We just went through the most censorious (and self-censorship inducing) few years in my living memory (I am almost 40), where people who we "asking questions" were called all kind of names by all kind of news outlets.
There's also a huge difference between "just asking questions" and "just asking questions" - and there are a huge number of people who are doing so in a bad-faith manner.
All IMO, of course.
Also - if your point of view is threatened by people just asking questions, then you really should think some more.
What is that?
Let's pretend I'm a card carrying jackboot wearing nazi. What question could I just ask, in bad faith? How come black people commit more crime? How come more black people are in prison?
Those are actually fantastic questions that, seriously considered, could lead to some significant societal change.
I can't think of an instance where the good/bad faith of the asker has any bearing on the question.
It often shows up more clearly in the follow-up questions. "But doesn't that mean that..."
"Just asking questions (also known as JAQing off) is a way of attempting to make wild accusations acceptable (and hopefully not legally actionable) by framing them as questions rather than statements. It shifts the burden of proof to one's opponent; rather than laboriously having to prove that all politicians are reptoid scum, one can pull out one single odd piece of evidence and force the opponent to explain why the evidence is wrong."
I think it's about this.
The chilling effect is that the "traditional" media see something on social media, say a "racist" post (something they deem to be racist anyway) of some normal person, then amplifies triggering wide scale harassment, and "canceling" of the person.
These laws could help though if it's just your boss who wants to fire you, but most of your colleagues would like to support you, even if silently.
Most (all?) of continental Europe actually has such laws, which is why you don't hear about american style firings here. So, your logic has been tested in practice and found out to be wrong.
This can give the victim some valuable paid time though.
Chances are the boss is just doing what's political correct too due the pressure put by various groups not what he/she badly wants.
I thought this was a foregone conclusion.
In 1920, a newspaper publication or a public speech needed to be really outrageously beyond the frames of the Overton window to end up in mass protests, boycotts, etc. It took a serious effort to coordinate the outrage, so it only happened when people felt really deeply about it.
In 2020, with social media, the cost of spreading the outrage is nearly zero: a retweet or a repost, maybe with some a few words of an inflammatory comment added on the top. But with social graphs being what they are (highly connected via a number of popular "influencer" accounts), any bit of outrage has a good chance to spread quickly and widely.
The outrage can defend itself by directing the outrage at detractors and doubters, so attempts to actively stop it can make one a victim of it; the cost of spreading outrage, and the cost of ignoring outrage, is much lower that the cost of trying to calm it down, and / or to call to reason over emotions.
It does not help that any moderately public figure, especially a journalist, has to have social media presence, because it's such a powerful tool to spread their own publicity, influence, and agenda.
Freer information flows usually change societies. Invention of writing changed ancient societies profoundly. Invention of the printing press and movable type in Europe changed Europe drastically. The internet and social media are changing our societies seriously, as we speak. There's no way back to the pre-Internet state of society.
The only real solution for this is education, teaching people to think, to listen, to evaluate the quality of their sources of information, to draw their own conclusions, and so on. It's not perfect but the alternatives are closer to simple AI trained on a very limited and one sided dataset.
> This is a very astute observation. It’s also only really possible with centralized social media, not decentralized/federated.
I'm not so sure. Can you explain why you think that? The GP describe a social problem, while the difference between "centralized" and "federated" is a technical implementation difference. If you can "retweet" a post from a federated instance, then I don't see any barriers to this kind of emergent social behavior.
Federation is a solution to a set of very specific problems, it's not a panacea.
Uhm, are you familiar with the material Henry Ford was publishing in 1920? Specifically to increase sales?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_International_Jew
Perhaps this wasn't "beyond the frames of the Overton window" at the time, I don't know. But cancel culture ain't all bad!
She does seem to acknowledge that social media is not the best place for.good faith debate.
Also - if your point of view is threatened by people just asking questions, then you really should think some more.
Especially in some work settings, where 'approved' thought is rewarded and 'discouraged' thought is punished.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can find it in places like Reddit. Post something nice about a politician from one side of the political aisle. Then post something nice about a politician from the other side. You'll see pretty quickly what it's about.
Getting "called all kind of names" is not censorship, it's just criticism. That's actually an exercise of free speech by the name callers, don't you think?
[EDIT:] The irony of voting this comment down until it's effectively censored. Sigh.
However, they then slip into much more general terms, as though by induction any writers facing any kind of social consequences for expressing their bigoted views is the same as the fatwa.
That they neglect entirely to make any mention of Adichie's own case seems disingenuous.
As an atheist I have to object to this comment.
There's a vast difference between what you call "ultra-religious" across cultures and religions. For example, I have Born Again Christian friends who never miss an opportunity to try to bring me out of the dark side. I also have "ultra religious" Jewish friends. In both cases some of the nicest people you will ever meet.
We have to be careful not to classify-and-vilify. Every single one of us could easily fit into a classification worth of some level of vilification. That only serves to create further division and friction and does not make for a better society.
There are a lot of religious people who mainly keep religion and politics separate. And there are a lot of religious people — especially outside the United States — whose religion inspires them into more left-wing politics.
In any case, I said nothing about "nice people" and "non-nice people". But that's always a spectrum anyway. People are complex. They can be super nice to some groups of people and super mean to other groups of people.
I noted that. Same objection. Conservatives are not evil. Democrats are not evil. The ideological extremes in these schools of thought are represented by a very small minority, just like the ideological extremes in any religion.
We need to get away from hating people by attaching labels to them. The vast majority of Trump and Biden voters are the same people, with the same problems in life and the same dreams and hopes. The only people who work hard to divide us are the politicians. They need you to hate the other side and vote for them. They need division, not unity. By characterizing people with labels such as "ultra religions conservatives" (and equivalent labels on the other side) and then applying blanket negative qualities to entire groups labeled this way all we do is provide fuel for politicians to divide us further.
This, in my opinion, is one of the most egregious negative results of social media. It has provided political masterminds with the tools necessary to divide the population with amazing granularity and drive votes based on the hundreds, if not thousands, of categories they are able to provide.
While all of this happens we lose sight of what really matters. Politicians have been talking about fixing healthcare, education, jobs, etc. for a century, and here we are. If they actually were in the business of getting things done (rather than gathering votes) none of these issues would exist today. That's the great lie. That's what people need to wake-up to. We divide. They win. They do none of the things we all care about and need them to actually get done.
Do not label, subgroup and vilify people. This is unfair and inaccurate. It is no different from applying the average to an entire population, which sounds great and yet it is one of the worst mistakes (or lies) anyone could make in statistics.
So, what are we supposed to say? There's a problem, involving some people, and... [censored] that's all I can say.
[Edit:] LOL I just read one of your other comments in this thread:
> And, yes, I am sorry to say, the blood is entirely, 100% on the hands of the ideological left.
Wow, hypocrisy much? Incredible. What happened to "We need to get away from hating people by attaching labels to them", "The only people who work hard to divide us are the politicians", and "Do not label, subgroup and vilify people"? SMH.
You misunderstand. I am saying that applying labels to groups AND THEN using those labels to broad-brush is wrong.
Are all ultra-religious Muslims terrorists? No! Of course not! Yet, in some circles that very association was created. Can a Muslim be deeply religious and not be labeled a terrorist? Well, in my world, yes, absolutely. And I am an atheist. I don't agree with any religion at all. However, I am not going to take that to the deep dark level of labeling people and then characterize the entire group in various negative ways.
I am not asking you to self-censor. You can say whatever you want. More importantly, you need to understand that the reason people self-sensor is because of the very real threat of violence, professional and financial ruin that has been created over the last decade or so. That is not a all what is happening here. You can say whatever you want. I don't care and I will not hurt your in any way for it. Unlike others on HN, I never downvote someone with whom I have a disagreement. I am, however, pointing out that applying these labels in such ways is not fair or even accurate, just like applying the average to the entire population often leads to seriously flawed conclusions.
>> And, yes, I am sorry to say, the blood is entirely, 100% on the hands of the ideological left. > Wow, hypocrisy much? Incredible.
Who controls the vast majority of universities and the media? Which ideology is being pushed in these environments?
There's unfair broad-brushing and then there's the truth. If the characterization is truthful than it is not only fair, it is, well, the truth. "Most crimes in some cities are committed by gang members". True. This isn't broad-brushing, it's the truth.
Same issue with regards to what the ideological left has been doing. Example: The US border has seen over five million people pour through without any real controls over the last two years. This has brought with it a massive increase of human trafficking (a sterile term for "rape", "sex slavery", "abuse", "exploitation", "child porn", etc.) and deadly illicit drugs.
You have politicians --all of whom are on the ideological left-- as well as the leftist media and leftist universities (where are all the human rights folks?) completely and utterly ignoring this tragic reality. If you only consume news from the ideological left you probably have no idea whatsoever about any of the above. And yet, this is real, as real as young girls being sold into sex slavery by the thousands --in the US-- and dangerous drugs like fentanyl coming into the country unabated quite literally disguised as candy for our kids.
All of this is on the ideological left. 100%. In other words, that is not unfair broad-brushing, it's the truth. When you have Secretary Mallorcas and the White House lying to the American people about the southern border every day, well, the death and misery, the blood, is in their hands, and that's just the truth. Like it or not. And, frankly, if you are American and vote for these people, the blood is in your hands as well, because you enable them. And that is also the truth.
> What happened to "We need to get away from hating people by attaching labels to them"
The distinction you need to make is that (sometimes fine) line between the truth and unjust characterizations.
Both Liberals and Conservatives are culpable of saying that people on the other side are dumb. That's just not true. It's unfair. If, on the other hand, I say that Liberal politics is resulting in a massive increase in rape, murder, sex slavery, child pornography, mutilation, drugs, death, etc. at the southern border and that this blood is 100% in their hands, that is 100% verifiably true. The MSM ignore this on ideological basis. Human rights groups ignore this on ideological basis. Feminists, ignore this on ideological basis. And while they all look the other way masses of people suffer, kids are raped, killed, sold and abused. Unless people are willing to stop being tools of their respective ideologies these tragedies will continue.
It also looks like you've been using HN primarily for ideological battle, and that's a line at which we ban accounts, so please stop doing that.
https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.