Comment by tablespoon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tablespoon | Hacker News Reader

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>> "you can help the redeemable extremists __know__ they're indulging in extremism by forcing them to go to fringe websites rather than allow them to stay on Twitter and Facebook as if nothing is wrong."

> This is such a terrible idea. All this accomplishes is causing extremists to find echo chambers where they will never actually know what they're doing is wrong. It's much better to keep extremists in mainstream platforms so they can be called out and atleast informed that they are wrong. Your solution is totally backwards and accomplishes the opposite of what you're hoping for.

It's not that simple:

1. It's totally believable that someone might follow a neo-Nazi on twitter, if the neo-Nazi avoids Nazi iconography and mainly tweets about Nazi-adjacent topics, but have second thoughts about joining an actual neo-Nazi website.

Not all extremists will seek out a fringe echo chamber. Some will, but others will not. The result is likely one where the most-extreme core gets separated from its recruitment opportunities, disrupting the first step in the recruitment funnel. That core may get more extreme in its echo chamber, but its overall movement could end up being smaller and weaker.

2. Counterintuitively, people tend to dig in to their existing beliefs when they're "called out." Also, I'm sure every neo-Nazi has been informed many, many times that they're wrong. Extremism is not a problem of lack of information.

> That core may get more extreme in its echo chamber, but its overall movement could end up being smaller and weaker.

This is precisely the problem. That core will certainly get more extreme because there's no cross pollination between it and other more moderate groups.

I would rather have more people with less extreme views than fewer people with more extreme views, because it's much more likely the more extreme people are a greater danger to society than the less extreme people.

> Extremism is not a problem of lack of information.

True, but it's more complicated than that. Extremism almost always results when you disenfranchise or ostracize a community. It's much better to integrate it so there's crossflow of information and empathy still. Dehumanizing groups of people also dehumanizes yourself.

> I would rather have more people with less extreme views than fewer people with more extreme views, because it's much more likely the more extreme people are a greater danger to society than the less extreme people.

History proves otherwise. All wars, massacres, tyrannies required extreme views to become popularized enough to achieve momentum.

> This is precisely the problem. That core will certainly get more extreme because there's no cross pollination between it and other more moderate groups.

But the question is how much? I'm highly skeptical that "cross pollination" moderates hard-core neo-Nazis to any significant degree, for instance. They might get a little more extreme in an echo chamber, but I don't think it will be that much more.

In fact, I think the "cross pollination" mainly goes the other way, by spreading extremist ideas to moderates that are vulnerable to them. Let them spread enough, and they could even become normalized.

> I would rather have more people with less extreme views than fewer people with more extreme views, because it's much more likely the more extreme people are a greater danger to society than the less extreme people.

I think the better way of thinking about this is "total quantity of extremism." You're always going to have a hard core, so the question is more about how big will that core be, and how many adjacent supporters will it have.

Let's say you keep neo-Nazis on twitter, and that leads to a hard-core that is 10% less Nazi, on average, but that's also ten times larger. You now have a far more dangerous situation on your hands.

> True, but it's more complicated than that. Extremism almost always results when you disenfranchise or ostracize a community. It's much better to integrate it so there's crossflow of information and empathy still. Dehumanizing groups of people also dehumanizes yourself.

Maybe in some cases, but not others. For instance, neo-Nazis extremists weren't created by disenfranchising some kind of "moderate" natural neo-Nazi community.

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