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Comment by anonymous5133 | Hacker News Reader

Yup and so does facebook, youtube, reddit and so on.

One could argue that the Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc are also more dangerous because they allow the recruitment and radicalization of normal people. Before social media was around someone would have had to seek out a site like Stormfront. They would have had to take an active interest in these hate groups. With social media the hate comes to them and is mixed in with all the usual cat pictures and memes. This serves to normalize hate and creates an easy avenue to recruit disenfranchised people who might never have previously been exposed to this type of thing pre-social media.

One could also argue that twitter, reddit and facebook also discourage people from joining hate groups and so on. All of these platforms can be used for good or bad. Maybe someone was a jew hater before but then they watch a documentary about Israel and realize that the jews aren't so bad etc. That same person might also watch a documentary about hate groups and realize they are a member of one and decide to make a positive change in their life.

Sure, these platforms can be used for both good and evil. But I don't see how that is relevant to my point. You don't have to allow the evil just so people can continue to do good. Or are you arguing that people are drawn to Twitter by the hate groups and are then recruited away by good Twitter users and those converts outnumber the number of people that the hate groups are able to recruit through Twitter?

What I see is mostly positive actions being done to counter the negatives. If someone makes hate speech then there are people who counter it by saying it is wrong and so on.

The bigger issue I see is if when these communities become echo chambers which I think is far more toxic. Now if Gab was removing speech that was against hate speech then I think that is a major issue. I see this issue happening more on Reddit where you have community that basically have rules like "if you don't agree with xyz then you will be banned immediately." So the whole thing is an echo chamber in itself.

Also the truth is, these hate speech people aren't going to just disappear. They will persist and continue. The only solution is to counter those people, in dialogue, and keep on them about why they're wrong etc.

I think you are being naive here if you think that the hate speech on these sites is being countered by a similar amount of positive speech. You also seem to be ignoring the victims of that hate speech and the abuse they have to endure. Maybe the person sending the death threats is better under the current system than if they were quarantined off on some other site, but my sympathy rests much more with the person receiving the death threat.

Gab was specifically founded because Reddit didn’t let them say the things they like saying.

Yup but it still persists. The users just spread out into other subs and do it there as well.

That was Voat.

Gab is the same but Twitter.

But for all their bitching, they are still active on both in large numbers. Both platforms really only engage in token bans.

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