Five years ago, 2015 and prior, I would have agreed with you. Since then I’ve seen the damage Trumpism can cause. Private entities trying to suppress outright falsehoods, even things that aren’t advocating directly for criminal actions, is something that needs to be done. Trumpism is just too dangerous to the future of humanity as a whole. I honestly believe that we came extremely close to Trump winning another term. Had Stacey Abrams decided to retire or take a private sector job after losing her 2018 election, it might very well have happened. Had that happened, it’s likely that humanity would be looking at a dystopian future. Banning people from social media for spreading lies about dead people voting in Wisconsin or postal workers in Detroit backdating postmarks and such is a small price to pay for saving the future of humanity.
And who is going to be enforcing these rules? From your post, it’s not entirely clear to me if you’re only talking about “Private entities trying to suppress outright falsehoods” on their own platforms–which I completely agree with–or if you are going beyond that and advocating the state suppressing falsehoods and “Banning people from social media”–that is, if necessary presumably putting people in jail.
Trump may not be POTUS for very much longer, but there are still a LOT of people in power (as governors and state attorneys general and local sheriffs and so on) who I very much do NOT want to give the power to coercively “suppress outright falsehoods” or to prevent people from “spreading lies”. Let’s remember which side it is that’s been screaming about “Fake News!” for the last few years.
So states should suppress murder. But not those who call for mass murder and do what they can to put that into effect?
No, that would be one for the “suppressing” column.
Should states suppress those who “call for mass murder”? No. (Especially since I don’t remotely trust MrDibble and company to actually have any kind of fair and reasonable definition of who is and is not “calling for mass murder”. We have already, right here in this thread, slid right past “Nazi mass murderers” to “Nazi mass murderers and male chauvinists misogynists”–but not, apparently, Communists, or even garden-variety fascists).
Should states suppress those who "call for mass murder and do what they can to put that into effect?" Well, that’s a totally different thing. Just because the Monster Raving Loony Party won the election (that is, they got 50%-plus-1 of the people who bothered to show up on some particular Tuesday to agree with their platform, to the extent of checking the “Monster Raving Loony Party” box) doesn’t, in any society with any kind of sane constitutional system, actually give the MRLP the legal right to start rounding people up and sending them to the camps. I believe in free speech, and also other constitutional liberties and human rights, and checks and balances in our political and civil institutions (an independent judiciary, federalism; a free press) to protect them.
As much as I loathe Donald Trump, he has never actually come out and advocated for genocide, you know. So, for those of y’all advocating for “censoring Nazis”, either:
- You wouldn’t have actually censored Trump and the Trumpists. And would therefore have prevented nothing of the shit-show of the last four years.
or
- You would have made it illegal to advocate for things like differing views about immigration. I agree that Trump’s views about immigration are cruel, bigoted, and just downright stupid–hey, has Mexico finished building that wall for us yet?–but I’m not prepared to have people locked up for advocated ideas even as idiotic and mean-spirited as those of Trump. I think we have enough Americans in jail already; not to mention that if we don’t manage to lock all of them up first, we’ll have set the precedent and given them the power to lock us up–“Fake News! Liberal lies! ‘They’ Will Not Replace Us! LOCK THEM UP!”
So, then, you would suppress all forms of fascism then? I don’t think there’s any form of fascism that doesn’t believe in “suppressing” its opponents. And at the very least, all forms of Leninist Marxism will also have to go. And a whole bunch of different religious fundamentalisms…
Not in this thread, I’m not. This thread is about social media, and that’s what I’m addressing (and Myers was) - social media platforms not deplatforming Nazis…
They should be when the ideas are “these Jews/Gypsies/Blacks/gays should be murdered” or “women need to be forced to sleep with incels”.
And we’re not talking about “ideas” here, we’re talking about publicizing the ideas in public forums.
Yes, in this thread, you are:
Sure, if that’s a characteristic of all fascism, then yes.
Yes, all those holdout Leninists too…
Ones calling for murder or oppression of women or the like? Sure.
Scare quotes usually indicate sarcasm. It’s entirely a comment on whether what I’m proposing constitutes “suppression” rather than just enforcing the (supposed) established order, not an advocation for a broadening of the discussion.
I am in favour of some of these measures in larger society, but that’s not the subject of this thread, and would constitute a hijack, so I’m not going to respond to any more debate on that tack even if you persist.
Start a new thread if you want to debate me on where I think government fails in its duty of protecting people’s rights when it allows racist speech.
This thread, I am explicitly telling you I am just talking about social media. Please keep that in mind when addressing my posts.
Well, all I’ll say is that you started the hijack by throwing around words like “censorship” (and not in the context of saying “…of course Twitter not allowing some kinds of speech isn’t ‘censorship’!”) and equating speech you disagree with to “murder” and “theft”.
In terms of the topic of this thread–does anyone care to defend the position that this stupid new app or platform or whatever it is should be illegal?
I’d have two different categories.
-
Planning violent acts. Things like the Michigan militia that wanted to “arrest” Gretchen Whitmer and “put her on trial.”
-
Creating deliberate falsehoods. This category would apply only to factual statements that are false and created to deliberately mislead people. I would include things that I already mentioned, such as claims that dead people voted in Wisconsin or that postal workers were deliberately backdating the postmark on ballots arriving after Election Day. I would not include odious opinions, unless, as above, they cross the line into threats.
So only people who can divine the future can prevent genocide, is what you’re saying? Because the timelines between the calls and the actions don’t always leave a lot of wiggle room…
Category one is already illegal, and has nothing to do with freedom of speech.
Category two, if you are talking about making things crimes (as opposed to private social media platforms banning certain sorts of content) is deeply problematic. Among other things: If a MAGA-hat-wearing loser sincerely believes his nonsense, then I guess it’s not a crime, huh? And, again, this is a principle that could very easily be weaponized by authoritarians of all stripes.
So, we’re back to state suppression, and NOT just the policies of social media platforms, then?
Of course private institutions can censor. There’s nothing in the definition of censorship that confines it to government actions.
It wouldn’t be a First Amendment issue, but it will still be censorship. Perfectly cromulent word for it.
I’ve already dealt with the fact that I wasn’t “equating” jack-shit.
Has anyone said that?
We’re talking about calls for genocide on social media platforms and possible state suppression of same. At least, I assumed that was the context, since I’d asked you quite politely to confine it to that.
But since you insist on … whatever the hell you think you’re doing… I’m just going to go ahead and skip your posts, then.
I’d set it up similar to what drugs laws are currently like in some states. In places like Oregon, they won’t arrest you for having a small bag of weed for personal use, but would if they found you with a ton of heroin in a warehouse intended for distribution. Similarly I don’t think it’s helpful to criminalize someone’s crazy uncle Bob for sharing the latest MAGA meme on Facebook. On the other hand, the Alex Jones’s of the world should have to face some sort of justice for what they do.
The topic of the thread is, social media platform A (or social media platforms A and B) ban certain kinds of content. So then, people go and start social media platform C. Can social media platforms A and B ban certain kinds of content? Sure they can. And then FascistBook and ReichsTwitter can come along and ban anything that isn’t fascist. Unless we’re talking about state suppression of speech, there really isn’t much to debate here. Social media platforms A and B are good–well, they’re OK–well, actually, they’re giant heartless corporations and I don’t remotely trust them–but anyway, FascistBook and ReichsTwitter are clearly vile and despicable. So now what?
Good lord. We’re finally making some headway on ending the stupid War on Drugs–time to declare a War on Something Else! That couldn’t possibly go wrong!
Of course there’s a lot to talk about beyond that - like, exactly how badly is this going to fail, or what are the implications for keeping track of what the Nazisphere is talking about, or is this where Trump is going to move next.