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Comment by seventytwo | Hacker News Reader

I spend most of my time on Reddit, and you’re spot on here. Deplatforming is the most effective way to fight the spread of hate. It’s literally a cancer, and it’s goinf to take the chemo therapy of stepping on the toes of free speech to protect our country and society.

Sucks, but that’s what it takes - especially when they wrap themselves up in the flag and hide behind the first amendment to spew their hate.

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You are not forced to look at subreddits that offend you.

> hide behind the first amendment

I think people need to hide behind first amendment, you misunderstand what it is.

Not if your speech is advocating for the erosion of the rights of others’ speech. Just as there is a paradox of tolerance, there is a paradox of free speech, and the hate groups use it to great effect in this country.

>You are not forced to look at subreddits that offend you.

I think this is the greatest misconception about the push for de-platforming. The goal is to remove the platform from becoming an echo chamber for racism/hate/violence not to stop people from being offended by content they dislike. By removing mainstream sites as options to promote hatered/racism/violence it's likely that it will make a measurable reduction in people joining these groups as there will be less traffic.

>Deplatforming is the most effective way to fight the spread of hate.

As evidenced by what?

From everything I see, deplatforming creates filter bubbles, which lead to radicalization, which lead to hate.

After the rise of deplatforming tactics in the last 5 years, American society is more radicalized than before.

have to agree here. deplatforming is definitely not the answer. To use a crude but fundamental analogy, if you want to reduce the concentration of something you need to dilute it not separate it from the rest

I think it’s the best tool we have, and we can either use that tool or twiddle our thumbs while this problem gets worse.

As for your dilution analogy, deplatforming does have that effect because it breaks up the filter bubbles of the hate groups. It makes the media feedback loop of hate more difficult for those caught in that. From the perspective of those considering the hate, their input has been diluted.

There have been a few informal studies that have shown its effectiveness. Additionally, the mechanism for action is clear - deplatforming actually breaks up the very filter bubbles that allow hate to become organized. It makes it harder for those seeking to spread hate, and gives more of an opportunity to consider alternatives for those who are perhaps caught in the drain of that bubble.

I think the current discourse if far more polarized than it was maybe 5 years ago. I think your assessment is delusional if you think your country and society got saved to any degree. On the contrary.

Describing groups of humans as a cancer is stage 4 of the ten stages of genocide:

http://genocidewatch.net/genocide-2/8-stages-of-genocide/

You’re engaging in behavior with truly horrifying antecedents.

I’m describing the spread of hateful ideas as a cancer, not the people themselves. We use the description of “virality” to describe the meme or idea, not that the people sharing are viruses. Same thing here.

In that case, we should ban /r/politics, the_don, shitredditsays, latestagecapitalism, news and worldnews, and every other obviously partisan subreddit, because by time they're obviously partisan, they're downvoting and banning any dissent shared within their community, and thus are spreading hate of everyone who doesn't conform to their extremist bubble standards. We should also perma-shadowban all users who contributed any posts or comments to any of those communities, because they are agents of hate. We should only leave the most abstract or concrete communities focused on real things with nothing but objective curiosity, like gaming, or DIY, or buildapc.

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