After New Zealand Shooting, Founder of 8chan Expresses Regrets
wsj.com
wsj.com
According to this google doc https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vNye_et1JZQquT9Oiz1wVnikEGU...
Title: Towards a peer-to-peer imageboard: essential elements thereof and approaches compared
Author: Fredrick R. Brennan
Date: March 16, 2019
If someone who wants "more censorship" as the WSJ article espouses, along with “I have no desire to ever be involved in the image-board world again,” he said. “A lot of these sites cause more misery than anything else.”
.... Why would you work on a P2P censorship resistant, completely anonymous imageboard? Page 5 of that document puts it best:
"The Christchurch massacare adds new urgency, with publications like The Verge floating the idea of shuttering 8chan, Forbes flat out asking whether or not 8chan should be “wiped from the web”, and the ever poorly researched Daily Dot offering its attempting to instigate action against 8chan and imageboards more widely."
I don't believe the WSJ in their reporting. They either got duped, or wrote an intentionally false article.
People end up only connected to people that share their viewpoints; and specific discussions in groups or subreddits are not occurring on a ‘soap box’ environment where the broader community is exposed or engaging with it; so it flourishes, with sometimes toxic results
Advertisers are the ones you need to keep happy not users.
Not many advertisers on sites with 0 users. You need both.
We've seen movements co-opted from one thing into entirely different things fairly regularly. Vulnerable people brought into far more extreme views. The pattern seems clear with things like Gamergate that turned into a reactionary identity type thing pretty quickly. "Incels" where frustrated men feed of each other's anger and it just builds and builds.
Do you really think it is possible to censor reddit/faceboot/etc so hard that few traces of these "countercultures" show up, actually making them less discoverable? That's a much taller order.
Even here voat has been mentioned several times. IMHO that's really all it takes, because the recruitment hook is when someone clicks that sibling link to /v/programming and sees a bunch of stuff they consider "refreshing", it having been pushed out of the mainstream discourse. Then reading those critiques of blue-flavored polarization dovetails right into reading support of red-flavored polarization.
And the solution to this is to expose them to "opposition" on "general platforms"?
There is a sizable quantity of legitimate people feeling marginalized by the "mainstream" discourse, whatever the hell that means. That these various masses of people are being pushed ever-closer towards unreasonable views is the entire problem.
Twitter and Facebook do not ban "legitimate people" because they express "non-mainstream" views.
People get banned when they post graphic violence, promotion of violence, threats, intimidation and child exploitation. They also get banned for targeting harassment towards a person or group [0].
If I run a café where strangers can sit down and talk to each other, I would eject any customer who did any of these things -- to protect my "legitimate" customers and to ensure the bad actors don't wreck my café.
Bad actors don't behave badly because they've been banned. They're banned because they first behaved badly and were warned multiple times.
[0] https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-rules
What I'm referring to is that the blue team has taken over the discourse of many popular forums [0]. HN has gotten better, but a few years ago it was quite hard to raise legitimate non-blue-flavored criticism without being downvoted into oblivion. Predictably, the only red-flavored comments being left were then lower effort, which would then get flagged to death.
So then people with moderate red-flavored views are left to go find different discussion forums if they want to express those views. And the places they end up have been similarly "claimed" by the red team, and are thus analogously tolerant of red team extremism.
Now rather than experiencing events like Christchurch primarily as a shared tragedy in which humans were killed (eg holy fuck what are we all doing to each other), the tragedies are mediated by political groupthink. To avoid having to distance themselves from their extremists, the home team caricaturizes the reaction of the other team. This creates cognitive dissonance which normalizes the extremist behavior rather than condemning it.
[0] At least from our perspective here. I'm certainly willing to posit someone could have a mirrored view where their popular forums are ever-more red-team flavored. This fits into my point.
Well your argument falls apart pretty early, since people subscribing to abhorrent ideas just squelch opposition themselves anyway so they don’t have to face it. They simply want the reach, they aren’t looking to have their minds changed.
/r/the_donald is one easy example. There’s no faster place to get banned on the internet than voicing opposition there.
I think that's very much the case, if you look at some of the subreddits that are sympathetic to the NZ situation, there's no opposition within those subreddits, any hint of an opposing view results in a ban in those subs.
Seems like humans have to rediscover this fact every couple of generations, the hard way.
Finding paradoxes in absolutely-defined frameworks is expected - a concept like "tolerance" can only ever serve as an imperfect heuristic. To proceed beyond its limits, you must judge by other metrics.
The point is that this "Paradox of tolerance" meme is invokable to escalate the aggression of any viewpoint - a paradox in the common (not not A -> A) logic system means anything can be proved.
We don't have a problem with the murderer and his enablers because they were intolerant, but because they committed and encouraged murder.
Can't really discourage the next one at this point unfortunately. People are going to do things like this, they have been for a while and will continue to do so in the future. These ideological extremists will be arguing back and forth forever.
All that said, there is the completely separate question of what our counter-terrorism infrastructure should be doing to identify and neutralize these threats. But that's not so much "discouraging" the next attack as it is attempting to keep the number of attacks to a minimum. Because I can pretty much guarantee, the counter-terrorism guys in NZ, or most other western nations, are not gonna be visiting suspected terrorists for the purposes of having a conversation in the hopes of "discouraging" them.
This is, of course, in _addition_ to other counter-terrorism infrastructure like intelligence gathering, monitoring, security, response, etc. Many of those more well-known systems are intended to identify bad actors and prevent them from doing bad things; understanding bad actors can lead to more methods to prevent regular people from becoming bad actors in the first place.
Here's the thing, people been doing this for literally MILLENNIA now, there is no way to identify everything that will drive extremists to kill. That's the essential problem with that philosophy. Even where you are able to identify the core issue, say for instance the religious divisions in the MidEast region, there is really no way to address the core problem. It's just far easier to engage the extremists, than it is to convince Christians, or Jews, or Muslims, to NOT be Christians, or Jews, or Muslims.
Extremists will just never be placated, and we shouldn't put too much effort into trying, because that gets people killed as well.
I would posit that being tolerant and intolerant to intolerance is not a mutually exclusive stste. You can be both to varying degrees.
In fact, being somewhat intolerant of intolerance is probably a prerequisite to being truly tollerant.
That middle ground is what we need to protect and preserve.
Acting like you must be one of the other is something a clever 5 year old would do.
Popper's definition is quoted in the Wikipedia article:
"""Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. — In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."""
(It's fine to disagree with Popper about where a good line to draw is; I think Popper's going for "maximum tolerance", and is noting that tolerating 'intolerant = unwilling to engage in rational argument' would reduce tolerance).
I'm still not sure I get it but I think my understanding of a paradox was incorrect.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-between-a-parad...
Strictly speaking I think it is a paradox. Where I got stuck is whether tolerance and intolerance are concepts in absolute. I dont think think they are absolute terms and in fact can be used to describe partial states, in other words, they can be used in this form but not [always] result in a logical contradiction which is where the paradox is coming from in this situation.
Citing the "paradox of tolerance" is nothing but a faux intellectual fig leaf for those who want to establish controls on what is allowed to be said.
Okay, here I go: "Modern progressives aren't liberals because freedom of speech is a core tenet of liberalism and therefore they should be treated as a hazard to the liberal movement."
There, I said it; I feel better now. Thank you for your kind invitation.
Where are modern progressives arguing to use state power to make some speech illegal?
The other simply uses speech in response.
You seem to think that critical speech should be less protected that bigoted speech. I’m baffled by that position.
If people went to a certain country and they said "We have freedom from self incrimination, just as the US does; the government is not allowed to force a confession from an alleged criminal. However, the victim and their family or friends may force a confession from the alleged criminal in any way they please.", then those people would undoubtedly say "Your country does not have freedom from self incrimination at all!"
If people went to a certain country and they said "We have freedom of speech, just as the US does; the government is not allowed to suppress or tamper with what an individual says. However, those who disagree with what they said may inflict 'social consequences' on that individual until their lives are ruined.", then people would undoubtedly say ...?
In short, it should be blindingly obvious that freedom of speech includes both protection from government intervention as well as protection from members of the public who seek to inflict harm^H^H^H^H"social consequences" because they disagree with what was said.
It is dismaying that a man of Randall Munroe's intelligence should make such a blatant logical error in his comic. Sadly, it's not even the only error in that comic.
Who is doing the forcing? Is it the state? If so, then I agree with you. If it isn't the state, with all of the force it entails, your argument is irrelevant and invalid.
You seem to be conflating social norms with state power.
We can't lock up an asshole just because they are an asshole, but we sure as shit can refuse to socialize with them. What would you want to be different?
You seek to limit my ability to react to what someone has said?
You want to force me to host nazi comments on my blog?
You want to force me, personally, to provide a platform for hate and bigotry and not chastise bigots?
I can’t call someone an asshole? I can't fire someone because they are an asshole?
It's not.
Tolerance is more like a peace treaty. When someone breaks it, they are no longer protected by it. I've found this post[0] from a few years ago to be a good explanation. Once you look at tolerance this way, the paradox disappears.
[0] https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1...
If you are a talent-less hack and want to get on the news this is a very simple method. I say that in the hopes that journalists will start excluding information and keeping these people nameless and bland.
- Not naming the killer frequently was one.
- Focusing on the victim's lives (basically humanizing them) was another.
- Not playing videos of the chaos and violence was another.
NPR actually seems to be following those patterns too. Not 100% because news is news, but I think news ogrs can follow them, and the information is still free.
What research is this based on? Sounds suspiciously like “computer games cause violence” which AFAIK has been debunked.
Everyone else just over here dying because white guys think it’s about their freedom to do X. And please don’t get confused. I am one too. I want to suggest if you are spending your time writing DRAFT proposals of a p2p image sharing amazing protocol that can’t be taken down by any jurisdiction man .... well that’s theoretically useful for every freedom-loving man everywhere but most likely something useful to child pornographers and there are lots of people actually suffering under boots and heels of tyrants now and what they don’t need is you writing RFPs while sipping Mountain Dew.
If you can’t see all the trolling about race and gender and just people in general isn’t helpful and is actually causing people harm in meatspace, that’s something you should work on.
But realistically how likely is this? For every sub Reddit bans a new one appears on Voat.
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/matt-philbin/2019/...
Also that talking point about Christians in Nigeria has been a common talking point among folks who seem very interested indirectly playing down the NZ event, and I belive ignores that Muslims were massacred before the Christians in Nigeria just before the Christian event...
It's because it's fake. Or at best unverifiable. Someone took a press release from the Nigerian government about a death toll (not one event), spun, laundered and seasoned until it sounded like a terrorist attack, then launched it as counter press to (pause while I take a breath to calm down) effectively defend the very real, very hateful attack in NZ.
What you just posted is straight up propaganda being used to "both sides" a way out for right wing, white christians to believe that this was somehow justified.
But if you put a bunch of racists in a forum together, and there's no grownup there to tell them that this isn't OK, they'll fester and feed back and eventually someone will take things farther than the lulz-seekers originally intended.
Like an aircraft accident, there's no one "fault" here. There are lots of contributing factors. But the ease of access to a welcoming shithole of hate is absolutely a contributing factor.
The argument at the time was that the kids aren't violent, video games make them violent. The analogue here is that the shooter wasn't a radical, 8chan made him one. Shitty people radicalize each other with or without the internet, much less with or without a very specific site.
I mean, Harris and Klebold weren't exactly doing what they thought suburban Colorado wanted.