If your bad idea is better than doing nothing and nobody can come up with something better, you could do it.

The problem is youtubes recommendation algorithm, which rides users ever deeper into weirder and more outrageous videos, if they are susceptible to it. It's a bit like balancing on a knifes edge, and that very system feeds directly into those generating revenue from it. It is a system that rewards cheap outrageous lies over intelligent and balanced truths.

In today's age where every truth will be declared to be just an opinion while every opinion will be presented as the truth, we don't need such a social experiment.

It's also produced Singapore.

That's a pretty silly example. North Korea is North Korea precisely because of the extremism.

>You have a better chance of getting struck by lightning than dying from extremism...

I know this is pedantic, but you got me curious so I went to check the numbers.

Odds of death in mass shooting (US only): 1 in 11,125

Odds of death by lightning strike (US only): 1 in 161,831

So it seems that it's actually a lot more likely for an American to die in a mass shooting than it is for us to die in lightning strikes.

Edit:

Sorry. The source was the National Safety Council, National Center for Health Statistics, and the Cato Institute.

https://www.businessinsider.com/mass-shooting-gun-statistics...

Great plan. All it takes is a government to designate a group as terrorists and any mention of them results in mega-fines.

nit- Among others, neither the 9/11 gang nor the Christchurch shooter were poor.

That is unconstitutional in most countries, because you have a right to a public trial. In the United States, it's especially illegal, since the press has a right to free reporting, including public trial.

The danger here is the government starting to weaponize this 'freedom', by designating mundane crimes as 'terrorism' and then holding secret trials. Given that this is precedented, and leads to significantly worse outcomes (including full-on genocide), it seems that it's probably better to just accept that there will be mass shootings. After all, even adding up all the mass shootings in the world, you will still not come close to the slaughter's perpetrated by governments holding secret trials of dissidents

That's the thing, I can't recommend an alternative other than censorship. All I know is that violent extremist groups or identities like ISIS, white nationalism, and others can be linked in part to a good chunk of the mass shootings and other acts of mass violence that many parts of the world have experienced over the past 10-15 years.

I don't know that you can prevent hostility after combining large groups of people from different cultures. Maybe throttle the stream of immigrants from different cultures so people can assimilate?

Better than censorship.

>Here in Germany it's very popular to talk about, chastise and silence "Nazis" (be it real or assumed), which sort of makes sense knowing Germany's history.

And yet it doesn't even prevent the core of the problem, which is that the supreme law of the land is easily abusable as a weapon once the Nazis get in power (and if the German economy tanks to the point where people can no longer buy bread for a day's work, which was true in the Weimar Republic, they will).

Anti-speech laws have never been about stopping Nazis. It's all about the feeling that they stop Nazis, which (especially in majoritarian-biased politics) is all that really matters.

> Mind you, Wahhabist groups were literally spreading their message just a few years ago (still in 2017) in front of shopping malls here in Berlin.

So do Neo-Nazis quite regularily. But the problem runs deeper. I find it acceptable for a society to say, that it doesn't want certain types of messages to be brought forward. E.g. if your political message is to basically disallow any other political message other than your own, why should society tolerate your message? Or if you are going in all inflamatory and start to divide people and spell out goals of genozide – why would any society that wants to remain civilized not in some form penalize that kind of behaviour?

As much as I am for free speech, censorship in any form (be it your collegues who stop interacting with you because of your shitty ideas) fulfilled certain societal functions and a lot of the change we saw in the recent years has also to do with the fact, that this censorship is not only gone, but the polar oposite: 30 years ago extreme opinions would have drowned out in the sea of mainstream opinions.

Today we have digital systems that penalize mainstream opinions and reward extreme opinions on the fringes. This leads to entirely different discourses and also ultimately to the need of more censorship to retain social stability.

The crucial question is how this censorship looks like once it comes (and it will).

The "Lies" group giving out Qurans got banned a few years ago and groups on the left are still regularly hit with §129 trials and cant be employed in the public sector. The AFD is far from being silenced or even prosecuted. They are a far right party and that is pointed out. I dont think there is a miss characterization. And not even Pegida marches are prosecuted or banned. People on the right being prosecuted are the same old nazis as before. Groups and parties like the NPD, the Unsterbliche group or the DritteWeg who run around in uniforms with illegal torchlight marches shouting for a return of national socialism.

It is, by definition, censorship. It's not _government_ censorship, but it's still censorship.

Ironically, I've rarely seen a thread with so much downvoting as this one. Is trying to grey-out a post the same as wanting to censor it? I just went through and upvoted most of the posts that were grey.

I was thinking about it. Making up filters to filter other people expression, using rules that are not explicitly enumerated in Governing laws -- is selective censorship.

Making up speech/expression filters that are explicitly enumerated by governing laws, is censorship too -- but this one is not 'selective', instead it is mandated.

So the opposition that people have on these topics, is towards 'selective censorship', not the 'mandated' one.

The next argument for 'selective sensorship' -- is that a private business can make up their own rules.

My view is, yes, private business can -- but then, the content where selective-censorship was applied, cannot be available publicly without a fee.

So, if Facebook wants to do selective-censorship, then ok --

however, that filtered content should be available only to people who selected to participate in explicit business relationship with Facebook.

Extremism seemt to match up closely with an opinion that is opposite those in power.

Well, broadcasting your massacre of 20 people online would be one kind of 'extremism'.

So there's that.

Surely it can get tricky (and it will) but we have to do something. This is not new, we always have. Every nation has some kind of hate law, applied one way or another.

Is it, though? https://www.amazon.com/Extremism-MIT-Press-Essential-Knowled...

I'm going to take a swing at your argument from a different angle, so follow along for a second. How do you define an immigrant?

The reason why I bring this up is because I've often seen people embracing laws or actions targeting immigrants, but isn't this in effect the same slippery slope as attempting to define extremism when we talk about free speech? Especially as immigration law is often expanded over time, encroaching on the rights of 'citizen' (a term which is also eroded over time) as we define a secondary class of people of which your typical rights do not apply to.

If we want to play the definition game, the exact definition of the word 'immigrant' depends entirely on the ruling class, ergo makes laws affecting immigrants equally as likely to cause the slippery slope effect as laws that affect extremists.