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Comment by jmcdl | Hacker News Reader

Anyone who thinks this is a good thing is a very poor student of history.

History doesn’t have any precedent for this. Algorithmically defined echo chambers are a new frontier for society to tackle. We’ve tried the option of waving our hands and hoping for the best, and what we got was a literal riot at the holiest of holies. Maybe it’s time for society to reject extremists on the internet, like we reject them in our local communities.

The fact the echo chambers are algorithmically determined or not is quite irrelevant -- the end result is the same -- cults. The historic precedent for minimizing bad influences of cults is decentralization and distribution so as to prevent systemic failure cascades in case where cultish behavior is endemic. This is federalism and anti-monopoly policies (for either government and private enterprise).

The solution, therefore, is that these centralized echo chambers need to be broken up into smaller pieces.

Yes. Antitrust enforcement is key to restoring democracy. Should be Priority #1

The end result is the same, but the mechanisms that create and persist that phenomenon are now a billion dollar industry driven by very smart people with shareholders that they answer to. The result is that the effectiveness and pertinacity of these creations far outstrip anything ever seen before in human history.

And yet, decentralisation and the social networks' "hands off" policies were exactly what started those cults.

Those trolls, movements and "subcultures" were not started on r/all. They came from niche subcommunities which were effectively unmoderated before they gained media attention or from 4chan and all the other -chan, -booru, etc sites which already were exactly the kind of small decentralised, free-speech-above-all-else services you're talking about.

> The historic precedent for minimizing bad influences of cults is decentralization and distribution so as to prevent systemic failure cascades in case where cultish behavior is endemic.

If this is anything more than repetition of dogma then please explain how exactly this should be applied to the current situation. What should be done?

They assume they will control the monster they're creating forever, believing it could never be subverted by their ideological enemies or even end up creating an ideology of its own that oppresses every other ideology. They're playing with fire that has to potential to hurt far more than themselves or their perceived enemies.

By "they" do you mean the companies that own those platforms? Or somebody else? Do you mean that someone else could take their platforms away from them?

Twitter is a private company. It's their decision who they do business with, or is it not?

I assure you that in the US, the threat posed during a resurgent white supremacy similar to Wilmington 1898 is NOT someone being banned from a social media platform

Can you elaborate? I don’t view Trump as being that far in likeness from David Duke, other than that Trump masks his hateful rhetoric every-so-slightly. Are you also all for having Davie Duke back on Twitter? And what in history enforces the idea that banning Trump is bad? I can’t think of a single incident that would indicate it will be anything but a boon for society.

This reminds me of when a teacher finally blows-up at the idiot student that has been incessantly disrupting class and has him suspended and all the non-crazies can get back to being productively educated. This is a good thing.

Edit, to add: not every shushing is the same. The context and circumstances can drastically change the nature of the shush.

Remember that time Hitler was deplatformed and nobody published Mein Kampf?

The biggest problem is that it will likely lead to a bunch of less visible alternatives arising.

Trump himself has claimed he’s going to start one.

That and the temptation to ban more and more for an ever widening definition of wrong thought will be impossible to resist. Every time some entity gains this type of control, the use of it always ends up expanding until it reaches a breaking point. After that, things get really messy for everyone involved.

Society functions fine without these platforms. Their bans will work out ok.

Well, they didn’t ban him because he thinks wrong things. They very clearly banned him because his words on the platform were intended to cause violence and stop the democratic process in the US (but mostly only the former). I think it’d be foolish not to ban people who use Twitter to communicate plans to perform acts of violence. If anything I hope they (along with other platforms) use this opportunity to get better at it.

Don’t forget this is Twitter exercising its right to free speech. If Trump is upset, he’s free to do the same and make his own Twitter-like platform. I’ve seen a few open source ones posted here that he could fork.

So you want this idiot to continue to have a platform to incite violence? You may be a student of history but your understanding of it is poor and honestly you sound like someone who supports this traitor.

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