Kanye West is buying Parler
theverge.com
theverge.com
Ok.
> A Twitter rep told The Post on Sunday afternoon that West’s account “has been locked due to a violation of Twitter’s policies.”
> JP Morgan Chase may have notified West of its decision to end its banking relationship with him
> In a statement to CNN Business on Saturday, a Meta spokesperson said content from West’s account was deleted for violating the company’s policies and a restriction was placed on his account.
Doesn't sound like it is a complex if Twitter, Chase, and Meta/FB have all taken actions against him recently.
Can you give specific examples? I just looked this up because I was interested. This very long winded Vice article only seems to point out a few "antisemitic" statements he makes[0]. Here's the first two:
> Ye used a strange metaphor when talking about Black people judging one another, telling Carlson, “Think about us judging each other on how white we could talk would be like, you know, a Jewish person judging another Jewish person on how good they danced or something.”
I've never heard of people hating on Jews because they can't dance. If you watch the clip it sounds like Kanye is just trying to come up with an example, and it's clear he's not "blasting antisemitism" here.
> Ye added, “I prefer my kids knew Hanukkah than Kwanzaa. At least it will come with some financial engineering.” (The belief that Jews control the financial system is one of the oldest and most deeply-rooted antisemitic claims...
Ah yes, the classic joke that Jews are rich. This has been a joke since forever, and maybe it's a bad thing. But Netflix is still playing Seinfeld reruns, and there's way more than one joke in there about rich Jews. There's even an entire episode poking fun at people taking offense to Jewish jokes[1]. And Twitter, Meta, etc aren't blocking Netflix. If joking that Jews are rich is antisemitism that's punishable by banishment from social media, these sites are not enforcing their standards fairly.
I don't really care about Kanye West, but I'm so sick of people claiming everybody is racist, bigoted, and homophobic just because they disagree with something. Show me where Kanye is advocating for the annihilation of the Jews before you go citing baseless claims. And if there is some clear antisemitic statements that I missed coming from Kanye, then I apologize in advance. But right now, it seems like this is just another "this person disagrees with me so let me find some vague statement they said and claim its racist/homophobic/bigoted speech".
[0]: https://www.vice.com/en/article/3ad77y/kanye-west-tucker-car...
[1]: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0697814/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl
> Show me where Kanye is advocating for the annihilation of the Jews before you go citing baseless claims.
Now, I didn't say he's been advocating for the annihilation of Jewish people, I said "blasting antisemitism." Antisemitism exists on a spectrum, and advocating for the annihilation of Jewish people is one point very far along that spectrum. If that's your actual threshold, you're definitely going to miss a lot of dogwhistles. But he's gotten pretty alarmingly close to exactly that:
> I'm a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I'm going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE.
In case you're not familiar, defcon 3 is an elevated state of military readiness -- that the US hasn't seen since 9/11.
It would be helpful if the media didn't post every single thing he's said about Jewish people claiming it's antisemitism, because that just muddies the waters and makes people more apt to believe the media is just lying.
Stuff like investing in property and making sure your children have a career path lined up regardless of your personal success. His anecdote about Stevie Wonder’s kid being forced into a low end job to make ends meet is really sad if it’s true.
HN sounding off about YE without knowing anything makes me question how I assume the authority of commenters here on other topics.
Devil's advocate: there's no way this isn't the case for Kanye, right? Why is this mental illness sparking up later in his life? Why was he able to achieve everything he's achieved 1996 -> 2012 (Roc-A-Fella -> The College Dropout -> My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy era) without these "mental illness" bouts?
Whatever is going on in this individual case, Bipolar disorder is terrible. It can look like someone is "fine" for a long time, but then they aren't fine and people look for what changed, and what changed is progression of the disease.
It's really hard to talk about without adding stigmatization.
It's possible that he's exhibited symptoms for far longer but it was brushed aside under the guise of kooky genius. I mean, the Taylor Swift thing was, what, 2009?
[1]: https://anchor.fm/dissect/episodes/S2E1--Kanye-West-The-Elep...
I’m of the opinion he’s both someone with good intentions with good points but who makes those points sideways. But also that he’s mentally I’ll so he’s losing the ability to communicate clearly. I also think Candace Owens is an untrustworthy person with only self serving intentions.
It’s gone now. Memory holed.
FYI (for the down-voters): https://www.verywellmind.com/clang-associations-380072 https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/clanging-schizophr...
Anyone who has dealt with/supported folks suffering from mental illness (and I definitely qualify, there), will tell you that mental illness gets worse, as you get older.
A young man that compulsively washes his hands, may well end his life, flying around the world in a sterile airplane, keeping his piss in canopic jars.
This is key to understanding bipolar: it has an "upswing" phase in which someone has more energy and less inhibition. Increased self-belief as well. It can, if you're lucky, be just the right thing to catapult someone into incredible creative works.
The risk is that risk-taking may not pay off, and the inhibitions may have been there for good reason. Not to mention that there's also a downswing phase which looks like depression and comes with elevated suicide risk.
After a few major life disasters (including getting married, and then having it annulled), she eventually figured out that the highs were fun but dangerous. I haven't talked to her in years, but she was reliably taking her meds to keep her even keel.
My friend was pretty self-aware though. Someone less so may not be able to see that their illness is the true cause of their life disasters.
Ya know.
"George Bush doesn't care about Black People".
"Taylor, I'ma let you finish..."
MBDTF came out in 2010. That was around the beginning of social media entering the mainstream (Kanye joined Twitter in July 2010).
So up until MBDTF, he didn't have a device in his pocket that allowed him to broadcast his unfiltered thoughts to millions of people. Up until that point, his public image was likely carefully managed by his label and management. All of his interviews were probably overseen by them. They likely only allowed interviews where he was asked pre-approved questions and gave canned answers. If he went too far off script, his label likely stepped in.
It's clear now that he has a lot more freedom with handling his own image. He's been signed to his own label since 2016 which probably afforded him a lot more power over his career. He had a few moments prior to 2016 but he didn't really go off the deep until 2017.
TLDR: what you saw as stable behavior prior to 2017 or so was probably the result of a curated image created by his label and management.
I've never seen a human being who more obviously "sought the approval of others." He has this weird negative charisma; like there are some people who light up the room by being in it. It's not that he darkens the room -- but it's that he needs the light from others. It just felt like he needed everyone to really like him, and I could so easily see how someone could take advantage of that.
That said, most presidents have had qualifications other than narcissism.
Same situation.
Can't a rich dude buy a company without goofy rumors being spread (scammed into buying Parler)?
Having a celebrity owner increases the value.
And Elon is just a completely normal guy?
In the midst of an uncontrolled manic episode? Often they are not.
Now, responsibility on the larger scale is indeed murky. We societally at once say addicts are and aren't responsible for their behavior (depending upon one's point of view and what acts took place): a drunk driver is treated differently than a homeless addict living under a bridge. Is Kanye 'addicted' to manic states? Should we look down upon him because he won't take his meds? I'm not sure.
Twitter clearly took full advantage of his irrational hard on to get a signed deal. Not “being scammed” in that Twitter very nuch did not seek out the deal, but they certainly fully leveraged his willingness to toss out preconditions any sane purchaser would demand.
> Having a celebrity owner increases the value.
As a mascot, maybe, unless they are polarizing and their area of negative appeal overlaps with the product’s market and their positve appeal doesn’t; but owners are also decision makers, and celebrity’s are going to be all over the map in that role.
(I have no particular reason to believe Musk is in anything less than full control of his faculties.)
This is no where near the same situation. When Elon originally put is offer to buy Twitter, Twitter didn't even want to sell. Then the market crashed and all the sudden Elon's own offer was almost double of the "fair market price" for Twitter.
Elon would be insane if he made the same offer today.
> 6 DE Code § 2705 (2019): Any person who has attained 18 years of age shall have full capacity to contract; provided such person has not been declared legally incompetent to contract for reasons other than age. Any person who has attained the age of 18 years shall become fully responsible for that person’s own contracts.
So I'd presume it would come down to what Delaware's Court of Chancery expects for someone to be "declared legally incompetent to contract." I'd imagine that's not something done lightly.
(IANAL)
1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2022/10/09/tw...
it'd be great if his name really was that blanked from the public mind, but I don't think that's quite the case with that specific example, yet.
Celebrity or not, his actions seem similar to the mentioned illness.
Nobody in their sane mind would say some of the stuff that Kanye said/tweeted, but as well there's very few people who have the ability to profit off making insane statements to the extent that people like Kanye or Trump can. It's almost like a perpetual vicious cycle of profitable victimhood.
I was never a big fan of the guy's work but he was an incredible producer back in the late 90s early 2000s. I think him experiencing the death of his mother was the start of a very serious downward cycle (mentally, at least) that he's yet to recover from.
I'm pointing out that his behavior could be the result of it, because he's a narcissist, or some combination of the two
You say this as if the latter isn't a direct result of the former.
If this is the case why hasnt someone tried to take power of attorney or something similar here?
There's a lot of stuff there, among other things:
> West said that he often has suicidal ideation. In a 2019 interview with David Letterman, West stated that he has bipolar disorder.
So invoking power-of-attorney over someone isn't always the solution to their mental health. Its an extreme move, and I'm really not sure if its designed to be used in the typical mental-health case.
Its not like the mentally ill are suddenly incapable of performing useful work, or unable to watch over themselves. They just have... delusions, bad memory, swings of mood, terrible sleeping habits, etc. etc. They need help, not someone walking in and stealing their money / taking their house / losing all sense of agency all together.
Mental health is... difficult, but livable. Extreme actions like invoking power-of-attorney probably makes things worse in more situations IMO.
You may be thinking of Legal Guardianship. Power of attorney just means someone is authorized to make the same legal decisions as the subject of the power of attorney and can be overridden by the subject.
Brittany Spears was subject to and abused by Guardianship.
I'm not saying Brittney would have, just saying that it's easier to have a very public manic episode where your every thought is aired than it was 15 years ago.
It should only be done in the most extreme of cases (ie: someone turns into a literal vegetable on life support). If someone still has a degree of agency and capabilities... even if they're delusional and/or mentally ill, they still deserve to live their life. IE: Control their own bank accounts and whatnot.
My grandma is beginning to look like she has dementia. But we, as a family, aren't at a point where we're thinking of taking away her agency. She's a proud woman and always has been.
In many cases, its probably better for the person for them to keep their agency. If they're only going to lose money, its really not that big of a deal. We're more concerned about what if she has a fall by herself or other such issue. But those things won't be solved by revoking her agency.
But just because someone is mentally ill (dementia, bipolar, or even schizophrenic) doesn't mean they deserve to lose their agency and get power of attorney invoked over them.
Has anyone close to you been in a mentally ill situation? Have you ever tried to tell someone you love, someone you trusted, someone you used to look up to that their mental capabilities have declined and that you no longer trust them to watch over themselves? And if so, do you think taking away their ability to use their bank account is the solution to that problem?
This depends on what will happen after they run out of money.
Someone very close to me has an untreated dual diagnosis (mentally ill + substance abuse disorder). She is otherwise young and intelligent, and with treatment she could at least theoretically have a full life. However she refuses all attempts at help, has been unemployed for over a year, is paranoid and isolated and alone from and abusive to friends and family, is burning through her savings, and will soon get to the point where she will have to foreclose on her house.
At that point she will literally be an unemployed, homeless, mentally ill drug addict.
This is a major problem in our individualistic society with no easy answer. As my coach says, people don’t change when they see the light, only when they feel the heat. She may need to crash and burn, and she may pick herself back up. But the odds on that happening for someone in her position are not good.
And meanwhile we all have to watch someone we love slowly descend into ruin.
I have, but it doesn't really look like that. It's a gradual assumption of responsibilities by the caregivers that roughly corresponds to the person's decline.
> do you think taking away their ability to use their bank account is the solution to that problem?
It's a solution, yes, when they could dramatically harm their situation/themselves doing things they no longer have the capacity to understand.
I think in your case, having someone cooperate into giving power of attorney is the best case. But in this case, my grandmother is still too proud to willingly give power of attorney to any of her children.
If she willingly gives it, I think we'll take her up on the offer. But she doesn't think she's been scammed yet. We likely have to wait until after she's realized how she's been taken advantage of before she's in the position to willingly give us power of attorney.
Forcibly taking it before that realization would be counterproductive.
There is, at least in principle (and certainly for people who can afford lawyers, as he certainly can) a very high bar for this. As there should be.
Now image you've done what seems impossible despite countless people telling you it wont work out. You are in the top 1% of fame. Now someone tells you your other ideas are wrong. And that you cant actually achieve x goal. And that you don't know what you are talking about when you talk about y. And that you are sick and need to take meds to fix yourself.
Would you believe them? Or would you believe yourself?
I think Kanye is sick and needs help but I can see almost anyone falling into the exact same trap hes fallen into if they lived his life.
Slim Shady stands up [0].
[0] - https://iamyourtargetdemographic.com/2011/08/30/kanye-west-v...
So yes, Eminem is still well ahead.
I love his stuff, Revival, Kamazake, Music to be Murdered by - I probably know 10 songs almost by heart.
But there's no denying that it's been a very different decade for Mathers and not everyone likes it.
However, in terms of influence on hip hop and pop music as a whole, I think Kanye is above Eminem and it's probably not close. Unfortunately, that's a lot harder to measure.
Kanye likes to claim that his music wasn't about gangster rap and that's why he was sidelined for... a couple years... meanwhile, Dre not only made NWA and Snoop Dogg but managed to convince the entire rap world that a poor white kid with drug problems and abuse issues was the next huge thing by doing things that nobody had ever thought to do before.
his influence is waning
The specific claim was "the most popular rapper/hip hop artist of all time". For that claim, I don't see a good reason why the last decade should weigh more heavily than the decades before.
I find it basically impossible to empathize with him. I just wouldn't ever be in that situation. "Rising against adversity" is not the story I'd be be using here so much as just a typical strongman bravado leading to an absolute disconnect from reality.
I would wager greatly that it's not that he's grown cynical to people saying he can't do something, but that he's become delusional from people telling him a genius. People who convince themselves that they're smart do this thing where they have an idea, and conclude that because they've come up with it and they're smart that it must be a well reasoned idea.
It's not really a story of rising against adversity though. It's that people who have a lot of success doing something have trouble turning around and doing the opposite. There seems to be a human tendency to double down on what people think got them their success.
He's been on a long, slow, downward trajectory with his mental health since the death of his mother and unfortunately there doesn't seem to be anybody looking out for him anymore. It's really sad to watch at this point.
This is an interview from 2005 where Kanye defended gay people when it wasn't exactly popular. Trigger warning for gay slurs.
But you also clearly have no idea who he is and what’s he’s stood for - the guy is single-handedly responsible for turning the tide on Gangster rap.
Here’s one way to put it:
No other man alive today is more responsible for changing negative to positive messages in popular music today.
He’s literally one of the most thoughtful and revolutionary artists alive. But of course you’d have to have listened to his albums from the start and followed along with interviews not just reading all the headlines on Reddit or Twitter.
And no, he hasn’t degraded. Ye, TLOP, Kids See Ghosts, Jesus is King are all massively successful unique pieces of art. It’s hard to compare him to anyone - MJ stayed within one genre, only really the Beatles maybe had as much diversity of novel styles.
If you only pay attention to the media you’d have your opinion. It’s so out of wack with reality though. But that’s what we have all across this entire forsaken thread - a bunch of totally naive people who aren’t even 1% familiar with his corpus of work or history calling him sick and worse.
That's interesting - I've listened to his music since the beginning and would've assumed the opposite based on his reaction to the South Park Fish Sticks episode. Is there a specific song/album/statement he made that shows support for the LGBT community? As he's turned deeply religious (supports mega churches) + conservative in recent years I'd further expect him to not support LGBT groups.
The comment you replied to has a YouTube link to a 2005 interview where Kanye says on national TV to stop discriminating against gay people.
That seems to me to be impossible to say with certainty.
Maybe it is a result of mental health issues. But then the premise of his success feels very different.
Something like... a mental illness?
By "his wife" do you mean his ex-wife Kim Kardashian? If so, in what ways is she an asshole?
I think this shows that the commenter is biased and doesn't have the full picture.
Though I was under the impression that her entire brand was showcased on a show where they went over the top being vain, petty, and brandishing the biggest ego's they could muster?
https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2022-183
she's also long been criticized for cultural appropriation,
https://time.com/6072750/kardashians-blackfishing-appropriat...
This describes the whole "beauty" industry. I think this might be a case of "don't hate the player, hate the game". There are also plenty of other celebrities whose success amounts to appearing on some reality TV show and building an empire off of that. Kim Kardashian is not remarkable in this regard, but seems to get more hate than average.
I think it's perfectly sensible to hate the players that perpetuate the game. It's nothing more than a very weak version of the Nuremberg defense.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/arts/television/kim-karda...
She's been working on that for nearly four years. And only just passed the 'baby bar' exam this year (The baby bar exam is the exam California gives -first year- law students. It requires a score of 70% to pass. Kardashian has taken four years, and four attempts, to pass the equivalent of the first year of law school).
Much as I hate to say it, those whose lives would be bettered by meaningful prison reform would probably get more out of her doing publicity and fundraising and using her celebrity status to that end, rather than becoming an attorney.
I've been wary of defending Kanye online lately, but Kanye's influence isn't just "rap / hip hop". Kanye also broke into luxury/high-end fashion quite unexpectedly where he was given the same sort of push back. It started with him interning at Fendi (when he already was one of the largest entertainers on the planet) alongside a group of other eclectic individuals (the other most notable one, Virgil Abloh, who would go on to become creative director of Louis Vuitton).
He captured lightning twice and I can't imagine that developing into a personality into anything other than "everyone else is wrong".
That said, I don't think he's become delusional from people telling him he's a "genius", or from mental illness. Since 2020, I've seen scores of people all fall into the internet misinformation pipeline and I don't think Kanye is any different - he just has the largest platform. He's no more mentally ill than your uncle who believed COVID was a hoax. Everything he is saying is currently "mainstream" conservative ideology, his talking points are lifted directly from Candace Owens who is employed by The Daily Wire, which is run by the most famous conservative personality, Ben Shapiro, (maybe after Tucker Carlson).
the secret here is that the emperor has no clothes, and Kanye's fashion garbage is equally as garbage as the rest of the high end fashion culture. It's not that kanye's that good, it's that its all a crock of dogfood with high end price tags and people who won't say anything trying to fit in for access to the wealthy.
This is not something I agree with, I believe there is something like called good taste (http://www.paulgraham.com/goodtaste.html), and just because I don't care to understand it (just like I don't care to understand expensive cars or expensive watches), that doesn't mean the entire field is garbage.
It's overpriced gaslighting dogfood at best, a meat market to gain access to the stupidly wealthy at worst.
Might as well go on to say that all modern art or modern cuisine is garbage, and sound just as ridiculous while doing so.
Spoiler alert: weird artsy high-fashion pieces you see on runways are not expected to be sold or worn in real life. Just like visual design of concept cars isn't what's expected to actually drive on the roads.
A lot of "post modern" art is this idea that it doesn't matter what you think, fuck you, I made this thing and it may even feel purposefully bad, and if I say it's good, it's a valid perspective. Which is really just kind of a post truth drain on society if you ask me; and is a really toxic thing when it's driven by tribalism and mass media to claim "this is good because a lot of people are saying it's good".
High end fashion is not very approachable to most people. A lot of it is just speaking back and forth within a very insular community. Most of it is absurd from the get go. Good art should be evocative of something.
FWIW, Kanye's fashion to me seems like it wants me to call it bad. Dreary. Unattractive. Poor, but.. in a way that seems like its asking for victimization rather than express something about poverty.
And for that I think it's actually bad.
Their line, they want to champion a more "pragmatic" approach to fashion, and "down to earth nature", compared to the big fashion houses.
Demna Gvasalia and his friends all worked at LV, Balenciaga, Maison Margiela, etc.
Vetements in reality? "Down to earth" $1200 track pants, $800 t-shirts, $500 baseball caps, $1500 hoodies.
Given a choice between "trying to break down fashion to be more pragmatic, approachable and down to earth" and "we saw how much money the fashion houses made and we decided we wanted a bigger piece", I know which way I lean.
Edit: in a fit of irony, Balenciaga offered him the role of Creative Director and he went there.
High fashion is obviously a completely different beast. Something that has been pointed out to me recently is how "folk fashion" which focused on meticulous details like beading and cross-stitching was largely the pursuit of women, while modern "high fashion" that involves conceptual flourishes that are relatively simple to produce is more dominated by men. I'm not really sure what to make of this observation yet, but it is interesting.
The treatment of workers in both "every day" fashion and high fashion is deplorable as well and is hard to look past if you're trying to keep an open mind.
I personally wouldn't pay $300+ for them. A lot of his fashion design has a similar utilitarian theme to it, and I believe that the intent with his partnership with GAP was to more or less have an outlet to offer his designs at a more affordable price. Although I could be mistaken.
(I acknowledge the fact that the price of my shoes is because of either some fraudulent factory manager skimming product and/or bad labor practices and that's a bit shitty of me. But they're simple shoes, there is certainly a very high markup on the authentic versions too.)
is he ranked that somewhere?
if so, i'm definitely getting old and out of touch with pop culture, and i'm from the Chicago area so grew up with everything available on the radio.
ranked number 10.
But the interesting thing is that you can see how the rankings favor more recent people, with 80s and 90s artists also up there and with far longer careers, but eclipsed by the more recent people.
His father was a photojournalist for the main newspaper in Atlanta and his mother was a Fulbright scholar. He grew up in a solid middle class suburb and he attended a magnet school for gifted kids before getting a scholarship to the American Acaedmy of Art. He started producing music for artists directly out of high school and was producing for Roc-A-Fella within 3 years of starting out in the music scene.
It was at Roc-A-Fella that he decided to be a rapper, and it took him all of 2 years to produce The College Dropout.
He lived an incredibly charmed life before he ever started rapping.
West has had success as an entertainer and as a businessman - I believe he has a successful shoe company. He's famous. If he thinks he can take on Parler, that seems like a crazy challenge but one he is well equipped to take on. I would certainly believe in myself - even if I thought it was low probability I'd feel certain that it was possible.
Kanye has a song off his album College Graduation where he talks about his initial troubles[1]
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpbeS15sHZ0&ab_channel=Kanye...
They didnt want him to be a rapper, but not for some malicious reason. They loved his beats, but thought no one would care for his songs that were nothing like the mainstream rap at the time, especially since none of them were about bling/drugs/gang stuff. That's just what was selling. And Roc-a-Fella Records wanted their star beatmaker actually making beats for their star rappers, not "pursue dreams". So they allowed him to make that album, thinking the sooner he is done with it, the sooner he will get back to beatmaking.
All of this is confirmed by tons of other people affiliated with Roc-a-Fella Records (like Jay-Z and others) at the time.
They're in on the story.
Unless literally everything said about the matter by everyone involved was an extremely consistent lie that they all conspired to perfectly maintain for 20+ years and ongoing, I find it very difficult to agree with your statement.
I assure you, I really tried to make sense of what she was saying to me. She was beautiful, and I was interested in her. (I say this to emphasize how hard I was trying to make sense of it all.) But, in the end, I just could not follow. Maybe she had a kind of ADHD. But my point is that her "mental illness" likely went no further than that.
I can't follow Kanye either—though I am far less motivated to do so, by comparison. But, the guy is successful. I'm tempted to give him the benefit of the doubt that, like the young lady in my story, he may know what it is he's saying.
Note: Sorry for dating myself and using a The Simpsons reference.
On the other hand, I often have to speed-watch speeches and lectures, as most neurotypical people stay on the same topic far too long for me to stay attentive. By speed-watching, the subject changes frequently enough for my mind to never start wandering.
So it makes sense his ego would be making it hard to see the world as it is, EVEN IF he didn't have any mental illness at all.
Kanye is a garden variety manic-depressive. It has likely been exacerbated by stress and self-medicating with the wrong drugs, causing instability, paranoia and delusion. Bipolar disorder is genetic, it doesn't develop due to no one being able to say "no" to them.
What you are describing, however, is one way that Narcissistic Personality Disorder can develop. Successful individuals are more at risk of NPD. One of the biggest issues is that NPD patients usually don't suffer, so they rarely seek treatment, which can correct if not cure the disorder in under 2 years, rare among psychological disorders. But the symptoms of NPD not only include an exaggerated sense of self-importance, but also an inability or fear of criticism, and exceptionally strong denial. Narcissists don't listen to anyone, such as those that are trying to help them, yet they require constant admiration.
It is likely West has one of the more benign flavors of NPD, at least, I haven't heard he is violent nor of reports of him berating and belittling others (though I do not follow celebrities). I think his biggest problem is BPD and drug abuse (though the self-medication may be keeping him alive, it is far less than an ideal solution), but due to the combination with NPD and vast wealth, and probably being surrounded by those that will never deny him his insane impulses, he's probably not going to get help until he bottoms out in clinical major depression for months, if he survives it. BPD must be maintained, and if it isn't, inevitably the train leaves the rails.
> I haven't heard he is violent nor of reports of him berating and belittling others
I haven't heard about violence, but berating and belittling others seems common for him - it's practically his brand
Incorrect. There is no single cure for personality disorders, but that doesn't mean they can't be cured. Any mental illness that is not genetic and which develops due to external causes can be cured. There are many personality disorders, of which NPD is one. While there is no single cure for NPD, in fact NPD can be cured in many cases in one of two ways. Some can be cured relatively quickly with an antidepressant, which eliminates the symptoms, but most with NPD can either mitigate the disorder or completely cure it though talk therapy generally in under two years. It's absolutely true that one can learn to stop being an asshole.
Psychedelics could be an interesting line of study for personality disorder treatment as well.
But most importantly, we don't know, so making broad, absolutist claims is a waste of time.
I presume this is because the classification of these disorders is way to broad and unspecific as opposed to hard science diagnostics.
> (…) through talk therapy generally under two years
Would you have a good source for that e.g. a meta study?
I wouldn't make a point of saying this on other topics but it's crazy how much damage this stuff causes to people's lives
Armchair psychiatrists seem to love to diagnoze the people they don't like with various disorders as a way of insulting by proxy.
Since when is a celebrity writing contraversial stuff on Twitter a big deal?
I don't need to catalogue the fallacies to point out why this is not a good idea.
This is also ironically vague and there is literally no ad hominem in there. Word salad is critique of the quality of the discourse, not of the person making it.
Also fallacy fallacy, just for good measure
This is ad hominem. You are ignoring what is said and making a personal attack. That is what ad hominem is, ignoring the argument and attacking the man.
> Do you apply this...
This is ad hominem.
> I don't need to catalogue the fallacies to point out why this is not a good idea.
This is invincible ignorance fallacy.
Here's an example of real ad-hominem: "You are an obnoxious narcissistic piece of shit that thinks every disagreement is a personal insult because you can't stand not being right". If someone was to use that sentence in an argument, that would be ad-hominem.
Asking whether or not you apply same standards of not using logical fallacies (from your original comment, I personally doubt it) is not ad-hominem because it's calling you out on asymmetric standards - apparently, you're free to commit logical fallacies as much as you want, but the moment someone else does, you halt all discussion and just shout "fallacy!" without any further elaboration and expect the other person to do the legwork of analysing how and why is the argument fallacious and fix it. That's not good faith discussion.
Incorrect, and this is ad hominem.
>>>>> impression of a deep understanding of
Who is being referred to? Who is being characterized? Certainly not no one. Thus, ad hominem attack.
> you're free to commit logical fallacies as much as you want, but the moment someone else does, you halt all discussion and just shout "fallacy!"
This is ad hominem. But it is also a straw man masquerading as tu quoque.
Also, fallacy fallacy.
> Kanye is a garden variety manic-depressive
> It is likely West has one of the more benign flavors of NPD
> I think his biggest problem is BPD and drug abuse
The rest of the post is either true-sounding-at-first, but completely meaningless claims, or completely obvious things that provide no insight whatsoever.
> NPD patients usually don't suffer
Completely false. Narcissistic injury is extremely painful, and one of the reasons narcissists lash out in the first place.
> [NPD treatment can] correct if not cure the disorder in under 2 years
Also not true. Narcissism is a personality disorder, and "curing" narcissism in 2 years is not common. Everything "can" be done, theoretically, but the implications of the sentence is that Narcissism is somehow special in that regard. It's not.
> but due to the combination with NPD and vast wealth, and probably being surrounded by those that will never deny him his insane impulses, he's probably not going to get help until he bottoms out in clinical major depression for months, if he survives it
So assuming he's NPD, his wealth and sycophants will lead him to destruction? Yeah, quite profound. He also has clinical major depression? Where did that come from?
"Psycho-babble" is a perfectly appropriate description of the original comment.
> Kanye, who is now legally known by his nickname, Ye, was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after being hospitalized for a psychiatric emergency in 2016. In the years since, he’s spoken about experiencing manic episodes, often tweeting and performing through them. He has famously referred to bipolar disorder as his “superpower,” and spoke candidly about the stigma around mental illness on David Letterman’s show in 2019. “I ramp up, I go high,” he said of his episodes, describing feelings of paranoia and delusions, as well as being handcuffed, drugged, and hospitalized.
https://www.google.com/search?q=kanye+npd+narcissist
https://www.google.com/search?q=kanye+drug+abuse+addiction
(In no way is this comment intended to be derogatory towards any party, only citations)
I'm not saying monetizing one's own mental illness is necessarily wrong, and I think many have been successful throughout history doing so, especially in art, without causing harm. But living in the spotlight, whether intentionally or not, one should, like Spider-Man, recognize there is great responsibility, and take the positive and negative effect it has on others seriously. Again, I don't know what Kenye is doing, only getting glimpses from headlines I can't avoid.
It is not. The question has been settled on a huge scale by historical events.
If illnesses like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia were meaningfully caused by genetic factors, then the Nazi genocide of mentally ill people would have caused a dramatic and lasting reduction in mental illness post-war among the affected population. It didn't.
You might also ask yourself, if something is genetic, shouldn't identical twins (preferably raised apart) both get it or both not get it? Obviously that situation is rare, but researchers do seek out and study instances.
The social construction of the category is embodied by the admission process at a hospital's mental ward. They literally go down the various causes that they can check for a disordered mental state, and if they can't find anything else, that is mental illness, end of story. In fact, lots of abnormal blood tests may be ignored if they don't fit into an obvious pattern.
The meaning of the term is defined by what people with the power to assign it do. There is no abstract essence of it beyond the process as enacted.
It's a label that serves a critical function of allowing society to abandon difficult diagnoses and redirect resources to others permanently. It doesn't represent an illness, but the lack of understanding what it is. This is not at all the same as the (unknown) constituent disorders being unphysical or one single entity.
It's sort of like the "scientific creationists" that keep finding God in the gaps of science. There's always something left, but either you have faith in naturalistic explanations or not. If you aren't satisfied with science, you can't talk as though there is such a thing as scientific fact about the scientifically unknown, and implicitly lump it all together.
Citation needed.
The population of Germany alone in 1940 was over 70M people. The Nazi's killed an estimated 230K disabled individuals, including the physically disabled and the mentally ill. That only accounts for 3 tenths of a percent of the population, but ~50% of any population will be diagnosed with a mental illness at some point in their lifetime, so their efforts were astoundingly insufficient from a mathematical perspective.
But whether someone is bipolar or not is not a simple trait like whether their earlobes are connected or whether they can roll their tongue. A massive genome study identified at least 64 regions of the genome that are associated with an increased risk of bipolar disorder. But even if it were a simple trait, there is such thing as recessive traits, so the Nazi's agenda was, of course, totally insane and could never be successful from a genetic perspective.
Schizophrenia tends to run in families, but no single gene is thought to be responsible. Bipolar disorder is the most likely psychiatric disorder to be passed down genetically. If one parent has bipolar disorder, there's a 10% chance that their child will develop the illness.
I read (ok, skimmed) an academic study that attempted to compare post-war populations with different histories, and failed to find evidence of an effect; if anything the reverse.
I dislike your sophistry about 50% of the population being mentally ill, as if the victims were chosen from that portion at random. So, out of spite, I'm not going to search for the study and you are free to believe that it doesn't exist.
If you have Bipolar disorder you can get tested to see if you have the gene for it. If you don’t then it can’t be passed down.
Source: someone in my immediate family has it and their doctor told them this, got tested, and found out they didn’t have gene for it.
Psych drugs commonly say, or used to say, in the info leaflets something like they "correct imbalances of certain chemicals in the brain".
This is completely made up, and apart from the vagueness, obviously not reasonable when you consider that such drugs usually take a considerable amount of time to have their full effect.
But it's a customary "white lie" (or rather a fiction) to try to sooth patients and keep them confidently on meds. It's not a big secret, or a scandal, but an attempt to manipulate hopefully trusting people for their own good.
As another example of the dynamic, doctors treat patients who are inevitably going to die in the near future, and if they sense the patient is still holding out hope and still wants treatment, they will probably avoid accurately communicating the reality, the number of weeks or days left, and instead say things about progress and remission until the end.
I don't know what context "the gene" for bipolar disorder came up in, but could it possibly be that your family member was obsessed with "the gene" and the doctor humored them? You've heard of sugar pills?
Just think about it... if you've been a success for so long and suddenly aren't, who would you blame? If you didn't say anyone but yourself, you're not Kanye.
I don’t think he’s even recognized as being in the top 3. There are so many much better than him, such as Eminem, Tupac, Snoop Dogg.
I don't want to get off topic here, but talking about Kanye West as "arguably the most popular hip hop artist of all time" should also come with that argument attached to justify such a grandiose statement. I mean, I need to see some Claire Danes w/red yarn vibes to even begin to understand that position.
You can talk of Kanye and Swift in the same sentence (never had a struggle meal, I see your nick Taylor ;) ), but Kanye vs. Nas? Jay? J. Cole? Sheeet, even Em? I don't even know if there are metrics that could make that statement valid unless you restrict it to some weird "early 'aughts" sub-generation.
I challenge thee to numbers, graphs and beyond all - cultural import! <gauntlet slap>
It’s almost as if his whole thing was to successfully market himself to be associated with the title of the “most successful rapper of all time”.
But I have to give him that other than such an illustrious title, I do hear of him in countless contexts other than music: his marriage, his shoes, his renaming himself, his presidential ambitions, his beefs with other actual artists, and now his purchase of 4chan.
Strictly as a rapper he might not be listed as "the best rapper ever", but as a musician he's easily up there.
He is extraordinarily influential in music and hip hop.
Maybe you missed the era where he skyrocketed to the top and spawned a generation of artists that emulate elements of his style to this day.
His impact is undeniable and that’s why you hear about it.
The disconnect is probably that he hasn’t done anything musically relevant in a few years + his mental health has continued to deteriorate in public.
At least try considering the possibility that his lived experience is valid.
I got an early taste of his mental illness. He started maybe 5 songs, each of which he would cut short in the middle to rant about the sound being off. He was completely unhinged and rambling each time. After 20 minutes he simply walked off stage and that was that.
Ever since then, I've found that his illness has been very evident in the art itself. It precludes me from enjoying it, and there's been a number of times I've felt terribly sad seeing these signs celebrated by those who don't see the connection (which is not to suggest that they should).
All that said, I've never even considered this perspective, so thank you for sharing it. It makes a mountain of sense, and makes the whole situation that much sadder (and more complex).
https://slate.com/technology/2015/06/tim-hunt-on-women-scien...
It's almost as if there is something that happens once you have a major, incontestible success, that you come to believe that your victory had little to do with luck and more to do with destiny or some inherent quality that you possess, and therefore the one masterpiece is a shadow of what is to come.
That foolish idea has led to many great follies.
Bizarre. In a way, good on them for editing the weirdest stuff out... But really probably shouldn't have used any of it when someone's so clearly in such a bad state?
I mean it really is just driving clicks/views/profit from someone's poor health, in a nasty sort of way (i.e. not to say news or obituaries etc. are bad) isn't it?
Why Tucker Carlson Pretends to Hate Elites
I think our society has gotten so used to pop stars who are safe, sanitized, vapid graduates of Disney kids, and "transgressive" high artists bravely fighting the against dead horses slain generations ago, that we've lost the capacity to handle artists who can be disturbing and awkward at times, and creatively redeeming at others, but can't easily be categorized as perfectly good or purely evil.
Every time he says something that deviates from the accepted narrative, he is attacked and dismissed as "crazy", "insane", "sick". Many non-normative geniuses throughout history have been treated in this manner.
Before anyone strawmans this, he does occasionally say things that should be condemned, particularly over the past week. Understandably people are focused on those remarks, but two things can be true at the same time.
1. He has been systematically marginalized and labeled as "crazy" every time he presents an alternative viewpoint. This has been going on for years.
2. He overcorrects when placed in a box. The more people try to control him, the more he tries to break out of that box by being purposefully provocative.
The irony here is I'm not condemning West. I'm recognizing the terrible situation he's in. It's your analysis that's uncharitable to him, not mine. I think he's a victim in this story.
> He is open about having been diagnosed, not about having a "public breakdown", being "increasingly unhinged" or "quite evidently sick". Those are your inventions.
Did the self-proclaimed HN doctors question his decision to collaborate with Adidas, Nike, etc by becoming a fashion designer with his Yezzy label which made him a billionaire? They didn't care in the first place; but because of Parler now they care?
> 1. He has been systematically marginalized and labeled as "crazy" every time he presents an alternative viewpoint. This has been going on for years.
> 2. He overcorrects when placed in a box. The more people try to control him, the more he tries to break out of that box by being purposefully provocative.
Well the same people who are calling him "crazy", "insane", "sick" are the same who believe everything that is said by the media. You go against the media narrative and they will punish you. Criticising and exposing some of the media's lies and the cancelling will happen and Ye knows that.
This also explains the unexplained downvotes because it is all true.
Would you say the same about a schizophrenic who refuses to stay on his meds and ends up ranting at people while living under a bridge?
People with bipolar disorder sometimes won't take their meds for a variety reasons, one being they seek the energy of manic episodes (one in my acquaintance had only had one major manic episode in her entire life but she put up with depression for years in hope of having another one).
Kanye West has stated in interviews that he's a.) bipolar and b.) doesn't take his meds because they interfere with his creative process. This man is not well.
No, because Kanye isn’t living under a bridge. He’s a billionaire.
Second, it's not clear what statement by The Gap he's talking about, but my guess is that this is related to the delayed launch of his product line:
https://www.billboard.com/culture/lifestyle/kanye-west-gap-p...
The "coordinated message" here appears to be "it is bad that children were killed".
It's a (sad) reality that if you're doing any kind of public relations you need to plan for the very real possibility that your giant brand launch is going to coincide with a national tragedy.
0. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/04/entertainment/kanye-west-two-...
I find this take interesting -- Kanye is insanely successful in multiple categories. He is very eccentric and always has been.
> Kanye is now a Black Hebrew Israelite
That said, calling him mentally ill or having a breakdown is a bit... odd. There are tens of thousands of "Black Hebrews", there are MANY more Scientologists. Is Tom Cruise mentally ill? Maybe, but people can have different beliefs than me and I wouldn't call them mentally ill.
Regarding Pete Davidson...
> “The 78 media outlets that called me an abuser when I was tryna get that heroin addict away from my kids that was tattooing my kids’ names on him, Skete, Pete Davidson…” said West. Davidson has spoken about his struggles with drugs and borderline personality disorder in the past.
https://news.yahoo.com/kanye-west-hits-pete-davidson-0413485...
I think a lot of the tabloid press is trying to make Kanye sound crazier than he is. That's how they sell stuff. Don't get me wrong, he's a bit off and he'll say things in a hyperbolic way (which is accurate.. but the connected dots don't always make sense).
Anyway, my point is I think dismissing someone as "mentally ill" for having different beliefs or opinions is probably not the best. It's a fair opinion, but I wouldn't assess it that way. He's acting rationally for his belief set.
There are no ads on HackerNews. What’s the point ?
Kanye himself has said, in the past, that he has bipolar disorder and has had manic episodes. His family has corroborated that, and his wife was open about taking responsibilities during the bad days.
Believing in a lot of conspiracy theories, in isolation, also doesn’t make someone “crazy”.
I don’t know the man, neither does anyone here so far.
My interest is in seeing more social media migrate to open, federated protocols.
His wife's new boyfriend got their kids' initials tattooed on his neck. That's deranged and suggesting that an angry response is evidence of mental illness is way into "positing unnecessary entities" territory.
This is a black man who is a unicorn in two industries. One of the most successful black people of all time. Who is fighting to establish black ownership in those industries.
Here’s his latest full interview where he goes into detail on what he’s been saying. I highly encourage you to watch at least the first 20 minutes:
https://odysee.com/@ArchAngel:e/Ye-on-The-Media-The-Kardashi...
“I respect what the Jewish people have done and how they brought their people together” he isn’t just spewing anti semitism he’s making a principled stand for his people owning more of the industries they run and airing specific problems. Feel free to engage with them.
(YouTube is censoring it because I guess you can critique whites and other ethnic groups all you want, but not Jews). I’m not endorsing anything here, but it’s clear he’s far within the realm of sanity. Accusations against someone’s sanity are of the ultimate nature, it’s a shame you lob them so.
But in it he actually clearly addresses everything you mention: Pete, Gap, Corey, and more. All of your points he has logical explanations for and I highly doubt you’re familiar with then since it seems you only follow Instagram posts, which is ludicrous.
In it I hear someone who is incredibly well controlled, who is speaking clearly and logically, and who has legitimate greviances borne out of experience. In fact I was surprised, as he’s always been a bit of a spaz in interviews (nothing too unusual, just within range ADHD, stress, narcissism would be my guess), so I was expecting worse. But if anything he seems more rational and grounded than ever.
Do you know what he meant by death con 3?
Because he explains it himself in the video and it’s not untoward like you’re implying.
Again, maybe listen to the guy for 20m.
I just don't understand the phenomenon of people moving from one day/week to the next, with a social media influencer or MSM feeding them the next thing to care about. I would be more dismissive of it, but when it starts spilling over into real life; workplaces, road rage, etc. - it is detrimental to society. At what point do people see this for what it is and wake up?
I read that unlike Elon he didn't sign a binding deal to buy for a set price. Just an agreement to consider a purchase. So if he's "sick", apparently not as much as other people.
I have been following self proclaimed free speech absolutists(because I too, believe in free speech but don't believe it exists) and they are totally not the kind of people that say "I hate what you say but I will die defending your right to say it". In all places, these people are curating comments and posts to push agenda.
The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
Yet again, I like that Musk and Kanye kind of people claim that they want free speech because at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it. This is in contrast with the pure fascist where they cannot be held responsible for anything because they don't claim virtue in first place. It's a bit like companies doing greenwashing, which can be exposed when they don't deliver on their claimed virtues versus companies who don't even claim such virtues and instead pretend that it doesn't matter. Those who claim virtue are better even if they ultimately fail.
What's the plan to do that when they censor all dissent on the platforms they just bought?
Those who felt censored just created their own social media. Some prominent figures in extreme right community are blue collar workers.
The only thing these networks censor is anything that is illegal in their hosted jurisdiction i.e the US.
Truth Social has apparently banned (and shadow banned) lots of people for posting anti-Trump and anti-GOP political messages.
I posit that this is the unavoidable result of free speech absolutism.
People like their idea of what absolute free speech will be like, but they don't like the real thing when they see it.
Like it or not Twitter is about as good a compromise as you're going to get. The "free speech" places like Truth Social and Gab will happily boot you off if they don't like you. Twitter have a TOS where they are very forgiving - for the most part issuing suspensions for violations and allowing you to delete TOS-breaking tweets rather than banning you. The line for Twitter seems to be when there is actual real-world harm that can be directly attributed to your actions on the platform. So if you're getting banned from Twitter you need to have fucked up big time
I still think he is the best thing that came out of Paypal, but arguably that is not a tall order.
I've been on Gab since its inception - the only type of comments/users that get booted are those who engage in illegal speech. Illegal speech != distasteful/hateful/politically-charged/racist/sexist/divisive/etc.
https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-re...
Is hate speech right? In most cases, probably not unless you're saying things like "f..k all pedophiles who rape children", then it's righteously motivated. Is it legal? Yes. This is a very important distinction and what gives the USA its unique character and distinguishing trait among ALL other nations who do not have these types of freedoms codified in their constitutions...in fact, in many countries you'd be sacked quietly for saying the "wrong" thing - where "wrong" is defined by whomever happens to be in power (e.g. Russia, China come to mind)
https://gizmodo.com/even-the-freest-free-speech-site-still-b...
Also, HN user encryptluks2 says he was banned "for making a post asking how are all the domestic terrorists Trump supporters doing after the capitol riot." They may be able to give you the info to verify.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26339259
Also, any form of sexual content is banned on gab which is also generally protected free speech. I'm not aware of anyone having been banned for it but I'm sure they are out there, and if not it is easy enough to test.
I'd also like you to consider another possibility - people on the internet lie and distort the truth. A lot. Eg. he may have gotten banned, but not for what he says here on HN. Or he may not have been banned at all but knows he'll get upvotes on HN if he bashes Gab, which was initially backed by YCombinator....until it wasn't. I'll let you figure out why they stopped supporting them.
> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
Sounds like a hint to me. There are more free speech sites, e.g. saidit.net. I would wholeheartedly recommend staying away from it: it's a cesspool, like the other reddit wannabes. Voat also comes to mind. Freedom of speech on such sites only serves to say the worst of the worst, and that will predictably include escalating aggression towards other users.
This is exactly the right question to ask. I'm convinced that it's not possible to have constructive "free speech" social media platform. There's always the need for moderation.
A free speech platform should allow a wide range of topics, but it's not expected to stand for all manner of trolling and bad faith argumentation. I think that conflating the two is tripping a lot of people up in the debate about the topic.
This and other examples are ruled under law in many developed countries.
See I have a problem with the word "never". How about "rarely" or at least "once". A terrible idea should be given an audience once. Let it it be quickly refuted, then go back to better conversations. If someone brings it up again, point them back to the earlier discussion. That way it is established why it is a bad idea.
I read that what really brought down the KKK was a massive amount of lawsuits
"Free speech" is a cool buzzword people think they can qualify for (or wish to), without the ramifications of true free speech (hurt feelings, bad ideologies being discussed in a positive light).
> Freedom of speech and expression, therefore, may not be recognized as being absolute, and common limitations or boundaries to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, hate speech, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, dignity, the right to be forgotten, public security, and perjury.
The fact that most people on the internet (which seem to include you) are using it wrong is another thing. Free speech only applies in the relationship between citizens and the state. It has no meaning in the relationship between individuals and the platforms they're using for communication.
I don't care about an arbitrary definition of two strung-together words, whose definitions individually, are absolute. When combined, their definition is just as absolute. The speech must be free. Free is simply defined as free. Not "free, but ..." in which case it is no longer just "free speech."
This feels like a deeper debate than I'm capable of having, but all language is a string of strung-together words with meanings. These meanings have reached a high enough degree of consensus to exist in a dictionary or semiotic treatise. I think that clinging to your own meaning of absolute free speech when faced with not an arbitrary definition, but one which was reached through a social and cultural consensus, is naive or willfully contrarian.
That is a pretty silly definition.
Imagine if a corporate owned mafia was going around murdering everyone who supports increasing taxes.
Surely, you would recognize that this has a chilling effect on speech, and could be said to control people's free speech rights, even though it is not the government doing it.
Fighting corporate-enacted censorship with government intervention is fighting fire with fire.
Personally I can think of a meaningful debate that can be had from talking about "genocide" but I'm pretty sure that people that would hold this opinion in truth are a little beyond what would be considered a "good faith" discussion.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/05/01/neutral-vs-conservativ...
Not every platform needs to have _all_ the users. I know that it's a bit of an anathema on a discussion board built by venture capitalists to say that the goal of a social platform should not be to maximize the amount of users and engagement, but here we are. I think optimizing your service for "everyone" is a bad strategy in competing with existing social networks, especially coming from an "indie" background. Not that Parler is exactly indie.
[1] I'm saying this as someone that is working towards a discussion platform that targets smallish to medium communities formed around a common interest. In this world if moms wanting to share their latest knitting project are excluded from a service that targets free speech people, that's fine, there can be a knitting community out there also for them. Having these two communities intermingle by using something like ActivityPub is a way to keep "the network effect" but keep them separate enough.
This does not actually...happen. At least not over the medium and long term. What actually happens, and you can see this in practice, is that decent people are not particularly interested, over long periods of time, in arguing that no, there is no globalist (read: Jewish) conspiracy to take over the world. They lose interest almost immediately, while the frothers intellectually crossbreed and turn from one particular flavor of bigot into all the flavors of bigot.
The problem isn't, as you are characterizing, that a platform must have "all the users". The problem is that this strategy hyperconcentrates relatively anodyne conservatives into literal-not-figurative fascists, and has been doing so for quite a while. The active creation of intellectual cul-de-sacs, of epistemic closures for hateful beliefs, is a major factor in why we're where we are right now.
One example that I can think of the top of my head is Scott Alexander's blog, where I saw opinions put forward (most of the times in a respectful manner) that ranged from extremely egalitarian to extremely libertarian. I am entirely sure that some of the people posting there have views that veer into "one flavour of bigot" or another, but because the community as a whole would rise against the most objectionable types of ideas that one could put forward, they never do it. To me that is a healthy community and I hope it can be achieved in other places without needing an "alpha-personality" at the center for people to gather around.
Sure I'm using offense terms but that's not as bad as claiming they control the world.
Or if I thought slavery should be brought back but I don't use the n word. Is that really the issue?
Making you feel like a martyr because you are being "censored" is worse in my opinion than allowing you to express your points of view and hopefully be receptive to counter arguments.
https://www.wired.com/story/pittsburgh-synagogue-shooting-ga...
I'm not qualified to speak with any authority about this issue, but my opinion is that people that are willing to shoot other people most likely have other incentives than reading a singular's dude online hate ramblings. The problem lies with the fact that they gets ostracized and _all_ they are able to read are the hateful things. If you go through the thread above, you'll see that my stance is the complete opposite of that: let's allow people say the "bad" things and balance them out with other peoples' "good" things.
This theoretically would ensure that this person is not exposed to only hate and negativity, and will hopefully make a better decision than ending others' life and their own.
Forcing this unbalanced individual to retreat into a corner of the internet where his opinion on other people goes unchallenged is unquestionably A BAD THING, and I doubt I'll change my mind on this fact any time soon.
"and I doubt I'll change my mind on this fact any time soon"
You have high hopes of people changing their mind when presented with new information, except for yourself apparently
More importantly I don't think most people over a certain age change.
On another note I'd go as far as to say that prohibiting it will make them even more radical and entrenched in their beliefs, germany has extremely strict anti-nazi laws and yet never stopped having neo-nazis, much to the contrary[0]. The people who are going to go as far as real life actions will find the daily stormer or whatever other website and now he will feel like a martyr and justified of some conspiracy or whatever.
[0]:https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/06/german-police-...
I don't know that when the rubber hits the road people are meaningfully trying to make a constructive free speech platform. The nihilism is the point.
I would like to see a platform where moderation exists, but it's "opt-in" only. Meaning, the mods / bots can tag / categorize user posts, and other users can control the visibility of tagged material. This way everything -- the most vile, twisted, hateful and disturbing things are still permitted a place to exist, but they're effectively shadowbanned by individual choice. Start with some sane defaults, and allow people to peel back the lid on the box of horrors if they want to.
This could work with age-restrictions (users below a certain age cannot see certain tags) as well as satisfy advertisers that their ads are shown next to the most innoffensive, oatmeal-bland content (they choose tags next to which their ads are never shown).
If someone is a racist bigot, they shouldn't be physically restrained(deleting posts is like physically covering someones' mouth) from being bigots but they should definitely be known for it. Then it's up to the community to decide how to interact with those people. That's how we do it in real life and works pretty well.
Another thing is the amplification: people pretending to be multiple people. This is also an issue, giving wrong impression about the state of the society and must be solved.
Lastly, we need some kind of spread management. We have the problem of BS getting huge traction and the correction getting no traction. Maybe everyone exposed to something should be re-exposed to the theme once there's a new development. For example, when people share someone's photo as a suspect and it turns out that the person in the photo is not the suspect, the platform can say "remember this Tweet? Yeah, there are some doubts about it. Just letting you know". The implementation of it wouldn't need a ministry of truth but an algo to track theme developments.
IMHO if Musk manages to solve these few problems, which I think he can, a free speech social media is possible.
> Than it's up to the community to decide how t interact with those people.
Twitter is a private company, and it chooses to run it's service how it wants. The government avoids actually physically restraining racist bigots, and lets the community decide how to deal and interact with those people. Some may chose to harbor them (Parlor, 4chan, etc), and others (like twitter) may opt to not host them.
It's not a huge social injustice if you're not allowed to tweet. Feel free to go to one of the millions of other websites, or your start your own (it's easier to do this than ever!) and see who's interested in what you have to say.
> Maybe everyone exposed to something should be re-exposed to the theme once there's a new development.
You're just reinventing content moderation!
And no, attaching follow up to organic content is not moderation.
I like it when it's about flagged posts. I have the option enabled to show these posts and I would vouch if there's something worthy in it. So spam and other BS is "removed" but I still can take a look at it and see it for myself.
Overall, I think HN is one of the best moderated online places.
- user A says vaguely racist thing
- user B calls person out for racist thing
- user A cannot downvote a reply, so they flag it instead - making it disappear
So both can silence someone, but in one case many people need to disagree with someone and in the other you just need one person (or one person with an alt account if you want to go and revert a "vouch"). So if anything flagging is more prone to abuse than downvoting. I try to read greytext comments when I can and vouch whenever it looks unjust (and do something similar for downvoted posts) but from the looks of things not many people do.
edit: might as well include my example - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33164001
So I'd understand if I was downvoted and called out for my confrontational response to racism. Because at that point I'd reply that actually treating this kind of casual xenophobic comment as unserious and mocking the person is the most effective counter to this kind of behavious. Getting bogged down in debating the merits or worth of any individual person or where they might "belong" is exactly what this kind of person wants to do.
The good thing about HN is that the moderators are reachable and they do respond intelligently. Unlike AI moderation, you can send an e-mail about it and dang will respond to you and explain why something happen and you can discuss it.
I had my account restricted multiple times and restored once we got on the same page(I don't agree with everything but once I see their point, I can work with it). I had wrongfully flagged comments unflagged by sending them an e-mail too.
It's not perfect but it's pretty good and miles ahead than anything else online.
Once it gets too big for that, you're doomed to destruction eventually.
My preferred solution would be to break up the communities once they're too big, instead of trying to make a massive world-wide community like Twitter does. Reddit somewhat has this, but there is still a site-wide issue.
>My preferred solution would be to break up the communities once they're too big, instead of trying to make a massive world-wide community like Twitter does.
I agree with this. In real life situations you can see it too, the larger the crowd the stupider their total behaviour becomes. Large crowds are good for certain things though, but mostly primal stuff like singing and chanting.
I do think HN is one of the better moderation systems since this is one of the saner places on the internet and you can still configure things so you can at least see all the content, though you can't interact with it all. I would just prefer it if I was in charge of saving myself from bad opinions or whatever motivates people to down vote posts into oblivion.
This allows people to evolve and to not be beholden to something they said/thought a decade ago and no longer think.
We've just come full circle to why twitter choses to moderate. They don't want to keep up content that drives people away.
What I wonder is what Musk will do if he finds out the scales are artificially weighted towards conservative content. Like if conservative content is artificially boosted by bots and algorithms. Facebook was much more liberal before thumbs were put on the scale. I don’t remember when but I think it was Mother Jones that saw huge traffic movement changes after algo changes like a decade ago?
https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/17/21520634/facebook-report...
Like what if the natural state of humanity is much more liberal than the American media and social media allow for? Will Musk allow that or will he see anything that doesn’t align with his views as error or manipulation?
What if a truly free and transparent self-moderating platform naturally promotes leftism more than a moderated but manipulated feed does?
> Results show that in the context of online firestorms, non-anonymous individuals are more aggressive compared to anonymous individuals. This effect is reinforced if selective incentives are present and if aggressors are intrinsically motivated.
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
There's been so many words spilled online about how terrible of an idea it is to require confirmed identities for online.
Recently, see https://twitter.com/mmasnick/status/1576274615231401984 or more casually https://www.garbageday.email/p/oh-cool-were-talking-about-an...
> Generally, if your solution is virtually indistinguishable from one of the systems the Chines government is using to keep people in line, your solution is bad.
Mike Masnick in his tweets repeats some talking points but there's no cohesive argument.
Furthermore, there can be layers of anonymity. There can be anonymous publicly but not to Twitter. That’s dangerous given that Twitter cannot protect your identity from a state actor accessing its internal systems. Thus, again, why would you want a checkmark as a dissident.
So the fact that this applies to some people means that it is an issue for those people.
Do you mean that in countries where not everyone has government ID? That's not an issue, the government doesn't have to be the authority of ID. Besides, governments can create fake IDs for covert operations anyway. I don't suggest that everyone should connect to the internet with government issued ID card.
I don't mean some idea that could work at some arbitrary point in the future (decentralized whatever...). If a social media platform were to do this, right now, how would they do it without verifying a government issued ID?
Nicknames are an identity and it's pretty much common these days to have nicknamed account on all over the internet. The problem with these is that one can have multiple of those and a behaviour in one place doesn't transfer into other places.
So maybe we can have across-the-internet identities. You are jasonshaev but who you are on twitter? on reddit? on other places? Once you become the person who is known around everywhere the same way, you have the identity that you would like to protect. You can't troll one place when bored then be known as a nice person somewhere else. I think that's good enough identity. The implementation can be around crypto, single sign in, face recognition etc.
If you want to verify some other, "online" identity, that's fine, but I don't see how that would meaningfully affect anyones behavior. To be clear, I don't think verifying someone's real name will meaningfully improve online behavior either -- plenty of other threads explain why. In which case, what's the point of either?
So maybe, for every single thought one has, one ought not fly around the world and post it on a flyer on every street corner and light post. Which is basically what posting on Twitter is.
But then I think a ton of stuff people casually do online is batshit crazy when you put it in real-world terms. Of course you wouldn't do the above. You wouldn't even do it if you had a magic button that could make it happen for you without taking time & money to go do it in person. "Post my random toilet thought on hundreds of millions of surfaces all over the world? No, god, why would I do that?"
Would you give a teenager access to such a magic button? Of course not. That would be entirely insane. Even if using the button would not, per se, get them in trouble, you'd destroy that thing or put it in a safe. Handing it over to them to do with as they please wouldn't even be something you'd consider doing.
But we live in a world where ~every developed-world kid has a button like that by age 12, and sometimes much earlier. WT actual F. Of course it's causing tons of problems. Most adults couldn't be trusted to make good choices with such a tool (clearly).
You either have people incentivized to self-identify with a checkmark or what? The alternative is to build an AI that identifies you in order to remove bots? I don’t even think that’s possible without it auto removing everyone that uses anonymizing tools like Tor?
See, because we don't say everything that comes to our mind, we are able to interact in a civil manner with people that can have any kind of opinions. In real life, I'm sometimes shocked that someone is a total bigot.
However, when civility is established we can discuss these ideas too and instead of having these people being toxic these ideas can be expressed in a civil manner and discussed. Maybe they have a point sometimes? If they do, it can be dully noted and if they don't they will be exposed to the counter arguments. Also, when ideas are expressed in civil manners, people don't label other people straight as "bigot", "racists" and accept the nuances. In fact, some prominent right-wing people are doing that, people like Jordan Peterson. Because the guy is civil, he is effective and it's up to the rest to contradict his claims in civil manners.
So yes, it is alright to have some self restraint and think before you speak. It's definitely much better than oppressing it.
edit: the comment I responded was a bit different, I guess the OP added more thoughts.
For a free speech absolutist curtailing this could also be seen as removing free speech.
> Lastly, we need some kind of spread management. We have the problem of BS getting huge traction and the correction getting no traction. Maybe everyone exposed to something should be re-exposed to the theme once there's a new development. For example, when people share someone's photo as a suspect and it turns out that the person in the photo is not the suspect, the platform can say "remember this Tweet? Yeah, there are some doubts about it. Just letting you know". The implementation of it wouldn't need a ministry of truth but a algo to track theme developments.
Still this wouldn't solve the issue with spread of BS, specially targeted BS: it is tailored to invoke and reinforce inherent biases and, on average, someone exposed to it will become less inclined to read/critically judge any rebuttal. Bullshit spreads much easier than well researched rebuttals, just by the nature of bullshit. It's a game where truth is bound to lose, no matter how many "algorithms" you implement to spread developments of a story to the same audience, the engagement of said audience to the rebuttals will vary depending on their biases. I'm not even including the required inherent drive and energy to actually follow-up, as an audience, on further developments, in the fast-paced world of social media people will selectively choose what to invest their energy into. Someone falling for bullshits won't want their effort to be thrown out by rebuttals and so will avoid such activities perceived as a waste of energy, after you formed an opinion it's much harder to un-form it.
I'm strictly in the camp that absolute free speech on social media is a fool's errand, at least in 2022. There is no upside to the massive downsides that we already see and experience, even in the scope of not existing with absolute free speech.
The detachment on social media between the written words vs the real humans behind those words causes a non-insignificant amount of grief that wouldn't happen in a in-person interaction. It seems that we humans easily lose our humanity when not in a real world social environment, the vileness is exaggerated while empathy is easily pushed aside.
Jerks and BS artist are nothing new but in real world we do have some tools to deal with them. IMHO, changing how some things work can create an atmosphere of healthy interactions.
This doesn't work. Show people two articles, one that is false and one that is true, and most people will say the one that aligns with their priors is true. We need to either teach people to recognize fake news, censor fake news, or accept that basically everyone will believe false propaganda. There are no other options. Once someone has been shown an article they agree with telling them the article was false just leads them to think you're on "the other side".
We're hot off the heels of hunter biden, surely that should be a wakeup call regarding how "misinformation experts" go both ways.
Do you have cause to believe that repeated exposure to every side of every story won't lead the average person towards truth?
It makes it hard to start a new platform. People start free-speech platforms with good intentions of having open debate about controversial topics. But they quickly get overrun by hate mongers and trolls, and become too noxious for most people to read. Intentional or not, it's a good strategy by the existing platforms to kick out the nasty people, ensuring that they're first to sign up for every new social network.
Most users don't want to wade through toxicity to get to signal. If they're discussing a topic of interest, say baking, and someone comes in and starts ranting on how a vast global conspiracy made up of surprisingly-homogeneous ethnicity given its global scale is pushing up the price of yeast to weaken the market for white bread, either the moderators squelch that noise or people who want to talk about baking go somewhere else to do it.
Given their own freedom, when given a choice, users tend to select moderated channels over unmoderated ones. We've been doing the Internet long enough to know this to be true.
The end result is the same, but it’s important to understand exactly where the mechanism is failing if you want to fix it.
This is true, but unfortunately the same mistakes keep being made because people don't pay attention to the history of the internet or didn't grow up during that era. We've known that completely unfettered discussion leads to self destruction since the Usenet era. But the lessons aren't heeded or ignored, so we get people that either stay ignorant or learn the hard way.
Maybe toxic people just congregate in places where their speech is accepted, therefore making the rest of the site toxic as well.
Maybe it’s not “hate mongers and trolls” that overrun sites and that the concept of free speech and being able to say anything just naturally brings out the worst people and the worst in people.
The problem with this theory is that 4chan is older than both Twitter and Facebook.
If unmoderated speech created an inherently better platform, surely 4chan would have captured the market a long time ago and cut off commercial alternatives like Craigslist did.
1: Also as others point out, even 4chan moderates, however lightly.
It's the same reason people haven't mass switched to Mastodon or other Fediverse services; because the userbase is so much smaller than the likes of Twitter that there's a good chance the people and content they care about isn't available there. Or why so many competitors to popular services fail in general, regardless of their stance on free speech. The network effect is strong, and sometimes even billions of dollars and tons of marketing can't overcome that (see Google+ for example).
Would people prefer a free speech orientated alternative? Hard to say, for the same reason as whether they'd prefer a decentralised or federated one; it's the content and users that bring people to a site or service, and the competitors to the popular ones are so much smaller and less active it isn't much of a comparison.
Direct, unfiltered exposure to the firehouse is at best banal, and at worst disgusting and self-destructive. It's an _awful_ job that ~no one would chose to do for themselves.
I think the better question is, what harm does not having a free speech platform do? I think the answer is fairly evident when you look at how the ability to control speech has been used throughout history. The justification, I would also suggest, has always been the same as the ones being advanced now. People act like it was social media that revealed the fact that the masses will say terrible things when allowed, but in fact that was the common opinion for most of history.
I will say in regard to twitter though that excessive policing of speech creates a segregation of audiences and consequently increases echo chambers, which is probably not what those speech police were trying to accomplish. I think it would be healthier for society if it were a little more tolerant, but that's not really related to my position on free speech.
To ensure that ideas that people want to be censored or deplatformed can be evaluated by others who want to see what they are.
If people are not able to read oposing viewpoints, it makes them less able to understand them, and why they are wrong.
Almost as if allowing absolute free speech has consequences, almost as if there was a reason absolute free speech isn't a thing anywhere in the world... we might be onto something
"Free speech absolutist" does not mean "absolute free speech", you're misunderstanding the premise here. The term does not mean that anyone should be allowed to say anything they want at any time.
The phrase means that we should permit any LEGAL speech. Where "legal" has tons of historical precedent and can be decided by the country.
We've seen time and again, that if the ability to speak freely isn't a priority, then censorship grows quickly. If you don't believe that there is a ton of censorship happening on these platforms with a specific set of biases (the biases that the employees of these companies carry) then I would say that you might not be viewing the situation with an open mind.
This is becoming a problem because the Internet has become the new town square where people learn what's going on in the world and talk with each other. If the people running these platforms are allowed to suppress speech that they don't like and promote speech that they do like, then they wield an incredible amount of power. This power is rife for abuse, both by people inside the corporation and within government.
You are correct though that 4chan is a gross cesspool, though its one I believe should be allowed to exist simply because I believe freedom of speech is important. The problem with that site is obviously that it's anonymous. Coupling anonymity with free speech is a recipe for bringing out the worst in people, but a system where peoples' identities are out in the open and where they can speak freely is good in my opinion. We need more free speech and we need to engage with our fellow countrymen and find common cause, otherwise this insanely polarized partisan situation will continue to get worse.
And even 4chan has rules and mods to enforce them.
welcome to true free speech on the internet. the worst and most abrasive of the bunch drive everyone away.
Here, you've solved it. "The free market", both users and advertisers, demand content moderation. If you want to attract users, you need a website that isn't a cesspool of 'toxicity'. If you don't want to drive away those who actually pay for your website (advertisers), you'll need to moderate.
Reddit has proved this out - they started out trying to say they're hands off, and they'll only remove illegal content (ignoring how troublesome that is to define for a global website), and they've slowly learned over the years that they cannot grow their website with those policies.
You could say that you don't want to grow your platform, and stay a small niche, which is totally fine. That's what gab and parlor and 4chan are. We have them already!
And you'll know the death-knell for reddit is here when they crack down on the porn.
Most people who declare their affinity for a value or policy or position merely do so tactically; they think that there's a short-term relationship between the furthering of some movement and their ability to get closer to what they want. Such people are allies when convenient.
Edit: typo
I’d argue that every place that allows every kind of speech without restriction will eventually degenerate into a cesspit. You lose the reasonable people quickly because they don’t want to deal with the toxicity and it’s all downhill from there.
> The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
These are people who have a track record of evading responsibility.
Can you give examples?
CPAC, the conservative PAC, canceled Milo Yiannopoulos when was planning to speak there.
I don't blame them, because Yiannopoulos was always acting in bad faith. If one of his talks hadn't gotten canceled it would have been a personal failure on his part and a clear indication that he didn't go far enough and would have to be even more offensive next time. The point with Yiannopoulos was that he'd get canceled, get attention, find some fool who would pay even more to hear a "controversial" speaker, and repeat the cycle. CPAC wised up to what is going on.
There’s a massive difference between de-facto public squares like Twitter and political party conferences.
What free speech has meant historically is "I don't believe the government should be able to criminalize certain kinds of speech." It never meant "I am entitled to insert garbage into someone else's newspaper or book" until people started misappropriating the term.
Most people who are in favor of free speech, are perfectly fine with you personally clicking the block button.
Instead, what they don't want, is a centralized platform preventing consenting parties from engaging with each other.
See the difference?
So instead people build addons and blocklists to manage all of that for them. Now you have a separate centralized platform for dealing with a certain subset of users.
And if that doesn't work or if they don't want to put in that effort they just leave the platform instead. They go to somewhere else where the social agreement with the platform is to automatically filter out or remove those users. Hence why few people actually use the free speech platforms like Gab, Parker etc.
Think about 2 situations. Person A, wants to see the content of Person B. So person A voluntarily chooses to see the content.
And the other situation is Person C, does not want to see the content of person B, so chooses not to do so.
> there is no manageable way to block all of them
Yes there is. Someone could choose to allow an automated method of blocking people that they don't want to see.
As long as nobody is forced to use this automated moderation, or can change it, while still having access to that platform, then it is fine.
> Now you have a separate centralized platform for dealing with a certain subset of users.
No actually, it is quite a bit different. The difference being that a person could chose to modify this blocking authority. It is all fine and well to have blocking authorities, as long as I, the user can turn it off, if I choose to do so, on that platform, or otherwise modify my own blocklist, or add a white list.
So that is the solution. Feel free to have blocklists. Just let me change the blocklist, for myself, if I disagree with it.
There, everyone gets what they want.
Who doesn't want that? The billions of people that interact with Twitter and Facebook, or the people who are sympathetic to the fringe racist beliefs that dominate "free speech" sites?
It's incredibly tiresome, not just online but in real life. There is no freedom vs control debate. There's just the people who advocate arresting those who teach their children inconvenient truths vs those who advocate arresting those who use naughty language.
You're mischaracterization of the debate leads me to believe you made this comment in bad faith.
And there it is. Advocate for free speech in front of a left-leaning audience and you're a conspiracy-spewing Republican. Advocate for free speech in front of a right-leaning audience and you're a child-grooming communist. Like I said, tiresome.
Everyone thinking "we need free speech on Twitter" has lost the plot, and, as you mentioned, the revealed preference of people who claim they want free speech is actually toward heavier moderation (but moderation they like).
Most of them go on Twitter for one kind of content, and on Parler or "Truth" Social for another kind, and they don't really want the streams to cross. We used to have this in the 90's and early 2000's. The question is how to get it back.
"How about we just go back to not using one big central social communication platform and go back to the spirit of using separate independently owned forums, chatrooms and websites for our little niches and communities to prevent this issue"
Regardless of what the issue is how would being on a smaller forum prevent this?
The idea of chasing after evil ideas is flawed from the outset.
It's not new, either, which is why this very long hacker news thread bothers me. I usually like to wade on on these topics more extensively, but here the entirety of the population is applauding free speech being a shitty idea, without any historical conversation.
Oh and it's incredibly US centric. Freedom of speech is a principle that was discussed in the Enlightenment and beyond, and fought for (first against religious authorities in ancient times, then against religious authorities in the 20th century). It happens to exist in the 1st amendment as a government limitation, but as a principle and a moral it is well beyond that.
a) new entrants can't exist ( Parler, Truth.. whatever ) b) the rules are so generic that they ensure given platform can ban whatever
And this is why people clamor for simple free speech slogan.
If this is how we understand it, then we do need free speech.
Unfortunately, I doubt that we can put the cat back in the bag.
It's unclear from your comment. Are you saying that Musk and West are our free speech champions and everybody else is a poser?
Because Musk and West do not care about free speech either. It's the problem these rich idiots all claim to have: "I need a platform where my voice can be heard," while their voice already gets top spot on the trending Twitter page and on newspaper front pages.
Of course Michael Spicer said it better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrqhgTjFkLo
How do you propose to do that, if you can't hold reddit, twitter et al accountable for the same today?
Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does wiggle its eyebrows meaningfully in causation's direction.
Free speech on small fringe sites somehow doesn't count because it's not forced on people that don't want to see it. It's pretty clearly not a free speech issue at this point.
There are plenty of places with free speech. You can walk outside and start saying some pretty insane stuff right now and people may hate you (consequence) but you are unlikely to have any type of legal consequence.
The social media one gets me the most because even if you do get rid of all moderation it is no secret that there is some algo out there amplifying some voices and not others. And in a way that is just censorship with extra steps.
I get unreasonably irked when some subreddit won't let me post a comment / removes a comment. Like, "who do you think you are to limit my ability to express myself here?!" Deprived of context, my contribution is meaningless -- so, how does that interact with the freedom of speech, really?
Say I'm in a crowded square where people are arguing about squids, and I have a squid-related revelation I'd like to share, but the self-appointed Guardians of the Square have gagged me. Is this an infringement on free speech? I'm free to leave the square and speak -- but what I have to say is relevant within the confines of the square, not elsewhere.
If they couldn't stop people talking at their venue what's to stop someone completely sabotaging their agenda?
I actually doubt the kind of trolling that happens on 4chan can be described as honest. Unvarnished maybe.
There's lots of things demonitized and not getting recommended.
But what else is censored?
Free speech in the way it was envisaged in the constitution presumes there is a feedback loop back to the emitter of the speech. Anonymity breaks that feedback loop. Anyone who tells you that free speech without consequences has ever existed pretty much anywhere is lying to themselves and to you.
If you want anonymity you need some measure of bounds on speech in those places.
I'm a furry, furry is a community built around an isolation between our IRL identity and our online one. But the community is tight knit enough that your reputation will follow you around - the identity you created for yourself yes - but still your identity, and if you're too far out of bounds, you get quietly (or loudly) excluded from the mainstream of the community. It largely functions the same way as tying your real name to every online identity.
Now take something like twitter - you start with a karma of say 75, anything less than 100 karma, and your tweets wont show up in searches, anything less than 50 and you start to disappear from timeline - even for followers, anything less than 30, you disappear from lists - effectively this creates an automatic shadow banning system.
But a saving grace, you earn a quarter point of karma just by not having any negative interactions on the site, you could also earn positive karma by upvotes on content.
You could also put some other bounds in there too, like limiting how much positive karma or negative karma a single post could earn, to prevent it from skewing the numbers too much (it should be based on a weighted average of interactions, not just on one tweet that goes viral and the rest of it is low effort shitposting).
Ideally you'd have a cross site 'identity' service that would also carry along a weighted karma score from all of the places you interact, and allow people to see those links - you're still abstracted from your real identity, and you're always welcome to start over again, abandon your account and start from zero, but there is persistent history of your interactions.
Anonymity is only a deterrent when you are the odd one out. When the President of the US is the one spouting the insanity you don't have to hide anymore.
The problem with anonymous online echo-chambers is that it lulls those in the community that there are more of them in the real world than there really are, which emboldens people to take their online craziness into the real world. This goes for everything from politics to "The raid on Area 51"
Yes, because in the real world - if you say something hateful enough to the wrong person - you'll get your head knocked off.
So people have some sort of filter.
When you take that away - the trolls with no lives come out just to agrivate people because misery demands company.
Agreed. Truth Social/Parlor as "Free speech" spaces is 100% laughable.
> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
AKA: Every totally-free-no-holds-barred-speech sites, there is a reason it's a stupid goal held by people either too naive or those using it as a dog whistle.
> Yet again, I like that Musk and Kanye kind of people claim that they want free speech because at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it.
Yes, because we have such a good track record of holding liars accountable...
> This is in contrast with the pure fascist where they cannot be held responsible for anything because they don't claim virtue in first place.
I can't even with this line. We have plenty of fascists running around claiming mountains of virtue and lying through their teeth. Their base/audience continues to blindly follow them and holding any of them accountable (especially by their base) is a pipe dream.
> It's a bit like companies doing greenwashing, which can be exposed when they don't deliver on their claimed virtues versus companies who don't even claim such virtues and instead pretend that it doesn't matter.
Again, this just isn't happening at scale.
> Those who claim virtue are better even if they ultimately fail.
False.
* it was not actively illegal (CP, terrorism etc)
* hacked info
* deadnaming trans people
Is that not the case anymore?
why would you go to wikipedia to get a copy of twitter's policies? Anyways based on what you've said so far you haven't actually been paying attention. It's been year's since Dorsey went Rogan's show and took one his trust and safety lawyers with him to do all the legal talk so he could maintain deniability.
And what might we learn from this?
The argument in favor of absolute free speech for me was basically “let everyone hear everything and make up their own mind”. This presumes that people are swayed by the content of an argument. This is a false assumption, people are mostly swayed by the volume of the argument. This is well documented in psychological research. Now, if everyone had the same level of visibility for their personal speech this would just lead to an ersatz version of opinion democracy, where the most often held opinions would rise to the top, which wouldn’t be a bad thing.
But people don’t have equal visibility. The reach of a wealthy or famous person is so much greater that in the political arena basically only the speech of the wealthy and famous ends up having enough volume to convince people, even if it starts out wildly unpopular and even if it is objectively false. Social media are especially sensitive to this thanks to the ability to buy access to views without the viewers even realizing, to micro-target audiences, and to have zero independent vetting of what is said. This then perverts absolute free speech into a weapon used by the powerful to deceive and subvert democracies.
That’s why I think that to protect democracies we must have some limits on the ability to get speech amplification through (social) media, but I don’t have a hard and fast rule for what that should look like. It is far easier to say “let everything pass” but that is the easy way out and ultimately bad.
I assume you are referring to something like defamation but controlled by the state
Maybe do issue follow ups, so if someone says something and later it is contested prioritise the contestants until they get similar reach. For example, if a politician says he never met with someone and a photo of them together is revealed make sure that their claim is displayed together with the new photo.
Things like this.
That's what fact-checking is. It's widely heckled.
I guess NASA tweets might receive pairs who claim that the Earth is not a globe :) That's OK, NASA can respond to these with equal visibility and if people are not convinced I guess NASA would need more convincing arguments.
Btw I'm not advocating for active suppression of ideas. I just understand if a particular company chooses to do it on their website. I'd do the same in their place. It's not their job to give everyone a voice.
It's split down the middle
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/27/republicans...
As to prominent people- What do you consider prominent, would most people agree with that, and do you have a poll of these people.
Saying most prominent people blah blah blah is debatable on two levels
I have no idea what you're arguing. Your own link says what I said.
I'm not saying anything about the fact-checking itself. I'm not on Twitter or Facebook. I haven't seen any fact-check posts. I'm sure they try their best to be accurate. I prefer to get my information about the most hoax-prone topics from authoritative sources - primary sources, news agencies, newspapers of record - the more boring, the better.
However, some sort of "fair & balanced" law would have to enforce this.
Edit: and to respond to sibling comment about fact-checking being heckled...
The mechanism here would have to somehow force a similar amount of views. For example, if a lie gets 1MM views, then the proof of the lie should have to gain 1MM views before the original author can gain leverage of the algorithm again.
Of course the new system will eventually be abused, however, it's a step in the right direction. And when that eventually fails to be recognizable, another set of checks and balances must be layered on top.
There was a time period when the left was for free speech and the right was wanting to constrain it. Maybe its just a giant pendulum - there is no right/left difference when it comes to free speech - everyone wants to censor / filter the speech of the opposite side.
If things come in cycles, then I expect the right to take over more and more (see the european shift) and then for them to slowly become in favor of censorship. Maybe then - if we are lucky - the left will remember that censorship is always the enemy even if it helps them currently.
When was this - and can you give examples of left and right acting the way you described in the past?
Other leftist advocates for free speech include Obama, Elenor Roosevelt, and Aryeh Neier are brilliant examples.
My initial point wasn't that it never happened, only to show there were never deliberate, strategic positions on free speech by the left or right- only messy tactical circumstances. Not long before McCarthyism was Japanese internment by a giant of the left: FDR.
Obama famously called someone a "jack-ass" after they exercised their free speech on-stage. He also railed against the Citizens United ruling. Having a binary "for/against free speech" is reductive.
I thought that a strange comment. Disapproving of what one says is clearly not the same as condemning free speech.
Mario's "Operation of the Machine" speech is pretty good.
Also worth noting, often these groups were not quite as egalitarian as they're thought to be. SDS for instance had quite a bit of sexism in its operations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_a_Democratic_Soci...
I have no position on this debate, I just thought you'd want a little context.
This is mostly because the left/right spectrum is too nebulous to be genuinely useful at understanding most people's values, which tend to be more nuanced than a one dimensional spectrum allows for. People that want to censor/filter speech are authoritarians. Nothing about authoritarianism uniquely binds it to the left or the right.
that's part of the reason why I come to HN, for well-moderated (or "censored" if you prefer) discussions on tech
Probably the lack of ability to advertise here the way you are encouraged to do on Twitter/FB/IG/Reddit (because they need that revenue) factors in as well.
I don't care much about my freedom to speak. My voice will never be a significant influence on the world anyway. What I care about is my freedom to listen. I value the freedom to review all the evidence and all the arguments then draw my own conclusions.
I don't often want to read dead comments. They are mostly low quality and deserve their status. Nevertheless, showdead is sometimes quite useful and the transparency gives me more faith in the moderation.
It's like living in darkness, and then someone invents light, and everyone cries "more light", and it's great, and then after a while the light gets so bright that it's blinding, making the light useless for its original purpose of letting you see things, and yet we still cry "more light" because we're afraid of going back to the darkness.
I don't know what new thing to replace the rallying cry if "free speech" with. Something about signal-to-noise ratio, but all the alternatives involve trusting people to moderate, which is obviously an undesirable property compared to the original concept, but I think it might be simply unavoidable. At a high enough level, free speech itself can be used to eliminate free speech.
Free speech on Twitter is a matter of values. It is not a matter of whether or not Twitter is legally liable to protect free speech (they're not) but whether they should protect it because it's something that is worthwhile protecting.
Given the ubiquity of social media and its current massive role in communicating and share ideas, what role should the companies behind these services play?
OTOH if its only about values and not about the actual legal idea of freedom of speech, then you can argue with that logic that there is also a moral value in protecting groups of individuals from being the subject of vitriol and hate speech on a forum you own. That's the position Twitter et al. have taken in this regard.
Yes, but only to the extent that you're capable of protecting it yourself. This is why the second amendment exists in the United States. I don't really care to get into whether or not this a valid point of view since that could be its entire own discussion, but that is at least partially the rationale behind protecting people's rights to procure weaponry.
> Sure you can get all philosophical and say things like every soul has a right to X Y and Z, but that doesn't mean anything in practice outside of the ivory tower if the government you are beholden to has a stance to the contrary.
I get what you're saying but unless the government does some minority report type thing where they arrest you before you exercise your rights, most people will still get to in the real world exercise it at least once. A person doesn't lose their right to free speech just because they are dumb or otherwise incapable of communicating their speech, either.
> OTOH if its only about values and not about the actual legal idea of freedom of speech, then you can argue with that logic that there is also a moral value in protecting groups of individuals from being the subject of vitriol and hate speech on a forum you own. That's the position Twitter et al. have taken in this regard.
This is in fact where I think the most interesting discussion can occur. What values should social media platforms be enforcing? I personally think that censoring speech broadly on the platform is in most cases inappropriate — Twitter and the like can make tools to help people insulate themselves from people they don't wish to see or interact with. Some of these already exist, but they could expand them. They could even create features that allow users to preemptively take action on types of speech they find objectionable (advanced filtering techniques).
I find this preferable because it allows the broader community to maintain discourse (even if some people find it abhorrent) and importantly grants individuals agency over the type of speech they engage with.
It's bigger than that - what if these ideas become popular and we elect a leader whose primary drive is to go "death con 3 on the jews"?
So today you say something that is acceptable. But maybe tomorrow, after you turn 18, someone discovers your statement and they cancel you using today's judgements.
> If you block people on Twitter you’re not truly open to different arguments or ideas. Similarly if you were truly open to trying new and different foods, you’d eat this hot dog I found in the gutter.
I think in the context of social media the replacement/adjunct rallying cry is "free association", i.e. moderation. I don't have to engage with racist nonsense or the people who produce it.
How exactly that's done is certainly an area for competition/innovation between the social networks, but ultimately the ability to not have to hear some categories of speech is the answer.
There's two related but distinct problems: the moderation problem and the village idiots problem[0]. Polarization _can_ come from moderation, but there's also a whole debate to be had about what is driving what. For example: Alex Jones' whole saga has been spun by some as "being punished for conservative beliefs", so yeah, I guess if he's a conservative then him being pushed off social might cause polarization. BUT I think it's important to note that 10 years ago if you said Jones was a conservative, almost _all_ conservatives would have said something "the interdimensional vampire guy? Don't lump us in with that crazy bastard". During the intervening years right wing leaders have increasingly signaled that Jones is one of theirs. That was a top down series of decisions more than social media's impact. In order to believe that "your team" is being punished you already had to believe that Jones was on your team. If the statement "Alex Jones is on my team and I'm on a mainstream political team" is true, then you're _already_ polarized. The moderation might make it worse but something severely fucked up has already happened.
The (potentially violent) extremism, though, is really about the idiots getting together and self reinforcing (for example incel groups periodically spinning out a mass shooter). Moderation isn't really going to impact the second problem since when they get booted from one platform they migrate to a less moderated one or spin up their own.
[0] Borrowing Peter Singer's framing from here: "Once, every village had an idiot. It took the internet to bring them all together."
Before social media, most people didn't get their info from books, they got it from TV, and you had a couple big channels that essentially led to most people having some sort of consensus on the few versions of reality that were broadcast by the media.
Whether that was a good thing or a bad thing is another discussion, but at least we didn't have the degree of balkanization and polarization we do now.
I was saying that having social media function as is, but doubling down on tools to help people screen out what they don't like, which is what the person I was responding to suggested, would, I think, just accelerate that balkanization. So I don't know that it's a good solution.
Part of accepting free speech is being tolerant of speech you may find offensive.
A lot of people believe their own views are dangerous for democracy, and limited to protect democracy. They just also don't believe in protecting democracy - sometimes explicitly, sometimes with lip service to a "democracy" that's little more than nationalism.
Well, you're the only person I've ever seen suggest that social media distribution be limited by author rather than viewpoint. Although I disagree, I'm not quite sure how that could be managed, either.
Freedom is a good in and of itself. Our rights don't need to serve a larger purpose.
Imagine asking for permission to read a book and being asked, "but what good would you reading this book do for society?" The answer of corse is that it doesn't matter -- our civil rights are not transactional -- they do not exist to serve others.
It’s not completely free speech here, but seems close and mostly pretty good results follow.
That's only half the story. The other half is tone. I have been persuaded against several beliefs that should have won me over if volume were the only consideration due to the quality of the writing. "These people type like morons, it's probably a belief primarily found amidst the stupid", as it were.
Controls on speech get perverted far worse and far faster, every single time. There is no perfect system where we can make everyone infinitely wise.
If that was done, then there would be far less issues here. Those who want free speech focused platforms could create them, and those who didn't want to use them wouldn't have to. The problem at the moment is that not only is there no place for free speech online, but any attempts at creating one can be bullied off the internet by an angry mob on social media because of companies and PR.
Really? They've never defined free speech, so how can we hold them accountable?
The idea of a "free speech absolutist" is a complete joke destined for legal consequences. For example, I don't think they mean free speech is the ability to post obscene content, threats, state secrets, corporate IP, or any other legal restrictions on free speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
Plus, there are all kinds of free speech reductions they could make, like only allowing palatable content onto top trending recommendations. So, you're not banning free speech, but you're actively restricting it based on what's attractive to advertisers or even the general public.
If they said "all legally permitted speech on our platform will be given the same protection and visibility based on metrics that do no include the meaning of the speech", then that would be something concrete that we could hold them accountable to.
Free speech opponents always like to point to these examples when the topic of free speech comes up, but I've never seen free speech advocates use an example of any of these as examples of problematic censorship - instead, they (we) point out voluminous examples of unfashionable opinions being removed. In fact, if Kanye or Musk came out and said "free speech except for" and listed your (specific, easily definable) examples, I'd still agree with them that they were advocating for free speech.
Just look at some of the exceptions to free speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
* Incitement
* False statements of fact
* Obscenity
* Fighting words
* Threatening the president of the United States
These are all grey areas that are constantly being tested and censored to varying degrees on multiple Social Media platforms. Trump was banned from Twitter because of “the risk of further incitement of violence” after Jan. 6. So it's very much at the crux of the issue on the debate whether or not Trump's speech on Twitter should have been protected by the platform or not, which is what really catalyzed Parler and Truth Social's branding in the market place as "pro- free speech".
Yes, this is what you'll end up getting on so called 'free speech' platforms. Because, unfortunately, these days what people really mean when they say 'free speech' is actually a veil for them to say hateful things about marginalized groups of people.
It's very interesting that you don't see the straight line between "absolute" free speech and toxicity.
Absolute free speech IRL is moderated by physical and emotional stimuli and inhibitions against direct confrontation and bucking social norms. There are also legal repercussions, such as libel or defamation suits, for particularly harmful speech. The anonymity, and lack of accountability or feedback to one's words makes people far less inhibited online.
This is a common but I believe overstated, even naive, ideal. What exactly does "holding them responsible" even truly mean? If a company is greenwashing and they are still emitting carbon, what really is the difference between the company who never claimed to care at all? The carbon is emitted all the same. "Oh, the stock price would fall because investors would lose trust." But greenwashing is a dime a dozen these days and I think the investors/upper class know that greenwashing is just marketing and don’t truly expect/care about the cause.
Regarding this, how does anyone hold Parler accountable for making a platform of "free speech"? Either you sign up or you don’t. If you sign up and complain they aren’t extreme enough, they don’t care or at least they don’t have any material reason to care. If you don’t, where else are you going to go? Twitter? But the whole demographic is people who didn’t like Twitter in the first place and want to be with their kind. So how do you "hold them accountable" without say, legislation, regulation, and government oversight, something today’s "free" speech advocates are opposed to?
Easy. Allow all legal speech, but make it very easy for each individual user to block what they don’t want to see.
Maybe even allow external providers to offer filters. Like an App Store but for content filters.
Let each individual decide how much and what kind of censorship they want.
That is what happens when speech is free from consequences.
You've found the problem. There _are_ "anything legal" online spaces, and they _suck_. There's no way to have 0 moderation and not have the place turn basically into 4Chan.
If people really want to be on totally free speech platforms, they can just go on 4Chan, but what they really want is to force everyone else to engage with the toxic shit they want to say and no one else wants to hear.
What does "holding them responsible" look like? Making pseudo-anonymous comments on HN calling them out?
Giving them the benefit of the doubt at this point that they are acting in good faith seems hopelessly naïve and exactly the smokescreen they are looking for. They're saying whatever Bullshit(tm) it takes to get through this week with the best possible outcome, and you want to circle back in a couple years? No one will care or remember remember what the initial statement was.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit#Lying_and_bullsh...
A lot of posters are claiming Kanye is mentally ill and unable to manage his own affairs. What is the direct evidence of this? And I don't simply mean "provide examples of opinions he's said that I don't understand or care for".
I think it's pretty dangerous to be labeling people involved in the national dialogue as mentally ill without a diagnosis, or at least some substantial and direct evidence. This label could be weaponized by an authoritarian political movement in a very dangerous way if that's the precedent we're using.
I think my general question remains. "How could an average outside observer distinguish between another's mental illness and a guy who's just a real out of the box thinker who might be wrong about many ideas but might also add value to the world by perceiving reality in an atypical way?"
PS: I'm not going to say what's true or false about any of Kanye's claims here, but who the hell knows what goes on in the highest levels of Hollywood? This is a circle of people who felt zero shame publicly disparaging critics of Roman Polanski. And apparently the Harvey Weinstein stuff was common knowledge in Hollywood crowds for decades. If you think Kanye has little credibility, well, think about how Hollywood's credibility ought to be perceived.
It seems like consensus is able to make that distinction without too many problems.
I think this is a lot less dangerous than you think. When people throw around terms like "groomer", "nazi", and "abuser" with reckless abandon, labelling someone as "bipolar" hardly compares. Ultimately anyone that agrees with what Kanye is saying will not be swayed by the label, neither will those who disagree with him by the lack thereof.
A lot of the commentary about his mental illness seems to be focused on trying to find an explanation for why his ideas and positions seem to have radically shifted in the last few years. Honestly, it kind of gives him an "out". If he was not afflicted by some kind of mental illness when he called for "Death con 5", his actions are even more morally suspect.
I think this might be a valid point if US government officials were calling Kanye mentally ill, but a bunch of people on the internet?
Btw I think it would've been quite dangerous indeed to call someone a communist during mccarthy era, and indeed one should've been wary of that back then.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry#...
One such was, according to him, an occasion when "they handcuffed him, drugged him, put him on the bed".
Now despite this, I also don't agree with just handwaving the discussions then, like, oh he's mad, so everything strange thing he does must be because of that. I think that it's perfectly valid to be mentally ill on one hand, and a huge asshole on the other. A strong motivator for sure, but illness is not a character trait, mental or not.
https://people.com/music/kanye-west-opens-up-about-bipolar-d...
On a second thought, I'd also like to add that the human psyche is not a solved problem. An average outside observer absolutely can't tell if an out of place thing is because of illness, or something other than that. Even the "standard" way to recognize and classify mental disorders, the DSM-5, changes from one edition to the other.
Meaning, the definition of mental illness is within some social context or norm. Historically, homosexuality was deemed a mental illness.
This doesn't seem like good evidence. It assumes that whenever someone is forcibly restrained and medicated, it was justified. It also assumes that he wasn't exaggerating when he said this. You have also not provided a source of him saying this.
Wikipedia also has a paragraph about it, if you'd like to dig into this topic further.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanye_West#Mental_health
Also I reject the assumption that I assumed that "whenever someone is forcibly restrained and medicated, it was justified". I haven't said this, and I only reported on his account on the happenings, because OP wanted evidence for mental illness, and I think that him recollecting that occurrence, while admitting that he was diagnosed bipolar, is good enough evidence.
We could even say that mental illness is defined by falling significantly out of alignment with the median mind of society. A mentally healthy person in our modern society might be seen as completely insane and unwell in a hunter gatherer tribe.
But we generally don't get to work out who was just mentally ill with no value and who was a value add until well after their death.
"Society honors its living conformists and its dead troublemakers."
I directly implied that many mentally ill people contribute huge value.
Go to Speakers Corner and have a go. Put up a website. Buy a TV/Radio station, or Internet provider.
"If that killjoy doesn't like something it must be fun!"
There is no fundamental reason this is an unchangeable true. A lot of the noise around Section 230 repeal and other laws being passed in places like Texas are designed to alter exactly this norm.
Personally I am not sure if I would change it or not, I am just pointing out that it is far from written in stone...
That's just civil law, the constitutional right to free speech doesn't cover getting sued for it. Even if it does apply to corporations right to censor...
Edit: I previously referred to Texas (re: the comment about laws being passed there, which I think refer to those to restrict de-platforming). What I meant with this comment was more like "if a state passes a law like Texas, it might be easier not to do business there than to comply," which obviously wouldn't work if section 230 was defanged or repealed. I don't think that would ever happen, but who knows.
I think you're right. Basically no user content platform that isn't (heavily) privately subsidised could survive without sec 230. Facebook would either need to charge hundreds of dollars a month per user or close accounts.
I think one of the things that limits our society is that we need complex laws (sec 230 is very misunderstood, the same is true of financial regulation though) AND laws have to be simple enough that voters cannot be misled over what they do. That's a very tight constraint, sort of like building the Apollo project but only 10 year olds are allowed to work on it...
> At its core, Section 230(c)(1) provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an "interactive computer service" who publish information provided by third-party users:
>> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
The longer answer is...
There are 2 sections we care about. The first (203(c)1) defines platforms as not being publishers so they're not liable (civilly) for content. That means they don't HAVE to moderate.
But that leaves a problem. As soon as you start moderating, you become a publisher whether you like it or now.
So there is ALSO 230(c)2
>Section 230(c)(2) further provides "Good Samaritan" protection from civil liability for operators of interactive computer services in the good faith removal or moderation of third-party material they deem "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected."
That lets platforms moderate and censor if they want to AND STILL NOT GET SUED when their moderation is not perfect.
Platforms probably have c1 rights anyway, courts ruled on that before 230 was enacted (section 230 is the remains of a bigger law that was ruled unconstitutional because it didn't respect the free press aspects enough)
So without section 230, platforms have 2 options: no moderation OR moderate but eat a tonne of liability.
Section 230 let's them have the best of both worlds: remove things AND don't be held responsible for things you didn't remove.
I should have been clearer that it was c2 that I was referring to.
If c2 were repealed, most platforms would have to stop all moderation. HN would be gone as we know it.
Messy enough?
In theory we could repeal the whole thing, but that has much the same effect as just repealing c2: companies close their user created content or get sued into oblivion by any lawsuit happy citizen.
You can see how this turns into political talking points and mis understandings very easily about how section 230 is both critical the free speech and against free speech and stops companies and enables them depending on the agenda of the speaker...
Censoring individual twits is one thing, but banning entire account is a different thing, because now it restricts your ability to interact with elected officials.
Besides, equal time rule demands that TV and radio stations(private and public) give equal time to competing politicians. There are exceptions, but logically it should extend to social media and video hosting sites, because they are today’s version of radio and TV stations.
On top of that, I would argue social media became the only mean of public assembly, which is a protected right, during Covid lockdown. Politicians pay attention to twitter, you can’t assemble by the city hall with banners to express your opinion, because you are to stay home. The next closest thing is to swarm twitter and facebook, given how closely they watch trends there.
We treat Twitter and Internet forums less seriously, as if someone can say whatever the fuck they want with no consequences at all. That’s not how it works in the public square, so why should it be that way on Twitter?
No one seriously suggests that all types of speech are allowed. Malevolently shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater is not free speech.
Noise ordinance have fairly limited scope and in virtual scope is actually fairly easy to deal with. I don't care what Kanye West things and I don't subscribe to him. As for disorderly conduct, it is such a wide net of laws, that it can range from misdemeanor like making loud noises to criminalizing homelessness or some other biased laws, I don't think that even make sense to apply this logic to the virtual space.
If we required artists be 100% free of mental illness, we would not have Van Gogh, Georgia O'Keeffe, Kusama Yayoi, Michelangelo, Brian Wilson, etc. Let him be him, enjoy what he creates, and take it all with a grain of salt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art
Just learned about this at the Mori Art Museum, since your username is dudeinjapan.
Recommend to check out the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (MOT), they have some killer exhibits, I've been to nearly every one the last few years.
I was just there yesterday haha. Glad we agree.
Another highlight in this past year was an exhibit the making of the classic Godzilla movies, they had some of the miniature sets recreated.
This source, for example: https://www.yourtango.com/2021341546/kanye-wests-documentary...
People can be abused and be successful at the same time. Their success doesn't exempt them from being hurt, in fact, it makes them even more of a target, while they are not less vulnerable at all.
Also I haven't implied that he's easily exploitable. The exploiter for example can be a real pro at it.
...but seriously folks, this article is uses the word "exploitation" to mean "exposure" of celebrities' personal lives for entertainment/gossip (e.g. Marilyn Monroe, UK royals, etc.) Smart celebs like Kim K and no doubt Kanye cash-in big-time on this exploitation... it's hard to think what Kim K actually does aside from making billions off of her own "exploitation" in some sense.
Re: Parler acquisition, "exploitation" means "fleecing", i.e. selling an asset to him at far greater than the market price b/c he is mentally ill and doesn't know better (akin to elder exploitation.) I haven't seen a valuation, but Parler did a $16M Series B in Sept 2022, so you'd think that the valuation was probably benchmarked off that. Maybe he paid a small premium, but TBH back to my original point if he takes it seriously and grows it, it could be worth 10-100x what he paid.
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/washington-secrets/p...
- Kanye just had his bank account closed by JP Morgan (for what appears to be his beliefs)
https://www.tmz.com/2022/10/13/kanye-west-bank-jp-morgan-end...
- Kanye was kicked off instagram & twitter
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/kanye-west-ins...
- It's still unclear exactly why both occurred. Supposedly it's antisemitism, but he also just wore a "white lives matter" shirt
https://nypost.com/2022/10/07/kanye-west-defends-white-lives...
The connection between all of this could lead someone to want to buy their own social media company.
The recent statements about Jews and the "white lives matter" thing are both after that letter. That it was instead retaliation for "his beliefs" is a convenient inference his camp is happy for people to draw though.
The article quotes Kanye on this one:
> "I went to JP Morgan but of course they won't give me no deal flow cause Jin Ulrich is on the board of both adidas and JP Morgan."
This sounds like an accusation of conflict of interest. How is this related to his beliefs?
Ye saying he's "going to go defcon 3 on the Jews" is absolutely antisemitic and absolutely why he got restricted on Twitter. [0] That's the tweet that was received moderation, and its subject matter is very clear. I don't see how one could be unclear of why that got removed or unclear that's it's antisemitic.
Wearing a shirt doesn't magical erase one's behavior. "White lives matter," "All lives matter", it does not matter; what a shirt says won't make his antisemitic comments not antisemitic. Kinda like staring a sentence "I'm not a racist but..." doesn't make whatever racist comment that follows not racist.
As an aside him wearing the shirt isn't in support of Jews or white lives, it's him being funny/ironic. Read your own source. When you have a "<minority> lives matter" it's about speaking up for an un/under-represented group. White lives matter is a joke, as they are the majority. To paraphrase your source, it's funny because it's a black man stating the obvious.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/09/entertainment/kanye-west-twit...
In my opinion controversy and political incorrectness are Okay. I don't think people should be too concerned about hurting others' feelings when discussing objective phenomena or expressing their own opinion (as long as they acknowledge their subjectivity) . Nevertheless obvious (although not to everyone) absurd, blatant lies and manipulations shouldn't be covered by the free speech umbrella. I wish people could correctly judge what they read themselves, taking what they read and what they feel critically, but many apparently can not.
"Capitalism is the problem", "modern employment is wage slavery". These are absurd, blatant lies meant to manipulate. Would you have statements like that removed?
Saying that a specific race is inherently evil is a specific factual claim (one that few people actually make).
Sure, but there's a huge gap between "X has problems" and "X is _the_ problem", i.e. if only we removed X, everything would be fine. It's absurd.
Someone saying "it would be better if the US adopted a government closer to the USSR's" is a pretty out there statement and I'm not going to assume that someone means that unless they're pretty clear about it.
"Capitalism is the problem". Let's take this as untrue (ironic laughter from the peanut gallery).
Could "capitalism is the problem" be an opinion coming from one person and a blatant lie coming from another?
Is it fundamentally different from "ethnicity X is the problem"?
That's often hard for me with a lot of the "out there" medical advice, where it's not immediately obvious to me that they're just scams where the person goes home to laugh at the fools giving them money, but rather themselves believe in whatever theory they're advocating. I don't think it becomes an opinion (it's still a statement claiming to be factual), but it's not a lie, and certainly not blatant, though some of it is absurd (but again not to everyone, obviously).
It's self evident that there should be separate standards for that.
A similar absurd lie that is intended to manipulate: Russia is being attacked by NATO and only defends itself against the fascists in Ukraine.
> It's self evident that there should be separate standards for that.
Sure, but they shouldn't be based on whether something is true or wrong, absurd or plausible, or said with intent to manipulate or inform.
Better criteria are required, or we'll be back to Twitter's stance of "this instance is against TOS, and that same thing isn't, because we feel like the author didn't mean it the same way", which comes down to "there are no rules other than don't do something/be someone I dislike".
But the past tends to be forgotten and on the internet nobody knows that the Soviet Union existed, so why not claim that it didn't. Or that it does, but is being attacked by NATO. Or, my favorite, that Russia doesn't exist, but is just a mirage used by NATO countries to pretend there's an external enemy so their population will follow orders more easily. "It's just an opinion" after all.
No one here is suggesting that the Soviet Union has a good track record on pollution. People are suggesting that capitalism doesn’t. “Capitalism is the problem” does not imply that the Soviet Union is the solution.
When people say “capitalism is the problem,” they’re often looking towards an ideal — which sometimes exists and sometimes doesn’t — of a better world. That’s not a bad thing. Practically no one would suggest that an authoritarian flavor of communism (ala USSR) is that ideal.
We did it because of fracking nat. gas replacing coal due to innovation. Capitalism brings a lot of innovation including advancements in green energy too.
Tesla was able to economically compete and take a huge segment away from the automobile giants through capitalism, forcing them to compete and develop EV cars.
I don't see many socialist countries actually doing much, hell Germany still wanted Russian gas so much someone (wonder who) had to blow up the pipeline!
https://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/21-countries-r...
Of course GDP grew for all countries over a decade, if it's not that means your country is doing worse than inflation rates lol.
European countries energy output shrank due to outsourcing their energy to places like Russia (something that recently just bit them in the ass)
Saying that Ukraine is the aggressor in the current war is a much more specific factual claim (that is absolutely a lie).
This would be a good rule, but there's no objective, especially no objective phenomena.
So what remains is that we can strive to be truthful, while trying not to be hurtful. Assertive communication, I-messages (communicating one's own account, instead of putting the other in focus), studying fallacies and trying to avoid them, things like that.
Humans are fallible. We like to think we could build something where people can talk freely, but if the ability to censor something we don't like is presented, at some point nearly everybody will take that action because they personally deem it necessary for some greater good.
Ultimately, protocols that cannot be altered or censored (at least without significant and difficult amounts of effort) are what are necessary to obtain true free speech.
There are some groups that are understanding this, and working accordingly. LBRY for example, says exactly this in their "what is LBRY" article:
> Building protocols, not platforms, is the best way to secure a free, open internet.
As long as people use centralized services that are susceptible to fallible human intervention, that fallibility will be acted upon.
Centralization was adequate back when the internet was first brewing. Many people had common interests, people were respectful of others' data often enough that encrypted network protocols weren't deemed necessary. Now, encryption is almost required because so many people have bad intentions. The internet has grown, and so have the amount of conflicting demographics using it.
Just as we had to adopt encryption on a wide scale to keep the internet usable, adopting decentralization at a wide scale will be too. And that includes making it easy enough for normies to access that they think nothing else of it, much like how they don't care what encryption is, as long as there's a lock icon in their search bar.
Child Porn, Revenge Porn, National Defense secrets leaking, instructions for Chlorine Gas masquerading as instructions for making Play-Doh, libel and slander, weaponized disinformation, doxxing, harassment, threats of violence.
I get there are advantages to avoiding censure, in many extremely important situations.
But don't pretend like it doesn't also hurt people.
"Don't let perfect be the enemy of good."
"true free speech" is the perfection you're striving for.
"Life is full of hurt." Are you an arms dealer? Why not? It's profitable, and sure, people get hurt, but what's the problem with that?
There are two different priorities here we will simply never agree on. Both harm someone.
If you weren't striving for perfection then you would accept the status quo as good enough, not try to make something new.
You should be able to choose what you see, not what other people say.
Child Porn, Revenge Porn, National Defense secrets leaking, instructions for Chlorine Gas masquerading as instructions for making Play-Doh, libel and slander, weaponized disinformation, doxxing, harassment, threats of violence.
It doesn't necessarily have to be super expensive to run what is essentially a forum, especially if it's not going to hit massive scale. The only problem is that I don't think owning these platforms will give the kind of cultural relevance that these wealthy far-right types are chasing. So at some point they're going to lose interest and then you're back to the business model problem.
Ye on Parler will present a pretty clear challenge to US norms of freedom of speech - he is a vocal anti-semite (whilst at the same time claiming to be Jewish)and I doubt very much that ownership of any platform will moderate his views.
Its one of the ways we are able to identify dirty money in politics as when they do that its easy to track it as opposed to a cash infusion from the platform owner.
Not to excuse his actions. I'd rather like to know wtf he's talking about and why.he would say something like this.
You know, there's a name for this. It's called a black Israelite.
Interesting...
[1] https://www.congress.gov/116/meeting/house/110723/documents/...
It makes sense that the "more free" platforms tend to attract people from the right because highly moderated platforms tend to censor right wing discussion more than left wing discussion. More extreme people are kicked off each platform successively until they end up places like 4chan. The opposite would be true if the mainstream advocated right wing politics, forcing left wing people onto the fringes. Similar to what happened pre-internet with the 60s counterculture, left wing ideas were found in the underground, whilst mainstream media pushed right wing ideas.
Facebook is less "free" in that regard since they won't allow "all men are trash", which Twitter would only go after if you qualify it with a race that is considered 'protected', and Reddit would probably ignore completely (but "local" mods might not, which makes Reddit take a special role there).
The Equal Rights Act of 1964: https://www.eeoc.gov/statutes/title-vii-civil-rights-act-196...
> As used in this subchapter, the phrase "unlawful employment practice" shall not be deemed to include any action or measure taken by an employer, labor organization, joint labor management committee, or employment agency with respect to an individual who is a member of the Communist Party of the United States or of any other organization required to register as a Communist-action or Communist-front organization by final order of the Subversive Activities Control Board pursuant to the Subversive Activities Control Act of 1950 [50 U.S.C. 781 et seq.].
What is the threshold of evidence that taints an entire political party?
[*edit] if you’re downvoting, kindly share your disagreement, I’d be interested to hear what you have to say.
But yes it seems clear that he was Russia’s preferred candidate, though it’s unclear to me whether that made any measurable or meaningful difference. Failing to campaign in the upper Midwest or rust belt as a democrat seemed like an avoidable self-own.
Does it? The DNC definitely conspired against the Bernie campaign, that’s a fact and they got caught.
The pizza gate nonsense seems like a random chance event. How often do crazy conspiracies for 4chan actually go mainstream?
MSNBC was actively peddling their own nonsense at the time, like the pee tape conspiracy. It was a weird time in American politics.
Two horribly unlikeable and pathological liars were competing and one of them failed to campaign in Michigan.
The DNC favored the Democrat over the independent. That’s to be expected. The voters picked Hillary. The conspiracy that it was stolen from Bernie was pushed by Russia. It’s literally public record in the Mueller report. I don’t recall if Russia started it but that’s irrelevant. A large organized foreign propaganda machine can seize on something like that and push it far. Russian agents still run many Bernie Reddit and Facebook groups. Just follow r/ActiveMeasures.
Increasing Hillary’s dislike and distrust was very clearly a goal of foreign operatives. It worked.
You cannot point to any one thing and know for sure it was the difference maker. Trump barely won. Any one of 6 things that served to suppress the vote may have made the difference.
The same powerful people that targeted socialists or civil rights leaders also influenced or even owned the media. It’s almost like the internet, at least early on, kind of broke that grip, and the rise of hard right media funded by billionaires with social media promotion weapons/bots/coordination is a response to that.
what makes you think that the content that appears on television is any sort of democratic free marketplace of ideas? why would that be the case, given its obviously corporate structure? like sure, you have "FOX News" presenting one Approved Viewpoint, and everyone else representing The Other Approved Viewpoint... but where are all the Unapproved Viewpoints on television? obviously, they're not there, for wholly obvious reasons.
I doubt Twitter classifies moderated content into political buckets as this would create massive liability, but has any neutral third party studied what kind of content is removed and classified it into "left" vs "right"?
I'd like to see the system that could accurately perform such classification at scale, if such a thing is even possible, since no one seems to know exactly what "left" and "right" mean.
For example, "liberal" and "left" are often conflated even though hardcore leftists tend to have a healthy disdain for liberals (in the modern, colloquial sense).
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/machines/twitter-algorithm-a...
I think mainstream now pushes both, which, a bit, depends on what you'd call "mainstream". If "mainstream" is "media watched by millions that thematizes the public discourse", then Fox News and Netflix are both mainstream, and their range of ideas being pushed span wide. I don't see that the mainstream prefers either side, on a worldwide stage.
"More extreme people are kicked off each platform successively until they end up places like 4chan."
I think extreme expressions are moderated chiefly because it turns a place toxic, and because the owner wouldn't like to be legally liable for things like hate speech or doxxing.
Oops.
It's sad to see.
Is it though? A lot of this free speech stuff usually boils down to "I wanted to say the n word on facebook". I'm not aware of any conservatives being arrested by the US government because they advocated for free market capitalism.
On the other hand, society resolved through politics (such as Affirmative Action) that the compound interest and lasting synergistic effects of historical discrimination should be compensated for somewhat. The only way to do that is through more discrimination (i.e. relatively penalizing the least historically discriminated-against people).
I suspect this selective enforcement of the rules is one kind of such relative penalization.
What I don't understand is why do private companies take it upon themselves to do this. Is it genuine stakeholder concern (in conflict with profits)? ESG criteria giving them access to cheaper funding or tax breaks? Plain marketing? Virtue signalling?
It also has professionals. There’s a point at which unmoderated content drives out all but the trolls, spammers, and haters.
Everyone knows that these companies control people because they are constantly engaged on their platforms they can push anything they want. Companies will support any dominating regime for their own good it doesn’t matter if it’s democrats or republicans, fascists or communists, etc.
Which is done by creating opportunities for historically discriminated groups, not blindly handicapping white people for being white. I'm not white, but it's really worrying to me that that's allowed. Today it's them, tomorrow it's me, then it's you.
For instance, taxes for minority X will be Y% smaller for the next Z decades.
This is why I don't like where companies are currently going - arbitrary enforcement.
Why not make the laws or rules clear? Because it affords them some level of plausible deniability to push agendae.
Companies are not perfectly rational calculators that always know best how to make money. They are made up of people, and people are flawed. People can be deluded into thinking that their bias toward pet issues is profit-neutral or even profit-positive. It happens in the non-politicized corporate sphere all the time - boondoggles is the term.
Are you sure? It's been a few years since I purged all social media from my life, but three years ago, it was going around and seemingly well-documented with screenshots that saying "men are trash" would get your post auto-deleted and your account sanctioned on Facebook.
This seems like another of those things where extremists on all sides believe they're being uniquely persecuted and some other side of the spectrum is given free reign, when more likely than not most mainstream platforms are pretty centrist.
Moderation[0] is not censorship. It just means having a productive conversation and debate without name-calling, slurs, and other malfeasance. "Trash" is not a harmful word, but inciting violence against an ethnic group definitely is harmful. There's also historical baggage attached to ethnic groups such as the Jews who were persecuted in an actual war and genocide. "Men" is too generic.
I'm not supporting Ye or any of his bullshit, but some of the comments on here are really chillingly authoritarian.
Parler isn't going to be able to maintain "free speech" even if they or Kanye want it to, which I seriously doubt anyway. They don't "have it now" and they won't have it tomorrow either. Still, it's strange how HN flips so violently against free speech when the content is obviously offensive and low quality.
People need to be better stewards of their own beliefs, not simply shielded from malicious, dim or unsavory ones out there in public.
As an aside, I can't believe celebrities have the sway they do. Today's breed talks like such imbeciles; I have no idea how they keep people's interest.
My belief is that public forums with reach into the tens or hundreds of millions are fertile ground for nationalist and genocidal movements, and they will be used for that purpose if it is not actively prevented.
Moderation of wide-reach public forums with the goal of preventing movements causing mass death and misery is perfectly consistent with my own beliefs about the value, conditions, and limits of free speech. You might believe differently, even oppose these beliefs, but the idea that the only correct stance is yours and all moral, rational people will converge on it is ridiculous.
Well, imagine that you got kicked off the internet for saying what you just said? You’re only allowed to express your disagreement because of free speech principles
Nevertheless I remain committed to preventing the growth of nationalist, racist, and genocidal movements, and I've come to believe that this requires moderation of large-scale public internet forums.
There is no fair, reasonable, effective content-neutral strategy here. All moderation is ideological, including the choice not to moderate at all. And every choice within that constraint will have consequences. We are better off looking at the consequences we want to prevent and working backwards, than we are starting from a specific ideology and moderating the way it demands.
"No moderation at all" isn't a virtuous abstinence from making this choice or being responsible for the outcomes, it is just one option among many, and one I find to have unacceptable consequences.
Sort of true, but it doesn't make sense not to re-evaluate how we apply those principles when we encounter dramatic changes in communication patterns. You can believe in freedom of speech as an end in itself, or you can believe in freedom of speech as better than the alternative. If you think of it as better than the alternative, then you should be consistently measuring to ensure that is still true.
I never said that. Conversations exist to be had, good ideas should be promoted and bad ideas disproven and cast aside. Ideas should be considered and judged on their merits, even ones I don't agree with. There's certainly no requirement for any individual to engage.
Despite calling me out, there's irony inherent here in that you believe your stance is the only one that deserves to even be considered. Censoring those that do not believe as you do is the definition of believing you have the "only correct stance".
People do and should have the option to curtail speech in their spaces as they see fit. I choose to converse on platforms that limit my and other's speech minimally. That's not an endorsement of "nationalist or genocidal movements".
> Moderation of wide-reach public forums with the goal of preventing movements causing mass death and misery...
Claimed goals are always rosy until they aren't. Individuals habituated to not having to determine truth for themselves are ultimately doing themselves a disservice. That said, if people prefer platforms that censor certain content, then those platforms will thrive; that's fine and they have. I don't think though that information freedom is on most people's radars when they choose a social media platform. A lot of this legislation that requires mandated strict moderation will only work to entrench big players that can pay to do so.
I'm not a racist genocidal nationalist and I don't follow nor broadcast their content. I still don't want their existence in the public sphere to limit my expression. They're not that important and we shouldn't make them out to be.
See this is the key thing and a conflict I pretty much expect and accept. I think they are important, on the metric of their body count over the last century. I'm willing to accept some limitations to public speech, both mine and yours, to reduce their power and risk in the future.
You don't accept that tradeoff, which I find a consistent and reasonable position that I also oppose. But your first comment did imply that it was the only valid position for reasonable people to have ("better stewards of their beliefs"). You may not have intended that meaning but it's the one I read.
Yes, we must crush all opposition so your side can have absolute power!!!
Let them speak?
Not one chance, where shall you draw the line? Where only your side wishes to draw the line, of course. Perhaps, the only choice then is to crush the other side, for if you don't they will use the forum for "nationalist and genocidal movements". So you see, they must be eliminated in their entirety. Wiped from the existence of all forums, wiped from participation in establishing truths. Or maybe, since they always seem to find support, always seem to find people willing to fight for the rights they represent, always seem to come back when you try to silence and silence and silence every mouth that exists, instead of repeatedly ineffectively trying to suffocate a voice that wishes to speak, maybe what you need to do is to eliminate them all, all of them from existence. This is the only way you will ever prevent genocide.
this is the result of years of propaganda enacted on an unsuspecting, smartphone-using populace. before the smartphone, the venn diagram of "advocate of free speech" and "Internet user" was a circle—look how far we've fallen since then.
Correct, because they allow EU users to sign up and therefore has to comply with various European countries content laws (including GDPR). Depending on their size and amount of users they could also be forced to store data on EU servers. They would have to remove material illegal in some countries if they have users from said country, i.e German users on Parler posting Nazi material are committing a crime, Parler needs to be able to remove it in time, or face consequences.
Same goes for HN. Sure many small services that let EU citizens sign up on them fly under the radar, but won't for long when more and more people complain to the authorities.
Look at Truth Social, it's not available in the EU because they would face fines if it was and they know it.
In the end it's pretty simple. Do you allow EU users on your platform? Then you need content moderation.
What are you thoughts on free speech regarding misinformation or election denial?
When so many republican candidates reject the result of 2020, what's the right answer? Allow them to continue to divide the country up until half of the populace no longer trusts the democracy and starts another civil war?
Information that's not tied to such a simple tit for tat relationship gets in the weeds though. How do you define "misinformation" as it pertains to your mother on someone's feed? You can claim and sue for damages and if a judge and jury find your case, then that's what it is, but mandating strict systematic moderation of all internet users on social media is not the same as mandating information disclosure for the Kellogs or IKEAs of the world. We've decided that Horseradish dyed green can be sold as Wasabi on the ingredients list. This is officially supported misinformation right?
In this instance, election denial is almost complete idiocy, yes, but barring "election denial" wholesale is a terrible thing to do. Your questions are quite leading too. We need more discussion around these topics, not less. I've talked election deniers off their stupid cliffs before. When SCOTUS shot down the Bush v. Gore recount decades ago, Americans had reason to be upset and talk about it. Would it have been more unifying if everyone had just bowed their heads, quickly and quietly, accepting the results without fuss, sure...
Censorship is a great tool for quelling public dissent. It's a shortcut around reason though and we've built up these tribal walls that preclude solving problems together. If quieting dissenters is the thing you want to maximize, you'll do great with it. We're not the only ones chomping at the bit to censor those that disagree with us, but I guess be careful what you wish for.
It’s incredible what they report. Everything is charged against democrats, and everything is a conspiracy. Of course, left leaning news sites demonize republicans in the same way, but it tends to be less extreme.
I think that in general censorship is wrong, but I just see so few options. I think the state of the US is more worrying than issues like climate change. Hopefully someone can fix it without war.
That's from your perceived bias. All MSM is biased and plays these tricks, you cross verify reporting from both extremes, check first hand sources and think for yourself!
You fight misinformation with more information. That's it.
Censorship leads to truth counsels, which leads to corruption.
We already had an example where valid topics were banned even though they were true (laptop story)
You're being a useful idiot if you advocate to take inalienable rights away from your brethren.
This is not an HN phenomenon. NYT/WaPo and the left machine is operating on anti-free speech mode right now in combination with Big Corporate + ESG. (See Cloudflare and Kiwifarms issue recently).
Remember these guys: https://www.splcenter.org/file/15770
Equating all conservatives with radial groups is not helpful and only further sows division.
https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/meetthepressblog/poll...
But you missed my point--by galvanizing the conservative base that is racist, homophobic, sexist, and anti-semetic, it leaves the rest of conservative party with an impossible choice--support a democratic candidate, or vote party line.
That is how Kanye is courting conservatives.
I didn’t really care about your point about Kanye, I can more about people sowing division.
I am not defending radicals. I never said they weren't wrong. My point is that you can't tell half of the country to just screw off. And, not all conservatives hold radical positions. I know many that vote conservative mainly because of the issue of abortion.
And how is this not radical? https://www.justice.gov/crt/recent-cases-violence-against-re...
Do you truly believe that every (or every most) republicans are radical?
I'm all for having discussions across the aisle--so to speak. But not with racists, homophobes, anti-Semites, misogynists, etc.
You want to talk to me about abortion being a crime, I'll be respectful, and I'll even share my own personal story related to abortion.
Want to talk to me about border security, and better immigration policy, I'm with you as well.
Want to talk to me about criminal justice, sure, I'm down.
Government spending--yep, cool too.
But those centrist conservative beliefs no longer represent the mainstream viewpoints of the Republican party anymore.
And personally, I do not have issues with republicans--but I do think the ones who believe Biden stole the election are idiots.
It seems that everyone defaults to hating republicans (or democrats) with no rooms for understanding. Taking this stance is only going to make reconciliation harder, or worse, impossible.
Unless we can have actual discussions with republicans, we're not going to have a democracy for much longer. As it is many republicans think our democracy is gone, and hating on them isn't going to help that.
> I do think the ones who believe Biden stole the election are idiots.
This is something I have a lot of trouble with. I don't think that it was stolen, but how can you or anyone really be sure? I imagine it's much easier for a republican to believe when all conservative news sources make it sound like their very way of life is threatened 24/7.
Many Christians (which tend to be republican) truly believe that the US is actively persecuting them and that Democrats want to make some godless state.
There has been no evidence brought forth any all the legal challenges that show it was stolen.
State election officials (both democrats and republicans) have said the results are accurate.
> But instead, the community turned into a hedonistic enclave, where people on Hsieh’s payroll indulged his every whim — such as conducting a research report on the laughing gas nitrous oxide, which he was consuming daily, to figuring out a way to stop time—and were less willing to curb his increasingly concerning behavior and excessive drug use, Forbes previously reported. During this time, Hsieh resisted attempts by family members and close friends to check him into rehab, according to multiple people familiar with the matter. By the end of July, Hsieh was estranged from his parents and several of his close friends.
(The aforementioned mental health issues do not excuse antisemitism or other anti-social behaviors.)
Free speech, and by free they mean speech that they can control.
I feel old and confused.
https://www.google.com/search?q=kanye+banned+from+twitter https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+banned+from+twitter
*edit
Ye/Kanye's twitter was locked, not banned.
I feel there's already disproportionate discussion here about a person and their cult of personality here. This doesn't feel quite in the spirit of HN. Even during the Elon Musk Twitter debacles there was still separate threads about the business dynamics and whether he is playing some kind of 4D chess. The attempts to quickly discredits Ye West's other accomplishment feels borderline like anti-blackness, except with the passive aggressive pretense of being concerned about his mental well-being. For example, Kanye West was part of the Fendi intern cohort which, as a former fashion design student myself, I find to be far more exclusive and prestigious than a Google internship (which I was offered). He's not just a musician but he's behind the scenes for making other established artists including Jay-Z and Beyonce, also billionaires. Even the title of the article being "Kanye West is buying Parler" feels disrespect when he said he goes by Ye, now. This is inconsistent with tech's community plight of respecting self-identification.
This is a community to talk about entrepreneurship, so let's talk about that. How are people jumping to the conclusion that he is being "scammed" without even knowing the terms of the deal? On that note, how much do you think this acquisition will go for? I noticed Parler has 3.3K ratings average 3 stars on the IOs App Store and Truth Social has 121k, averaging 4.5 stars. I will go out on a limb and question whether the 4D chess with Twitter and Parler will somehow involve Truth Social / DWAC.
Entrepreneurship is something you do for a living. A mean to get satisfaction and something you do to feel good.
You can have the best numbers but still be despised by the business community because of the way you act, and similarly nobody in the business community would trade places with you despite your amazing numbers because the way you act denotes mental illness. Money is worth nothing if you have mental illness.
It's exactly the case for Musk and West.
Let's hope he finds and accepts help.
Musk and Trump's audiences, I'll admit to guessing about this, are passionate for sure, but:
- In Trump's case, tech literacy is low, the average age is relatively high, and disposable time they have, is probably low
- Musk's audience is undoubtedly tech literate, but I would guess that the age demographic is similar to Trump's, and would further guess their disposable time is similar, if not lower (we nerds barely have time for HN!)
Kanye's audience though... They're young, and they already live online. I can't imagine it overtaking Twitter at any point in the future, but I can definitely imagine the venture gaining more traction than Trump's attempt. And that will encourage other similarly minded business people to support his venture.
This is most critical for judgements that lead to consequential decisions and actions. Whether you love someone or hate them, those feelings lead to bad outcomes if not based on correct information and reasoning.
He becomes Kanye. Apart of this is a challenge to his audience. Do you STILL listen?
Or maybe they don't give a damn because they are also financially benefiting from this guy's mental illness?
If I wanted racist-idiot-news, I'd go to reddit.
It may be hard to understand for some, but there are topics that make people highly uncomfortable. These people prefer an environment that 'protects' them from fringe ideas.
The issue is, the 'Overton Enforcement' doesn't work when a large minority (say, 30% of users) has ideas considered highly controversial to the majority of users. Most people actually do want to live in a bubble most of the time so being exposed to these opinions undermines their sanity.
A 100% free speech platform could work fairly well though if it was sophisticated enough to understand what a user does and doesn't want to see and then only occasionally expose them to controversial content. Kind of like TikTok's 'for you' page but with less censorship. Or, perhaps, let users control their exposure directly. Twitter doesn't have the technical capability to pull this off though so they are stuck with occasionally infuriating large minorities of users.
A simple solution would be federation - let people build and choose their own bubbles instead of forcing everyone into a one giant bubble. That's how it works in real-life.