I’m always curious what time period people are referring to when they say something like this. Because it seems to me that there have always been things that you would have been shunned for saying. The only difference is that collection of things changes over time and people are uncomfortable when those changes outpace their own opinions. That has been happening throughout recorded human history, every generation thinks the generation or two after them are destroying the moral fabric of society. It wasn’t true when the ancient Greeks complained about it and it probably isn’t true today.
1 - https://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~jnd260/cab/CAB2012%20...
The younger generations are constantly in the process of destroying the moral fabric established by previous generations and weaving their own.
First past the post voting is also obviously terrible, and many better ways are available and have had successful implementation, but nothing changes here.
Theoretically what you're saying makes sense, but it doesn't seem to match reality. Instead we just get a lot of tribalism, war, and death.
Yakutia?
I would ask you respond to me and the things I said and not to HN as a whole (or to what people said in this particular discussion), whatever other conversations you think this relates to, I don't think I was there and I don't think I'm responsible for them. By and large I stand by the things I've said here (there are things I'd take back if I could, but I digress), but I certainly won't be held responsible for things other people have said and that I'm not even aware of. I'm not as unreasonable as you're implying, this example was flawed.
You could turn this criticism around on your comment, "this is a classic HN whatever, where any criticism is dismissed for no reason. The crazy thing is I could've criticized this for any reason, or cited any amount of evidence, and it still wouldn't have been enough."
HN being a public forum means our discussion is visible to anyone and anyone can join. It doesn't mean that I represent anyone's views except my own, or that I should answer for trends you perceive in HN's comments.
[1] The intended meaning in this comment, that incited the discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34952301
>"organic" but it matches their intended meaning.
Yeah the fact they used cultural revolution which you say is not organic pretty much shatters the notion they were presenting things the way you say. The fact you thought they meant whatever dubious notion of 'organic' you have doesn't mean that they represent anyone's views except they own, or that they should answer for your perception of implied organic-ness.
I apologize for being unclear, I meant it matched the intended meaning of this commenter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34952301 I've edited my comment to clarify.
It's a stupid claim and I pointed out an obvious counter example.
Many people who lived in China during and after the Cultural Revolution, and in the former Soviet Union, say the way that many people talk in universities today are starting to sound like the people in power in the places they came from.
Hard to find a reform the next generation wants that hasn't been written or conceived by our ancestors, yet so many people are naïve to the point they think they're part of something novel.
The verbiage in this bit is exactly what I was talking about. Your objection was not simply that there are forbidden topics, you are specifically complaining about what topics are forbidden.
And to be clear, the "cancelling" of people existed before either social media or the internet. Yes, the internet and social media can act as a multiplier on this behavior, like they do for all sorts of other human behavior, but they didn't create it.
When did the internet become garbage? I'd say Facebook and Gamergate, but news groups were really cool until they got trashed by trolls, or was it when you needed to set up a special eggdrop to protect your irc, and that was a long time ago.
Is Ham radio cool again?
September 1993.
Now get off my lawn!
What happened to bands/athletes who spoke out against American wars in the past? What happened to atheists for the last few decades/centuries? Or women who were accused of being witches? What happened to people who thought that women could participate in professional life? How about people who thought that it was ok to be gay or love someone outside of your race? How about people who thought that native peoples we not savages or subhuman?
To think this is a anything new or has anything to do with "wokeness" (whatever the hell that means) is to take an extremely short-sighted view of the world.
> At least in my experience, conversations online were more open 10 years ago than they are today.
I'd argue the exact opposite. 10 years ago there were a lot less people online. And those who were online engaged in more niche and closed off platforms/forums. It's only been in the last 10 years that general discussions with huge numbers of people from all around the world on any and every topic have been combined into a singular feeds on a small number of platforms.
As for social justice being a recent phenomenon, it isn’t. It being on the web is, but the web is still relatively young and it finally became intertwined with our offline selves that your online behavior is just your behavior. And social consequences for that behavior can be executed online.
We've done worse, and with more rigor than today's cancel culture, but for however much I might find it distasteful, the stigma borne of cancel culture at least doesn't have the full weight of the law behind it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gombe_Chimpanzee_War?wprov=sfl...
Delegated decision-making.
[1] Here's an article from 2016 chronicling the rise of the phrase over 25 years before that. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/30/political-co... . If you search for that phrase you will find a treasure trove of exactly the same sorts of outrage we see today, only now the phrase "political correctness" is replaced with "cancel culture" or "wokeness".
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Closing_of_the_American_Mi...
2016 - Colin Kaepernick knelt during the national anthem and never played another game after the end of the season.
It's easy for CIS-het white men to feel threatened by their loss of supremacy in American society. And to take it out on everyone outside their group.
There may or may not have been collusion to keep him quiet, but the post hoc ergo propter hoc explanation you've given is wildly incomplete.
I'm happy to concede that he was starting caliber, because I think he was. I don't think you can realistically consider a player who was 1 for 11 in his last season a top QB, but he was definitely ahead of guys like Deshone Kizer, Brett Hundley, CJ Beathard. Looking at the list of QBs who started in 2017, I'd tentatively (and very subjectively) rank him ~21st -- but without knowing his salary demands, it's hard to say that what he wanted was commensurate with his ability to win games. The best player I'd put him clearly ahead of was making $4-4.5 million that year. He wanted $9-10 million and a chance to start. It was reported that he wanted $20 million to play in the AAFL. Beyond that, he had a chance to play in Baltimore, which I was excited for, before his girlfriend called the team's owner a slavemaster and the most iconic player associated with the city, a slave.
So, while we can debate the merits of whether or not he deserves to play football, he's turned down offers of $4-5 million to play in the CFL, had exorbitant salary demands to the AAFL, and ducked out of an opportunity to play in the offense best suited to his talents. Other players who knelt at the same time and in support of him still had careers well after Kaepernick.
Summing up, "Colin knelt and never played another game of football" misses not only a lot of context, but ignores the fact that he actually did play after kneeling, as have lots of other players.
I don't think it's recent, it's just done a complete 180. You could absolutely be cancelled for holding the wrong opinion in the 80's when I was a teenager, but the "wrong opinions" were anti-conservative opinions back then.
Typically the shoe was on the other foot.
It seems now online, the biggest discussions are about politics.
We can look at notable events in history, like say Monty Python's Flying Circus and the Monty Python films. Those were censored in some countries and got shunned by Catholics, but they did not get fired, their homes did not get turned on fire, the shows did still air on TV and movie studies in the UK, they continued to get employment later in life and in general was not that shunned by society at large. How they treated Catholics was not compared to the Nazi. UK flags was not burned nor did anyone break into UK embassies.
So that is one level of free speech we can compare with. Catholics may disapprove of what Monty Python said and did, but as a society we should defend the level of free speech that Monty Python performed. We should avoid having consequences of Monty Python-level of free speech be worse than what Monty Python received back in 1979.
What I meant was that these days a lot of people feel the need to immediately push back on someone's opinion by framing it as ethically bad. They do this while offering no opinion themselves. For example I got in trouble because I questioned the way corporations are implementing diversity initiatives. I am completely on board with the intent but I think it's not done in an effective manner but more like a PR stunt. It's possible that I am wrong but I don't think I deserve to be called a racist by people who are not offering any thought of their own on the issue.
I think this has to do with the the way the US parties with the help of social media have managed to split the populace into two camps that live in separate realities where even listening to somebody who is on the "other" side is viewed as treason.
I think the problem with statements like this is that there are some things they could refer to that are very, very obviously (at least from where I sit) actually ethically bad, but were considered by many to be acceptable things to say few generations ago. Things like sexist and racist jokes, comments about where women and "colored" people belong, blatant homophobia and transphobia—y'know, all the widely-normalized bigotry that was a part of the rich white male landscape in the postwar years, à la Mad Men, remained so to some extent at least through the late '90s, and continues to be aggressively defended by some to this day.
It is true (I might even call it a truism) that some people go too far and overreact, but I think it's important to step back and think for a minute about just how short a time it's been since these things were considered widely acceptable. Then think about how that affected the people still around today who had to sit through that. Then remember that, as I said, there are still many people today who are actively advocating for a return to that blatant bigotry.
This is why you get people who overreact even to genuinely-benign questioning of such policies: because it's very hard, in many cases, to tell the difference between someone who's just asking questions, and someone who's "just asking questions"[0].
It is true (I might even call it a truism) that some people go too far and overreact, but I think it's important to step back and think for a minute about just how short a time it's been since these things were considered widely acceptable. Then think about how that affected the people still around today who had to sit through that. Then remember that, as I said, there are still many people today who are actively advocating for a return to that blatant bigotry.
This is why you get people who overreact even to genuinely-benign questioning of such policies: because it's very hard, in many cases, to tell the difference between someone who's just asking questions, and someone who's "just asking questions"[0].
Both sides can play this nonsense game. Not every perceived slight is bigotry or -ism. Stating the fact that men cannot get pregnant isn't transphobic. Stating the fact that Black people per capita are more likely to be both the perpetrators and victims of violence isn't racist. The immediate push back to even broaching these subjects, facts, and findings is what got us here. We're not even capable of discussing anything because any deviation from the party line is immediately perceived as the worst of the "opposition". If you state you're pro-free speech, you're a fascist neo-Nazi. If you're pro-trans children you're a pedo child groomer. Nuance and the capability to talk across the aisle has sadly disappeared, and everyone just gaslights and projects about the other side being sexist, racist, anti-White, Europhobic, Islamophopic, antisemitic, etc.
Because this is almost always true. For example, there was somebody here, who said the same thing, that they got in trouble because they asked whether transwomen can have periods. They knew the answer. They just tried to argue about something stupid, and they used this problematic wording for a specific reason: they wanted to have a pointless debate. They even knew that if they would asked the same thing with “period symptoms”, there wouldn’t be any debate. They didn’t want to have a conclusion.
Btw, one of my close friends said the same thing about corporations. He has zero ground to say such thing, he can’t even argue for his statement. It’s just his feeling.
I don't think so. You may think you are especially enlightened with your views and therefore people with a different view just deserve a rhetorical beating.
A. You are probably not as right as you think you are
B. People come from different backgrounds and life experiences may come to different conclusions
C. Aggressive takedowns may make you feel good but achieve nothing in solving issues. They just produce pushback. A little bit of effort in understanding others can go pretty far.
I remember having decent discussions with people in the 2000s and being able to agree or disagree. It wasn't perfect by any means but I have noticed that in the last ten years with a lot of people it got increasingly more difficult to talk about an issue and developing thoughts while talking. It feels like you are either all in with "their" side or you get lumped in with the "other" side. Nuance not allowed.
Just my persnal experiennce.
Of course, it can happen also with the exact same person. For example, I wouldn’t have the same debates as 10 years ago. And also, when somebody say something which I disagree, I wouldn’t debate it, I would ask for a source, or just ignore it. Most of the time, I know immediately the source. But the only reason for this is age, and that in the past 20 years, I’ve already debated, and read a lot about basically every single topic which is politically important, and will be important in the next ~50 years.
To give you an US-centric example: arguing against discrimination of Muslim Americans during the early 2000s got you the same kind of anti-establishment pushback you can get for, say, criticising gay marriage today.
It is a fact people's view's are becoming more polarized. Some google searches will get you there. This is due to people now more than ever always having access to others who agree with their views, and ignore people who don't. This is the age of tinder swiping and (un)following (un)subsribing. People have become more replaceable. Agree with this person? This forum? Be there. Disagree? Leave. Like this person? Keep them. Dislike? Ghost them. We meet more people now than we ever meet in humanity's history. The need to learn how to deal with different views is going away, when you can always hide from them and go for places that have supporting views. The need for respectful disagreement is getting lower.
In the past there wasn't as much this choice. In the extreme, nomadic times, you had the same people all your life. Now we are at the other extreme. I'm not surprised that people's relationships are getting more and more superficial, and more temporary. There's always a "us" vs "them" to be had somewhere. With so many people, what used to be sporadic outliers, are now in massive numbers. Even if they still belong to the extremes of the natural distribution.
As we know, these people also tend to be more vocal, "the vocal minority" as it is usually referred, very opinionated, who defend their views to the end.
Then you could also add the fact the emotional trauma is spreading, although this one will make many people scratch their heads. Emotional trauma increases what we refer in psychology as negative affectivity "(...)a broad personality trait that refers to the stable tendency to experience negative emotion". Disagreeableness being one of the most typical ways in which this manifests itself.
Add to this the easyness of being anonymous, being rude without consequences and you get a perfect recipe for at any point you have a conversation online, getting obnoxious, opinionated, rude and disagreeable replies. The step from online conversation to IRL isn't that much of a step at this point, and it still makes sense the same is happening.
This is not a deduction, but a inference. But it fits everything i've just said: it's becoming more difficult to have an opinion, and not be attacked, shamed, mocked or invalidated by it.
It's becoming increasingly rare to hear "I see your point. What I in my view makes more sense is..." and instead "You're wrong, you have no clue what you're talking about and you should go hide yourself."
This can be explained also with age. When somebody says something outrageous, I know the source immediately. For a while, I asked for a source. After the 100x time you get a very clear view about the source, and you just leave. This happened only because I’ve kept asking for a source for more than 10 years.
For example, if Canada, and “personal nouns” are in the same sentence, you know the source. You debated that at least a handful of times. You don’t want to do that again. It’s pointless. But still, I hear that fake news from time to time from my friends. Even after, I clearly proved them that it’s fake news. It’s just pointless.
I don’t want to say that justifies piling bad on bad. But that once the well is poisoned, we all die.
Explain. You "got in trouble", what kind of trouble exactly?
Did someone disagree with you? Because that's natural. And did someone call you "racist"? Well if you posted your opinion publicly and 10,000 people saw it, it's almost certain at least one will comment that. Doesn't mean it's the majority opinion at all.
The Greeks and Romans suffered serious civilizational decay around the times that people were saying such things.
I also remember when racism, xenophobia, slandering women, and generally ignorant talk was accepted and chuckled at. Thankfully, women are now expected to express opinions at dinner parties and minorities aren't run out of town for having the audacity to exist in the same neighborhood.
Sure, but this topic is "special" in the sense that the response GP is complaining about is about the most uncritical, non-contrarian, obvious possible one. If you view conversations as a multiplayer gradient descent, then making an accusation - even an implied and/or non-specific - of racism, sexism, bigotry and associated "sins", is like making a huge sinkhole on the optimization surface: a very deep local minimum, nearly impossible to walk out of.
It's so easy for anyone to do this, and the effect is both immediate and so obvious, that when someone does that, it's hard not to see it as a deliberate attempt at shutting down the conversation. It's equivalent of someone pulling a gun in the middle of what the other person thought was friendly sparring.
99% of the time that someone decries the "death of free speech", it boils down to them not wanting to hear criticism for expressing ignorant or hateful ideas.
Just because you can say something doesn't mean you should. And if you do say something that is stupid or is harmful to others, you should expect push back. If you have no defense for that push back, it's a clear sign that you should either re-evaluate your opinion or express yourself in a more thoughtful manner.
This is a lesson that most people learn in grade school. But one of the big issues today is that a lot of people believe that others not accepting their opinion is a form of persecution. They are so self-centered that criticism of what they say is taken as an insult to them personally. Criticism of these people lead to no moments of self-reflection and no moments of personal growth.
The big question for me is how do we move past this moment without a large number of people realizing that they are acting like spoiled children. Speech is as free as it's ever been. What's different is an entitlement behind expressing opinions that destroys any meaningful discussion.
The colloquial term for these people is "woke".
[0] https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article269675...
What do you think is wrong with the belief that there are systemic injustices in American society that should be addressed?
https://nypost.com/2023/02/26/white-student-sues-historicall...
Not arguing about facts and opinions, just about who was more "harmed" by the other parties speech. Not that the arguments presented are dumb and ridiculous, or even ridiculing a person for holding those views. But an attempt to litigate harms based on their individual identities.
(The label "white panther" I find pretty funny and a good example of battling bad speech with counter speech.)
More of a non sequitur putting those two sentences together.
Tulsa had a great many rich black businesses .. how did that work out?
https://www.wane.com/top-stories/court-docs-fort-wayne-shoot...
Somebody is dead and somebody else is alleged to have killed them and you're asking someone on the other side of the world about injustice in this specific case?
Nothing. What's wrong here is you making a sleight of hand (also known as "Motte-and-bailey"): whatever someone said in a court, under oath or not, about the definition of a word, has zero relevance to what the word means in regular conversation. It has even less authority than a dictionary, which tries to be generally descriptive, because it's just making an operational definition for the purposes of the court case.
I imagine you understand perfectly well the meaning of "woke" GP used, and you surely realize it is close to how this word is understood in general by those who don't subscribe to this particular group of ideologies - otherwise you wouldn't have to try and substitute an alternative meaning, from some court case no less, that just happens to be maximally inoffensive and agreeable, and also very much not the thing people are talking about.
And yeah, the most extreme self proclaimed "anti-woke" seem to reflect this trait just as strongly as the woke people they criticize.
To the best of my understanding, "woke" is now used by people to signal pretty much anything that they don't agree with. It's more frequently used when the subject matter is a black, gay, trans, women, or minority rights. But it's current usage is so incredibly broad, it is pretty much meaningless beyond "liberal nonsense I don't approve of". Hell even M&Ms, sidewalks being shoveled before roads, and not wanting to expose your kids to gas fumes (I can keep going with dozens of additional absurd things...) are all now called "woke".
Do you have a better definition than the one above? Because the fact that you fail to offer a counter-definition is pretty damn telling.
Or, in actuality, it mostly means they’re tired of people stripping all of the nuance away from their ideas, casting them in the most extreme light, and then deriding them as hateful and bigoted without any critical thought.
I understand the person you originally were responding to, because I feel much the same way. I used to be able to engage in conversations with random people about the world, and while this still happens occasionally, most people either self-censor or blatantly straw man you to score points.
The types of deeply nuanced, sometimes multiple day/week long conversations and debates I used to see on IRC in my youth have ceased to exist online, and can really only be had in person now with close friends who will not immediately act in bad faith.
This attitude is destroying society. There is no place for nuance in general discourse anymore. It bothers me greatly. I have no solution, only an ability to despair.
But if your "conservative" friends happen to drop openly misogynist, racist, and/or xenophobic things inappropriately into casual conversation - she might be justified in feeling a little off put since she is probably worried that you also hold similar hurtful views but are more careful with what you say.
1) Other ideologies are not immune to having people with such views, so I'm not sure why to single out conservatives for those kind of worries.
2) A truly open mind might be open to 'racist' viewpoints, such as blacks are more likely to suffer from sickle cell anemia and this trait is inferior to whites in regions without mosquitoes. That's just a straight up racist viewpoint (by the dictionary definition) coupled with the assertion whites legit have a characteristic here that is racially superior in places without malaria. I wonder how many other biological traits like this, of any 'race' (to the extent such a concept exists), we've thrown aside because scientists are just too scared to investigate it.
I'm really struggling to follow what you're trying to say in your second point. Honestly, if I'm hanging out with a friend of my wife and she starts going into "racially superior" traits of whites vs blacks - I'm going to either look to change the conversation or excuse myself to grab a beer because that's a strangely detailed and long example to get into.
I'm pretty sure the person you replied to said nothing about their friends being misogynist/racist/xenophobic. The only thing we know is they were conservative, so your statement "I only singled out..." is a complete sidestep from your process conservative -> "If your conservative friends happen to drop misogynistic/racist/xenophobic ..."
When literally the only thing we know is the person's political ideology and you go straight to talking about if they were saying racist stuff we all know what the implication is, and we all know it was said in a weird way to create plausible deniability that just maybe it wasn't being made.
Well no, that's not true. We also know that his wife was "off put" by him engaging with them. And if you re-read my rely, you'll see that I specifically mention her being "off put" 3 different times because that was the main part that I was replying to.
And if someone tried to shoehorn a long winded discussion about "racial superiority" into an unrelated conversation (much like you are doing right now on a discussion about free speech), I would certainly bow out because it's irrelevant and weird.
No being off put was a description about the wife not them. All we know about them is they were conservative.
>And if you re-read my rely, you'll see that I specifically mention her being "off put" 3 different times because that was the main part that I was replying to.
There was no mention of xenophobia/racism/etc that was entirely your introduction.
>And if someone tried to shoehorn a long winded discussion about "racial superiority" into an unrelated conversatio
My guy, racism was your introduction, why did YOU shoehorn it in. Don't get upset you brought up racism and now you have to deal with replies including the subject you roped in.
The problem is that today, unlike a decade or two earlier, the conversation on-line (and increasingly off-line) is dominated by people who will happily choose to call anything they feel like as "misogynist, racist, and/or xenophobic", using it to invalidate what others have said wholesale (and in some contexts, also make an implied threat).
You are, I assume unintentionally, doing that too, this very moment: the problem with calling something "misogynist", "racist" or "bigoted" is that it's an asymmetric superweapon - once you say, or even vaguely suggest, that I'm saying something racist, it's impossible for me to argue my way out: any attempt of proving it's not is considered an admission of guilt. "Kafkatrap", I believe, used to be a term for this.
There are severe consequences to being seen as a misogynist or a racist or a bigot. There are no consequences whatsoever for accusing someone of being a misogynist or a racist or a bigot, for any reason whatsoever, including just for shits and giggles. No third party wants to challenge the accusation either, because it carries a risk of becoming seen as guilty by association.
> she might be justified in feeling a little off put since she is probably worried that you also hold similar hurtful views but are more careful with what you say
And herein lies another problem: fear of people secretly committing wrongthink. There is no way one can prove whether or not a person is nice, or is a wrongthinking racist bigot who's just being careful with what they say. By finding reasons to assume the latter, one is not only making their own life worse, but also that other person's, and their combined social circle.
> There are no consequences whatsoever for accusing someone of being a misogynist or a racist or a bigot, for any reason whatsoever, including just for shits and giggles.
That's just how accusations work. I can just as easily say: "There are no consequences whatsoever for accusing someone of being woke, for any reason whatsoever, including just for shits and giggles."
> And herein lies another problem: fear of people secretly committing wrongthink.
Well I would be concerned if my partner had misogynist, racist, and/or xenophobic thoughts. Because those are not the thoughts of a kind, secure, and empathetic person (the type of person who I wish to share my life with). But you may have different morals where having misogynist, racist, and/or xenophobic thoughts is not an issue.
And yeah, as an immigrant, certain conservatives have absolutely espoused views that are... antagonistic towards her family, even though they didn't know it at the time. You're basically on the money with your last sentence. It's really more of an apprehension that my political views are shifting (or I hid them) as a result of hanging out with those who hold contrary views.
I would also chalk a lot of it up to you changing over the last few decades. All of us have a habit of being nostalgic for things past. But a lot of that nostalgia isn't because things were better, it was because we were in better health, were not as jaded to the world, and monotony of life had not yet kicked in. When you were growing up you also didn't have to take full responsibility for what you said and a lot of times didn't understand the implications of what you were saying.
Lol wtf is up with people these days thinking that they have zero responsibility for the precision or correctness of the words that they use in discourse to ensure that they are saying exactly what they mean? Grow up and stop making excuses for your lack of self-awareness.
OP hasn’t made any claims (that I can see) that they wish to avoid criticism for their ignorant and hateful ideas, and you’re slinging shade at them. Maybe they’re in the 99%, but… maybe they’re in the 1%. You can’t be too upset when people react to you negatively - if you say something harmful to others, you should expect pushback too.
I was not upset or objecting to push back. I was, as people often do in replies to non-substantive comments, using it as an opportunity to expand on what I previously posted.
I'd say they are stuck in a victim mentality. How do we get these people to leave that behind and to start being responsible?
It's an interesting double standard.
Also, this hyperbolic style of response (end of the world, racism, xenophobia, the other million examples in the thread) is part of what the OP was saying is a problem today. Nuance in dialog seems to be lost, and the second someone disagrees instead of coming back with a well reasoned response, it's "oh so you YEARN for the days when minorities weren't even considered human?!" and the conversation ends.
That's boring. Strive to be less boring. It's not comfortable but it's worthwhile.
You have valid examples, yes, but GP comment has a point as well.
After all, what is the point in discussing something if ideas are not challenged or expected to have a sound argument behind them? To feel that you should be able to say anything you want and people cannot make a counter-point is absurd and quite selfish.
GP definitely has a valid point as do you. Speech was not equally free if the counter points weren’t allowed, which allowed a lot of people to say anything they want for a long time.
That's how reputations work. "I will defend to your death the right to say it, but not the right to say it from my stage."
2. Do you have any evidence that they we "deamplified" as a conscious decision by employees of the platform? Or did their opinions expressed simply lose them following and/or not generate their normal engagement?
If their deamplification was a conscious decision by employees of the platform - how is that not also an expression of free speech by those employees and/or the platform? Should private companies not be allowed to moderate content on their platforms as they see fit?
If the deamplification was a result of them losing following and/or not generating normal engagement - what do you expect to happen here? People can express any opinion they want, but people are also completely free to not listen or engage.
https://www.newsweek.com/twitter-suspends-dr-li-meng-yan-wuh...
This sound a lot less like she was deplatformed from Twitter by Twitter employees, and a lot more like Twitter was given a legal order from the Chinese government to deplatform her. Which is a very different conversation than employees of social media companies suspending someone because of their personal beliefs.
Despite her being suspended from Twitter, "Yan’s paper on Zenodo — despite several blistering scientific critiques and widespread news coverage of its alleged flaws — now has been viewed more than 1 million times, probably making it the most widely read research on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic" [0]
She also proceeded to appear on the most viewed national evening news segment multiple times as well as dozens of podcasts and live streams.
So I don't really see how going from having a Twitter account to being a national conservative hero as a whistle-blower is really feeling any negative reproductions from her speech. In fact, her speech seemed to make a name for herself and win her a lot of positive publicity.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/02/12/china-c...
People just didn't like the political implication, and that is not something which reasonable argument and supporting facts can solve.
That throws the whole possibility of debate and responding to critics out the window.
If their "censorship" was a conscious decision by employees of the platform - how is that not also an expression of free speech by those employees and/or the platform? Should private companies not be allowed to moderate content on their platforms as they see fit?
If the "censorship" was a result of them losing following and/or not generating normal engagement - what do you expect to happen here? People can express any opinion they want, but people are also completely free to not listen or engage.
You: I remember also when this unrelated set of things existed at the same time.
That's a great non sequitur you just spewed out. In case your Latin is rusty, that translates to "it does not follow".
But it is. Also, no one was making such a claim, either, so why point it out in the first place?
> It's pointing out that their view of history is naive and not grounded in reality
Says who? You? I'd venture to guess GP's view is grounded in reality much more than yours is. For instance, there is plenty of racism today, and it's mainly from the people of the same political party that's been most racist from its beginning: https://www.socialjusticesurvivalguide.com/2018/01/08/the-de....
All that's changed is that in this party it's now in vogue to be racist against whites.
> To call these two points unrelated is to not understand the subject at hand.
You could in fact relate them. You could say probably what you meant, which is: "today's censorship is great because it silences all those evil racist bigots that used to be able to speak their minds." And to that, I would reply that your view is not grounded in reality! Take, for instance, this lawsuit:
https://www.dailywire.com/news/lawsuit-illinois-school-distr...
"Stacy Deemar, a middle school drama teacher, sued the school district over its curriculum allegedly forcing students to participate in “privilege walks” separated by race, comparing “whiteness” to the devil, and other lessons that pit “different racial groups against each other,” according to the suit."
Unfortunately, this kind of racism thrives under today's speech police.
And, from: https://www.dailywire.com/news/pathetic-megyn-kelly-slams-sa...
"Sally Field ... apologized for being white during her acceptance speech for a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2023 Screen Actors Guild Awards on Sunday."
Why is she apologizing for being white? That sounds awfully racist!
And, lastly: https://www.dailywire.com/news/bicycling-doctor-allegedly-mu...
"A California emergency room doctor out for a ride on his mountain bike was allegedly murdered Wednesday by a man who police said struck him from behind with his vehicle, then jumped out and repeatedly stabbed him while, according to a witness, decrying “white privilege.”"
It looks like this kind of openly accepted hate speech is getting people killed! The present day certainly isn't rosy either. Maybe it's even worse than it used to be!
"I love the new Marvel film" "Eh, I didn't think it was that great". Why is the 2nd person in the equation not allowed to express their opinion?
It's only when it turns into an argument, where both parties refuse to accept the differing opinion of the other party that things go awry. Or frequently as I find with friends, they're prepared to try to change my opinion but aren't prepared to discuss it for as long as I am, where they get upset & overly emotional and it therefore turns into an argument.
Some people have a hard time separating the idea that's being attacked from themselves; personal attacks are not okay. "I don't think people should vote for x for y reasons" is a lot cleaner than "I can't believe you'd vote for x, what kind of person are you".
I was that person. Stopped it, better off for it. I realized how annoying that behaviour is. Nowadays i respond: "Ah, okay." Whats the value in disagreeing about taste? Negative. I remember how hurt i was in the past, when i showed people music i love and they dismissed it.
I even stopped wanting to be right all the time, since i grew tired of arguing over trivia. I think i disentangled my knowledge/smarts from how i feel about myself.
It's different with Hatespeech for sure.
(However, if you wish to state your view, it would be better to try to make an argument for it, if you can do so. (It is possible that it is just a guess, in which case you can say so; if you know why you made that guess then you might mention that too.) If a reasonable argument can be made on both sides then a better debate will be possible, rather than merely being ignorant and saying things without any good reason to do so. If you actually explain things, then you can learn better, isn't it?)