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Comment by evrydayhustling | Hacker News Reader

Reading this article is like watching someone beat the ocean with a stick. What would it look like for an "anti-deplatforming" initiative to succeed? All ideas have equal access to all platforms? Just the big ones? The objective is so poorly formed, it's not even wrong.

A platform's identity and ability to attract an audience are determined by the activities they accept / cultivate, not vice versa. Infowars wanted to be on Facebook because it made it easier to sell your grandparents vitamin supplements, but Facebook felt that leaving them on make it a place families (and their grandparents) won't visit. Gab would like to use Stripe or Paypal because they are trusted payment providers, but those networks felt they'd stop being trusted payment providers if they let Gab stay on.

And there's plenty of reason to think they're right: super-permissive platforms exist and work (4chan et al.), they just don't attract the same broad audience. When people complain about being deplatformed, they're just saying "the platforms that accept me aren't popular enough". I'm glad our internet is enough of a distributed commons that many platforms are broadly accessible -- but nobody owes you an audience at the most popular ones.

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First people get kicked off their platforms "build your own platforms"

Then platforms got kicked off the platform platforms "build your own platform platforms"

What reason is there to assume those platform platforms will not get kicked off the platform platform platforms?

These people are not arguing in good faith.

What's the alternative to "build your own platforms" though. Are you willing to compel Stripe by threat of force to keep processing credit cards for nazis? Are you willing to completely torpedo freedom of association, as long as the people demanding your company continue associating with them are sufficiently monstrous?

No need to jump to the idea of compulsion. If there were an established social norm that "platform platforms" should make an active attempt to be viewpoint-neutral, chances are that enough of them would voluntarily follow that norm to allow platforms like Gab to continue operating. If the norm isn't established, well, good luck passing a law to force anyone to follow it. Right now, the trend seems to be against such a norm.

And - how or why would I care that stripe processed infowars transactions, unless I was actually in the process of buying something from infowars?

The issue isn't whether you in particular care or not.

The issue, as I'm reading the parent comment, is that it's beginning to appear that no one is willing to stand up and say "look, it's not that I support this or that view, it's just that, well, if people are going to spout nonsense it might as well be here where can all observe them", because doing so would be so against current social normal it would be irresponsible.

Why should "platform platforms" establish a norm attempting to actively appear "viewpoint neutral"?

"come a little closer mouse so that I may better catch you and eat you..."

Why on earth should society bend over backwards to aid spoiled deliberate attention-seekers when there are 7 billion other people who are actually trying to resolve problems that need our actual attention.

These "malingerers" are using up valuable medical staff's time they could be spending upon actually ill patients!

I'm not sure what you mean about medical staff. I'm not suggesting that anyone bend over backwards to aid organizations like Gab, merely that they don't go out of their way to ban them merely because they don't like them. For example, in the case of Stripe and PayPal, there doesn't seem to be any suggestion that Gab falls under any of the normal categories that would cause a financial services platform to ban a merchant – e.g. suspicion of fraud or money laundering, high chargeback rates, high rates of fraud among people giving money, anything like that.

What makes the 'deplatforming' threat viable is that so many critical aspects of an online business are a choice between private-enterprise players. Stripe or Authorize.net. AWS or DigitalOcean. GoDaddy or Namecheap.

As you suggest, they have no individual legal obligation to serve a business that may cause bad press/high risk/whatever. But when you can enough of them pointing in the same direction, it creates the chilling effect-- a business that's technically legal but can't get the services they need. It basically creates am unspoken private regulation well beyond the actual law of the state.

I tend to think the answer might be non-profit or state-run "service providers of last resort" -- charter-bound to provide service for any legal purpose, no matter how distasteful. Not necessarily cheap or slick, but they won't pull your plug because people complain about your content. Such a provider would defang the deplatforming strategy pretty fast.

I don't want my tax money used for that. Not because I object to the content, but because it's a waste of money and government officials have more important things to focus on.

Ah, state-hosted platforms calling for the extermination of Jews. It's not exactly Radio Free Europe, is it?

> But when you can enough of them pointing in the same direction, it creates the chilling effect-- a business that's technically legal but can't get the services they need. It basically creates am unspoken private regulation well beyond the actual law of the state.

Yes, but this is how the free market works. That my $.25 artisanal dog cupcake business can't get the services it needs at the price I can afford doesn't raise complaints.

But when we replace dog cupcakes with Nazi chat rooms, suddenly we need the government to step in and subsidize a business which the market has shown is not worth it. In economic terms, the "distaste" of a client is an externality, and there is an increase in price associated with that externality. If the company can't afford it that's just the market at work. So the government providing a platform like this is just the government subsidizing business with negative externalities that the free market was correct tly pricing. It's like subsidies for strip mining or fracking or rhino poaching. But this is something you support in this case.

It's odd to me.

> I tend to think the answer might be non-profit or state-run "service providers of last resort" -- charter-bound to provide service for any legal purpose, no matter how distasteful.

And what if my distateful venture needs redis or windows 10 or a spanner like distributed database, or whatever other service your unflashy system doesn't provide?

Then either I can't get off the ground anyway, or you require that the government service maintain feature parity with all the others, neither of which seems viable.

>> That my $.25 artisanal dog cupcake business can't get the services it needs at the price I can afford doesn't raise complaints.

If you can't get services you need at any price isn't that when competition authorities [ought to] start investigating?

The is no evidence that Gab can't find a price at which to run its service. Again: even Stormfront is still up and running. And Stormfront is just Gab without the pretend rules forbidding threats and harassment.

So, once again, "Are you willing to compel Stripe by threat of force to keep processing credit cards for nazis?"

"Somebody someone else really doesn't like" != Nazi

When we start throwing that word around, along with describing groups as "far right" (or indeed "far left") when they've started getting more votes than the [previously] mainstream groupings, we appear have a problem with nomenclature.[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessian_state_election,_2018 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_state_election,_2018 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_presidential_election,_... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_legislative_election,...

I assume that you have a proposal that would differentiate between the two? So that they would be forced to serve "somebody someone else really doesn't like", but not be forced to serve Nazis?

In the 1950s, your question would've been "Are you willing to compel Stripe by threat of force to keep processing credit cards for leftists and commies?" You believe because your political faction has a little leverage currently that it will always remain that way; not so. If you legitimize deplatforming, it is a weapon that will someday be turned against you.

Given the unwelcome resurgence of the right worldwide, that day may come sooner than you think.

If memory serves, at least in the US this was the opposite. The free market was fine with serving least wing groups. It was the government that stepped in and told individuals to not be leftist, under threat of force.

Only then did businesses stop associating with those people, because the government was implicitly threatening them.

It was exactly the government's interference that caused the deplatforming of potential leftists during the red scare.

The government isn't an entity with its own independent will; the US public broadly voted in officials that put in place those policies. Leftists who openly identified as such faced all sorts of problems doing business even without government intervention.

Hollywood blacklists, the most famous example from the red scare, only began after HUAC subpoenaed and held people in contempt.

You're just repeating the same invalid argument. Go and look up the history of widespread small scale anti-lefist incidents in that era that occurred before the HUAC existed.

The onus is on you to provide examples. Most of what I know of, and what I can find documented, was government sanctioned or under (implied) threat of government retaliation.

Please cite examples of these widespread small scale, grassroots anti-leftist incidents.

I'd love to see Republican senators voting to fund an antifa 24/7 channel. I mean, they can't even get behind Sesame Street so I'm sure that wouldn't be a problem.

> it creates the chilling effect-- a business that's technically legal but can't get the services they need

They can get it, but have to pay for that. Just like the porn industry had to build their own payment providers.

The chilling effect is working as intended. You need something in society to make people find common ground and live in a similar reality. The current US seems like a great example of people not being able to do so. They blame more and more blame other side for their problems. And i wonder if that trend can be reversed before you guys start shooting each other.

Recent developments like social media made and the US TV landscape make it easier than ever to live in your favorite filter bubble. Algorithms getting better and better at giving you what you want to hear. I don't see developments emerging to counteract that.

If de-platforming is bullet we have to bite for society to keep functioning, than so be it. It's still somewhat mild tool you can work around... i take that over government intervention any time.

>They can get it, but have to pay for that. Just like the porn industry had to build their own payment providers.

There are two problems with that argument.

First, it's nowhere near as trivial as you make it sound. A one man shop could potentially build and maintain a custom forum service himself, but trying to create a real-world ready payment processing infrastructure from scratch is going to mean a team of tens of specialists.

The porn industry was able to solve it because it was a big, industry-wide problem that left a lot of money on the table-- a need big enough to create a market for specialists.

Second, it may not be possible to bypass every firm that presents a deplatforming risk. The porn industry may have avoided rejection by the mainstream gateway providers, but they're still dependent on retaining good relationsips with Visa and Mastercard at the end of the day. I'd think those guys are the nuclear option for deplatforming-- no matter who you line up to take your payments, if you can't accept 90% of the cards on the market, you're not going to be able to monetize effectively.

This is such a common thing that you're doing.

There are four levels of power (kind of) => government, employer, social, individual. Whenever you're in an argument, assume that the other side is advocating for the top level to enforce something so you can call them oppresive, and claim that you're advocating for the bottom level (and that that level should be free to do as it likes).

Nothing in this article mentions passing a law and he even mentions several times that it's within their rights. It's therefore clearly discussing level 3 and 4 (trying to effect cultural change at the level of the individual. For you to weigh in as if he's arguing for passing an insane freedom of speech is disingenuous.

>Nothing in this article mentions passing a law [...] For you to weigh in as if he's arguing for passing an insane freedom of speech is disingenuous.

I think you've inadvertently overlooked how the 3 parent replies above you were discussing hypotheticals. In other words, each reply tried to elaborate what the alternate universes of free/censored speech might look like:

- evrydayhustling's hypothetical: "What would it look like for an "anti-deplatforming" initiative to succeed? [...]"

- im3w1l's hypothetical: "What reason is there to assume those platform platforms will not get kicked off the platform [...]"

- amputect's hypothetical: "What's the alternative to "build your own platforms" though. Are you willing to compel Stripe by threat of force [...]"

Commenters can bring up hypothetical laws or attempt to predict hypothetical outcomes even though the article itself doesn't mention creating a new law.

(It's also possible that the middle reply in the chain of hypotheticals by im3w1l was misinterpreted as a call for a government law even though he doesn't explicitly state it. Sometimes people read between the lines and misconstrue the commenter's intent. It does seem like im3w1l's statement of "These people are not arguing in good faith" is implying that the mechanisms of the free market and free association wouldn't work for marginalized ideas. Therefore, it's not unreasonable to assume that the alternate universe he's thinking of that would work would be a government law that prevents de-platforming.)

I agree with you, but your four levels really need to be refined by a fifth level, corporate power.

That is, power that is wielded over you by corporations even though they're not your employer because you essentially have to do business with them (Visa and MasterCard come to mind - they're essential infrastructure to the point where it really should just be a function of government, but isn't for historical reasons)

Very good point

>What reason is there to assume those platform platforms will not get kicked off the platform platform platforms?

Why should we assume that until someone gets kicked off the platform pltaform platforms?

Platform platforms intended exclusively for uses commonly considered undesirable have been successful in the past, see namecentral.

You are mistaking "good faith" for satisfying others' entitlement

The spirit of your complaint here is "there should be a reasonably easy path for me to widely distribute my message without getting the rug pulled out from under me". There is exactly one way to distribute your message, and whether it is easy or hard is up to you. That is: satisfy the requirements of every platform you build on top of, and fill in the rest by creating your own infrastructure and audience.

I believe in common spaces, and like I said I am glad that if you drill down far enough you will find distributed* protocols that aren't opinionated about your content. Feel free to start there and build an ecosystem and audience - that is how the world discovers who wants to participate in a particular kind of dialogue.

The * is that of course central censorship exists at the Telecom and government levels. I (directly) support distributed private protocols to ensure that people can choose to find the information they want as easily as possible. But doing so emphatically doesn't and shouldn't guarantee you an audience.

>> satisfy the requirements of every platform you build on top of

This sounds simple, until you realise the requirements aren't well-defined, or that the definitions can be changed arbitrarily (and retroactively) by the platforms.

No argument, and it wasn't meant to sound simple -- just depends on how deeply you are aligned with the goals of the platform. I agree from painful experience that platforms can be capricious and even disingenuous. But that's also part of how they adapt to a changing world and business. Still boils down to: nobody said it would be easy (to get others' attention).

"We're shuttering our API" (which kills your business model) is very concerning if you're the business that's just been torpedoed.

"We don't want your sort on our platform because reasons" ought to be concerning at a much wider level (and not just to the sort that apparently aren't wanted on the platform).

People keep saying this "ought to be concerning". What I see are mainstream commercial conveniences refusing to be complicit in spreading bigoted messages that have gotten people killed. Why am I meant to be surprised by that? If I ran a hosting provider I sure as shit wouldn't let that happen either.

We can all think of things we would ban if we ran hosting providers. We all know there's a line. Why are we pretending there isn't?

>> spreading bigoted messages

"Bigoted messages"? Would that be content that's

* against the law

and/or

* against the upstream AUP/TOS

and/or

* "someone said something that offended someone else"

>> that have gotten people killed

Not wishing to pour more gasoline on the raging fire, but ... source?

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're asking.

> …just depends on how deeply you are aligned with the goals of the platform.

Here is the problem though: The platform of platforms, then, is politics, if we want to keep biology out of the picture.

And the thing with politics these days is, that the state, as a system, is compulsive. I cannot leave the state, I am not free to do so.

In other words, the most underlying platform is not of my choice and therefore it is not as simple as you are making it out to be.

I like your thinking framework and agree with it.

It doesn’t sound any more complicated given that. “I had no idea they would have a problem hosting my anti-Semitic writings or calls for violence, because the rules aren’t well defined, and they’re constantly changing, it’s so arbitrary!” is not convincing at all.

>You are mistaking "good faith" for satisfying others' entitlement

The spirit of your complaint here is "there should be a reasonably easy path for me to widely distribute my message without getting the rug pulled out from under me".

There is a reasonably easy path to do exactly that. But it has dependencies, and certain people are manipulating these dependencies in any which way they can to control online discourse. And you're cheering them on, pretending that not publishing someone's article is exactly the same as closing someone's bank account on hearsay.

And yet I am 100% sure that if someone started following you around and pressuring companies to close your accounts and stop any dealings with you, you would immediately decry it as grave injustice and invent some reason why it's "different".

>I believe in common spaces

In hypothetical ones, that don't exist.

>Feel free to start there and build an ecosystem and audience - that is how the world discovers who wants to participate in a particular kind of dialogue.

So, what exactly in your arguments binds them, preventing you from saying the exact same things about this hypothetical zero-layer public space when it gets sabotaged? Nothing, really. You will just say "you're still free to build another one, somehow".

After some thought, here is what really matters. The same people who make demands on companies to effect deplatforming are the ones who post about "freedom of association" for those companies when the deed is done. This is not a real argument, just an excuse.

When PayPal start banning clients based on their activity outside of monetary transactions, PayPal effectively condemns certain points of view. Which might sound sensible at first, if the views are questionable, but it also implies that not banning an account is a way of endorsing the holder. And just like that, you arrive at the conclusion that PayPal and other service providers are responsible for the moral quality of all their clients, and not just can but have to ban clients who transgress. How's that for freedom of association?

I love how you're treating customers and employees petitioning a company, and then the company taking their concerns seriously, like it's some kind of bullying conspiracy. Never mind when a platform manager like Matt Prince [1] goes out of his way to make it clear he is autocratically representing his own judgement, after grappling with the very real moral tradeoffs involved in excluding someone.

PayPal publicly condemned certain points of view long before Gab: prohibiting "the promotion of hate, violence, racial intolerance or the financial exploitation of a crime" was part of the TOS when Gab signed up, as was the fact that the definition of those things was up to PayPal. They don't seem to share you're opinion that non-fraudulent monetary transactions are the only aspect of their business.

And as far as anyone having to ban clients who transgress, when did that happen? As we've tossed around in other threads, you can loudly and proudly make not-banning the core of your business. But you're expressing a personal priority for diverse expression (or at least the type of expression you make welcome, c.f. Gab's Pepe) that other people might not share, or might not prioritize the same way you do. Freedom of association means you make your choice and other people make theirs.

[1] https://blog.cloudflare.com/why-we-terminated-daily-stormer/

>I love how you're treating customers and employees petitioning a company, and then the company taking their concerns seriously, like it's some kind of bullying conspiracy

This attempt to frame deplatforming as something enacted by concerned stakeholders is out of touch with reality. It usually involves partisan press, activist organizations and whipped-up online crowds with no stake in the platform they're trying to affect. It takes about 10 seconds of web searching to find all three in Gab's case. @deplatfromhare and so on.

>Never mind when a platform manager like Matt Prince [1] goes out of his way to make it clear he is autocratically representing his own judgement, after grappling with the very real moral trade-offs involved in excluding someone.

Why are you switching attention to a completely different incident all of a sudden? Are you claiming that this single example disproves many other instances of deplatforming occur due to blatantly obvious external pressure?

Speaking of Cloudflare:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cloudflare-and-its-free-speech...

"Tech companies have cut ties with the extremist-friendly website Gab, but digital security company Cloudflare appears to be standing by the site."

It is absolutely laughable to say there is no bullying going on when the press is fully of articles that point fingers and draw spurious correlations.

>PayPal publicly condemned certain points of view long before Gab: prohibiting "the promotion of hate, violence, racial intolerance or the financial exploitation of a crime" was part of the TOS when Gab signed up, as was the fact that the definition of those things was up to PayPal.

My post above talks specifically about "banning clients based on their activity outside of monetary transactions". PayPal TOS apply only to such transactions:

  You may not use the PayPal service for activities that [...] relate to transactions 
  involving [...] the promotion of hate, violence

They don't say anything about moral character of account holders. And yet people use Twitter screenshots as "proof" that Gab's deplatforming was justified, endorsing the crazy notion that PayPal should take such things into account.

If this isn't about the owner, then it is about the website. So the question is whether hosting hateful content of your users does by itself constitute "promotion of hate". Considering that PayPal does business with Cloudflare the answer seems to be a resounding "no".

By all accounts, this does not look like a consistent application of TOS.

>Freedom of association means you make your choice and other people make theirs.

That is not what it means and what you described here is not freedom, but law of the jungle.

Like I said above, the only context in which deplatformers engage in this faux-libertarianism is after they've gotten their way. The moment the tactic stops working or applies to them, they switch back to moralistic arguments or demands for regulation.

Moreover, this argument was initially used to advocate for deletion of specific content on normal websites. Then it was used for banning individuals from large communication platforms. Now the exact same thing is being said about simultaneous multi-company service termination for a messaging platform with hundreds of thousands of users. As if those things are logically equivalent scenarios.

It it not a consistent position, but mere convenient nonsense.

> It usually involves partisan press, activist organizations and whipped-up online crowds with no stake in the platform they're trying to affect.

For someone claiming the moral high ground enfranchising speech, you seem pretty free basing arguments on knowing that certain voices should be ignored. Fortunately, we can skip the boring discussion about the character of different activist groups because it's the listener's opinion that matters -- in this case, the platforms who thought these folks (or their ideas) were worth listening to.

> Speaking of Cloudflare...

I brought up Prince as evidence that platform managers are making their own decisions, not being bullied by crowds. Framing them as victims belittles their agency, ignores their responsibility, and perpetuates this BS chain of victimhood that is required by your arguments in order to make deplatforming look like a conspiracy rather than a big swath of society trying to spend less time with a few jerks.

And of course Cloudflare (or FreeDNS) have the same right to provide services to Gab that others did to deny it. Digressing for a second, I'm personally glad that Prince et al. hold a steeper standard for cutting service than Facebook or even PayPal. DDOS'ing is an infringement of freedom of speech in a way that deplatforming isn't, and right now we're all depending on a very few companies like Cloudflare to be the equivalent of a police force that maintains any notion of commons.

> ...By all accounts, this does not look like a consistent application of TOS.

PayPal felt Gab itself was getting paid, through PayPal, to run a platform that promoted hate speech. That's related to the transaction, and related to the TOS. You can disagree with them, and people can post potentially irrelevant screenshots, but both are sideshow.

> the only context in which deplatformers engage in this faux-libertarianism is after they've gotten their way

Yet again, you're resorting to ad-hominem about the long-term behavior of a group you're barely bothering to define. You don't know anything about me outside this conversation. Lots of different people support or are fine with deplatforming, and many of us also care about the quality of the commons on which the deplatformed can continue to exercise their speech.

But instead of yet another conversation about which broadly defined online group says the most dumb things, why don't you put forward a concrete vision of what your definition of free speech is? It seems to me like it involves something like a right to an audience (sincerely, how is that not a right to force people to interact with to you?). Or perhaps some sort of protected class situation, where you want to clearly define the difference between "passively" enforcing TOS and singling someone out (what would that look like?).

> why don't you put forward a concrete vision of what your definition of free speech is?

Because that is not the correct response to someone who casually describes eight hundred thousand users as "a few jerks". Or someone who smugly dismisses a well-reasoned article by saying the author "beats an ocean with a stick". If you insist on promoting gross misrepresentations of reality, all you will get in response is well-deserved pushback. The ideas and constructive suggestions will flow to people who actually listen.

Got it, seems like you plan to keep misrepresenting my words instead of explaining your own. Nobody deplatformed 800k Gab users and I didn't call them jerks (I'm sure there are all kinds). They deplatformed Gab's jerk founder/operators who specifically marketed to dangerous crazies, including by bragging about profiting from a tragedy. Anyone who has a problem with that has every right to sever ties. Gab's users have alternative homes on 4chan and Reddit, or the next platform which prioritizes diverse expression without marketing to hate so actively that upstream providers stop doing business with them.

As for the article, I obviously disagree that it was well reasoned, but I regret implying that the author is foolish. The point of the ocean metaphor is that you can't and shouldn't try to stop people from making their own choices about whom to associate with - which is what you are doing when you say all views are entitled to an audience. I've dug in with you on this thread because I think that "free speech = free audience" is a potentially attractive fallacy that risks degrading both individual rights and tractable notions of free speech.

But at this point it looks like we're done talking to each other, and nobody else cares about this thread. Nuff said.

When people complain about being deplatformed, they're just saying "the platforms that accept me aren't popular enough".

What happens when you or those who share your opinions don't get accepted by the popular platforms?

Hopefully they'd find something more productive to do than complain on the internet....

...Actually, that may mean they get more involved in politics, so that's kind of scary.

There are already a large number of fights over this. And the solution is the same: complain and hope for the court of public opinion to go your way.

E.g. breastfeeding on Facebook, lgbt content generally, the drone strike reporting app on iOS, sex work adverts after FOSTA etc.

Then there's the illegal stuff like fraud websites, ddos control domains, and anything to do with copyright infringement.

It's noticeable which people only show up to defend far right speech on the internet.

But gab isn't far right. As I understood it, it's just a Twitter alternative. It doesn't make it inherently left or right.

Many people pointed towards lgbt content being taken down and said: "Look, you guys brought this on yourselves." The implication being that some vocal lgbt people were pushing for censorship of other people, but it ended up being used against themselves.

I think the solution is to require platforms over a certain size to allow all of these things. Platforms are not held responsible for many things due to being platforms. The government could amend those rules and say that if they want to be protected under those rules and they are larger than X then they should allow freedom of expression/speech.

Platforms such as Twitter, reddit, and Facebook are already treated by many like public spaces. Perhaps this would fall in line with their.

Gab's frog logo is not a coincidence. The network was created by people who believed they were being censored by the left.

> Many people pointed towards lgbt content being taken down and said: "Look, you guys brought this on yourselves."

Nah, LGBT content being taken down or deemed obscene despite not being explicit or pornographic is the default state of society and has only recently (past 20 years) been more permissive.

> Nah, LGBT content being taken down or deemed obscene despite not being explicit or pornographic is the default state of society and has only recently (past 20 years) been more permissive.

This is true and you might think that recent history would give the left pause about calling for increased censorship, but that does not appear to be the case.

Twitter, reddit, facebook, hacker news aren't the public street. They are someone else's public meeting hall that you may rent out for the small price of contributing useful dialog and not being an asshole. The fact that they don't allow all comers is a feature not a bug because some would be patrons are hateful vandals whose presence is liable to discourage your more useful patrons from visiting.

The public street is the broader net where everyone can have a voice and decentralization is probably a more useful strategy. If you feel strongly that free speech on the internet is essential don't ask facebook to tolerate deplorables while others demand it kick them off.

When the deplorables kick puppies and blow up children you will certainly lose the argument.

Instead consider building or contributing to decentralized communications that are challenging to block under the ideal that a platform where its hard to block deplorables from communicating with one another is also free of interference for more savory communications.

>> Twitter, reddit, facebook, hacker news aren't the public street.

I'd say these are the online equivalents of pseudo-public spaces[0], "[spaces] that seem public but are actually owned by corporations"

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jul/24/revealed-pseu...

I'm sorry, this is just false. Gab is white supremacist Twitter. Its founder was kicked out of YC for harassing minorities. Its (verified) Twitter account has been repeatedly screenshot promoting white supremacist and anti-Semitic messages. Virtually all of Gab's users are either white supremacists or right-wing conspiracy theorists --- even the account that posts inspirational landscape photos turns out to be a white supremacist on Gab.

Gab very much wants you to believe they're just a Twitter alternative with no intrinsic slant (though they've been overt about being a home for nationalists in their own materials). But that's just a grift.

what the person above me said: SPOT ON!!!

"It's noticeable which people only show up to defend far right speech on the internet."

> Gab would like to use Stripe or Paypal because they are trusted payment providers, but those networks felt they'd stop being trusted payment providers if they let Gab stay on.

What does that even mean "stop being trusted payment providers"? If their API works and payments go through, that seems trustworthy to me.

I assume it means the mass of people might stop using those services (like paypal) because they don't want to support sites that talk about racist things like happens with gab. gab is different than say reddit to me because while reddit might have some people posting racist things or threatning to kill someone or rape them, but reddit will ban them or the group - but allowing for that kind of speech ends up appearing to be the main reason for a site like gab to exist.

Wells Fargo has laundered billions of dollars for drug cartels, yet people have not stopped using them: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/al-capone-meet-wells...

If people can't get off their asses to stop working with a company that has worked with organizations responsible for thousands of deaths, I don't think support of Gab is going to drive anyone's payment platform decisions.

So you think somebody else should make that business decision, rather than the actual company involved? Who would that be?

People still use the international financial system and the banking system in particular even though they have done and still do business with very dodgy people. Afaik HSBC is still alive and kicking even though it has helped some Mexican cartels launder their money, we’re talking about monsters who like to skin their victims alive.

I'd love to see your equivalent ancestor in the 1640s when Milton published the Areopagitica.^1

> Reading this polemic is liketh watching someone did beat the ocean with a stick. What wouldst behold liketh for an initiative contra-contra-press-freedom to succeedeth? All ideas havest equal access to all presses? Just the large enou ones? The objective is so po'rly formed, t's not coequal wrong.

> A Land's identity and ability to attracteth God's Grace art determin'd by the activities those gents accepteth & cultivateth, not vice versa. The Papists did want to print on Protestant English Presses because it madeth it easier to selleth thy grandparents heresies & indulgences, but Protestant English Presses hath felt leaving those folk on maketh it a lodging families (and yon grandparents) willst not visiteth. The abbots of Shrewsbury wouldst liketh to useth the Bank of England because those gents art trust'd payment provid'rs, but those bankers hath felt those servicing said monastery would halt their intellection of being said trust payment provid'rs if it be true that those gents allow'd Papists to stayeth on.

> And there be plenty of reasoneth to bethink those gents're right: permissive Lands existeth and work (the Savages in the colonies et. al), those gents just attracteth not the same Salvation as Proper English Lands. At which hour people complaineth about being censored, those gents're just declaring "the Lands that accepteth me aren't popular enow". I'm fain our World is enow of a Terra Incognita that many Lands art broadly accessible -- but nobody owes thee an audience on English soils.

---

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areopagitica

Wow, that is an edudite reference and a flatteringly thorough translation. But, taken seriously, the comparison of anti-deplatformers (can y'all make up a catchy name?) to Milton is facile. Milton was fighting for the right to distribute his work, you're fighting for the right to be distributed by others.

I'm fully against forceably preventing folks from speaking, and support of investing in protocols so that others can voluntarily associate with them. But they can get their own damn printing press.

How are those not synonymous in this day and age? The point of freedom of expression is not inhibiting the right to an audience or explicitly interferring in the marketplace of ideas in civil society. Saying that Facebook, Twitter, Paypal, et. al face any actual injury or diminution in service as a result of hosting pernicious speech is absurd, especially in light of the role of Chapter 47 in the history of the freedom of the Internet.^1

And let's be clear, this isn't a case of the use of a service depriving other more worthy parties of using said service. It is Shaw's comparison between apples and ideas.^2 And it is attempting to tear down a universal principle to make it accountable to shifting tastes and moral fads which makes everyone guilty eventually.

---

1 - https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230

2 - “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

>Saying that Facebook, Twitter, Paypal, et. al face any actual injury or diminution in service as a result of hosting pernicious speech is absurd,

It isn't absurd because an example of such an injury happened last year at YouTube with the "adpocalypse" demonetization debacle.[1]

- Various uploaders put objectionable content on Youtube. Google/Youtube doesn't censor or filter it out.

- Viewers complain loudly about it and threaten to boycott the major advertisers that ran ads against it (e.g. Proctor & Gamble, etc)

- P&G and other advertisers abandon Youtube and Google loses millions[2]. The innocent Youtube channel creators who created mainstream content also lost AdSense reveneue because they got caught up in the stricter content crackdown.

- Some advertisers finally return. E.g. P&G after one year.[3]

Facebook and Twitter can't realistically be an "any and all free speech including hate speech" platform because they are beholden to advertisers. They have the same platform funding dependence as Youtube/Google.

Those social media websites are not in the lower layer of the TCPIP stack such as "common carriers" ISPs like Comcast and Verizon. Those "dumb pipes" telecom businesses are less sensitive to whether a TCPIP packet is routing bytes for hate speech vs pictures of cats.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_by_Google#Advertise...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=biggest+advertisers+abandon+...

[3] https://www.tubefilter.com/2018/04/20/pg-resumes-youtube-spe...

> What would it look like for an "anti-deplatforming" initiative to succeed?

Casting mere absence of de-platforming efforts as an initiative definitely gets the golden medal for mental gymnastics in this entire discussion.

>A platform's identity and ability to attract an audience are determined by the activities they accept / cultivate, not vice versa.

It's interesting how you don't factor in the actual value being provided. As if the only thing that can drive people to use a service is whether the company bans the "right" people.

Also, since when does a DNS provider or credit card processor suddenly need an "identity"?

>Gab would like to use Stripe or Paypal because they are trusted payment providers, but those networks felt they'd stop being trusted payment providers if they let Gab stay on.

Users trust PayPal because it moves money in a predictable way without leaking credit card info. This has nothing to do with some unrelated vendor using the system, as long as that vendor isn't scamming people.

Are you seriously advocating baking activism? Do you understand how unstable the entire society will become if more organizations follow this suit in more cases?

>And there's plenty of reason to think they're right: super-permissive platforms exist and work (4chan et al.), they just don't attract the same broad audience.

4chan as opposed to what? Most platforms that are currently at the top of that food chain rose there by being permissive and they're changing their mottos only now, when they feel they can get away with it. Reddit and Twitter used to be staunch advocates of free speech when they actually needed to attract users, instead of relying on the network effect. But that's not even particularly relevant to this discussion.

>When people complain about being deplatformed, they're just saying "the platforms that accept me aren't popular enough". I'm glad our internet is enough of a distributed commons that many platforms are broadly accessible -- but nobody owes you an audience at the most popular ones.

Gab was a social media platform. Their audience wasn't provided to them by PayPal, GoDaddy or Azure. Your argument makes no sense in this context.

Interesting comment. I think you are right but what OP is predicting is the inevitably of the overton window being narrowed on these services via the mechanisms described. This narrowing will lead to more and more services being preformed outside the mainstream over time.

When people complain about being deplatformed, they're just saying "the platforms that accept me aren't popular enough".

This is perfect.

No, it's crazy. In that case, ideas aren't being judged as ideas. It's the same sort of "technically not" dishonesty that Noam Chomsky called out in Manufacturing Consent. Western media did indeed cover events not favorable to the US/Nato side. But it was covered in back pages, in the plainest language. Technically, it's not censorship in the same way as Pravda airbrushed people out of photos was censorship. However, it had pretty much the same effect.

I thought the media distortion was bad in the 80's/90's. Now I realize I didn't realize how much worse it could get.

I’m sure Radio Television Libre des Mille Collines only wanted their ideas to be seen as ideas, just like all others!

We should let the crazies advertise themselves as crazies. Bad ideas should be exposed so they can be argued down. Suppressing ideas instead of arguing just creates a Streisand Effect entrenching them. There is another comment here, where someone analyzes the Weimar Republic's actions as doing just this. The Judiciary and Law enforcement seemed biased towards one side, which increased support for the other. The legislative government seemed to support the other side, which increased support for their opponents.

The lesson of history is clear: You shouldn't let rule of law break down. Media and the judiciary should remain impartial and not push an agenda. Suppressing expression while letting the extremists commit violence in the streets just makes things far worse.

I don't think you caught the reference. Maybe plug that name into Wikipedia and revisit your argument.

I'm seriously interested in what you thought of that argument after you looked up Radio Mille Collines.

"It received support from the government-controlled Radio Rwanda, which initially allowed it to transmit using their equipment. ... Critics claim that the Rwandan government fostered the creation of RTLM as "Hate Radio", to circumvent the fact they had committed themselves to a ban against "harmful radio propaganda" in the UN's March 1993 joint communiqué in Dar es Salaam. ... During the Genocide, the RTLM acted as a source for propaganda by inciting hatred and violence against Tutsis, against Hutus who were for the peace accord, against Hutus who married Tutsis, and by advocating the annihilation of all Tutsis in Rwanda. ... An estimated 10% of all the violence within the Rwandan Genocide is resulted from the hateful radio transmissions sent out from RTLM."

Interesting. Something I might say: given that the reigning government was supporting this stuff, as well as an animated and violent mob from the general population; and given that the "deplatforming" under discussion is done via social pressure, corporate action, and/or conceivably government intervention: how would any kind of mechanism for "deplatforming" have done anything to stifle this RTLM? If anything, such a mechanism would have been directed at dissenting voices.

"One of the major reasons that RTLM was so successful in communication was because other forms of news sources such as televisions and newspapers were not able to be as popularized because of lack of resources." Apparently there was a dissenting radio station, but Wiki says "Radio Muhabura had a much smaller audience, probably because it broadcast in English instead of Kinyarwanda", which is unfortunate. So I guess there was no need for the government to deplatform any dissenting voices, because there weren't any significant ones. Therefore, one could argue that the Rwandan genocide is an illustration of what might happen if the ruling party+mob manage to deplatform everyone who disagrees with them. :-)

> You shouldn't let rule of law break down. Media and the judiciary should remain impartial and not push an agenda

What are you calling a breakdown of the rule of law here? Which law is supposed to decide who Facebook is required republish?

What are you calling the media here? In this case people are writing their own content, and the folks being deplatformed definitely and unapologetically had an agenda.

What would impartial possibly mean? We are talking about publication of opinions, not journalism or science.

As for being "exposed and argued down", there will always be folks who won't stop an atrocious argument. They didn't sign up for a productive synthesis of ideas, and nobody else signed up for their boorishness and abuse, so it's up to the listener to walk away - as these platforms are doing. That's not suppression of expression, it's standing up for the value of your own time and community. If there is a backlash, maybe it will be more constructive than the original trolling was.

No, they are complaining about mistreatment on the basis of opinion. Minority rights are important.

“Gab would like to use Stripe or Paypal because they are trusted payment providers, but those networks felt they'd stop being trusted payment providers if they let Gab stay on.”

No. Surely not. Those networks felt they’d stop being cool or PC or untargetted by hordes of angry people, or something. But being seen as a trusted payment provider? That’s not threatened in the least, except by kicking people off. So he’s right. They did the one thing that hurt their image in the one place that matters for them.

That’s not to say that businesses should only care about the bottom line, but you’ve definitely got this backward.

So, you think these businesses took an existential risk with their reputation for the ephemeral benefit of looking cool? You are seriously underestimating the acumen of the folks who each went from zero to critically central providers in a cutthroat industry in less than 10 years.

Stripe/Paypal's constituents include their employees, businesses, and end users, all of whom have lots of choices about which network to align with. Their job is to project both a service and identity that align those folks to maximize the value of their network effects. They decided that the wedge of people who are worried about deplatforming (either Gab specifically or in some holistic way) is smaller than the wedge of people who would rather not be in the same ecosystem as Gab. I seriously doubt you know those audiences better than them, but if you're right then you have a great idea for your own fast-growing business.

BTW, the above doesn't have to be interpreted some cynical, 5-dimensional chess game analyzing user segments. Individual and brand identities and ethics are part of how people make purchasing/participation decisions, whether they are calculated or sincere. Sometimes a part of what makes people and their companies succeed really includes values they articulate that don't seem like part of the core product. You may dismiss those ethics as chasing some sort of trivial coolness-or-PC-ness, but enough other people take them seriously to move a lot of the world's money and time around. If it's tempting to dismiss that chunk of peoples' motivation as some sort of NPC ignorance (edit: apologies for putting words in your mouth if not), you might actually be defending your lack of effort to understand and adapt.

“So, you think these businesses took an existential risk with their reputation for the ephemeral benefit of looking cool?“

Well, yes and no. As you pointed out, they are the 800lb gorilla in the room now. Sort of like FB and Twitter. Others have pointed out that Twitter, for example, started out championing free speech, and that’s part of how they grew to their huge size. Now they have no need to grow in that way, and staying that way can do damage. But beyond potential damage to their platform, you also have the fact that they can afford to lose money now to stay “cool” in a way they couldn’t before.

This is somewhat similar, but we’re talking about a company for money transfer, not communication.

Google grew by saying they wouldn’t be evil. The fact that they are being evil now poses very little short or medium term danger to them.

Long term? Yes. I think they chose short-term profit that will come with a cost later on. Not necessarily in people leaving. (They are the 800lb gorilla, after all.) Maybe in regulation or who knows what.

Having said that, I’m now thinking about other options. As is EasyDNS.

Consumer rights protection/anti-monopoly law.

“A platform's identity and ability to attract an audience are determined by the activities they accept / cultivate, not vice versa.”

I think this is a really good point, but it’s precisely why platforms that are content neutral are optimal for creative and productive exchange of ideas.

Reality is a platform. The universe allows all us atoms to zip around. If it consciously tried to optimize based on shifting morals then it would not work well.

In a little while, we’ll be digital and “deplatforming” will be a form of death sentence. So, I’d like to get used to letting fringe people be fringe and having the authorities get involved when laws are broken.

It’s not about “owing you an audience” it’s about equal access to basic infrastructure needed for a free society to interact. This is sort of net neutrality related as our comms need to function like title I carriers in the US where they just provide dumb infrastructure. The last thing I want is to have to pick my DNS server based on political ideology. Does the future get to the point where there’s a “No Nazi GPL?”

The way to fix people to stop being nazis/isis is not to make their blog stop working, but to engage and surround them with empathy. And then maybe their kids will be ok. There’s a lot of 100 year old wars out there where people escalate without resolution.

The basic infrastructure is there regardless.of whether you can access the internet. People will still have eyes and ears and can walk to each other, just like they always do.

please show me the content neutral platforms on the internet that are optimal for creative and productive exchanges of ideas.

4chan is good for the memes, but i'm not sure what else.

It mostly sounds like a truism to me, but I'd like to be proved wrong.

Making the Nazis blog stop working CAN help us contain their crap. Propaganda works full stop. People perceive what is normal and correct based on repetition and social proof.

If you want to sell your brand of hammer you spend millions putting it in front of everyone's faces in ads on tv, in magazines, if you can organically by getting people to talk about it among themselves. This last is better because it seems more authentic.

You do this because the biggest barrier is not getting someone to pick between foo and bar brand hammers its to consider foo a legitimate choice when they need a hammer so that they will spend their finite time learning about foo or their finite money on it.

People spend billions on this industry because it works whether you're selling hammers or hate. Imagining what works to sell hammers doesn't work to sell hate is a lack of imagination.

Incidentally the basic infrastructure to facilitate communication is dns and http not facebook pages. The sooner people learn that the better.

The question is if there is alternative and if this thing applies consistently. If I want to create a club which only accept men or whites it will not be allowed and there was the famous case with the bakery that refused to make a cake for a gay wedding. The supreme court in the US actually sided with the bakery but then there is the question of alternative and whether it is a monopoly. The bakery was certainly not a monopoly but access to a payment system could be completely blocked for people with certain view and that's a bit worrying. We don't allow it with certain other critical utilities and we should ask ourself if some of those services are not critical utilities. I feel also very worried that when it comes to people views the people who decide which voice will be heard and which not is some tech company manager. The idea of the first amendment was that the government will not suppress speech because the government was the one with the power to suppress it but these days it is few unelected people in power position in a very specific industry and location of the US with a very obvious point of view and set of believes. So although I don't like certain opinions I like less the precedence we have here and the power given to very few people that I can't even influence by voting. It is like the city square fell under the control of some private company, companies like facebook and twitter are the modern city square and the first amendment should apply to it the same way it applies to any other public place.

This is very very difficult to read. Instead of writing extemporaneously as one thinks it would profit you to break your thoughts into paragraphs. A few minutes spent editing the end result, trimming the fat, and organizing what remains could profit innumerable readers.

I believe that the public interest is that the broader web be accessible to all comers. That means that it ought to it ought to be possible for information and money to pass between interested parties. This however does not mean that individual players like facebook have to help nazis spread hate. Facebook isn't the public street but you too can play there with your own server.

If this becomes challenging because registrars, hosts, colocation providers don't want your money or your hate the logical solution is decentralization not forcing facebook to give nazis a place to congregate.

Bitcoin is an unmediated exchange of money, stuff like tor hidden services are an unmediated exchange of ideas. This idea could certainly be expanded and made more user friendly if a substantial group of people felt like their ideas weren't welcome on the broader net.

If this isn't possible because the only people who can't play are a tiny minority of hateful idiots then it seems like the system is working.

I wonder how many of the people arguing for the good of deplatforming have, in other circumstances, argued that internet access is a human right. Also, those denying that internet access is a human right decrying deplatforming. It’s interesting the interaction between those two ideas.

Internet access is not the same as forcing somebody else to host your content. I think most people can tell the difference.

I was unaware that having access to the internet meant a one-way pipe.

I guess you’ve got a right to read email, but not write it; read wikipedia, but not contribute; etc.

> Gab would like to use Stripe or Paypal because they are trusted payment providers, but those networks felt they'd stop being trusted payment providers if they let Gab stay on.

That's an extreme simplification that borders on deceptive. No one is going to stop using Paypal and Stripe because they support a platform. Maybe if they were processing payments for ISIS, but Alex Jones isn't ISIS.

No, Paypal and Stripe were given orders from above and this is them carrying out those orders.

> I'm glad our internet is enough of a distributed commons that many platforms are broadly accessible -- but nobody owes you an audience at the most popular ones.

This would only make sense if there wasn't an active campaign to shut out smaller platforms in order to control the ecosystem. What is the point of making a sound if no one is around to hear it?

Saying people should just change platforms is like saying people should just change internet companies. Sure, HughesNet might be an alternative to the only worthwhile provider in my area, but you can't say with a straight face that the experience is comparable. You're dismissing the problems other people face in getting their voices heard because it doesn't directly affect you. It's easy to take the high road with the deplatforming debate but only if you ignore the bigger picture.

> No one is going to stop using Paypal and Stripe because they support a platform.

This is objectively false. I would stop supporting a business based on who they support. I have done so many times. From web services to food services, and everything in between.

They're a payment processor. If you believe in a non-discriminatory economy, where anyone with a legal, useful service or skill should be able to collect payment for it, then you simply can't have this position.

Payment processors must follow the law like anyone else and have no obligation to process payments for illegal services, but we can't start mass boycotting them based on the clients they legally do business with. That's a huge incentive for discriminatory practices which are at the behest of the mob.

I disagree. I doubt we'll get to any sort of shared position via internet forum, I was simply pointing out that the parent comment was objectively false.

Lots of people don't accept your premise that white supremacists deserve FRAND terms for access to commercial hosting providers. I'd go so far as to describe it as the mainstream opinion. So: they can quite simply have that position.

This isn't an issue of what should be legal. It's an ethical issue.

If it's ethical, it's even more baffling why this would be a problem; providing services to enable and amplify white nationalism is clearly unethical.

Censorship is unethical because it's a giant slippery slope of subjectivity. Are we really calling Alex Jones a white supremacist?

Censorship is unethical because it's a giant slippery slope of subjectivity

What does that actually mean? How would you translate it into any sort of policy short of complete and absolute non-regulation of speech (or, really, anything if you just pick something other than 'censorship' as a scare-word).

As to Jones,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alex_Jones#White_genocide

"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak for me."

— Martin Niemöller

Alex Jones is a paranoid lunatic, misinterpreting a very real assault on demographics like the straight white male as full-on white genocide, as well as many unrelated issues like immigration, but that doesn't really make him a white supremacist. Being afraid that your demographic is being targeted doesn't make you a supremacist. There are many minority demographics right now who validly feel that way. Calling for the extermination of other races would make him a white supremacist. Alex Jones being a white supremacist is a false narrative perpetuated by the informal group of gatekeepers trying to silence his platform.

> How would you translate it into any sort of policy short of complete and absolute non-regulation of speech?

That's false absolutism. You cannot dismiss censorship as a "scare-word". It's scary for a damn good reason. Right now they're only coming for the socialists. Soon they will come for someone you care about, and then I wonder if you will still be so readily apologetic for the information gatekeepers of the new era.

Sweet, let's engage in Learned Quote Battle!

"How now, how now, chop-logic! What is this?"

--William Shakespeare

a very real assault on demographics like the straight white male

Oh! Never mind, I'll see myself out.

Try to have a debate in any moderately left forum about topics like feminism or economics without having some people come out of the woodwork with character assassination and insults, disregarding your opinion as a priviliged cis white male. It's a real thing and it's ridiculous. I get told all the time I'm not allowed to participate in conversations based on my sex, sexual orientation, and skin color.

I feel like I need to correct you on a couple of things.

People being mean to you in a forum is not evidence of "a very real assault on demographics like the straight white male".

You don't have to be a genocidal maniac to be a white supremacist.

'White genocide' is not something someone yelled in the heat of the moment - it's an old neo-Nazi term and it is obviously intended to justify extremism - after all, what response is inappropriate if you're a victim of genocide?

The people Niemöller was talking about faced imprisonment, torture and murder. The oppression the owners of Gab face involves putting on pants and driving some servers to the nearest colo facility.

Aristotle was not Belgian.

The central message of Buddhism is not "Every man for himself."

And the London Underground is not a political movement.

What an incredible strawman.

'strawman' you're going to have to look up yourself since I already did all the other ones.

You lack quite a bit of self-awareness.

"Calling for the extermination of other races would make him a white supremacist."

It seems to me like you're ignoring the plain definitions of simple words in constructing this statement. Wanting to preserve a dominant position in society (which is what it sounds like Jones' concern is) makes one a supremacist. Wanting to eliminate other groups makes one something else, perhaps an "eliminationist" or "exterminationist". They are distinct. You can be both, but you can also be the former without being the latter. Assuming Jones is not an exterminationist, that is entirely consistent with him being a supremacist who either has scruples or doesn't feel the situation is desperate enough yet.

People who feel threatened may reasonably speculate he (or others who are sympathetic to supremacist views) might become an exterminationist if the situation appeared more desperate. That's neither a "true" nor "false" narrative, but a plausible yet uncertain prediction.

You could be right about that. I'm not really here to defend Alex Jones' position. I honestly don't know enough about the dude and what he wants. However I will defend his right to a platform as long as he is operating within legal bounds.

Right now we are having a national conversation about the right of an ISP to hold a monopoly over its customers. We don't think it's fair that the only worthwhile ISP in an area can charge tiered amounts for different levels of internet access.

The same conversation is just beginning with regard to platform rights. It's one thing to secure your right to connect to the internet. But we need to secure the right for people to connect to you.

"Right to a platform". What does that mean? Can you generate an answer that isn't morally equivalent to a demand for FRAND terms for Alex Jones? Remember, FRAND is an exceptional case in commerce; it's (for instance) what you do to get your patented IPR into a global standard. It's not the expected default.

If you're familiar with Jesse Singal's journalistic work I think it's straightforward for us to consider what was meant above there.

The question is of "Fascism" Scope Creep, no? Accepting that big tech companies can decide what is and isn't ethical to "amplify" is going to quash some issues where all sides need to be heard and communicate with each other, into a one-dimensional conception of whatever the most popular liberal people think is over the line into "fascism" at a given historical moment. With millions of dollars a day of US military aid going to Israel, for one thing, and state officials pushing to ban boycotts explicitly in law, I don't think it's silly to worry about this.

I'll say I honestly don't know if Stripe and hosting sites dropping white nationalists sets such a uniformally bad precedent. The material reality of it is pretty good. I'm also not going to treat objectors who talk about free speech like children.

I’m pretty familiar with Singal and doubt he has much of a problem with Gab getting booted from Godaddy. Want me to ask him?

I wasn't really invoking his opinions on Gab specifically, but I would be curious to know them. My point was more like: What happens to journalists like Singal when any writing deviating from to the most mainstream of progressive frameworks of thought endangers the resources/finances of the outlet publishing it? Have you Googled his full name?

Yeah, we follow each other on Twitter. I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here, but I'll ask what he thinks about Gab.

Gab isn't a site that respectfully questions orthodoxy regarding trans issues. It's white supremacist Twitter. If it were me in his shoes, I'd find the comparison a little offensive, and also feel like it affirmed and amplified my critics.

My point is exactly the opposite of saying the two are comparable...

The idea is that when Electronic Intifada's webhost or their donation processor or Twitter decides they want some positive PR, more and more they can safely say "It isn't a website that respectfully questions orthodoxy regarding US foreign policy. It's anti-Semitic abuse." That doesn't mean I think EI and Gab are comparable, it means I think other people with connections and power think they are, or it benefits them to normalize the comparison.

Isn't it a little ironic that your example of a problematic counterpart for Gab.ai is itself a site in part dedicated to boycotts?

A boycott of a country with a government and military killing unarmed protesters and carrying out other human rights violations?

I don't know that this exchange is going places right now... For something positive, I appreciate all you all are doing with the Great Slate.

I am sympathetic to the BDS movement! I'm just saying, you're suggesting that commercial entities could use commercial coercion against Electric Intifada, which is itself an organization that enthusiastically seeks to use commercial coercion against supporters of Israel.

Like, I think, most people, I'm a believer in boycotts. You bring the pressure you have to bear on the causes you believe in, and the most potent pressure most people have at their disposal is commercial. It's also itself a straightforward application of free speech. But, then, that's effectively what's happening to Gab, too. It's (again) not clear to me why anyone who is OK with boycotting would be up in arms about it --- excepting people who are sympathetic to Gab's mission. Let me be clear that there's no subtext that you're one of those people!

The Overton Window is moving too quickly these days for us to be making judgements on deplatformization based on what is and isn't something the average person wants to see.

I don't know what this is supposed to mean. The ethical status of white supremacist organizing hasn't changed.

> No, Paypal and Stripe were given orders from above and this is them carrying out those orders.

Who is this "above" giving orders?

Frankly, this is conspiracy theory material. Sure, those companies are reacting to pressure, but it's distributed social pressure, not shady backroom dealings.

I have no idea who is the "above", and nothing on which to speculate. The internet's two largest payment processors both pulling out at the same time that Gab loses hosting, and becomes the target of a widespread slander campaign, definitely seems orchestrated. You can't dismiss that as "conspiracy theory material".

Sure, it could be distributed social pressure, but even that would just be a standalone event resulting from a larger and more subtle push from above to use social pressure as a mechanism for modern information gatekeeping.

Like I said, I'm not speculating as to who or what is behind this push for modern censorship but don't delude yourself into thinking it isn't there.

The definition of conspiracy theory is: "a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators" (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conspiracy%20theo...)

So, here we have an event - payment processors refusing to serve Gab. The theory is that this is explained by from some entity "above" that we don't know anything about and that clearly acted in secret to force them to do this.

Using the dictionary definition of a conspiracy theory, this is a conspiracy theory.

Oh, hush.

"Conspiracy theory material" has a strong connotation that a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators doesn't capture at all.

The connotation heavily implies that the theory is to be disregarded as ridiculous and false.

But you know that already, so why am I even telling you?

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