Elon Musk, Twitter’s next owner, provides his definition of “free speech”

Amid Twitter buyout, Musk says free speech is simply "that which matches the law."

Read the whole story

 

[Rachelhikes]

This is why I am an advocate for free speech. I believe that the best means of confronting hateful and bigoted speech is to confront it directly.

There’s an old saying: Never wrestle with a pig. All that will happen is you will get shit all over you and the pig enjoys it.

A social media concept based on endless pig wrestling is not for me. No fucking way.

 

[whitetigersx]

Look. I don't care if he buys it. I just want him to be truthful about the why.

You aren't buying a company 'to restore free speech'. He sees profit, plain and simple. His desire to take it private even supports that. So why not just say it rather than continue with this free speech crap.

He's also being a little dickish about how he's going about this.

Here's a thought on why he might , other than profit. A private company could try to hide information from the federal government under the Constitution. The SEC could be toothless then. It shouldn't work due to that visible to the public bit. Blocking specific IP's and users due to their employment with the federal government could be seen as an admission of guilt by attempting to hide something from the government, actively.

 

[Basil Forthrightly]

You don't know them. Not the people. The leaders, true. The people they're a different animal. They feel ignored (flyover country), denigrated (deplorables) and dismissed. They've turned to the only leaders talking to them. It's how Hitler came to power. Lenin. Mao. bin Laden. History is full of such examples.

But you don't want to hear this. So you won't. And this will just go on.

“Who will think of the ignorant backwater racists?”

They were out protesting yesterday, in my neck of the woods.

About a dozen bigots, with various odd flags (and a standard Confederate battle flag), with posters about protecting "our children" from pedophiles and advertising white power [.] org.

Most of them had masks and most of those were skull masks.

Pretty sure this is the same bunch of anti-semites that's been hitting the area over the last year; the picket site was the busiest stoplight near the Jewish campus that hosts maybe 5 congregations, a community center, and the Ballet Austin Academy (for some reason - the campus was funded by the Dells, maybe they're also into ballet).

Last fall, one of the anti-semites used his mom's car to reconnoiter a synagogue in a different part of town in daylight; came back a few nights later to try and burn it down (failed but did very real damage). Security cams caught his plates and his unusual habit of wearing a wristwatch on his right hand.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/accused-a ... cutors-say

His lawyer is blaming the "real" bad guys for his client's crimes (which allegedly also include armed robbery).

“You can have more than one victim in a case,” Wannamaker said. “I know my client is accused of a serious crime, but I think my client is a victim, as well. COVID hit, and autistic kids are isolated because of the condition naturally. And so with the lockdown, just like everybody else, he retreated to the internet. And the real bad guys here, in my opinion, are the far-right-wing ultra-nationalists who prey on people like my client. They’re vulnerable and they’re easy pickings, because they’re looking for somebody that will give them the time of day. And I think my client fell prey to those people... It’s very, very sad.”

 

[DovePig]

Spoiler

You don't know them. Not the people. The leaders, true. The people they're a different animal. They feel ignored (flyover country), denigrated (deplorables) and dismissed. They've turned to the only leaders talking to them. It's how Hitler came to power. Lenin. Mao. bin Laden. History is full of such examples.

But you don't want to hear this. So you won't. And this will just go on.

“Who will think of the ignorant backwater racists?”

They were out protesting yesterday, in my neck of the woods.

About a dozen bigots, with various odd flags (and a standard Confederate battle flag), with posters about protecting "our children" from pedophiles and advertising white power [.] org.

Most of them had masks and most of those were skull masks.

Pretty sure this is the same bunch of anti-semites that's been hitting the area over the last year; the picket site was the busiest stoplight near the Jewish campus that hosts maybe 5 congregations, a community center, and the Ballet Austin Academy (for some reason - the campus was funded by the Dells, maybe they're also into ballet).

Last fall, one of the anti-semites used his mom's car to reconnoiter a synagogue in a different part of town in daylight; came back a few nights later to try and burn it down (failed but did very real damage). Security cams caught his plates and his unusual habit of wearing a wristwatch on his right hand.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/accused-a ... cutors-say

His lawyer is blaming the "real" bad guys for his client's crimes (which allegedly also include armed robbery).

“You can have more than one victim in a case,” Wannamaker said. “I know my client is accused of a serious crime, but I think my client is a victim, as well. COVID hit, and autistic kids are isolated because of the condition naturally. And so with the lockdown, just like everybody else, he retreated to the internet. And the real bad guys here, in my opinion, are the far-right-wing ultra-nationalists who prey on people like my client. They’re vulnerable and they’re easy pickings, because they’re looking for somebody that will give them the time of day. And I think my client fell prey to those people... It’s very, very sad.”

Oh, goody...

Your honour, my client is innocent and really surprised at all this, he simply fell prey to those leopards who ate his face!
_{quote spoilered for brevity}

 

[Alfonse]

This is why I am an advocate for free speech. I believe that the best means of confronting hateful and bigoted speech is to confront it directly.

There’s an old saying: Never wrestle with a pig. All that will happen is you will get shit all over you and the pig enjoys it.

A social media concept based on endless pig wrestling is not for me. No fucking way.

It should also be noted that it's easy to say "wrestle this pig" when you don't intend to do any wrestling yourself because you have nothing at stake. Few "free speech absolutists" actually have anything on the line in any of these debates. They're theater, an academic debate of intellectual interest. Nothing more.

Do trans people get to exist and have rights? That's an academic, risk-free debate... so long as you're not trans. That's why "centrists" like O/Siris demand that it be held. Because they know that they personally will never be forced into a debate about their rights.

Well, they believe that at any rate. History tells us that the fascists have other plans, because fascism never actually stops stripping rights from people. And the "centrists" keep falling for it. Every. Single. Time.

 

[Alfonse]

Spoiler

You don't know them. Not the people. The leaders, true. The people they're a different animal. They feel ignored (flyover country), denigrated (deplorables) and dismissed. They've turned to the only leaders talking to them. It's how Hitler came to power. Lenin. Mao. bin Laden. History is full of such examples.

But you don't want to hear this. So you won't. And this will just go on.

“Who will think of the ignorant backwater racists?”

They were out protesting yesterday, in my neck of the woods.

About a dozen bigots, with various odd flags (and a standard Confederate battle flag), with posters about protecting "our children" from pedophiles and advertising white power [.] org.

Most of them had masks and most of those were skull masks.

Pretty sure this is the same bunch of anti-semites that's been hitting the area over the last year; the picket site was the busiest stoplight near the Jewish campus that hosts maybe 5 congregations, a community center, and the Ballet Austin Academy (for some reason - the campus was funded by the Dells, maybe they're also into ballet).

Last fall, one of the anti-semites used his mom's car to reconnoiter a synagogue in a different part of town in daylight; came back a few nights later to try and burn it down (failed but did very real damage). Security cams caught his plates and his unusual habit of wearing a wristwatch on his right hand.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/accused-a ... cutors-say

His lawyer is blaming the "real" bad guys for his client's crimes (which allegedly also include armed robbery).

“You can have more than one victim in a case,” Wannamaker said. “I know my client is accused of a serious crime, but I think my client is a victim, as well. COVID hit, and autistic kids are isolated because of the condition naturally. And so with the lockdown, just like everybody else, he retreated to the internet. And the real bad guys here, in my opinion, are the far-right-wing ultra-nationalists who prey on people like my client. They’re vulnerable and they’re easy pickings, because they’re looking for somebody that will give them the time of day. And I think my client fell prey to those people... It’s very, very sad.”

Oh, goody...

Your honour, my client is innocent and really surprised at all this, he simply fell prey to those leopards who ate his face!
_{quote spoilered for brevity}

To be fair, his lawyer is not wholly incorrect. I imagine the pandemic, and the isolation it caused, move a lot of people towards radicalization pipelines. A lot of the shit we're dealing with now, particularly QAnon, is due to this kind of thing.

But you can't use that as some justification for dodging responsibilities for your actions.

 

[Gary Patterson]

Spoiler

You don't know them. Not the people. The leaders, true. The people they're a different animal. They feel ignored (flyover country), denigrated (deplorables) and dismissed. They've turned to the only leaders talking to them. It's how Hitler came to power. Lenin. Mao. bin Laden. History is full of such examples.

But you don't want to hear this. So you won't. And this will just go on.

“Who will think of the ignorant backwater racists?”

They were out protesting yesterday, in my neck of the woods.

About a dozen bigots, with various odd flags (and a standard Confederate battle flag), with posters about protecting "our children" from pedophiles and advertising white power [.] org.

Most of them had masks and most of those were skull masks.

Pretty sure this is the same bunch of anti-semites that's been hitting the area over the last year; the picket site was the busiest stoplight near the Jewish campus that hosts maybe 5 congregations, a community center, and the Ballet Austin Academy (for some reason - the campus was funded by the Dells, maybe they're also into ballet).

Last fall, one of the anti-semites used his mom's car to reconnoiter a synagogue in a different part of town in daylight; came back a few nights later to try and burn it down (failed but did very real damage). Security cams caught his plates and his unusual habit of wearing a wristwatch on his right hand.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/accused-a ... cutors-say

His lawyer is blaming the "real" bad guys for his client's crimes (which allegedly also include armed robbery).

“You can have more than one victim in a case,” Wannamaker said. “I know my client is accused of a serious crime, but I think my client is a victim, as well. COVID hit, and autistic kids are isolated because of the condition naturally. And so with the lockdown, just like everybody else, he retreated to the internet. And the real bad guys here, in my opinion, are the far-right-wing ultra-nationalists who prey on people like my client. They’re vulnerable and they’re easy pickings, because they’re looking for somebody that will give them the time of day. And I think my client fell prey to those people... It’s very, very sad.”

Oh, goody...

Your honour, my client is innocent and really surprised at all this, he simply fell prey to those leopards who ate his face!
_{quote spoilered for brevity}

To be fair, his lawyer is not wholly incorrect. I imagine the pandemic, and the isolation it caused, move a lot of people towards radicalization pipelines. A lot of the shit we're dealing with now, particularly QAnon, is due to this kind of thing.

But you can't use that as some justification for dodging responsibilities for your actions.

I was thinking much the same thing. There are always reasons why someone gets to the point of committing crimes, but those reasons almost never excuse their acts. They just explain them.

That said, I thought that lawyer made an excellent case for good moderation on social media to remove the "far-right-wing ultra-nationalists who prey on people like my client." It's always worth remembering that good moderation helps open conversation, while lax moderation leads to more stories like this.

 

[whitetigersx]

Bots are not speech. They are an algorithm. Twitter can, and will, still ban bots.

And it continues to amaze me how much spam, disinformation, slurs, gross memes, and falsehoods I see posted on Twitter everyday without the accounts being banned. But let's get one thing straight. Spam, to an extent, has been being regulated by Congress. Because it can be harassment or it can disrupt normal activity.

But I will say this to all the 'big names' that whine about free speech: be ready. The same controls that moderate your speech moderate every one else's.

Why arent bots speech? Serious question, btw. Saying algorithm seems to be a bit simplistic, after all they dont create themselves.

If companies can be ruled by the Supreme Court to have free speech why wouldnt a bot deployed by a company be part of free speech?

Click-wrap licenses actually already suggest that bots are "people" and can have "speech". Fortune 500 companies literally delegate signing authority for contracts to what barely even qualifies as an algorithm using the most liberal definition of the word. So surely if you sprinkle in some ML logic allowing for a limited degree of autonomy and decision making capacity it seems like it should qualify if you want to take an absolutist position.

Its not really about what I want but when a guy says he's going to make Twitter only moderate whats not legal speech wise and says at the same time he wants to ban bots there's a disconnect there. And legally that can get absolutist very quickly.

He wants to ban bots so people cannot post public information and his terrible and ridiculous plane habits.

Ah, I had assumed that by "bots" he meant a single person controlling multiple accounts (ahem). But that does make sense that he might be talking about banning automatic posting entirely to go after the plane tracking kid.[/quote]


While you could be correct. How would you do that programmatically? How does a computer know it's not a real person on the other end? Must boil down to a true/false question.

 

[DovePig]

Spoiler

You don't know them. Not the people. The leaders, true. The people they're a different animal. They feel ignored (flyover country), denigrated (deplorables) and dismissed. They've turned to the only leaders talking to them. It's how Hitler came to power. Lenin. Mao. bin Laden. History is full of such examples.

But you don't want to hear this. So you won't. And this will just go on.

“Who will think of the ignorant backwater racists?”

They were out protesting yesterday, in my neck of the woods.

About a dozen bigots, with various odd flags (and a standard Confederate battle flag), with posters about protecting "our children" from pedophiles and advertising white power [.] org.

Most of them had masks and most of those were skull masks.

Pretty sure this is the same bunch of anti-semites that's been hitting the area over the last year; the picket site was the busiest stoplight near the Jewish campus that hosts maybe 5 congregations, a community center, and the Ballet Austin Academy (for some reason - the campus was funded by the Dells, maybe they're also into ballet).

Last fall, one of the anti-semites used his mom's car to reconnoiter a synagogue in a different part of town in daylight; came back a few nights later to try and burn it down (failed but did very real damage). Security cams caught his plates and his unusual habit of wearing a wristwatch on his right hand.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/accused-a ... cutors-say

His lawyer is blaming the "real" bad guys for his client's crimes (which allegedly also include armed robbery).

“You can have more than one victim in a case,” Wannamaker said. “I know my client is accused of a serious crime, but I think my client is a victim, as well. COVID hit, and autistic kids are isolated because of the condition naturally. And so with the lockdown, just like everybody else, he retreated to the internet. And the real bad guys here, in my opinion, are the far-right-wing ultra-nationalists who prey on people like my client. They’re vulnerable and they’re easy pickings, because they’re looking for somebody that will give them the time of day. And I think my client fell prey to those people... It’s very, very sad.”

Oh, goody...

Your honour, my client is innocent and really surprised at all this, he simply fell prey to those leopards who ate his face!
_{quote spoilered for brevity}

To be fair, his lawyer is not wholly incorrect. I imagine the pandemic, and the isolation it caused, move a lot of people towards radicalization pipelines. A lot of the shit we're dealing with now, particularly QAnon, is due to this kind of thing.

But you can't use that as some justification for dodging responsibilities for your actions.

I was thinking much the same thing. There are always reasons why someone gets to the point of committing crimes, but those reasons almost never excuse their acts. They just explain them.

That said, I thought that lawyer made an excellent case for good moderation on social media to remove the "far-right-wing ultra-nationalists who prey on people like my client." It's always worth remembering that good moderation helps open conversation, while lax moderation leads to more stories like this.

TL;DR, in other words: unmoderated social media leads to unhinged domestic terrorists.

 

[whitetigersx]

I've said it before and I'll say it again; he's just a more successful Justin Hammer at best.

Yep. Perfect analogy.

Dollar General Justin Hammer.
Given Justin Hammer's utter incompetence at providing useful tech, wouldn't Obadiah Stane be a better fit?

Hammer was an egotistical cockwomble with a massive chip on his shoulder whose tech worked about as well as FSD does.

Imagine if you ordered Justin Hammer from Wish. That's Elon Musk.

And Justin Hammer is already "We have a Tony Stark at home!"

 

[graylshaped]

Spoiler

You don't know them. Not the people. The leaders, true. The people they're a different animal. They feel ignored (flyover country), denigrated (deplorables) and dismissed. They've turned to the only leaders talking to them. It's how Hitler came to power. Lenin. Mao. bin Laden. History is full of such examples.

But you don't want to hear this. So you won't. And this will just go on.

“Who will think of the ignorant backwater racists?”

They were out protesting yesterday, in my neck of the woods.

About a dozen bigots, with various odd flags (and a standard Confederate battle flag), with posters about protecting "our children" from pedophiles and advertising white power [.] org.

Most of them had masks and most of those were skull masks.

Pretty sure this is the same bunch of anti-semites that's been hitting the area over the last year; the picket site was the busiest stoplight near the Jewish campus that hosts maybe 5 congregations, a community center, and the Ballet Austin Academy (for some reason - the campus was funded by the Dells, maybe they're also into ballet).

Last fall, one of the anti-semites used his mom's car to reconnoiter a synagogue in a different part of town in daylight; came back a few nights later to try and burn it down (failed but did very real damage). Security cams caught his plates and his unusual habit of wearing a wristwatch on his right hand.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/accused-a ... cutors-say

His lawyer is blaming the "real" bad guys for his client's crimes (which allegedly also include armed robbery).

“You can have more than one victim in a case,” Wannamaker said. “I know my client is accused of a serious crime, but I think my client is a victim, as well. COVID hit, and autistic kids are isolated because of the condition naturally. And so with the lockdown, just like everybody else, he retreated to the internet. And the real bad guys here, in my opinion, are the far-right-wing ultra-nationalists who prey on people like my client. They’re vulnerable and they’re easy pickings, because they’re looking for somebody that will give them the time of day. And I think my client fell prey to those people... It’s very, very sad.”

Oh, goody...

Your honour, my client is innocent and really surprised at all this, he simply fell prey to those leopards who ate his face!
_{quote spoilered for brevity}

To be fair, his lawyer is not wholly incorrect. I imagine the pandemic, and the isolation it caused, move a lot of people towards radicalization pipelines. A lot of the shit we're dealing with now, particularly QAnon, is due to this kind of thing.

But you can't use that as some justification for dodging responsibilities for your actions.

...and then the leopards came for MY face.

 

[Deleted member 1]

There’s an old saying: Never wrestle with a pig. All that will happen is you will get shit all over you and the pig enjoys it.

A social media concept based on endless pig wrestling is not for me. No fucking way.

An insightful saying, but the truth is that everyone wrestles with pigs. It's not really a matter of choice.

Most people don't enjoy arguing with bigots and psychopaths, but it's a useful skill that's essential for mature citizenship.

It may not be "high debate," where the goal is consensus. But it's like an intellectual version of a cancer screening: You don't do it in the hopes of "convincing" cancer to stop being cancer, just to identify it and minimize its future danger.

That is the entire thesis of free speech, and it's undefeated when people understand that it's a shield and not a sword.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

Yeah, protect free speech by suppressing free speech, great

Yep.

Hang on a moment.

So imagine a white supremacist group uses their free speech to tweet about how good a white-only world would be, and how they wish they had some final answer get rid of all those annoying 'others.' Twitter places an ad for some pillow manufacturer next to those tweets and some non-white supremacists contact the pillow company to make them aware. The pillow company says they're happy to appear next to a pic of some guy with a swastika tattoo yelling that non-whites need to get out of his country. The non-white supremacists organise a boycott and you support Twitter banning them because they threaten Twitter's ad revenue?

Do I have that right? And you post Karl Popper's paradox of tolerance to support your point?

Or do you mean Musk would get rid of the white supremacists from Twitter, in my example?

If you allow speech that threatens the viability of your free speech platform, then it may cease to exist. To best protect it, you paradoxically might have to suppress that speech that threatens it. It's mostly a thought exercise, taking the principle of free speech to extremes, but it shows, like Popper's tolerance paradox, there is still room in a "maximum free speech" model to restrict some speech.

I doubt Elon's Twitter would come close to a total free speech model anyways.

Popper meant you should refuse to tolerate the intolerant, in this example, the white supremacists. Banning the people who speak against the white supremacists is exactly the inverse of Popper's point. It creates a world where only the bigots speak, where only hateful messages are allowed.

You missed the point - and the imagery - of the little cartoon you posted.

Still, it'll be interesting to watch Twitter turn into the alt-right paradise and turn everyone else away. It's a strategy that worked wonders for Gab and Parler, and I hear Truth Social is doing really well.

Popper's Paradox has also been summed up as the Social Contract where a society safeguards your freedoms and rights, and in turn you agree to help society safeguard those freedoms and rights.
It follows that asshats who can not abide by those very simple rules have no place in said society.

But it's cute how the alt-right is so persistently bereft of actual arguments they have no other recourse than to try to nick the arguments posited against them and try to undermine them using broken logic and troll rhetoric.

Cetero Censeo yeet these benighted fuckwits into the damn sun.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

This is why I am an advocate for free speech. I believe that the best means of confronting hateful and bigoted speech is to confront it directly.

There’s an old saying: Never wrestle with a pig. All that will happen is you will get shit all over you and the pig enjoys it.

A social media concept based on endless pig wrestling is not for me. No fucking way.

It should also be noted that it's easy to say "wrestle this pig" when you don't intend to do any wrestling yourself because you have nothing at stake. Few "free speech absolutists" actually have anything on the line in any of these debates. They're theater, an academic debate of intellectual interest. Nothing more.

Do trans people get to exist and have rights? That's an academic, risk-free debate... so long as you're not trans. That's why "centrists" like O/Siris demand that it be held. Because they know that they personally will never be forced into a debate about their rights.

Well, they believe that at any rate. History tells us that the fascists have other plans, because fascism never actually stops stripping rights from people. And the "centrists" keep falling for it. Every. Single. Time.

Yep.

Some centrists may truly, honestly, believe they're in the middle. That they're standing between two opposite opinions.

They're not. They're standing at the edge of the nazi camp arguing that some amount of dead jews is acceptable. That a certain degree of bigotry is ok. That society is so messy we should just accept that casual misogyny remains a thing. That trans people need to stop being so damn visible and upsetting people.

And when "centrists" keep pushing that argument the end result, in the end, becomes Malcolm X explaining why the "soft-spoken moderate liberal" is a far more fearsome enemy to the cause of equality than the nakedly aggressive clansman. Because one of those will simply prevent any change for the better and has the credibility to get their way.

 

[ardent]

Speaking only for myself: allowing others to confront the speech is not unchecked speech. I still believe that direct confrontation of the speech is the best method to confronting hate.

Here's the beauty of reality. We don't have to "believe" things. We have evidence for things.

And the reality is this: direct confrontation of bigots by those they are bigoted against doesn't work. The latter requires the victims of bigotry to basically be attacked and just take it. The latter legitimizes the "debate" by having it actually happen and being required to take it seriously (notably their opposition does not take it seriously). And as long as the point remains "debatable", then people think that it is a legitimate question (the bigots won just by having the debate happen).

That's not a thing I "believe". That is what has been proven time and again.

Are people on 4chan or 8kun being deradicalized from bigotry? No. Why not? They're "free speech" platforms; people can say whatever bigoted or anti-bigoted thing they want. If your method worked, then those sites would be perfect breeding grounds for deradicalization. But they're not.

Until your "beliefs" can explain this objective reality, you will find these "beliefs" to be a hard sell. A hypothesis that predicts X, but then not-X is found in reality, is a bad hypothesis.

You have been asked many times before to provide evidence for your "beliefs", and you cannot. You simply choose to believe them based on... well, this is what you must believe to be true in order to be a free speech absolutist. Well, OK, but you have no right to tell those of us with actual evidence on our side that we're wrong.

I also believe that banning it entrenches it.

Again, you can believe things. But reality tells a different story. Deplatforming works. Deplatforming of hateful bastards allows minoritized people to participate on platforms. Deplatforming of hateful bastards allows minoritized people to interact with normal people, getting them used to speaking with and interacting with them without constantly having to deal with bigotry and hate. Deplatforming fascists makes it harder for fascists to convert others. And so forth.

Yes, no bigots are convinced by being deplatformed. But they're bigots; most of them didn't reason themselves into their bigotry, so there was never any reasoning them out of their bigotry.

And, again, there are types of speech that are not protected. Such as calls for race wars, direct threats against people, and doxxing people, even Justices of the US Supreme Court, the insurrection of Jan 6, 2020, etc. Nor is that a comprehensive list.

Do you honestly think that Elon fucking Musk would prohibit such speech? Maybe direct threats, but I highly doubt he'd do anything about the stuff leading to the insurrection, including what Trump and his ilk were saying and doing.

The problem is that you think these people are acting in good faith. They're not. They're fascists. For them, "free speech" is when they get to talk and their enemies are silent. Any claims to the contrary are merely to get their foot in the door.

You don't know them. Not the people. The leaders, true. The people they're a different animal. They feel ignored (flyover country), denigrated (deplorables) and dismissed. They've turned to the only leaders talking to them. It's how Hitler came to power. Lenin. Mao. bin Laden. History is full of such examples.

But you don't want to hear this. So you won't. And this will just go on.

You want truth?

None of them matter. It's called flyover country for a reason. They are denigrated for their backwards views because they are backwards. If it weren't for a residual construct of our country's formative years specifically designed to empower a backward, conservative faction we wouldn't have to talk about them at all. They keep pushing, we'll start pulling.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

So let me get this straight.

People can post whatever they like, and that's fine. Even if what they post is considered deeply offensive and hateful to others, causing those targeted to leave the platform.

When those targeted post calls for boycotts or similar, in an effort to get the platform to limit the posts they consider deeply offensive and hateful, causing advertisers to leave the platform, that's not okay.

Your justification for this is that boycotts of advertisers harm platform revenue, making the platform no longer viable or self-sustaining based on generated revenue. E.g. the (original) TOS is not a suicide pact, so the platform can implement restrictions and expand the scope of the TOS in order to keep the platform financially stable. Makes sense.

Please tell me, what do you think is going to happen to the platform's ad revenue, which you postulate is necessary to keep the platform viable, when all the people targeted by speech they deem offensive and/or hateful leave the platform? Users choosing to leave the platform en masse reduces ad revenue as much as (or more than) specific advertisers choosing to leave the platform.

Are you suggesting that the offended users be compelled to continue using the platform? If so, how would you implement that? If not, why is one class of revenue-reducing speech worth protecting while another class of revenue-reducing speech is worth banning?

People have been targeted by offensive speech on Twitter for a long time now. Many people left. Those still on are quite addicted, especially the heavy users, and are unlikely to leave in large numbers. There are tools to help, which could be expanded.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ch ... ment-tools

This in no way approaches anything resembling an answer to the question I asked you.

Are you suggesting that the offended users be compelled to continue using the platform? If so, how would you implement that? If not, why is one class of revenue-reducing speech worth protecting while another class of revenue-reducing speech is worth banning?

This is the alt-right we're talking about. Compulsory attendance to the speeches of the Dear Leader strongman/oligarch and his cohorts is exactly what they keep implying is necessary.

 

[mpfaff]

Speaking only for myself: allowing others to confront the speech is not unchecked speech. I still believe that direct confrontation of the speech is the best method to confronting hate.

Here's the beauty of reality. We don't have to "believe" things. We have evidence for things.

And the reality is this: direct confrontation of bigots by those they are bigoted against doesn't work. The latter requires the victims of bigotry to basically be attacked and just take it. The latter legitimizes the "debate" by having it actually happen and being required to take it seriously (notably their opposition does not take it seriously). And as long as the point remains "debatable", then people think that it is a legitimate question (the bigots won just by having the debate happen).

That's not a thing I "believe". That is what has been proven time and again.

Are people on 4chan or 8kun being deradicalized from bigotry? No. Why not? They're "free speech" platforms; people can say whatever bigoted or anti-bigoted thing they want. If your method worked, then those sites would be perfect breeding grounds for deradicalization. But they're not.

Until your "beliefs" can explain this objective reality, you will find these "beliefs" to be a hard sell. A hypothesis that predicts X, but then not-X is found in reality, is a bad hypothesis.

You have been asked many times before to provide evidence for your "beliefs", and you cannot. You simply choose to believe them based on... well, this is what you must believe to be true in order to be a free speech absolutist. Well, OK, but you have no right to tell those of us with actual evidence on our side that we're wrong.

I also believe that banning it entrenches it.

Again, you can believe things. But reality tells a different story. Deplatforming works. Deplatforming of hateful bastards allows minoritized people to participate on platforms. Deplatforming of hateful bastards allows minoritized people to interact with normal people, getting them used to speaking with and interacting with them without constantly having to deal with bigotry and hate. Deplatforming fascists makes it harder for fascists to convert others. And so forth.

Yes, no bigots are convinced by being deplatformed. But they're bigots; most of them didn't reason themselves into their bigotry, so there was never any reasoning them out of their bigotry.

And, again, there are types of speech that are not protected. Such as calls for race wars, direct threats against people, and doxxing people, even Justices of the US Supreme Court, the insurrection of Jan 6, 2020, etc. Nor is that a comprehensive list.

Do you honestly think that Elon fucking Musk would prohibit such speech? Maybe direct threats, but I highly doubt he'd do anything about the stuff leading to the insurrection, including what Trump and his ilk were saying and doing.

The problem is that you think these people are acting in good faith. They're not. They're fascists. For them, "free speech" is when they get to talk and their enemies are silent. Any claims to the contrary are merely to get their foot in the door.

You don't know them. Not the people. The leaders, true. The people they're a different animal. They feel ignored (flyover country), denigrated (deplorables) and dismissed. They've turned to the only leaders talking to them. It's how Hitler came to power. Lenin. Mao. bin Laden. History is full of such examples.

But you don't want to hear this. So you won't. And this will just go on.

You want truth?

None of them matter. It's called flyover country for a reason. They are denigrated for their backwards views because they are backwards. If it weren't for a residual construct of our country's formative years specifically designed to empower a backward, conservative faction we wouldn't have to talk about them at all. They keep pushing, we'll start pulling.

The funny thing is I live in Ohio, just outside of Cincinnati, if you look on Google maps I'm somewhere in that green nothing dotted with small towns sort of between Cincinnati and Dayton. I wish all the time that the people here would stop living up to the shit labels the coastal people give this part of the country, but they seem to work hard to slot into that as best they can. The fucking Trump trucks that used to be everywhere... I was late to a date a couple years back because they all decided that they were going to meet at an old K-Mart parking lot and drive around the beltway of Cincinnati in favor of Donald Trump. Who does that? I don't think any Democrat candidate had people running up flags.

People in the Midwest are going to do what they're going to do, they didn't elect Trump because a lady on the news was mean to them.

 

[ardent]

Speaking only for myself: allowing others to confront the speech is not unchecked speech. I still believe that direct confrontation of the speech is the best method to confronting hate.

Here's the beauty of reality. We don't have to "believe" things. We have evidence for things.

And the reality is this: direct confrontation of bigots by those they are bigoted against doesn't work. The latter requires the victims of bigotry to basically be attacked and just take it. The latter legitimizes the "debate" by having it actually happen and being required to take it seriously (notably their opposition does not take it seriously). And as long as the point remains "debatable", then people think that it is a legitimate question (the bigots won just by having the debate happen).

That's not a thing I "believe". That is what has been proven time and again.

Are people on 4chan or 8kun being deradicalized from bigotry? No. Why not? They're "free speech" platforms; people can say whatever bigoted or anti-bigoted thing they want. If your method worked, then those sites would be perfect breeding grounds for deradicalization. But they're not.

Until your "beliefs" can explain this objective reality, you will find these "beliefs" to be a hard sell. A hypothesis that predicts X, but then not-X is found in reality, is a bad hypothesis.

You have been asked many times before to provide evidence for your "beliefs", and you cannot. You simply choose to believe them based on... well, this is what you must believe to be true in order to be a free speech absolutist. Well, OK, but you have no right to tell those of us with actual evidence on our side that we're wrong.

I also believe that banning it entrenches it.

Again, you can believe things. But reality tells a different story. Deplatforming works. Deplatforming of hateful bastards allows minoritized people to participate on platforms. Deplatforming of hateful bastards allows minoritized people to interact with normal people, getting them used to speaking with and interacting with them without constantly having to deal with bigotry and hate. Deplatforming fascists makes it harder for fascists to convert others. And so forth.

Yes, no bigots are convinced by being deplatformed. But they're bigots; most of them didn't reason themselves into their bigotry, so there was never any reasoning them out of their bigotry.

And, again, there are types of speech that are not protected. Such as calls for race wars, direct threats against people, and doxxing people, even Justices of the US Supreme Court, the insurrection of Jan 6, 2020, etc. Nor is that a comprehensive list.

Do you honestly think that Elon fucking Musk would prohibit such speech? Maybe direct threats, but I highly doubt he'd do anything about the stuff leading to the insurrection, including what Trump and his ilk were saying and doing.

The problem is that you think these people are acting in good faith. They're not. They're fascists. For them, "free speech" is when they get to talk and their enemies are silent. Any claims to the contrary are merely to get their foot in the door.

You don't know them. Not the people. The leaders, true. The people they're a different animal. They feel ignored (flyover country), denigrated (deplorables) and dismissed. They've turned to the only leaders talking to them. It's how Hitler came to power. Lenin. Mao. bin Laden. History is full of such examples.

But you don't want to hear this. So you won't. And this will just go on.

You want truth?

None of them matter. It's called flyover country for a reason. They are denigrated for their backwards views because they are backwards. If it weren't for a residual construct of our country's formative years specifically designed to empower a backward, conservative faction we wouldn't have to talk about them at all. They keep pushing, we'll start pulling.

The funny thing is I live in Ohio, just outside of Cincinnati, if you look on Google maps I'm somewhere in that green nothing dotted with small towns sort of between Cincinnati and Dayton. I wish all the time that the people here would stop living up to the shit labels the coastal people give this part of the country, but they seem to work hard to slot into that as best they can. The fucking Trump trucks that used to be everywhere... I was late to a date a couple years back because they all decided that they were going to meet at an old K-Mart parking lot and drive around the beltway of Cincinnati in favor of Donald Trump. Who does that? I don't think any Democrat candidate had people running up flags.

People in the Midwest are going to do what they're going to do, they didn't elect Trump because a lady on the news was mean to them.

I lived in the proper Midwest for a long time. My wife routinely got treated like a pariah and told to "go back to where she came from," (which, to be clear, is Texas) even when she was in uniform. Now, to be clear, these particular idiots shouldn't be taken as a representative example of Midwesterners. They're not. I've got plenty of good friends who hail from there and aren't racist and awful. But they are a significant subset and they also get to vote, so they shouldn't be ignored either.

 

[Snark218]

I believe that the best means of confronting hateful and bigoted speech is to confront it directly.

In practice, this means that the people who are targeted by racist and bigoted speech will have to confront being told that they are lesser humans and deserve lesser protections and rights every day, wherever they go, forever. They will have to either tolerate being griefed constantly at all times or completely cede most online spaces and platforms to the racists and bigots, who will never stop attacking and demeaning them and who will never be held accountable. Ever.

Get your head out of your ass.

 

[Snark218]

Speaking only for myself: allowing others to confront the speech is not unchecked speech. I still believe that direct confrontation of the speech is the best method to confronting hate.

Here's the beauty of reality. We don't have to "believe" things. We have evidence for things.

And the reality is this: direct confrontation of bigots by those they are bigoted against doesn't work. The latter requires the victims of bigotry to basically be attacked and just take it. The latter legitimizes the "debate" by having it actually happen and being required to take it seriously (notably their opposition does not take it seriously). And as long as the point remains "debatable", then people think that it is a legitimate question (the bigots won just by having the debate happen).

That's not a thing I "believe". That is what has been proven time and again.

Are people on 4chan or 8kun being deradicalized from bigotry? No. Why not? They're "free speech" platforms; people can say whatever bigoted or anti-bigoted thing they want. If your method worked, then those sites would be perfect breeding grounds for deradicalization. But they're not.

Until your "beliefs" can explain this objective reality, you will find these "beliefs" to be a hard sell. A hypothesis that predicts X, but then not-X is found in reality, is a bad hypothesis.

You have been asked many times before to provide evidence for your "beliefs", and you cannot. You simply choose to believe them based on... well, this is what you must believe to be true in order to be a free speech absolutist. Well, OK, but you have no right to tell those of us with actual evidence on our side that we're wrong.

I also believe that banning it entrenches it.

Again, you can believe things. But reality tells a different story. Deplatforming works. Deplatforming of hateful bastards allows minoritized people to participate on platforms. Deplatforming of hateful bastards allows minoritized people to interact with normal people, getting them used to speaking with and interacting with them without constantly having to deal with bigotry and hate. Deplatforming fascists makes it harder for fascists to convert others. And so forth.

Yes, no bigots are convinced by being deplatformed. But they're bigots; most of them didn't reason themselves into their bigotry, so there was never any reasoning them out of their bigotry.

And, again, there are types of speech that are not protected. Such as calls for race wars, direct threats against people, and doxxing people, even Justices of the US Supreme Court, the insurrection of Jan 6, 2020, etc. Nor is that a comprehensive list.

Do you honestly think that Elon fucking Musk would prohibit such speech? Maybe direct threats, but I highly doubt he'd do anything about the stuff leading to the insurrection, including what Trump and his ilk were saying and doing.

The problem is that you think these people are acting in good faith. They're not. They're fascists. For them, "free speech" is when they get to talk and their enemies are silent. Any claims to the contrary are merely to get their foot in the door.

You don't know them. Not the people. The leaders, true. The people they're a different animal. They feel ignored (flyover country), denigrated (deplorables) and dismissed. They've turned to the only leaders talking to them. It's how Hitler came to power. Lenin. Mao. bin Laden. History is full of such examples.

But you don't want to hear this. So you won't. And this will just go on.

I know them. I live in a big square state that is largely red except for where most of the people live, in a little blue corner of a city that's about as big as a city can get and stay red. So these people are absolutely fucking everywhere around me. They're not ignored; they're given much more attention than their lack of actual policy ideas or vision merits. They're denigrated, but largely because they say and do deplorable things. And they're not dismissed, because while they're about a quarter of the population, they hold at least 45% of the political power.

But feeling ignored, denigrated, and dismissed is not why the supporters of Trump, Putin, Hitler, or any other fascist came to support them. That's completely ahistorical, because those who are actually ignored, denigrated, and dismissed - gay, trans, minorities, workers, immigrants - tend to recognize that conservative politics holds nothing for them but further victimization . You know who supports fascists? Middle-class professionals, business owners, your rock-ribbed Chamber of Commerce types who feel that the economic and social standing they feel they're entitled to is under threat. That's reflected in Trump voter demographics, too; very white, generally rural or suburban, not generally college educated but quite high income, and from areas suffering from social and economic decline, high rates of drug overdose, and high wealth disparity. They don't feel dismissed and denigrated, they feel threatened because society has decided to give people not like them the privilege and consideration to which they consider themselves uniquely entitled.

 

[Bondles_9]

There’s an old saying: Never wrestle with a pig. All that will happen is you will get shit all over you and the pig enjoys it.

A social media concept based on endless pig wrestling is not for me. No fucking way.

An insightful saying, but the truth is that everyone wrestles with pigs. It's not really a matter of choice.

Most people don't enjoy arguing with bigots and psychopaths, but it's a useful skill that's essential for mature citizenship.

It may not be "high debate," where the goal is consensus. But it's like an intellectual version of a cancer screening: You don't do it in the hopes of "convincing" cancer to stop being cancer, just to identify it and minimize its future danger.

That is the entire thesis of free speech, and it's undefeated when people understand that it's a shield and not a sword.

The problem with this line of thinking is that these ideas - fascism, racism, transphobia - are ideas that we have already identified as cancer. They have had their chance in the marketplace of ideas and they have lost. Demanding that we confront speech with more speech is saying that despite knowing that these ideas are cancer, we shouldn't cut them out; we should instead prove that they're dangerous from first principles every time some 14-year-old edgelord brings them up. No thanks.

 

[Deleted member 1]

The problem with this line of thinking is that these ideas - fascism, racism, transphobia - are ideas that we have already identified as cancer.

We've also already identified literal cancer as cancer, and yet we don't stop researching it or screening for it. Just having the abstract concept isn't an immunity or treatment in itself.

Thinkers of history tried every kind of harangue or sullen authoritarian trick to make people believe the conclusions they had reached, and none of it really worked until someone tried simply asking questions and letting himself be questioned. You don't come at people as a prophet with stone tablets laying down the law, but as a participant in a mutual catalytic process.

If I'm so confident in my ideas, I can jump in the arena and try them. If, instead, I choose to hide in the shadows and make a paranoid cult of my opinions...or, even more telling, if I try to shut down the testing arena itself out of frustration with my inadequacy in it...that would tell people everything they need to know about my personality and the quality of my conclusions.

It would mean that my views are nothing more than byproducts of ego, and have no actual value for society; that I regard myself as some kind of precious specimen whose insights are too special and holy to be scrutinized. And once you see that kind of pattern at work in a mind, it's much easier to trace the pathology of bad ideas and immunize an argument against them.

They have had their chance in the marketplace of ideas and they have lost. Demanding that we confront speech with more speech is saying that despite knowing that these ideas are cancer, we shouldn't cut them out; we should instead prove that they're dangerous from first principles every time some 14-year-old edgelord brings them up. No thanks.

Everyone teaches, whether they mean to or not. The only question is what you teach, and whether you're letting yourself learn something too in the bargain.

Probably someone has said something like "Light is never shed in vain," and I believe that fully.

A billion trillion miles of darkness in every direction is defeated in an instant by a single flicker of a single star.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

The problem with this line of thinking is that these ideas - fascism, racism, transphobia - are ideas that we have already identified as cancer.

We've also already identified literal cancer as cancer, and yet we don't stop researching it or screening for it. Just having the abstract concept isn't an immunity or treatment in itself.

Thinkers of history tried every kind of harangue or sullen authoritarian trick to make people believe the conclusions they had reached, and none of it really worked until someone tried simply asking questions and letting himself be questioned. You don't come at people as a prophet with stone tablets laying down the law, but as a participant in a mutual catalytic process.

If I'm so confident in my ideas, I can jump in the arena and try them. If, instead, I choose to hide in the shadows and make a paranoid cult of my opinions...or, even more telling, if I try to shut down the testing arena itself out of frustration with my inadequacy in it...that would tell people everything they need to know about my personality and the quality of my conclusions.

It would mean that my views are nothing more than byproducts of ego, and have no actual value for society; that I regard myself as some kind of precious specimen whose insights are too special and holy to be scrutinized. And once you see that kind of pattern at work in a mind, it's much easier to trace the pathology of bad ideas and immunize an argument against them.

They have had their chance in the marketplace of ideas and they have lost. Demanding that we confront speech with more speech is saying that despite knowing that these ideas are cancer, we shouldn't cut them out; we should instead prove that they're dangerous from first principles every time some 14-year-old edgelord brings them up. No thanks.

Everyone teaches, whether they mean to or not. The only question is what you teach, and whether you're letting yourself learn something too in the bargain.

Probably someone has said something like "Light is never shed in vain," and I believe that fully.

A billion trillion miles of darkness in every direction is defeated in an instant by a single flicker of a single star.

That's a lot of words to arrive to the summary conclusion that every time we see a cancer patient we should research the phenomenon from the start rather than rely on your accrued knowledge to excise the damn tumor.

Some ideas - slavery, bigotry, rape under the precepts of law, torture, etc - have already been investigated. They are cancerous tumors. There is no need to investigate them nor allow them to do further harm.

Karl Popper wrote his paradox of tolerance right after World War 2. We know for a fact the outcome of giving certain ideas equal weight to others.

Your argument is bad, your premise false. If you want to die on that hill you'll have to move it to 4chan and 8kun where you can experience, firsthand, what more enlightened people recognize as the folly of letting every gormless fuckwit with a hard-on for hurting the other have their fifteen minutes in the forum.

You are, metaphorically, arguing the merits of the feces smeared on the walls of the capitol rotunda and asserting that these should be considered valid opinion.

 

[Hack-n-Slash]

A billion trillion miles of darkness in every direction is defeated in an instant by a single flicker of a single star.

“A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.”—Mark Twain.

Or, put in your own terms... It takes a photon 170224670 years to travel a billion trillion miles.
By which time, it's too fucking late.

 

[mpfaff]

The problem with this line of thinking is that these ideas - fascism, racism, transphobia - are ideas that we have already identified as cancer.

We've also already identified literal cancer as cancer, and yet we don't stop researching it or screening for it. Just having the abstract concept isn't an immunity or treatment in itself.

Thinkers of history tried every kind of harangue or sullen authoritarian trick to make people believe the conclusions they had reached, and none of it really worked until someone tried simply asking questions and letting himself be questioned. You don't come at people as a prophet with stone tablets laying down the law, but as a participant in a mutual catalytic process.

If I'm so confident in my ideas, I can jump in the arena and try them. If, instead, I choose to hide in the shadows and make a paranoid cult of my opinions...or, even more telling, if I try to shut down the testing arena itself out of frustration with my inadequacy in it...that would tell people everything they need to know about my personality and the quality of my conclusions.

It would mean that my views are nothing more than byproducts of ego, and have no actual value for society; that I regard myself as some kind of precious specimen whose insights are too special and holy to be scrutinized. And once you see that kind of pattern at work in a mind, it's much easier to trace the pathology of bad ideas and immunize an argument against them.

They have had their chance in the marketplace of ideas and they have lost. Demanding that we confront speech with more speech is saying that despite knowing that these ideas are cancer, we shouldn't cut them out; we should instead prove that they're dangerous from first principles every time some 14-year-old edgelord brings them up. No thanks.

Everyone teaches, whether they mean to or not. The only question is what you teach, and whether you're letting yourself learn something too in the bargain.

Probably someone has said something like "Light is never shed in vain," and I believe that fully.

A billion trillion miles of darkness in every direction is defeated in an instant by a single flicker of a single star.

Bigots have been engaged and it doesn't do any good. They don't argue in good faith, they don't have logical arguments (they're bigots after all), and they don't really care about your opinion.

You're either welcoming to bigots or welcoming to everyone else, there isn't a middle ground.

It's like there's a bar, some black old college friends come in, two racists in the corner immediately start in. They say "Hey, cut that out, we're just looking to have a beer and chat" and then they don't stop. One goes to the bartender and asks if they can leave and the bartender just says it's a free country and they should try engaging them. They leave, on their way out the bigots are still talking their trash and a group of white friends comes in, sees that, looks to each other and says "oh, klan bar, lets leave" and goes right back out the door.

That little metaphor is why no free speech maximalist in all the discussions on Ars about this has told everyone that 8kun, 4chan, and any other "free speech" platform is a good example of how this works. No one normal goes there because it's a dumpster.

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

The problem with this line of thinking is that these ideas - fascism, racism, transphobia - are ideas that we have already identified as cancer.

We've also already identified literal cancer as cancer, and yet we don't stop researching it or screening for it. Just having the abstract concept isn't an immunity or treatment in itself.

Thinkers of history tried every kind of harangue or sullen authoritarian trick to make people believe the conclusions they had reached, and none of it really worked until someone tried simply asking questions and letting himself be questioned. You don't come at people as a prophet with stone tablets laying down the law, but as a participant in a mutual catalytic process.

If I'm so confident in my ideas, I can jump in the arena and try them. If, instead, I choose to hide in the shadows and make a paranoid cult of my opinions...or, even more telling, if I try to shut down the testing arena itself out of frustration with my inadequacy in it...that would tell people everything they need to know about my personality and the quality of my conclusions.

It would mean that my views are nothing more than byproducts of ego, and have no actual value for society; that I regard myself as some kind of precious specimen whose insights are too special and holy to be scrutinized. And once you see that kind of pattern at work in a mind, it's much easier to trace the pathology of bad ideas and immunize an argument against them.

They have had their chance in the marketplace of ideas and they have lost. Demanding that we confront speech with more speech is saying that despite knowing that these ideas are cancer, we shouldn't cut them out; we should instead prove that they're dangerous from first principles every time some 14-year-old edgelord brings them up. No thanks.

Everyone teaches, whether they mean to or not. The only question is what you teach, and whether you're letting yourself learn something too in the bargain.

Probably someone has said something like "Light is never shed in vain," and I believe that fully.

A billion trillion miles of darkness in every direction is defeated in an instant by a single flicker of a single star.

Bigots have been engaged and it doesn't do any good. They don't argue in good faith, they don't have logical arguments (they're bigots after all), and they don't really care about your opinion.

You're either welcoming to bigots or welcoming to everyone else, there isn't a middle ground.

It's like there's a bar, some black old college friends come in, two racists in the corner immediately start in. They say "Hey, cut that out, we're just looking to have a beer and chat" and then they don't stop. One goes to the bartender and asks if they can leave and the bartender just says it's a free country and they should try engaging them. They leave, on their way out the bigots are still talking their trash and a group of white friends comes in, sees that, looks to each other and says "oh, klan bar, lets leave" and goes right back out the door.

That little metaphor is why no free speech maximalist in all the discussions on Ars about this has told everyone that 8kun, 4chan, and any other "free speech" platform is a good example of how this works. No one normal goes there because it's a dumpster.

The "Nazi Bar" phenomenon is so well known among bartenders it's become part of the unwritten rules for any publican - both in europe and the US, independently.

https://www.upworthy.com/bartender-expl ... ing-anyone

The logic presented there is why, when someone starts bringing a certain kind of assertion to the debate you don't humor them. You flag them, kick them out, report them to the publican or mall owner - or otherwise just shut them down. Hard.
Because there'll always be that soft-spoken reasonable fellow testing the waters first, before the open bigots show up. Whether you giggle at or allow the racist slur or degrading trans joke to pass determines whether a week later you'll be sitting at a table with nazis and bigots with the only option left to ljoin them or leave. The "The worst people" problem.

And these days the very first argument presented by the nazi shill is the one where every opinion is held as equal, usually brought in a reasoned tone of voice or pseudo-erudite comment. Exactly like goodolejackburton does.

He could just be an ultraliberal bereft of any history. He might be someone so divorced from reality he doesn't grok the logic he employs puts every participant in the public debate under the obligation to shoulder the burden of rehashing centuries of philosophy every time some Very Fine Person starts talking about the black animals at Charlottesville.

But it really doesn't matter if he's deliberately carrying water for a failed ideology or not. Only that he keeps asserting long-debunked nonsense which if implemented guarantees free speech dies in troll shit.

To reiterate my previous response to his insane example on cancer, of all things; No, we do not need to research cancer every time a patient hits the table. We know it's malignant. The treatment for the tumor does not consist of giving the last century's worth of medical research a do-over. It consists of chemo and the knife.

Some things are indeed self-evident. And for those things the middle ground does not exist.

 

[Deleted member 1]

That's a lot of words to arrive to the summary conclusion that every time we see a cancer patient we should research the phenomenon from the start rather than rely on your accrued knowledge to excise the damn tumor.

Being willing to investigate a subject down to first-principles roots is not the same thing as saying you have to actually do it on every topic and instant. But if we're not even willing to, the question must be asked: Where exactly do you imagine all that "accrued knowledge" came from?

Was the past some kind of magical, sepia-toned Tolkien Time when saintly philosophers with minds rooted in Elysium spent every waking moment perfectly discussing issues in a way that we me mere mortals of today can't?

Obviously not. The great minds of the past wrestled with pigs and gods alike, and that's part of the reason they were great. They were unsatisfied with authority, including their own, and unafraid to look at a bad idea because they accepted that so many of their own ideas were probably bad too.

Understanding is not an inanimate object to be inherited and put on the mantle, it's operational. It's something you either do or fail to do; build on or lose.

Some ideas - slavery, bigotry, rape under the precepts of law, torture, etc - have already been investigated. They are cancerous tumors. There is no need to investigate them nor allow them to do further harm.

Any claim that there's "no need to investigate" horrific things that keep happening to people is absurd. Self-satisfaction that we understand how bad something is does not protect other people from it. Only a working knowledge of how it happens can offer strategies against it.

I'm also a little confused about what you think knowledge even is, since you're attacking every method of actually getting it as some kind of irrelevant hobby.

Karl Popper wrote his paradox of tolerance right after World War 2. We know for a fact the outcome of giving certain ideas equal weight to others.

Yes, it's important to avoid playing into loaded questions or giving delusions the undeserved respect of debatable positions, but that's not the same thing as denying someone's right to be wrong. Not a single long-standing democracy was convinced by anything like what Germans swallowed wholesale, so I disagree that a "paradox of tolerance" even exists.

Freedom is strong, censorship is weak. Full Stop.

If you want to die on that hill you'll have to move it to 4chan and 8kun where you can experience, firsthand, what more enlightened people recognize as the folly of letting every gormless fuckwit with a hard-on for hurting the [other/i] have their fifteen minutes in the forum.

There's the problem right there: The idea that you're "letting" them do something, as if your attention determines whether or not they affect the world.

Human frailty doesn't go away because you avert your eyes from it.

You are, metaphorically, arguing the merits of the feces smeared on the walls of the capitol rotunda and asserting that these should be considered valid opinion.

There's no connection between anything I've said and vandalism. Try to stay focused.

 

[graylshaped]

Speaking only for myself: allowing others to confront the speech is not unchecked speech. I still believe that direct confrontation of the speech is the best method to confronting hate.

Here's the beauty of reality. We don't have to "believe" things. We have evidence for things.

And the reality is this: direct confrontation of bigots by those they are bigoted against doesn't work. The latter requires the victims of bigotry to basically be attacked and just take it. The latter legitimizes the "debate" by having it actually happen and being required to take it seriously (notably their opposition does not take it seriously). And as long as the point remains "debatable", then people think that it is a legitimate question (the bigots won just by having the debate happen).

That's not a thing I "believe". That is what has been proven time and again.

Are people on 4chan or 8kun being deradicalized from bigotry? No. Why not? They're "free speech" platforms; people can say whatever bigoted or anti-bigoted thing they want. If your method worked, then those sites would be perfect breeding grounds for deradicalization. But they're not.

Until your "beliefs" can explain this objective reality, you will find these "beliefs" to be a hard sell. A hypothesis that predicts X, but then not-X is found in reality, is a bad hypothesis.

You have been asked many times before to provide evidence for your "beliefs", and you cannot. You simply choose to believe them based on... well, this is what you must believe to be true in order to be a free speech absolutist. Well, OK, but you have no right to tell those of us with actual evidence on our side that we're wrong.

I also believe that banning it entrenches it.

Again, you can believe things. But reality tells a different story. Deplatforming works. Deplatforming of hateful bastards allows minoritized people to participate on platforms. Deplatforming of hateful bastards allows minoritized people to interact with normal people, getting them used to speaking with and interacting with them without constantly having to deal with bigotry and hate. Deplatforming fascists makes it harder for fascists to convert others. And so forth.

Yes, no bigots are convinced by being deplatformed. But they're bigots; most of them didn't reason themselves into their bigotry, so there was never any reasoning them out of their bigotry.

And, again, there are types of speech that are not protected. Such as calls for race wars, direct threats against people, and doxxing people, even Justices of the US Supreme Court, the insurrection of Jan 6, 2020, etc. Nor is that a comprehensive list.

Do you honestly think that Elon fucking Musk would prohibit such speech? Maybe direct threats, but I highly doubt he'd do anything about the stuff leading to the insurrection, including what Trump and his ilk were saying and doing.

The problem is that you think these people are acting in good faith. They're not. They're fascists. For them, "free speech" is when they get to talk and their enemies are silent. Any claims to the contrary are merely to get their foot in the door.

You don't know them. Not the people. The leaders, true. The people they're a different animal. They feel ignored (flyover country), denigrated (deplorables) and dismissed. They've turned to the only leaders talking to them. It's how Hitler came to power. Lenin. Mao. bin Laden. History is full of such examples.

But you don't want to hear this. So you won't. And this will just go on.

You want truth?

None of them matter. It's called flyover country for a reason. They are denigrated for their backwards views because they are backwards. If it weren't for a residual construct of our country's formative years specifically designed to empower a backward, conservative faction we wouldn't have to talk about them at all. They keep pushing, we'll start pulling.

The funny thing is I live in Ohio, just outside of Cincinnati, if you look on Google maps I'm somewhere in that green nothing dotted with small towns sort of between Cincinnati and Dayton. I wish all the time that the people here would stop living up to the shit labels the coastal people give this part of the country, but they seem to work hard to slot into that as best they can. The fucking Trump trucks that used to be everywhere... I was late to a date a couple years back because they all decided that they were going to meet at an old K-Mart parking lot and drive around the beltway of Cincinnati in favor of Donald Trump. Who does that? I don't think any Democrat candidate had people running up flags.

People in the Midwest are going to do what they're going to do, they didn't elect Trump because a lady on the news was mean to them.

I lived in the proper Midwest for a long time. My wife routinely got treated like a pariah and told to "go back to where she came from," (which, to be clear, is Texas) even when she was in uniform. Now, to be clear, these particular idiots shouldn't be taken as a representative example of Midwesterners. They're not. I've got plenty of good friends who hail from there and aren't racist and awful. But they are a significant subset and they also get to vote, so they shouldn't be ignored either.

On two occasions, my wife was told to "go back to where you came from." She is fit, and confident, and on both occasions invaded the personal space of the women chastising her to say, calmly, "I was born in Anaheim," at which point the bigots shrunk away.

I grew up in the midwest, and keep tabs with a bunch of friends, and still have family there. It is surprising to me to learn how few of them have ever traveled internationally--even those that have had success and have the resources. On a trip back to where I was born a few years ago, we stopped for lunch at an ostensibly Mexican restaurant. When my wife ordered, the server complimented her on her Mexican accent, and we wondered if she was the first actual person of Mexican descent to ever eat there.

The world is a big place, and a better one when more people explore it and celebrate its diversity.

 

[Deleted member 276317]

[SNIP]
Yes, it's important to avoid playing into loaded questions or giving delusions the undeserved respect of debatable positions, but that's not the same thing as denying someone's right to be wrong. Not a single long-standing democracy was convinced by anything like what Germans swallowed wholesale, so I disagree that a "paradox of tolerance" even exists.

Freedom is strong, censorship is weak. Full Stop.
[SNIP]

Must every venue that invites expressive participation allow all expressions?

 

[graylshaped]

That's a lot of words to arrive to the summary conclusion that every time we see a cancer patient we should research the phenomenon from the start rather than rely on your accrued knowledge to excise the damn tumor.

Being willing to investigate a subject down to first-principles roots is not the same thing as saying you have to actually do it on every topic and instant. But if we're not even willing to, the question must be asked: Where exactly do you imagine all that "accrued knowledge" came from?

Was the past some kind of magical, sepia-toned Tolkien Time when saintly philosophers with minds rooted in Elysium spent every waking moment perfectly discussing issues in a way that we me mere mortals of today can't?

Obviously not. The great minds of the past wrestled with pigs and gods alike, and that's part of the reason they were great. They were unsatisfied with authority, including their own, and unafraid to look at a bad idea because they accepted that so many of their own ideas were probably bad too.

Understanding is not an inanimate object to be inherited and put on the mantle, it's operational. It's something you either do or fail to do; build on or lose.

Some ideas - slavery, bigotry, rape under the precepts of law, torture, etc - have already been investigated. They are cancerous tumors. There is no need to investigate them nor allow them to do further harm.

Any claim that there's "no need to investigate" horrific things that keep happening to people is absurd. Self-satisfaction that we understand how bad something is does not protect other people from it. Only a working knowledge of how it happens can offer strategies against it.

I'm also a little confused about what you think knowledge even is, since you're attacking every method of actually getting it as some kind of irrelevant hobby.

Karl Popper wrote his paradox of tolerance right after World War 2. We know for a fact the outcome of giving certain ideas equal weight to others.

Yes, it's important to avoid playing into loaded questions or giving delusions the undeserved respect of debatable positions, but that's not the same thing as denying someone's right to be wrong. Not a single long-standing democracy was convinced by anything like what Germans swallowed wholesale, so I disagree that a "paradox of tolerance" even exists.

Freedom is strong, censorship is weak. Full Stop.

If you want to die on that hill you'll have to move it to 4chan and 8kun where you can experience, firsthand, what more enlightened people recognize as the folly of letting every gormless fuckwit with a hard-on for hurting the [other/i] have their fifteen minutes in the forum.

There's the problem right there: The idea that you're "letting" them do something, as if your attention determines whether or not they affect the world.

Human frailty doesn't go away because you avert your eyes from it.

You are, metaphorically, arguing the merits of the feces smeared on the walls of the capitol rotunda and asserting that these should be considered valid opinion.

There's no connection between anything I've said and vandalism. Try to stay focused.

One more wall of text from you absent any relevant point gets you a sea lion picture. I'm quoting it to let you read it again and realize there isn't any semantic value in that whole post.

 

[Hack-n-Slash]

The world is a big place, and a better one when more people explore it and celebrate its diversity.

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain

 

[Scary Devil Monastery]

That's a lot of words to arrive to the summary conclusion that every time we see a cancer patient we should research the phenomenon from the start rather than rely on your accrued knowledge to excise the damn tumor.

Being willing to investigate a subject down to first-principles roots is not the same thing as saying you have to actually do it on every topic and instant. But if we're not even willing to, the question must be asked: Where exactly do you imagine all that "accrued knowledge" came from?

Was the past some kind of magical, sepia-toned Tolkien Time when saintly philosophers with minds rooted in Elysium spent every waking moment perfectly discussing issues in a way that we me mere mortals of today can't?

Obviously not. The great minds of the past wrestled with pigs and gods alike, and that's part of the reason they were great. They were unsatisfied with authority, including their own, and unafraid to look at a bad idea because they accepted that so many of their own ideas were probably bad too.

Understanding is not an inanimate object to be inherited and put on the mantle, it's operational. It's something you either do or fail to do; build on or lose.

Some ideas - slavery, bigotry, rape under the precepts of law, torture, etc - have already been investigated. They are cancerous tumors. There is no need to investigate them nor allow them to do further harm.

Any claim that there's "no need to investigate" horrific things that keep happening to people is absurd. Self-satisfaction that we understand how bad something is does not protect other people from it. Only a working knowledge of how it happens can offer strategies against it.

I'm also a little confused about what you think knowledge even is, since you're attacking every method of actually getting it as some kind of irrelevant hobby.

Karl Popper wrote his paradox of tolerance right after World War 2. We know for a fact the outcome of giving certain ideas equal weight to others.

Yes, it's important to avoid playing into loaded questions or giving delusions the undeserved respect of debatable positions, but that's not the same thing as denying someone's right to be wrong. Not a single long-standing democracy was convinced by anything like what Germans swallowed wholesale, so I disagree that a "paradox of tolerance" even exists.

Freedom is strong, censorship is weak. Full Stop.

If you want to die on that hill you'll have to move it to 4chan and 8kun where you can experience, firsthand, what more enlightened people recognize as the folly of letting every gormless fuckwit with a hard-on for hurting the [other/i] have their fifteen minutes in the forum.

There's the problem right there: The idea that you're "letting" them do something, as if your attention determines whether or not they affect the world.

Human frailty doesn't go away because you avert your eyes from it.

You are, metaphorically, arguing the merits of the feces smeared on the walls of the capitol rotunda and asserting that these should be considered valid opinion.

There's no connection between anything I've said and vandalism. Try to stay focused.

One more wall of text from you absent any relevant point gets you a sea lion picture. I'm quoting it to let you read it again and realize there isn't any semantic value in that whole post.

Well, I for one thought it was very kind of him to offer that vivid demonstration of softspoken nazi shill rhetoric I just mentioned.
Note how "tossing a nazi out of the bar" gets converted into "rejecting knowledge".

It would be more impressive if his straw men and false premises weren't so damn obvious - I mean, my quotes were included in his response so it's outright obvious that he wasn't responding to anything I'd actually written...

 

[Adreaver]

That's a lot of words to arrive to the summary conclusion that every time we see a cancer patient we should research the phenomenon from the start rather than rely on your accrued knowledge to excise the damn tumor.

Being willing to investigate a subject down to first-principles roots is not the same thing as saying you have to actually do it on every topic and instant. But if we're not even willing to, the question must be asked: Where exactly do you imagine all that "accrued knowledge" came from?

Was the past some kind of magical, sepia-toned Tolkien Time when saintly philosophers with minds rooted in Elysium spent every waking moment perfectly discussing issues in a way that we me mere mortals of today can't?

Obviously not. The great minds of the past wrestled with pigs and gods alike, and that's part of the reason they were great. They were unsatisfied with authority, including their own, and unafraid to look at a bad idea because they accepted that so many of their own ideas were probably bad too.

Understanding is not an inanimate object to be inherited and put on the mantle, it's operational. It's something you either do or fail to do; build on or lose.

Some ideas - slavery, bigotry, rape under the precepts of law, torture, etc - have already been investigated. They are cancerous tumors. There is no need to investigate them nor allow them to do further harm.

Any claim that there's "no need to investigate" horrific things that keep happening to people is absurd. Self-satisfaction that we understand how bad something is does not protect other people from it. Only a working knowledge of how it happens can offer strategies against it.

I'm also a little confused about what you think knowledge even is, since you're attacking every method of actually getting it as some kind of irrelevant hobby.

Karl Popper wrote his paradox of tolerance right after World War 2. We know for a fact the outcome of giving certain ideas equal weight to others.

Yes, it's important to avoid playing into loaded questions or giving delusions the undeserved respect of debatable positions, but that's not the same thing as denying someone's right to be wrong. Not a single long-standing democracy was convinced by anything like what Germans swallowed wholesale, so I disagree that a "paradox of tolerance" even exists.

Freedom is strong, censorship is weak. Full Stop.

If you want to die on that hill you'll have to move it to 4chan and 8kun where you can experience, firsthand, what more enlightened people recognize as the folly of letting every gormless fuckwit with a hard-on for hurting the [other/i] have their fifteen minutes in the forum.

There's the problem right there: The idea that you're "letting" them do something, as if your attention determines whether or not they affect the world.

Human frailty doesn't go away because you avert your eyes from it.

You are, metaphorically, arguing the merits of the feces smeared on the walls of the capitol rotunda and asserting that these should be considered valid opinion.

There's no connection between anything I've said and vandalism. Try to stay focused.

That's a lot of bullshit.

We don't need to investigate whether racism is bad. We know it is bad. We don't need to give people calling for lynchings a seat at the table with people discussing civil rights. Individual instances of racism merit investigation, so that those at risk of harm can be protected, and the children in those situations can be taught at an early age that racism is not OK, but the concept of racism as it pertains to public policy and public discourse does not merit reasoned debate.

A conservative might say something like "I think affirmative action is a bad policy, and race-blind admissions are better. Why should people have an advantage because of the color of their skin?" This is a point that can be debated. I might respond with "Historically marginalized groups continue to face equity issues in college admissions, despite having the requisite academic qualifications. I'm happy to call for the end of affirmative action when that is no longer true." There are points to be made on both sides, because this is nuanced discussion about the minutia of a public policy initiative.

In contrast, a racist might say "I don't understand why those black people keep complaining about the police. Maybe if they stopped committing more crimes per capita than any other race they wouldn't be profiled." I would respond with "Fuck off, racist, nobody deserves extrajudicial murder at the hands of police regardless of race." There is no valid point on the racism side here - fundamentally the racist argument is rooted in a belief that one race does not deserve the same rights or protections under the law as another, solely because of their race, and no amount of debate is ever going to make that a reasonable starting position.

To use the cancer analogy, research is on finding new kinds of cancer to screen for, new treatments for existing cancers, and cancer prevention where possible. To equate that to an online space, that would be better/smarter content filters (not necessarily blocking it, but flagging for moderation), more effective moderation, and fostering community growth that excludes bigoted elements from the outset. You aren't going back to "Well what is cancer, really?" every time you find it.

 

[graylshaped]

[SNIP]
Yes, it's important to avoid playing into loaded questions or giving delusions the undeserved respect of debatable positions, but that's not the same thing as denying someone's right to be wrong. Not a single long-standing democracy was convinced by anything like what Germans swallowed wholesale, so I disagree that a "paradox of tolerance" even exists.

Freedom is strong, censorship is weak. Full Stop.
[SNIP]

Must every venue that invites expressive participation allow all expressions?

The Book of Elon says "Yes."

Fuck that shit.

 

[mpfaff]

That's a lot of words to arrive to the summary conclusion that every time we see a cancer patient we should research the phenomenon from the start rather than rely on your accrued knowledge to excise the damn tumor.

Being willing to investigate a subject down to first-principles roots is not the same thing as saying you have to actually do it on every topic and instant. But if we're not even willing to, the question must be asked: Where exactly do you imagine all that "accrued knowledge" came from?

Was the past some kind of magical, sepia-toned Tolkien Time when saintly philosophers with minds rooted in Elysium spent every waking moment perfectly discussing issues in a way that we me mere mortals of today can't?

Obviously not. The great minds of the past wrestled with pigs and gods alike, and that's part of the reason they were great. They were unsatisfied with authority, including their own, and unafraid to look at a bad idea because they accepted that so many of their own ideas were probably bad too.

Understanding is not an inanimate object to be inherited and put on the mantle, it's operational. It's something you either do or fail to do; build on or lose.

Some ideas - slavery, bigotry, rape under the precepts of law, torture, etc - have already been investigated. They are cancerous tumors. There is no need to investigate them nor allow them to do further harm.

Any claim that there's "no need to investigate" horrific things that keep happening to people is absurd. Self-satisfaction that we understand how bad something is does not protect other people from it. Only a working knowledge of how it happens can offer strategies against it.

I'm also a little confused about what you think knowledge even is, since you're attacking every method of actually getting it as some kind of irrelevant hobby.

Karl Popper wrote his paradox of tolerance right after World War 2. We know for a fact the outcome of giving certain ideas equal weight to others.

Yes, it's important to avoid playing into loaded questions or giving delusions the undeserved respect of debatable positions, but that's not the same thing as denying someone's right to be wrong. Not a single long-standing democracy was convinced by anything like what Germans swallowed wholesale, so I disagree that a "paradox of tolerance" even exists.

Freedom is strong, censorship is weak. Full Stop.

If you want to die on that hill you'll have to move it to 4chan and 8kun where you can experience, firsthand, what more enlightened people recognize as the folly of letting every gormless fuckwit with a hard-on for hurting the [other/i] have their fifteen minutes in the forum.

There's the problem right there: The idea that you're "letting" them do something, as if your attention determines whether or not they affect the world.

Human frailty doesn't go away because you avert your eyes from it.

You are, metaphorically, arguing the merits of the feces smeared on the walls of the capitol rotunda and asserting that these should be considered valid opinion.

There's no connection between anything I've said and vandalism. Try to stay focused.

Bigotry is intellectual vandalism, it only serves to smear shit on everything it touches. Not everyone wants to be part of some intellectual root cause analysis of bigotry, they just want to be able to discuss whatever without people taking shots based on who they are. Bigotry and hate speech on social networks literally kills people and there isn't any obligation to keep what was well described as cancer alive.

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

The only possible defense of keeping bigoted speech around is that you believe there might come a time when the bigots are proven correct in their bigotry, and by not having their voices we'd have been missing out.

The whole "but what if the shoe is on the other foot???" argument doesn't work out. The whole reason the shoe gets to be the on the other foot and bigots are in a position to suppress equality-loving advocates is because we let the bigotry proliferate and become normalized in the first place.

 

[O/Siris]

This is why I am an advocate for free speech. I believe that the best means of confronting hateful and bigoted speech is to confront it directly.

There’s an old saying: Never wrestle with a pig. All that will happen is you will get shit all over you and the pig enjoys it.

A social media concept based on endless pig wrestling is not for me. No fucking way.

It should also be noted that it's easy to say "wrestle this pig" when you don't intend to do any wrestling yourself because you have nothing at stake. Few "free speech absolutists" actually have anything on the line in any of these debates. They're theater, an academic debate of intellectual interest. Nothing more.

Do trans people get to exist and have rights? That's an academic, risk-free debate... so long as you're not trans. That's why "centrists" like O/Siris demand that it be held. Because they know that they personally will never be forced into a debate about their rights.

Well, they believe that at any rate. History tells us that the fascists have other plans, because fascism never actually stops stripping rights from people. And the "centrists" keep falling for it. Every. Single. Time.

(bolding mine)
It's kind of comical to watch how strongly you and yours feel about assertions for which there is no evidence until you yourself make such assertions.

 

[Deleted member 276317]

 

[Celery Man]

Speaking only for myself: allowing others to confront the speech is not unchecked speech. I still believe that direct confrontation of the speech is the best method to confronting hate.

Here's the beauty of reality. We don't have to "believe" things. We have evidence for things.

And the reality is this: direct confrontation of bigots by those they are bigoted against doesn't work. The latter requires the victims of bigotry to basically be attacked and just take it. The latter legitimizes the "debate" by having it actually happen and being required to take it seriously (notably their opposition does not take it seriously). And as long as the point remains "debatable", then people think that it is a legitimate question (the bigots won just by having the debate happen).

That's not a thing I "believe". That is what has been proven time and again.

Are people on 4chan or 8kun being deradicalized from bigotry? No. Why not? They're "free speech" platforms; people can say whatever bigoted or anti-bigoted thing they want. If your method worked, then those sites would be perfect breeding grounds for deradicalization. But they're not.

Until your "beliefs" can explain this objective reality, you will find these "beliefs" to be a hard sell. A hypothesis that predicts X, but then not-X is found in reality, is a bad hypothesis.

You have been asked many times before to provide evidence for your "beliefs", and you cannot. You simply choose to believe them based on... well, this is what you must believe to be true in order to be a free speech absolutist. Well, OK, but you have no right to tell those of us with actual evidence on our side that we're wrong.

I also believe that banning it entrenches it.

Again, you can believe things. But reality tells a different story. Deplatforming works. Deplatforming of hateful bastards allows minoritized people to participate on platforms. Deplatforming of hateful bastards allows minoritized people to interact with normal people, getting them used to speaking with and interacting with them without constantly having to deal with bigotry and hate. Deplatforming fascists makes it harder for fascists to convert others. And so forth.

Yes, no bigots are convinced by being deplatformed. But they're bigots; most of them didn't reason themselves into their bigotry, so there was never any reasoning them out of their bigotry.

And, again, there are types of speech that are not protected. Such as calls for race wars, direct threats against people, and doxxing people, even Justices of the US Supreme Court, the insurrection of Jan 6, 2020, etc. Nor is that a comprehensive list.

Do you honestly think that Elon fucking Musk would prohibit such speech? Maybe direct threats, but I highly doubt he'd do anything about the stuff leading to the insurrection, including what Trump and his ilk were saying and doing.

The problem is that you think these people are acting in good faith. They're not. They're fascists. For them, "free speech" is when they get to talk and their enemies are silent. Any claims to the contrary are merely to get their foot in the door.

You don't know them. Not the people. The leaders, true. The people they're a different animal. They feel ignored (flyover country), denigrated (deplorables) and dismissed. They've turned to the only leaders talking to them. It's how Hitler came to power. Lenin. Mao. bin Laden. History is full of such examples.

But you don't want to hear this. So you won't. And this will just go on.

I know them. I live in a big square state that is largely red except for where most of the people live, in a little blue corner of a city that's about as big as a city can get and stay red. So these people are absolutely fucking everywhere around me. They're not ignored; they're given much more attention than their lack of actual policy ideas or vision merits. They're denigrated, but largely because they say and do deplorable things. And they're not dismissed, because while they're about a quarter of the population, they hold at least 45% of the political power.

But feeling ignored, denigrated, and dismissed is not why the supporters of Trump, Putin, Hitler, or any other fascist came to support them. That's completely ahistorical, because those who are actually ignored, denigrated, and dismissed - gay, trans, minorities, workers, immigrants - tend to recognize that conservative politics holds nothing for them but further victimization . You know who supports fascists? Middle-class professionals, business owners, your rock-ribbed Chamber of Commerce types who feel that the economic and social standing they feel they're entitled to is under threat. That's reflected in Trump voter demographics, too; very white, generally rural or suburban, not generally college educated but quite high income, and from areas suffering from social and economic decline, high rates of drug overdose, and high wealth disparity. They don't feel dismissed and denigrated, they feel threatened because society has decided to give people not like them the privilege and consideration to which they consider themselves uniquely entitled.

Yep... for a quarter of a millennium while males in this country have been able to loudly voice their opinions, on everything, to anyone, whenever they want. Anything less than that is censorship, etc., in their minds.

 

[Celery Man]

Wanting to debate things with every side implies there's a compromise to be had. Some things can't be compromised on. A good thought experiment is to consider, say, the Holocaust. What's a good compromise there? Only a million people killed? A hundred thousand? A thousand?