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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The Closure of the Internet
I recently started reading Arctotherium’s almost encyclopedic article titled The Closure of the Internet documenting the change starting in the mid-2010s from the internet being a free-speech zone to its current state as a censored environment. I only started reading the article since it is so truly extensive in its documentation, and then I skimmed through and read the highlights of the main article and some of the footnotes.
I was having 2 conflicting reactions: (1) this is not news – as anyone here who remembers the departure of this forum from Reddit or slatestarcodex can attest and (2) this is likely “the most important social phenomenon of the late 2010s” (Arctotherium's words) since it changed the dynamic so completely of the place where most people spend most of their free time and I, and most others, have never thought of it that way. In fact, many young people aren't even aware that it happened.
Why is it both not news and unknown? I think the article contains the answer to this question, without seeming to understand its importance - it doesn't have a name:
So I propose that we all start calling it the name Arctotherium used: the closure of the internet.
As a second note, I want to push back on the “Did it Work?” section in the article, which argues that the closure of the internet did not work since it failed at its goal of preserving confidence in traditional institutions. The section is true, as far it goes, but it leaves out that the closure of the internet was effective (at least in my view) on its object-level issues. I would argue there is more immigration and there was more compliance during COVID than there would be if discussion of these issues had remained open, but after spending their political capital on, for example, COVID, they have lost the public trust they need to fight, for example, measles.
Cause this is a problem for online people, not for the "touch grass" offline crowd.
In the real world, there also aren't many free-speech zones for people to truly unleash their most radical, dark, unsavory thoughts. The real reason free speech flourished in the internet is because of anonymity. If people can speak their mind anonymously in real life, you'll hear them much more often too. In the real world, unless you're crazy and just speaking to no one, you're speaking to an audience, and therefore, they know you. They can judge you, they can laugh at you, they can raise their eyebrows or makes visible that they think you're disgusting, they can think twice about doing business with you, and on and on and on.
I would like to add a second point about the internet is that people who champion it being a "free speech zone" is because not only of the anonymity, which protects them from retaliation, but also reach. If you're the guy shunned by the local community, it's unlikely that they would repeat or share your words with others. Yeah you still got free speech, alright, your speech just isn't landing. On the internet, be dark and edgy and you can go viral, and of course "a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes".
The things being censored were normal or mainstream opinions. Opposition to gay marriage, disgust with fat people, support for Donald Trump, even opposition to immigration could get posters deplatformed. The pandemic was censored! If you believed the pandemic came from the Wuhan coronovirus research laboratory and not Chinese people eating bats, you could be banned. If you didn't want to take a novel mRNA vaccine, you could be banned. There were government agencies on tax dollars paying employees to scour social media and report "misinformation" to twitter HQ.
The website you are posting on right now exists because of threats that the conversations that we have here were too "dangerous" for reddit to continue to host them.
This is a problem if you want to pursue truth and not status.
Yeah, from a private website, it's like being banned from a restaurant. And look, a rich man bought out a big square (Twitter/X), and Trump got his own (Truth Social). To me, this feels more like complaining about the consequences. You can be a moon landing denier but don't be surprised if you get punched in the face by an astronaut. Also, specifically about the wuhan coronavirus lab leak theory, I always get annoyed because Jon Stewart went on Colbert and literally just talk about it. I'm here to say that I don't think the stuff with the internet is markedly different if the example is not-internet. Even the case with payment processing, look, if you're a business owner that has only one supplier with monopoly power, and you piss them off because of your political views, well, yeah, good luck with that.
Yeah, i agree that if the government is doing the pressure then it's not good (because it's unconstitutional), but if pressed, I don't think I'm a freedom of speech absolutist in daily life. I personally think that just like how all the Biden pressure campaign stuff came out once Trump is in office, then all the Trump pressure campaign stuff will come out once Trump isn't in office. Though I do think Trump and his admin is more likely to just demand the results directly instead of doing things opaquely like Biden. I think if someone comes from the position of defending free speech, they'll find problems with every administration. And thankfully, America has a vibrant market and populace that is always vigilant on these things (Musk buying Twitter/X, Trump launching Truth Social, this site splitting off from Reddit, I'm hearing about Gab/Parler, watchpeopledie has their own site).
To me, this is equivalent to if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?.
What do you think about restaurants banning people for skin color? Do you think it should be legal?
a quick search (and also IANAL) shows me that the reason why it is illegal for restaurants to ban people based on skin color because of the following:
And like many before, it's pointed out that you can discriminate based on political speech, YMMV lol.
Personally, I think it is immoral to ban people based on their skin color. I think for the good of a multi-racial society (because that's what the US is whether one likes it or not), that should not be a thing because it just leads to segregation/disintegration and would in the long term lead to a fractured and balkanized US. Now I have reservations about upgrading from legal to constitutional, maybe race won't be a concern in the far future and "race" might mean something different and the law needs an upgrade (or maybe not, supreme court justices have been reasonably intelligent so far). So yeah, I think it's good that restaurants cannot ban people for their skin color.
What I want to know is why your principles for banning black people from restaurants differ from your principles for banning people from "private websites".
depends on the context. Banning people for political speech on website is fine, because you can also ban people from your restaurant for political speech.
That doesn't answer the question. Why are the principles different between banning blacks from your restaurant and banning people for political speech from websites? I'm asking you to explain the difference. Pointing out that they can be the same doesn't explain the difference.
As far as I can tell, your argument for banning people from private websites is "it's private, so they should be able to ban whoever they want". As a principle, that implies that since the restaurant is private, the restaurant should be able to ban whoever they want too. Why don't you agree with what seem to be the implications of your principle?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link