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Comment by tpirx | Hacker News Reader

By what measure are you attributing all of this to any App specifically? What if 60% of the violent offenders were radicalized via Twitter? If this were a court case all of the platforms would be implicated.

On what ground will you stand on to prevent another crypto war? [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars

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If 60% is from Twitter, we eradicate 60%. Good

You are not eradicating anything. You are removing people them from your view AND pissing them off in the process. A time tested key for success.

This is the same thing an abuser says to their spouse.

Please provide an example because what you're saying doesn't make sense to me.

Making them leave (= leaving them) will be bad because it “will only make them angrier” and it won’t really solve anything.

Just because it’s also used by abusers doesn’t mean it’s always incorrect. Clearly the divide has been growing, and if you think deplatforming the right (which of course immediately went on to create their own platforms, so there’s now left wing and right wing echo chambers) isn’t at least partly to blame, then what is?

A time tested key for success of what exactly?

These moves successfully de-platformed and pissed off racists and terrorists, very good.

I think the point is that "pissing off" radicals is more cathartic than useful. What moderate people want is to thwart their ambitions, but ideally de-radicalize them so that they are no longer dangerous people in need of thwarting. The main argument I see against a move like this is that it may temporarily achieve the former but only at the expense of the latter.

Personally, I believe that de-platforming is a useful tool when radicalization is spreading like a contagion, but only if it is applied in a consistent way and with well defined boundaries.

Yeah I agree.

But de-platforming the radicalizing accounts is an effective way to de-racalize.

Radicalization is the process feeding someone an explanation for feelings they already have. We have to address the root cause. For a huge segment of people the root cause is the hollowing out of the middle class over the last 50 years. We're completely incapable of solving this problem with the same economic tools we've been using.

Taking away communication kicks the can down the road in the same way.

> For a huge segment of people the root cause is the hollowing out of the middle class over the last 50 years.

I keep hearing this, but the data shows a different story. Trump supporters (and Republicans) in general are wealthier than Democrats, and the country as a whole.

See https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-mythology-of-trumps...

Yes I don’t disagree that addressing the root cause is important.

But we should disable radicalization immediately because they already organized to attack the capitol.

Deplatforming from what I understand works in deradicalization at the population level. That is, if you want a smaller population of radicals, you deplatform them. If you want less radical behavior, you deplatform them.

(NOTE: the following paper also covers what happens to the radicals who remain radicals post-deplatforming, which is super interesting.) https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/02673231209220...

Exactly. They have no right to the megaphone that social media offers.

Let them build their own websites and find their own audiences.

This is quarantining of ideological violence.

This worked against ISIS and I didn't see anyone complaining about free speech then.

The poster and I aren’t doing anything; Twitter, a private company, is refusing to publish their words to limit their legal and brand liability if another coup is attempted. It’s hard for me to argue that they shouldn’t with the laws as written without a law degree. And similarly I have a hard time arguing that the law should be changed where they are disallowed from doing so.

Sure, it's possible (probable?) that all the people planning violence on Parler are going to continue somewhere else.

But do you really think that the world would be better off if they were allowed to continue on Parler? Should nothing be done?

It is already happening. The community has contingency plans for each of their communication channels being shut down.

One of the things not in the news is that a 30K user discord server was shut down this week. The community is switching to matrix.org/telegram/signal and has slick on boarding media to funnel users onto these platforms with step by step guides on how to setup accounts and get vetted. The on-boarding process is better documented by these groups than the services themselves.

I've also seen contingency comms plans in opposition groups starting to form should platforms try to cull both sides in an attempt to been seen as playing fair.

What's the end game look like for communities who want to avoid moderation? Things like decentralized immutable message ledgers with vetted in person trust chains becoming an in-demand/enabling technology. If it is mathematically possible to secure comms it will be used.

My personal take? Address the root causes of the disaffected population. Monitoring and reacting is fools game.

I agree with addressing the root causes, but that's a separate issue that Amazon/Apple/Google aren't responsible for.

It seems like this argument boils down to: if the community violating the TOS is organized enough that shutting it down won't stop them, then an exception should be made to the rules.

> that's a separate issue that Amazon/Apple/Google aren't responsible for.

The problem is that no one is responsible for this issue. There is no existing social construct that can address this problem.

> then an exception should be made to the rules.

By all means shut down communities. Just keep in mind that it won't solve the long term problem.

Hate crimes and the related seem to involve a very small tiny amount of people dedicated to the cause of genocide and a revolving door of a much larger contingency who is susceptible to in the moment but eventually decides it's too extreme, not for them, etc and killing people of a religious group/racial group/political ideology doesn't achieve their goal of the other group actually isn't trying to kill them.

The exact same arguments were made for info wars when they were banned. There was a big jump in numbers the first couple weeks and when they could no longer recruit the susceptible they disappeared from all serious discussions of conservative view points. Elimination of bad faith arguments doesn't actually amplify those views on timescales that actually matter.

You are limiting their ability to recruit and viralize their message.

These are terrorists we are talking about, not conservative grandparents sharing memes on facebook.

All of the platforms are used to radicalize terrorists. Not just Trump, look at Anwar al-Awlaki or Anjem Chaudhry. All platforms need to work together to eradicate incitement to violence.

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