I also firmly believe that everyone has biases and inclinations that are morally wrong. The sooner we learn how to deal with the "good guys" unfair biases, the sooner we can figure out how to deal with the "bad guys" too.
The available evidence says the opposite is true.
http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf
The way to deal with the "bad guys" is for private businesses to not give them a platform to spew their hate from. And it's up to us to pressure these private businesses to do that.
> And it's up to us to pressure these private businesses to do that.
No it isn't. I am fed up of something I like being ruined by moral busy bodies such as yourself. My friend and I like the "edgy" jokes because we work in environments where you have to be political correct and I need to let off some steam.
8chan isn't the problem. The problem is that large portions of the population aren't engaged in society at large. The is a huge problem with loneliness, suicide and general lack of meaning to life.
Censorship and harassing companies that run image board won't fix the problem. All you will do it hide it.
Do you think that this is the root cause of violent islamic extremists as well?
Extremists that grow up in the Middle-East. No idea I haven't spent a lot of time in the Middle-East (only Israel).
And it will come back much worse, and you won't know how to recognize it or fight it.
> My friend and I like the "edgy" jokes
Liberals like to make off-color jokes too, they're just in denial about it.
Yep.
> Liberals like to make off-color jokes too, they're just in denial about it.
The logic is "it is okay when we do it".
Are they? Myself, a liberal, and all my liberal friends and family, make off color jokes all the time and are totally aware of it. Similarly, we don't castigate conservative friends for making off color jokes.
I think you're purposefully misstating the fact that people disagree on the (admittedly fuzzy) line between off color jokes and sincere expressions of hatred.
If speech crosses the line, law enforcement should pursue and prosecute.
Short of that (e.g. the "we were just joking" crowd), the best possible aggregate outcome seems like it would be companies making independent moral judgements and acting on them.
If Cloudflare doesn't want to be associated with 8chan, they refuse them as a customer.
Other customers are then free to judge Cloudflare for that action and use / not use them as they decide.
This seems far preferable to more draconian, government-enforced options.
Companies are inherently political, and a diversity of options is the healthiest ecosystem.
Not, this requires that we have functioning alternatives. For something like 8chan, Cloudflare's services are probably avoidable, but there's a market penetration at with "must serve" should be considered.
E.g. if Facebook banned a political party
> Companies are inherently political
I am fed up of everything be political. I know someone is going to make Doom Eternal political somehow when the game is about a man that is too angry to die taking on the legions of the hell dimension (that is literally the plot of the game).
Gilette have tried making how I remove hair from my face political.
I want companies to sell their product and as long are people are using it legally they should probably not take a political stance.
Ergo, merely by selling to the market and interacting with it, companies make political choices.
These choices may be more or less obvious, but they're always there. The apolitical company is a myth.
Note: I am using political in the greater, rather than "red vs blue" sense.
I don't buy bog roll as a political decision, I buy it so I can wipe my arse.
Beyond that, to use the same analogy, one brand might be dump their bleaching agents in the ocean.
It's up to the companies if they want to trumpet their behavior loudly or say nothing about it. And it's up to consumers if they care about whatever type of behavior is involved.
This logic as previously stated is a horrible mind worm that infests everything and ruins a great many things that are just useful (razor blades) or fun (video games).
Politics is a set of power games done by people we call politicians and promoted by their activists. It has nothing to do with right and wrong.
Without politicians, politics would still exist.
Well said. The American melting pot makes this loneliness stronger still as there’s no sense of community left for these people. They live amongst us but they’re not connected to anyone around them.
I’m convinced there’s twisted weirdos all over the world, but traditionally communities did a better job of watching their own and making sure they were not endangering others. That simply does not exist any more, so the dark thoughts fester and grow until they’ve taken total control.
I don’t know how to fix any of this, but know it going to require either bringing those people into the light or occasionally joining them in their darkness.
There's a difference between policing your own corner of the internet; versus policing the entire internet.
Sure, there are some alternatives that are harder to restrict and monitor, like if all the radicals move to private Telegram groups or the dark web or something.
However all the vulnerable people at risk of being radicalised are less likely to be radicalised if they're using a similar forum to 8chan but without all the white supremacist and other hateful memes and "jokes", that obviously have radicalised a lot of people. Even if most people just scroll past them.
It helps prevent the on-boarding of people who can be potentially radicalized.
There is also plenty of astroturfing also going on in this message boards by entities that want to cause chaos.
Assuming this is true, plenty of people still slip through the cracks
Also, it seems like the group egging them on motivates these shooters. Tragically seems related to internet likes. So, by deflating the social network surrounding these ideas, there will be less social motivation to carry out such horrible actions.
And, finally, people have a social concept of truth, and if such ideas are considered to only be fringe crazy ideas instead of consistent with mainstream Darwinian theory, then people will be less likely to believe such ideas are true and less likely to act on them. As it is, social Darwinism seems to be one of those unpleasant truths due to the social weight given to the idea. Such social weight needs to be eradicated.
I'd expect stuff done in the open on 'chan sites to be much easier to monitor than stuff done in private encrypted channels elsewhere.
>Also, it seems like the group egging them on motivates these shooters. //
In private where all the voices coalesce around a single ideology then the effect (Echo Chamber) makes it appear that _everyone_ [who matters] shares that ideal.
Moreover, it's easier to "other" the out group, make them in to a caricature; dehumanise them. (See 2-party political systems!)
Cults don't operate in the open, forcing people underground creates a sort of cultist environment.
Contact with genuine people who are considered part of the out-group appears to be highly effective in breaking down these sorts of barriers .. that can happen on generalist sites but will never happen in closed ideology-bad groups.
It seems to me that shutting down places like 8chan is going to lead to _more_ radicalised groups (that are more extremely radicalised), though they may be smaller groups and a smaller overall population. I think bigger, less cohesive, in-the-open groups are easier to monitor and take action against when necessary.
I wonder if there are any useful models that can give actionable input to this question.
De-platforming fractures the echo chambers and forces the population to find newer, smaller echo chambers, which reduces the impact of each echo.