You're still using subjective terms like "extremism" in an objective way that the people on the receiving end of that label may not agree with or appreciate.
They convinced me that information should be free, that it was my right to download and share anything digital, and that the internet was a borderless utopia of knowledge, limited only by our imaginations.
Now, I see the error of my ways and the harm I, and those who thought like me, caused to content creators and distributors.
I understand that the internet is safer, more secure, and better when suckled through the benevolent teat of large corporations, whose wisdom and foresight allows it to be restricted, filtered, and repackaged into a socially beneficial form.
Don't make the same mistakes I did! Trust in the system.
\s
If you ban extremist speech, then what you've done is create incentive to label everything as extremist.
Sounds reasonable, but the real fun begins when you add: "Everyone who disagrees with us is a Nazi."
We have to call things as we see them. And build a consensus around what's core values and within the normal range of debate, and what's beyond that into dangerous, destructive, and even murderous.
This is a type of speech, and there's no reason all speech should be regulated uniformly, just as speech and actions should presumably not be regulated uniformly. We could just prevent actions without bothering with speech at all, but (for instance) it seems similarly doable to ban certain forms of speech that cause unreasonable harm while leaving other forms alone.
An argument could be made that this would be yet another slippery slope, but I think at some point every law falls into that category and a society must decide whether the benefits are worth the tradeoff of starting down this path.
Except that the article is dedicated to explaining why it's not doable and is a bad idea in general
The article does not address whether it's a bad idea, rather its entire premise is built upon the fact that whether it's a good or bad idea is preceeded by a question of whether it works. Several commenters in this thread have pointed out that it does work, and is used to this day, from China's authoritarian implementation to the implementation at other points in history.
I think it's reasonable to make the statement: assuming that it does work (and maybe the article is correct - perhaps it doesn't work), would it still be a good idea? What number of people would it need to work on to be a good idea?
An idea that won't work is a bad idea (to me, at least). From the author's point of view, it won't.
> Several commenters in this thread have pointed out that it does work, and is used to this day, from China's authoritarian implementation to the implementation at other points in history. > I think it's reasonable to make the statement: assuming that it does work (and maybe the article is correct - perhaps it doesn't work), would it still be a good idea? What number of people would it need to work on to be a good idea?
Depends on your definition of works, I suppose. Unfortunately, even if the main objective could be achieved, there are drawbacks. I would not call CCP's implementation a success. Sure, in some ways they have squashed extremist speech, but at what cost? They have also severely curtailed speech which criticizes them. They have created a culture of fear where people self-censor. Eventually, I believe something will have to give. It is simply too early to call it a success or failure at this moment.
Regarding your parent post's objection to "redeemable", it's not used in religious contexts exclusively.
Someone: Extremism is bad.
You: What is extreme is subjective.
The next step would be for you to try to give counter points of what you think is extreme that others consider not, or better, what you think is not extreme that others consider so.
That's true, but it also seems to effectively hold for the originals, only with conformity rather than contrarianism:
> Someone: Extremism is bad.
"Who am I to say if it's wrong to believe people should be killed and enslaved for their skin color? Next thing you know, someone may think I'm extreme for what coffee I drink!"
Your argument is inane.
I don't think that's the next step. I think the point is that what is extreme will always be subjective, and there is danger in allowing some group of people to decide what speech is acceptable and what is not.
We wouldn't be having this conversation if the things labeled extremism and thus banned from platforms was limited to ISIS and literal Nazis. It's been far more far-reaching than that. That's probably due to the incentives, not due to actual extremism.
So if extremism is subjective, it will be leveraged in that manner and you can't stop that behavior without removing the incentive. That's the point, not what is or isn't labeled as extremism today, that's just dragging the conversation back into the political gutter.