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Comment by ethagknight | Hacker News Reader

>>The use of sexualised and racist tropes, and critiquing women’s physicality, are known strategies of gendered disinformation campaigns, which seek to undermine and degrade women on the basis of their identity.

Not kind, but whats the play? No off-color jokes allowed on the internet?

>> Some Reform-supporting accounts shared claims that the attempt was orchestrated by top Democrats such as Biden, or by the CIA in collusion with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Mike Pence.

Sounds crazy, but who is to arbitrate?

It SEEMS like, now that Progressivism is losing control of the microphone, it's suddenly a problem.

X is amazing for the speed at which information, true and false, can be communicated. Put the power to the people.

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> Not kind, but what’s the play? No off-color jokes allowed on the internet?

It seems like I see two positions. One that algorithmic social media is bad, but the second that certain negative trends are definitely normal.

Maybe the algorithm is weighted towards negativity in a way that isn’t actually aligned with the network beneath it.

> Not kind, but whats the play? No off-color jokes allowed on the internet?

People tend not to enjoy jokes that punch down. Nor do they like jokes that reinforce negative stereotypes, especially bigoted negative stereotypes.

I don't endorse the jokes. But I also don't think any government or corporation could write a policy that is anything other than a sharp wrap on free speech.

Not trying to be the fun police here, but discussion that paints out-groups with a broad brush and reinforce the supposed superiority of the in-group are how fascists get the ball rolling. Every time. Identify some minority, shift the blame for all of societies problems onto that minority, rally people around prosecuting that minority. Genocide. It is a song as old as time. If you don't fight it early and constantly it can grow out of control surprisingly quickly. These messages are a siren call to anybody looking for someone else to blame for their problems.

"Free speech is a slippery slope to fascist genocide" ?

The term you need to Google is the "Paradox of Tolerance". There have been many scholarly articles written on the subject far too long to fit in a HN post.

I'm well familiar with Popper, you are still drawing a direct line between mean-spirited comments on social media to Totalitarianism as a justification for control of speech for differing worldviews? Many of the mean spirited and politically divisive comments are actually simple observations of what is happening at the time. Things which we are told we are not allowed to say?

So therefore, Intolerance is the only rebuttal to intolerance? Argument falls in on itself.

(edited for minor cleanup)

Free speech has lost all meaning in a world connected by large corporations with opaque algorithms and weighting, where discussions of "free speech" can be drowned out by propaganda.

Propaganda is a slippery slope to fascist genocide. The "marketplace of ideas" does not work if you're never exposed to counter arguments/viewpoints/facts.

Since when are bots operated by organised disinformation campaigns 'the people'?

The article is very clear these accounts are "bot-like" but don't make a clear claim, simply citing red flags of bot-ness. As noted below, they do not list out the 45 "bot-like" accounts in question, while they do cite specific "divisive political content" that is counter to a progressive political campaign.

So maybe so, maybe not. Not disputing that bots are a problem on X. But in this case, theres an obvious effort to lump in all anti-progressive writing as "divisive political content."

> No off-color jokes allowed on the internet?

Yes.

It isn't exclusively a left/progressive thing but these people are basically plagued by a worldview that doesn't really allow opposing views to be organic, and similarly cannot handle any even slightly organised movement of move than 2 people not being setup by some shadowy organisation.

Every person who disagrees is evidence that the future may not belong to them, so this must be crushed (the equivalent aphorism for the right looks mostly into the past)

Completely agree. Glad to see there's another person who fully read the article.

> Put the power to the people

But this is the problem is it not? Like if individuals are organically making crazy shit trend, then great. If the algorithm is inorganically promoting a few small accounts, left or right, at the expense of more organically trending topics than that should be looked at?

Since the article, despite its rigor and footnoting, fails to list the "bot-like accounts," it is really difficult to assess the article at face value. Did I miss it somewhere? Is it a bot or just an alternative news source? The omission is significant in an otherwise thorough report.

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