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Comment by SolaceQuantum | Hacker News Reader

I don't know about Paul Joseph but I believe Milo has had cases of publicly naming, threatening to name, doxxing, and mocking trans women that study on the campuses that he's spoken at. I belive this is dangerous behavior due to statistic that trans people are especially vulnerable for being murdered compared to the rest of the American population.

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Indeed, Milo is not too different from Info Wars. These people use the classic tactic of saying something insanely outlandish, and when they are called out on it, they just use the "I was obviously sarcastic" card.

Even if they are just joking, their followers most definitely take their message at face value, and that's exactly why they are dangerous.

> These people use the classic tactic of saying something insanely outlandish, and when they are called out on it, they just use the "I was obviously sarcastic" card.

So, like, the 'Saturday Night Live Card'?

Do you not find a difference between a show that bills itself as comedy and satire and a site that bills itself as news and info?

Sure, but net effect is the same - saying something hugely biased and hiding behind a screen of humor (legitimate or not) to allow it to be said.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Story_within_a_story

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekend_Update

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jester

The former can be just as disingenuous as the latter. Jon Stewart wielded immense political influence amongst the under-30 crowd, but whenever seriously challenged, hid behind the defense of comedy.

Yiannopoulos consistently billed himself as a provocateur, little different from a Coulter or Maher.

People have been blending news, entertainment, and polemic together for centuries and it's not going to stop because some people want to codify rules of Serious Journalism and impose them universally across the Internet.

SNL is a comedy sketch. You go in with the expectation of satire and sarcasm. Milo and InfoWars most definitely don't act like they are joking, they purposefully tread the line, and use the "joke" excuse for when they happen to cross it.

I've heard people against seeing him on campus say that, but never seen any actual proof of him doing it or even threatening to do it.

Pretty easy to find multiple incidents of him saying threatening things, or inciting his unhinged fan base to do horrible things to people, and ducking under "I was joking", or "free speech". These trolls know exactly what they are type of harm they are causing when they walk the line of harassment.

I'm of the opinion trolls like him should be given zero media attention. Anecdotally after his twitter ban I rarely saw him in the headlines like a few years ago.

I am hoping media editors are starting to see when they are getting played for headlines.

https://www.dailycal.org/2017/09/21/uc-berkeley-students-har...

> Milo Yiannopoulos publicly posted the photos and identifying information of ASUC Senator Juniperangelica Cordova-Goff and campus doctoral student Adam Jadhav on Wednesday, spurring harassment from his supporters.

https://www.advocate.com/people/2018/6/28/milo-says-death-th...

> Milo Yiannopoulos said he was joking when he sent a text message to reporters, "I can’t wait for the vigilante squads to start gunning journalists down on sight."

> The remark made the gay right-wing provocateur a trending topic on social media, following the Thursday shooting of the newsroom of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Md.

https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/01/27/24830371/uw-prof...

> In addition to internet doxxing, Weatherford says, his sense of physical safety on campus has been severely compromised:

> They have spammed my UW email account with listserve confirmations; they know where my office is in addition to my office hours; and I have started to receive packages to my departmental mailbox, some of which hinted to include Pepe the frog figurines (an image often sent to victims of online harassment). [...] There is even a post that is attempting to find the bus that I ride in order to further harass me. And, I later learned that night that they know my biological mother’s personal information.

If a group is marginally more likely to suffer violence, anyone mocking them should be denied access to widely used communications platforms? Doesn’t really make sense, does it?

Trans people are not marginally more likely to suffer violence. They're significantly more likely to suffer violence, on the rate of several times more than the general population.

And banning Milo from Facebook is going to somehow improve that situation is it? Milo the loud mouthed cretin’s tame insults are responsible for the incidence of violence against trans women?

The bar Facebook has set is not that they will improve the situation of all trans women everywhere. The bar set is that Facebook will removing people known for dangerous speech. The question is "has Milo committed dangerous speech?". I answered "yes, I believe so, I recall incidents that can be interpreted as such".

Also, I did see what you wrote before you edited it out. That was an unfortunate, accusatory comment in bad faith and I'm glad you removed it.

You recall? Post the proof. I think if it were true it would definitely be all over for him.

Yes, it works

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/5/18125507/m...

Zack Beauchamp? really? I have no schtick in this debate but damn!! Using Vox´s Zack Beauchamp´s journalistic compass as a judge on what "works" is like if a dude linked you to flatearth.com to prove that circles are actually squares...

I tried to find statistics for this claim by looking at homicide risk but was unable to find anything supporting it. Possibly this is true in non-western countries. For example here is a look at the data that claims tran people are less at risk in the UK. https://www.google.com/amp/s/fairplayforwomen.com/trans-murd...

I suspect there are lots of confounders if you wanted to isolate the risk that trans brings. For example apparently trans people have a higher rate of sex work which would increase the risk. On the other hand I wouldn't be surprised if trans were coming from higher socio-economic groups on average which would lower the risk.

Fair play for women is a notoriously anti trans organisation. I wouldn't go looking for trans related statistics there.

I know this is late but from what I recall trans women are approximately 4.3x more likely to be murdered(Trans people of color coalition and human rights campaign), and 1 out of 2 trans people have experienced violence (I forget where I've seen this).

In the USA this doesnt seem to be true. I just looked up the stats. 23 and 27 murders of trans individuals in US over past 2 years. Avg US homicide rate is 5 deaths per 100,000 per year. There are roughly 1.5 million trans individuals so you'd expect 75 or so. However margin of error and confounding variables are massive so my point is just that it seems roughly normal, not that it's safer to be trans. This despite 15% of female transgenders having worked at some time in the sex industry, more involvement with drugs, etc.

If you want some crazy (depressing) stats, look up trans suicide rates. Although I would speculate that only like 1 in 40 attempts succeeds.

As a counterpoint, ten trans people were murdered in the UK in the last ten years. About one per year in a population of of 66 million. A high estimate of the number of trans people in the UK is around 500,000. On average, there is a one in one hundred thousand chance of being murdered in the UK each year.

Given those figures, trans people are considerably less likely to be murdered than non-trans people. Even if we take the lowest estimate of the number of trans people I've seen — around 200,000 — non-trans people are still twice as likely to be murdered as trans people.

https://transrespect.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/TvT_TMM_...

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...

(And I don't think Milo is responsible for a single one of those murders)

That's not what the above poster said, and you know it. You say "marginally", "anyone", "mocking". But the people in question aren't anyone, and they aren't just mocking.

There are specific cases of them calling on their fans to harass private citizens. Anyone with some semblance of awareness of US law knows free speech is not without limits. No one is entitled to online speech, believe it or not.

> No one is entitled to online speech, believe it or not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Internet_access

This is not relevant. Some people get the right to internet access. They don't get the right to say what they want where they want without moderation.

Not irrelevant. The OP said that "no one is entitled to online speech". That's an unqualified statement which my link disproves. If they had instead qualified it as, "no one has a right to speech on Facebook", that's a different claim (arguably also false depending on the circumstances).

The post is about the US, your link shows the right exists only in about 6 countries, none of which are the US.So it's irrelevant.

Once again, the statement was unqualified, "no one has the right to..." And once again, my link literally proves this statement to be false, because as you just admitted, at least some people do have that right.

You seem to be confusing two different rights.

The right to Internet access is not the right to say whatever you like on the Internet.

I suggest reading the first sentence from the link I posted.

But you seem to think "freedom of expression" == "freedom to say what you like", and that's clearly wrong because Europe has rights to freedom of expression (article 10) but you can't say what you like in Europe.

I'd suggest that you take the time to understand the links you post.

> But you seem to think "freedom of expression" == "freedom to say what you like"

Where did I say this?

That is just an appeal to authority. Once upon a time, that same kind of authority said certain races were sub-human and had few or no rights. The question of whether or not it is a right is completely separate from the current trend of those in power.

I suppose you’re aware that it’s not unknown for members of the trans community to “call on their fans to harass private citizens”. Would you like them banned too? In fact, Milo has been the victim of many such calls for harassment.

To be clear, I had personal interactions with Milo many years ago when he ran a technology magazine in the UK. I’ve never met a more unpleasant individual and I would be happy to never hear from him again, but progressives working hand-in-hand with corporations to ban obnoxious individuals is a slope I don’t want us to start sliding down.

> for members of the trans community to “call on their fans to harass private citizens”

And you're free to raise that issue on its own merit when it happens. You're also welcome to report it to the social network it's posted on for moderation/banning. This does not change anything about banning Milo.

You avoided the question. Do you think members of the trans community who call for the harassment of private citizens should be banned from Facebook?

Yes, I did. I'm familiar with Milo situation, but not with situations you have in mind. I'm happy with Facebook banning anyone breaking their policies. I do not agree with many of their policies. In general, I'd expect the answer would be "yes" - but without knowing specific cases and what you mean by "harassment", I can't answer.

So for you this is an issue of property rights? Facebook owns the platform and so they can ban whomever they like for breaching their policies, which they should be free to choose without interference?

> There are specific cases of them calling on their fans to harass private citizens. Anyone with some semblance of awareness of US law knows free speech is not without limits. No one is entitled to online speech, believe it or not.

So will CNN, MSNBC, and the Washington Post be banned from facebook for setting hundreds of doxxers and activists on a high school kid who smiled in a red hat?

Man, the lack of introspection in this thread is astounding.

So it's ok for Alex Jones to encourage doxxing constantly forever because some bad reporting happened in the main stream media once? Got it.

No not at all. I think they should be banned along with CNN and MSNBC. I don't see why when I suggested banning those two news outlets you immediately assumed it was nuts and the argument was to urban Alex Jones.

> once?

How fast we forget: https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/04/politics/kfile-reddit-user-tr...

Or take your pick of mainstream media openly inciting violence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw9kyYEwg2

They should be suspended with a warning, yes. If they continue to do it, they should be banned.

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