Hacker News Reader

Comment by wwright | Hacker News Reader

Deplatforming and disemploying is fundamentally different in that it works by social consensus rather than an individual “fiat,” at the very least. I can’t deplatform you without getting the agreement of all relevant platforms.

That’s one big difference in the things you are comparing, without diving too deep into a different topic.

View on HN

Good point. Although I think it tends to be a consensus among an influential minority of the populace rather than society as a whole.

Mob rule is never actually mob rule, there's a complicated relationship between the mob and the demagogues who alternately control the mob while also being controlled by it.

Controlled opposition while shuffling the real dirty jobs on them and maintaining plausible deniability.

That is fair, but realistically, I think that’s every social consensus… and the implications are much more far reaching than social media platforms :-)

Every motive factor in "society" is a consensus among an influential minority rather than the whole. Society is not a unified entity, nor are its boundaries even strongly defined, so there cannot be a consensus among a "whole" which doesn't exist.

Well, that's OK, provided we're honest about what it is, e.g. we don't use media to create the illusion of a majority consensus where none exists.

"Social consensus" in the case of deplatforming is a handful of yuppy bureaucrats in Silicon Valley deciding what people far less privileged than themselves are allowed to say.

It's not fundamentally different, just much more effete.

To confirm, your argument is that refusing to allow someone to advocate for genocide on your blog platform is fundamentally similar to killing a man for refusing to pay protection money?

This is a standard tactic of those in the deplatforming business - to claim that everything they are deplatforming is the same thing as advocating for genocide. It's a terrible argument, and the moral equivalent of asking somebody if they've stopped beating their wife.

If you can't make a good argument for deplatforming a specific person based on the specific things they've actually said, then maybe, just maybe, you're the bad guy.

Exactly. They jump to the most extreme case to try and put you on the defensive.

It is a smoke screen for what this is all about: silencing dissent and controlling what people are allowed to say.

In this case, I am speaking about the general act of deplatforming vs mafia hits. A great deal of people HAVE been banned from platforms for explicitly advocating genocide; that’s an actual thing that happens fairly regularly.

Many are deplatformed for other things, of course, and I would never say that everyone who is banned from a platform is banned for good reasons. But there are a lot of assholes out there in need of banning, imo.

Ludicrous hyperbole and a clumsy attempt at shaming.

It was a sincere question — are we talking about mafia killings and deplatforming, or something else?

I'm thinking of when they tried to deplatform the trans activist youtuber Contrapoints over one trans person who guest starred on her show one time turning out to have a view of certain gender things those people didn't like. The host probably wasn't even aware and it's gotten absurd how this can happen with such a degree of separation - dare to even interact with somebody guilty of wrongthink and now you and everyone you've associated with is also guilty and eaten alive. Very absolutist and reminds me of brainless zero tolerance policies in public education.

Except Contrapoints hasn't been deplatformed, so using her as an example of the extremist and arbitrary power of the "mafia morality" behind deplatforming to punish "wrongthink" doesn't work.

There was an attempt. Here's one article on it: https://medium.com/swlh/contrapoints-pronouns-canceled-twitt...

Sure, there was an attempt... but the fact that it wasn't immediately successful at erasing her and making her persona non grata with no effective means of interacting with society due to the absolute and arbitrary control that leftists have over the web, and by extension over free expression itself, contradicts the common fear-narratives around deplatforming.

I mean "dare to even interact with somebody guilty of wrongthink and now you and everyone you've associated with is also guilty and eaten alive" can't be true if it didn't happen. We can't be living in a fascist Orwellian dystopia where the SJW mafia and the pitchfork-wielding thought police control all that we see and hear if they can't actually deplatform someone as controversial as Contrapoints at will.

You left out a major detail. Contrapoints is a far leftist who was let off the hook after making a groveling apology.

Good luck with any of that if you are even slightly to the right of center.

In general she tows the party line of what is acceptable to the Silicon Valley hall monitors and tattletales. She only ran afoul of a few even further to the left of her. Trying to use her as a counter-example is laughable.

It's odd that you seem to believe "Silicon Valley hall monitors and tattletales" somehow control and arbitrate the entirety of LGBT discourse, such that Contrapoints "tows their party line," even though she upsets the left and LGBT community all the time, and has nothing to do with Silicon Valley as far as I'm aware, but whatever.

However... since it seems I only need to find a single example of someone "even slightly to the right of center" who has "run afoul" of the left without being deplatformed... J.K. Rowling. Engaged in behavior many consider to be transphobic[0] and bigoted, yet not deplatformed.

Or James Damore? Hasn't been deplatformed. Jordan Peterson? Not deplatformed. Stefan Molyneaux? Not deplatformed. Brendan Eich? not deplatformed.

Searching Twitter under tags and terms like alt-right, right wing, far right, gender-critical, mra, etc., reveals a lot of open and unapologetic discussion of definitely not left and extreme left politics, which shouldn't be the case. All of that should be memory-holed by the SJWs scrubbing the platform of wrongthink, shouldn't it?

[0]https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/12/19/21029874/jk-rowlin...

It is wildly disingenuous to try and pass off being deplatformed as an on/off switch.

There are many degrees to which one could be deplatformed, and sadly a segment of the sclerotic left have decided to use it as a political tool to squash dissent.

To try and suggest that deplatforming doesn't happen or isn't an issue because there isn't a magic button that can be pressed to instantly remove somebody from the public sphere is grossly manipulative and dishonest.

I wonder how many people forgot or never knew at all about the ultra liberal “activist” that shot up a YouTube office because they deplatformed/demonitized her/him.

You would THINK a shooting at a YouTube office would have been a big deal - but nope - memory holed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com