
Alt-right leaders can no longer spread disinformation on Medium - janemanos
https://theoutline.com/post/3468/medium-suspends-mike-cernovich-jack-posobiec-laura-loomer
======
IronWolve
Don't think its honest to label conservatives we don't like as alt-right just
to ban them. If they are pushing violence, ban them under the TOS for
violence.

~~~
colanderman
Your suggestion is literally what Medium did. From the article:

> The “Hate Speech” section has been significantly expanded […], disallowing
> posts that “glorify, celebrate, downplay, or trivialize violence, suffering,
> abuse, or deaths of individuals or groups,” including “the use of scientific
> or pseudoscientific claims to pathologize, dehumanize, or disempower
> others.” Also prohibited: “calls for intolerance, exclusion, or segregation
> based on protected characteristics, nor do we allow the glorification of
> groups which do any of the above” and “hateful text, images, symbols, or
> other content in your username, profile, or bio.”

~~~
peoplewindow
Did they? The article is suspiciously silent on what, if anything, might have
triggered bans and Medium themselves refuse to say.

I went and found a cached copy of the "How I'd run for Congress" article it
talks about:

[http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=How+I+Would+Run+for+Congres...](http://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?q=How+I+Would+Run+for+Congress+cernovich&d=5011034540282539&mkt=en-
GB&setlang=en-GB&w=Y5hW9Mb889nmwWWUCp8GzIUcirRxW8qI)

Looks fine to me.

But it sounds like it's time to stop using Medium. Updating their ToS to say
that they can pull your content at will, for no reason beyond someone there
not liking something you did or said that isn't even on their platform? Like,
it could literally be something said in person that was overheard by someone
who works there.

A blog is a long term thing, it's not a set of tweets. The content should last
for years. Medium have clearly gone full blown Valley SJW and the people who
thought freedom of speech mattered have either been shouted down or changed.
Who knows what Medium considers to be "disinformation"? Anything that
criticizes Hillary Clinton?

~~~
Consultant32452
I'm curious about your thoughts on those Loomer quotes.

[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Laura_Loomer](https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Laura_Loomer)

I personally have a hard time faulting a _private_ platform for not wanting to
promote ideas like racial segregation in taxi services. I was going to say
religious segregation, but I can't imagine how she was able to discern
someone's religion by their Uber/Lyft profile.

~~~
peoplewindow
I'm sure she has a bunch of ideas that offend lots of people. Seems like a
distraction.

Yes, obviously Medium can do a bait-and-switch in which they attract people by
claiming to value free speech and then abandoning those ideals after people
have built up followers and PageRank using their service. They can do what
they like.

However, the problem with picking sides like this, as Medium and Twitter are
doing, is that it inevitably leads to gross and shameful hypocrisy.

Just based on a quick search, here are some shockingly hateful quotes that
quite obviously violate their new policies, but which I don't believe for one
second will lead to account bans:

[https://medium.com/the-archipelago/men-get-on-board-with-
mis...](https://medium.com/the-archipelago/men-get-on-board-with-
misandry-4a3bc6c08e16)

 _I drink from a coffee mug that says “Male Tears.” Female friends sign off
emails to me with “ban men” or “kill all men.”_

 _But let’s be honest: the more time you spend thinking about the patriarchy,
the more you’re genuinely like UGH DUDES AMIRITE. Because the thing is,
patriarchal culture actively trains men to be awful_

 _I do think the concept of “manliness” needs to be taken out and shot._

It goes on and on like that. Clearly, anything Loomer has said about Muslims
is matched by anything Jess Zimmerman has said about men.

~~~
pvg
_Clearly, anything Loomer has said about Muslims is matched by anything Jess
Zimmerman has said about men._

No, because one of these things is deliberately ironic, as it says repeatedly
throughout the thing you linked and quoted. How did you miss that detail?

~~~
peoplewindow
I do not believe it's ironic. Yes, after stating repeatedly how much she hates
men and manliness she says words to the effect of, "oh guyzzz I don't REALLY
want to kill you all! Chill out!" and then goes back to hateful rhetoric.

At any rate, that particular article is just one example I used to illustrate
my point. Do you really believe Medium's moderation will be completely fair
and politically unbiased, given their new policy? I would find it quite naive.

------
bmcusick
I'm completely cool with this, because -All platforms have the right to
exercise editorial discretion, and -Those people are awful, and -This will
only drive the adoption of censorship resistance platforms, which I'm
generally in favor of.

Free speech is important, but people too often forget about the freedom of
association, and its inverse the freedom of non-association. And Medium should
have the freedom to not associate with the alt-right any other conspiracy
theorists if it chooses to.

~~~
dictum
While it doesn't violate your argument (freedom of association) I'm less happy
about how this isn't specifically about what's published in Medium: the
criteria is specific individuals:

"We do not allow posts or accounts that engage in on-platform, off-platform"

It's the "off-platform" part that bothers me about such policies.

Thought experiment: Would Medium ban Henry Kissinger, were he to open an
account?

~~~
bmcusick
I am completely, 100% cool with banning people based on "off platform"
activity.

I know that making Nazi comparisons is cliché, but would you allow a Nazi on
your platform even if he only did Nazi stuff off your platform? I wouldn't.

There a larger number of people I can amicably disagree with. I'd be unable to
function professionally or socially if that weren't the case. But there are
limits, and that's fine and good.

------
nodesocket
Free speech, as long as it's liberal free speech.

~~~
actsasbuffoon
Claiming that last week's school shooting was a false flag operation isn't a
conservative stance; it is a lunatic stance. I know conservatives, and I even
have conservative positions on a number of topics. I don't know a single
serious conservative who thinks it is acceptable to slander recently murdered
children.

~~~
cryptonector
Regardless, it's also not worth censoring. Let me make my own mind up.

------
nikster
R.I.P. Medium. It was good to know you. If there isn't a blockchain based
censorship-proof publishing platform soon, I will work on one. Promise.

------
mindslight
s/disinformation/information/

That is, unless they've perfected a test for what actually constitutes
disinformation.

~~~
actsasbuffoon
Laura Loomer is pushing the narrative that last week's school shooting was a
false flag operation, and that the students were actors paid for by left-wing
agitators. That is 100% disinformation.

~~~
mindslight
Sure, but the title is "can no longer spread disinformation", not "have been
sanctioned for spreading disinformation" \- the term "disinformation" is being
used to refer to the general classification, rather than specific incident(s).

As such, the only reason that [some members of one team of the political
industry] can "no longer spread disinformation" is that they have been
"prevented" from spreading _all_ information. So directing the focus towards
their inability to spread _dis_ information directs it away from the
underlying action of broad person-based censorship, and is thus itself
disinformation.

Addendum: You've referenced her narrative for the assumption that I, or most
everybody, will casually disregard it as nonsense. I do, and agree that it is
a valid assumption... Which implies that broad-sweeping heavy-handed measures
are nowhere near necessary for suppressing it, and thus we should be loudly
condemning said measures rather than implicitly condoning them.

------
lj3
Nope. I'm done. See you all in meatspace.

~~~
tptacek
Twitter is choc-a-bloc with conservative accounts. That's a deeply dishonest
(if unsurprising) story lede.

(The comment to which this is a response originally included a link to a
recent Russia Today story suggesting Twitter was purging conservatives).

------
acconrad
Can't they just stop the spread of false information in general? I feel like
by saying it's targeting the alt-right leaders, it's doing precisely what
those groups want - to attack the Press because it's singling them out.

~~~
colanderman
They _did_ target false information specifically. Third paragraph of the
article:

> By far the biggest change made by Medium is the addition of a section called
> “Related Content,” which reads “We do not allow posts or accounts that
> engage in on-platform, off-platform, or cross-platform campaigns of
> targeting, harassment, hate speech, violence, or _disinformation_. We may
> consider off-platform actions in assessing a Medium account, and restrict
> access or availability to that account.” (Emphasis ours.)

------
devmunchies
> _Time to start the countdown for an Alt-Right Medium_

How about just a platform that prides itself in free speech?

~~~
tptacek
Start one, and see what it becomes. Your right to speech will be unimpeded.

~~~
peoplewindow
Well, unimpeded, unless you make the mistake of using Google's DNS services
and they decide to steal your domain name for the greater good.

Or someone decides to impede your right to speech with DoS attacks (see:
Quillette) and you made the mistake of using Cloudflare to protect yourself.

At this point to reliably be able to express opinions that are based in
science but offend some minority subgroup you would have to avoid basically
all firms based in Silicon Valley. Note the quote from the new medium.com
policy:

 _But it is now more detailed and focused, disallowing posts ... including
“the use of scientific or pseudoscientific claims to pathologize, dehumanize,
or disempower others.”_

So basically an anti-Damore clause. If you state something based in scientific
studies, but someone claims to feel "disempowered", you can't use Medium. I
wonder how long before other Valley firms adopt similar usage policies.

This reminds me of the quote by Urs Hoezle:

 _As engineers, we 're trained to pay attention to the details, think
logically, challenge assumptions that may be incorrect (or just fuzzy), and so
on. These are all excellent tools for technical discussions. But they can be
terrible tools for discussion around race, discrimination, justice, and so on,
because these discussions touch topics with a high cultural and emotional
content. That's because questioning the exact details can easily be perceived
as questioning the overall validity of the effort, or the veracity of the
historical context._

An entire subculture founded in the advancement of science is systematically
turning its back on science, in case it 'offends' someone. A milestone in the
(d)evolution of the Valley.

~~~
actsasbuffoon
There are good reasons why we don't want to consider these sorts of pseudo-
scientific claims for employment or other important matters.

Let's say we live in a society with mandatory DNA testing with publicly
available results. Your DNA shows that you have a genetic marker which
indicates a tendency towards anti-social behavior. It's fine though; despite
the increased risk, you're actually a very level-headed and agreeable person.

You go apply for a job, and I apply for the same job. Perhaps your résumé is
slightly stronger than mine, but the employer worries that you'll be difficult
to get along with based not on your interview, but on your DNA test. I don't
have the DNA markers for anti-social behavior that you have, though it turns
out that I'm a bit of a jerk (not far-fetched; check my HN post history).

This would be wildly unfair to you. While the DNA marker means there's an
increased chance that you don't get along well with other people, it does not
define you. You've just been denied a job based on a thing that you didn't
choose, there's nothing you can do to change it, and is actually incorrect in
your specific case.

The good news is that we don't live in a world with mandatory public DNA
testing. The bad news is that many minorities kind of do live in that world.
They can't hide their ethnicity or sex. Just like how a DNA marker doesn't
mean you're a jerk, it also doesn't mean you're less capable of being a good
engineer. To make hiring decisions based on that kind of information would be
horrifyingly immoral.

