why are you "split" on having a "complete free speech zone"?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.