Which in itself is one of the biggest rationales for developing such a system. The Fed really has a third unspoken directive: maintain dollar supremacy.
Anyone who hasn't realized that this is about more than economics is deluding themselves. This is about a struggle for global supremacy between two nations with wildly different views about reality.
The CCP does not believe in the rights of the individual and holds an iron grip on China. It is instituting policies straight out of an Orwellian dystopia and wants to export its model around the world.
The most powerful nation sets the world agenda, whether we like that or not. The United States cannot allow China to set the agenda.
Completely false on all points. If you want to equate prisons for lawbreakers with concentration camps for political prisoners there's no further discussion we can have.
But don't you see how the lines blue very quickly? It's not always as clear where morality lies as when some lunatic posts terroristic threats. Arbitrary value judgements must be made when enforcing censorship so censorship always leads to conflict between groups that disagree on what should be censored.
That's why the best course of action is to not censor at all and allow the system to work itself out.
What system are you talking about if not the system where people and companies can choose who they wish to associate with?
I should clarify, I'm not advocating complete freedom in this regard. We don't want a society where it's hard to be a gay person because lots of companies deny service to homosexuals. However, we also can't claim that every company should always have to serve everyone. There is certainly some nuance and ambiguity here, but not hosting services for groups which support far-right terror seems to be fairly reasonable.
I'll be very clear about what I want. I want companies that facilitate speech to be forced to tolerate all legal speech on their platforms. It's that simple.
In the 1700's, when we were having the debate over speech protected from government interference, someone could have easily said "yes well if you don't like the government's policies you should go to another country!"
The existence of alternatives is irrelevant to the fact that freedom of speech is sacred and forums for speech - public or private - must never infringe upon its freedom.
I’m afraid the basis on which your argument is made is shaky. The First Amendment was not rooted in concerns about the government controlling speech in general. It was rooted in concerns about criminal liability for contra-government speech as reflected in the seditious libel laws in England that had been in place since the 1500s. Like, you could go to jail for criticizing the government.
If you study our jurisprudence you’ll find that no free speech cases were decided by the Supreme Court despite plenty of common law surrounding speech such as civil libel, commercial regulations, etc. for nearly 150 years (!) until the early 1900s. Debs v U.S. (1919) was the first case and it was about - surprise, surprise - an anti-war speech.
> I want companies that facilitate speech to be forced to tolerate all legal speech on their platforms. It's that simple.
I don't think it's that simple. Taken at face value, you want it to be illegal for someone (say, a game publisher) to have a discussion forum which facilities speech around a particular topic (say, their game) while banning off-topic discussions (say, porn). I'm therefore going to assume you're just thinking of companies which facilitate all kinds of speech, such as forums like Reddit and Twitter and infrastructure like Cloudflare, but excluding Hacker News and lobste.rs and /r/factorio which focus on a particular subject area.
The problem with your approach is that, invariably, a discussion forum which doesn't get rid of despicable content ends up repelling people who dislike that content and attracting people who like that kind of content. A great example is voat.co, which looked like a fairly good Reddit alternative until its free speech absolutism ended up attracting all kinds of hateful people and content.
If a platform isn't allowed to reject legal speech, we would need much stronger laws regarding what counts as hate speech and what doesn't. I don't know if that's what you want.
In this case, the idea is to lose a bit of free speech, and gain less hatred and less murder. That is not an arbitrary judgement; admittedly this is also not a clear-cut judgement.
The system never works itself out, successful societies are the ones which have established governing rules. Game theory has given us pretty good indication that systems rather self-destruct without governance than self-stabilize.
Hatred and murder has always existed! The idea that online discussion forums create or foment hatred is laughable. That hatred has always been out there. Now people just have a place to vent. The good part about it being out in the open is that we can actually see it and be aware of it.
> That's why the best course of action is to not censor at all and allow the system to work itself out.
I disagree with this sentiment, and upon reflection of why, it seems we've come to a real-life example of the trolly problem. Choosing to be passive and "let the system sort itself out" will almost certainly result in more deaths (edit: specifically in terms of mass shootings), but choosing to be active means the powers that be are forced to make subjective choices. I personally believe that it's worth taking on the responsibility of subjective choice.
Edit: However, I also realize that censorship oftentimes just ostracizes already-radical groups. This has the advantage of making it harder for them to find an audience, but also allows them to radicalize further while under less scrutiny, which also seems like a complicated balance to me.
the problem here is that in one case you're sending the trolley into a tunnel where the potential harm or prevention thereof is largely based on your preexisting (and likely incomplete) assumptions.
what if rather than being a viper pit of nefarious hatemongers seeking to brainwash the youth into committing acts of violence, imageboards tend to be popular among a subset of the population more prone to depression & more severe mental illnesses which also happens to the encompass the the kinds of loser psychopath edgelords who commit these sorts of crimes.
the whole response around these events simply shows we've learned nothing from columbine and are still in essence trying to eradicate the trenchcoat mafia.
It's not helpful to palm this off on mental illness - that does a disservice to people with such issues and doesn't address the fact that virulent ideologies exist in the real world and have proponents that are capable of planning, organizing, and recruiting.
Sure, 8ch is also full of autists who just need a hug (subject to certain terms and conditions) but if I discover that a bunch of people are making plans to kill me I'm not under any obligation to put my enemy's problems ahead of my own survival.
It can be checked through lawsuit -- 8chan could conceivably sue Cloudflare under numerous doctrines, starting with breach of promise / breach of contract.
Another service provider could step up, as was the case with Daily Stormer, and is extensively commented upon in Prince's commentary, and provide services.
Regulatory or legal procedures could be established to specifically address this situation or provide redress.
Public outcry, market sanctions, or labour actions might be taken against providers who exercise such power in manners which are seen as morally reprehensible. For similar examples, see Google employees over Dragonfly or Edleman's emplyee backlash over a contract with a border-wall services company.
The question to be asked, the question we all have to ask, is whether or not individuals, groups, companies, or inchoate movements which are themselves dedicated to abolition or denial of civil order and rule of law are themselves deserving of its full protections in pursuing those ends. And a considerable case can be made for "no".
It's not unchecked- they are free to move to a different service. Why should Cloudflare be forced to keep all customers no matter what? That infringes on their rights as a private business to run their business as they see fit. There is no "freedom of platform" where your right to a platform is being infringed. You have no right to a platform.
Do we really need to talk about closing down a site where people encourage each other to kill other people (no matter who does it)? Why is it so important that there are no exceptions to freedom of speech?
Seriously, I just don’t get how the purity of the concept of freedom of speech can be so important that it beats common sense.
Since there are no army related sites which encourage people to kill other people I'm not in favor of that and you are free to convince me otherwise by providing a link. But, if they were doing this I would be in favor of shutting them down, yes.
Army is all about how to kill other people. Not hypothetically, very real. Every day.
And governemnts openly advertise for it. On websites, (even in schools). And private enthusiasts maintain forums where army people discuss about the current wars and how to better kill the current enemy. Etc. Etc.
Not necessarily. The purpose of armies is to win wars. If it was possible to win wars without killing people they wouldn't kill people. In fact they are trying to minimize collateral damage. It's different with white supremacists. They have a direct interest in killing people. There is no collateral damage for them, which is also why they do mass shootings and the army usually doesn't.
Most of the latter are interested in expelling those they don't consider their own, violence to most of them is just a means to an end, otherwise "go back" or "send them back" would not have been their rallying cry.
Some really do want to kill people, but then again would you deny that the army or even the police doesn't get their fair share of these people?
I guess we already made the experiment what would happen if white supremacists would lead a country, so we can already tell that it's likely that "sending them back" isn't going to cut it, if "they" refuse to leave.
I think the vast majority of bigots are low-level blowhards who don't even understand their own viewpoints. Only a small percentage of those actually cause direct harm to others.
I don't know the answer, but I know that indiscriminate restrictions on freedom of speech aren't the answer.
It saddens me that this paraphrased prose I'm about to write even has to exist.
First they came for the Nazis, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Nazi.
Then they came for the racists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a racist.
Then they came for the bigots, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a bigot.
Then they came for the rich, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not rich.
Then they came for the religious, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not religious.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
I don’t consider deleting calls for violence towards minorities censorship. And I do think that history has shown too many times that propaganda is a powerful tool, that needs to be restricted. I mean you are free to doubt common sense, but I think doubting common sense is always the first step of becoming fanatic. What would be the country you are talking about? The way I could imagine for someone to commit atrocities out of common sense would be if he has a gun pointed to his head.
We are not talking propaganda here, these are individual actors. Some just like to provoke a reaction, some have these believes and I have seen people turning their back on these platforms innumerable times.
Regardless of the reason people visit these places, the moment they get external pressure, their believes get vindicated. We see a large surge in issues with these communities since we got on our little censorship trip. It is just plainly the wrong move to make.
There have been Nazis on the internet since shortly after its inception. But random people going out and shooting crowds in this frequency is a new phenomenon.
Historically censorship has always been applied for the right reasons of course.
This historical comparison just isn't fair since at no point in human history the possibilities of communication were anywhere close to what they are now.
Freedom of speech is not without exceptions. You can't yell, "fire" in a crowded theater when there is no fire for example.
Everyone here wants that perfect idealistic and pure world, unfortunately that's now the world we are given. Problem is many here want to just treat the world we have as the idealistic model world as if there is no difference.
The government could fund educational programs to teach people to think critically about the content they see on the internet, then they wouldn't have to censor it.
The only value in superficial diversity (the sort of diversity most valued in the West today) is that of a signal: signifying that there isn't any discrimination going on.
Aside from this signaling value, superficial diversity has very little value.
Ironically, as superficial diversity has become an end in itself, we are now encouraged to reduce individuals to their superficial characteristics, this behavior being the very foundation of the bigotry we want to eliminate from society.
Brave people willing to stand up and call out the diversity mafia for what it is - a bunch of well meaning but naive advocates for what often amounts to disguised bigotry - is what we need now more than ever.
