[1] http://comp.social.gatech.edu/papers/cscw18-chand-hate.pdf
Who do you believe should have final say over which person or group of people can have a platform, and who can't?
Should it be whoever owns that particular platform? Should it be the government? Should it be the court of public opinion? I've yet to see a compelling argument for deplatforming that answers this question, because what is acceptable to society has large grey areas that are constantly shifting. I think the intentions are nothing but wonderful - I'm very glad that communities like those in the report you cited, and many similar ones, no longer exist on Reddit. The problem as I see it is that censorship lowers visibility of hate speech very effectively, but if anything seems to strengthen people's convictions that they are right about what they believe. Hateful subreddits may disappear, but is that clear evidence that the people that participated in them changed their minds about what they had expressed online? I find that conclusion dubious at best.
I see this issue most strongly with conspiracy theorists, which seem to be a dime a dozen in 2020. Censorship is nothing if not evidence that what someone is saying is true - see the recent "Plandemic" viral video as a great example.
Deplatforming is, like I said, well-intentioned, but like so many "solutions" it is obsessed with the symptom of the disease, not the cause. It is based on the very old but very wrong notion that 'if only everyone believed what I believe, all the world would be at peace'. That notion is the cornerstone of religious dogma and has been the justification for religious conversion, forcible or otherwise, for millennia. There are proven ways to moderate people's beliefs through civil discourse. The issue is that it is so time consuming, unsatisfying, and thankless (not to mention that you don't get to play moral superiority games) that I'm not surprised people would rather just throw down the banhammer instead.
Censoring the point of view of others merely lends credence to their point of view. Unless you find a way to censor them completely, you will cause more and more people to lose faith in your ideals.
Because networks tend to follow an exponential growth rate. The time it takes to go from 1 to 128 equals the same time it takes to go from 128 to 16384, so if you add 127, you've shortened the time for the network to grow from 1 to 16384 by half. Meanwhile, for a platform that already had 16384, subtracting 127 is a drop in the bucket.
> Is there any evidence that this is the case?
Facebook/Youtube/Twitter/et al couldn't have grown as much as they did as fast as they did unless that was the case.
See how that works? Very slippery slope.
Sounds very segregationist.
I think if the president of the US is unable to operate within the terms of service, he shouldn't get a platform.
Why is that something you're going to argue against?
Am I the only one who gives a fuck about the rules around here?
/me plays AC/DC - Thunderstruck
Despite huge deplatforming efforts over the last decade fringe views have grown to become mainstream and there is less trust between people than ever.
Compared to what?
From my perspective the tech censors are already on thin ice - I actually don’t see how they could ramp up efforts much more without facing serious opposition.