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Comment by commandlinefan | Hacker News Reader

I’m old enough to remember when Howard Stern, as quaint as that seems today, was considered one of the greatest threats to civilization and had to be “de-platformed” before he could successfully destroy society - and the reasoning they used against him was _exactly_ the same as this reasoning: “he, himself (8chan, itself) is not going out and doing horrible things, but he’s encouraging people to go out and do horrible things, so he (it) must be shut down”.

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I'm on the record here defending /r/The_Donald. I'm even on the record saying I didn't think it should be quarantined and that I don't think it should be banned in the future. It takes a lot for me to wonder if something actually should be censored. I certainly wouldn't have been on the side of censoring Howard Stern.

Radicalizing terrorists to such an extent that they actually go through with it -- multiple times -- is extreme enough to make me wonder.

The El Paso shooter's manifesto was posted on 8chan for a reason. The manifesto was written specifically for other potential shooters. It contains tips and advice. It explains the shooter's choice of gear and that he needed to use heat-resistant gloves because one of the guns he used was prone to overheating if fired rapidly. It encourages potential shooters to avoid heavily guarded areas and to avoid engaging with security personnel regardless of how confident they are.

Throughout 8chan, I saw many posts subscribing to the general theory that racial violence has been accepted throughout most of human history and the only people who disapprove constitute a tiny little blip on the grand tapestry. The whole point of this ideology was to encourage people to commit acts of violence by indoctrinating them into the belief system that all their ancestors would not only have approved but would have done it themselves.

/r/The_Donald is not very far from the kind of hatred and prejudice used on 8chan. White supremacists use places like /r/The_Donald to "normalize" ideologies and move the overton window far enough from normal that the extremer places like explicit calls to violence on 8chan are now palatable. It's all part of the same pipeline.

Nonsense. The kind of hate and prejudice posted on 8chan /pol/ would be deleted in a heartbeat on T_D. The worst you can say about T_D is that they don't like Islam, and given the violence and regressiveness it promotes, I can't blame them.

This is the slippery slope that people worry about and why they fight against banning things like 8chan. First it's banning 8chan, then it's /r/The_Donald. What's next?

Mass shooters are a problem that must be dealt with. Pretending that everything to the right of mainstream Democrats is a pipeline to mass shooters that must be silenced is the type of thing that radicalizes people. It's unduly oppressive and it dehumanizes people you may not happen to agree with.

Hey the morons in /r/The_Donald can say what they want. That is what we have all determined.

However, one of the largest social media sites out there (reddit) does NOT have to allow them to congregate together. Reddit should have banned them years ago. They are actively responsible for providing a place for hate to thrive.

You can be 100% pro free-speech and still agree that no one (except the government is some form, meaning sure they can hold meetings in public places, etc) HAS to give them a platform. Anything private can and should say NO.

No one is claiming reddit legally has to give anyone a platform. The claim is that it would be immoral to censor the donald.

>I saw many posts subscribing to the general theory that racial violence has been accepted throughout most of human history

My knowledge of human history mostly validates this theory.

I should clarify that the theory also encompasses the additional inference that the above statement justifies racial violence today. The gist is that you shouldn't worry about how people today might judge you, because you'd be judged positively by the N billion people who came before you; therefore your actions are correct and justifiable.

Playing whack-a-mole with extremist communities is only going to drive them together under a common threat and make them more desperate. The dedicated ones install a tor client and go further underground. The not-so-dedicated ones leave. But the not-so-dedicated parts of the community are the ones helping contribute to the deradicalization of the others.

It should be obvious to state that if you get rid of 8chan, those people aren't suddenly deradicalized and they're still in the country holding the same beliefs. Those people who are today at risk of continuing in this shooter's footsteps have already read the manifesto. People like the shooter often do these things because they want to be heard and they want to contribute to the course of history. Taking away what little voice they have in their own spaces makes them feel less heard. Destroying the little community that they have removes their stake in the world. Suppressing their only place to express their grievances causes them to lose hope. This is the cocktail for more violence, not less.

The *chans are the furthest from centers of indoctrination because the moderation is the weakest of all social media platforms. All ideas are present and little to nothing is suppressed. Dissent is commonplace and general consensus has no power. Sure, it means ugly ideas get spread, but it means that people actually have to refine their moral argumentation. No longer can you assume that the other person has the common ground of "racism is wrong", you have to actually dive into why racism is wrong. You can act outraged all you like, but it won't convince people to change their mind. Changing minds is going to be the only effective course of action to avoid tragedies like these.

The fact that this all seems to be getting worse as more and more people are deplatformed from more mainstream carriers like Facebook and Twitter (where rational voices can chime in from time to time) bolster your suspicion that they're just driven to the more and more extreme places that let them in.

You know, I was going to argue against the above poster, but then I read your post here, and I think this is an excellent point. I think it's extremely reasonable to wonder how many folks would avoid feeling the need to go to a place like 8chan if they felt like more reasonable versions of their viewpoints could be represented in mainstream venues and subjected to healthy debate rather than aggressive and hostile deplatforming.

> It should be obvious to state that if you get rid of 8chan, those people aren't suddenly deradicalized

More importantly, you should ask yourself how they found 8chan. They were using other means of communications that didn't disappear. The invisible force that gathered them together on 8chan is still there and can definitely do that again.

At that point, it doesn't sound like freedom of speech is the problem. Rather, this sounds like conspiracy to promote and further the attempts of mass murder for the intent to cause terror.

That being said, I grew up reading TOTSE, which might by this conversation's context in today's world, also sound like a source of the same.

I think there's a pretty big gap between making dick jokes and encouraging mass murder.

But not much gap between conflating allowing free speech and encouraging mass murder to conflating dick jokes (and having a KKK member as a frequent guest) and encouraging moral decay.

Stern was broadcasting on public airwaves where the FCC sets a low threshold for "public decency". This isn't really comparable.

Howard Stern landed on his feet.

Oh yea? Howard Stern was encouraging mass murder? Something that isn't, nor has EVER been protected speech?

The call-in segments on Stern's show have been frequently used as a platform for extreme and fringe positions, including calls for violence. Through the mid 90s, these came from Stern himself, although he has matured and tempered with time.

See these examples:

https://nypost.com/2000/08/16/howard-stern-caller-busted-in-... (2000s; a caller threatens to kill Senator Lieberman on air)

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/665af0/til_t... (Mid 90s; Stern plays gunshots during a Selena song)

https://variety.com/2014/voices/columns/howard-sterns-white-... (Stern books the Overland Park Jewish Community Center shooter)

https://www.howardstern.com/show/2016/10/24/ronnie-limo-driv... (2016 Twitter spat with implied threats of violence with Stern-affiliated staff)

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