site banner
PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   31136 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

5
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Thierry Breton, Commissioner for Internal Market of the European Union, has written a 'friendly' letter to the leadership and ownership of X Twitter:

I am writing to you in the context of recent events in the United Kingdom and in relation to the planned broadcast on your platform X of a live conversation between a US presidential candidate and yourself, which will also be accessible to users in the EU...

This notably means ensuring, on one hand, that freedom of expression and of information, including media freedom and pluralism, are effectively protected and, on the other hand, that all proportionate and effective mitigation measures are put in place regarding the amplification of harmful content in connection with relevant events, including live streaming, which, if unaddressed, might increase the risk profile of X and generate detrimental effects on civic discourse and public security.

((The commission has called this letter "neither co-ordinated or agreed", for whatever that means.))

Bruce Daisely, the pre-Musk Twitter VP for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, writes in the UK's Guardian that:

Musk is having a live conversation with the former president, promising “entertainment guaranteed”...

The founding general counsel of Twitter, Alex Macgillivray, once described the business as being the “free speech wing of the Free Speech party”. In the US, there’s often a myopic sense that its freedoms don’t exist in the rest of the world, but in the UK 1998 Human Rights Act, article 10 enshrines freedom of speech. Critically, there is a recognition that free expression carries with it a duty of responsibility. The UK law requires that such free speech is not used to incite criminality or spread hatred...

In my experience, that threat of personal sanction is much more effective on executives than the risk of corporate fines. Were Musk to continue stirring up unrest, an arrest warrant for him might produce fireworks from his fingertips, but as an international jet-setter it would have the effect of focusing his mind. It’s also worth remembering that the rules of what is permitted on X are created by one of Musk’s lesser known advisers, a Yorkshire man called Nick Pickles, who leads X’s global affairs team.

Musk’s actions should be a wake-up call for Starmer’s government to quietly legislate to take back control of what we collectively agree is permissible on social media. Musk might force his angry tweets to the top of your timeline, but the will of a democratically elected government should mean more than the fury of a tech oligarch – even him.

The London Met Chief Commissioner had an interview last week, where he said:

We will throw the full force of the law at people. And whether you’re in this country committing crimes on the streets or committing crimes from further afield online, we will come after you.

I'd like to summarize the rest of the video -- allegedly he or the interviewer highlighted Musk specifically -- but for some reason the underlying video has disappeared. I'm sure Sky News pulled the video without any government action being involved, yepyepyep.

apropos of nothing

A Washington Post journalist asks the White House: [edited for readability]

Q: Elon Musk is slated to interview Donald Trump tonight on X. I don’t know if the president is going to tune in. Feel free to say if he is or not. But I think that misinformation on Twitter is not just a campaign issue. It’s an America issue. What role does the White House or the president have in sort of stopping that or stopping the spread of that or sort of intervening in that?

Some of that was about campaign misinformation, but, you know, it’s a wider thing, right?

A: Yeah, no, and you’ve heard us talk about this many times from here, about the responsibilities that social media platforms have when it comes to misinformation, disinformation. Don’t have anything to read out from here about specific ways that we’re working on it. But we believe that they have the responsibility. These are private companies, so we’re also mindful of that too.

But, look, I think it is incredibly important to call that out, as you’re doing. I just don’t have any specifics on what we have been doing internally.

Given the urgency here, I'm sure that they have published urgent fact-checking on things like... *checks transcript* Trump's hilariously false claims about the harms caused by the Fukushima Nuclear Accident, right?... Right?

No, that's not what they mean by misinformation or disinformation, just like the people calling GOP investigations into the "Global Alliance for Responsible Media" 'conspiracy theories' didn't mean that like its clear and prominent existence or self-admitted tooling or target matters. The line between 'allegedly' and 'stated in public' is less a distinction and more just overlap.

There's a fun story here, where despite all this, free speech still works, and to some extent that's likely to keep being the case. Even if you end up having to exfiltrate employees from certain countries, there's VPNs for now and StarLink in the future, and one not-quite-stated explicitly side effect of StarLink is that Musk will probably end up with a mini-Cloudflare, too. (though, uh, there's another possible solution to that).

But there's a more morbid one where it's come to this point. There aren't any detailed reports behind Musk's claims that "The European Commission offered 𝕏 an illegal secret deal: if we quietly censored speech without telling anyone, they would not fine us". Musk has implied at length that GARM used 'Brand Safety' as a proxy for political positions, but there aren't specific claims in his lawsuit. There's no explanation how major industry metrics whoopsididdled the official number there for months on end. Barring a million Congressional subpeonas that aren't going to happen and wouldn't be answered fully even if they did, it's impossible to tell the difference between GARM's membership all acting independently in a specific way, and someone in power in some regulating state made a few phone calls?

Is this the one place all these forces were necessary? Or is it unusual only in its visibility, as a result of people not playing along?

The London Met Chief Commissioner had an interview last week, where he said:

We will throw the full force of the law at people. And whether you’re in this country committing crimes on the streets or committing crimes from further afield online, we will come after you.

I'm not sure I understand this last bit. How exactly is the London Met going to "come after" Elon Musk? Or is this some weak-sauce "we'll charge him with a crime if he ever comes here"?

I mean, England can request the extradition of US citizens all they want, and it makes foreign travel much more complicated for them.

It would be phenomenally stupid to demand the extradition of citizens of your security guarantor over a crime which isn't illegal in that country, so you have to expect that the UK foreign ministry will stop things from getting to that point. One furthermore has to expect that even a Kamala Harris administration won't extradite a US citizen over hate speech. But the met can make foreign travel much more complicated all the same.

One furthermore has to expect that even a Kamala Harris administration won't extradite a US citizen over hate speech.

I thought the same thing about how Jan 6 protestors would be treated given all the "fiery but mostly peaceful" protest all summer. Then they started sending grandmas who got waved through to pound me in the ass prison, and everyone went "Duh, obviously this was going to happen to regime enemies." Now I expect much the same. Everyone will act like there is no way Kamala would allow the UK to extradite Elon for hate speech, until she fucking does, and then they'll act like it was obvious and Elon was a moron for going against the regime.

I can't imagine a circumstance where the Harris government has it out Elon bad enough to extradite him to the UK for hate speech where it doesn't just kill him. Cleaner and easier that way

Because she can get rid of an enemy without the blowback of being guilty of doing the deed herself. Julian Assange faces much the same — he’s charged in the USA so Britain can simply say “he’s accused of terrorism of course we’re sending him to America if he leaves the embassy. If they try him themselves he can be sympathetic to the public causing people to not like the regime as much.

Britain didn't really care that much about Assange, so it's not a great analogy.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats