Twitch and Reddit enacted bans simultaneously:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/29/reddit-bans-pro-tru...
https://www.engadget.com/twitch-suspends-donald-trump-accoun...
Seems odd for multiple independent companies to act in concert like this.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/29/reddit-bans-pro-tru...
https://www.engadget.com/twitch-suspends-donald-trump-accoun...
Seems odd for multiple independent companies to act in concert like this.
The reddit bans wave was leaked in advance. The more actors involved in a coordinated action the harder it is to keep a secret.
Original leak: https://old.reddit.com/r/WatchRedditDie/comments/hh1pjd/redd...
Has this been announced or was this just speculation?
Frame it? It is an anti-racism initiative. It may have side effects as well but that is the main driver.
If you don't know, to post on /r/blackpeopletwitter you have to send a photo of your skin color to the moderators. They are literally racially segregating users.
Just because someone claims something is anti-racist doesn't make it so. Almost all organized evil is done in the name of something good. Look at how laws like the The Patriot Act are named.
The people behind these bans are leftist extremists going after their rightist extremist enemies. Their "good intentions" are paving our path towards hell.
https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-reporting/acc...
The majority where? I can't find any specifics on what the majority qualifier is applied to (ex: the community in which the speech occurs, the geographic community of the user, etc).
So according to this rule, a racial minority can call members of a "majority race" sub-human, but not vice-versa. And yet, majority/minority are regional properties. How do you know a redditor's region in order to moderate their comment appropriately? Or are reddit employee regions the only ones that matter?
It's clearly a farce. Majority/minority status is a red herring. It's used only to enable reddit and mods to selectively apply the rules for their own ends. The fact is, it's unethical to call any race sub-human, regardless of whether the majority shares your views.
According to academia, this is correct: racism only exists in the context of class based oppression.
Of course, many people disagree with this definition.
Well, when people are arguing over the meaning of words - in this case "racism" - it is sometimes useful to reference what the "experts" think. There are entire fields of study within academia dedicated to this topic (often but not always including the word "critical").
Of course, whether or not said people have anything meaningful to say on the topic is not broadly agreed upon.
Which is silly on its face. If two opposing races that hated each other held equal power, they might not be able to get the upper hand on the other, but they still hate each other solely on the basis of race. Is this the "non-racist" utopia they're after?
Also, don't be so casual throwing around "Nazi". I've also seen liberals calling for conservatives to be put into camps.
I am super, super tired of "if you denounce bigots that makes you just as bad as them."
It's never okay. Not for any reason.
Was there another way I should have read your comment with that in mind?
The person who wrote "Dehumanization is alive and well, even among progressives" was responding to someone who wrote "But that policy is not even talking about racism, however defined; it's talking about hate. Hate is hate, no matter who it's directed to. Prejudice is prejudice." (That is literally the entirety of their comment.) So at least the way I read this thread, "dehumanization" was introduced as a rhetorical device to equate "prejudice is prejudice" with "dehumanize your opponents."
Given that I'm being downvoted repeatedly, I guess others don't see it that way, but I'm going to be blunt. I just reread the thread and I do not think I'm the one giving things an unfair reading. I don't see a call for "dehumanization" here, and if folks are going to come down on me for failing to address an argument that isn't being made, I don't know what to say. ("Have you stopped beating your wife yet?")
With respect, that's not at all what's happening. I started this sub-thread with this comment [1] criticizing the wording of the policy which emphatically does not focus on just "hate is hate", and "prejudice is prejudice", but is worded specifically towards protecting "marginalized groups".
And it's quite clear on reddit that it's not applied even-handedly to both minority and majority groups. If you think otherwise, go try defending Trump supporters as an experiment and see what happens.
So my comment here [2] to which you objected was not "restating what the other person said as something worse", but was raising the additional point that, despite the policy, hating on the majority is accepted as perfectly fine on reddit, and plenty of other places (Twitter, Facebook, etc.).
How do you get from "don't hate the haters" to "don't denounce hatred and bigotry"? Seems like you're missing a step like, "denouncing entails hatred". Do you actually believe that's true?
There used to be this notion of condemning the act and not the person. It actually used to be a progressive principle arguing for criminal justice reform geared more towards rehabilitation than punishment. It's sad that this nuance has been lost.
Are they serious? So basically racism is OK as long as it's toward people who are the majority?
Here is the Oxford dictionary definition:
"The inability or refusal to recognize the rights, needs, dignity, or value of people of particular races or geographical origins. More widely, the devaluation of various traits of character or intelligence as ‘typical’ of particular peoples. The category of race may itself be challenged, as implying an inference from trivial superficial differences of appearance to allegedly significant underlying differences of nature; increasingly evolutionary evidence suggests that the dispersal of one original people into different geographical locations is a relatively recent and genetically insignificant matter."
People who want to discriminate on the basis of race and sex have contrived a definition of racism/sexism that exempts themselves.
>At what point did it diverge?
The 1980s apparently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory
1 person renting out property = a rentier. Private ownership of land = capitalism.
1 person not hiring women = a misogynist. Companies not offering parental leave and assuming the primary caregiver is the mother = sexism.
Zuckerberg saying "young people are just smarter" = a bigot. Focusing on algorithms in software interviews which new-grads will have an easier time solving = ageism.
It's very common to call a prejudiced or discriminatory individual a "-ist" because the individual is subscribing to an ideology. But, that's emphasizing the individual rather than the society. If you only look at individual people as racist, they feel like isolated cases which don't have good solutions. Furthermore, you're absolving people who aren't explicitly discriminatory but who are still supporting systemic discrimination.
- This company will hire anyone who's qualified, but they're full of ivy-league graduates because they rely heavily on campus recruiters. Even though they aren't prejudiced when hiring, they are classist because they cater to high-class people.
- This bank will offer a mortgage to anyone with a steady paycheck and a safe-investment property. However, due to red-lining and racial covenants, Black people weren't able to purchase safe-investment homes so they didn't get good mortgages.
Granted, it's an uphill etymological battle because the individual usage is so common. When people argue for the systemic definition, they're arguing that we should focus on processes rather than individuals.
Now I guess it's ok to hate me as I'm part of several majorities and people seems to like it.
What am I supposed to do now? Hate myself? Allow others to discriminate me? Make a blind eye to those who think it's ok to hate me?
It's interesting, I'm not from the US and I find it curious that these situations arise. I can understand and empathise with (as a 'person of colour' as it's called over there) the arguments of both sides, but deep down I find this kind of 'positive segregation' morally wrong.
That's pretty much the whole idea of censorship.
I think there's a good reason for doing that, given that such a sub can almost trivially become a hate sub for mocking people on Twitter, much like fatpeoplehate. "We want our community to be largely black" seems like a reasonable founding principle.
"We want our community to be largely white" seems like a reasonable founding principle.
How do you feel about the statement now?
If you change the founding principle to "we want our community to be largely Russian," that would be totally fine by me.
Additionally, opposition to the "largely black" founding principle implies opposition to women-only spaces and other community groupings that are largely accepted in society.
Yup, so even if some poor Croatian guy just got off the boat, as long as he looked white enough for Americans, some of them would say he benefited from American slavery of blacks and must renounce his white privilege.
In any case, this has little to do with the original topic of establishing a black-focused community.
(FWIW, Slavic culture didn't originate with the enslaved Slavs.)
Now when we talk about African-Americans you gotta remember that Africa is a huge continent, not a single nation or culture. The people who were kidnapped, beaten, chained, subjected to the horrors of the Middle Passage, then treated like subhumans for hundreds of years, they came from many different cultures, they were forcibly prevented from carrying those with them, and so they have formed a new culture, native to the soil of this continent. That's why it's appropriate to capitalize the word "Black" when referring to Black American culture: it's a proper noun.
When you speak of "white people" in America, you're generally referring to the whole American mainstream culture, which is neither genetically nor culturally Caucasian exclusively. The word "White" capitalized as a proper noun refers to a specific complex of "White supremacist" culture.
In sum:
Black - African American
white - Mainstream American (includes everybody: The fictional character Steven Quincy Urkel could be called "white" in this sense.)
White - racist American subculture
There is no one "Black" culture either.
>so when you capitalize the word in the context of United States of America it refers to the KKK et. al., not to mainstream American culture
And yet if you capitalize Black it doesn't mean black supremacists?
Why do you hold different standards to white and black?
>which developed in waves of lots of different cultures (not all of which are European-derived.) E.g. the Irish. Treated like shit when they first got here, now we have St. Patrick's Day parades.
St. Patrick's Day is not specifically an Irish holiday. It is a Christian holiday which is popular amongst Irish.
>And so we have Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, Chinese-Americans, and so on. They kept their cultures.
There are many blacks who kept their cultures as well. Not all blacks were slaves. Many voluntarily migrated to the US.
>Now when we talk about African-Americans you gotta remember that Africa is a huge continent, not a single nation or culture.
You are contradicting yourself. You said "There is no one "White" culture, so when you capitalize the word in the context of United States of America it refers to the KKK" and yet you also admit there is no single "Black" culture.
>The people who were kidnapped, beaten, chained, subjected to the horrors of the Middle Passage, then treated like subhumans for hundreds of years, they came from many different cultures, they were forcibly prevented from carrying those with them, and so they have formed a new culture, native to the soil of this continent.
Not all blacks living in the US were slaves.
>That's why it's appropriate to capitalize the word "Black" when referring to Black American culture: it's a proper noun.
But there is no single black culture. You yourself said that white should not be capitalized because there isn't a single culture.
>When you speak of "white people" in America, you're generally referring to the whole American mainstream culture, which is neither genetically nor culturally Caucasian exclusively.
When I say white people I mean white people. I don't mean anything else. I don't mean culture. If I meant culture I would say culture.
I have never seen anybody saying anything different than I said. Please provide examples of mainstream people using the the phrase differently.
>The word "White" capitalized as a proper noun refers to a specific complex of "White supremacist" culture.
You haven't proven that.
I've only ever heard that question asked about us Europeans, for some reason.
Freedom of association is a thing. Now, would you agree with the statement, ""We want our community to be largely white" seems like a reasonable founding principle." ?
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackPeopleTwitter/comments/b93w1j/...
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackPeopleTwitter/comments/gumxuy/...
1. black people who can verify and get a flair
2. non-white and non-black people who can verify but don't get a flair
3. white people can ask the moderators for entrance, but it only says they will will "receive further instructions." It's not clear what these further instructions are supposed to be.
This is racist and if a right wing subreddit did it, they would have been banned years ago.
Anywhere race is a topic and anyone can join, but there is no verification of identity, trolls can claim anything. How do you think it feels to be a Black member of a forum and see a White person who is taken in by a White troll pretending to be Black? Conversely, how do you think it feels to be Black and be arguing with someone White who is sure you are a White troll pretending to be Black?
It's not a trivial problem, and it's inherent anywhere your online identity isn't linked to your real one.
They aren't verifying identity, they are verifying skin color and using the information to then discriminate against their users. A person with verified skin tone and not verified identity can dress themselves in all sorts of lies just as trolls do everywhere on the internet.
>How do you think it feels to be a Black member of a forum and see a White person who is taken in by a White troll pretending to be Black? Conversely, how do you think it feels to be Black and be arguing with someone White who is sure you are a White troll pretending to be Black?
Maybe we should focus on ideas over identity.
I'm not saying it's a good solution in an absolute sense, nor do I have any idea how well it's working.
I'm just saying I think it's obviously motivated by a real and inescapable issue, and I don't think there is a simple and obviously better solution given the constraint that you want to have an online forum where people can acknowledge and discuss things related to racial identity.
> This sub is intended for exceptionally hilarious and insightful social media posts made by black people. To that end, only post social media content from black people.
And I'm the crazy one when I say social media is only banning right wingers.
At this point it feels like Reddit saves the big important bans specifically so they can be announced in ban waves, because by the time they happen the response is always, “how in the world did this take over a year to be done?”
edit: to my point it looks like they banned over 2000 subs this time. I doubt that list hadn’t been growing over time. I checked out one that was apparently for a podcast and the little bit I could view on Wayback Machine looked pretty damn ordinary, with only mildly edgy jokes. Not immediately casting doubt that there is good reason but it sure feels like every other ban wave I’ve seen from Reddit.
https://www.reddithelp.com/en/categories/rules-reporting/acc...
Private companies can't (mechanically, not legally) determine who has a moral right to speak. If we had a magic method for figuring that out it'd have been a feature of politics since at least the Roman Empire. Instead we ended up with things like Robert's Rules of Order where the process is controlled as best as possible to let wildly contradictory opinions get aired.
Of course not, no one is claiming they are the ultimate arbiters of morality.
But they do have the right to decide who can use their platform (as long as they don’t discriminate against protected groups). The broader public can then judge them positively or negatively for these decisions.
That said I don't really know what these users were actually banned for saying. It could have been pretty bad and although I might not agree with what they said I hope that people are free to express their thoughts and ideas even though I might find them personally offensive.
Social media companies don't become more liable just because they moderate. They all do that already. There's no sudden legal line between moderation involving messages with spam or bigotry.
I think anyone amplifying messages on a large-scale in a one-to-many manner, between people that aren't equally engaged in a conversation together, should be considered to start accruing responsibilities over the content of what they're participating in amplifying, in a way that a phone companies largely don't have. I think social media companies have been largely shirking that responsibility by phrasing it as a free speech issue and letting anything go.
> Social media companies don't become more liable just because they moderate.
Actually they do:
https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/1997-....
And also: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/cs181/projects/1997-...
1) They can't be held liable for user-generated content, e.g. Facebook can't be sued for a defamatory statement that I make in a post on their platform.
A newspaper that authors and publishes an article making a similar defamatory statement could be held liable. I believe that Facebook could be held liable if the company itself authored and published the defamatory statement, instead of merely distributing my defamatory statement.
2) They can moderate user-generated content visible on their platform as they see fit, without trying to be "neutral" and without losing their liability protections (item 1 above).
Apparently, before this law, internet companies were worried about being held liable for what users said if they did any moderation (and some companies were sued for this).
---
This article seems to be a decent overview: https://www.minclaw.com/legal-resource-center/what-is-sectio...
This longer video (33 mins) from Legal Eagle is nice as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUWIi-Ppe5k. It's been a few weeks since I watched it so hopefully I didn't miss too many important details.
Suggest you give less credence to whoever you contracted it from.
Is there any evidence of this besides the announcements just happening on the same day? It could be companies waiting to announce these moves on Monday morning after days of seeing Facebook embroiled in controversy for not doing this. Or maybe one company decided to make this move and other companies fast tracked anything they had planned on this so they wouldn't be viewed as ignoring this issue.
We have no indication one way or another whether this is coordinated. We shouldn't just assume it is coordinated because it is happening on the same day.
The likelihood of high profile bans like these not being coordinated is slim.
Either way, my request still stands. Is there any evidence to suggest these companies are working together instead of us all just assuming that is the case?
We have had multiple simultaneous ban waves this is not a new occurrence, at this point one would ask for evidence to show its not the case since the fact that this happening is self evident.
It's the same coordination you see in penguins jumping off an ice flow. They'll all bunch up looking for sea lions they know are lurking. Eventually one jumps in or gets pushed and they all jump in right after.
While it probably isn’t as spontaneous as the penguins I also don’t see it as some smokey or well these days vapey dark room where they sit around the table with a bunch of dossiers laid out in front of them taking a vote.
https://www.google.com/search?q=youtube+site%3Areddit.com%2F...
https://www.google.com/search?q=twitch+site%3Areddit.com%2Fr...
https://www.reddit.com/r/DeclineIntoCensorship/comments/hh1s...
Investing into shitty companies will make you loose your investment. Why should this be different with ideas?
To extend your metaphor, if I invest in a bad company, sure, my finances will suffer. But if it were that easy to tell which companies were bad there'd be no reason to invest at all. People who bet against the crowd and are right are generally considered heroes. I agree there should be a cost to trying to be a hero, but I don't think we currently have enough of them and I'm leery of making it harder to be one.
He's not. Judith Miller was fired from NYT ending her career as a reporter within a couple of years of her original Iraq reporting. Alex Jones continues to make a living being a repugnant human being.
The distinction is especially material here, because this is the standard-issue message board argument against journalism, or "the mainstream media": that it must be conducted at the highest standards of scrupulous accountability, a standard far higher than any of us hold our own work to (I like to call this "The Djikstra Amnesia Effect"). And if it isn't, its practitioners are no better than Alex Jones.
Should the media have .. simply chosen not to report it? ""Censor"" mentions of "freedom fries"?
Is the BBC article itself "denouncing and shaming"? Or just the Republican it's quoting?
Yes and no, this is less collusion and more to avoid platform hopping basically if one platform bans them they’ll flock to another even if the medium isn’t identical or the platform is not optimal for their use case any platform would do in times like these.
I’m pretty sure at this point when the behavior pattern is known the platforms inform each other of high profile bans.
The others follow suit to avoid being branded as the one that didn’t or worse as the one that accepted the now pariahs “with open arms”.
This time has not elapsed.
This isn’t an opinion for or against this pattern just an observation on why it makes sense.
If we want to be concerned about individual rights, we should at least be somewhat accurate about the definition of the word.
For example, I 'own' my sidewalk, but anyone can protest there. A lot of public space is privately owned, but can still be used for protest.
The internet is the new public square. It can be privately owned, but still forced to recognize the rights of the public.
As it stands, Google+Youtube, Facebook, and Reddit (1st, 2nd, 4th, and 6th most popular websites in the country) currently have the power to ban, or worse, guide, all discussion of any topic they wish, with no accountability whatsoever. That is a frightening amount of power to have, and one that I don't believe the free market is equipped to deal with its abuses.
This latter problem is something I'm legitimately surprised more people are not concerned about. Just because they're using this power to target something you don't like doesn't mean it won't be used for more nefarious purposes in the future.
I'm leaning towards the idea that platforms with no barrier to entry should be treated as public to some degree, while those with a sign-up process more involved than email and password are still treated as private.
In most cities, the land owner even in downtown will own the sidewalks, but there is an 'easement' that says it's a public right of way. However, it's a public space, and anyone can protest or say what they want there. Their freedom of speech is protected, even though the land is private. The land is certainly private because the landowner is responsible for upkeep and can generally modify it so long as the sidewalk meets certain requirements.
Here's an example in New York City where the Occupy protests took place: https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/the-21-million-sidewalk-how...
All this is to say is that we have a model for privately owned public space -- spaces where private interests have certain rights and obligations and ownership but where accomodations for the public must be made.
Here's another example in London and Portland: https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/public-space-battle-playing...
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/jul/24/revealed-pseu...
In San Francisco at least -- only using it because I'm most familiar -- certain buildings are required to have public spaces, and you in general have a right to be in this space for free. There are even some beautiful rooftop decks that are privately owned but have been made public to meet the requirement -- like the deck on one kearny.
It all comes down to what is popular and unpopular--which is fine in a marketplace. That's exactly how marketplaces are supposed to work.
it wouldn't surprise me if there was an informal discussion and a decision by google led others to also take action.
Elections aren't held in a vaccum. People 'interfere' with them by persuading, spending money, and by choosing to give political ideas access to their platform.
Media agencies 'interfere' with elections all the time, by exercising their discretion for the last point, and by actively agitating on the first point.
And why would de-platforming racist white nationalists interfere with the election, anyways? Is there a racist white nationalist on the ballot in 2020, who will be hurt by this?
If the specific figures being banned are not affiliated with any candidate for election, even under a minor party or for local office, how is this "election interference"?
It shouldn't, all social networks delegate banning "hate content" to the SPLC and ADL. It's much more efficient/effective to do things this way, and more importantly, it assures fair enforcement. Otherwise, you'd have the same content allowed on one platform, but banned on another. This approach is much better for the platforms and their users.
Delegating also ensures that cancellations aren't done willy-nilly—the SPLC/ADL are not like a Twitter mob. They have (combined) over a billion in funds to investigate hate speech on the Internet, and to then advise the social networks that they are hosting hate speech—who then make the actual decisions to ban or not ban. Typically, they coordinate and all ban in unison, to avoid weird situations where someone is banned on one (or a few networks), but not all.
Obviously, none of this will feel "fair" to racist Whites, but there are places online (e.g. Gab, Bitchute, etc.) for them to speak freely to other racists where they won't be banned.
Here is an HN link from it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16643040
Act together, and they are accused of conspiracy.
I guess their PR teams decided the latter is less hassle for them.
Same thing with mask use in airlines. Some companies do not want to enforce mask use until all airlines do it, because they do not want customers opposed to masks leaving them for competitors that do not require masks on flights.
Leftist extremists are effecting public banishment of their rightist extremist opponents.
It wouldn't be as bad if leftist extremists were getting banned at the same time. The problem is that leftist extremists have bullied the mainstream left into extreme action.
That is absolutely not the definition of consistent, so I have no idea why you've tried to square this circle. Consistent means proportional enforcement without political bias, which has clearly never been a priority for reddit.
After all, reddit has repeatedly targeted right-leaning subs with shadow bans and stealth editing including directly from the CEO. Which left-leaning subs have received CEO stealth editing treatment?
There are dozens of affiliated subreddits just there.
Just a simple substitution, and now we see that this is just bad thinking.
Reddit after all developed moderation tools like shadow banning and deranking and used them exclusively against right-leaning subs, including stealth editing from the CEO.
In practice, big services like YouTube, Twitter, Reddit, et. al., are going to get heat from all sides of the political spectrum. Right-wingers are positive Twitter is suppressing them, yet left-wingers frequently complain Jack Dorsey is a cryptofascist. Both of them are pushing these theories on... Twitter. And they get thousands of retweets. You would think that irony would not be lost on them, but you would be oh so wrong.