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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   31249 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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This won’t be popular here, but I honestly support heavyhanded censorship of toxicity on social media even if it is used as a fig leaf to specifically target my own political beliefs, as long as it actually also removes hateful comments.

  • -13

It never works this way. What is actually - and always - happening is there's a preferred narrative and there are in-groups and out-groups. It may not be stated explicitly, but it always happens one way or another. Comments dissenting from preferred narrative are deemed "misinformation". Comments offending the in-group are deemed "hate" - even if they are formulated in most polite and courteous terms possible (e.g.: there's no way to disagree with sexuality/gender theory and not be labeled "hateful" and "phobe", regardless of how polite and considerate you are). On the contrary, comments agreeing with the narrative would be deemed "truth" and "science", regardless of their agreement with the objective facts, and comments targeting an out-group would be deemed "vigorous discussion vital for our democracy", no matter how many f-bombs and calls for violence they contain.

What you are probably envisioning is some kind of clean space where everybody is polite and rational and are having thoughtful arguments, and you want that even at the cost of brutal repression. That is not what will happen however - the brutal repression would never be applied equally, and the space would be a paradise for whoever wants to "own" the other side, the side of the outgroup, and hell for whoever is on the other side.

To illustrate an example, if comments disparaging a vaccine are not allowed on the basis that it might lead to advocates of vaccination being threatened, then fairness would require removing comments praising a vaccine because it might lead to anti-vaxxers being threatened.

Of course, in the real world, the overwheming majority of violence committed was done by vaccine advocates against detractors, in the form of vaccine mandates. Wanting critics of vaccines censored for safety is dubiously linked. Wanting advocates of vaccines censored to lower risk of mass violence againsy the unvaccinated is less so. Yet how receptive do you think twitter would be to me claiming that pro-vaccine messaging encourages violence?

It's easily generalized - any advocacy for an idea X can be reframed as a dangerous call for violence against those who disagree with X. And if you doubt that, you can always find one or two idiots that would be willing to write on Twitter "if you disagree with X, you must die!". And if you find yourself in a rare idiot drought, you can always open an new twitter account and do it yourself... This form works absolutely regardless of the content, and thus can be applied against (or for) anything, provided you have the necessary power.

I find this a pretty strange stance, how much hate do you actually experience in your mainstream social media spheres? I find I need to intentionally seek it out to actually find it. In my experience nearly everyone who seems to have a problem with social media being toxic are the people you avoid if you don't want to see hate/toxicity on social media.

If that’s the case then you close down all social networks. Anyone can spew up some toxicity to close down other view points.

Then your throwing Biden off twitter because I said something mean about trump. And trumps banned because one supporter said means things about Biden.

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