Gab.com, A Social Site that the Pittsburgh shooter used, is being deplatformed - Sensationalist Headlines

Oh wow, I remember when sites like this and Voat first popped up as the alt-right's "blackjack and hookers" versions of popular social media platforms. Funny they'll parrot all day how their "dedication to freedom of speech" is their big advantage over the originals, when I bet if you went on either of those with a hint of any liberal ideology you'd probably be "soy"ed off there faster than a basement-dwelling amoeba can say "based and redpilled". No one believes for a second that these sites are anything more than alt-right echo chambers formed by people who were laughed off of the original platforms for being repugnant nutcases. Freedom of speech matters to these people as much as lowered taxes matter to a Republican politician - insofar as how those things apply to themselves, not anyone else. No one is censoring you by refusing to do business with you. Isn't that the line these people always spout when someone refuses to sell a gay couple a wedding cake or something?

Will you stop being so disingenuous? This would be more like if a gay man intentionally spread aids and frequented a site for people to discuss how they want to spread aids. People not wanting to do business with white supremacists discussing how great a genocide would be is not censorship.

Fair enough. They're being stopped from spreading their opinion because it breaches TOS, and perpetuates violence. Guess I have a hard time thinking about it as genuine censorship because of the different circumstances.

If you think spreading AIDS is about as integral to the LGBT culture as removing anyone who isn't white to the nazis, sure. Or if you regularly got stories of people willingly spreading AIDS. Or if Gab wasn't just a shithole for racists to gather and yell about how gosh-darn amazing it'd be if all those darkies could get gassed.

Individual subreddits/subvoats/ boards (on something like 8ch) still censor you like crazy, but the idea behind the sites like 8ch and voat is that, once you do make a subvoat or board, the site will never delete you unless you're doing illegal shit. This is very valulable for the reasons demonstrated in the OP, even having a host who will protect unpopular content is difficult. Those sites started popping up because sites like reddit really were implementing widespread censorship of pretty tame views, see gamergate as one of the premier examples, the popular view about that here on facepunch is outright banned on most of reddit. The problem is that when we allow censorship on a site as big as reddit or facebook, then when those "alternate" sites pop up, obviously they gain a majority of whatever view gets censored, this leads to a counter-echo chamber within those sub-boards amd further polarizes the discussions, it kinda fucking sucks and it's a situation that can only be solved by regulating the bigger sites as free speech platforms, at which point the polarization would be limited because people would have to all be in the same boat, and if you're always reading a good spread of views you'll tend to be more moderate in my opinion.

@Mattk50 what exactly do you want? Should webhosters be forced to host white supremacist content with talk of genocide?

But what about groups that specifically perpetuate violence and bigotry towards groups of people. Is there really any reason to defend that? Why should they get the privilege of having a platform? Why should we not try our best to make sure they don't?

I think most people are conflating censorship with the first amendment, which is explicitly about stopping the government from inhibiting free speech. But I also think that companies shouldn't be forced to spread messages they don't want to. Companies are very useful for amplifying speech, but they are not necessary for the speech. If they are passionate enough, people can organize without them.

It's hilarious to see some users only caring about free speech when nazis advocating for genocide and actualy committing mass murders are deplaformed, or when alex jones is banned from twitter. Just shows their priority and the agenda that's being pushed when theses kind of things happen all of the time to people all accross the political spectrum.

I mean I don't find it easy at all. And maybe there are lines to be crossed (immediate, credible threats could be one), but the issue is that it's not even the "most would agree approach" (and even then, that approach can hardly be called optimal) at work here, but rather companies that can choose to either give in to public pressure (which might be a pseudo-"most would agree"-approach), but could just as easily cave in to political or economic pressure. Doing these things not through laws might be awfully flexible and convenient, but they also make their effects completely dependent on interests you have no control over.

The thing about censorship is that we all actually agree to it to some extent. We censor children's television for example, it's just where you draw the line. I rated you dumb because i thought that post was dumb, really isn't a big deal, i think i rated a different post of yours disagree because it wasnt dumb. Don't complain about ratings, and even then whats your argument, that if i use ratings it means im wrong? Guess everyone rating me dumb means im right? What the heck? None of that makes sense. Moving on... I always come into threads like this to try and reign in the progression of pro-censorship anti-free speech sentiments. My personal concerns are that people with much wider definitions of wrong-think will piggy back on these precedents to expand the nets of internet censorship and corporate control, and this kind of stuff does already happen and i think we're in extreme danger of more severe, more subtle widespread impacts than whatever "good" deleting gab would do. I ultimately don't think Gab matters, i think the wider implications of this completely override the importance of the individual situation. To use another analogy, people see the few nuclear disasters as really bad even though they really have done an imperceivable amount of damage compared to other power industries, but because other power industries spread that damage out, the nuclear disasters are what stands out. This is a simular situation in my opinion, the nuclear disaster is some guy getting radialized and sending pipe bombs through the mail, but i consider the chilling effect from widespread censorship to do more real damage to us all in the long term. This point is certainly up for debate.

Hypothetically it can lead to bad things, I agree. But it seems that in practice, it is working out beneficially. It seems that only the most extreme and dangerous groups are affected by these sort of takedowns. Sure, there's always the smaller scale things like subreddits where mods go berserk over anything, but I don't really find that comparable. I personally think that inaction is more detrimental in cases like this.

Have you heard of the phrase "the ends justify the means"? If you understand why one might see that sentence as problematic, you should understand why this is.

Excuse me but i have not seen a recent thread where i could have even gone in to argue against a majority that agreed that widespread deplatforming or corporate censorship of something left-leaning was a good idea. Pretty much everyone agrees those situations are wrong already, there would be nobody to debate.

I'm still waiting for you to explain why you think forcing hosting companies to host white supremacist content is a good idea.

So you're comparing Nazis being deplatformed by a private company to the governement organising the arrest of leftists for being leftists, and denying all their rights, and general violence against anyone left of them. "When the accused invoked the Fifth Amendment to protect themselves, McCarthy said this act is "the most positive proof obtainable that the witness is Communist."" That's exactly what I mean. Theses are not comparable by any means.

This is specifically about extremism though. Left or right doesn't really matter here.

You got me, I kill Jews for breakfast and I burn homosexuals at the stake every other Thursday with my buddies down at the KKK. If only I hadn't betrayed my agenda by arguing that corporate censorship of any group is problematic. Obviously I'm the extremist here.

the specific post i was responding to was implying it was about left and right and stuff about a hidden agenda. I don't really see any threads about left wing extremists being denied webhosting and im struggling to think of any recent examples, i'd be disagreeing with that too though. Extremism in which you call for the death of others already breaks several laws and wouldnt really be allowed regardless, my point is that there were times where gay rights activists, civil rights activists were considered radicals and extremists. What is and isn't extreme is a moving window and if it's companies that decide the limits that's a huge problem.

I picked communism simply for historical reasons, I might as well have picked people who like cotton candy. My point is that you're letting companies decide which view points are alright and which aren't, and that this might one day be used against you. It has nothing to do with how bad these viewpoints might or might not be.

Ok this corporate censorship talk is starting to get kinda annoying. I'm guessing a TV channel refusing to air an ad about how the Jews need to die would be corporate censorship as well.

Okay. And? Unless you're trying to argue that 'ethnic cleansing is totally neat' is liable to become non-extremist somewhere in the near future, I'm not sure what your point is.

Companies do not decide the limits. The government does. Companies only decide what speech to spread. Gay and Civil rights activists, at least early on, I'm pretty sure they did not have much help from corporations.

the issue with TV is it's a terrible analogy for the internet, TV is very curated with limited airtime, a tiny minority of people who watch TV contribute to TV, wheras almost everyone on the internet contributes to the internet. The TV was never going to be a free speech platform. The internet is an obvious application for free speech. Your example would also be illegal on multiple levels, one you can't literally advocate for mass killings without being arrested, second television itself has strict literal government content regulation (this is government censorship) and that obviously wouldnt pass those standards either.

Imagine thinking that private companies deciding to support literal Nazis by giving them a platform to spout their bullshit is a bad thing. You have the right to be an absolute piece of shit and say as much garbage as you want but that doesn't mean other people need to support you in doing that.

This is not a meaningful distinction as far as my argument goes, sure individual companies will do some censorship along their profit motives, but neither profit motive or popular opinon are ever guaranteed to be right. early gay rights activists faced constant censorship and hardships because it was very unpopular, thats where this analogy connects. Popular opinion can sway in very negative ways, and is often wrong.

Oh ok then. So how about if some site such as facepunch refused to put up ads for a white supremacist group? Would that suddenly not be corporate censorship too?

Our disagreement is that i consider basic tools in the service of free speech to be part of free speech, it shouldnt be viewed as support. The ability to host a website is a basic tool in the service of free speech.

Which is already something that's happening since internet exists. Twitter bans both leftists and right wingers all of the time for crossing over the line of what don't view as acceptable on their platform. Advocating for murder will get you banned on twitter because twitter doesn't view that as something they want to host on their platform. When gab did, and maybe you see the reason why twitter is smarter than gab about this now. This conversation only comes up when far right extremists aren't allowed to advocate for ethnic cleansing or something like that, and never when a leftist twitter account is suspended by an alt right mass flagging campaign. There's an inherent biais here. And again, freedoms don't work in a vacuum. Societies have to make compromises because your freedom isn't more valuable than the freedom of everyone else. Purely hypothetical scenarios and abstractions aren't useful here, people are being murdered by theses people.

In the past i've argued that we could modify safe harbor law so that you only get those protections if you operate your site as a free speech platform. it makes sense if you think about it, either you curate your site carefully, limit the speech there and basically operate the website as your own personal speech platform, or you're someone like facebook and you operate as a massive free speech platform where you can't legally be held responsible (like how safe harbor DMCA already works) for what's on there, but lose your ability to censor.