Twitter permanently bans white supremacist David Duke
cnet.com
cnet.com
- Karl Popper
The latter conveniently unconstitutional.
If their providers want to cancel these business relationships, that is their right as well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_association
What is really problematic and has been since its inception is the overuse of commercial and centralized services by public institutions and organizations. Twitter and other services of that nature are not public utilities.
Edit: To the replies pointing out the protected class distinction: I'm well aware of it (as my example shows). What I am highlighting is that "freedom of association" isn't as absolute as the parent post implies, and that in the past the law was changed and that freedom was diminished when it allowed behavior we didn't like.
In fact, if you were to start a group that wanted to destroy white Europeans (like how the Klan wants to destroy non whites, Catholics, Mormons, Jews, and sanity itself) then you would quickly find yourself ostracized.
I would bet an anti white group would quickly find itself branded as a terrorist organization in the US.
Anti-Semites are not a protected class. Political opinion is not protected in private space. The policies of these private platforms are clear and available for anyone to read, and include a ban on racist speech. If you want to stay on the platform, follow the rules.
You have no control over what color you were born, and you can't change it. That's why race is a protected class and opinions are not. Free speech only protects us from the government, not from private consequences.
In 1997 the big tech platforms lobbied that not only they wouldn't censor views, that it was basically impossible for them to do so.
This is what allowed the internet to grow without onerous regulation (ie they were treated as a carrier not a publisher).
Now that big tech is moving towards "being publishers", you're now going to reverse it all and cause massive regulation to take place. In the end, "the internet" will look no different than mainstream tv.
I worry about this, but I also suspect we're heading in a direction that will mostly avoid this fate. However, even if given a hard binary choice between TV land and the current popularity of hatred that Duke exemplifies, I wouldn't have to think on it.
The censors aren't stupid, of course they are going to go after the David Dukes first, then over the next decade watch how the internet slowly transforms into a massive establishment mouthpiece.
Maybe explain to your kids, "we were afraid of bad words".
Wikileaks and Julia Assange are commiting crimes were they in the US. There is a long list to cut.
Is that what you meant?
I find DD to be repelling- but moves like this are more repelling than yet another asshole on Twitter.
Twitter apparently wants to save its users from ever being critical thinkers.
On the other hand parler might only be popular because twitter started banning these people in the first place.
If I say I'm anti-racist, but disagree with you as to what constitutes "racism", which of us is right and which should be banned? Who gets to judge?
Saying the term "racist" is "constantly in flux" seems to imply its definition is completely arbitrary, or that no commonly accepted or generally agreed upon definitions exist. Regardless of what else people may say it does or doesn't mean, I think most people would agree that the white supremacist views of David Duke could be considered racist.
>If I say I'm anti-racist, but disagree with you as to what constitutes "racism", which of us is right and which should be banned? Who gets to judge?
In the specific case, obviously the owner of the platform. Despite what people say (or want to be true) Twitter is not a public space, it's a private platform and its owners can ban whomever they please for whatever reason they want, and that's probably spelled out in their terms of service somewhere.
In the more general case, possibly a framework of law, common societal or religious norms and cultural influences, or no one. Truth can't always be determined with absolute certainty when one is dealing with social constructs in the subjective and abstract landscape of modern hyperreality. People can't even agree on the world being round anymore, and it's easier to accept that everything one is told is a lie than attempt to reconcile a complex and fragmented media universe of mutually opposed, violently overlapping magisteria. Obviously, if we can't even agree on what race is, we may not agree on what what racism is, or opposition to it. How do you even do that when some people believe most of the people they pass on the street are holograms in the Matrix?
That said, when David Duke talks about "the Jews" and their campaign of "white genocide" or about his desire to live in an all "white" society, it's entirely possible to see what he means in that context and form an opinion accordingly.
Twitter absolutely safe-harbors the extreme left. I think it's the only tech company I would refuse to work for due to their moral failings.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priyamvada_Gopal#%22White_live...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/mar/20/cambridge-...
Edit as reply due to posting limit: It wasn't meant to convince you the KKK shouldn't be banned. It was only meant to correct the misleading implication that opposing the KKK is as "left" as Twitter gets.
(Scare quotes around "left" because I don't believe there's anything inherently left about "white lives don't matter". I.e. one can be a radical leftist without believing that.)
That said as much as I think that that professor is a door knob that should’ve been fired instead of promoted I also don’t think that she has nearly as much impact as the fucking leader of the KKK on social media.
It's a real dilemma: pushing these people to niche platforms limits their ability to spread their hateful ideology, but then those same niche platforms could then become radicalizing cesspits for the few that get sucked into them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pittsburgh_synagogue_shooting:
> Bowers had earlier posted anti-Semitic comments against HIAS (formerly, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) on the online social network Gab.[11][12][13] Dor Hadash[14] had participated in HIAS's National Refugee Shabbat the previous week. Referring to Central American migrant caravans and immigrants, Bowers posted on Gab that "HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I'm going in."[15]
Maybe. But then again they're radicalizing people on the mainstream platforms as well.
Of course, if we admit that radicalizing people with hateful ideology is a problem, then we might have to admit the ideology itself is also a problem, and that would suggest that all speech isn't perfectly equal and equally valid relative to all other speech, and that some speech can actually be harmful. We would have to treat different ideas, ideologies and claims differently, and judge their merits on a case by case basis, and allow there to be consequences for harmful speech just as there are consequences for harmful actions, both in society as well as legally.
We can't do that in the current political climate, so perhaps the next best thing is to simply reduce the number of people being radicalized as much as possible by not giving racists as big a megaphone as possible.
What we should be happy about is they have to dig this far off the mainstream to find someone like him.