People need to stop being so lazy and throwing around the word censorship. If a bunch or teenagers come into my coffee shop and start loudly calling each autists and retards I'm going to kick them out. I'm not censoring them by kicking them out.
And while some are screaming for these sites to get shut down over it, most of us aren't. What you see from most of us is recommendation to stop using services that silence you. This is a reasonable response, if someone doesn't like you, go somewhere where they do like you. That's what the comment you're responding to is advocating, embracing and even getting excited about. The internet needs a true public square, not a private entity masquerading as one that for some reason totally unbeknownst to them has to constantly remind everyone that they are not a public square.
In two clicks I found their community guidelines on their website:
https://discord.com/guidelines
Second rule:
"Do not organize, promote, or coordinate servers around hate speech. It’s unacceptable to attack a person or a community based on attributes such as their race, ethnicity, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, or disabilities."
Calling someone a "retard" or "autist" is considered by Discord to be mocking people with disabilities.
Also IRC exists and is still in use by many people. Anyone can set up a server.
> ive been folowing this saga since GME was 60 or so but sadly i was too afraid to become autistic, and have now gone full retard
And this isn't an isolated comment, there are hundreds of comments like it in the 90k+ commetns on that thread, and in that subreddit. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l6er79/the_...
I'm criticizing the incentives Discord's polices create for moderation.
I'm sorry my wording was bad. I certainly did not intend any FUD spreading.
This is just about power and money, the chances that many of these HNers aren't losing money due to the actions of /wsb is low. I have no doubt many of the posters trying to defend the move are being a bit disingenuous. Not all for sure, but certainly some of them.
Honest question: why?
If anything, public discourse enables people to observe and see potential clusters, covid could be traced to tweets talking about pneumonia in November and December of 2019.
If, instead of squashing them, we figured out the underlying problem, which almost always is lack of prospects, we can act accordingly.
So that the "invisible hand of the market" may decide who is wisest (as demonstrated when we look at all the instances where this happened)?
I think all of these wishes of a true public space are usually colored by the (mis?)perception of certain opinions being opressed, when in fact they are often just socially unacceptable because of their destructive nature.
Not to be that guy, but I grew up in Austria inbetween old Nazis and young Neo-Nazis. When they said: "you are trying to silence us" what they meant is "we want to establish the old power again, so we can silence you. until that happens, we want free speech". This is literally (translated from a very thick accent in Austrian German) what one of the neo nazis said to me after the 8th beer and a heated discussion. To assume these people want free speech for anybody other than themselves is naive. For them tolerating others is a vehicle to convince them of their cause: Once they have what they want they will get rid of it.
The question how much tolerance we have to show those who themselves are intolerant is a old one and still not easy to answer. However to me it is quite clear that we should sacrifice the free society we have without a fight.
I'm of the belief that to protect your free society you protect it's virtue, even when people take advantage of it. If you hold steadfast to "free speech", no group ever gets past that first stage, so they can never take power. It means sometimes tolerating hearing reprehensible views of the world, but it is either that or giving someone all the guns and the power to control what you say, and if history teaches us anything, that always ends badly for the regular people no matter the initial intention of the person doing the censoring, a power like that is irresistible to those who want to use it to benefit themselves.
Never thought its gonna get to a point where i have to explain individual liberty in the west
There is historical evidence of this, the monarchs of the centuries past, the Catholic church, they all stifled the ability for people to freely discuss ideas, and even killed people for sharing the wrong ones. As soon as the printing press was invented that allowed people to share ideas freely you had revolts against them all over the next few centuries leading to representative democracies and republics, the enlightenment and development of ideas such as human dignity and individual rights, diversity of religion in the west took hold, the end of theocratic rule over Europe, and it all culminated in the creation of the US and an end to global colonialism mid 20th century. We owe our great way of life and our emergence from theocratic and monarchical shackles in large part to the ability to express and share ideas freely, this is a big reason why western societies hold that right in high esteem, it was a resounding success, it worked for us up until now and it will continue to do so if we let it.
This delicate balance was at times destoyed by a single person that started attacking people aggresively for who they were rather than attacking the argument they made in a way that makes them understand. Allowing that person to freely speak was reducing the classes freedom over all, because that person wanted to dominate the discussion so much, they fostered a climate were all other discussion was not possible anymore and free speech was prevented from happening.
In that case throwing someone out is a totally acceptable option. In fact this is the reason why discussion on this very site work out: because we are after insight and we punish behavior that is pure sophistry, aggressive, snarky, etc.
I am convinced that to speak freely as a collective, sometimes we must stop certain individuals from abusing their freedom of speech within our forums.
The outcome of such experiments always end up the same. People want to generalize about groups of people when its against the right group of people. We want to specifying gender when it is unnecessary, as long it not in the wrong situation. And we want to attacking people for who they were rather than attacking the argument, if its against people which is socially accepted to attack and dismiss.
People just love violence when its done for the right reasons and abhor it when it done for the wrong reasons. At the same time we try to apply principles like freedom of speech and find it completely incompatible with our split view on violence.
The discourse about whether and how much we should tolerate the intolerant is old and has be well discussed by post WWII philosophy. If we want to defend the freedom of all, we need to restrict those freedoms for the people who try to get rid of them.
Or as a neo nazi once said to me: "we want to establish the old power again, so we can silence you. until that happens, we want free speech".
The trouble comes back to the issue when a community and places such as universities tries to mimic laws without actually consider the problem of consistency, and at the same time wanting to believe in principles that they then don't apply to everyone. The result is inconsistency, hypocrisy, and often in order to escape the fact, removal of transparency.
I'm sorry I don't understand, are you arguing on behalf or against Discord who called the wsb crowd a bunch of white supremacist Nazis? I'm not being snarky, I genuinely can't tell if you're defending the open discussion about stock trading or the people that came in and called them names and got them shut down.
I am all for a discussion focused group having rules and expecting participants to adhere to them and booting them out if they don't. What I am opposed to is businesses that market themselves as places to freely discuss, wait til they have market control, then change their terms and kick people out based on tenuous accusations, in this case for the apparent reason of protecting hedge funds from the market. It is egregious what Discord did.
This is a tired old argument and it isn't convincing or effective. There's a big difference between having a conversation in a corner at a rock concert, and having a conversation in an online service hosted by someone else outside of that conversation, in a territory owned by a state where the host has to comply with laws which place the accountability of user-generated content on the host. A more apt comparison would be... I don't know, I actually don't have any idea. How about simply not being deliberately offensive or hateful or using whatever rhetoric that could ultimately translate into real-world violence?
Do you want a change in this society? I'd guess you do, most people want to change something. Espousing a desire for any change will always be offensive to someone, and so wanting any improvement necessarily includes being deliberately offensive. The right to speak is the right to offend.
Real world violence, sure. Let's ban that. And asking people to be nice, that's not a bad thing. And banning name calling in your private forum to promote substantiative discussion, that's probably a good idea. But deciding what unappetizing ideas are allowed and are not allowed to be discussed is a bad idea, I thought we learned that lesson in the last century. Free speech isn't what leads to fascist dictatorship, control of ideas does.
All this and I just want to remind you that we are discussing a web site using "white supremacist Nazis" as a pretext to prevent people from organizing against wall street hedge funds.
This is not true. Whatever you’re disagreeing with another person, you don’t have to call that person any politically incorrect slur, which is really the kind of “offensive” that we are talking about here.
"Retard" is considered a slur by some. It doesn't matter if others don't consider it to be. The one making the judgement is the service provider.
Same with Parlour complaining about being kicked off AWS when they violated their terms of service. There's a copy of the letter AWS sent to them that's public [0]
" Recently, we’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms. It’s clear that Parler does not have an effective process to comply with the AWS terms of service. {...} You remove some violent content when contacted by us or others, but not always with urgency. Your CEO recently stated publicly that he doesn’t “feel responsible for any of this, and neither should the platform.”" "
It's just a desire to have freedom from consequences. If they self hosted in Alabama, I'm sure they would have been fine.
[0] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/johnpaczkowski/amazon-p...
Also, if you have people coming to your coffee shop and acting badly, people can judge it for themselves and form their own opinion. On the internet, bans are quiet and you can easily silence a large chunk of the userbase without making a noise.
You may cheer these big platforms now because it's only "racists, white supremacists and crooks" being banned, but as soon as the first group of people you agree with gets blocked from these platforms you'll be the first one to fight for freedom of speech.
Private companies and individuals can do what ever they like with their property, no?
Arguments like these are all to often made out of convenience, but should be made in good faith and on principle. Do you truly believe in their right to private property?
Are you trying to argue some kind of Marxist position in order to show censorship can exist without government involvement.
I’m happy to have a discussion on why capital owners probably stole their wealth at some point. But you need to take me on the journey to how that’s related to censorship
If the rules of property mean I have certain rights.
But I don’t like the rules of property, and I want them to change.
And also, counterproductive. If you'd like to change the rules, perhaps defending them every time they're used to hurt your ideological opponents is not the way to do that. Maybe it would be more effective to agree with them and help them.
They aren’t banning you from speaking, just stopping you from doing it in their house, you can continue your message everywhere else.
This meta discussion about the actual point feels awkward. Is the alternative you are suggesting that you have to accept whatever anyone says always? Is it more nuanced than that?
That's not the definition of censorship. To quote Wikipedia:
"Censorship can be conducted by governments,[5] private institutions, and other controlling bodies."
Do you cry censorship when someone shushes you in the cinema?
Wrong comparison.
I’m pointing out a ridiculous application of what you’ve pointed out, private business, or an individual stoping you from speaking while technically censorship, happens all the time and no one raises an eyebrow.
Would shushing a whole crowd of people talking in the cinema be untoward?
What about a whole subreddit worth of people?
But in this case, it’s a perfect analogue, that illustrates why decrying censorship here is odd.
Reddit can kick people out if they don’t like the behaviour. This happens every day in businesses all over the world (virtual and non virtual) and it is not decried and for the most part is approved of.
No it's not a perfect analogue. To make the cinema comparison work: There is a cinema. You can rent rooms in that cinema. You and your friends go in to talk about stuff. Someone else comes in and "shushes" you instead of going to another room where nobody is in.
Reddit can also kick out people for having the wrong opinion, as they do, as was observed. Banning for the wrong opinion is of course censorship. Banning for specific lingo used by those people is also censorship.
There is difference between banning for wrong opinions and banning for eg. spamming. The line is slim.
Discord has made no attempt to stop anyone saying anything, they're just chosen not to lend these people their megaphone.
Discord reacted to how the platform they had already given was being used. That's different, practically and morally, from NBC not giving them a TV show.
They did not give it without terms of usage so your point is mute.
Let's start with the basics. Forget the selective enforcement aspect and the lawyering over the definition of "censorship" - can anything a private company does with its private property ever be criticized?
Terms of service are not above criticism, did not say it and did not imply it. I don't understand how you came to think that considering that in your previous post there is no criticism of discords TOS.
I was simply replaying to your statement that: "Discord reacted to how the platform they had already given was being used.". I don't understand why anyone would think that the owner of the platform should not be able to dictate the terms of use of their platform or react if those terms are not followed.
Do you want to live like that?
Most pro-censorship voices motte-and-bailey the latter by conflating it with the former.
That they can is not being argued, that they did it now is the issue.
In the same vein, no one would argue that a male manager shouldn't be able to schedule a female employee on their shifts. But when that male manager asks for a date and is refused, the action takes on an entirely different tone.
Maybe a bit too much. How about: "Social Engineering via Targeted Group Deplatforming?"
Because that is how these look-like to me and to a lot of these "persecuted" groups. These groups aren't necessarily "hateful" or "organizing" violence. A lot of the time it's just distasteful, kinda sexist etc and the "platform" owners simply don't like them and want to keep them from growing because (I think) they think that there is a real fear that societal opinion might swing their way. However the missing key here is that a lot of times, these are genuine "political movements" before they've cooled & solidified, and exist solely as mis-directed or nebulous emotion, hence the "hateful" and distasteful content.
Not all, but a good chunk of them of course. Sometimes you just get bad groups, but in a lot of those cases, I think it's more clear that they're doing something blatantly evil. For lack of a better example: coordinating and sharing info on how to sabotage deforestation using dangerous methods like putting nails inside trees, which would cause chainsaws to snap and hurt the operators.
Moderated content because you are responsible for stuff that's being posted? Then go "censor" stuff all you want. Same rules for all.
Open platform and not be responsible for content? (Similar to ISPs) Then everything should be allowed until a judge tells otherwise.
You would also be censoring people if you ran an upscale restaurant with a dress code and standards of behavior, or if you didn't let them post ads on the walls.
As long as you make your rules clear and enforce them fairly, censorship and standards of behavior are completely fine.
The very large social media platforms all market themselves as being neutral. They got to be the largest by providing a space for everyone.
So the ask here is "please enforce the rules fairly the way you have always promised you would." Asking a business to deliver on the promises they've made and continue to make is not an entitled attitude.
After all, all these businesses are in complete control of what they promise. If they don't like the old promise, they have a first amendment right to make a new promise that suits them better.
What is that statement meant to convey?
If you want to use their service you have to follow their rules.
Turns out that Discord doesn't like people using the terms "Retard" and "Autist" in a disparaging way.
They don't want that kind of discourse to be part of their community.
In the same way, I'm guessing that you're not going get far on this forum calling people "retards"
If you want to have your own community where you want to have that kind of discourse, you can self host a forum. Instead of Discord consider IRC, it's an open standard, and anyone can host a server.
You don't need AWS, you just need an internet connection. You just need to find a hosting provider that's willing to host it. Of which there are plenty.
I dont think you have any proof of that - it's not actually written clearly in their term of service what level of calling each other names is allowed.
Considering that people were calling each-other retards on Discord for years, any judge would conclude that they are happy with this behaviour.
On the other hand, timing of these bans are very suspicious, maybe they recieved a phonecall and banned the community under false pretences.
I really hope we can subponea some documents and find out if this is coming from corruption or cosmic coincedence
Discord did a thing and people don't like the thing Discord did. Now what?
All journalists, nearly all politicians, and lots of other people as well communicate largely on social networks owned by these giant amoral artificial creations. What does "public space" even mean anymore? Should we stand on the stroad median with the panhandlers? Would anyone even read our signs?
It is possible for citizens to impose conditions on the existence of the corporations their elected government creates.
Discord and Reddit in this case, even if they're not banned from Reddit yet, is their only means of communicating with eachother. Sure people can create some kind of group / channel on another platform, but if they are banned from one there is no way for them to know where to go.
Obviously the group is going to be mostly dispanded when they are banned or removed. I would say this is a kind of censorship. If they would've been given some time, like a week or a month before the banning then I would agree it would not be censorship because then they can assemble somewhere else.
//Been told I'm posting too fast again by the benevolent left wing moderators on HN so this is what I would have replied:
"From the comment on WSB that was a story on here before it got flagged off the front page:
"We blocked all bad words with a bot, which should be enough, but apparently if someone can say a bad word with weird unicode icelandic characters and someone can screenshot it you don't get to hang out with your friends anymore."
In other words, they told the kids not to swear and enforced it but someone came up with a new swearword that the cafe owner didn't recognise (it's hard to think of an analogy for using weird characters to say a bad word) and so the cafe got shut down. "
At most, it is a mall telling a coffee shop owner that they need to take care of a small subset of regulars - the teenagers - because they are regularly using offensive speech. If they don't, the coffee shop is in violation of the malls' leasing agreement. Coffee shop does nothing, so they are evicted.
It isn't like a place got shut down because they let the general public in.