
Extremism pays. That's why Silicon Valley isn’t shutting it down - pmoriarty
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/18/extremism-pays-why-silicon-valley-not-shutting-it-down-youtube
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“Extremism” is a misleading description of the examples given. Strongly held
political beliefs are being conflated with tabloid-style conspiracy. Such a
lack of nuance devolves the conversation into a chaos of mostly useless and
misdirected opinionations.

The biggest risk is in the rhetorical miscategorization of the content, which
sidelines critical voices from the popular discussion by conflating them with
those of conspiracy entertainment.

We should abandon the use of terms like “extremism” and the like, in favor of
more specification. This will lessen the unwanted side effects of
marginalizing important voices.

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sheepmullet
Why does anyone trust essentially unaccountable big advertising companies like
Google and Facebook to correctly draw the line on extremism?

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Erlangolem
While that’s definitely a factor, I wouldn’t umderestimate just how much
shutting down expression rubs a significant number of people in tech the wrong
way. Some will object on libertarian grounds, some will object on slippery
slope grounds, even when the examples are obvious and heinous. A lot more will
object to “shutting it down” when the line is blurry, or object to the notion
of the likes of FB, Google, and Twitter as arbiters of what is and is not
extreme.

I’m in the middle. There is a lot of obviously violent, vile crap on places
like Reddit that needs “shutting down.” I’m unconcerned with the rights of
child and animal abusers to freely express themselves. I’m equally
unsympathetic to Nazis and white supremacists, but after that it gets a little
hairy.

Are people in the “Drop The T” movement extremists? I disagree with them, but
I don’t think they should be “shut down,” but plenty would leap at the chance.
I think Peter Thiel is a blowhard and a prick, but I don’t think he should be
censored. Who gets to draw the line? And redraw it? Who gets to say there is a
line? I wouldn’t trust myself to do it. I’m not sure I’d trust anyone else
either.

Maybe it really is better to have a free for all, than a free for none.

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Turing_Machine
> I’m equally unsympathetic to Nazis and white supremacists

What about Communists?

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Erlangolem
a lot of regimes call(ed) themselves communist while being something very
different. I’m not a fan of the ideology, not in the least because it always
seems to fail in spectacularly ugly ways, such as Stalinism, Maoism, or that
tragicomic Juche shit in North Korea. Having said that, I don’t believe that
I’ve ever met an actual Communist, so I couldn’t say. If I did, I’d mostly
point out the history of their ideology in practice, and be massively
skeptical of either their motives, or intellect.

Does that satisfactorily answer your question?

~~~
Turing_Machine
> Does that satisfactorily answer your question?

No, not really.

> Having said that, I don’t believe that I’ve ever met an actual Communist, so
> I couldn’t say.

Goalpost moving. What does meeting them have to do with it? I strongly doubt
you've ever met any _actual_ Nazis, either, since there haven't been any of
those for about seventy years.

Dude, there are Marxists everywhere, primarily because it's somehow still
socially acceptable to be a Communist -- which is the issue I'm trying get you
to address.

> I’m not a fan of the ideology, not in the least because it always seems to
> fail in spectacularly ugly ways, such as Stalinism, Maoism, or that
> tragicomic Juche shit in North Korea

But not enough of a non-fan that you'd advocate that Marxist material be
banned from, say, YouTube?

Communists have murdered far more people than the Nazis ever did.

Also, communists still control entire countries, with standing armies and
nuclear weapons.

By contrast, the "Nazis" of today are mostly small groups of rednecks who can
barely make the payments on their mobile homes.

Why is one worse/more of a danger than the other, to the extent that one group
should have its material banned, but the other not?

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ropeadopepope
Come again? Youtube isn't shutting down leftist extremist content. But right-
wing channels are getting banned by the dozen. Even relatively moderate right-
wing channels are going down.

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p1necone
Post some examples of this "leftist extremist" content? I'm curious.

