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Two articles are popping today that I believe are related. Both are reasons for censorship or reasons the left has used to justify censorship.
https://twitter.com/scottgottliebmd/status/1612548694762745856?s=46&t=0qCqhJLXqMO-wn5FoPsWKg
The best he has is some anonymous account saying “execute this bastard”. Obviously with anonymous accounts anyone can just randomly vent and say something mean. It could even be Scott Gottlieb saying this about himself so that he can then asks for censorship of others in the name of “violence”.
Obviously people shouldn’t be threatened but a random message board comment I don’t think rises to the occasion of a real threat - though I’d agree those accounts should be suspended banned that make violent threats. They shouldn’t be used to censor non violent debates.
And the rest of the tweets he cited are not threats but calling him a murder and bastard. Being that he’s citing tweets that are not calls to violence does that means he total received only one anonymous threat to justify censorship of dissenting scientist?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/01/09/russian-trolls-twitter-had-little-influence-2016-voters/
Another claim for censorship especially in 2020 and especially for the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian troll/bots interferes with the 2016 election and now we need to censor people. NYPost/Zerohedge got censored on these justifications.
At first I thought these were both solid culture war stories to post about but didn’t feel like doing two posts. Then I realized their connected and both are weak reasons that have been used for significant censorship and deplatforming.
There's an argument here that one should default to taking death threats 'seriously' since if even one person acts on them the consequences can be severe. I have an acquaintance who was very publicly threatened with the murder of himself and his wife, and then, some time later, the person in question did in fact go on to kill multiple (other) people.
So even if the ratio of death threats:actual murder attempts is 1,000,000:1 (I'd guess that's correct to within an order of magnitude) one should still treat a death threat as relatively serious if there's any reason to believe it might be backed up.
The problem is taking this and using it to justify [policy] that you wanted already, even when the effects of [policy] have implications FAR beyond death threats and may, in fact, be very tenuously related to the problem of death threats.
Nobody should be faced with death threats in response to mere speech (speech that isn't itself calling for violence, I'd say), especially in an online context, but it's part of the background radiation of the public internet in much the way that grizzly bears are part of the background radiation of backwoods camping. Public-facing accounts will get these from time to time, and I can't think of any reason this justifies a massive censorship regime, especially in open forums where said public accounts willingly participate.
Especially when there's nuance in exactly what is and isn't a serious 'death threat,' and one can make 'veiled' threats as opaque and ambiguous as they like with artful wording.
I think people should be allowed to insult, degrade, and even 'wish ill' upon someone in a public forum. "I hope you lose your job and experience what it is like to be poor for a while" is probably a valid response if the speaker believes the the target is bad at their job, especially in a way that makes life worse for others, and/or that they're out of touch with the experience of poverty and this colors their view of the world.
A particularly sensitive person could still construe the above as a sort of threat. A really sensitive person would construe any person expressing negative opinions about them as a sign the person dislikes them and wishes them harm. A paranoid person can read possible threats in almost any communication towards them.
I think it is fine to tell the sensitive and paranoid people that they should probably minimize their public online presence, particularly in open forums if they are consistently feeling threatened. I don't think we should build our rules for the discourse around sensitive people's comfort levels.
I don't at present have any bright-line rule that would make sense for enforcing the difference between wishing misfortune on someone vs. articulating the intent to inflict pain on them.
Well, Google's blurb on the relevant search suggests that the ratio of living on Earth for a year to successful murders (not attempts) is somewhere around 100,000:1. Do we know if receiving a death threat actually is even positively correlated with a chance of being murdered (by the threatening person, or anyone at all)? I would not be very surprised if it turned out that, conditioned on A and B being acquaintances who spoke at least once, a death threat from A to B were actually negatively correlated with A going on to murder B, and I would be not surprised at all if it were conditioned on A and B being acquaintances and B believing that A has a grudge towards B - dogs who bark don't bite, and all that. But then, shouldn't I feel more threatened if someone who I had a serious falling-out with did not send me a death threat? Should that person be punished for failing to send me a death threat, thus depriving me of the relative feeling of safety that they have vented their negative sentiment in words and are not making any concrete plans that they wouldn't want to jeopardize by warning me?
Yeah you're hitting on the point: the people calling for censorship want the feeling of safety, or generally to avoid the negative emotions when someone expresses strong negative opinions about you. They're probably not honestly concerned that they'll actually be murdered, since that would exhibit itself through a different set of behaviors.
If our technology is creating a widespread problem where people are no longer able to emotionally differentiate between serious and frivolous threats, that seems like a problem, no?
I think a lot of it is done in bad faith. No doubt there are people who are legitimately anxious, but there’s also political actors/journalists that know they can shut down opposition by calling opposition as violence or overplaying some vague anonymous threats to shut down legitimate non threatening opposition. (As gottlieb did in my opinion).
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