Not tolerating xenophobia, racism and bigots in general is a big point for a lot of people. The paradox of tolerance is something that many people should consider.
Our problem is that we've built almost our entire ecosystem on systems where a single actor's intolerance can deny millions of people access to a product. This seemed like a good idea at the time. Apparently what it comes down to is the entire economy needs to be duplicated? Banks, payment providers, app stores, content delivery networks, web hosting, all the way to operating systems. I didn't realize that it would take that much to get the right to access any app or social network I want to? But apparently that's where the so-called paradox of tolerance has led us.
Seems we should have seen this coming. A certain xkcd about infrastructures comes to mind. Oh well. Since true decentralization is possible, it's just a matter of time in the end.
What it comes down to is if you're a fascist you won't be allowed to participate in the economy at all to spread your message. Service providers who cater to fascists will be cut off by the banks, and banks that refuse to do their due diligence w.r.t. fash in their customer ranks will be singled out for more in-depth investigation by federal authorities.
> And then when it turns out that the enemies can just leave and start their own institutions, with horrendous results for everybody, the cry goes up “Wait, that’s unfair! Nobody ever said you could do that! Come back so we can grind you beneath our boots some more!”
I don't think often of the right to "go away if you don't like something", but that's because it's so basic and essential I barely consider it.
https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1...
You don't have to tolerate the intolerant, and the people running the app stores are free to make their choices of who they allow into the store.
If you want to be associated with fascists and racists, that is up to you, but you will not be welcome in civilised places. You can always run your own app store which allows those groups.
I mean grasp the irony.
That hallmark does not stand up to many examples. Being strictly against another ideology is not really the definition of fascism.
Stop disturbing the peace.
Most go with something like "If we tolerate people who aren't 100% our version of kumbaya, we'll end up in tyranny", when Popper's original is restricted to people who have stopped listening, and would make their argument with pistols.
Most of the time, the paradox citers are closer to the "not listening" camp than not. Many are hideously fundamentalist ideologues who want to limit discussion to what they themselves find acceptable, not to deplatforming things that really try to deprive others of their freedom of choice.
"Hakuin used to tell his pupils about an old woman who had a teashop, praising her understanding of Zen. The pupils refused to believe what he told them and would go to the teashop to find out for themselves.
Whenever the woman saw them coming she could tell at once whether they had come for tea or to look into her grasp of Zen. In the former case, she would serve them graciously. In the latter, she would beckon to the pupils to come behind her screen. The instant they obeyed, she would strike them with a fire-poker.
Nine out of ten of them could not escape her beating."
It is a great metaphor. Nine out of ten applications of the tolerance paradox do not pass the fire poker test. One needs a certain level of enlightenment and maturity of judgement to apply it, otherwise it can turn into metooism, mob behavior and plain hypocrisy.
You used a lot of words to make a mundane, unsupported assertion sound profound. Do you have any real examples?
Well, that's the game, isn't it?
Btw, like some of your music. Do you have finished tracks online?
If it is just users, why ban them and not browsers or anything that can access Facebook?
Because Facebook is controlled by the right people, and Gab is not.
Consider the unbelievably offensive and sometimes illegal content (including child porn) that's been hosted on Reddit. They've cleaned up significantly recently to be more advertiser-friendly, but they were able to host all that content for years without getting deplatformed or facing any real consequences. Because Reddit is controlled by the right people. It's all about power.
Or even read, it’s barely longer than a page and yet I see it mischaracterised on these threads repeatedly by people who have clearly not read it.
For those with too short an attention span to even search for the text, let alone read it, and to save them from the mendacious cartoon that purports to boil it down, here’s what it says in two lines:
- speech should beget speech, no matter how disagreeable
- intolerance is defined as those who will not engage in speech and have turned to violence instead
That is not the same as deplatforming “bigots”, or punching Nazis. Quite the opposite.
Edit: typo
Criticizing speech is speech.
Criticizing speech and advocating, on the basis of that criticism, that people should choose not to relay the criticized speech is speech.
Choosing what speech to relay or not is speech (except when it is “press”, but those are effectively aspects of the same thing called out separately to prevent an artificial distinction from being used to regulate speech.)
Deplatforming is speech, from advocacy to execution.
That our forums allow for free speech is clearly implied by the form.
Censorship (of which deplatforming is one form) is not the same as choosing not to listen, and hence, is not part of freedom of speech.
Deplatforming is choosing not to actively relay speech. While, yes, such does (as “self-censorship”) fit in some of the broader conceptions of censorship, it's absolutely part of the freedom of speech (and central to the idea of the “marketplace of ideas”, the same as people being free not to buy, distribute, and resell your goods is central to classical markets in goods and services.)
The “freedom of speech” isn't limited to choosing not to listen, hence why it isn't called the “freedom to choose not to listen”. Freedom from making speech at the direction of another party is at least as fundamental as freedom not to listen.
Deplatforming is censorship because, if done actively and exceptionally (i.e. discriminatorially and out of the ordinary routine) then it is the attempt to prevent the speaker from speaking and anyone wishing to listeners being able to listen.
It seems to me that you're conflating distribution with purchase in your analogy, which might explain your subsequent reasoning, though I find them to be quite different things. If you are going to conflate them then distributors refusing to distribute the goods of gays or blacks based on them being gay or black, given that they usually distribute goods from non-gays and non-blacks, that is not prejudicial discrimination?
I would not agree with that in a marketplace, and that wouldn't fit with my conception of freedom of speech either, given the analogy.
If, however, we were talking about private individuals and not distributors, then I agree that they should be able to choose who they purchase from or even sell to - in a private capacity, not as a business - whether based on prejudice or not. Just as with speaking and listening.
No, it's not. It's refusing to actively participate in the speakers speech. It is distinct from either preventing them from speaking, or preventing interested parties from listening. The freedom of speech is, as conservatives are fond of pointing out, a negative right, not a positive one.
(The use of “discriminatorially” here is pure noise; all choices are, by definition, discrimination.)
> If you are going to conflate them then distributors refusing to distribute the goods of gays or blacks based on them being gay or black, given that they usually distribute goods from non-gays and non-blacks, that is not prejudicial discrimination?
It's certainly race and sexual orientation discrimination, but that's not what we're discussing, and it's an orthogonal issue to freedom of speech. If you want to argue a violation of existing or ideal public accommodation laws protecting against political viewpoint discrimination, that's a very different argument than the free speech argument. In fact, it's an opposed argument, as public accommodation laws (and the concept of freedom from private discrimination on various axes more generally) is in tension with free speech and free association rights, a tension which is at its maximum when the service involved is relaying speech and the basis for denial is the political content of the speech at issue.
- speak back
- listen
- transmit
Additionally, repeating what someone else has said (speech) is not transmission of their speech, it's transmission of their ideas.
A television broadcaster or a book publisher, however, transmits. That is their function.
> The freedom of speech is, as conservatives are fond of pointing out, a negative right, not a positive one.
Which is why there was a qualifier of "if done actively and exceptionally (i.e. discriminatorially and out of the ordinary routine)".
If a broadcaster like Sky Sports refuses to have on Noam Chomsky for a discussion about, well, anything, that's not censorship because he doesn't talk about sport nor does he have anything to do with sport. They passively and normally do not transmit his speech, hence it is not censorship. If Chomsky asks to go on then they may still refuse and it not be censorship because even though their refusal is active it is *not* exceptional.
If, however, the BBC political flagship programme refuses to have Chomsky on because he's Chomsky or Chomsky once wrote in support of a Holocaust denier [note 1] then *that is censorship* because it is active and exceptional.
None of that requires positive liberty, nor is it in variance with conceptions of free speech as a negative liberty.
> If you want to argue a violation of existing or ideal public accommodation laws protecting against political viewpoint discrimination, that's a very different argument than the free speech argument.
Given what you've written I can see how you'd think this. As I'm not:
> It's certainly race and sexual orientation discrimination, but that's not what we're discussing, and it's an orthogonal issue to freedom of speech.
If we take your analogy about distributors to its logical conclusion then it is what we're talking about - enabling discrimination that violates negative liberties.
[note 1] He wrote in support of an academic's right to freedom of speech, not in support of his book denying the death camps, but that's the way things get framed.
Edit: formatting. I will forever rage against HN's half hearted markdown flavour.