The "Debate Me Bro" Grift: How Trolls Weaponized the Marketplace of Ideas
techdirt.com
techdirt.com
Usually when people say "both siding", its more refering to an ad hominem falacy where someone tries to counter an argument by pointing to something bad the other side does that is separate (and hence irrelavent) to the original argument. I dont think that is what the person who you are responding to is doing because what they are saying is directly applicable to the issue at hand.
If it defies orthodoxy, in most cases. At least that's my observation.
Most of the cases where I've seen complaints of "both-sidesing" is about mainstream media coverage that did not dismiss one major faction's position out of hand. Basically, a demand the journalist put on a judge hat and rule for the speaker's side. And it happened in the context of the cultural moment described here: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-bluesky-ization-of-the-ame....
"Neutrality requires that mainspace articles and pages fairly represent all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in those sources. Giving due weight and avoiding giving undue weight means articles should not give minority views or aspects as much of or as detailed a description as more widely held views or widely supported aspects. Generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all, except perhaps in a "see also" to an article about those specific views. For example, the article on the Earth does not directly mention modern support for the flat Earth concept, the view of a distinct (and minuscule) minority; to do so would give undue weight to it."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_vie...
Usually i would describe it more as giving equal air time to opposing views despite the views not having equal prominance (e.g. In a news article about an eclipse you don't have to give equal air time to a flat earther)
Great question. Are there logical arguments for why both-sidesing/whataboutism is bad, backed up with evidence, and a comparative analysis against arguments that claim it is good? Surely there must be a rational basis for the claim so often made.
Is pointing this out as helpful as coming up with a real solution? No, of course not. But I don't have a real solution, so I'm sharing what I do have, which I think is at least slightly better than nothing even if it's not much better.
I don't think false balance is relevant here, because that's about the question of how to present a controversy to less-informed audiences, which isn't at issue in this case; if you're reading an internet argument then you probably have a decent understanding of how internet arguments tend to go and what makes them go wrong.
No. They don't.
There are plenty of people—some of them right here on HN—who have bought into the idea that these debate-bros are just rationalists persuading people through good-faith argumentation.
That's why the debate bros do this: because it works on a lot of people.
So spreading awareness that they are bad-faith actors actively seeking to spread misinformation and cloud the truth for fun and profit, without any reference to some "other side" that is "just as bad", is very, very necessary.
So I see the axis between the two as one of honesty, not one of closed-mindedness. The actual problem is to move both of them to a more open-minded position, not to balance honest vs. dishonest.
The problem with having an oversensitive trolling detector is that then people can spew arbitrary nonsense and dismiss counterarguments as trolling, and observers don't get a chance to find out that what's being said doesn't withstand scrutiny. The problem with an undersensitive trolling detector is that discourse becomes an endurance contest rather than a test of who's actually right. Hence the need for a well-calibrated trolling detector, or rather, for norms that weight speech according to some reasonable proxy of whether it's the kind of contribution that stands or falls on its merits. This is the challenge.
I think it is good to stand firm in one's moral convictions.
It is also good to try to persuade others through debate of the truth if those convictions.
If other people are not as clear or as firm in their own convictions, they might be interested in listening and being persuaded.
It's part of America's constitution and freedom of speech and belief. Unlike France, for example, where religious speech in public (proselytizing) is an arrestable crime.
This seems to me to be a problem very low on the list of problems. Imagine we lived in a world filled with reasonable sounding people. Some of those people were in fact un-reasonable they just acted reasonable.
Would that world be better or worse then the reality we find ourselves in?
Surely if disagreement emerges about something: it makes sense to "debate" in some sense of the word. But only insofar as that's indistinguishable from "trying to reach a mutual conclusion."
The other use of that word — what we see in televised debates or these little Kirklike pop up stands — is where both sides are predisposed/rooted in some opinion and are instead vying over an audience (real or imagined). It's a social exercise masquerading as an intellectual one. Which, to be fair, is maybe an exercise worth engaging for a prospective president, but that nuance is lost in how we treat them.
I don't think that's its purpose. At its best, having your ideas challenged helps you sharpen and refine them so they're more nuanced and persuasive. But at a minimum it helps you understand what rhetoric works and what doesn't.
Its not like falacious arguments and bad faith rhetoric is a new phenomenon. They've been with us since the beginning of time. They are problems we have solutions to.
That kind of moderation encourages bad-faith behavior instead of preventing it.
Intellectually dishonest argumentation cannot avoid ending in falsehood. By design it grows to consume all available time.
A walled garden, if constructed in good faith, has at least the potential to find truth.
I suspect that we're really both just contrasting best-case and worst-case scenarios for our preferred positions. What ends up actually happening is a mix of both.
The author is describing a symptom of modern society: “viral video clips” are the most powerful way of building an audience right now. They’re powerful for getting re-shares but lack nuance and are dangerously prone to misinterpretation.
As a society we need more and better ways to engage and debate ideas. People are coming around to the idea that a soundbite doesn’t cut it for a complex issue, which is good. But platforms haven’t caught up - so predictably we shoot the messenger.
This seems to be the permanent _mode_ for the president (and all the appointees who manage to hold their positions).
I’ve hypothesized this is why the movement is so popular. Members want to learn the patterns because the bullying and trolling “wins”.
But you can’t argue this way within your group/tribe. It’s too demeaning, and undermining of people’s identity/self-worth.
And so, the president continually manufactures outsiders and targets. Publicly with personal attacks, and more recently (totally unscientific conclusion) it’s all “democrats” (democratic party).
Copy these arguments and win. Practice on these targets. Never target the group (and conveniently, never introspect/question your own actions).
What is this? A cult?
The second thing interesting in the article, “The “debate me bro” playbook is simple and effective…”
Reading the list of steps immediately give me the idea of an algorithm. We’ve struggled with the idea of the Social Media algorithm for years now.
What’s the difference between “the algorithm” and the “playbook”?
>> This is exactly backwards from how the actual “marketplace of ideas” is supposed to work.
> Fundamentally, it’s not actually a marketplace, and the analogy starts to break down. One of my crank takes for awhile has been we should retire the term. It gives people a false sense of the inevitability of good ideas winning out.
>> The format actively discourages the kind of thoughtful, nuanced discussion that might actually change minds—the kind actually designed for persuasion
> I think you’re underselling this, a bit. Kirk wasn’t in the business (just) for money. It’s because those viral clips can persuade people. There’s a lot of people you can win over with zingers. Spectacle is persuasion. It shouldn’t be, but it is effective.
>> Klein is inadvertently endorsing a grift
> I don’t think it’s inadvertent, he’s smart enough to know better. In the circles he cares about, it’s better to be seen as “open minded” and “bipartisan” than accurate, even if it means inventing a legitimate counterparty that doesn’t exist. it’s toxic, and it’s precisely the tic Kirk exploited.
I'm not a fan of the national month of mourning for a b-list podcaster that the right is trying to institute but this is just disingenuous. "Toxic"? "Intellectual harassment"?
Does the article's author think that standards of debate were any kinder and gentler in ancient Athens, the Roman Republic, British Parliament, revolutionary era United States, leftist Russian revolutionaries (until they stamped out any debate), etc?
Why not just embarrass him in a viral stunt. Nobody even tried to do that. They leaped all the way from 0 to 11 by shooting him dead.
https://x.com/Rightanglenews/status/1966264506486853810
Edit: Downvoters, if that wasn't calls to violence, especially at the end, post it on HN on a reply. I dare you to be consistent on your vote.
It's obviously cut to look inflamatory, but be honest, do you really think he calls for democrats to _literally_ gut republicans? Or, and i don't know about eitehr this long-hair guy or the context, he was talking about a US debate democrats just lost because they showed no heart and refused to reach for the jugular after a successful initial attack, on a debate show?
Because, and again, not a native speaker, not from the US, don't know about it, i might be too charitable, it looks to be to be missing a lot of context. Was it recent? was it during the election cycle? To me its very, very suspicious that an editing like this comes out just now, it seems like a hit job.
Someone is trying to talk about the marketplace of ideas without reasonably engaging with Mill[1]. The positing of an idea being viable if and only if passing "peer review" is beyond ridiculous from a purely Millian standpoint. In his own words[2]:
> ...though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.
I agree that CK was a political grifter (e.g. someone that found great wealth by partaking in inflammatory speech), but the marketplace of ideas allows for people like him to engage in any dialog he pleases. After all, TMZ does the same thing. Tabloids do the same thing. Tons of podcasts do the same thing. Hasan Piker, Destiny, Piers Morgan, Bill O'Reilly, and Alex Jones all do it, too. I may not agree with Charlie Kirk's politics or with his rhetorical methods, but I'll defend his right of free speech to the death.
> It requires shared standards of evidence, mutual respect, and actual expertise on the topics being discussed.
No it doesn't. This is a carefully-crafted contingency to ensure that you always have the higher ground via: "you're not an expert" (when experts can be, and sometimes are, wrong) or "you don't have the same standard or evidence as me" (when standards of evidence are often contextual).
[1] https://web.uncg.edu/dcl/courses/vicecrime/m3/part1.asp
[2] https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Courses/Western_Washington_...
If we define truth as something real, and something that we determine based on evidence and correspondence with reality, then you absolutely need some shared epistemological standards for what constitutes evidence and correspondence. I'm not sure if you need peer review for everything, but building expertise in those epistemological standards and approaches _is_ a requirement for well functioning marketplace of ideas, especially if our goal is to develop and understand the truth.
This is distinct from free speech -- I wouldn't want to impose restrictions on one's ability to speak, but that's not the same as saying all speech is equally valid in the pursuit of truth.
This is semantic posturing, as, at the end of the day, any "truth" will always require some degree of consensus. Even in the hardest of sciences, we must agree to some (definitionally unprovable) axioms by consensus. Logical positivism died many years ago (though I do know modern-day "rationalists" are attempting to reanimate its corpse).
It's fair to critique arguments or debate formats that do not establish those standards, or which throw out agreed upon standards with no basis, as not really participating in a marketplace of ideas.
I have a hard time seeing if this is true or not. The Axiom of Choice, for example, has reached consensus because of its usefulness, not necessarily because of any epistemological standards. I guess "doing more math" is a bit of an epistemological standard, but AC also leads to all kinds of weird stuff (Tarski's paradox, etc.), so I'm not sure if that's a pro or a con. To me, AC seems more ad hoc than not.
But the more salient point here is that you can have people that vehemently disagree with AC (and a minority of mathmaticians do). Now, I'm not arguing that Charlie Kirk is some intellectual giant here, nor was he even a conservative thought leader (like Scalia was, for example). But, and admittedly this is a pretty soft argument, I'd rather err on letting him do his thing rather than stifling his speech by arguing that he's somehow orthogonal to the marketplace of ideas. I think J.S. Mill would agree. To me, even the homeless weirdo yelling "THE END IS NIGH" at the street corner seems to be a part of that marketplace.
Do I believe that C. S. Lewis has more interesting things to say about Christian doctrine than Charlie Kirk; or that Alvin Plantinga makes better arguments than Ben Shapiro? I do, but that doesn't make Kirk's or Shapiro's speech less "speech-y."
Usefulness in proofs _is_ an epistemological standard. Axioms are evaluated based on how they impact mathematical proofs and their compatibility with other axioms, and mathematical disagreements with the Axiom of Choice also follow similar epistemological standards and procedures. We take Banach-Tarski seriously because it meets the standards.
If you wanted to make an argument that "The Axiom of Choice is nonsense" and be taken seriously, you would be expected to show how it is incompatible with other axioms, or how it generates a paradox. You wouldn't be arrested or silenced if you went around denouncing the axiom of choice without following these standards, but you would (rightfully) not be taken seriously.
Similarly, the article isn't saying CK should have been silenced or had his speech stifled, but it is objecting to the notion that what he did was real debate or real intellectual discourse. I don't think that argument equates to stifling speech.
See, I don't think you would. That's not a knock against you, practically no one (myself included) has that firm of convictions. But very, very few people are willing to even knowingly put their lives at risk for their beliefs. In fact, the only person who did so in this entire situation is the shooter. Kirk almost certainly didn't think he was in any real danger. You or I writing HN comments certainly don't.
I don't think the world would be a better place if our bluffs on firmly held beliefs were more regularly called. But it definitely doesn't sit right with me that you glamorized the very kind of extreme behavior that you're criticizing.
"Kirk perfected this grift. As a recent detailed analysis of one of Kirk’s debates demonstrates, when a student showed up prepared with nuanced, well-researched arguments, Kirk immediately tried pivoting to culture war talking points and deflection tactics. When debaters tried to use Kirk’s own standards against him, he shifted subjects entirely. The goal was never understanding or persuasion—it was generating content for social media distribution."
Who is to say whether the college student's positions were actually nuanced? Is well-researched just "agreed with my perspective" or a fact?
(Edit: I missed the hyperlink somehow, point still remains this is an interpretation dance.)
Honestly, to me once someone start to fight over semantics on words that are well understood, he is a grifter and does not deserve my time.
He can't really make his point because his argument fell apart, and rather than integrating the critique on his argument to make it stronger or even (i've never seen it), changing his point of view, he has to comeback to semantics to remake the same argument without even thinking on how to integrate the critique.
I'm not saying this guy is like that, i honestly don't watch US culture war (unless they critique the best Olympics ceremonies i've seen because they don't like/understand French culture)
But i've seen some weird Jubilee videos, content about one of the current genocide, and i follow my country's politics. Often (not always), "debate bros" are just people who, when they lost the argument, start to debate over semantics. I'd rather listen to a poorly-informed student than listen to that kind of person.
Like "woman"?
If someone starts to argue with me and then ask me 'whats the true definition of X', i just tune him out. If he ask me "What did Paxton meant when he used the word 'collaboration' according to you?", then I'll talk with him, because I know he can have interesting and meaningful discussions.
Oh good, then my usual strategy of completely ignoring these types is the correct response.
Fair enough, but there are those who won't even engage with those ill-prepared to counter their ideas.
Edit: Also, what's the deal with calling everyone a "grifter"? I see no evidence that Charlie Kirk was insincere about what he believed, where's the "grifting"? Isn't any kind of political activity for pay "grifting" by this standard?