The Far Right Has a New Digital Safe Space | Hacker News Reader

The Far Right Has a New Digital Safe Space

nytimes.com

33 pointsrandomname289 comments

That's not what "Safe Space" means? There's nothing stopping anybody from going on Gab and virulently disagreeing with everyone there or intentionally offending certain users.

Still, impressed with the NYT's ability to push a narrative.

> Still, impressed with the NYT's ability to push a narrative.

Isn't news narrative? Seems like I am missing what is bad about this article.

Or did you want just the facts? New app call ____ which does ___. Move along you now have all the facts?

I want a news story to give me context and some way to sort out the narrative and do something with the raw data.

Anything that doesn't explicity share my views is a narrative created by the enemy.

And this is exactly the problem. I'm a democratic-leaning voter in a blue state -- clearly I have to trust and love outfits like the NYT and WaPo. Nevermind that both were obviously out of touch throughout this year's election.

I'm honestly not sure how I escape the bubble at this point.

This might help. Try finding things that completely disagree and see what they have to say. For example -

Compare /r/The_Donald with /r/politics with /r/hillaryclinton

Compare Breitbart to Wikileaks to CNN / MSNBC.

Compare Reddit.com with Voat.co

Compare Wikipedia to infogalactic.com

Boil away the opinion/predictions made by every article and get down to what concrete, verifiable facts they contain (if any). Check original sources! Articles that cite a legal decision or laws and don't give a link to actual court papers/law are a special peeve of mine. Compare which facts get omitted in each version and which agree. Track who does (and doesn't) get over the stopped clock threshold (i.e. being right at least twice a day) and how often in matters of fact (not opinion). Track future predictions (right and wrong, take special note of fuzziness and lack of a time horizon). Remember the bias induced when we only remember some predictions and not others. Even when there are people you find hateful, it's important to understand what they believe and why.

> Nevermind that both were obviously out of touch throughout this year's election.

Nope 2 million under the popular vote doesn't seem like they were wrong at all.

And if the President was selected by popular vote, that would mean something.

Doesn't mean the paper was out of touch though with the popular voters of the nation and in their regions?

Because the narrative employs obvious bias only partially grounded in reality. The title implies that these people needed a safe space to protect themselves from dissenting opinion -- when the simple reality is Twitter kicked them out so they started using a different website. Yes, all news is biased but increasingly I'm finding the NYT to be completely out of touch. It's very obvious there's a story they want to push and so they find news that they can make fit the story.

from elsewhere in this thread:

>On the Friday after the US presidential election, Andrew Torba, CEO of Gab.ai, a social network favored by conservatives, was kicked out of Y Combinator “I am actually surprised it took them this long to excommunicate me,” Torba told BuzzFeed News. “Y Combinator doesn’t accept conservatives and they don’t accept Trump supporters.”

this is relevant here because of what this dude was actually doing, being a prick.

> In the Facebook thread, before he was booted from Y Combinator, Torba wrote: “All of you: fuck off. Take your morally superior, elitist, virtue signaling bullshit and shove it. I call it like I see it, and I helped meme a President into office, cucks.”

it took me a long time to learn that you don't have the right to be a prick on the internet.

if you insist on being a prick, don't cry persecution when you get shown the door. don't cry censorship. it's neither. it's you being shown the door because you wanted to be a prick. full stop.

if the guy in the above example wasn't a prick, he'd still be in the program. he could have called people cucks with donations like the big boys do, and not on facebook like a child.

How does this in any way negate the comment you are responding to? His point is that people go to Gab because they are thrown out of other venues.

You're just going on about how they deserve to be thrown out.

>His point is that people go to Gab because they are thrown out of other venues

my point is that they aren't being thrown out because of their political views.

the guy in the above example wasn't purged because he was a conservative. it's a shock, I know, but consider the fact that he was shown the door because he was an asshole.

Fair enough. But people did experiments like

http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/twitter-user-replaces-white-...

that show how same speech applied from opposite angles produces different results vis-a-vis being banned.

NO! Get out! That context and subject actually matter? NO WAY. /sarcasm

Aren't those two words synonymous? lol

I mean, invite only + downvote/upvote system looks a lot like how you'd create a safe space to me.

Or an Echo Chamber ;)

Where do you get invite only from?

I don't have an account, but from looking at the home page, it looks like you just give them your email address and you're added to the 'waiting list'.

[nobody@example.com] > Done! You're #1324763 in the waiting list.

There's no evidence that they're inviting from the waiting list.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/16/banned-alt-...

I signed up to the waitlist and received an invite within a week. There's no evidence that they're not inviting from the waitlist.

I signed up, was put on the waiting list, received my invite a couple days later.

This sounds pretty simple to test empirically.

This is the NY Times best attempt at deflecting the criticism they've been getting post-election.

"We might have screwed up but look at what those guys are doing!!!"

> That's not what "Safe Space" means?

I'm sure the NYT knows that. I assumed it was a sarcastic dig against the concept of "safe spaces".

If they wanted to be sarcastic, they really should've called it an 'unsafe space'.

Relevant backstory: https://www.buzzfeed.com/nitashatiku/trump-supporting-startu...

The NYTimes article is surprisingly charitable, although perhaps ironically.

FTA: > On the Friday after the US presidential election, Andrew Torba, CEO of Gab.ai, a social network favored by conservatives, was kicked out of Y Combinator “I am actually surprised it took them this long to excommunicate me,” Torba told BuzzFeed News. “Y Combinator doesn’t accept conservatives and they don’t accept Trump supporters.”

I'm bewildered. I want to think that they are just trolls looking for attention. My pessimistic side says that they actually do have a persecution complex and somehow feel that the groups they regularly malign have more rights and privilege than they do.

One thing I've noticed regarding the above excerpt is a unique interpretation of free speech where they believe they are free to say anything they want without consequence. Any negative response is met with claims of censorship. If you acted that way in a coffeeshop, bar, or some community gathering you would be asked to leave as well. If you continue hurling verbal assaults after being asked to leave, that's harassment. You have the right to be a dick, but they're claiming they are exercising their right to free speech and are surprised people are being dicks back to them. I hope society never succumbs to their desires and normalizes denigrating speech and just being a complete asshole. I really hope they are trolls

EDIT: > “if you feel ‘unsafe’ from from [sic] me saying ‘fuck off’ or ‘build a wall,’ you probably shouldn’t be on the internet.”

Sigh, I had such high hopes for the Internet being the ultimate tool to elevate mankind to a more enlightened tomorrow and the promise that technology would make the world a better place. Seems it has enabled a safe space for people to unleash their inner asshole. I'm afraid of what's going to happen if they ever summon up enough courage to do these things in person and are inevitably met with violence.

I'm not a tough guy at all, but in my hometown, dem is called fightin words

Funny that the same people who want to be able to say anything under free speech regardless of who it hurts, or how hateful, are the same ones who would take away citizenship from protesters who would burn the flag as a form of speech.

Need to look at a specific example but rights always, without exception, come with obligations. They are not a net bonus.

You can't say 'let us have free speech' - by using hate speech --then say 'take away their free speech' i.e. flag burning or w/e it's a double standard.

His reaction didn't just fall out of the sky, one does not interact with somebody in good faith and then get a reaction like that immediately. That is the response of somebody who's sick and tired of liberals.

> I hope society never succumbs to their desires and normalizes denigrating speech

This is already happened, you can denigrate conservatives or anybody to the right of you easily, look at all the histrionics surrounding Trump. People are saying he's hitler UNIRONICALLY. We've blown by your line in the sand a long time ago.

> People are saying he's hitler UNIRONICALLY

Like the Tea Party people from a few years ago claiming that Obama was Hitler "unironically" and that Obamacare was a "Nazi program"?

{edit} I'm curious why you didn't see things like this:

http://www.wataugawatch.net/uploaded_images/Tea-party-2-7129...

as "going way past the line?"

Citation please.

This comes up on the first page of a Google search... It's almost like you didn't search for anything yourself...

http://americablog.com/2013/02/tea-party-obama-is-hitler.htm...

or there is this:

https://kristiann1.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/hitler-t-4-ob...

Right - but I don't think anybody took that seriously. Even the tea partiers saying it most likely only meant it as a 'Obama is a very bad guy and the worst name we can call him is Hitler'.

On the other hand the many liberal journalists prognosticating Trump to become a totalitarian like Hitler really meant it (for example see https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/28/th...)

Gab appears to be employing unlimited bidirectional voting. This inevitably creates a shout-down chamber, so the network will likely not attract a diverse group of opinions and is nearly guaranteed to become the echo chamber everybody is expecting it to become.

I don't find this to be the new competitor the market is really looking for.

I don't find this to be the new competitor the market is really looking for.

All the better then. A black hole that sucks up their energies (and lets them feel "validated" even though no one outside their tiny community is listening) might be just the thing for them.

I would interpret your statement to indicate you are an opponent of free exchange of ideas.

Which you can, if you want. But that's not what my statement implies.

This is not correct. The people going to Gab are not going because of market preference, they are going because they are being forced out of current market leaders who do not desire to have free exchange of ideas on their networks.

By extension, supporting of this movement means you do not support a free exchange of ideas.

Sorry, but I don't buy your contention that the restrictions adopted by market leaders are about blocking the "free of exchange of ideas", per se.

And apart of that, your "extension" would be a faulty generalization based on that contention.

It is not what those leaders perceive their actions to be, it is what their actions actually are. They are acting to reduce the capacity of people with some viewpoint from being able to communicate that viewpoint.

It is not faulty. It is you who is applying a generalization in your claim.

I would say they "choose not to foster" rather than "reduce" of the capacity certain people to propagate their views.

(Yes, there's a distinction, and a quite crucial one in fact).

Doesn't one usually associated a 'safe space' with the introduction of policies surrounding what can and cannot be said? This article seems to suggest that a 'safe space' is also a place associated with looser constraints allowing people say whatever they like.

I guess it's a "Safe Space" for alt-righters because they are surrounded by like-minded people that will shout down any dissenting opinions?

In a way, this might be a good thing -- it substantially weakens their ability to cry "censorship". And provides a space where their drivel can be monitored and tracked: inevitably, we'll see many people connected with the new administration turning up here -- and it will be interesting to see how they expose themselves.

I know that the fake news narrative is popular right now, and maybe it's just me, but do you think maybe you might be a little biased here?

How is it not censorship when somebody actively monitors what is posted on Twitter and makes a judgement on whether or not that post is appropriate? What is appropriate and how does free speech equate to that in your mind?

Technology does weird things to conversations about the First Amendment. Twitter benefits from freedom of speech/the press/assembly in the sense that it can operate a platform that broadcasts individuals' writings. By the same principle, it has the right to only broadcast what it wants. Twitter isn't the government or a public entity. It's the publisher printing a paper. So, no, that's not really censorship, whereas requiring Twitter to broadcast speech against its will seems like it would be.

NB: I am not a constitutional lawyer.

Do you think maybe you might be a little bit biased here?

Everyone is biased, to one degree or another. Subjective judgement can be quite a useful tool, actually (but that's a much broader topic).

How is it not censorship when somebody actively monitors what is posted on Twitter and makes a judgement on whether or not that post is appropriate?

My own definition of censorship is any any kind of restrictions that are government-enforced (or enforced via proxies such as public universities).

Editorial and/or community guidelines imposed by private media companies aren't "censorship", by this definition -- they're just that: editorial or community guidelines (which have always been in place, ever since people started investing the effort in creating mass copies of readable works via clay tablets, strands of knots, notches on wood, etc).

What is appropriate and how does free speech equate to that in your mind?

In my mind it all comes down to "not being an asshole." HN has a few additional guidelines, which I find eminently sensible and am happy to comply with. As do FB or this new Gab platform (both of which I'm less in favor of, and choose not to participate in).

To each their own watering hole, as it were -- and that's about as fair as one can expect things to ever be (and about as close to the the libertarian paradise a lot of these alt-right folks are dreaming for, as we'll ever get).

kafkaesq is biased. I am biased. It should be okay to be biased against white nationalist/supremacy viewpoints, especially those advocating violence against people because of their race.

It is censorship. It is also censorship to prevent me from claiming a jar of pickle juice is a cure for cancer in a television advertisement.

The account cancellations by Twitter were a direct response to incitement of harassment and promotion of hate speech. It's likely that some violent leftists are ignored by the Twitter ban hammer, but they aren't nearly as effective at stirring up harassment, death threats, swatting, threatening family members, etc. It may be unfair that only successful trolls are being picked on, but it's the way the world works.

Free speech means that you can say whatever you want without government persecution. You do not however have the right to dictate what individual people think or how they respond to what you say. So if the people doing the monitoring are government employees who's job is to monitor then yes this is censorship. If they are private citizens then it is in no way censorship <edit>unless they are being compelled to do so by government</edit>.

> How is it not censorship when somebody actively monitors what is posted on Twitter and makes a judgement on whether or not that post is appropriate? What is appropriate and how does free speech equate to that in your mind?

Do you ever downvote comments or flag stories here on Hacker News? Do you think that is censorship? Do you think it is appropriate?

You can't really be conflating free speech as a freedom within the legal system with the ability to say anything without being subject to policy set by a nongovernmental organization like Twitter.

That's so basic a fallacy that I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're being obtuse and didn't really make that mistake.

Because censorship isn't a bad thing and absolute free speech isn't a good thing.

The owners of a platform have a social responsibility to curate it.

A quarantine on this stuff is a nice thing for the rest of us in the short term. In the long term it could either be a bad thing because it helps the movement grow, or a good thing because without any opposition to troll within the platform it flames out.

This is the thing I keep saying. If we kick them off every other platform around rather than letting the community critique them, they'll move to echo chambers and new people won't be able to be introduced to their ideas through criticism, only through those echo chambers. Not only that, but these echo chambers tend to let conspiracy theories and misinformation brew and go wild.

I do hope they're successful in getting more users onboard. In many ways I like their libertarian-style free speech loving moderation stance personally, but I read invite only somewhere, which is concerning me even more. If they want to take a free speech stance, they need to respect that free speech needs to be for all, so we can critique and discuss these sorts of ideas.

Seems all too ripe to be an echo chamber as is. Guess we'll see how long the invite only thing lasts.

I don't know where this "invite only" stuff is coming from. I was not invited, and had no relationship with anyone on the site, and no public profile of note. I signed up because I was curious what they were doing, and was added in a few weeks.

That's not to say they don't have some system of prioritizing sign-ups. Perhaps they do, but regardless there doesn't seem to be any method in place to prevent people joining.

The free TV time gifted to Trump for saying outrageous things gave him a decided signal boost over his rivals. On the other hand, the media did not give sufficient time to a sane counterargument whereas a well-regulated forum might offer that opportunity.

Unfortunately, that's not what we see from the balance of Trump supporters online, who are not at all hesitant to flag or brigade opposing viewpoints regardless of merit.

I'm not so sure, I think the media gave plenty of time to sane counterargument. Even CNN, which I constantly see blamed as an evil by both the left and right, they'd air his stuff, then go and critique it and debate it for quite a while afterwards.

I think ultimately not as many people are interested in the critique and debate portion and perhaps more importantly, and I think many supporters just didn't care about a lot of the outrageous stuff he said because their alternative seemed even worse. They were basically left no choice but to dismiss it.

If the options were better, even just one of them I think this whole thing would have worked out a lot nicer. But instead a lot of people were caught in the middle debating the better of two evils.

I'm sure many will argue it was clearly one way or the other, but I'm pretty sympathetic to both arguments here. Education, debate and rationality can't solve that in a really significant way, only better options can.

Can we stop normalizing scum like Richard B. Spencer and the alt right? Many would consider me "far right", I have nothing in common with that filth...

Also, nice to see the market filling the need for a censor-less social platform. Let them be hateful idiots over in the corner, it's their right.

Yeah, it's not actually hyperbole to call Spencer a Nazi. I mean, if your political program calls for ethnic cleansing, your meetings include Nazi salutes and chants of "sieg hiel!", we can call you a Nazi.

But sure, they needed a new platform, because Stormfront and the Daily Stormer are too PC?

They needed a new platform because they think they need a new platform; that's how a market works.

They need a new platform because they want a platform that for at least the first few minutes won't be "that place where the fucking Nazis hang out."

Ok. So?

+1 to the normalizing piece. These folks are a few short hops away from ISIS. They've nailed hate-filled ideology, lone-wolf attacks and it's only a matter of time before they organize into something worse. Trump has opened the flood-gates for individuals like this to have a voice.

Couldn't vote for him, never liked him, he scares me for a lot of reasons; but you think Trump has opened that flood gate? I don't think I buy that. I think the media has opened the flood gate/given it a soapbox in order to link it to Trump. For all his obvious faults, I don't think he is actually a racist. Nothing in the man's history, until he ran for president, shows that... if anything his history shows the opposite.

idk, but yea, we agree these guys suck.

(down votes incoming...)

Please don't preemptively complain about downvotes. It poisons the well.

To your point, Trump was sued in 1973 for racial discrimination in his housing business[1]. Most recently, he has advocated for banning Muslim people from entering the country based on their religion. The list goes on. The guy is racist to his bones in a way that has been normal but unspoken in America since the 1970s. He did not create the racism, but now the racists who want to be active have his tacit support.

[1] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/sep/...

eh, I think I will if I want to. Telling people what do to also poisons the well.

Just spent the last 30 minutes reading about that case... doesn't look good, that's for sure. Was also 40+ years ago. We can go back that far in just about any politicians life (Hillary, Bernie, etc...) and find extremely questionable to outright disgusting things. Not sure it's relevant today, maybe it is.

As for the immigration moratorium from certain regions of the word, or similarly, deportation of undocumented immigrants; these are both things we have done VERY commonly in the past. Hell, Obama has done both. I wouldn't consider either to be racist, would you?

Don't fall into the trap of thinking Trump won because of some white uprising. The numbers just aren't there. Trump won because the country is revolting against the establishment. (I think people are kind of silly for thinking Trump is going to "fix" that, but that's a separate conversation I suppose.)

Should Trump come out in staunch opposition to every nutcase that get's in front of a microphone? Idk, maybe. Would take a lot of his time.

Anyway, here is to the country healing.

When you say something like:

> Nothing in the man's history

then I don't know why you then retort with "well, that was a long time ago." You made a statement that someone was proving false. Heck, you made that statement so broad in an attempt to bolster / underscore your point, so I think it's fair game.

> As for the immigration moratorium from certain regions of the word, or similarly, deportation of undocumented immigrants; these are both things we have done VERY commonly in the past. Hell, Obama has done both. I wouldn't consider either to be racist, would you?

I'm unclear how "Muslim" classifies one as being from a certain region of the world rather than describing their religious affiliation. Could you explain this?

> then I don't know why you then retort with "well, that was a long time ago." You made a statement that someone was proving false. Heck, you made that statement so broad in an attempt to bolster / underscore your point, so I think it's fair game.

He did prove me wrong, that is something in his history. But my comment regarding time and other politicians still stands.

> I'm unclear how "Muslim" classifies one as being from a certain region of the world rather than describing their religious affiliation. Could you explain this?

The man is a professional wind-bag, but he has multiple times expanded on that and specified he means "terror-prone regions", which is something we do all the time and is totally legal.

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-1994-title8/pdf/USCODE-...

The list really doesn't stop at Muslims though.

You forgot that judges can't be impartial if they're Mexican or that illegal aliens are rapists. Also, Black people are thugs. Etc etc.

If Trump's not racist, he's uncomfortably close.

> but you think Trump has opened that flood gate? I don't think I buy that.

I think that Trump opens the floodgates because these people believe that he's on their side (regardless of whether or not he is). Because they believe that, they also see Trump's election / America's support for him as support for their alt-right / white nationalist cause, which makes them more bold.

It doesn't matter if he's just done it opportunistically without actually believing what he says.

The real crazies are using him as a bridge to the mainstream and Trump doesn't care as long as he gets wherever he's going.

we can start off by calling them white supremacists rather than alt-right.

Sure, but then how can you smear normal conservatives? /s

Maybe you should try calling him a racist. That usually works.

This is a absolutely dishonest headline.

Andrew Torba and his team created Gab as a response to Twitter when Jack and his team started harassing and outright censoring people who didn't agree with far left ideology (and no, not just those who identify themselves as "right"). The most important design principle of Gab is "freedom of speech", and it is completely neutral of who are making use of this principle; Andrew has stated several times that EVERYBODY IS WELCOME no matter where you are in the political spectrum.

Yes, a large part of the population on Gab can be described politically as either "alt right" or "conservative" because these people are outright scared that their online voices will be shut simply because of disagreement. But that doesn't mean that the Gab population is 100% right wing, it also consists out of classical liberals and moderates who are sick and tired of the behavior and bullshit narrative of the far left, and do not agree with the way Twitter is handling freedom of expression, which by the way is a universal human right, on its platform.

Is this the same as the former YC company?

Yep.

I have an account an Gab, with the same handle as my account here. It seems to be growing very quickly and offers keyword-based timeline filters that are far better than what Twitter offers.

I've said it before on HN, but I really think it's a mistake to write off approximately half the country because you disagree with their political positions.

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