Sounds like there's some really interesting ideas here.
> Two people with two different mod lists for the same community can see drastically different communities
Reminds me of the 'sharding' idea in World of Warcraft. I'm really curious if you'll end up with issues of 'social dissonance' where your perception of a community differs drastically from someone else's because you literally see different content, and if that affects how people engage with the community.
Also, it seems like with user sovereignty and decentralization, that there will be various objectionable or even vile communities is inevitable, right? Is there a plan for how to deal with that, should Aether ever become popular enough to get more mainstream news attention? I imagine responding to tech blogs with, "yes, there are white supremacist sub-communities, but you don't have to see them if you don't want to" won't come across as a very satisfying answer from their perspective.
> I imagine responding to tech blogs with, "yes, there are white supremacist sub-communities, but you don't have to see them if you don't want to" won't come across as a very satisfying answer from their perspective.
It's always irked me that most people seem to think that people with different politics to them shouldn't be allowed to communicate.
1. Referring to them as just "different politics" covers up the hateful, violent ideologies we're talking about.
2. Wanting them to be banned from a particular platform isn't a general ban on communication. Private communities are under no obligation to tolerate the intolerant.
The domain-name removals, the mastercard and visa bans, and the app bans are the actions of private companies in name only. What this is, despite pretending otherwise, is an exercise of a form of state power. When exercised against a nation, we recognize it as a sanction. But when exercised against an individual, it is something different. In reality, there is no practical difference between this and state censorship in China.
Personally, I don't object to this kind of power in principle, I just think that it is used in the wrong direction in the United States. Rather than being used to target and remove individuals who promote instability, it has been used to target and remove individuals who promote stability. Much of the United States now believes property destruction is acceptable if it achieves honorable ends.
> The domain-name removals, the mastercard and visa bans, and the app bans are the actions of private companies in name only.
No, they're completely the actions of private companies.
It turns out, private companies exist in a mostly-shared culture and often have similar ideas about how to behave. Currently -- thank god -- deplatforming blatant bigots is generally agreed upon as A Good Thing. No conspiracy here, just good sense.
> Rather than being used to target and remove individuals who promote instability, it has been used to target and remove individuals who promote stability.
Seriously? White supremacists are now "individuals who promote stability"?
> Much of the United States now believes property destruction is acceptable if it achieves honorable ends.
I mean, yeah, the US has always believed that. The country had basically two starting points, after all: stealing the natives' land, and then later on destroying property as part of a protest.
> It turns out, private companies exist in a mostly-shared culture and often have similar ideas about how to behave. Currently -- thank god -- deplatforming blatant bigots is generally agreed upon as A Good Thing. No conspiracy here, just good sense.
It currently is recognized as a good thing, but it wasn't before. Before the consensus was "I may disagree with what you say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it." That said, a consensus cannot be defended simply because it has previously existed.
> Seriously? White supremacists are now "individuals who promote stability"?
I'm talking about people who opposed defunding the police. In a healthy society, people who supported defunding the police would have been fired from their jobs and sanctioned, but the opposite has happened. 'White supremacy' has been redefined to include fundamental state structures that are required for the functioning of society.
> I mean, yeah, the US has always believed that. The country had basically two starting points, after all: stealing the natives' land, and then later on destroying property as part of a protest.
The United States does not need to justify its existence. Almost every nation in existence today was formed on the backs of millions of deaths, and most of the natives died through communicable disease that was inevitably spread once any european landed on the North American shores. The only major mistakes the United States ever made were 1) allowing the establishment of slavery in North America and 2) trying to spread 'freedom and democracy' around the world.
Otherwise, the United States is responsible for almost all fundamental technology that the developed world employs and may (hopefully) be responsible for spreading human life to another planet. If the latter happens, then that alone justifies the sins of the United States.
Allow me to add one of my own: Journalists' jobs aren't to share their "concerns", it's to report the facts. So much of the media's pathology is a result of the problem that news doesn't even try to be impartial anymore.
If you want to "share your concerns", the place to do that is an op-ed, or a blog post, or twitter, or something. But it isn't journalism anymore.
News never was impartial. Just by selecting what to report and the order in which you report things you influence the reception of the world. I'd argue that it's impossible to have objective news.
The word 'bigoted' is getting thrown around all over the place in this post and most commenters, including this one, seem to have never actually looked it up in the dictionary.
Bigoted does not mean right-wing, objectionable, or things one disagrees with.
Bigoted means unwilling to change one's opinion. Which certainly applies to the hard left wing end of the spectrum just as much as it does to hard right.
Bigoted: obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, and intolerant towards other people's beliefs and practices.
If anything, so-called journalists using a platform to express 'concern' over things they disagree with is a better fit for the term. The job of a journalist is to report, not to preach their own brand of politics or dislikes or concerns.
> The word 'bigoted' is getting thrown around all over the place in this post and most commenters, including this one, seem to have never actually looked it up in the dictionary.
On the contrary:
"""One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ."""
It applies very well to people intolerant of other groups, ethnicity or race.
It's not restricted to ethnicity, groups or race. Bigotry is merely the refusal to entertain different beliefs; whatever their groupby factor may be. Cherry-picking parts of the definition to meet one's idea of what it 'should' be, is the actual meaning of bigotry.
Please refer to the Oxford dictionary definition if you're still confused.
You focused on unwillingness to change one's opinion. That's certainly a definition, but the more common one in use is about prejudice, especially prejudice based on inherent traits like sex or race or sexuality. I'm sure you're aware of that, which is why it's confusing that you're acting as if you're not.
I don't dispute that it's extraordinarily difficult to get people to change political opinions, especially on the fringes. That was never my contention, I made that pretty clear with the example of bigoted communities I chose being white supremacists. Not sure how you could misread that, unless you wanted to.
No, it's not just that. I don't understand why you're being intentionally obtuse here, other than that the framing helps your viewpoint if you can trick others into accepting it.
Words can have more than one definition. Yours isn't the one I was using, no matter you wish it was otherwise.
Again, since you apparently missed this the first time around, or intentionally ignored it:
> especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (such as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."
> Two people with two different mod lists for the same community can see drastically different communities
Reminds me of the 'sharding' idea in World of Warcraft. I'm really curious if you'll end up with issues of 'social dissonance' where your perception of a community differs drastically from someone else's because you literally see different content, and if that affects how people engage with the community.
Also, it seems like with user sovereignty and decentralization, that there will be various objectionable or even vile communities is inevitable, right? Is there a plan for how to deal with that, should Aether ever become popular enough to get more mainstream news attention? I imagine responding to tech blogs with, "yes, there are white supremacist sub-communities, but you don't have to see them if you don't want to" won't come across as a very satisfying answer from their perspective.