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Comment by DrDimension | Hacker News Reader

The truth is that information does not radicalize people - censorship does. That's why the channers are as radicalized as they are - they've been censored everywhere else. Censor their last remaining outlets and you will increase violence by orders of magnitude.

If ethno-nationalists are not allowed to make their political case with speech, what alternative would they have but violence? You obviously can't change their minds with censorship, only harden them.

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A lot of people say "censorship radicalizes" but I've never seen any studies or evidence for this claim. Your comment is purely speculative. There is some evidence that banning extremist content reduces its potential to radicalize [1]. Do you have any evidence to suggest it increases radicalization?

[1] http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf

That study only proves that it moves extremists somewhere else...

If a man can't speak his truth, what alternative does he have to violence?

In this case their "truth" is violence. The thing being censored is them advocating violence...

> If a man can't speak his truth, what alternative does he have to violence?

No one is stopping anyone from speaking their truth. They're just saying they're not going to help you.

If you want to speak your truth, speak it. Go down to a public square and preach. Write your truth down, print it, and hand it out. If its truth and you believe it so much, you'll do the work necessary in getting it out there.

People are used to treating the Internet as the new public square. Obviously, there are many private entities that make up the Internet, but if want it to continue to serve as the public square (rather than a patchwork of corporate fiefdoms) then I think we have to accept the moral (and possibly legal) obligation of these private entities to maintain the Internet as a public square.

I essentially agree. The internet is not the public square, until you legally make it so.

And that essentially is not going to happen. Companies are "people too". They are allowed to express their free speech by not doing business with you.

Cloud Flare is within their rights to protect their stock value by doing business with whomever they choose. If the government declared the opposite, then it would truly require a massive shakeup of law and precedent.

> The internet is not the public square, until you legally make it so.

Culture and custom generally precede law and government. If the Internet is a public square, it is only so as a result of our various social relations. Passing laws would be merely to preserve it as such.

Someone once said "The pen is mightier than the sword. But when you have taken my pen, what choice do I have?"

Forgive me if I prefer to base my policy analysis on quantitative studies rather than idioms.

Shallow statistics are never going to replace empathy* when it comes to sound policy making.

That study does show that banning content within a forum means that you will get less of that content on that forum. A useful but not entirely surprising result. As a Reddit user, I'm glad that the site has less of such content.

It does not prove that censorship reduces "radicalization" (whatever that is). As the study says, many of those users just moved their content to Voat.

*By which I mean cognitive empathy: the capacity to infer the motivational states of other people and anticipate their actions.

> Shallow statistics are never going to replace empathy* when it comes to sound policy making.

Agree, hyperrational people often forget how easy it is to lie with (true) numbers.

Maybe not radicalizes but seems obvious that censorship sort of 'funnels' the extremists onto the same forums which turn into an echo chamber / amplification chamber for their ideas. It seems like if they were tolerated on other forums that there'd be enough mediating comments to prevent the amplification. I'd also be interested in seeing studies that echo chambers increase radicalization in the first place. That seems to be a given right now.

I don't think that is how they come about. It is about recruitment and ideals and how they spread not about being banned on other platforms. If they could discuss saving the white race with violence on reddit or hackernews nothing would change more than they would have more potential recruits.

At least something else would change. internal conversation based on uniform agreement would become impossible.

If 1% of the people on a site agree with you, you will have an harder time memeing with your buddies undisturbed.

Whether in practice the tradeoff is worth it, is another topic.

One alternative is that many of them give up the idea of taking action.

What will you do when your plan to censor the alt-right backfires and makes the violence worse? Attempt to start rounding them up? And when that makes it even worse?

You don't have a plan, just a knee jerk impulse to censor.

It's not censorship of the entire alt-right. It's the limited censorship on certain privately-run forums of a small subset that is directly advocating for violence and attempting to tear apart society.

If they want to speak in public, they are free to. They probably won't get a warm reception.

The US president supports and advocates for their cause. A national television syndicate (Fox) echos their talking points. I don't think you can call them censored.

> If ethno-nationalists are not allowed to make their political case with speech, what alternative would they have but violence?

Plenty of nazi sites on the web where they make all sorts of “political cases”. Don’t confuse inability to make the case with repugnance to that case in general public.

I partly agree with you, with some caveats. I would say that censorship increases the ability of information to radicalize.

It is sadly true that some people are capable to manipulate others without the need for censorship to isolate them first.

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