
Infowars passionately defends the right to censor Infowars - okket
https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/7/17661548/infowars-alex-jones-terms-of-service-censorship
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amarant
not long ago I had never heard of infowars. Having since read a bit of the
garbage they publish, I support the effort to get them off the internet.

I do worry this is having a Streisand effect though..

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jstewartmobile
What is so wrong about leaving it all out there and letting people use their
own discretion?

It's bad enough that the internet re-centralized as fast as it did. Now we
have all of these people cheering-on private censorship just because they lost
an election. Dark times for civil liberties. Some would counter, " _Oh, that
's just Twitter._", or " _That 's just Facebook_". With the centralized nature
of the beast, those bans alone are tremendous. Throw in Cloudflare or an ISP
or two, and it becomes a total blackout.

I'm less afraid of nutjobs like Alex Jones than I am of seeing my country turn
into the _People 's Republic of North America_\--or perhaps _Saudi America_
\--depending on which party rounds-up the most oligarchs.

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amarant
nothing really, i guess "off the internet" was a bit harsh. But it seems
promoting this kind of nonsense is a bad idea. show it to enough people and a
bunch will believe it. this is also why I oppose promotion of anti-vaxxing
ideas, homotherapy, religion and other such obvious nonsense that tend to be
convincing but detrimental to portions of the population.

I do think "that's just facebook" is a fair thing to say. it's a platform that
promotes content, they have the right to choose what content they promote, and
maybe this shouldn't be on that list.

~~~
jstewartmobile
Truth is a very difficult thing to pin down. Anyone who can justify their own
truth is probably going to welcome dissenting argument; it's a perfect
opportunity to put the case forward and spread the news.

I think people who aim to suppress dissent are doing it primarily out of an
inability to establish their own arguments. It is purely an act of will and an
expression of power. Saying, "look at all my degrees" is not an argument.
Saying, "look at all of this data I did Excel voodoo on" is also not an
argument--especially when, in some disciplines, half of their most-cited
research fails to reproduce. Even in stricter disciplines like
medicine/biology/chemistry, there is still a huge problem with sponsored
research that either cherry-picks supporting data, or attempts to drown-out
the inconvenient findings of other researchers.

And when it comes to the " _you peasants are too stupid to assess the validity
of statements_ " angle, that judgement can gradually be broadened to include
everyone who runs afoul of the party line.

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amarant
>Truth is a very difficult thing to pin down.

indeed, but obvious over-the-top nonsensical bullcrap is fortunately much
easier. the default is to allow it on all platforms, so pinning down the truth
is not what we're doing. we're filtering the shittiest forms of bull.

>you peasants are too stupid to assess the validity of statements

some people do require help. Failure to help them is what happened in Germany
in the beginning of last century, when a certain very charismatic leader
fooled an entire nation with false-but-tempting ideas.

this is probably also an argument you're tired of, but i'm sure you get the
idea, and can formulate it to better fit your tastes by yourself ;)

~~~
jstewartmobile
One piece of history, hardly even contested, is that Hitler came to power when
"moderates" were trying to "stem the tide" of "extremism" from the left and
the right. von Papen--along with other industrialists, nobles, and political
elites--wrote a letter to Hindenburg asking him to appoint Hitler as
chancellor, then Hindenburg complied.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler#Rise_to_power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler#Rise_to_power)

Now we're going after far-left like Greenwald and TruthDig, and far-right like
Cernovich and InfoWars. People just need to grow a pair and trust the process.
Teutonic authoritarianism didn't work then, and it's not going to work now.

