Deplatforming Is Wrong | Hacker News Reader

Deplatforming Is Wrong

16 pointsriffnote25 comments

While I don't use Parler, it probably serves an important social purpose for 95 percent of its members: being a place where they can be heard and not feel isolated.

Deplatforming isolates people at the worst time ever, during a global pandemic. It shuts up a huge swath of the American population who need to be heard and understood. Big tech is wrong here. They are not our saviours. They are not defenders of democracy and freedom.

Please see this for what it is: groupthink on a grand scale.

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When a platform refuses to monitor and remove seditious activity and incitement for violence is when they fail and need to be dropped.

HN is a hotbed for groupthink. That is just as dangerous, even moreso.

Can you cite or link to What Trump said to incite the siege on the capital (as opposed to just getting people to its steps peacefully as he’s been talking about for 2 weeks)?

Honest question...I literally can’t find it anywhere.

I want to know what he said to incite violence. I assume he broke the law in-doing so as it’s illegal to call for violence I think.

Not Trump, Parler was full of seditious calls for violence against politicians. And Parler was either unwilling or unable to delete all of it.

But the claim is that Trump said something to incite it... hence why he was booted from Twitter and impeached. But what did he say? Asking for a friend.

Until they move to another platform which cannot be dropped / de-platformed. Meanwhile Gab gets another 600,000 sign ups. The point is, it is still alive there and is getting stronger by the minute.

Well done for showing that de-platforming is working and that it is reducing and removing 'seditious activity'. /s (It isn't.)

Sorry to burst your bubble, but so far it has been rather clearly demonstrated that de-platforming works for diminishing interest and engagement with some of these more dangerous groups. It raises the bar for alternative systems, makes a casual redirect difficult (c.f. algorithmic push towards some of these groups due to perceived higher engagement/controversy), and generally puts the nutjobs into their own little echo chamber where we can watch them.

Must be a bitter pill to swallow, but you are simply wrong. There are few platforms that cannot be diminished, and the further out these groups are pushed the harder it becomes for them to maintain the interest of a large potential audience. While there is always a signup bump after big events (c.f. the parler and Gab bumps when some of the more egregiously intolerant Trump groups were dumped from reddit and other places) this never lasts and eventually the only group that remains on these sites is the core nucleus of nazi assholes that no one wanted in the first place.

Deplatforming, for the better or worse, is putting a bigger spotlight on decentralized platforms to mitigate the issue of hosting something that businesses are unwilling to touch. They'll always try to find a platform they can leech on that cannot be moderated as easily, because not one holds the keys to the kingdom.

I feel like that attempting to silence a group by deplatforming is similar to attempting to block/censor a service provided over the Internet, the network sees censorship as a system failure and it will always attempt to find a route around that.

> the network sees censorship as a system failure and it will always attempt to find a route around that

No, it really doesn't. John was wrong. What happens is that 'censorship' is applied at a particular level of the stack and this forces people who want to share or view the content to move to a more complicated and expensive process at a higher level of abstraction in the delivery stack. This is because decentralized systems are less efficient and because, so far, decentralized systems have incredibly shitty UX. You can shine a spotlight on decentralized alternatives and they may get a little bit of attention, but the attention will not last long enough to have a significant impact. The true believers may try to make the effort for a while, but they will slowly drift back to spending most of their time using the easiest possible mechanism and tool because they actually have other things to do with their time and life.

Should twitter be deplatformed for allowing the Hang Pence hashtag to trend the day after the the riots?

Deplatforming is right.

Private companies have TOSes. They are publishing user content and they must act for child p*rn or violence.

Go talk again with your politicians if you want to change that. There is no online court, just executives that have to uphold the law, just like everybody else

Deplatforming is a net positive (to me personally) if it helps establish more decentralized and free networks of communication.

I feel like the timing is almost right, with all the emerging technologies from the past few years (matrix, fediverse etc) just reaching stability.

So true. It will accelerate the tech. Just wait until Musk enters the game.

The problem is feeling entitled to services (individual extremists to social networks, Parler to AWS) in the name of free speech, while in reality these problem customers are demanding a commercial relationship with companies who dislike them enough to refuse business.

Despite contrary perception, web sites aren't a limited resource (like, say, newspaper distribution) that needs antitrust regulations. Parler can run its service without AWS, and individual extremists can exercise their right to free speech elsewhere, without imposing their presence where they are unwanted.

Republicans, pick one: - Government regulation - Small government

I don't understand why has this post been flagged, it's a legitimate opinion

Every social media story this weekend is turning into a referendum on the marketplace of ideas, which HN can probably argue endlessly about without reaching a novel conclusion.

In the UK Bolt is an alt-Uber app, which for some journeys is cheaper than Uber.

I had an interesting conversation with a Bolt driver recently, after he remarked surprise that I was a 'decent' passenger; it turns out Bolt is the app for everyone banned from Uber.

Many of the drivers work multiple apps and apparently quite a few are refusing to pickup Bolts or treating Bolts with suspicion because Bolt doesn't have the same driver protections as Uber.

When I ran a nightclub ~20 years ago we would share photos of people we had banned, so other venues would also ban those patrons. That left them to the 'trouble pubs' which were consequently heavily policed. What is happening now is no different.

Ultimately there are groups of people within society that can't behave themselves and ruin the experience of [whatever] for everyone else, and society acts accordingly.

This article explains that groupthink and self-justification very well:

https://threader.app/thread/1347912743605698560

Companies don't want to be tied to hate speech or speech that causes people to riot. It may not seem fair, but companies are private and not a part of the government so there is no freedom of speech.

Google, Facebook, Apple etc are already deeply influencing the way we think. Deplatforming discussion forums for people who feel isolated and misunderstood is a bold step towards mass compliance and brainwashing.

I feel sorry for radicalized Republicans. They can be reached. Banning, deplatforming and isolating is the opposite of what we should be doing. Big tech should be creating more platforms for them, and more outlets for expression and diversification, not less.

A year ago I would have agreed, but a laissez faire approach has been the dominant one for quite a while now and is what has led us to this point. It clearly hasn't reduced these extremists and something else must be tried.

Doesn't posting in an echo chamber isolate you from the larger share of the population anyway?

I'm European, but if I were in America I would not be republican, I might be democrat. I don't like Trump as President or even as a human being. I think Trump is a sore loser who should've accepted the election results and I think it's despicable that he incited his followers to insurrect and take the Capitol. I also think he's desperate because either he exiles to a country without extradition with the USA or he's going to prison (I believe he'll exile).

I can even understand Twitter and Facebook banning him until the 20th to avoid another violent incident.

On the other hand, I never used Parler, but I think Amazon and other providers should not deny service to Parler, as I understand Parler is just a Platform that allows free speech. They're just killing the messenger. I don't agree with those MAGA or QAnon or Antivaxxers, but they should be allowed to discuss freely. I'm an atheist, what if someone decided atheists have dangerous ideas and they shouldn't be allowed to have a platform to discuss? If the internet existed a few centuries ago that would've definitely happened.

Also Trump had a personal crusade against Jeff Bezos, so I believe Bezos is just trying to claim some payback.

Nazis don't deserve to be heard.

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