downvoting. I try to
| read greytext comments when I can and vouch whenever it
| looks unjust (and do something similar for downvoted
| posts) but from the looks of things not many people do.
|
| edit: might as well include my example -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164001
|
| So I'd understand if I was downvoted and called out for
| my confrontational response to racism. Because at that
| point I'd reply that actually treating this kind of
| casual xenophobic comment as unserious and mocking the
| person is the most effective counter to this kind of
| behavious. Getting bogged down in debating the merits or
| worth of any individual person or where they might
| "belong" is _exactly_ what this kind of person wants to
| do.
| mrtksn wrote:
| That's where you judge the moderation. The moderation
| quality defines the community quality.
|
| The good thing about HN is that the moderators are
| reachable and they do respond intelligently. Unlike AI
| moderation, you can send an e-mail about it and dang will
| respond to you and explain why something happen and you
| can discuss it.
|
| I had my account restricted multiple times and restored
| once we got on the same page(I don't agree with
| everything but once I see their point, I can work with
| it). I had wrongfully flagged comments unflagged by
| sending them an e-mail too.
|
| It's not perfect but it's pretty good and miles ahead
| than anything else online.
| smcl wrote:
| So in my case the comment didn't desperately need
| unflagging - someone could wave the comment guidelines in
| my face and I'd probably concede that such an open
| confrontation broke at least one. But yeah I guess you
| can overturn a flagging more easily than being downvoted.
| bombcar wrote:
| The real key is that there's a moderator, and the
| community is small enough that he can check things
| manually.
|
| Once it gets too big for that, you're doomed to
| destruction eventually.
|
| My preferred solution would be to break up the
| communities once they're too big, instead of trying to
| make a massive world-wide community like Twitter does.
| Reddit somewhat has this, but there is still a site-wide
| issue.
| mrtksn wrote:
| >Once it gets too big for that, you're doomed to
| destruction eventually.
|
| >My preferred solution would be to break up the
| communities once they're too big, instead of trying to
| make a massive world-wide community like Twitter does.
|
| I agree with this. In real life situations you can see it
| too, the larger the crowd the stupider their total
| behaviour becomes. Large crowds are good for certain
| things though, but mostly primal stuff like singing and
| chanting.
| dd36 wrote:
| Agree. The big one you missed is identity. Most hate is
| anonymous. Being able to filter by tags like "known racist"
| or whatever, and seeing someone's history of sharing
| misinformation is useful but most people would self-censor
| if their identity was known or other users would filter out
| those that won't identify.
|
| What I wonder is what Musk will do if he finds out the
| scales are artificially weighted towards conservative
| content. Like if conservative content is artificially
| boosted by bots and algorithms. Facebook was much more
| liberal before thumbs were put on the scale. I don't
| remember when but I think it was Mother Jones that saw huge
| traffic movement changes after algo changes like a decade
| ago?
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/17/21520634/facebook-
| report...
|
| Like what if the natural state of humanity is much more
| liberal than the American media and social media allow for?
| Will Musk allow that or will he see anything that doesn't
| align with his views as error or manipulation?
|
| What if a truly free and transparent self-moderating
| platform naturally promotes leftism more than a moderated
| but manipulated feed does?
| madeofpalk wrote:
| A study showed that people are _more_ aggressive online
| when using their real name
|
| _> Results show that in the context of online
| firestorms, non-anonymous individuals are more aggressive
| compared to anonymous individuals. This effect is
| reinforced if selective incentives are present and if
| aggressors are intrinsically motivated._
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/jour
| nal...
| dd36 wrote:
| Weird but I still think Elon's idea of needing confirmed
| identity for a checkmark is solid. If anonymous users
| then are nicer than checkmarked users, I guess the filter
| will work in reverse? The elimination of bots will be
| nice if they can do it.
| _djo_ wrote:
| You already require confirmed identity to receive a
| Twitter blue checkmark. So that wouldn't be a new change.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Requiring validated identity is anti free speech.
|
| There's been so many words spilled online about how
| terrible of an idea it is to require confirmed identities
| for online.
|
| Recently, see
| https://twitter.com/mmasnick/status/1576274615231401984
| or more casually https://www.garbageday.email/p/oh-cool-
| were-talking-about-an...
|
| _> Generally, if your solution is virtually
| indistinguishable from one of the systems the Chines
| government is using to keep people in line, your solution
| is bad._
| dd36 wrote:
| That's an opinion. I disagree with it. It's a private
| corporation not the government.
|
| You either have people incentivized to self-identify with
| a checkmark or what? The alternative is to build an AI
| that identifies you in order to remove bots? I don't even
| think that's possible without it auto removing everyone
| that uses anonymizing tools like Tor?
| mrtksn wrote:
| How do you know that requiring identity is anti free
| speech? Not everyone online is Iranian political
| dissident. Sure, some people claim that you can't have
| free speech when your identity is known but I don't see
| any solid reasoning behind it.
|
| Mike Masnick in his tweets repeats some talking points
| but there's no cohesive argument.
| dd36 wrote:
| And AFAIK an anonymous political dissident wouldn't want
| a blue checkmark?
|
| Furthermore, there can be layers of anonymity. There can
| be anonymous publicly but not to Twitter. That's
| dangerous given that Twitter cannot protect your identity
| from a state actor accessing its internal systems. Thus,
| again, why would you want a checkmark as a dissident.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Again, not every speech revolves around political
| dissent.
| stale2002 wrote:
| Some does though.
|
| So the fact that this applies to some people means that
| it is an issue for those people.
| mrtksn wrote:
| We can have special arrangements for special
| circumstances.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| Requiring ID verification is adding limitations on who
| you permit to speak. It is inherently anti 'free speech'.
| I think it's fine if that's the sort of website you want
| to build (twitter at the moment is not a free speech
| maximalist), but don't pretend that doing this doesn't
| limit speech.
| mrtksn wrote:
| > Requiring ID verification is adding limitations on who
| you permit to speak
|
| Do you mean that in countries where not everyone has
| government ID? That's not an issue, the government
| doesn't have to be the authority of ID. Besides,
| governments can create fake IDs for covert operations
| anyway. I don't suggest that everyone should connect to
| the internet with government issued ID card.
| jasonshaev wrote:
| How do you verify someone's IRL identity without a
| government issued ID card in a scalable way?
|
| I don't mean some idea that could work at some arbitrary
| point in the future (decentralized whatever...). If a
| social media platform were to do this, right now, how
| would they do it without verifying a government issued
| ID?
| mrtksn wrote:
| Identity doesn't come into existence with the
| registration with a government, it's something you build
| over time as you interact with the world around you.
|
| Nicknames are an identity and it's pretty much common
| these days to have nicknamed account on all over the
| internet. The problem with these is that one can have
| multiple of those and a behaviour in one place doesn't
| transfer into other places.
|
| So maybe we can have across-the-internet identities. You
| are jasonshaev but who you are on twitter? on reddit? on
| other places? Once you become the person who is known
| around everywhere the same way, you have the identity
| that you would like to protect. You can't troll one place
| when bored then be known as a nice person somewhere else.
| I think that's good enough identity. The implementation
| can be around crypto, single sign in, face recognition
| etc.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I struggle with how else to phrase this - Adding
| restrictions inherently restricts people.
| godshatter wrote:
| You never know where the prevailing winds of online
| sentiment will turn next. Having your every post tagged
| with your identity can lead to real-life problems in the
| future, even if it was something edgy you said as a
| teenager or something you used to believe but don't any
| longer.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > You never know where the prevailing winds of online
| sentiment will turn next. Having your every post tagged
| with your identity can lead to real-life problems in the
| future, even if it was something edgy you said as a
| teenager or something you used to believe but don't any
| longer.
|
| So maybe, for every single thought one has, one ought not
| fly around the world and post it on a flyer on every
| street corner and light post. Which is basically what
| posting on Twitter is.
|
| But then I think a ton of stuff people casually do online
| is batshit crazy when you put it in real-world terms. Of
| course you wouldn't do the above. You wouldn't even do it
| if you had a magic button that could make it happen for
| you without taking time & money to go do it in person.
| "Post my random toilet thought on hundreds of millions of
| surfaces all over the world? No, god, why would I do
| that?"
|
| Would you give a teenager access to such a magic button?
| _Of course not_. That would be _entirely insane_. Even if
| using the button would not, _per se_ , get them in
| trouble, you'd destroy that thing or put it in a safe.
| Handing it over to them to do with as they please
| wouldn't even be something you'd consider doing.
|
| But we live in a world where ~every developed-world kid
| has a button like that by age 12, and sometimes _much_
| earlier. WT actual F. _Of course_ it 's causing tons of
| problems. Most _adults_ couldn 't be trusted to make good
| choices with such a tool (clearly).
| mrtksn wrote:
| Wouldn't self censor solve the problems just as well as
| deleting content?
|
| See, because we don't say everything that comes to our
| mind, we are able to interact in a civil manner with
| people that can have any kind of opinions. In real life,
| I'm sometimes shocked that someone is a total bigot.
|
| However, when civility is established we can discuss
| these ideas too and instead of having these people being
| toxic these ideas can be expressed in a civil manner and
| discussed. Maybe they have a point sometimes? If they do,
| it can be dully noted and if they don't they will be
| exposed to the counter arguments. Also, when ideas are
| expressed in civil manners, people don't label other
| people straight as "bigot", "racists" and accept the
| nuances. In fact, some prominent right-wing people are
| doing that, people like Jordan Peterson. Because the guy
| is civil, he is effective and it's up to the rest to
| contradict his claims in civil manners.
|
| So yes, it is alright to have some self restraint and
| think before you speak. It's definitely much better than
| oppressing it.
|
| edit: the comment I responded was a bit different, I
| guess the OP added more thoughts.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| > Maybe everyone exposed to something should be re-exposed
| to the theme once there's a new development.
|
| This doesn't work. Show people two articles, one that is
| false and one that is true, and most people will say the
| one that aligns with their priors is true. We need to
| either teach people to recognize fake news, censor fake
| news, or accept that basically everyone will believe false
| propaganda. There are no other options. Once someone has
| been shown an article they agree with telling them the
| article was false just leads them to think you're on "the
| other side".
| philippejara wrote:
| And who is going to decide what those "fake news" are to
| censor and how will you assume they won't fall into the
| exact same trap of wanting to believe in what they
| already agree with.
|
| We're hot off the heels of hunter biden, surely that
| should be a wakeup call regarding how "misinformation
| experts" go both ways.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| No clue. All I know is that if we don't censor fake news
| people will believe it, no matter how much evidence to
| the contrary they are shown. Maybe we just have to accept
| that.
| piva00 wrote:
| > Another thing is the amplification: people pretending to
| be multiple people.
|
| For a free speech absolutist curtailing this could also be
| seen as removing free speech.
|
| > Lastly, we need some kind of spread management. We have
| the problem of BS getting huge traction and the correction
| getting no traction. Maybe everyone exposed to something
| should be re-exposed to the theme once there's a new
| development. For example, when people share someone's photo
| as a suspect and it turns out that the person in the photo
| is not the suspect, the platform can say "remember this
| Tweet? Yeah, there are some doubts about it. Just letting
| you know". The implementation of it wouldn't need a
| ministry of truth but a algo to track theme developments.
|
| Still this wouldn't solve the issue with spread of BS,
| specially targeted BS: it is tailored to invoke and
| reinforce inherent biases and, on average, someone exposed
| to it will become less inclined to read/critically judge
| any rebuttal. Bullshit spreads much easier than well
| researched rebuttals, just by the nature of bullshit. It's
| a game where truth is bound to lose, no matter how many
| "algorithms" you implement to spread developments of a
| story to the same audience, the engagement of said audience
| to the rebuttals will vary depending on their biases. I'm
| not even including the required inherent drive and energy
| to actually follow-up, as an audience, on further
| developments, in the fast-paced world of social media
| people will selectively choose what to invest their energy
| into. Someone falling for bullshits won't want their effort
| to be thrown out by rebuttals and so will avoid such
| activities perceived as a waste of energy, after you formed
| an opinion it's much harder to un-form it.
|
| I'm strictly in the camp that absolute free speech on
| social media is a fool's errand, at least in 2022. There is
| no upside to the massive downsides that we already see and
| experience, even in the scope of not existing with absolute
| free speech.
|
| The detachment on social media between the written words vs
| the real humans behind those words causes a non-
| insignificant amount of grief that wouldn't happen in a in-
| person interaction. It seems that we humans easily lose our
| humanity when not in a real world social environment, the
| vileness is exaggerated while empathy is easily pushed
| aside.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I agree that we can't have a perfect solution but let's
| loose a good solution in the pursuit of a perfect one and
| I think there can be a good solution by implementing some
| of the real world social dynamics into the virtual one.
|
| Jerks and BS artist are nothing new but in real world we
| do have some tools to deal with them. IMHO, changing how
| some things work can create an atmosphere of healthy
| interactions.
| tlb wrote:
| A platform that hosted both objectionable speech and regular
| speech together might be tolerable to read. But the most of
| the regular speech ends up on popular platforms than ban
| objectionable speech, so the free-speech sites are left with
| mostly the objectionable stuff, which makes them pretty
| unpleasant to read.
|
| It makes it hard to start a new platform. People start free-
| speech platforms with good intentions of having open debate
| about controversial topics. But they quickly get overrun by
| hate mongers and trolls, and become too noxious for most
| people to read. Intentional or not, it's a good strategy by
| the existing platforms to kick out the nasty people, ensuring
| that they're first to sign up for every new social network.
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| 4chan has hosted anything and has done so for longer than
| other social media sites.
|
| Maybe toxic people just congregate in places where their
| speech is accepted, therefore making the rest of the site
| toxic as well.
|
| Maybe it's not "hate mongers and trolls" that overrun sites
| and that the concept of free speech and being able to say
| _anything_ just naturally brings out the worst people and
| the worst in people.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The hidden piece of the puzzle here is that objectionable
| speech pushes regular speech out.
|
| Most users don't want to wade through toxicity to get to
| signal. If they're discussing a topic of interest, say
| baking, and someone comes in and starts ranting on how a
| vast global conspiracy made up of surprisingly-homogeneous
| ethnicity given its global scale is pushing up the price of
| yeast to weaken the market for white bread, either the
| moderators squelch that noise or people who want to talk
| about baking go somewhere else to do it.
|
| Given their own freedom, when given a choice, users tend to
| select moderated channels over unmoderated ones. We've been
| doing the Internet long enough to know this to be true.
| fzeroracer wrote:
| > Given their own freedom, when given a choice, users
| tend to select moderated channels over unmoderated ones.
| We've been doing the Internet long enough to know this to
| be true.
|
| This is true, but unfortunately the same mistakes keep
| being made because people don't pay attention to the
| history of the internet or didn't grow up during that
| era. We've known that completely unfettered discussion
| leads to self destruction since the Usenet era. But the
| lessons aren't heeded or ignored, so we get people that
| either stay ignorant or learn the hard way.
| tlb wrote:
| I don't think bad speech pushes out good speech directly.
| Rather, it pushes out the audience, and the good speakers
| follow.
|
| The end result is the same, but it's important to
| understand exactly where the mechanism is failing if you
| want to fix it.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > Why do we need an absolute free speech platform?
|
| To ensure that ideas that people want to be censored or
| deplatformed can be evaluated by others who want to see what
| they are.
|
| If people are not able to read oposing viewpoints, it makes
| them less able to understand them, and why they are wrong.
| dmix wrote:
| When only the rejects use the sites of course it's going to
| be full of bad content. That doesn't mean there isn't value
| in free speech being better valued on mainstream platforms.
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "When only the rejects use the sites of course it 's
| going to be full of bad content."_
|
| The problem with this theory is that 4chan is older than
| both Twitter and Facebook.
|
| If unmoderated speech created an inherently better
| platform, surely 4chan would have captured the market a
| long time ago and cut off commercial alternatives like
| Craigslist did.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Didn't 4chan start off largely as castaways from
| Something Awful? Your point is valid though. 4chan had an
| enormous amount of time to become the shining star of how
| great an absolute[1] free speech site could be, but still
| manages to be a cesspool. This should be a neon hint, but
| people keep thinking that _they 're_ going to invent the
| one free speech site that doesn't end up toxic.
|
| 1: Also as others point out, even 4chan moderates,
| however lightly.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| And 4chan got much worse over time, there's no reason it
| had to be rejects at all. The toxicity was entirely self
| directed.
| [deleted]
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| ...or capturing the market would have flooded it in inane
| speech, rendering it no better (or different) than
| anywhere else.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| When given the choice between platforms, why do you think
| the majority continues to congregate on the more
| restrictive ones?
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I think the answer here is complicated, but a good
| portion of it is closely related to 'my friends are
| here.'
| CM30 wrote:
| Yeah, it's 'my friends are here' and 'the content I want
| to read/interact with is here'.
|
| It's the same reason people haven't mass switched to
| Mastodon or other Fediverse services; because the
| userbase is so much smaller than the likes of Twitter
| that there's a good chance the people and content they
| care about isn't available there. Or why so many
| competitors to popular services fail in general,
| regardless of their stance on free speech. The network
| effect is strong, and sometimes even billions of dollars
| and tons of marketing can't overcome that (see Google+
| for example).
|
| Would people prefer a free speech orientated alternative?
| Hard to say, for the same reason as whether they'd prefer
| a decentralised or federated one; it's the content and
| users that bring people to a site or service, and the
| competitors to the popular ones are so much smaller and
| less active it isn't much of a comparison.
| kristjansson wrote:
| Why are we here instead of 4chan? Why does everyone that
| uses email use a spam filter?
|
| Direct, unfiltered exposure to the firehouse is at best
| banal, and at worst disgusting and self-destructive. It's
| an _awful_ job that ~no one would chose to do for
| themselves.
| seti0Cha wrote:
| > Why do we need an absolute free speech platform? What good
| does it do?
|
| I think the better question is, what harm does not having a
| free speech platform do? I think the answer is fairly evident
| when you look at how the ability to control speech has been
| used throughout history. The justification, I would also
| suggest, has always been the same as the ones being advanced
| now. People act like it was social media that revealed the
| fact that the masses will say terrible things when allowed,
| but in fact that was the common opinion for most of history.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| We have a free speech platform though. Practically everyone
| has decided not to use it. I think the echo chamber that
| self selecting which moderators you want has created huge
| problems, but we can't force people to use 4chan when they
| don't want to.
| seti0Cha wrote:
| I think you misunderstand my position. I'm not saying
| twitter should be unmoderated, I'm responding to the
| question as to why free speech is important. I would say
| that the internet itself is a free speech platform, and
| that's a very good thing. I'm perfectly content to let
| people converse under whatever rules they choose as long
| as there is choice.
|
| I will say in regard to twitter though that excessive
| policing of speech creates a segregation of audiences and
| consequently increases echo chambers, which is probably
| not what those speech police were trying to accomplish. I
| think it would be healthier for society if it were a
| little more tolerant, but that's not really related to my
| position on free speech.
| shafyy wrote:
| > _Why do we need an absolute free speech platform? What good
| does it do?_
|
| This is exactly the right question to ask. I'm convinced that
| it's not possible to have constructive "free speech" social
| media platform. There's always the need for moderation.
| btbuildem wrote:
| I agree, but I'd like to play with what "moderation" means.
| A great example of when moderation fails / is abused is
| Reddit, or the big socials like IG. The bots can be overly
| sensitive / have lots of false positives, and the
| individuals in charge of moderation are not accountable to
| anyone (except maybe advertisers, indirectly).
|
| I would like to see a platform where moderation exists, but
| it's "opt-in" only. Meaning, the mods / bots can tag /
| categorize user posts, and other users can control the
| visibility of tagged material. This way everything -- the
| most vile, twisted, hateful and disturbing things are still
| permitted a place to exist, but they're effectively
| shadowbanned by individual choice. Start with some sane
| defaults, and allow people to peel back the lid on the box
| of horrors if they want to.
|
| This could work with age-restrictions (users below a
| certain age cannot see certain tags) as well as satisfy
| advertisers that their ads are shown next to the most
| innoffensive, oatmeal-bland content (they choose tags next
| to which their ads are never shown).
| mariusor wrote:
| I think moderation should be about the words that are being
| said, not the ideas that are being discussed.
|
| A free speech platform should allow a wide range of topics,
| but it's not expected to stand for all manner of trolling
| and bad faith argumentation. I think that conflating the
| two is tripping a lot of people up in the debate about the
| topic.
| shafyy wrote:
| I disagree. There are limits to what ideas constitute
| free speech in many modern countries. As an extreme
| example, an idea that puts forward genocide as acceptable
| form of action should never be allowed under "free
| speech", even if it's said with nice words.
|
| This and other examples are ruled under law in many
| developed countries.
| t0suj4 wrote:
| Those developed countries have people taking their banned
| speech underground. It is usually also very illegal to
| take their strongest arguments and argue against them.
| All you have left is hope that they will never gain
| stronger support.
| themitigating wrote:
| That's fine, it helps. Countries the UK also have
| defamation laws that are much stronger than the US.
|
| I read that what really brought down the KKK was a
| massive amount of lawsuits
| mariusor wrote:
| My words were "a wide range of topics" not "all the
| topics".
|
| Personally I can think of a meaningful debate that can be
| had from talking about "genocide" but I'm pretty sure
| that people that would hold this opinion in truth are a
| little beyond what would be considered a "good faith"
| discussion.
| francisofascii wrote:
| > an idea that puts forward genocide as acceptable form
| of action should never be allowed under "free speech"
|
| See I have a problem with the word "never". How about
| "rarely" or at least "once". A terrible idea should be
| given an audience once. Let it it be quickly refuted,
| then go back to better conversations. If someone brings
| it up again, point them back to the earlier discussion.
| That way it is established why it is a bad idea.
| themitigating wrote:
| "That way it is established why it is a bad idea." Is
| that how most arguments on the internet end?
| francisofascii wrote:
| Sometimes. Threads are archived. Questions closed but not
| deleted. New questions/comments disallowed. It meets a
| middle ground between absolute free speech and absolute
| moderation.
| themitigating wrote:
| What I meant was people don't normally end a discussion,
| especially political, with one side admitting loss and
| agreeing that the other way right.
| jat850 wrote:
| In practice, almost never. Internet arguments seldom
| result in both sides agreeing on a single outcome. Nobody
| is convincing anyone else of anything on the internet
| (most of the time).
| seanw444 wrote:
| Then it's not free speech. The whole point is that there
| are not restrictions. If it's restricted, it is by
| definition not free.
|
| "Free speech" is a cool buzzword people think they can
| qualify for (or wish to), without the ramifications of
| true free speech (hurt feelings, bad ideologies being
| discussed in a positive light).
| mariusor wrote:
| Freedom of speech is not a buzzword, it has a pretty good
| definition in the declaration of human rights and on
| Wikipedia:
|
| > Freedom of speech and expression, therefore, may not be
| recognized as being absolute, and common limitations or
| boundaries to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander,
| obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting
| words, hate speech, classified information, copyright
| violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure
| agreements, the right to privacy, dignity, the right to
| be forgotten, public security, and perjury.
|
| The fact that most people on the internet (which seem to
| include you) are using it wrong is another thing. Free
| speech only applies in the relationship between citizens
| and the state. It has no meaning in the relationship
| between individuals and the platforms they're using for
| communication.
| seanw444 wrote:
| You're right. Companies have the right to censor things
| they don't like on their platforms. That's why people
| should stop using platforms that are frequently censored
| if they really care about "free speech." Just like how
| people can't "free loiter" on my personal property if I
| want them out of it.
|
| I don't care about an arbitrary definition of two strung-
| together words, whose definitions individually, are
| absolute. When combined, their definition is just as
| absolute. The speech must be free. Free is simply defined
| as free. Not "free, but ..." in which case it is no
| longer just "free speech."
| mariusor wrote:
| > I don't care about an arbitrary definition of two
| strung-together words, whose definitions individually,
| are absolute. When combined, their definition is just as
| absolute.
|
| This feels like a deeper debate than I'm capable of
| having, but all language is a string of strung-together
| words with meanings. These meanings have reached a high
| enough degree of consensus to exist in a dictionary or
| semiotic treatise. I think that clinging to your own
| meaning of absolute free speech when faced with not an
| arbitrary definition, but one which was reached through a
| social and cultural consensus, is naive or willfully
| contrarian.
| stale2002 wrote:
| > Free speech only applies in the relationship between
| citizens and the state.
|
| That is a pretty silly definition.
|
| Imagine if a corporate owned mafia was going around
| murdering everyone who supports increasing taxes.
|
| Surely, you would recognize that this has a chilling
| effect on speech, and could be said to control people's
| free speech rights, even though it is not the government
| doing it.
| asdff wrote:
| There are two definitions of free speech going around the
| internet discussion boards these days it seems. One is
| the legal one that has existed in our country since it
| was penned in the constitution, which protects you from
| government opression from publicly held opinions. That
| doesn't mean you can say whatever and expect no recourse
| from anyone, you have no protections from being kicked
| out of a private place or fired from your employer under
| this law, just that the State will not put you in jail or
| kill you over these words like other states around the
| world do for words. The other view is that you are
| allowed to say whatever you like on platforms like
| twitter and should not be banned. It has nothing to do
| with twitter. Twitter is not part of the State. People
| making it about twitter are missing the significance of
| the first amendment and what society looks like in places
| without protections on speech and religion from the
| State.
| themitigating wrote:
| If I think jews control the world and I calmly discuss
| it, present circumstantial evidence, etc would that be
| acceptable?
|
| Sure I'm using offense terms but that's not as bad as
| claiming they control the world.
|
| Or if I thought slavery should be brought back but I
| don't use the n word. Is that really the issue?
| mariusor wrote:
| I personally would dismiss you as a lunatic and racist in
| both cases and move on with my day. However I see no
| reason why you shouldn't be able to make a fool of
| yourself if you so choose.
|
| Making you feel like a martyr because you are being
| "censored" is worse in my opinion than allowing you to
| express your points of view and hopefully be receptive to
| counter arguments.
| themitigating wrote:
| What of people that read hypothetical posts like mine and
| decide to shoot up a synagogue.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/pittsburgh-synagogue-
| shooting-ga...
| mariusor wrote:
| I think you're trivializing the issue quite a bit. But
| yes, I dislike the paternalism of considering everyone
| else on the internet stupid and incapable to making
| informed decisions when facing questionable points of
| view.
|
| I'm not qualified to speak with any authority about this
| issue, but my opinion is that people that are willing to
| shoot other people most likely have other incentives than
| reading a singular's dude online hate ramblings. The
| problem lies with the fact that they gets ostracized and
| _all_ they are able to read are the hateful things. If
| you go through the thread above, you'll see that my
| stance is the complete opposite of that: let's allow
| people say the "bad" things and balance them out with
| other peoples' "good" things.
|
| This theoretically would ensure that this person is not
| exposed to only hate and negativity, and will hopefully
| make a better decision than ending others' life and their
| own.
|
| Forcing this unbalanced individual to retreat into a
| corner of the internet where his opinion on other people
| goes unchallenged is unquestionably A BAD THING, and I
| doubt I'll change my mind on this fact any time soon.
| themitigating wrote:
| "This theoretically would ensure that this person is not
| exposed to only hate and negativity, and will hopefully
| make a better decision" ....
|
| "and I doubt I'll change my mind on this fact any time
| soon"
|
| You have high hopes of people changing their mind when
| presented with new information, except for yourself
| apparently
| philippejara wrote:
| they get arrested. The amount of violence that could be
| attributed to this sort of thing is so minuscule its
| barely a rounding error in overall figures. Just like
| school shootings it's extremely publicized but when it
| comes to the actual numbers it's nothing.
|
| On another note I'd go as far as to say that prohibiting
| it will make them even more radical and entrenched in
| their beliefs, germany has extremely strict anti-nazi
| laws and yet never stopped having neo-nazis, much to the
| contrary[0]. The people who are going to go as far as
| real life actions will find the daily stormer or whatever
| other website and now he will feel like a martyr and
| justified of some conspiracy or whatever.
|
| [0]:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/06/german-
| police-...
| btbuildem wrote:
| So how does that work when a hip-hop artist says the
| n-word vs a neonazi says the n-word?
| colinmhayes wrote:
| In the end you end up with the same problem. All the
| "exterminate the jews" types go to the free speech
| platforms at which point everyone else leaves, even if
| the people with the ideas that aren't liked are using
| respectful language. It's not just the bad faith and
| trolling that make people want to leave the site, it's
| the base level ideas of the people who have been
| moderated off other platforms.
| mariusor wrote:
| I think that a platform where people expect the ugly
| ideas to be debated (in good faith) will have the users
| that are willing to do that[1].
|
| Not every platform needs to have _all_ the users. I know
| that it's a bit of an anathema on a discussion board
| built by venture capitalists to say that the goal of a
| social platform should not be to maximize the amount of
| users and engagement, but here we are. I think optimizing
| your service for "everyone" is a bad strategy in
| competing with existing social networks, especially
| coming from an "indie" background. Not that Parler is
| exactly indie.
|
| [1] I'm saying this as someone that is working towards a
| discussion platform that targets smallish to medium
| communities formed around a common interest. In this
| world if moms wanting to share their latest knitting
| project are excluded from a service that targets free
| speech people, that's fine, there can be a knitting
| community out there also for them. Having these two
| communities intermingle by using something like
| ActivityPub is a way to keep "the network effect" but
| keep them separate enough.
| eropple wrote:
| _> I think that a platform where people expect the ugly
| ideas to be debated (in good faith) will have the users
| that are willing to do that[1]._
|
| This does not actually...happen. At least not over the
| medium and long term. What actually happens, and you can
| see this in practice, is that decent people are not
| particularly interested, over long periods of time, in
| arguing that no, there is no globalist (read: Jewish)
| conspiracy to take over the world. They lose interest
| almost immediately, while the frothers intellectually
| crossbreed and turn from _one_ particular flavor of bigot
| into _all the flavors of bigot_.
|
| The problem isn't, as you are characterizing, that a
| platform must have "all the users". The problem is that
| this strategy hyperconcentrates relatively anodyne
| conservatives into literal-not-figurative fascists, and
| has been doing so for quite a while. The active creation
| of intellectual cul-de-sacs, of epistemic closures for
| hateful beliefs, is a major factor in why we're where we
| are right now.
| mariusor wrote:
| I disagree with you. I think that the phenomenon that you
| described (which exists on most social platforms that are
| advertising themselves as "free speech") is not present
| everywhere and my impression is that the problem is
| exactly with the "chase all the users" mentality.
|
| One example that I can think of the top of my head is
| Scott Alexander's blog, where I saw opinions put forward
| (most of the times in a respectful manner) that ranged
| from extremely egalitarian to extremely libertarian. I am
| entirely sure that some of the people posting there have
| views that veer into "one flavour of bigot" or another,
| but because the community as a whole would rise against
| the most objectionable types of ideas that one could put
| forward, they never do it. To me that is a healthy
| community and I hope it can be achieved in other places
| without needing an "alpha-personality" at the center for
| people to gather around.
| [deleted]
| mmastrac wrote:
| > The moral of the story is: if you're against witch-
| hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian
| community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new
| society will end up consisting of approximately three
| principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches.
| It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts
| are genuinely wrong.
|
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-
| conservativ...
| mikkergp wrote:
| > I'm convinced that it's not possible to have constructive
|
| I don't know that when the rubber hits the road people are
| meaningfully trying to make a constructive free speech
| platform. The nihilism is the point.
| uncomputation wrote:
| > because at least we can hold them responsible when they don't
| deliver it
|
| This is a common but I believe overstated, even naive, ideal.
| What exactly does "holding them responsible" even truly mean?
| If a company is greenwashing and they are still emitting
| carbon, what really is the difference between the company who
| never claimed to care at all? The carbon is emitted all the
| same. "Oh, the stock price would fall because investors would
| lose trust." But greenwashing is a dime a dozen these days and
| I think the investors/upper class know that greenwashing is
| just marketing and don't truly expect/care about the cause.
|
| Regarding this, how does anyone hold Parler accountable for
| making a platform of "free speech"? Either you sign up or you
| don't. If you sign up and complain they aren't extreme enough,
| they don't care or at least they don't have any material reason
| to care. If you don't, where else are you going to go? Twitter?
| But the whole demographic is people who didn't like Twitter in
| the first place and want to be with their kind. So how do you
| "hold them accountable" without say, legislation, regulation,
| and government oversight, something today's "free" speech
| advocates are opposed to?
| lm28469 wrote:
| > The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it
| contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
|
| Almost as if allowing absolute free speech has consequences,
| almost as if there was a reason absolute free speech isn't a
| thing anywhere in the world... we might be onto something
| Dig1t wrote:
| Okay I'm going to try and engage in a good faith reply here:
|
| "Free speech absolutist" does not mean "absolute free
| speech", you're misunderstanding the premise here. The term
| does not mean that anyone should be allowed to say anything
| they want at any time.
|
| The phrase means that we should permit any LEGAL speech.
| Where "legal" has tons of historical precedent and can be
| decided by the country.
|
| We've seen time and again, that if the ability to speak
| freely isn't a priority, then censorship grows quickly. If
| you don't believe that there is a ton of censorship happening
| on these platforms with a specific set of biases (the biases
| that the employees of these companies carry) then I would say
| that you might not be viewing the situation with an open
| mind.
|
| This is becoming a problem because the Internet has become
| the new town square where people learn what's going on in the
| world and talk with each other. If the people running these
| platforms are allowed to suppress speech that they don't like
| and promote speech that they do like, then they wield an
| incredible amount of power. This power is rife for abuse,
| both by people inside the corporation and within government.
|
| You are correct though that 4chan is a gross cesspool, though
| its one I believe should be allowed to exist simply because I
| believe freedom of speech is important. The problem with that
| site is obviously that it's anonymous. Coupling anonymity
| with free speech is a recipe for bringing out the worst in
| people, but a system where peoples' identities are out in the
| open and where they can speak freely is good in my opinion.
| We need more free speech and we need to engage with our
| fellow countrymen and find common cause, otherwise this
| insanely polarized partisan situation will continue to get
| worse.
| easrng wrote:
| > The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it
| contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
|
| And even 4chan has rules and mods to enforce them.
| asdff wrote:
| We have a platform with free speech: your own website! I don't
| get why these personalities who are charging this free speech
| narrative don't just decamp with their massive following to
| their own website. It's like arguing a bar has no right to kick
| out a drunk and disorderly person, because "free speech."
| Sorry, people can kick you out of the place they own, if you
| don't like that then start up your own bar/twitter/etc.
| nailer wrote:
| > All those free speech advocates are actually NIMBY's when it
| comes to free speech.
|
| Can you give examples?
| renewiltord wrote:
| Elon Musk, for instance, claims to be a free speech
| absolutist. However, in practice, he attempts to suppress
| speech that is expressed through bots that advertise crypto
| currency in replies to him.
| status200 wrote:
| Not OP, but this example is probably the most famous:
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/30/business/elon-musk-private-
| je...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| If you look at it politically, there are people on the right
| in the US who complain incessantly about cancel culture and
| how they feel persecuted on Twitter who like to ban books and
| passed the "don't say gay" legislation in Florida.
|
| CPAC, the conservative PAC, canceled Milo Yiannopoulos when
| was planning to speak there.
|
| I don't blame them, because Yiannopoulos was always acting in
| bad faith. If one of his talks hadn't gotten canceled it
| would have been a personal failure on his part and a clear
| indication that he didn't go far enough and would have to be
| even more offensive next time. The point with Yiannopoulos
| was that he'd get canceled, get attention, find some fool who
| would pay even more to hear a "controversial" speaker, and
| repeat the cycle. CPAC wised up to what is going on.
| chasing wrote:
| > The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it
| contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
|
| And what might we learn from this?
| yokoprime wrote:
| Free speech is only a concept in a judicial sense. E.g. If you
| come barging into my house spewing racist shit I may not be
| able to call the police in you for being a racist, but i'm
| throwing you off my property
| asddubs wrote:
| >The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it
| contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
|
| welcome to true free speech on the internet. the worst and most
| abrasive of the bunch drive everyone away.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > Musk and everyone else is right that we do need a platform
| with free speech. The only problem is that all those free
| speech advocates are actually NIMBY's when it comes to free
| speech.
|
| Agreed. Truth Social/Parlor as "Free speech" spaces is 100%
| laughable.
|
| > The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it
| contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
|
| AKA: Every totally-free-no-holds-barred-speech sites, there is
| a reason it's a stupid goal held by people either too naive or
| those using it as a dog whistle.
|
| > Yet again, I like that Musk and Kanye kind of people claim
| that they want free speech because at least we can hold them
| responsible when they don't deliver it.
|
| Yes, because we have such a good track record of holding liars
| accountable...
|
| > This is in contrast with the pure fascist where they cannot
| be held responsible for anything because they don't claim
| virtue in first place.
|
| I can't even with this line. We have plenty of fascists running
| around claiming mountains of virtue and lying through their
| teeth. Their base/audience continues to blindly follow them and
| holding any of them accountable (especially by their base) is a
| pipe dream.
|
| > It's a bit like companies doing greenwashing, which can be
| exposed when they don't deliver on their claimed virtues versus
| companies who don't even claim such virtues and instead pretend
| that it doesn't matter.
|
| Again, this just isn't happening at scale.
|
| > Those who claim virtue are better even if they ultimately
| fail.
|
| False.
| triceratops wrote:
| > The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it
| contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
|
| It's very interesting that you don't see the straight line
| between "absolute" free speech and toxicity.
|
| Absolute free speech IRL is moderated by physical and emotional
| stimuli and inhibitions against direct confrontation and
| bucking social norms. There are also legal repercussions, such
| as libel or defamation suits, for particularly harmful speech.
| The anonymity, and lack of accountability or feedback to one's
| words makes people far less inhibited online.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it
| contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
|
| Here, you've solved it. "The free market", both users and
| advertisers, demand content moderation. If you want to attract
| users, you need a website that isn't a cesspool of 'toxicity'.
| If you don't want to drive away those who actually pay for your
| website (advertisers), you'll need to moderate.
|
| Reddit has proved this out - they started out trying to say
| they're hands off, and they'll only remove illegal content
| (ignoring how troublesome that is to define for a global
| website), and they've slowly learned over the years that they
| cannot grow their website with those policies.
|
| You could say that you don't want to grow your platform, and
| stay a small niche, which is totally fine. That's what gab and
| parlor and 4chan are. We have them already!
| bombcar wrote:
| They could grow the _website_ just fine - it was growing the
| _advertising_ (read: profits) that is the problem.
|
| And you'll know the death-knell for reddit is here when they
| crack down on the porn.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| No, it wasn't just about advertising. Some types of content
| (piracy, child porn, etc) would get them in actual legal
| trouble
| philippejara wrote:
| that falls under illegal content in the US which they
| never didn't remove. Maybe not piracy but there's plenty
| of piracy subreddits last I checked. What made them start
| changing things iirc was the backlash over the Icloud(?)
| celebrity nude leaks.
| threatofrain wrote:
| You're basically looking for people like Stallman, who is a
| very rare kind of person. He thinks about the principles he
| would like to advocate for and then he fleshes out how these
| principles interact and how to deal with tensions or
| contradictions.
|
| Most people who declare their affinity for a value or policy or
| position merely do so tactically; they think that there's a
| short-term relationship between the furthering of some movement
| and their ability to get closer to what they want. Such people
| are allies when convenient.
| BWStearns wrote:
| > The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it
| contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
|
| You've found the problem. There _are_ "anything legal" online
| spaces, and they _suck_. There's no way to have 0 moderation
| and not have the place turn basically into 4Chan.
|
| If people really want to be on totally free speech platforms,
| they can just go on 4Chan, but what they really want is to
| force everyone else to engage with the toxic shit they want to
| say and no one else wants to hear.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| > but it contains so much toxicity
|
| Easy. Allow all legal speech, but make it very easy for each
| individual user to block what they don't want to see.
|
| Maybe even allow external providers to offer filters. Like an
| App Store but for content filters.
|
| Let each individual decide how much and what kind of censorship
| they want.
| diceduckmonk wrote:
| "Great Minds Discuss Ideas. Average Minds Discuss Events. Small
| Minds Discuss People."
|
| I feel there's already disproportionate discussion here about a
| person and their cult of personality here. This doesn't feel
| quite in the spirit of HN. Even during the Elon Musk Twitter
| debacles there was still separate threads about the business
| dynamics and whether he is playing some kind of 4D chess. The
| attempts to quickly discredits Ye West's other accomplishment
| feels borderline like anti-blackness, except with the passive
| aggressive pretense of being concerned about his mental well-
| being. For example, Kanye West was part of the Fendi intern
| cohort which, as a former fashion design student myself, I find
| to be far more exclusive and prestigious than a Google internship
| (which I was offered). He's not just a musician but he's behind
| the scenes for making other established artists including Jay-Z
| and Beyonce, also billionaires. Even the title of the article
| being "Kanye West is buying Parler" feels disrespect when he said
| he goes by Ye, now. This is inconsistent with tech's community
| plight of respecting self-identification.
|
| This is a community to talk about entrepreneurship, so let's talk
| about that. How are people jumping to the conclusion that he is
| being "scammed" without even knowing the terms of the deal? On
| that note, how much do you think this acquisition will go for? I
| noticed Parler has 3.3K ratings average 3 stars on the IOs App
| Store and Truth Social has 121k, averaging 4.5 stars. I will go
| out on a limb and question whether the 4D chess with Twitter and
| Parler will somehow involve Truth Social / DWAC.
| [deleted]
| jasonhansel wrote:
| IIRC Trump wouldn't join Parler unless it agreed (among other
| things) to censor his critics. This seems to be a pattern with
| Trump: he demands that people be more loyal to him personally
| than to any abstract principle (including free speech
| absolutism).
| jsemrau wrote:
| Given that Parler is primarily associated with alt-right users,
| this purchase is quite amusing. Yet it underlines how the right
| to speak freely is under threat online and I am not sure if
| Billionaires further centralizing access is the right way
| forward.
| evgen wrote:
| Is it too surprising if I tell you that Candace Owen's husband
| is the CEO of Parler? Yes, the same Candace Owens that has been
| advising Kanye West and appeared with him in the matching White
| Lives Matter t-shirt...
| Loughla wrote:
| Honestly, this whole Kanye thing has made me sad. (pardon my
| language for a minute) It's a world of shit taking advantage
| of someone who plainly needs mental health support and
| assistance.
|
| It's sad to see.
| brutusborn wrote:
| Why is that amusing?
|
| It makes sense that the "more free" platforms tend to attract
| people from the right because highly moderated platforms tend
| to censor right wing discussion more than left wing discussion.
| More extreme people are kicked off each platform successively
| until they end up places like 4chan. The opposite would be true
| if the mainstream advocated right wing politics, forcing left
| wing people onto the fringes. Similar to what happened pre-
| internet with the 60s counterculture, left wing ideas were
| found in the underground, whilst mainstream media pushed right
| wing ideas.
| saila wrote:
| I've seen people on both the "left" and "right" claim that
| Twitter more heavily moderates "their side." Is there any way
| to know if either "side" is correct?
|
| I doubt Twitter classifies moderated content into political
| buckets as this would create massive liability, but has any
| neutral third party studied what kind of content is removed
| and classified it into "left" vs "right"?
|
| I'd like to see the system that could accurately perform such
| classification at scale, if such a thing is even possible,
| since no one seems to know exactly what "left" and "right"
| mean.
|
| For example, "liberal" and "left" are often conflated even
| though hardcore leftists tend to have a healthy disdain for
| liberals (in the modern, colloquial sense).
| philjohn wrote:
| Got some examples of right wing discussions that have been
| moderated?
| bobsmith432 wrote:
| In my opinion if Antifa can be let on a platform so can
| neonazis
| [deleted]
| dd36 wrote:
| I know my left wing friends would claim the media still is
| right wing and truly left wing ideas are disallowed. It may
| be that the left wing was censored and vilified for so long
| that it ceased existing in the US.
| tsol wrote:
| The news media maybe. But watching tv, surfing the web, etc
| the majority generally sides with the liberal status quo of
| our times. It's rare to see genuine positive religious
| sentiment in media compared to real life, and it's very
| obvious to me
| dd36 wrote:
| But isn't that an indication that truly free peoples are
| less religious as opposed to a conspiracy? My whole life
| there have been religious cable news shows. If they were
| extremely popular, they'd air on prime time or their
| content would be shared more on social media. It's not
| being blocked.
| adamrezich wrote:
| believing that what you see on TV reflects reality 1:1 is
| exactly why it's so dangerous--it's a wholly artificial,
| professionally-curated window into reality, nothing more,
| nothing less. I'm a bit shocked to see people still
| buying into the idea that it's an accurate reflection of
| reality, as you are, still, in the current year.
|
| what makes you think that the content that appears on
| television is any sort of democratic free marketplace of
| ideas? why would that be the case, given its obviously
| corporate structure? like sure, you have "FOX News"
| presenting one Approved Viewpoint, and everyone else
| representing The Other Approved Viewpoint... but where
| are all the Unapproved Viewpoints on television?
| obviously, they're not there, for wholly obvious reasons.
| tsol wrote:
| I'm an Indian muslim, and I know many asian and middle
| eastern muslims. I also know a smattering of Sikhs,
| Hindus, jews, etc. I can't say that the religious
| attitudes of any of these groups seemed to be represented
| on tv. No one is saying it's a conspiracy. But it's not a
| conspiracy either that when you start interacting with
| many minority groups you notice in general they are
| fairly religious. And it's their experience that get's
| ignored in the American national 'christian right vs
| secular left' rivalry.
| brutusborn wrote:
| What kind of ideas? I guess if you go far enough left then
| everything is to your right.
| guerrilla wrote:
| I mean they were literally persecuted by the United
| States itself, which the right has never been.
| McArthyism, blacklisting, banning, COINTELPRO and the
| most enormous propaganda campaigns in history since WWII.
| The US went to war with leftists and eradicated them,
| which is why European (and generally global) politics
| looks so different as many of those places didn't have
| such direct oppression.
| dd36 wrote:
| Yes, the news recently that the FBI monitored Aretha
| Franklin?!?
|
| The same powerful people that targeted socialists or
| civil rights leaders also influenced or even owned the
| media. It's almost like the internet, at least early on,
| kind of broke that grip, and the rise of hard right media
| funded by billionaires with social media promotion
| weapons/bots/coordination is a response to that.
| drcongo wrote:
| Socialism is apparently a dirty word in the US, but a
| perfectly normal political ideology in large parts of the
| rest of the world.
| dd36 wrote:
| Communism, socialism, ending capitalism, etc. Just look
| at European politics.
| luckylion wrote:
| Where on e.g. Twitter or Reddit would that be disallowed?
| Isn't r/antiwork/ hitting the front page regularly?
| dementiapatent wrote:
| I would like to point out that employers are/were
| permitted to discriminate against these people under
| federal law:
|
| The Equal Rights Act of 1964:
| https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/title-vii-civil-rights-
| act-196...
|
| > As used in this subchapter, the phrase "unlawful
| employment practice" shall not be deemed to include any
| action or measure taken by an employer, labor
| organization, joint labor management committee, or
| employment agency with respect to an individual who is a
| member of the Communist Party of the United States or of
| any other organization required to register as a
| Communist-action or Communist-front organization by final
| order of the Subversive Activities Control Board pursuant
| to the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950 [50
| U.S.C. 781 et seq.].
| ch4s3 wrote:
| To be fair, when that was written being a member of the
| CPUSA meant there was a very good chance that someone was
| working with the KGB. There was a long history of people
| with college ties to communist groups going to work in
| sensitive industries and passing secrets to the KGB.
| dementiapatent wrote:
| I find it interesting that similar claims have been made
| against several members of the Republican party in recent
| times (by prominent news outlets).
|
| What is the threshold of evidence that taints an entire
| political party?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| For the record I think it was wrong then, but there are
| literal KGB records of people in the working for them,
| and some were caught and arrested at the time. Again I
| think the law was wrong, but the concern was real. As for
| "Russia Gate", I remain in unconvinced.
|
| [*edit] if you're downvoting, kindly share your
| disagreement, I'd be interested to hear what you have to
| say.
| dd36 wrote:
| You named the only two relatively free, large,
| unmoderated public forums with transparent-able feeds.
| Well Reddit's feed is transparent: Lower bound of Wilson
| score. On Twitter, I only filter for latest, but you
| cannot do that on Facebook.
| luckylion wrote:
| Feeds suck, sure, but there's really no censorship for
| anything about communism etc short of calling for
| violence against wealthy people.
|
| Facebook is less "free" in that regard since they won't
| allow "all men are trash", which Twitter would only go
| after if you qualify it with a race that is considered
| 'protected', and Reddit would probably ignore completely
| (but "local" mods might not, which makes Reddit take a
| special role there).
| greenhearth wrote:
| The biggest companies in the U.S. are not really right
| wing, but neo-liberal. There are some right wing ones too
| and they are completely bonkers.
| npteljes wrote:
| >whilst mainstream media pushed right wing ideas.
|
| I think mainstream now pushes both, which, a bit, depends on
| what you'd call "mainstream". If "mainstream" is "media
| watched by millions that thematizes the public discourse",
| then Fox News and Netflix are both mainstream, and their
| range of ideas being pushed span wide. I don't see that the
| mainstream prefers either side, on a worldwide stage.
|
| "More extreme people are kicked off each platform
| successively until they end up places like 4chan."
|
| I think extreme expressions are moderated chiefly because it
| turns a place toxic, and because the owner wouldn't like to
| be legally liable for things like hate speech or doxxing.
| IE6 wrote:
| > right to speak freely is under threat online
|
| Is it though? A lot of this free speech stuff usually boils
| down to "I wanted to say the n word on facebook". I'm not aware
| of any conservatives being arrested by the US government
| because they advocated for free market capitalism.
| impowski wrote:
| I mean you can say "men are trash", "white people are trash" and
| so on, but at the same time you are not allowed to say anything
| against jewish people or other people? Isn't it kinda
| hypocritical? Maybe we should not allow toxic behavior at all and
| have a civil discourse about someone is feeling towards some
| group of people to allow him to change his mind? Personal attacks
| and hatred will not do any good this will only prove to that
| person that he is right.
| DerekBickerton wrote:
| > Maybe we should not allow toxic behavior at all
|
| Moderation[0] is not censorship. It just means having a
| productive conversation and debate without name-calling, slurs,
| and other malfeasance. "Trash" is not a harmful word, but
| inciting violence against an ethnic group definitely is
| harmful. There's also historical baggage attached to ethnic
| groups such as the Jews who were persecuted in an _actual war_
| and genocide. "Men" is too generic.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderation
| nonameiguess wrote:
| > I mean you can say "men are trash", "white people are trash"
|
| Are you sure? It's been a few years since I purged all social
| media from my life, but three years ago, it was going around
| and seemingly well-documented with screenshots that saying "men
| are trash" would get your post auto-deleted and your account
| sanctioned on Facebook.
|
| This seems like another of those things where extremists on all
| sides believe they're being uniquely persecuted and some other
| side of the spectrum is given free reign, when more likely than
| not most mainstream platforms are pretty centrist.
| luckylion wrote:
| I believe that's because Facebook gave itself some actual
| rules and then enforced them, regardless of who said it and
| who was the subject of the post, they treated all groups the
| same. Twitter or Reddit do not.
| houstonn wrote:
| It is typical. Here is a recent illustration of one from a
| blue check that attracted a lot of attention but was not
| removed.
|
| https://twitter.com/TalbertSwan/status/1581103527585120257
| DerekBickerton wrote:
| https://nitter.net/TalbertSwan/status/1581103527585120257
| dd36 wrote:
| Kanye West is still on Twitter. What was it he couldn't say?
| tonightstoast wrote:
| He made some anti Semitic comments and I thought his account
| was banned. Maybe it was just a suspension though.
| paulpauper wrote:
| that never happened. the tweet was only removed
| Kiro wrote:
| It says that he is locked out of his Twitter account in
| the article. Isn't that the same thing as being banned?
| nickthegreek wrote:
| no, when you are banned, you pretty much cant get your
| account back. When it is locked, there are steps you can
| undertake to get access restored (like deleting the
| offending content).
| fckgw wrote:
| Ah yes, when will we do something about the toxicity against
| the historically marginalized group, "White Men"?
| danuker wrote:
| On one hand, there should ideally be no discrimination. So,
| hate speech directed even at white males should be disallowed.
|
| On the other hand, society resolved through politics (such as
| Affirmative Action) that the compound interest and lasting
| synergistic effects of historical discrimination should be
| compensated for somewhat. The only way to do that is through
| more discrimination (i.e. relatively penalizing the least
| historically discriminated-against people).
|
| I suspect this selective enforcement of the rules is one kind
| of such relative penalization.
|
| What I don't understand is why do private companies take it
| upon themselves to do this. Is it genuine stakeholder concern
| (in conflict with profits)? ESG criteria giving them access to
| cheaper funding or tax breaks? Plain marketing? Virtue
| signalling?
| tsol wrote:
| >The only way to do that is through more discrimination (i.e.
| relatively penalizing the least historically discriminated-
| against people).
|
| Which is done by creating opportunities for historically
| discriminated groups, not blindly handicapping white people
| for being white. I'm not white, but it's really worrying to
| me that that's allowed. Today it's them, tomorrow it's me,
| then it's you.
| danuker wrote:
| I agree with you. Rule of law should be upheld, and laws
| should be objective.
|
| For instance, taxes for minority X will be Y% smaller for
| the next Z decades.
|
| This is why I don't like where companies are currently
| going - arbitrary enforcement.
|
| Why not make the laws or rules clear? Because it affords
| them some level of plausible deniability to push agendae.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| HAve you ever looked at the ads on 4chan/pornhub/generic
| "free speech" site? That's the reason twitter doesn't allow
| anti-semetic speech.
| dd36 wrote:
| Twitter has corporate users and advertisers. If it became
| 4chan, that would all evaporate.
|
| It also has professionals. There's a point at which
| unmoderated content drives out all but the trolls, spammers,
| and haters.
| danuker wrote:
| I don't have a stance on principled moderation of content.
| Only on arbitrary enforcement.
| impowski wrote:
| People are lazy they think that some sort of compensation
| will resolve all their issues but it's not.
|
| Everyone knows that these companies control people because
| they are constantly engaged on their platforms they can push
| anything they want. Companies will support any dominating
| regime for their own good it doesn't matter if it's democrats
| or republicans, fascists or communists, etc.
| danuker wrote:
| How are companies benefitting by pushing something, rather
| than trying to stay politically neutral?
| drak0n1c wrote:
| Usually there is no deeper reason than the fact that those
| private companies are staffed at the administrative and
| policy level by college-educated yuppies living in San
| Francisco and New York City, and that demographic has become
| increasingly ideological in the last few years and bought
| into the idea that progressive toxicity is either a socially
| good form of tough love/bullying/peer pressure or at least
| that restricting it disproportionately damages vulnerable
| groups, etc while what is labeled regressive toxicity is
| assumed to be heinous, destroying society, and deserving of
| quick permanent bans.
|
| Companies are not perfectly rational calculators that always
| know best how to make money. They are made up of people, and
| people are flawed. People can be deluded into thinking that
| their bias toward pet issues is profit-neutral or even
| profit-positive. It happens in the non-politicized corporate
| sphere all the time - boondoggles is the term.
| robertsfrost wrote:
| monopoliessuck wrote:
| There's a really concerning trend on HN and elsewhere I'm seeing.
| Everyone now seems to think free speech is too dangerous to try
| and promote anymore. It's been a shift over a couple years.
|
| I'm not supporting Ye or any of his bullshit, but some of the
| comments on here are really chillingly authoritarian.
|
| Parler isn't going to be able to maintain "free speech" even if
| they or Kanye want it to, which I seriously doubt anyway. They
| don't "have it now" and they won't have it tomorrow either.
| Still, it's strange how HN flips so violently against free speech
| when the content is obviously offensive and low quality.
|
| People need to be better stewards of their own beliefs, not
| simply shielded from malicious, dim or unsavory ones out there in
| public.
|
| As an aside, I can't believe celebrities have the sway they do.
| Today's breed talks like such imbeciles; I have no idea how they
| keep people's interest.
| pelorat wrote:
| > Parler isn't going to be able to maintain "free speech" even
| if they or Kanye want it to
|
| Correct, because they allow EU users to sign up and therefore
| has to comply with various European countries content laws
| (including GDPR). Depending on their size and amount of users
| they could also be forced to store data on EU servers. They
| would have to remove material illegal in some countries if they
| have users from said country, i.e German users on Parler
| posting Nazi material are committing a crime, Parler needs to
| be able to remove it in time, or face consequences.
|
| Same goes for HN. Sure many small services that let EU citizens
| sign up on them fly under the radar, but won't for long when
| more and more people complain to the authorities.
|
| Look at Truth Social, it's not available in the EU because they
| would face fines if it was and they know it.
|
| In the end it's pretty simple. Do you allow EU users on your
| platform? Then you need content moderation.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| The idea that it's important to have a mainstream and
| consequence-free venue for all forms of speech may be your
| belief but it is not mine.
|
| My belief is that public forums with reach into the tens or
| hundreds of millions are fertile ground for nationalist and
| genocidal movements, and they will be used for that purpose _if
| it is not actively prevented_.
|
| Moderation of wide-reach public forums with the goal of
| preventing movements causing mass death and misery is perfectly
| consistent with _my own beliefs_ about the value, conditions,
| and limits of free speech. You might believe differently, even
| oppose these beliefs, but the idea that the only correct stance
| is yours and all moral, rational people will converge on it is
| ridiculous.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| > The idea that it's important to have a mainstream and
| consequence-free venue for all forms of speech may be your
| belief but it is not mine.
|
| Well, imagine that you got kicked off the internet for saying
| what you just said? You're only allowed to express your
| disagreement because of free speech principles
| mikkergp wrote:
| > You're only allowed to express your disagreement because
| of free speech principles
|
| Sort of true, but it doesn't make sense not to re-evaluate
| how we apply those principles when we encounter dramatic
| changes in communication patterns. You can believe in
| freedom of speech as an end in itself, or you can believe
| in freedom of speech as better than the alternative. If you
| think of it as better than the alternative, then you should
| be consistently measuring to ensure that is still true.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I have frankly radical political beliefs and am outspoken
| about them: getting banned and censored is not a
| hypothetical situation for me but an experience I have
| actually had many times.
|
| Nevertheless I remain committed to preventing the growth of
| nationalist, racist, and genocidal movements, and I've come
| to believe that this requires moderation of large-scale
| public internet forums.
|
| There is no fair, reasonable, effective content-neutral
| strategy here. All moderation is ideological, including the
| choice not to moderate at all. And every choice within that
| constraint will have consequences. We are better off
| looking at the consequences we want to prevent and working
| backwards, than we are starting from a specific ideology
| and moderating the way it demands.
|
| "No moderation at all" isn't a virtuous abstinence from
| making this choice or being responsible for the outcomes,
| it is just one option among many, and one I find to have
| unacceptable consequences.
| monopoliessuck wrote:
| > the idea that the only correct stance is yours and all
| moral, rational people will converge on it is ridiculous.
|
| I never said that. Conversations exist to be had, good ideas
| should be promoted and bad ideas disproven and cast aside.
| Ideas should be considered and judged on their merits, even
| ones I don't agree with. There's certainly no requirement for
| any individual to engage.
|
| Despite calling me out, there's irony inherent here in that
| you believe your stance is the only one that deserves to even
| be considered. Censoring those that do not believe as you do
| is the definition of believing you have the "only correct
| stance".
|
| People do and should have the option to curtail speech in
| their spaces as they see fit. I choose to converse on
| platforms that limit my and other's speech minimally. That's
| not an endorsement of "nationalist or genocidal movements".
|
| > Moderation of wide-reach public forums with the goal of
| preventing movements causing mass death and misery...
|
| Claimed goals are always rosy until they aren't. Individuals
| habituated to not having to determine truth for themselves
| are ultimately doing themselves a disservice. That said, if
| people prefer platforms that censor certain content, then
| those platforms will thrive; that's fine and they have. I
| don't think though that information freedom is on most
| people's radars when they choose a social media platform. A
| lot of this legislation that requires mandated strict
| moderation will only work to entrench big players that can
| pay to do so.
|
| I'm not a racist genocidal nationalist and I don't follow nor
| broadcast their content. I still don't want their existence
| in the public sphere to limit my expression. They're not that
| important and we shouldn't make them out to be.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| > I still don't want their existence in the public sphere
| to limit my expression. They're not that important and we
| shouldn't make them out to be.
|
| See this is the key thing and a conflict I pretty much
| expect and accept. I think they _are_ important, on the
| metric of their body count over the last century. I 'm
| willing to accept some limitations to public speech, both
| mine and yours, to reduce their power and risk in the
| future.
|
| You don't accept that tradeoff, which I find a consistent
| and reasonable position that I also oppose. But your first
| comment did imply that it was the only valid position for
| reasonable people to have ("better stewards of their
| beliefs"). You may not have intended that meaning but it's
| the one I read.
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| > There's a really concerning trend on HN and elsewhere I'm
| seeing. Everyone now seems to think free speech is too
| dangerous to try and promote anymore.
|
| What are you thoughts on free speech regarding misinformation
| or election denial?
|
| When so many republican candidates reject the result of 2020,
| what's the right answer? Allow them to continue to divide the
| country up until half of the populace no longer trusts the
| democracy and starts another civil war?
| monopoliessuck wrote:
| I think mandated information disclosure is extremely
| important in a capitalist system. How can we make good
| decisions if we don't have good information? We need to ask
| more questions, trust, but verify. We do pass laws that
| require those that sell products and services to disclose X,
| Y and Z for their products in a standardized and uniform
| manner. Likewise, we should be skeptical and critical about
| what others are telling us.
|
| Information that's not tied to such a simple tit for tat
| relationship gets in the weeds though. How do you define
| "misinformation" as it pertains to your mother on someone's
| feed? You can claim and sue for damages and if a judge and
| jury find your case, then that's what it is, but mandating
| strict systematic moderation of all internet users on social
| media is not the same as mandating information disclosure for
| the Kellogs or IKEAs of the world. We've decided that
| Horseradish dyed green can be sold as Wasabi on the
| ingredients list. This is officially supported misinformation
| right?
|
| In this instance, election denial is almost complete idiocy,
| yes, but barring "election denial" wholesale is a terrible
| thing to do. Your questions are quite leading too. We need
| more discussion around these topics, not less. I've talked
| election deniers off their stupid cliffs before. When SCOTUS
| shot down the Bush v. Gore recount decades ago, Americans had
| reason to be upset and talk about it. Would it have been more
| unifying if everyone had just bowed their heads, quickly and
| quietly, accepting the results without fuss, sure...
|
| Censorship is a great tool for quelling public dissent. It's
| a shortcut around reason though and we've built up these
| tribal walls that preclude solving problems together. If
| quieting dissenters is the thing you want to maximize, you'll
| do great with it. We're not the only ones chomping at the bit
| to censor those that disagree with us, but I guess be careful
| what you wish for.
| adamrezich wrote:
| > There's a really concerning trend on HN and elsewhere I'm
| seeing. Everyone now seems to think free speech is too
| dangerous to try and promote anymore. It's been a shift over a
| couple years.
|
| this is the result of years of propaganda enacted on an
| unsuspecting, smartphone-using populace. before the smartphone,
| the venn diagram of "advocate of free speech" and "Internet
| user" was a circle--look how far we've fallen since then.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| unity1001 wrote:
| You people are saying how that is crazy or Kanye has gone crazy,
| having a breakdown etc, but there is a method to the madness: He
| ran for president in 2020. He has been posturing himself as a
| conservative since a while. This move fits into that pattern and
| signals that he is going to go into GOP politics.
| balls187 wrote:
| That was my thought as well. He is saying outlandish things to
| poise himself to run for president in 2024. His relationship to
| Candace Owens is what tipped off his plan to me.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| Where does "going death con 3 on jewish people" fall into his
| grand plan?
| balls187 wrote:
| Courting conservatives.
|
| Remember these guys: https://www.splcenter.org/file/15770
| shepherdjerred wrote:
| > Courting conservatives.
|
| Equating all conservatives with radial groups is not
| helpful and only further sows division.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > In a world where conservative opinions are considered to be
| controversial
|
| In my opinion controversy and political incorrectness are Okay. I
| don't think people should be too concerned about hurting others'
| feelings when discussing objective phenomena or expressing their
| own opinion (as long as they acknowledge their subjectivity) .
| Nevertheless obvious (although not to everyone) absurd, blatant
| lies and manipulations shouldn't be covered by the free speech
| umbrella. I wish people could correctly judge what they read
| themselves, taking what they read and what they feel critically,
| but many apparently can not.
| luckylion wrote:
| > Nevertheless obvious (although not to everyone) absurd,
| blatant lies and manipulations shouldn't be covered by the free
| speech umbrella.
|
| "Capitalism is the problem", "modern employment is wage
| slavery". These are absurd, blatant lies meant to manipulate.
| Would you have statements like that removed?
| [deleted]
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| These are opinions. And I lean to agreeing with them (except
| I don't think anybody knows a good solution to the problem).
| Blatant lies/absurd are things like all (or almost all)
| people of specific race are inherently evil or stupid, they
| control the state for their wicked aims and there is a gene
| for specific preferences which ought to be eradicated or we
| are doomed.
| poopnugget wrote:
| luckylion wrote:
| That sounds to me like picking and choosing what's okay
| because "opinion" and what's not because "blatant lie".
| elil17 wrote:
| "Capitalism is the problem" is a statement so broad an
| non-specific that it can not be a lie. Certainly any
| economic system has problems.
|
| Saying that a specific race is inherently evil is a
| specific factual claim (one that few people actually
| make).
| luckylion wrote:
| > Certainly any economic system has problems
|
| Sure, but there's a huge gap between "X has problems" and
| "X is _the_ problem", i.e. if only we removed X,
| everything would be fine. It's absurd.
| elil17 wrote:
| I do not assume that people mean "if we only removed
| capitalism, everything would be fine" when they say
| "capitalism is the problem." I assume they mean something
| more like "replacing capitalism with [y] would make
| things much better than marginal changes to capitalism"
| where [y] is probably democratic socialism, or that they
| mean something like "most problems can be traced back to
| capitalism and to fix these problems we need to fix
| capitalism" where "fixing capitalism" means enacting
| whatever policies the speaker happens to advocate for.
|
| Someone saying "it would be better if the US adopted a
| government closer to the USSR's" is a pretty out there
| statement and I'm not going to assume that someone means
| that unless they're pretty clear about it.
| bckr wrote:
| There's a conversation of some depth to be had here. I
| think it might simply devolve into "rhetoric is part of a
| struggle for power", but I am not ready to be that
| cynical yet.
|
| "Capitalism is the problem". Let's take this as untrue
| (ironic laughter from the peanut gallery).
|
| Could "capitalism is the problem" be an opinion coming
| from one person and a blatant lie coming from another?
|
| Is it fundamentally different from "ethnicity X is the
| problem"?
| luckylion wrote:
| That's an interesting point, and it seems correct. You
| need to consider the context and background to get an
| idea whether someone doesn't know better or actively
| tells the truth.
|
| That's often hard for me with a lot of the "out there"
| medical advice, where it's not immediately obvious to me
| that they're just scams where the person goes home to
| laugh at the fools giving them money, but rather
| themselves believe in whatever theory they're advocating.
| I don't think it becomes an opinion (it's still a
| statement claiming to be factual), but it's not a lie,
| and certainly not blatant, though some of it is absurd
| (but again not to everyone, obviously).
| jccalhoun wrote:
| Being wrong is not lying. To be a lie the person has to know
| it isn't true. Whether those statements are untrue or not, I
| think that most people that say those things believe them to
| be true and so they are not lies.
| [deleted]
| _djo_ wrote:
| But how can you seriously compare a statement like
| 'capitalism is the problem', which is an opinion about how
| society chooses to organise itself, to bigotry and prejudice
| against what people were born as, including anti-semitism?
|
| It's self evident that there should be separate standards for
| that.
| luckylion wrote:
| It's absurd to call capitalism the problem for e.g.
| pollution (which is a typical example of 'capitalism is the
| problem' statements), which every economic system faced
| (and the communist systems handled much worse than the
| capitalist), not to mention comparing slavery to 21st
| century employment in the West. The people uttering those
| statements know that, they're neither stupid nor children
| who haven't yet gotten an education, so they're lying, and
| they're doing so to manipulate.
|
| A similar absurd lie that is intended to manipulate: Russia
| is being attacked by NATO and only defends itself against
| the fascists in Ukraine.
|
| > It's self evident that there should be separate standards
| for that.
|
| Sure, but they shouldn't be based on whether something is
| true or wrong, absurd or plausible, or said with intent to
| manipulate or inform.
|
| Better criteria are required, or we'll be back to Twitter's
| stance of "this instance is against TOS, and that same
| thing isn't, because we feel like the author didn't mean it
| the same way", which comes down to "there are no rules
| other than don't do something/be someone I dislike".
| macintux wrote:
| Pollution is an example of an externality which
| unregulated <anything>ism fails to address, but since
| capitalism is the dominant economic model and many
| capitalists advocate for less regulation, it's not a
| dramatic leap of logic to say capitalism is the problem.
| luckylion wrote:
| Again, we've had something very not capitalist to compare
| it to (which those people tend to love) and boy, was that
| worse.
|
| But the past tends to be forgotten and on the internet
| nobody knows that the Soviet Union existed, so why not
| claim that it didn't. Or that it does, but is being
| attacked by NATO. Or, my favorite, that Russia doesn't
| exist, but is just a mirage used by NATO countries to
| pretend there's an external enemy so their population
| will follow orders more easily. "It's just an opinion"
| after all.
| elil17 wrote:
| The statement "capitalism is the problem" can be saying
| that capitalism is the problem with respect to a more
| regulated for of capitalism, Nordic socialism, or even a
| platonic ideal/imaginary version of communism.
|
| Saying that Ukraine is the aggressor in the current war
| is a much more specific factual claim (that is absolutely
| a lie).
| npteljes wrote:
| >when discussing objective phenomena
|
| This would be a good rule, but there's no objective, especially
| no objective phenomena.
|
| So what remains is that we can strive to be truthful, while
| trying not to be hurtful. Assertive communication, I-messages
| (communicating one's own account, instead of putting the other
| in focus), studying fallacies and trying to avoid them, things
| like that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-message
| GoodJokes wrote:
| I can say whatever I want to my friends or cat. The people who
| want free speech in the internet just want to broadcast offensive
| or dangerous speech.
| PointyFluff wrote:
| And?
|
| If I wanted racist-idiot-news, I'd go to reddit.
| status200 wrote:
| "Parler was later reinstated on both app stores after agreeing to
| more closely moderate posts"
|
| Free speech, and by free they mean speech that they can control.
| juve1996 wrote:
| A store can decide what products to put on it shelf. If your
| product is unpalatable sell it somewhere else or make it
| palatable, which they (smartly) did.
| Ruq wrote:
| I gotta say, this was the last thing I expected to read today.
| dynamite-ready wrote:
| Kanye has burnt a lot of bridges, but he still enjoys a healthy
| portion of popularity. A very different form of popularity to
| that of both Trump and Musk too.
|
| Musk and Trump's audiences, I'll admit to guessing about this,
| are passionate for sure, but:
|
| - In Trump's case, tech literacy is low, the average age is
| relatively high, and disposable time they have, is probably low
|
| - Musk's audience is undoubtedly tech literate, but I would guess
| that the age demographic is similar to Trump's, and would further
| guess their disposable time is similar, if not lower (we nerds
| barely have time for HN!)
|
| Kanye's audience though... They're young, and they already live
| online. I can't imagine it overtaking Twitter at any point in the
| future, but I can definitely imagine the venture gaining more
| traction than Trump's attempt. And that will encourage other
| similarly minded business people to support his venture.
| coffeeblack wrote:
| Awesome.
| jeffwask wrote:
| Candace Owens really played Ye.
| diceduckmonk wrote:
| You don't become a multi-billionaire being the one that's
| played.
| ajb wrote:
| You might become a non-multi-billionaire that way though
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns.
| Someone can be brilliant for a long time and still get played
| in the end. Just take a look at what happened to Tony Hsieh
| after he got hooked on drugs: https://www.forbes.com/sites/an
| gelauyeung/2021/01/26/cause-o...
|
| > But instead, the community turned into a hedonistic
| enclave, where people on Hsieh's payroll indulged his every
| whim -- such as conducting a research report on the laughing
| gas nitrous oxide, which he was consuming daily, to figuring
| out a way to stop time--and were less willing to curb his
| increasingly concerning behavior and excessive drug use,
| Forbes previously reported. During this time, Hsieh resisted
| attempts by family members and close friends to check him
| into rehab, according to multiple people familiar with the
| matter. By the end of July, Hsieh was estranged from his
| parents and several of his close friends.
| jeffwask wrote:
| Nope, you do it by exploiting the less fortunate. Kayne is
| now among the less fortunate who suffer from untreated mental
| health issues.
|
| (The aforementioned mental health issues do not excuse
| antisemitism or other anti-social behaviors.)
| [deleted]
| rospaya wrote:
| It's like the school bully buying a megaphone when he gets banned
| from the classroom.
| bakugo wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder if people who post things like this have
| ever actually been to school.
| rospaya wrote:
| It's called an analogy, I don't think a lot of kids buy
| megaphones yknow?
| glonq wrote:
| If you're an advisor/accountant/manger to Kanye, do you just
| shake your head and sigh when stuff like this happens?
|
| Or maybe they don't give a damn because they are also financially
| benefiting from this guy's mental illness?
| logicalmonster wrote:
| How could an average outside observer distinguish between
| another's mental illness and a guy who's just a real out of the
| box thinker who might be wrong about many ideas but might also
| add value to the world by perceiving reality in an atypical way?
|
| A lot of posters are claiming Kanye is mentally ill and unable to
| manage his own affairs. What is the direct evidence of this? And
| I don't simply mean "provide examples of opinions he's said that
| I don't understand or care for".
|
| I think it's pretty dangerous to be labeling people involved in
| the national dialogue as mentally ill without a diagnosis, or at
| least some substantial and direct evidence. This label could be
| weaponized by an authoritarian political movement in a very
| dangerous way if that's the precedent we're using.
| breck wrote:
| Just take a look at parler (https://parler.com/breckyunits) --
| there are barely any ads, clear sign of mental illness.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| He has personally admitted to being diagnosed with bipolar
| disorder.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| I never want to be engaged in mind-reading, but it seems to
| me that the people who are shouting about him being mentally
| ill the loudest are doing so in a way to justify stifling
| everything he says, as if saying "he's mentally ill" ends any
| conceivable discussion about any of his ideas.
|
| I think my general question remains. "How could an average
| outside observer distinguish between another's mental illness
| and a guy who's just a real out of the box thinker who might
| be wrong about many ideas but might also add value to the
| world by perceiving reality in an atypical way?"
| 0x445442 wrote:
| Even if he's known to be mentally ill, his ideas can still
| stand. Take Ted Kaczynski for example. His actions were
| inexcusable but his ideas and writings on technology and
| its relationship to society have value.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| Do you think Kanye's claims that Hollywood Jews have
| placed child actors in his home to sexualize his children
| will stand the test of time and be shown to have value?
| logicalmonster wrote:
| Whether or not some or all of Kanye's claims are the most
| ridiculous things, cherry-picking and presenting one
| piece of bait and trying to associate everything Kanye
| has ever said with the same brush feels like a hell of a
| disingenuous way to argue. You can't just dismiss
| everything somebody said just because they were very
| wrong other stuff.
|
| PS: I'm not going to say what's true or false about any
| of Kanye's claims here, but who the hell knows what goes
| on in the highest levels of Hollywood? This is a circle
| of people who felt zero shame publicly disparaging
| critics of Roman Polanski. And apparently the Harvey
| Weinstein stuff was common knowledge in Hollywood crowds
| for decades. If you think Kanye has little credibility,
| well, think about how Hollywood's credibility ought to be
| perceived.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| In my opinion there's no real discussion to be had on the
| things he is saying recently, so dismissing them as the
| rantings of a mentally ill man is the most charitable thing
| to do. If he's not mentally ill, then he's an extremely
| ill-informed anti-Semite who either believes outlandish
| things or pretends to for engagement.
| etchalon wrote:
| No one is accusing Candace Owens, for instance, as being
| mentally ill for her beliefs, and Bi-polar has some very
| specific tells.
|
| It seems like consensus is able to make that distinction
| without too many problems.
| anonporridge wrote:
| You can't. More often than not, mental illness goes hand in
| hand with unorthodox thinking that breaks the mold and causes
| unexpected progress.
|
| We could even say that mental illness is _defined_ by falling
| significantly out of alignment with the median mind of society.
| A mentally healthy person in our modern society might be seen
| as completely insane and unwell in a hunter gatherer tribe.
|
| But we generally don't get to work out who was just mentally
| ill with no value and who was a value add until well after
| their death.
|
| "Society honors its living conformists and its dead
| troublemakers."
| guerrilla wrote:
| [Ignore my reply. I parsed the comment wrong.]
| anonporridge wrote:
| Why ignore the second half of that sentence in your
| response?
|
| I directly implied that many mentally ill people contribute
| huge value.
| [deleted]
| boxed wrote:
| I think we should also realize there's not much difference
| between mental illness and having incorrect basic beliefs,
| except treatment options are different.
| kalkr wrote:
| Kanye's mental illness is well documented.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanye_West#Mental_health
| npteljes wrote:
| >Kanye is mentally ill and unable to manage his own affairs.
| What is the direct evidence of this?
|
| One such was, according to him, an occasion when "they
| handcuffed him, drugged him, put him on the bed".
|
| Now despite this, I also don't agree with just handwaving the
| discussions then, like, oh he's mad, so everything strange
| thing he does must be because of that. I think that it's
| perfectly valid to be mentally ill on one hand, and a huge
| asshole on the other. A strong motivator for sure, but illness
| is not a character trait, mental or not.
|
| https://people.com/music/kanye-west-opens-up-about-bipolar-d...
|
| On a second thought, I'd also like to add that the human psyche
| is not a solved problem. An average outside observer absolutely
| can't tell if an out of place thing is because of illness, or
| something other than that. Even the "standard" way to recognize
| and classify mental disorders, the DSM-5, changes from one
| edition to the other.
| diceduckmonk wrote:
| > Even the "standard" way to recognize and classify mental
| disorders, the DSM-5, changes from one edition to the other.
|
| Meaning, the definition of mental illness is within some
| social context or norm. Historically, homosexuality was
| deemed a mental illness.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality_in_the_DSM
| npteljes wrote:
| Absolutely, and also the field itself is constantly
| developing.
| colpabar wrote:
| > One such was, according to him, an occasion when "they
| handcuffed him, drugged him, put him on the bed".
|
| This doesn't seem like good evidence. It assumes that
| whenever someone is forcibly restrained and medicated, it was
| justified. It also assumes that he wasn't exaggerating when
| he said this. You have also not provided a source of him
| saying this.
| npteljes wrote:
| The link is the source, but he used the "you" pronoun and I
| rephrased it as "him". Sorry for the confusion, I probably
| need to do better on a public forum like this.
|
| Wikipedia also has a paragraph about it, if you'd like to
| dig into this topic further.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanye_West#Mental_health
|
| Also I reject the assumption that I assumed that "whenever
| someone is forcibly restrained and medicated, it was
| justified". I haven't said this, and I only reported on his
| account on the happenings, because OP wanted evidence for
| mental illness, and I think that him recollecting that
| occurrence, while admitting that he was diagnosed bipolar,
| is good enough evidence.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| It's not evidence for "unable to manage his own affairs"
| in the present instance.
| npteljes wrote:
| It's not. I should have been clear about referring only
| to the mental issues part.
| [deleted]
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > I think it's pretty dangerous to be labeling people involved
| in the national dialogue as mentally ill without a diagnosis,
| or at least some substantial and direct evidence.
|
| I think this is a lot less dangerous than you think. When
| people throw around terms like "groomer", "nazi", and "abuser"
| with reckless abandon, labelling someone as "bipolar" hardly
| compares. Ultimately anyone that agrees with what Kanye is
| saying will not be swayed by the label, neither will those who
| disagree with him by the lack thereof.
|
| A lot of the commentary about his mental illness seems to be
| focused on trying to find an explanation for why his ideas and
| positions seem to have radically shifted in the last few years.
| Honestly, it kind of gives him an "out". If he was not
| afflicted by some kind of mental illness when he called for
| "Death con 5", his actions are even more morally suspect.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| There are specific reasons to be wary of the way psychiatric
| diagnosis is used vs. other insults:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry
| [deleted]
| AlexandrB wrote:
| By that token, the same wariness should be applied to
| calling someone a "Communist" thanks to McCarthyism.
|
| I think this might be a valid point if US government
| officials were calling Kanye mentally ill, but a bunch of
| people on the internet?
| bondarchuk wrote:
| Strictly speaking nothing matters cuz we're all just
| rando's typing on the internet. But since we were having
| a discussion I thought I'd chime in with some vaguely
| relevant points...
|
| Btw I think it would've been quite dangerous indeed to
| call someone a communist during mccarthy era, and indeed
| one should've been wary of that back then.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think the parallel stands. A lot of the egregious
| political abuse of mental illness in the US dates back to
| 50-100 years ago[1]. You don't hear about public figures
| being involuntarily committed over accusations of mental
| illness in recent years. The worst you get is accusations
| of senility against some of America's older politicians.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psyc
| hiatry#...
| [deleted]
| protoc wrote:
| Is there any "normal" content on parler? everything on the front
| page is right-wing politics
| hikingsimulator wrote:
| It is quite tragic to see him become the Bobby Fischer of music.
|
| Let's hope he finds and accepts help.
| tptacek wrote:
| This is really a story about a celebrity's mental illness and
| public breakdown. If you haven't been following the news, West
| has spent the week saying increasingly unhinged things, not just
| about politics but about Pete Davidson, his wife, and (if I'm
| remembering right) his kids and the fake actor children that have
| been installed in his former home to corrupt them. He was
| interviewed for a show on Fox and a big chunk of what he said was
| edited out and later leaked; the "people at the Gap" knew about
| Uvalde, Kanye is now a Black Hebrew Israelite, &c. He's quite
| evidently sick, and these Parler people are scamming him.
| princevegeta89 wrote:
| Could be true.. but doesn't matter as long as they get to
| liquidate their product for a few hundred millions.
| dominotw wrote:
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| It's sad because to become successful Kanye had to ignore
| hundreds/thousands of important people telling him he wasnt
| good enough and he would never make it as a rapper. Then he
| became, arguably, the most popular rapper/hip hop artist of all
| time.
|
| Now image you've done what seems impossible despite countless
| people telling you it wont work out. You are in the top 1% of
| fame. Now someone tells you your other ideas are wrong. And
| that you cant actually achieve x goal. And that you don't know
| what you are talking about when you talk about y. And that you
| are sick and need to take meds to fix yourself.
|
| Would you believe them? Or would you believe yourself?
|
| I think Kanye is sick and needs help but I can see almost
| anyone falling into the exact same trap hes fallen into if they
| lived his life.
| itake wrote:
| > the most popular rapper/hip hop artist of all time
|
| Slim Shady stands up [0].
|
| [0] - https://iamyourtargetdemographic.com/2011/08/30/kanye-
| west-v...
| bambax wrote:
| This article is from 2011, but today on Spotify Eminem
| still has more monthly listeners than Kanye West (53M vs
| 51M). Eminem also has several songs that have over a
| billion streams (one with >1.5b), while Kanye has just one
| and it's at exactly 1b.
|
| So yes, Eminem is still well ahead.
| iso1631 wrote:
| arguably the top. Probably no doubt he's in the top 5,
| which doesn't make any difference to the fundamental
| point.
| mikercampbell wrote:
| As a huge Eminem fan, 2011 was a good time to stop
| counting.
|
| I love his stuff, Revival, Kamazake, Music to be Murdered
| by - I probably know 10 songs almost by heart.
|
| But there's no denying that it's been a very different
| decade for Mathers and not everyone likes it.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Give him a couple of years more to include "Rap God."
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Kanye had tons of collabs as a producer and a huge
| influence on hip-hop artists to follow. It's not just
| about streams.
| lghh wrote:
| This discounts Kanye's production work as well and might
| discount many of his collaborations, but I expect Eminem
| to still have more listens on spotify.
|
| However, in terms of influence on hip hop and pop music
| as a whole, I think Kanye is above Eminem and it's
| probably not close. Unfortunately, that's a lot harder to
| measure.
| werber wrote:
| The first time I remember hearing about Kanye was on
| Jay-Z's Black Album, "Kanyeezy you do it again, you a
| genius", the criticism lobbed against him in the early
| aughts was that he was a brilliant producer, but not a
| rapper, and then College Dropout came out, and changed
| that. It's really a shame to see all of this, Kanye is
| one of my favorite musicians of all time.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| If we're talking overall influence, it's Dr. Dre and then
| everyone else can get far back in line.
|
| Kanye likes to claim that his music wasn't about gangster
| rap and that's why he was sidelined for... a couple
| years... meanwhile, Dre not only made NWA and Snoop Dogg
| but managed to convince the entire rap world that a poor
| white kid with drug problems and abuse issues was the
| next huge thing by doing things that nobody had ever
| thought to do before.
| lowkeyokay wrote:
| Kanye's 808 & Heartbreaks has been claimed by many
| rappers from the 2010's and onwards to have been a major
| influence. He really went all in on autotune and
| introspective lyrics. I much prefer Dre but his influence
| is waning.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| nemothekid wrote:
| This is a very dry comparison between the two, as it only
| looks at numbers. Is Nickelback has far better commercial
| success than Rage against the Machine, but I don't think
| most people would rate Nickelback higher than RATM.
| Stronger may be Kanye's best selling track, but it's his
| easily least influential.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > arguably, the most popular rapper/hip hop artist of all
| time
|
| is he ranked that somewhere?
|
| if so, i'm definitely getting old and out of touch with pop
| culture, and i'm from the Chicago area so grew up with
| everything available on the radio.
| volkk wrote:
| seriously? you don't need to be "young" to know this.
| unless by old you mean 60+. then perhaps i can understand
| it
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-greatest-
| rappers...
|
| ranked number 10.
|
| But the interesting thing is that you can see how the
| rankings favor more recent people, with 80s and 90s
| artists also up there and with far longer careers, but
| eclipsed by the more recent people.
| [deleted]
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| As someone who doesn't listen to much rap / hip hop, and can
| only name his cover (adaptation?) of Stronger, I do know who
| Kanye is. I don't know anything about his music. Mostly I
| just know of him because he's a very public asshole. Much
| like his wife.
|
| I find it basically impossible to empathize with him. I just
| wouldn't ever be in that situation. "Rising against
| adversity" is not the story I'd be be using here so much as
| just a typical strongman bravado leading to an absolute
| disconnect from reality.
|
| I would wager greatly that it's not that he's grown cynical
| to people saying he can't do something, but that he's become
| delusional from people telling him a genius. People who
| convince themselves that they're smart do this thing where
| they have an idea, and conclude that because they've come up
| with it and they're smart that it must be a well reasoned
| idea.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _I would wager greatly that it 's not that he's grown
| cynical to people saying he can't do something, but that
| he's become delusional from people telling him a genius._
|
| I've been wary of defending Kanye online lately, but
| Kanye's influence isn't just "rap / hip hop". Kanye also
| broke into luxury/high-end fashion quite unexpectedly where
| he was given the same sort of push back. It started with
| him interning at Fendi (when he already was one of the
| largest entertainers on the planet) alongside a group of
| other eclectic individuals (the other most notable one,
| Virgil Abloh, who would go on to become creative director
| of Louis Vuitton).
|
| He captured lightning twice and I can't imagine that
| developing into a personality into anything other than
| "everyone else is wrong".
|
| That said, I don't think he's become delusional from people
| telling him he's a "genius", or from mental illness. Since
| 2020, I've seen scores of people all fall into the internet
| misinformation pipeline and I don't think Kanye is any
| different - he just has the largest platform. He's no more
| mentally ill than your uncle who believed COVID was a hoax.
| Everything he is saying is currently "mainstream"
| conservative ideology, his talking points are lifted
| directly from Candace Owens who is employed by The Daily
| Wire, which is run by the most famous conservative
| personality, Ben Shapiro, (maybe after Tucker Carlson).
| LegitShady wrote:
| >Kanye also broke into luxury/high-end fashion
|
| the secret here is that the emperor has no clothes, and
| Kanye's fashion garbage is equally as garbage as the rest
| of the high end fashion culture. It's not that kanye's
| that good, it's that its all a crock of dogfood with high
| end price tags and people who won't say anything trying
| to fit in for access to the wealthy.
| filoleg wrote:
| Just because you don't understand an entire art-form and
| the industry attached to it, that doesn't make it all
| "garbage".
|
| Might as well go on to say that all modern art or modern
| cuisine is garbage, and sound just as ridiculous while
| doing so.
|
| Spoiler alert: weird artsy high-fashion pieces you see on
| runways are not expected to be sold or worn in real life.
| Just like visual design of concept cars isn't what's
| expected to actually drive on the roads.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| For "every day" fashion, the game is given away by the
| cyclical nature of fashion trends. What's popular today
| is approximately what was popular 20 years ago. It's a
| game of maintaining constant demand for new stuff in an
| industry where almost all of the practical problems were
| solved a century ago.
|
| High fashion is obviously a completely different beast.
| Something that has been pointed out to me recently is how
| "folk fashion" which focused on meticulous details like
| beading and cross-stitching was largely the pursuit of
| women, while modern "high fashion" that involves
| conceptual flourishes that are relatively simple to
| produce is more dominated by men. I'm not really sure
| what to make of this observation yet, but it is
| interesting.
|
| The treatment of workers in both "every day" fashion and
| high fashion is deplorable as well and is hard to look
| past if you're trying to keep an open mind.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Doesn't make it good either though. A lot of "modern" art
| was artists claiming that traditional lenses and
| standards held too much authority and fuck off. We're
| going to do draw squares and they're going to be cool.
| Challenging "what does it mean to be good". Cool.
|
| A lot of "post modern" art is this idea that it doesn't
| matter what you think, fuck you, I made this thing and it
| may even feel purposefully bad, and if I say it's good,
| it's a valid perspective. Which is really just kind of a
| post truth drain on society if you ask me; and is a
| really toxic thing when it's driven by tribalism and mass
| media to claim "this is good because a lot of people are
| saying it's good".
|
| High end fashion is not very approachable to most people.
| A lot of it is just speaking back and forth within a very
| insular community. Most of it is absurd from the get go.
| Good art should be evocative of something.
|
| FWIW, Kanye's fashion to me seems like it wants me to
| call it bad. Dreary. Unattractive. Poor, but.. in a way
| that seems like its asking for victimization rather than
| express something about poverty.
|
| And for that I think it's actually bad.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Yup, whenever I hear that about fashion, for all the
| times I think that the GP's statement is accurate,
| there's also a Vetements story.
|
| Their line, they want to champion a more "pragmatic"
| approach to fashion, and "down to earth nature", compared
| to the big fashion houses.
|
| Demna Gvasalia and his friends all worked at LV,
| Balenciaga, Maison Margiela, etc.
|
| Vetements in reality? "Down to earth" $1200 track pants,
| $800 t-shirts, $500 baseball caps, $1500 hoodies.
|
| Given a choice between "trying to break down fashion to
| be more pragmatic, approachable and down to earth" and
| "we saw how much money the fashion houses made and we
| decided we wanted a bigger piece", I know which way I
| lean.
|
| Edit: in a fit of irony, Balenciaga offered him the role
| of Creative Director and he went there.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| You can buy into it and sound ridiculous while doing so
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Kanye 's fashion garbage is equally as garbage as the
| rest of the high end fashion culture._
|
| This is not something I agree with, I believe there is
| something like called good taste
| (http://www.paulgraham.com/goodtaste.html), and just
| because I don't care to understand it (just like I don't
| care to understand expensive cars or expensive watches),
| that doesn't mean the entire field is garbage.
| LegitShady wrote:
| just because good taste exists doesn't mean it exists in
| the luxury fashion industry or any particular location or
| time. Good taste exists but not there.
|
| It's overpriced gaslighting dogfood at best, a meat
| market to gain access to the stupidly wealthy at worst.
| sanderjd wrote:
| I think Kanye actually is more mentally ill than our
| misguided uncles. I believe he has even spoken about his
| struggles with it during more lucid times.
| qq66 wrote:
| > Mostly I just know of him because he's a very public
| asshole. Much like his wife.
|
| By "his wife" do you mean his ex-wife Kim Kardashian? If
| so, in what ways is she an asshole?
| fmdragon wrote:
| I believe that OP meant that his ex-wife HAS a very
| public asshole.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Pushing unrealistic beauty standards on to teens
| cwkoss wrote:
| She's a no-talent clown who bought her way into the
| public view with nepotistic wealth. She heavily uses
| photoshop on her pictures, and then sells beauty products
| to insecure young women to profit off the insecurities
| her digital media team helped manufacture. Her brand is
| basically just 'stupid and rich' - not someone I'd ever
| want any of the young women I care about to idolize. Her
| fame is a shame of American society: her rise is
| emblematic of the shift, away from talent, to wealth
| being the primary factor in modern cultural prominence.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > She heavily uses photoshop on her pictures, and then
| sells beauty products to insecure young women to profit
| off the insecurities her digital media team helped
| manufacture.
|
| This describes the whole "beauty" industry. I think this
| might be a case of "don't hate the player, hate the
| game". There are also plenty of other celebrities whose
| success amounts to appearing on some reality TV show and
| building an empire off of that. Kim Kardashian is not
| remarkable in this regard, but seems to get more hate
| than average.
| dionidium wrote:
| So, nothing, basically. You just don't like her, which is
| fine, but this is a list of zeros.
| cwkoss wrote:
| I think it's weird that you don't think being a cancer on
| society is equivalent to 'being an asshole' but agree to
| disagree.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| What is your point? Someone called her an asshole and
| then gave a reason. You don't like that reason but you
| say it's fine not to like her. Seems like a pointless
| conversation.
| knownastron wrote:
| I agree. Kim has her faults but I don't recall a time
| when she has been an asshole to anyone.
|
| I think this shows that the commenter is biased and
| doesn't have the full picture.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I certainly do not.
|
| Though I was under the impression that her entire brand
| was showcased on a show where they went over the top
| being vain, petty, and brandishing the biggest ego's they
| could muster?
| enragedcacti wrote:
| On the flip she has been doing a lot of advocacy for
| prison reform and is apprenticing to become a lawyer in
| California, seemingly to that end.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/arts/television/kim-
| karda...
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > and is apprenticing to become a lawyer in California
|
| She's been working on that for nearly four years. And
| only just passed the 'baby bar' exam this year (The baby
| bar exam is the exam California gives -first year- law
| students. It requires a score of 70% to pass. Kardashian
| has taken four years, and four attempts, to pass the
| equivalent of the first year of law school).
|
| Much as I hate to say it, those whose lives would be
| bettered by meaningful prison reform would probably get
| more out of her doing publicity and fundraising and using
| her celebrity status to that end, rather than becoming an
| attorney.
| moomin wrote:
| Her dad, of course, was famously a defence lawyer in
| California...
| werber wrote:
| She's under investigation for a crypto scam,
|
| https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2022-183
|
| she's also long been criticized for cultural
| appropriation,
|
| https://time.com/6072750/kardashians-blackfishing-
| appropriat...
| LegitShady wrote:
| Crypto scams are bad. your second link can't be taken
| seriously by people capable of critical thinking and
| undermines your credibility.
| technotony wrote:
| She settled with the SEC:
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/03/kim-kardashian-settles-
| sec-c...
| slowmotiony wrote:
| Oh no, not cultural appropriation! How absolutely dare
| she!
| davewritescode wrote:
| Early Kanye West brought a lot of attention to social
| issues through his music and was one of the first hip-hop
| artists to publicly advocate for acceptance of gay folks in
| hip-hop culture at a time when gay slurs were very common.
| His first album was downright wholesome as far as hip-hop
| and there's a reason he was so beloved.
|
| He's been on a long, slow, downward trajectory with his
| mental health since the death of his mother and
| unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anybody looking out
| for him anymore. It's really sad to watch at this point.
|
| This is an interview from 2005 where Kanye defended gay
| people when it wasn't exactly popular. Trigger warning for
| gay slurs.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sp45-dQvqPo
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| I don't feel that's particularly incompatible with
| anything I said.
| dcow wrote:
| GP is simply offering some context since you said you
| don't know Kanye at all and have only encountered him
| recently. It was never intended to be incompatible.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Fair I guess. I'm not sure about the "recently" comment
| though. He's been making a ruckus for well over a decade
| now.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| > one of the first hip-hop artists to publicly advocate
| for acceptance of gay folks in hip-hop culture
|
| That's interesting - I've listened to his music since the
| beginning and would've assumed the opposite based on his
| reaction to the South Park Fish Sticks episode. Is there
| a specific song/album/statement he made that shows
| support for the LGBT community? As he's turned deeply
| religious (supports mega churches) + conservative in
| recent years I'd further expect him to not support LGBT
| groups.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > Is there a specific song/album/statement he made that
| shows support for the LGBT community?
|
| The comment you replied to has a YouTube link to a 2005
| interview where Kanye says on national TV to stop
| discriminating against gay people.
| b0bb1z3r0 wrote:
| viscanti wrote:
| > "Rising against adversity" is not the story I'd be be
| using here so much as just a typical strongman bravado
| leading to an absolute disconnect from reality.
|
| It's not really a story of rising against adversity though.
| It's that people who have a lot of success doing something
| have trouble turning around and doing the opposite. There
| seems to be a human tendency to double down on what people
| think got them their success.
| elmomle wrote:
| > I just wouldn't ever be in that situation
|
| That seems to me to be impossible to say with certainty.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| Short of something fundamentally changing my personality,
| I'm absolutely certain that I would never do the things
| he does.
| sleepymoose wrote:
| Almost as if his mental health (or lack thereof) has
| fundamentally changed his personality.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| His rise to fame is largely predicated on that
| personality and has been present for over a decade?
|
| Maybe it is a result of mental health issues. But then
| the premise of his success feels very different.
| Kranar wrote:
| >Short of something fundamentally changing my
| personality,
|
| Something like... a mental illness?
| mariodiana wrote:
| Kanye makes me think of someone I knew. I knew a young woman
| once whose conversation was impossible to follow. She was a
| college graduate, and seemed intelligent. But, I think either
| her mind wandered, or else she simply lacked the capacity to
| reliably establish context in conversation.
|
| I assure you, I _really tried_ to make sense of what she was
| saying to me. She was beautiful, and I was interested in her.
| (I say this to emphasize how hard I was trying to make sense
| of it all.) But, in the end, I just could not follow. Maybe
| she had a kind of ADHD. But my point is that her "mental
| illness" likely went no further than that.
|
| I can't follow Kanye either--though I am far less motivated
| to do so, by comparison. But, the guy is successful. I'm
| tempted to give him the benefit of the doubt that, like the
| young lady in my story, _he_ may know what it is he 's
| saying.
| alfnor wrote:
| Interesting, because personality disorders run in my family
| (ADHD, ASD, schizophrenia, OCD, depression, anxiety, etc.)
| and as someone with two of those diagnosed (and likely a
| third undiagnosed), I tend to follow Ye's line of thought
| flawlessly.
|
| On the other hand, I often have to speed-watch speeches and
| lectures, as most neurotypical people stay on the same
| topic far too long for me to stay attentive. By speed-
| watching, the subject changes frequently enough for my mind
| to never start wandering.
| thomastjeffery wrote:
| Intellect isn't a single axis. People can be very skilled
| at understanding the details while being totally blind to
| the bigger picture.
| lawrenceyan wrote:
| It's like trying to determine whether there's actually
| signal there or just random noise.
| andirk wrote:
| To a lesser extent, I have found entertainment in speaking
| with people who start a topic with their thesis (i.e. why
| are there Yellow Pages and White Pages? So stupid!) To
| which you lightly counter with some easy to digest fact
| (i.e. yellow is biz, white is res), and then a few
| sentences later, they'll conclude with their original
| point, as if you said nothing at all (i.e. See? Isn't it
| stupid, yellow and white pages. Makes no sense!). It was
| frustrating before, but now it's enjoyable to see a person
| live in a different reality right in front of me.
|
| Note: Sorry for dating myself and using a The Simpsons
| reference.
| wturner wrote:
| This is a great point. People become calcified and stuck in
| their ways as a survival mechanism! Times change and
| circumstances do too thus the axioms floating around in our
| heads deviate from "reality" like a lifeboat floating away
| while we pretend everything is normal. This is not only a
| lesson for the extreme rich - but everyone.
| dkonofalski wrote:
| I think you've hit the nail on the head here. This is a very
| sad, very public case of mental illness combined with the
| paradox of success. There's no way, healthy or not, that he
| wouldn't think he knows better than everyone else for exactly
| the reason you describe. Anyone in his position would be
| fighting back the naysayers. The major difference is that
| Kanye has had enough failures and stumbles now that his whole
| "god" and "GOAT" persona is publicly falling apart and he
| doesn't know how to handle it. The mental health issues are
| just exacerbating his inability to reconcile his personal
| ambitions with reality.
|
| Just think about it... if you've been a success for so long
| and suddenly aren't, who would you blame? If you didn't say
| anyone but yourself, you're not Kanye.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| You are right. And that cycle of being told he was crazy but
| having massive success, was repeated TWICE in music and
| fashion.
|
| So it makes sense his ego would be making it hard to see the
| world as it is, EVEN IF he didn't have any mental illness at
| all.
| badpun wrote:
| > Then he became, arguably, the most popular rapper/hip hop
| artist of all time
|
| I don't think he's even recognized as being in the top 3.
| There are so many much better than him, such as Eminem,
| Tupac, Snoop Dogg.
| Maursault wrote:
| > but I can see almost anyone falling into the exact same
| trap hes fallen into if they lived his life.
|
| Kanye is a garden variety manic-depressive. It has likely
| been exacerbated by stress and self-medicating with the wrong
| drugs, causing instability, paranoia and delusion. Bipolar
| disorder is genetic, it doesn't develop due to no one being
| able to say "no" to them.
|
| What you are describing, however, is one way that
| Narcissistic Personality Disorder can develop. Successful
| individuals are more at risk of NPD. One of the biggest
| issues is that NPD patients usually don't suffer, so they
| rarely seek treatment, which can correct if not cure the
| disorder in under 2 years, rare among psychological
| disorders. But the symptoms of NPD not only include an
| exaggerated sense of self-importance, but also an inability
| or fear of criticism, and exceptionally strong denial.
| Narcissists don't listen to anyone, such as those that are
| trying to help them, yet they require constant admiration.
|
| It is likely West has one of the more benign flavors of NPD,
| at least, I haven't heard he is violent nor of reports of him
| berating and belittling others (though I do not follow
| celebrities). I think his biggest problem is BPD and drug
| abuse (though the self-medication may be keeping him alive,
| it is far less than an ideal solution), but due to the
| combination with NPD and vast wealth, and probably being
| surrounded by those that will never deny him his insane
| impulses, he's probably not going to get help until he
| bottoms out in clinical major depression for months, if he
| survives it. BPD must be maintained, and if it isn't,
| inevitably the train leaves the rails.
| dpifke wrote:
| (Retracting my comment. Kanye West has publicly talked
| about having bipolar disorder, see link below. Thank you to
| toomuchtodo for digging up that reference!)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.thecut.com/2022/02/kanye-west-bipolar-
| disorder.h...
|
| > Kanye, who is now legally known by his nickname, Ye,
| was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after being
| hospitalized for a psychiatric emergency in 2016. In the
| years since, he's spoken about experiencing manic
| episodes, often tweeting and performing through them. He
| has famously referred to bipolar disorder as his
| "superpower," and spoke candidly about the stigma around
| mental illness on David Letterman's show in 2019. "I ramp
| up, I go high," he said of his episodes, describing
| feelings of paranoia and delusions, as well as being
| handcuffed, drugged, and hospitalized.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=kanye+npd+narcissist
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=kanye+drug+abuse+addictio
| n
|
| (In no way is this comment intended to be derogatory
| towards any party, only citations)
| krustyburger wrote:
| What drugs do you think he's abusing? That's quite a claim
| to make.
| peyton wrote:
| IIRC it came up in a couple lawsuits with his insurance
| company a while back.
| [deleted]
| cwkoss wrote:
| Personality disorders aren't curable.
|
| > I haven't heard he is violent nor of reports of him
| berating and belittling others
|
| I haven't heard about violence, but berating and belittling
| others seems common for him - it's practically his brand
| Maursault wrote:
| > Personality disorders aren't curable.
|
| Incorrect. There is no single cure for personality
| disorders, but that doesn't mean they can't be cured. Any
| mental illness that is not genetic and which develops due
| to external causes can be cured. There are many
| personality disorders, of which NPD is one. While there
| is no single cure for NPD, in fact NPD _can be cured_ in
| many cases in one of two ways. Some can be cured
| relatively quickly with an antidepressant, which
| eliminates the symptoms, but most with NPD can either
| mitigate the disorder or completely cure it though talk
| therapy generally in under two years. It 's absolutely
| true that one can learn to stop being an asshole.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| Both you and parent are likely incorrect. The truth is,
| curability depends on a number of things which we
| currently lack the correct insight and models to
| correctly analyze. It's likely case-by-case, and ad-hoc,
| based on the extremely complex history of the individual.
|
| But most importantly, _we don 't know_, so making broad,
| absolutist claims is a waste of time.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Personality disorders can be treated and managed, but not
| cured. Like PTSD, just because a disorder is caused by
| external factors does not mean that it is reversible.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Magic mushrooms can cure PTSD
| austinjp wrote:
| Dude, come on. That statement needs several strong
| caveats.
| ipaddr wrote:
| It is not untrue but it is incomplete. It may make things
| worse. But it could cure. A cure is possible.
| anm89 wrote:
| This is word salad. A bunch of psycho-babel that gives the
| impression of a deep understanding of the human psyche when
| in reality it shows at best the ability to memorize the
| criteria around a few invented categories and give a
| horoscope based off of them.
|
| I wouldn't make a point of saying this on other topics but
| it's crazy how much damage this stuff causes to people's
| lives
| Maursault wrote:
| Vagueness fallacy as well as as hominem argument. If you
| disagree with what I've said, you must specifically speak
| to it. Handwaving and attacking me personally will never
| be persuasive.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| Spot on.
|
| Armchair psychiatrists seem to love to diagnoze the
| people they don't like with various disorders as a way of
| insulting by proxy.
|
| Since when is a celebrity writing contraversial stuff on
| Twitter a big deal?
| Maursault wrote:
| Ad hominem fallacy.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Makes sense .. it's tragic.
| jprd wrote:
| Whoaaaaaaa. Whoa. Easy there.
|
| I don't want to get off topic here, but talking about Kanye
| West as "arguably the most popular hip hop artist of all
| time" should also come with that argument attached to justify
| such a grandiose statement. I mean, I need to see some Claire
| Danes w/red yarn vibes to even begin to understand that
| position.
|
| You can talk of Kanye and Swift in the same sentence (never
| had a struggle meal, I see your nick Taylor ;) ), but Kanye
| vs. Nas? Jay? J. Cole? Sheeet, even Em? I don't even know if
| there are metrics that could make that statement valid unless
| you restrict it to some weird "early 'aughts" sub-generation.
|
| I challenge thee to numbers, graphs and beyond all - cultural
| import! <gauntlet slap>
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| That's not how his life story went at all.
|
| His father was a photojournalist for the main newspaper in
| Atlanta and his mother was a Fulbright scholar. He grew up in
| a solid middle class suburb and he attended a magnet school
| for gifted kids before getting a scholarship to the American
| Acaedmy of Art. He started producing music for artists
| directly out of high school and was producing for Roc-A-Fella
| within 3 years of starting out in the music scene.
|
| It was at Roc-A-Fella that he decided to be a rapper, and it
| took him all of 2 years to produce The College Dropout.
|
| He lived an incredibly charmed life before he ever started
| rapping.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| From this perspective - my intuition is that the likelihood a
| Kanye West led Parler will be successful is substantially
| greater than that a rap career will be successful. In some
| sense West is moving on to more plausible investments as he
| gets older.
|
| West has had success as an entertainer and as a businessman -
| I believe he has a successful shoe company. He's famous. If
| he thinks he can take on Parler, that seems like a crazy
| challenge but one he is well equipped to take on. I would
| certainly believe in myself - even if I thought it was low
| probability I'd feel certain that it was possible.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| I don't know if I think it's likely he can make a success
| out of Parler. That's a very tall order. But I definitely
| think he's got a better shot at it than whoever has run it
| to date.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Completely agree. Put another way, it was far dumber for
| Parler's current founders and investors to try and create
| the Nth twitter clone in the current year than it is for
| Kanye to try and run it. Assuming he paid a reasonable
| price - buying Parler is probably faster, simpler, easier
| than creating your own app, which Kanye might not have
| the expertise/team to feel comfortable doing.
| c3534l wrote:
| I don't know much about Kanye, but are reports of people
| telling him he didn'h have talent to be a rapper genuine, or
| just something he tells people? Because it sounds like the
| sort of thing people make up for their own personal
| narrative. It reminds me of when people say things like "the
| doctor told me I only had a year to live" - which is
| something no doctor would actually say because its a massive
| legal liability, but it fits our personal narrative. Who were
| these people Kanye had to overcome?
| ls15 wrote:
| Most artists have to deal with rejection at some point
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Parent commenter is reading too much into Kanye's first
| struggles to become a rapper in light of this Parler
| purchase. But parent commenter is right that no one saw
| Kanye as a rapper initially. Back then, Kanye was only
| known as a beatsmith and producer, not someone to actually
| be on the track.
|
| Kanye has a song off his album College Graduation where he
| talks about his initial troubles[1]
|
| [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpbeS15sHZ0&ab_channel=K
| anye...
| filoleg wrote:
| It was genuine. He worked hard to get good at making beats,
| to the point he got signed at Roc-a-Fella Records to make
| beats for big artists at the time (Jay-Z, Alicia Keys,
| etc). He was super known for that in the industry, but
| Kanye insisted on one specific term of the contract - they
| gotta let him release his own album. Which they hesitantly
| allowed, because they thought he was just gonna fail and go
| back to what they thought he was good at, making beats for
| other rappers.
|
| They didnt want him to be a rapper, but not for some
| malicious reason. They loved his beats, but thought no one
| would care for his songs that were nothing like the
| mainstream rap at the time, especially since none of them
| were about bling/drugs/gang stuff. That's just what was
| selling. And Roc-a-Fella Records wanted their star
| beatmaker actually making beats for their star rappers, not
| "pursue dreams". So they allowed him to make that album,
| thinking the sooner he is done with it, the sooner he will
| get back to beatmaking.
|
| All of this is confirmed by tons of other people affiliated
| with Roc-a-Fella Records (like Jay-Z and others) at the
| time.
| kgwxd wrote:
| > All of this is confirmed by tons of other people
| affiliated with Roc-a-Fella Records (like Jay-Z and
| others) at the time.
|
| They're in on the story.
| notduncansmith wrote:
| I'm not buying this Kanspiracy theory.
| jprd wrote:
| I don't know if you coined that or not, but I will
| forever claim you did regardless.
| filoleg wrote:
| I mean, it's the same story now that's been told since
| the time all of this was happening, and Kanye was indeed
| having issues with his first album getting even
| published. And it is also true that pretty much everyone
| expected his first album to flop.
|
| Unless literally everything said about the matter by
| everyone involved was an extremely consistent lie that
| they all conspired to perfectly maintain for 20+ years
| and ongoing, I find it very difficult to agree with your
| statement.
| glomgril wrote:
| Even among fans, early Kanye was never considered a great
| rapper (although he was always considered an elite
| producer). It always felt clear to me that he'd be around
| and doing big things in the music industry for many years,
| but I kinda assumed he'd be much more behind the scenes and
| focusing on production.
| cwkoss wrote:
| He's been delusionally egotistical for nearly two decades. I
| think he's always been a self centered asshole, the schtick
| was just more palatable when he was only talking about the
| trivialities of the music industry.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| To be clear, he's saying that it felt like everyone already had
| their message about Uvalde coordinated before the Uvalde event
| had fully come out in the news to the point where even The Gap,
| a store as removed as possible from being a news organization,
| had a message prepared. That feels different than "people at
| the Gap knew about Uvalde". Is that still an insane thing to
| say?
| evan_ wrote:
| They knew there was going to be a mass-casualty school
| shooting ahead of time because there's a mass-casualty school
| shooting every few months in this country
|
| It's a (sad) reality that if you're doing any kind of public
| relations you need to plan for the very real possibility that
| your giant brand launch is going to coincide with a national
| tragedy.
| djur wrote:
| First, he said that it "felt like the people at the Gap knew
| about the school shooting that Matthew McConaughey was
| talking about before it even happened", comparing it to the
| movie _The Truman Show_. In response to Carlson's request for
| clarification he does say "I'm not saying that they did" but
| he clearly doesn't rule it out, either.
|
| Second, it's not clear what statement by The Gap he's talking
| about, but my guess is that this is related to the delayed
| launch of his product line:
|
| https://www.billboard.com/culture/lifestyle/kanye-west-
| gap-p...
|
| The "coordinated message" here appears to be "it is bad that
| children were killed".
| z7 wrote:
| So the most upvoted comment claims West said "the "people
| at the Gap" knew about Uvalde". But he actually said "it
| felt like" that was the case, while adding that "I'm not
| saying that they did"? I mean, maybe we should just stick
| to what he actually said. I wonder how accurate the other
| claims about his claims are.
| taylodl wrote:
| _and these Parler people are scamming him_ - that 's an
| interesting point I hadn't thought of. My first thought on
| hearing this news was so what? I don't care about Parler or
| Kanye West, but if Parler is taking advantage of Kanye's mental
| decline then that's next-level awful. Like I said, I'm no fan
| of Kanye, but that's horrible to take advantage of people like
| that.
| werber wrote:
| I understand this sentiment, and my only concern is Kanye's
| acquisition legitimizing anti-semitism and pushing vulnerable
| fans into radicalization via that platform.
| jrm4 wrote:
| I _really wish_ people understood this more. Anecdotally, I
| 'll never forget the time I was around him and some of his
| people. This when he was just coming up as a rapper but well
| known to be a producer. Just a little club appearance, and
| there was some odd technical issue.
|
| I've never seen a human being who more obviously "sought the
| approval of others." He has this weird negative charisma;
| like there are some people who light up the room by being in
| it. It's not that he darkens the room -- but it's that he
| needs the light from others. It just felt like he needed
| _everyone_ to really like him, and I could so easily see how
| someone could take advantage of that.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| No wonder he's tried running for president. Seems to be a
| trend amongst narcissists.
| runlevel1 wrote:
| I think everywhere requires "capacity" to enter a contract,
| and Delaware does have this on the books:
|
| > 6 DE Code SS 2705 (2019): Any person who has attained 18
| years of age shall have full capacity to contract; provided
| such person has not been _declared legally incompetent to
| contract_ for reasons other than age. Any person who has
| attained the age of 18 years shall become fully responsible
| for that person's own contracts.
|
| So I'd presume it would come down to what Delaware's Court of
| Chancery expects for someone to be "declared legally
| incompetent to contract." I'd imagine that's not something
| done lightly.
|
| (IANAL)
| paulmd wrote:
| That's like, if you're committed to an institution, or have
| a conservator placed over you.
| P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote:
| Is Elon Musk being scammed by Twitter?
|
| Same situation.
|
| Can't a rich dude buy a company without goofy rumors being
| spread (scammed into buying Parler)?
|
| Having a celebrity owner increases the value.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Is Elon Musk being scammed by Twitter?
|
| Twitter clearly took full advantage of his irrational hard
| on to get a signed deal. Not "being scammed" in that
| Twitter very nuch did not seek out the deal, but they
| certainly fully leveraged his willingness to toss out
| preconditions any sane purchaser would demand.
|
| > Having a celebrity owner increases the value.
|
| As a mascot, maybe, unless they are polarizing and their
| area of negative appeal overlaps with the product's market
| and their positve appeal doesn't; but owners are also
| decision makers, and celebrity's are going to be all over
| the map in that role.
| tptacek wrote:
| Twitter didn't want to sell to him in the first place.
| Musk's buyout offer took place in the context of a
| months-long drama about Musk being on the board. It's
| hard to look at the Musk/Twitter situation and say that
| it was driven forward by anyone other than Musk.
|
| (I have no particular reason to believe Musk is in
| anything less than full control of his faculties.)
| kgwxd wrote:
| Twitter wasn't a platform created specifically to grift
| idiots, and it has actual reach.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Is Elon Musk being scammed by Twitter?_
|
| This is no where near the same situation. When Elon
| originally put is offer to buy Twitter, Twitter didn't even
| want to sell. _Then_ the market crashed and all the sudden
| Elon 's own offer was almost double of the "fair market
| price" for Twitter.
|
| Elon would be insane if he made the same offer _today_.
| anoonmoose wrote:
| Kayne isn't being scammed by Parler. He's being scammed by
| Candace Owens, whose husband owns Parler.
| detaro wrote:
| I don't think Kanye West saying that he suffers from
| bipolar disorder is a rumor.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Not that it makes it better, but Elon also said he
| suffered from bipolar disorder.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| He's also claimed that he has Asperger's, without any
| evidence.
| LegitShady wrote:
| nobody owes the public their medical records for
| 'evidence'.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Not having access to their psych records, I think all we
| have to go on is what they claim.
| P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote:
| People with bipolar disorder aren't capable of making
| rational decisions?
|
| And Elon is just a completely normal guy?
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| > People with bipolar disorder aren't capable of making
| rational decisions?
|
| In the midst of an uncontrolled manic episode? Often they
| are not.
| ponow wrote:
| So who should be held responsible for their decision
| then? Who gets to decide?
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| If they commit a crime, a judge and/or jury, informed by
| the testimony of medical experts, determines whether
| someone was cognizant of right and wrong. This is not
| uncommon in the criminal justice system.
|
| Now, responsibility on the larger scale is indeed murky.
| We societally at once say addicts are and aren't
| responsible for their behavior (depending upon one's
| point of view and what acts took place): a drunk driver
| is treated differently than a homeless addict living
| under a bridge. Is Kanye 'addicted' to manic states?
| Should we look down upon him because he won't take his
| meds? I'm not sure.
| yupper32 wrote:
| People are mostly talking about this as a moral failure,
| not as some kind of legal issue.
| greenhearth wrote:
| jrm4 wrote:
| Entirely possible to be both, I think.
| ididitagain wrote:
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| paulpauper wrote:
| People keep saying he's sick or he is wrong, yet his popularity
| keeps growing. Same for net worth. His tweets are getting 3-5x
| the engagement compared to a year ago. Maybe it's all part of
| the act.
| asdff wrote:
| Does engagement mean he is truly popular or that people are
| tuning into the spectacle? I think it would be true for most
| celebrities sliding into mental decline that their more
| deranged tweets would get a lot more eyes on them.
| [deleted]
| tptacek wrote:
| People love this shit. We live in a fallen world.
| [deleted]
| xd1936 wrote:
| His tweets _were_ getting engagement. They locked his
| account[1].
|
| 1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2022/10/09/
| tw...
| sneaky_verily wrote:
| And now he is going to own a social media site so his
| account can't be locked.
| boringg wrote:
| Looks like that strategy worked out great for the other
| person who did that. What was his name again and what was
| that awful platform?
| serf wrote:
| >What was his name again and what was that awful
| platform?
|
| it'd be _great_ if his name really was that blanked from
| the public mind, but I don 't think that's quite the case
| with that specific example, _yet_.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| I guess free speech is alive and well.
| newguynewphone wrote:
| until cloudflare finds "threats to human lives" on parler
| and drops them
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-53501482
|
| Celebrity or not, his actions seem similar to the mentioned
| illness.
| breck wrote:
| I agree Parler is terrible (we know this because they don't
| have any elites from the left on there) despite their amazing
| programming and Kanye is mentally ill (we know this because his
| wife tells everyone he is crazy). Thank you tptacek, I loved
| your book on the brain.
| imjk wrote:
| Call me cynical, but I think the likes of Kanye, the
| Kardashians, Trump, even Elon, etc. are much more calculated
| than they are deranged. They know how to work the media and
| manipulate the public better than anyone else. We're living in
| a world now where journalists are paid by click counts more
| than quality of content. In the same vein, Kanye and the likes
| know that the more absurdist and unconventional their actions,
| the more publicity they get.
| gsanderson wrote:
| Exactly. They know what they are doing. And calling out the
| crazy inevitably repeats whatever they were saying, giving it
| even more publicity and them attention.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Maybe the current media environment _selects_ individuals
| that just happen to do well in such an environment. People
| that crave attention and are just naturally gifted at
| attracting it. Basically "effective narcissists".
| Melatonic wrote:
| I think this is it. The environment enables the behaviour
| and the CAUSE of said behaviour can be multiple things
| separately or at once. The right kind of deranged combined
| with the right kind of stupid? Maybe that works. Completely
| manipulative and not deranged at all? Maybe that works too.
| themitigating wrote:
| And when you align with the right you can just claim
| persecution, that you are always the victim, if called out
| for your behavior
| berberous wrote:
| Why not both? I agree with you that all of those people know
| how to play the media to their benefit, but Kanye is also
| clearly bipolar and currently in one of his episodes, and
| Trump also clearly is the clinical definition of narcissistic
| personality disorder. The Kardashians and Elon have their
| flaws too, but I don't think they rise to the level of
| clinical issues in the way that Kanye and Trump do.
| NickC25 wrote:
| It's got to be both.
|
| Nobody in their sane mind would say some of the stuff that
| Kanye said/tweeted, but as well there's very few people who
| have the ability to profit off making insane statements to
| the extent that people like Kanye or Trump can. It's almost
| like a perpetual vicious cycle of profitable victimhood.
|
| I was never a big fan of the guy's work but he was an
| incredible producer back in the late 90s early 2000s. I
| think him experiencing the death of his mother was the
| start of a very serious downward cycle (mentally, at least)
| that he's yet to recover from.
| coinbasetwwa wrote:
| "No dude! They are totally insane people! We're the smart
| ones here" /s
| woodruffw wrote:
| This isn't an either/or: Kanye West (or anybody else) can be
| simultaneously shrewd, calculating, and mentally unwell.
| Nobody has claimed that Kanye is stupid or otherwise
| compensating, only that he has a _publicly attested_ history
| of mental health problems.
| houstonn wrote:
| It's more of a story of a famous artist who thinks for himself
| and has been marginalized for years as a result.
|
| Every time he says something that deviates from the accepted
| narrative, he is attacked and dismissed as "crazy", "insane",
| "sick". Many non-normative geniuses throughout history have
| been treated in this manner.
|
| Before anyone strawmans this, he does occasionally say things
| that should be condemned, particularly over the past week.
| Understandably people are focused on those remarks, but two
| things can be true at the same time.
|
| 1. He has been systematically marginalized and labeled as
| "crazy" every time he presents an alternative viewpoint. This
| has been going on for years.
|
| 2. He overcorrects when placed in a box. The more people try to
| control him, the more he tries to break out of that box by
| being purposefully provocative.
| coinbasetwwa wrote:
| Thanks for pointing out the obvious. Amazing how many people
| miss this.
| tptacek wrote:
| Again: not only is he diagnosed, he's open about about it. He
| literally attributes his success to his mental illness. His
| "thinking for himself" includes the a paranoid delusion about
| literal fake children corrupting his children. You're not
| doing him any favors by dignifying this stuff.
|
| The irony here is I'm _not_ condemning West. I 'm recognizing
| the terrible situation he's in. It's your analysis that's
| uncharitable to him, not mine. I think he's a victim in this
| story.
| ididitagain wrote:
| bondarchuk wrote:
| He is open about having been diagnosed, not about having a
| "public breakdown", being "increasingly unhinged" or "quite
| evidently sick". Those are your inventions. Though they
| might well be true I think one should be careful diagnosing
| people at a distance (and without being a mental health
| professional) especially when it is used as a justification
| for taking away someone's agency (which I acknowledge you
| haven't done, but others in this thread/saga are doing).
| tptacek wrote:
| You're right. Maybe there is a conspiracy to plant child
| actors at his house to sexualize his children.
| bondarchuk wrote:
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Are you doubling down on the following or just trying to
| change the direction of the conversation?
|
| > He is open about having been diagnosed, not about
| having a "public breakdown", being "increasingly
| unhinged" or "quite evidently sick". Those are your
| inventions.
| rvz wrote:
| Correct. The responses around this are absolutely pathetic,
| and many of them believe that he is unable to think for
| himself because he is buying Parler. So what if he is buying
| it. I'd say good for him, he can rebrand it if he wants to.
|
| Did the self-proclaimed HN doctors question his decision to
| collaborate with Adidas, Nike, etc by becoming a fashion
| designer with his Yezzy label which made him a billionaire?
| They didn't care in the first place; but because of Parler
| now they care?
|
| > 1. He has been systematically marginalized and labeled as
| "crazy" every time he presents an alternative viewpoint. This
| has been going on for years.
|
| > 2. He overcorrects when placed in a box. The more people
| try to control him, the more he tries to break out of that
| box by being purposefully provocative.
|
| Well the same people who are calling him "crazy", "insane",
| "sick" are the same who believe _everything_ that is said by
| the media. You go against the media narrative and they will
| punish you. Criticising and exposing some of the media 's
| lies and the cancelling will happen and Ye knows that.
|
| This also explains the unexplained downvotes because it is
| all true.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| evgen wrote:
| He has also become quite tight with Candace Owens recently. She
| has been publicly supporting his persecution complex and
| appeared with him in the White Lives Matter t-shirt incident at
| the Paris Fashion Week event. I will give you two guesses who
| the CEO of Parler is married to...
| smrtinsert wrote:
| This is shameful. You couldn't ask for a clearer example of
| taking advantage of a vulnerable person.
| pixelpoet wrote:
| I don't know, for-profit prisons are definitely in the
| running.
| blaser-waffle wrote:
| Agit-Prop runs on "useful idiots". High profile idiots are
| especially useful.
| [deleted]
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| > She has been publicly supporting his persecution complex
|
| Ok.
|
| > A Twitter rep told The Post on Sunday afternoon that West's
| account "has been locked due to a violation of Twitter's
| policies."
|
| > JP Morgan Chase may have notified West of its decision to
| end its banking relationship with him
|
| > In a statement to CNN Business on Saturday, a Meta
| spokesperson said content from West's account was deleted for
| violating the company's policies and a restriction was placed
| on his account.
|
| Doesn't sound like it is a complex if Twitter, Chase, and
| Meta/FB have all taken actions against him recently.
| klyrs wrote:
| Dude's been blasting antisemitism on social media, in
| violation of long-standing, well-understood policies.
| Shutting down his accounts is the opposite of persecution.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| > Dude's been blasting antisemitism on social media, in
| violation of long-standing, well-understood policies.
|
| Can you give specific examples? I just looked this up
| because I was interested. This very long winded Vice
| article only seems to point out a few "antisemitic"
| statements he makes[0]. Here's the first two:
|
| > Ye used a strange metaphor when talking about Black
| people judging one another, telling Carlson, "Think about
| us judging each other on how white we could talk would be
| like, you know, a Jewish person judging another Jewish
| person on how good they danced or something."
|
| I've never heard of people hating on Jews because they
| can't dance. If you watch the clip it sounds like Kanye
| is just trying to come up with an example, and it's clear
| he's not "blasting antisemitism" here.
|
| > Ye added, "I prefer my kids knew Hanukkah than Kwanzaa.
| At least it will come with some financial engineering."
| (The belief that Jews control the financial system is one
| of the oldest and most deeply-rooted antisemitic
| claims...
|
| Ah yes, the classic joke that Jews are rich. This has
| been a joke since forever, and maybe it's a bad thing.
| But Netflix is still playing Seinfeld reruns, and there's
| way more than one joke in there about rich Jews. There's
| even an entire episode poking fun at people taking
| offense to Jewish jokes[1]. And Twitter, Meta, etc aren't
| blocking Netflix. If joking that Jews are rich is
| antisemitism that's punishable by banishment from social
| media, these sites are not enforcing their standards
| fairly.
|
| I don't really care about Kanye West, but I'm so sick of
| people claiming everybody is racist, bigoted, and
| homophobic just because they disagree with something.
| Show me where Kanye is advocating for the annihilation of
| the Jews before _you_ go citing baseless claims. And if
| there is some clear antisemitic statements that I missed
| coming from Kanye, then I apologize in advance. But right
| now, it seems like this is just another "this person
| disagrees with me so let me find some vague statement
| they said and claim its racist/homophobic/bigoted
| speech".
|
| [0]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/3ad77y/kanye-west-
| tucker-car...
|
| [1]: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0697814/plotsummary?ref_=
| tt_ov_pl
| klyrs wrote:
| First off, his name is Ye, and I actually like his music
| (though, let's be honest, Donda was never gonna live up
| to the hype). This isn't about me not liking the guy.
|
| > Show me where Kanye is advocating for the annihilation
| of the Jews before you go citing baseless claims.
|
| Now, I didn't say he's been advocating for the
| annihilation of Jewish people, I said "blasting
| antisemitism." Antisemitism exists on a spectrum, and
| advocating for the annihilation of Jewish people is one
| point very far along that spectrum. If that's your actual
| threshold, you're definitely going to miss a lot of
| dogwhistles. But he's gotten pretty alarmingly close to
| exactly that:
|
| > I'm a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I'm going
| death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.
|
| In case you're not familiar, defcon 3 is an elevated
| state of military readiness -- that the US hasn't seen
| since 9/11.
| trafficante wrote:
| The recent Drink Champs podcast is a weird mix of legit
| anti-semitism ("Jewish media blackballed me") and, for
| lack of a better phrase, "advice to black people that
| they should copy behaviors that made Jews successful".
|
| Stuff like investing in property and making sure your
| children have a career path lined up regardless of your
| personal success. His anecdote about Stevie Wonder's kid
| being forced into a low end job to make ends meet is
| really sad if it's true.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification. It doesn't help that
| Twitter has removed this, so all I can find are long
| winded articles about him saying this without actually
| showing it. This is clearly an antisemitic statement.
|
| It would be helpful if the media didn't post every single
| thing he's said about Jewish people claiming it's
| antisemitism, because that just muddies the waters and
| makes people more apt to believe the media is just lying.
| wturner wrote:
| Candace Owens - Wilks Bros funded figure head tasked with
| helping socially engineer a culture that removes taxes on the
| rich and feed contempt for real democracy.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > This is really a story about a celebrity's mental illness and
| public breakdown.
|
| Devil's advocate: there's no way this isn't the case for Kanye,
| right? Why is this mental illness sparking up later in his
| life? Why was he able to achieve everything he's achieved 1996
| -> 2012 (Roc-A-Fella -> The College Dropout -> My Beautiful
| Dark Twisted Fantasy era) without these "mental illness" bouts?
| smcn wrote:
| He's diagnosed with bipolar back in 2016 and talks about
| refusing medication because it messes with his ability to
| create/be creative.
|
| It's possible that he's exhibited symptoms for far longer but
| it was brushed aside under the guise of kooky genius. I mean,
| the Taylor Swift thing was, what, 2009?
| lexapro wrote:
| The _" George Bush doesn't care about black people"_
| incident was in 2005. Not saying that was a manic episode,
| but it certainly could have been.
| tptacek wrote:
| It seemed pretty fair at the time, like I remember being
| confused by why it caused such a media furor. You could
| disagree, of course, but you could also see given the
| circumstances why someone would say it.
| NickC25 wrote:
| I'd definitely say it was fair at the time as that was
| around Hurricane Katrina and the vast majority of the
| most affected people at the time were low-income black
| people. IIRC some parts of the 9th Ward are still yet to
| recover from Katrina.....and that was 17 years ago.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Typing this from the ninth ward across from the vacant
| site of a former sausage factory I am inclined to agree
| themitigating wrote:
| I'm bipolar and while I do get excited with bursts of
| energy I've never made antisemitic or political remarks
| because of it
| smcn wrote:
| Nor did I say bipolar caused either of those things.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Both bipolar and schizophrenia can manifest late. They're
| often latent and triggered by unusual stress.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Why is this mental illness sparking up later in his life?_
|
| Anyone who has dealt with/supported folks suffering from
| mental illness (and I _definitely_ qualify, there), will tell
| you that mental illness gets worse, as you get older.
|
| A young man that compulsively washes his hands, may well end
| his life, flying around the world in a sterile airplane,
| keeping his piss in canopic jars.
| woodruffw wrote:
| One of the most common pop analyses of Kanye West is that the
| death of his mother in 2007 affected him deeply, and that he
| (essentially) goes on a mental health bender every year
| around the time she passed. I don't know if that's true or
| not, but it's not the most implausible explanation and _does_
| comport with his most recent behavior (since the anniversary
| of her death is a few weeks away).
| simongr3dal wrote:
| The story told on the Dissect podcast[1] about Kanye and My
| Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy really paints a picture of a
| person who is not very well.
|
| [1]: https://anchor.fm/dissect/episodes/S2E1--Kanye-West-The-
| Elep...
| dk775 wrote:
| Listen to his interviews yourself. Any medium, including
| podcasts, are packaging a narrative for you to hear. For
| better or worse. Personally and I'm black I listened to his
| latest interview and his points are pretty strong, it
| becomes obvious how he is being painted in a false light
| after hearing the interviews for yourself then hearing
| other people use clips to say he's mentally ill and crazy.
| jshaqaw wrote:
| Would those be the points where he rehashes the same
| antisemitic tropes which have circulated for hundreds of
| years and every once in a while leads to the massacres of
| innocent people? Because if he doesn't get an out due to
| mental illness he is just another little attention whore
| neonazi.
| bnjms wrote:
| Could you suggest a recent interview as an example? I'd
| like to judge myself.
|
| I'm of the opinion he's both someone with good intentions
| with good points but who makes those points sideways. But
| also that he's mentally I'll so he's losing the ability
| to communicate clearly. I also think Candace Owens is an
| untrustworthy person with only self serving intentions.
| iaml wrote:
| Not the person you asked, but here's an interview that
| released yesterday.
|
| https://youtu.be/-ZmbP5vIbyk
| bnjms wrote:
| Thanks. I was looking forward to watching that. The
| comments thread was mostly positive.
|
| It's gone now. Memory holed.
| ivank wrote:
| http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Aht
| tps... is somehow still working for me, but it may be
| region-specific
| z7 wrote:
| This wouldn't surprise me. I haven't listened to the
| interviews myself, but a lot of people here seem to base
| their claims on having read secondary sources, not
| primary sources. In other words, their view of reality is
| based on how a journalist decided to summarize a
| conversation that is often multiple hours long. I'm not
| sure this constitutes a strong enough chain of evidence
| to diagnose someone with a mental illness.
| pjc50 wrote:
| https://www.thecut.com/2022/02/kanye-west-bipolar-
| disorder.h... : "He has famously referred to bipolar disorder
| as his "superpower,""
|
| This is key to understanding bipolar: it has an "upswing"
| phase in which someone has more energy and less inhibition.
| Increased self-belief as well. It can, if you're lucky, be
| just the right thing to catapult someone into incredible
| creative works.
|
| The risk is that risk-taking may _not_ pay off, and the
| inhibitions may have been there for good reason. Not to
| mention that there 's also a downswing phase which looks like
| depression and comes with elevated suicide risk.
| monknomo wrote:
| Both phases come with a lack of self-awareness and
| sometimes anosognosia as symptoms
| RajT88 wrote:
| I used to know a lady with Bipolar. She thought the highs
| were totally worth it, and she was self-aware enough when
| she was swinging into a low period, and she'd just isolate
| herself until she came out of it. She didn't like her
| medication because it dulled the highs.
|
| After a few major life disasters (including getting
| married, and then having it annulled), she eventually
| figured out that the highs were fun but dangerous. I
| haven't talked to her in years, but she was reliably taking
| her meds to keep her even keel.
|
| My friend was pretty self-aware though. Someone less so may
| not be able to see that their illness is the true cause of
| their life disasters.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Hopefully some day we can figure out a solution that can
| help brunt the lows without completely brunting the
| highs. Although people do dumb stuff on the high swing
| too.
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| All hip hop artists (and most artists) are manic. A little
| bit of mania helps you make creative connections and clever
| rhymes. Too much mania turns you into Don Quixote.
|
| FYI (for the down-voters):
| https://www.verywellmind.com/clang-associations-380072
| https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/clanging-
| schizophr...
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Bit of an exaggeration. Plenty of rappers who are
| depressive. Isn't that the whole premise of mumble rap?
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| Manic depression, otherwise known as bipolar disorder
| pazimzadeh wrote:
| More:
|
| https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/transition.115.23#me
| tad... https://sci-hub.se/10.2979/transition.115.23
| maxboone wrote:
| It's very possible for bipolar disorder to manifest late /
| have a late onset in life
| labrador wrote:
| I have bipolar disorder which is characterized by extreme
| highs and extreme lows. Ye is manic right now in my
| estimation. Bipolars like me and Ye have lives of periods of
| success and periods of failure. You can read about bipolar if
| you'd like to learn more.
| rewgs wrote:
| My estimation is that he's schizophrenic (in addition to
| being bipolar -- they do often go hand in hand). I've seen
| not one but two people get dragged into the hell of that
| disease, and both began with buying into antisemitic
| conspiracy theories.
| csours wrote:
| That's not how mental illness works. I am not diagnosing
| Kanye, but look up the progression of bipolar disorder. It is
| truly terrifying and heartbreaking.
| tptacek wrote:
| You don't have to diagnose West. He's been diagnosed. He's
| open about it.
| csours wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| Whatever is going on in this individual case, Bipolar
| disorder is terrible. It can look like someone is "fine"
| for a long time, but then they aren't fine and people
| look for what changed, and what changed is progression of
| the disease.
|
| It's really hard to talk about without adding
| stigmatization.
| nerdix wrote:
| You're acting like he hasn't had public outbursts before...
|
| Ya know.
|
| "George Bush doesn't care about Black People".
|
| "Taylor, I'ma let you finish..."
|
| MBDTF came out in 2010. That was around the beginning of
| social media entering the mainstream (Kanye joined Twitter in
| July 2010).
|
| So up until MBDTF, he didn't have a device in his pocket that
| allowed him to broadcast his unfiltered thoughts to millions
| of people. Up until that point, his public image was likely
| carefully managed by his label and management. All of his
| interviews were probably overseen by them. They likely only
| allowed interviews where he was asked pre-approved questions
| and gave canned answers. If he went too far off script, his
| label likely stepped in.
|
| It's clear now that he has a lot more freedom with handling
| his own image. He's been signed to his own label since 2016
| which probably afforded him a lot more power over his career.
| He had a few moments prior to 2016 but he didn't really go
| off the deep until 2017.
|
| TLDR: what you saw as stable behavior prior to 2017 or so was
| probably the result of a curated image created by his label
| and management.
| ididitagain wrote:
| dcow wrote:
| Serious question: is it a scam if they're both delusional, as
| it were?
| P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote:
| Jonovono wrote:
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Because normal-brained people announce that they're going
| "deathcon 3" on Jews all the time.
| afavour wrote:
| You don't need to know him personally. He's talked publicly
| about being bipolar and how it makes him imagine scenarios
| exactly like those he has described recently. His recent
| behaviour has all the hallmarks of a bipolar episode. I think
| there's a good discussion to be had about how we should talk
| about situations like this but dismissing it out of hand
| definitely isn't helpful.
|
| > I don't think you can say anything so factual about his
| life, let alone that he's being scammed.
|
| One thing I think it's possible to say definitively is that
| he was played by Tucker Carlson's team. The comments they
| didn't air, like those about Jewish people, are headline
| making. Any serious journalistic outfit would have aired
| them. The fact that they cut around them shows that they
| wanted to paint Kanye in a particular way for their own
| purposes.
| mmastrac wrote:
| We don't have all the info, but let's not kid ourselves that
| mental illness can't be visible from a distance.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Yeah, I agree. I'm not a conservative, but if I were I
| wouldn't want Kanye (or Trump) to be the one championing my
| views. Find someone who (1) actually has conservative
| views, (2) isn't mentally ill, and (3) can articulate those
| views persuasively. Thomas Sowell might be considered a
| good example.
| Jonovono wrote:
| a
| [deleted]
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| _Obviously_ no one is arguing that we should attack
| mentally ill people. We can acknowledge that mental
| illness impairs decision making ability without attacking
| people. It doesn 't even mean that people can't agree
| with some of Kanye's conclusions, but if you are such a
| person, consider finding a champion for your ideas who
| can do a better job of articulating those ideas.
| [deleted]
| OJFord wrote:
| It's linked ('unaired segments of the interview') in the
| submitted article:
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/3ad77y/kanye-west-tucker-car...
|
| Bizarre. In a way, good on them for editing the weirdest stuff
| out... But really probably shouldn't have used any of it when
| someone's so clearly in such a bad state?
|
| I mean it really is just driving clicks/views/profit from
| someone's poor health, in a nasty sort of way (i.e. not to say
| _news_ or obituaries etc. are bad) isn 't it?
| MockObject wrote:
| A celebrity says some things that make sense, and some things
| that don't, and it's nasty profiteering to report on the
| former? That really seems a bit extreme to me.
| OJFord wrote:
| I didn't watch it or anything, so I'm definitely biased by
| only having read an article about 'even more unhinged bits
| leaked' as it were, but wasn't it all a bit sensational?
| Depends what you call 'makes sense' I suppose, I think one
| perhaps needs a higher bar when it's in the context of such
| a conversation, where other things are clearly paranoia; if
| he's clearly not 'himself', why should someone else get to
| judge which bits 'make sense' 'enough'?
| MockObject wrote:
| I watched it, and it was an engaging mix of lucidity,
| nonsense, insight, and delusion. Intended to be a 30
| minute interview, Kanye had much on his mind, and they
| went for two hours. He wasn't clearly not himself; he's
| always like this during his public, manic phases. (He
| goes dark during his depressive phases.)
|
| I think our society has gotten so used to pop stars who
| are safe, sanitized, vapid graduates of Disney kids, and
| "transgressive" high artists bravely fighting the against
| dead horses slain generations ago, that we've lost the
| capacity to handle artists who can be disturbing and
| awkward at times, and creatively redeeming at others, but
| can't easily be categorized as perfectly good or purely
| evil.
| soupfordummies wrote:
| It's Fox News. I don't think they have any ethical care
| whatsoever.
| ponow wrote:
| OJFord wrote:
| Oh, I'm sort of aware of that reputation (of Fox News), but
| I just read 'Carlson', not a name I know.
| achenet wrote:
| He's a guy who Murdoch pays to say offensive things to
| drive engagement on Fox News :)
| paxys wrote:
| Tucker Carlson. He is pretty much the face of Fox News
| and conservative media in general right now.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| There's some interesting footage of Tucker Carlson
| exposing the way Fox operates, from a decade before he
| became the main guy doing it for them. Very weird to
| watch:
|
| https://youtu.be/RNineSEoxjQ
|
| _Why Tucker Carlson Pretends to Hate Elites_
| profstasiak wrote:
| this vice guy is known for manipulation in his videos. I
| guess choose your bias type of battle
| evan_ wrote:
| They edited out all of the crazy stuff he said and then
| Tucker Carlson literally said "See, he's not crazy!"
| j0hnyl wrote:
| Maybe, or maybe he will do whatever it takes to get attention.
| Likely it's both.
| c7DJTLrn wrote:
| Twitter seems to induce madness in some celebrities. Elon Musk
| has been going off the rails as well.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| Do you think there would be same level of uproar if he decided
| to donate x millions to blm all of a sudden?
| favorited wrote:
| I bet Tucker Carlson would do a 180 pretty quick.
| filoleg wrote:
| Well, around 2 years ago, he made a $2 million direct
| donation to support the families of George Floyd, Ahmaud
| Arbery and Breonna Taylor[0].
|
| 0. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/04/entertainment/kanye-west-
| two-...
| [deleted]
| themitigating wrote:
| What if it's just a narcissist? What if it's a combination of
| both? He's made blantent antisemitic remarks and yet his
| popularity among the right grows
| [deleted]
| rewgs wrote:
| > He's made blatant antisemitic remarks and yet his
| popularity among the right grows.
|
| You say this as if the latter isn't a direct result of the
| former.
| mind-blight wrote:
| He's diagnosed bipolar, so mental illness is definitely in
| the mix.
| coinbasetwwa wrote:
| Good thing we have Kanye's physician in the comments to
| make that determination.
| npteljes wrote:
| Source: https://people.com/music/kanye-west-opens-up-
| about-bipolar-d...
| kristjansson wrote:
| He's stated it publicly, it's not like this is rumor or
| conjecture.
| themitigating wrote:
| It might not contribute at all. My evidence being the
| countless people who are bipolar but don't make antisemitic
| remarks and the countless people who aren't bipolar and do.
| kleton wrote:
| His name is now legally Ye. Would you deadname Chelsea Manning
| in the same way?
| rOOb85 wrote:
| Those 2 things are not the same thing. Someone who changes
| their gender to what they feel they should be, including a
| new gender name is very much different then a person changing
| their name to a mononym.
| gardenhedge wrote:
| Why do you think that?
| poopnugget wrote:
| winternett wrote:
| he is a victim of his own choices... I don't want to sound
| callous, but to be honest, we all face a much more harsh and
| unforgiving future than him if we made the same mistakes. He
| has squandered the good faith he built over many years by
| making bad decisions. Somehow he generated wealth out of it
| all, but continued to make bad decisions in hopes of hanging on
| to his dramatic public personality/popularity. It's not for me
| to judge of course, but it's a vital lesson to us all in the
| age of Internet fame, integrity and reputation matter... The
| more we forgive and cast a blind eye to people that "sell out"
| based those principles, the more we end up forgetting exactly
| why morality, good conduct, and positive reputations matter in
| life.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| > he is a victim of his own choices...
|
| Would you say the same about a schizophrenic who refuses to
| stay on his meds and ends up ranting at people while living
| under a bridge?
|
| People with bipolar disorder sometimes won't take their meds
| for a variety reasons, one being they seek the energy of
| manic episodes (one in my acquaintance had only had one major
| manic episode in her entire life but she put up with
| depression for years in hope of having another one).
|
| Kanye West has stated in interviews that he's a.) bipolar and
| b.) doesn't take his meds because they interfere with his
| creative process. This man is not well.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Would you say the same about a schizophrenic who refuses
| to stay on his meds and ends up ranting at people while
| living under a bridge?_
|
| No, because Kanye isn't living under a bridge. He's a
| billionaire.
| coinbasetwwa wrote:
| electrondood wrote:
| It's a fact that the guy is very publicly suffering from
| mental illness. Let's please not insinuate that he's being
| smeared for "disagreeing with the status quo" or not
| conforming to mainstream ideas, or some other common right
| wing victimhood nonsense.
|
| When you say crazy things, it is correct to call them crazy.
| hfourm wrote:
| I think if you follow along with Kanye, it is obvious it is
| beyond normal celebrity "insanity". I feel bad for him
| because I really grew up listening to his music and still
| have a soft spot in my heart for him, but he has some
| incredible delusions it would seem in the last 5-10 years.
| phatfish wrote:
| You seem to have missed the last couple of weeks of Kanye's
| antics.
| tptacek wrote:
| He believes his kids friends are "professional actors" who
| were placed there to "sexualize" them, that The Gap knew
| about the Uvalde shooting before it happened, and that Pete
| Davidson slept with his wife through the mechinations of an
| international Jewish conspiracy. You're doing the same thing
| Fox did: quoting the least unhinged things and pretending the
| most unhinged things didn't get said.
|
| And, as I'm sure will have to be repeated dozens more times
| on this doomed thread: the mental illness thing isn't
| hypothetical. He was hospitalized for it, diagnosed, and is
| open about it. He attributes his success to it!
| [deleted]
| bambax wrote:
| Millions of people believe the Covid vaccine was designed
| to kill them, or that the Clintons eat fetuses in
| pizzerias. Millions more are absolutely certain a Jewish
| secret cabal runs the world. Are they "insane", or just
| dumb?
|
| Kanye West is pushing conspiracies a little further, into
| the domestic realm.
|
| What's upsetting is that when ordinary John Does promote
| conspiracy theories they are shunned, but when it's a
| successful artist we try to find them excuses.
| coinbasetwwa wrote:
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _but when it 's a successful artist we try to find them
| excuses._
|
| This is, to me, what is missing from this entire thing.
| Kanye is bipolar, yes, but I don't think anything he's
| points to some kind of manic outburst. What he said over
| the past few weeks have be fairly mainstream (or sub-
| mainstream) conservative talking points. Maybe not the
| ones that get blasted on Fox News, but the ones that
| shared and like with Fox News posts on Facebook.
|
| To me the "Kanye is mentally ill" is a cover to hide some
| very pervasive talking points in conservative circles.
| It's an extension of the mass misinformation problems
| that we as a society have been dealing with since COVID
| and Kanye is the latest victim.
| z7 wrote:
| Thing is, I need to see the primary source before I can
| make a judgement. I tried to find the source for the first
| claim and it seems to be a quote from this Vice article:
|
| >Carlson's program also didn't air a strange claim from Ye
| that "fake children" had been placed in his house to
| manipulate his children. "I mean, like actors, professional
| actors, placed into my house to sexualize my kids," he told
| Carlson. He referred to the "so-called son" of an
| associate, seemingly to imply the child was fake.
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/3ad77y/kanye-west-tucker-
| car...
|
| I have no idea what exactly he is trying to say and I don't
| know the context, so it's not clear to me what to make of
| it.
| z7 wrote:
| lol, I already scored two thumbs down for wanting to see
| the primary source and wanting to understand the context
| before making a judgement. xD
| coinbasetwwa wrote:
| raydev wrote:
| > I have no idea what exactly he is trying to say
|
| It's right there in the quote that you pasted. Not sure
| what context you're missing.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _He believes his kids friends are "professional actors"
| who were placed there to "sexualize" them_
|
| Considering the way the entertainment industry in America
| uses kids, this is one of the least insane things Kanye has
| said. Anybody with sense would try to keep their kids away
| from the entertainment industry, who groom children to be
| products without regard for their welfare. How many former
| child actors need to go crazy before you notice the
| pattern?
| citilife wrote:
| > This is really a story about a celebrity's mental illness and
| public breakdown.
|
| I find this take interesting -- Kanye is insanely successful in
| multiple categories. He is very eccentric and always has been.
|
| > Kanye is now a Black Hebrew Israelite
|
| That said, calling him mentally ill or having a breakdown is a
| bit... odd. There are tens of thousands of "Black Hebrews",
| there are MANY more Scientologists. Is Tom Cruise mentally ill?
| Maybe, but people can have different beliefs than me and I
| wouldn't call them mentally ill.
|
| Regarding Pete Davidson...
|
| > "The 78 media outlets that called me an abuser when I was
| tryna get that heroin addict away from my kids that was
| tattooing my kids' names on him, Skete, Pete Davidson..." said
| West. Davidson has spoken about his struggles with drugs and
| borderline personality disorder in the past.
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/kanye-west-hits-pete-davidson-0413485...
|
| I think a lot of the tabloid press is trying to make Kanye
| sound crazier than he is. That's how they sell stuff. Don't get
| me wrong, he's a bit off and he'll say things in a hyperbolic
| way (which is accurate.. but the connected dots don't always
| make sense).
|
| Anyway, my point is I think dismissing someone as "mentally
| ill" for having different beliefs or opinions is probably not
| the best. It's a fair opinion, but I wouldn't assess it that
| way. He's acting rationally for his belief set.
| breck wrote:
| I think you aren't being hard enough on Kanye. I just signed
| up for Parler (https://parler.com/breckyunits) and there are
| barely any ads on that site--he clearly doesn't know what
| he's doing.
| diceduckmonk wrote:
| > there are barely any ads on that site--he clearly doesn't
| know what he's doing.
|
| There are no ads on HackerNews. What's the point ?
| parker_mountain wrote:
| > That said, calling him mentally ill or having a breakdown
| is a bit... odd.
|
| Kanye himself has said, in the past, that he has bipolar
| disorder and has had manic episodes. His family has
| corroborated that, and his wife was open about taking
| responsibilities during the bad days.
| aborochoff wrote:
| So apparently its evident to a lot of people on hacker news
| that kanye has a mental illness and is making bad decisions
| because of it.
|
| If this is the case why hasnt someone tried to take power of
| attorney or something similar here?
| philippejara wrote:
| Because doing such a thing to someone as young and quite
| honestly as sane as him is absurd, regardless of what twitter
| people thing. The man is completely capable of making his own
| decisions and is not a real threat to anyone, at least not
| enough of a threat to pass the bar for having his agency as
| an individual taken away. The whole situation with britney
| spears was a tragedy and we need to stop thinking that these
| measures are a realistic way to treat things except for the
| most egregious cases. Having a mental illness and making bad
| decisions because of it is not one of those cases, else you
| can bet the political opposition of whatever
| party/whistleblowers/etc will start magically having mental
| illnesses and making bad decisions because of it as well.
| [deleted]
| mort96 wrote:
| It's not just evident to a lot of people; he has claimed it
| himself, and it's basically confirmed. Here's the relevant
| part of his Wikipedia article:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanye_West#Mental_health
|
| There's a lot of stuff there, among other things:
|
| > West said that he often has suicidal ideation. In a 2019
| interview with David Letterman, West stated that he has
| bipolar disorder.
| themitigating wrote:
| Brittney Spears, who hasn't made any public racists remarks
| (at least that I know) lost control
| dragontamer wrote:
| And in that case, it seemed like her holding company was
| abusing her.
|
| So invoking power-of-attorney over someone isn't always
| the solution to their mental health. Its an extreme move,
| and I'm really not sure if its designed to be used in the
| typical mental-health case.
|
| Its not like the mentally ill are suddenly incapable of
| performing useful work, or unable to watch over
| themselves. They just have... delusions, bad memory,
| swings of mood, terrible sleeping habits, etc. etc. They
| need help, not someone walking in and stealing their
| money / taking their house / losing all sense of agency
| all together.
|
| Mental health is... difficult, but livable. Extreme
| actions like invoking power-of-attorney probably makes
| things worse in more situations IMO.
| wavefunction wrote:
| > invoking power-of-attorney
|
| You may be thinking of Legal Guardianship. Power of
| attorney just means someone is authorized to make the
| same legal decisions as the subject of the power of
| attorney and can be overridden by the subject.
|
| Brittany Spears was subject to and abused by
| Guardianship.
| lghh wrote:
| It was a lot harder to make those public remarks when
| Brittney was at her lowest publicly than it is for Kanye
| right now.
|
| I'm not saying Brittney would have, just saying that it's
| easier to have a very public manic episode where your
| every thought is aired than it was 15 years ago.
| [deleted]
| rchaud wrote:
| This is simply the latest in a long line of erratic behavior,
| which eld to a pretty public divorce. The man has no friends
| or family left, only yes-men.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > why hasnt someone tried to take power of attorney or
| something similar here?
|
| There is, at least in principle (and certainly for people who
| can afford lawyers, as he certainly can) a very high bar for
| this. As there should be.
| jenkstom wrote:
| Because of Britney Spears this has become a lot harder to do
| in the past year or two.
| dragontamer wrote:
| For good reason. Invoking power of attorney solves no
| fundamental problems and just creates a ton of other
| problems.
|
| It should only be done in the most extreme of cases (ie:
| someone turns into a literal vegetable on life support). If
| someone still has a degree of agency and capabilities...
| even if they're delusional and/or mentally ill, they still
| deserve to live their life. IE: Control their own bank
| accounts and whatnot.
| coinbasetwwa wrote:
| Because it's just people arguing on conjecture that folks
| they disagree with are mentally ill. He is quite obviously
| sane if you hear him speak.
| hfourm wrote:
| Did you not watch the Netflix documentary? The last
| episodes contained many non-obviously-sane conversations.
| Especially the one where he was talking to bankers at one
| of their vacation homes.
| coinbasetwwa wrote:
| I've seen plenty of weird conversations in the workforce
| like leaders living in an alternate reality than direct
| reports to hawk their views, yet never felt motivated to
| call them mentally ill. I don't judge how people feel
| they need to speak to relate to anybody, especially under
| the influence of alcohol as Kanye was in that segment.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > power of attorney
|
| My grandma is beginning to look like she has dementia. But
| we, as a family, aren't at a point where we're thinking of
| taking away her agency. She's a proud woman and always has
| been.
|
| In many cases, its probably better for the person for them to
| keep their agency. If they're only going to lose money, its
| really not that big of a deal. We're more concerned about
| what if she has a fall by herself or other such issue. But
| those things won't be solved by revoking her agency.
|
| But just because someone is mentally ill (dementia, bipolar,
| or even schizophrenic) doesn't mean they deserve to lose
| their agency and get power of attorney invoked over them.
|
| Has anyone close to you been in a mentally ill situation?
| Have you ever tried to tell someone you love, someone you
| trusted, someone you used to look up to that their mental
| capabilities have declined and that you no longer trust them
| to watch over themselves? And if so, do you think taking away
| their ability to use their bank account is the solution to
| that problem?
| MaxfordAndSons wrote:
| My mother is in the early/mid stages of dementia, and she
| recently granted my father and I power of attorney. It
| doesn't have to be a "taking away" if they can be convinced
| that it's in their best interested. Admittedly ymmv, it
| helps that my mother is a retired psychologist. Also it's
| hardly a "solution"; it's merely a mitigation. In the
| months before we did it my mother had been scammed out of
| thousands of dollars multiple times. There are so many
| scammers out there targeting the elderly/mentally ill, it's
| only matter of when not if.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I agree.
|
| I think in your case, having someone cooperate into
| giving power of attorney is the best case. But in this
| case, my grandmother is still too proud to willingly give
| power of attorney to any of her children.
|
| If she willingly gives it, I think we'll take her up on
| the offer. But she doesn't think she's been scammed yet.
| We likely have to wait until after she's realized how
| she's been taken advantage of before she's in the
| position to willingly give us power of attorney.
|
| Forcibly taking it before that realization would be
| counterproductive.
| nhod wrote:
| > If they're only going to lose money, its really not that
| big of a deal.
|
| This depends on what will happen after they run out of
| money.
|
| Someone very close to me has an untreated dual diagnosis
| (mentally ill + substance abuse disorder). She is otherwise
| young and intelligent, and with treatment she could at
| least theoretically have a full life. However she refuses
| all attempts at help, has been unemployed for over a year,
| is paranoid and isolated and alone from and abusive to
| friends and family, is burning through her savings, and
| will soon get to the point where she will have to foreclose
| on her house.
|
| At that point she will literally be an unemployed,
| homeless, mentally ill drug addict.
|
| This is a major problem in our individualistic society with
| no easy answer. As my coach says, people don't change when
| they see the light, only when they feel the heat. She may
| need to crash and burn, and she may pick herself back up.
| But the odds on that happening for someone in her position
| are not good.
|
| And meanwhile we all have to watch someone we love slowly
| descend into ruin.
| Domenic_S wrote:
| > _Has anyone close to you been in a mentally ill
| situation? Have you ever tried to tell someone you love,
| someone you trusted, someone you used to look up to that
| their mental capabilities have declined and that you no
| longer trust them to watch over themselves?_
|
| I have, but it doesn't really look like that. It's a
| gradual assumption of responsibilities by the caregivers
| that roughly corresponds to the person's decline.
|
| > _do you think taking away their ability to use their bank
| account is the solution to that problem?_
|
| It's _a_ solution, yes, when they could dramatically harm
| their situation /themselves doing things they no longer
| have the capacity to understand.
| dionidium wrote:
| > _but about Pete Davidson_
|
| His wife's new boyfriend got their kids' initials tattooed on
| his neck. _That 's_ deranged and suggesting that an angry
| response is evidence of mental illness is way into "positing
| unnecessary entities" territory.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| The antidote for all who gain information via the Internet is to
| develop their common sense and critical thinking skills. We must
| know what to question and then, how to pull answers to form our
| judgements and our resulting actions. These skills need to be
| core to all education curriculum.
|
| This is most critical for judgements that lead to consequential
| decisions and actions. Whether you love someone or hate them,
| those feelings lead to bad outcomes if not based on correct
| information and reasoning.
| frankhhhhhhhhh wrote:
| What the heck happened to The Verge? Haven't visited in a while
| and it doesn't even seem like it's the same site.
| joenathanone wrote:
| They have become the avocado toast of tech news sites. I
| remember when they first got started as This Is My Next, when
| they had Joanna Stern, Joshua Topolsky and Paul Miller, the
| good ole days...
| cebert wrote:
| Has anyone seen any stats on how many Parler active daily users
| there are? I'd assume it's quite small.
| npteljes wrote:
| "700,000 to 1 million (active) as of January 2022", compared to
| the "20 million (total) as of January 2021". The leak was also
| in January, 2021.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parler
| tgv wrote:
| And has Kanye already asked for statistics on the number of
| bots? I mean, it appears as if he's trying to do an Elon.
| feralfoo wrote:
| This looks more like pulling a 'Trump' with Truth Social,
| since they both got 'yeeted' from twitter and other
| platforms.
| dd36 wrote:
| But he's still on Twitter?
| [deleted]
| feralfoo wrote:
| Who are you referring to? Both were banned. Ye was
| allowed back recently and was banned again days later for
| anti-semitic tweets:
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=kanye+banned+from+twitter
| https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+banned+from+twitter
|
| *edit
|
| Ye/Kanye's twitter was locked, not banned.
| dd36 wrote:
| Kanye was banned? I thought they removed your content if
| you were banned.
| feralfoo wrote:
| Yep just clarified, restricted/locked, not banned.
| dementiapatent wrote:
| After they leaked drivers licenses and other personal documents
| uploaded by their userbase for verification, I'd be astounded
| that anyone is still willing to use that platform.
|
| See: https://www.rt.com/usa/512152-parler-hacker-data-leak/
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