That said, I think they should always err on the side of free speech wherever possible.
They were literally doing this! Then they got slammed for 'censorship', so they got rid of the moderators. Now they're in the position they are now.
Don't get me wrong, I see why it's a pain in the ass to wind up with a popular comment even if the comments are mostly positive (and especially if they're not not), but I think this is better handled by UI and rate limiting on notifications rather than the alternatives.
>in some cases other people see the trolling about you even after you block it.
Pardon my arrogance, but I don't believe it's your place to determine how other people are allowed to talk about you even if you've excused yourself from the conversation. Down that path lay dragons. For a quick example why, sub out "you" and "your" in the previous sentence for the name of any unpopular politician.
Even if they're discussing whether you should be murdered?
This problem does not require the extreme step of giving the subject of a conversation an unconditional veto on the conversation.
Well, we started with discussion of genocide at the top of the thread, so it's kind of in context.
> giving the subject of a conversation an unconditional veto on the conversation.
Isn't this the other extreme?
Also, in some cases other people see the trolling about you even after you block it.
..which implies it's a negative that you don't have control over the (valueJudgmentOf: comments) about you after you've blocked the conversation. Was this incorrect?
I don't buy this. If an internet forum like FaceBook, Twitter, Reddit, or whatever allows increasingly toxic behavior it eventually spills into the real world. For example, unmoderated forums facilitate doxing and incitement. What happens when an online harasser posts someone's home address, work address, and childrens' schools online with a call to real world violence? Should the victim just not care? What if online trolls set about smearing your professional or personal reputation? What if they decide to out you as gay to your parents or in a country where being gay is illegal?
And don't tell me you can simply avoid going online, that isn't practical. Its precisely places like Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc where marginalized people can find a supportive community. Also the internet should be for everyone, not just the most horrible, hard, and callous among us.
Online and real world harassment aren't two different things is more or less my conclusion. They are different vectors for similar anti-social behavior.
Would you defend someone following another person around every public space they visit screaming in their face as free speech and say the victim should toughen up? I doubt you would, and in fact it probably constitutes several crimes depending upon where you live. You could probably get a restraining order. Blocking online works similarly, but you have to do it site by site, alias by alias which doesn't scale. However, many of the tactics that trolls use scale rather well. So I think platforms have some responsibility here.
Offloading contact curation on each individual user doesn't solve the fundamental problem of identifying malicious users, it shoves it where someone else has to deal with it.
Neverthess, thinking the issue is just about insults is naive. The actual uncensored (especially anonymous) forum means hardcore bdsm porn posted for fun in the discussion about gardening or child raising. Or very disgusting pic of vivisection of animal. Or calls for another holocaust along with floorplan of your house.
It also means most 'normal' people leave elsewhere due to above. Cause most people dont need above in their lives.
Moreover, insults have meaning and it matters. If you ignore them, you are more likely to become target of bullying or mobbing. Because people parrot what they see and the more you allow it, the more people join on that to look like members of stringet group - to get popular. Or they simply feel it is socially ok.
In the work, it affects your ability to push for ideas, to get leadership position, to get raise, to be trusted and given a bit more autonomy. All of that matters.
Humans are social animals. We care about what others think by default. Maybe you're an outlier, that's nice for you, but please don't think your experience is normal.
That's not an absolution of bullies, and people who interpret it that way are morons. It's a mantra. It is to teach a child that THEY have the control over whether those words hurt them, not the person saying them. By default, yes, we have mirror neurons and we are profoundly social. It evolved to perfectly fit our society of nomads travelling in tribes across a plentiful landscape, where anyone deigning to take control of others would simply be left behind as the tribe walks over the next hill. Wait, we don't LIVE in that type of society any longer. Which makes those evolutionary traits sub-optimal at best and downright dangerous at worst. I'd go with dangerous given the negative impact of cortisol and other stress hormones. Keeping them in check is a burden the modern world puts on us all.
I think individuals should have the tools to disengage from trolls, harassment, spam, etc. (even if it's a catch-all "block everyone that my extended network has blocked" checkbox, or something similar) but I personally want the option to see the dregs of humanity and actively engage with those people.
Now, that mantra has been mostly rejected for environmental pollution because there's a far better option: Gather the pollutants, process/eliminate them, and work to eliminate the sources.
Back in our context, hopefully the elimination of people with unsavoury viewpoints is not on the table. We must fundamentally agree that humans being what they are, free thought being what it is, these ideas will never be 'gone'. So accepting that, perhaps "the solution to pollution is dilution" applies.
Apply it and we quickly see how censorship will be counter-productive - Those people, viewpoints and opinions don't go away and instead they concentrate in localized 'hot spots' (or cesspools), where they actually do far more intense and immediate damage. Obvious example: 4chan/8ch. Less obvious example: People's minds.
By avoiding chasing these things into the shadows they remain open to challenge. While the mind of the person you're challenging might not be changed, when its out in the open all others that come past and read that interaction get to judge it on it's merits and make their own judgement call.
Without that, folks end up in echo chambers. When newcomers get to those places, they are not exposed to a balance of viewpoints and the opinions they themselves form will tend to conform to the leanings of the echo chamber where they spend their time.
This is an often-repeated theory, but I'm not sure it actually works that way. For example, consider the recent discussion about Reddit's "censorship" of hate subs:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15220305
When you openly engage some people, they decide that their idea is now "normal" and then demand the rest of the society to accommodate them. There's a reason why most scientists refrain from debating creationists.
If there are so many horrible people, wouldn't you be against censorship and moderation?
This experiment has been repeatedly played out over decades. Without moderation, it always degenerates into shitposting trolls.
What really solves the problem is a 3rd party gatekeeper composed of "Council of Wise People".(henceforth referred to as gatekeepers). Movie rating board is an example.
This leads to the age old question, "Who will monitor the gatekeepers?"
This leads to democracy, where the gatekeepers only have a 4 year period and new gatekeepers are elected again.
The government should have been the gatekeepers. But turns out, these gatekeepers care more about their own pockets (filled by the same corps they are gatekeeping).
Humans suck :P
But... you're alive. Laws don't stop crime, they can only punish it afterwards. Deterrence doesn't work, there are still plenty of crimes under even the most capricious regimes that hand out death penalties for the slightest infractions. So why are you alive?
Because no one is willing to kill you. They're able. They're ALL able. Every single person, young or old, you have ever met or walked past could have killed you. Every last one of them was able. But not one has been willing. Humans aren't as bad as you might be tempted to think.
You give far too much credit to humans following the rule of law. There's a fine balance between humans using their abilities for their own desires.
America has a mass shooting every week. If the real world was as reprisal-free as the internet, and people could just keep shooting, how many casualties would there be?
And I don't think it's likely that if everyone could cause indiscriminant destruction it would be likely to occur because that is already the case and has been for a very long while. Killing people is NOT hard. Just look at what people do with a car when they want. How many cars are there? How many angry, desperate people with access to them? And how common is it for them to drive it into a crowd and kill and injure people? Run the numbers. You're more likely to die from being hit by a meteor, so concern yourself with that instead.
this is a bit simplistic. receiving information is a physiological process and not purely a cold and analytical affair. that's why a particularly vicious insult can drive some into a fit of violent irrational rage.
> And how common is it for them to drive it into a crowd and kill and injure people? Run the numbers. You're more likely to die from being hit by a meteor, so concern yourself with that instead.
there is a tremendous amount security work that contributes to this. many billions of dollars (possibly into the trillions, worldwide). a lot of dissuading machinery in legal and social systems.
however you quantify them, the dangers people face are not a simple consequence of unwilling perpetrators.
The 'producing sustainable organizations' changes the topic completely. Human beings, as individuals, are absolutely and fundamentally different from human beings as a group. America went to war with Vietnam in the 1960s. That is a true statement. Even though there were tons of protestors who had no desire to fight Vietnam. Talking about groups and about people as individuals is starkly and completely different. People in groups can be easily driven by 'mob mentality', especially if they have been trained to be especially susceptible to this by things like team-based competitive sports in their formative years. Acting in a group 'disables' a great deal of a persons individual moral code. The same is true of people in a position of subservience. "I was just following orders" makes sense to the person pulling the trigger because they earnestly feel no moral responsibility for their actions - it's how they protect themselves. It's a dangerous defense that needs to be consciously acknowledged and resisted by all people. Failure to do so makes people very dangerous. And it is not an easy thing to do at all.
Organizations also pretty much always form to facilitate some form of control. And control is poison. It is inherently harmful, regardless of either the aim, intention, or end result of it. It is also, I think, cumulative. There's no one law that turns a country into an oppressive regime, it's an accumulation. And it doesn't matter if every single one of the restrictions is "for your own good". Unless the 'good' produced by the restriction outweighs the cumulative damage it does by inflicting the control upon each individual in the society, it is overall harmful. People often ask ridiculous questions like "Why should X be legal?" which pre-supposes that everything ought to be illegal unless there is a 'good reason' to permit it. They ask "Why should you be allowed to X?" as if every action a person takes needs to be justified as beneficial in some meaningful way. It's a very dangerous mindset that has undone many societies in the past. And control poisons not just the people being controlled, but those dishing it out as well. I'm uncertain whether their damage is greater than the damage to those controlled or not. As far as I know it's not been studied and that sort of thing would be hard to quantify. I mean, prison guards are killing themselves in massive numbers and always have for a reason, obviously, but the prisoners are tattooing themselves, joining gangs, and fighting as well, so which is having more harm inflicted? They're both responding in pretty extreme ways (ways identical to how people in oppressive nations, in oppressive cults, in high-control prisons everywhere, and increasingly in American high schools respond).
is this statement based on some kind of study?
> Deterrence doesn't work, there are still plenty of crimes (..)
not terribly convincing... 'crimes happen' doesn't seem to sufficiently demonstrate that 'deterrence doesn't work'.
> Humans aren't as bad as you might be tempted to think
some aren't. some are much, much worse.
It's based on the law. They punish crimes after they have been committed. Where is the law that doesn't say "if you murder, you go to jail" but instead sets things up so you physically can not murder?
>not terribly convincing... 'crimes happen' doesn't seem to sufficiently demonstrate that 'deterrence doesn't work
Yeah, the part you cut out is the important bit. Sure you could argue 'oh well people are willing to steal a pair of shoes because they only get punished with 3 days in jail so they make a value judgement' if that's what we were talking about. But it's not. I pointed out the case of extreme punishment, death, not even THAT being capable of preventing the simple stupid crimes like stealing a pair of shoes.
>some aren't. some are much, much worse.
'Some' are individuals. I was speaking of humans overall. They're two very different things. Individually humans are impossible to predict, in groups they're among the most predictable things around. 'America went to war with Vietnam in the 60s' is not false simply because there were a bunch of protestors that opposed it. A statement about a group is not a statement about all of the individuals within it, and language would be incapable of functioning if that was the standard you attempted to apply.
is the only way to prevent murder a physical impediment?
does talking an attacker out of their plans count as preventing a murder?
> I pointed out the case of extreme punishment, death, not even THAT being capable of preventing the simple stupid crimes like stealing a pair of shoes.
again, you seem to be suggesting that 'deterrence doesn't real' because crime still exists. it seems you're presenting deterrence as an all-or-nothing dichotomy.
> 'Some' are individuals. I was speaking of humans overall.
indeed, and that's the point. pointing to a vague generalization about humans doesn't keep your kids safe.
The problem here is that Facebook seems to be choosing sides.
It worth noting that this might be propaganda to begin with and many of those so called "activists" posts could likely be violating TOS at the least if not actual laws.
What is going on in Burma is terrible but there has been a lot of violence from all factions the Buddhists didn't woke up one day and decided to commit genocide.
Like many current conflicts these aren't black and white and the only truth is that people are dying.
There is ALWAYS choosing sides. When FB decides to block pornography, they are choosing a side. When FB decides to mark some posts as spam, they are choosing a side.
Could they have a platform with ZERO choosing of sides? Technically, yes!
But, do you know what that would look like? My guess is more and more spam posts.
I don't want these companies making the "disappear this" judgment calls anymore. They've shown that making those calls dispassionately and objectively isn't all that important to them.
This is a pretty ridiculous reading of events in Myanmar. Rakhine buddhists with the help of the military and police have been persecuting Rohingya since as far back as the end of WWII (the Rakhine and Rohingya fought on opposite sides). More recently since the junta took control in 1962 the Rohingya have been denied citizenship and harassed constantly by the junta. The Rohingya in the past 20 years have begun to push back and formed armed defense groups branded by the government as terrorists. Things came to a head in 2012 (after the 2011 transition to "democracy" began) when the government incited sectarian riots in Rakhine state. The government blamed the Rohingya and began driving them out of their villages in recent years to "fight terrorism". Some Rakhine buddhists have used this as an opportunity to burn those villages and attack fleeing Rohingya.
Yes there are armed Rohingya groups, but they were trapped between an encroaching military and until this year a border with Bangladesh they couldn't cross. The government and Rakhine are absolutely, unquestionably committing genocide. Basically everyone in the world other than the Burmese government and you agrees with this designation.
Video links for the voices of the victims ignored in the media. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQf4DxgowbY&list=UUBwU9jzFLZ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4jB8K0pVAe8&list=UUBwU9jzFLZ...
My parents used to live in the conflict zone. I have been to the region several times. Tensions can be traced back over decades, but there was sectarian violence between Rohingya and Rakhine. Many of the times, the conflict started with initiating attacks by Islamist terrorists in the community. There were major attacks in 2012, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017. The affairs are far from one-sided bullying. That genocide claim is a stretch by a thousand miles. Two of my relatives, Buddhist Rakhines, who used to live there until a month ago, had to run and fled home due to the increasing threats of militant Islamist groups, and they do not ever want to go back the area. The other side of the story was never been heard in the media.
One blatant lie is that of majority Buddhist persecuting the minority Muslims. I wonder if those journalists writing about the issue ever step a foot on the region. There is too much propaganda going on out there. I cannot believe what is going on. What you have to understand is that a conflict is happening in a remote and very isolated land even from other areas in Rakhine State, Myanmar. The sole mode of transportation is by river boats. The population of Rohingya Muslims outnumbers the combined population of Rakhine Buddhists, Hindu, and other ethnic groups by the ratio of six to one. Rakhine Buddhists were the majority in the region half a decade ago. Muslim population tripled since the 1980s. Islamist terror attacks have been more and more frequent.
I am not here to downplay the plight of Rohingya, but framing the complex issue into a simplistic version to drive an agenda and demonizing the other side is evil. I am in the camp of giving citizenship to people who have legitimately lived there for generations. Leader Aung San Su Kyi has been working along with UN to draft guideline for citizenship and resolve this issue. Everyone is suffering. The rise of know-nothing activists, ivory tower commenters, and increasing radicalization in the region have made life very difficult for everyone in the region. The bottom line is that it is not one-sided bullying and people who have been to the region and studied the issue are very much aware of it.
I have never been more disappointed in the integrity of the news media. If you want to learn nuanced and balanced analysis from an outsider who had actually been there and studied the issue, I recommend this article by Jasmine Chia, a Harvard student who did research in Rakhine State. http://thediplomat.com/2016/03/the-truth-about-myanmars-rohi...
How about the interview with a US diplomat who used to work in Burma. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1MoehFI3io
How about your country starts by letting in international observers to witness exactly what is happening? From all accounts they are being prevented by the Myanmar government from doing so. When you prevent this, you look as if you have something to cover up after all.
> but there is so much misinformation going on regarding the current crisis.
If it's misinformation, let international observers in to see what's happening. Moreover, are the Rohingya women and children fleeing into Bangladesh with bullet entrance wounds in the backs of their arms and legs misinformation? They got shot by someone, and they say it was the army. Shooting fleeing women and children is very indicative of something like a genocide.
>What you have to understand is that a conflict is happening in a remote and very isolated land even from other areas in Rakhine State, Myanmar
Yes, we've seen maps. Not everyone in the West is totally ignorant of geography.
>One blatant lie is that of majority Buddhist persecuting the minority Muslims.
I didn't say that, and neither does the UN or any news outlet I read. I'd argue that the government is persecuting the Rohingya and some local Rakhine Buddhists appear from numerous reports to be complicit. Self identified Rakhine found at the sites of burning Rohingya villages has been confirmed by the BBC.
>The population of Rohingya Muslims outnumbers the combined population of Rakhine Buddhists, Hindu, and other ethnic groups by the ratio of six to one. Rakhine Buddhists were the majority in the region half a decade ago. Muslim population tripled since the 1980s. Islamist terror attacks have been more and more frequent.
I'm not sure A is necessary and sufficient to prove or lead to B in your argument. As seen elsewhere in the world Muslim population doesn't even correlate with terrorist attack frequency.
> Aung San Su Kyi has been working along with UN to draft guideline for citizenship
Which appears to be bullshit, because it requires documents that displaced Rohingya were long denied, and wouldn't have access to in the event that they fled across the border.
To quote the article you linked: "It is clear that anti-Muslim propaganda has become part of regular nationalist discourse", which is sort of the crux of my criticism. The government leverages anti-muslim propaganda to legitimize the persecution of the Muslim population.
*EDIT: Also, that you for adding your perspective to the discussion. It is rare in the rest of the world to hear perspectives from ordinary people in your country. I hope I haven't come across as too harsh, or combative. I do fundamentally agree that it is a messy complicated situation that is too often painted as a simplistic narrative.
I did not mean to personally accuse you of lying when I wrote the sentence. I meant to point out what many major media (BBC, Guardian, CNN) are insinuating. I apologize that I came across that way. >One blatant lie is that of majority Buddhist persecuting the minority Muslims.
Also, I am not implying that population of Muslim correlates with the frequency of terror generally everywhere in the world. All I am pointing out is what is happening in troubled Maung Daw region. I am not in the camp that attacks Islam as a whole and formulates a general theory. The issue is more complicated than a simplistic correlation.
I disagree with your following statement. >The government leverages anti-Muslim propaganda to legitimize the persecution of the Muslim population.
There are many Muslims in the other regions of Myanmar. Even in Rakhine state, there is another minority Muslim group, Ka-Mann, in the middle of the state. Ka-Man Muslims were recognized as an ethnic group by the government, and there was no alleged religious persecution of Ka-Man. If you visit Yangon, the biggest city in the country, you will see that there are several Mosques in downtown, and there are a lot of Muslim communities that are peacefully coexisting with Buddhists, Christians, and Hindu for a very long time. Unlike what media is portraying, the extremist monks, like U Wiyathu who was on the cover of Time magazine as Burmese Bin Laden, are unpopular in the country. This Rohingya issue is being mischaracterized by the media. Those in agenda-driven media who are framing this as one are fanning the flames. There are unverified accusations dumped on Rakhine Buddhists and the army who we do not support. We all are hoping unbiased international investigators to dig the truth out.
I agree 100% with you in letting international journalists and observers in and let them investigate and report without hindrance. That is what many people, including me, have been asking for years. There are several journalists from BBC, NYTimes, and some major news organization in the region. I do though want to point out one thing that many people in the region and the country as a whole are very distrustful of international media. There is resentment among Native Rakhine, and they feel that they have been framed and unfairly demonized for a particular agenda or narrative by these major news organizations. I am one of those people very much bothered by the narratives and very selective coverage of BBC and Guardian. I am all for welcoming international journalists and observers from all political spectrum and ideologies. People can have biases, but they need to be open about it.
I am ignorant of many things in the world. I just happen to know a bit about this particular issue since my grandparents, Rakhine Buddhists, lived their entire lives in the troubled region, and I happened to hear a lot of brutal heartbreaking stories from the other side ignored in the media. It is just a very odd moment in life when you became very cynical about everything in the media. I do not want to live my life that way.
I am aware of my background and bias. All I want to do is to point out that there are a lot more to the story than a very simplistic version painted in the media, just as you mentioned.
Thank you for your engagement. I appreciate your input.
Again, thanks for sharing your unique and illuminating perspective.
Germans didn't wake up one day in the 1930s and decide to exterminate the Jews either. That doesn't mean the Jews were at all to blame for their persecution.
I doubt that. In fact, from my experience in a "completely open" I would say that this is false.
Keep both honest.