I Thought the Web Would Stop Hate, Not Spread It

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/30/opinion/cesar-sayoc-robert-bowers-social-media.html

by petethomas • 8 years ago

22 25 8 years ago

rasengan• 8 years ago

I always believed the web would stop control over the narrative from single centralized powers, not spread it.

When corporations and governments run social media campaigns, isn't that a single centralized power influencing the narrative?

dragonwriter2• 8 years ago

When corporations and governments run social media campaigns, isn't that a single centralized power influencing the narrative?

No, “corporations and governments” are not “a single centralized power”.

arkh• 8 years ago

Paraphrasing Bruce Schneier: the web is a force multiplier. Understood and used by people with small power (citizens) it let them do more. Understood and used by people with a lot more power (states) it gives them a ludicrous amount of possibilities.

core-questions6• 8 years ago

What is this dreck?

Somehow it's the fault of a Saudi prince's exploratory investments that people in the USA want to use their constitutionally-protected right to free speech on the Internet? How absolute dare they!

There is no such thing as hate speech. There is free speech, and there is censorship. Kara Swisher seems to be mad that there is not yet enough censorship for her tastes, which I think would extend to domain registrar or even ARIN deplatforming of any site or network that dares host the comments of someone who says something she is uncomfortable with.

I find it reprehensible that anyone can even consider curtailing speech as a kneejerk reaction to violence. It's crystal clear to me that further censorship is actually going to add fuel to the fire, as those with evil opinions will have no outlet, no chance of counterargument or of being convinced toward nonviolent action, no support from other people in their emotional struggle. As though censorship will be successful this time at enabling the security of the establishment, even though it didn't work in China or Russia.

We'll painfully rediscover the lessons of the past, probably with more death and mayhem. Just as much of it will be on the hands of the censors as is on the hands of those who facilitate speech; it's up to you to decide if that's a nonzero amount.

yongjik• 8 years ago

... no support from other people in their emotional struggle.

Are you actually proposing better mental healthcare for Americans (which would be super awesome), or are you suggesting that gab.com and its likes count as "emotional support"?

core-questions6• 8 years ago

I'm absolutely in favour of better mental healthcare, including increased funding, though I'm also in favour of committing people who would otherwise end up being drug-addicted and homeless, so we may still not see eye to eye on this.

I do believe that everyone needs a bit of community and a bit of emotional support. The Internet can indeed provide this for people, but there's a risk when people get into echo-chambers - regardless of whether we're talking about right wing extremists, or tumblr social justice warriors. The ideal state is one in which we're still continually introduced to things we may not completely agree with, and one in which we're all free to debate and discuss even controversial topics.

Deplatforming and censorship hurt that effort, drive it underground, and further the formation of deep discontent.

charlesism2• 8 years ago

    I find it reprehensible that anyone can even consider curtailing speech as a kneejerk reaction to violence.

Can we still curtail the yelling of "fire" in a crowded theatre?

core-questions6• 8 years ago

This tired, tired meme. It's a few hundred years old by now, isn't it? Does anyone who has a reasonable outlook on life really think that issuing a command that instantiates an instant tribal mob mentality on a cloistered group of people is the same as political speech?

False equivocations that you don't even really believe yourself aren't exactly good counter-arguments.

rasteau• 8 years ago

Hitchens responds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyoOfRog1EM

michaelmrose• 8 years ago

People find truth in repetition and social proof that the belief is shared by those they regard as their peers.

Ugly openly available hate groups attract followers of various sorts and allow them to bounce hateful ideas back and forth among themselves that serve to cement the truth of these poorly thought out world views as part of their deeper view of the world.

Those who are mild are more likely to find themselves subserviently listening to those who are bolder and more extreme. The latter will certainly garner a larger audience and gradually seem "truer" to the rest of the community.

The people who merely wrongly believe that jewish people are somehow hogging all the money garner less attention than those who believe they are conspiring to harm us all and calls for violent action are heard above those who call for reason and sanity.

People self select groups of people to communicate with who reinforce their existing beliefs because this is intellectually comfortable and they rarely change their opinion when they rarely encounter a dissenting view.

You probably can't keep deviants from talking to one another short of implementing 1984 but it seems highly likely that we could in fact probably drive most of the trash underground if we were so inclined and thus keep a lot of people out of the intellectual mud in the process.

The argument that "it wont work" seems to be from a deficit of imagination or wishful thinking.

olivermarks• 8 years ago

What a shame Swisher appears to have joined the censorship and anti free speech police

forapurpose5• 8 years ago

She buys into an assumption that the hate speech is grassroots, meaning that it is from ordinary citizens.

There is a lot of evidence that much comes from powerful parties such as governments and political actors, who seek to promote conflict, division, and/or the far right (EDIT: and others too, but the far right seems especially prominent). For example, one report I read said that the Russia government's Facebook activity for the 2016 U.S. election focused "overwhelmingly" on race,[0] and recently I read that Russian government Twitter bots sent thousands of tweets criticizing NFL anthem protestors.[1] I'm going to try to find the links and add them. (None of this is surprising: During the Cold War the Soviets tried to aggravate U.S. racial division; for example, a former officer said that they would send racist hate mail to African-American leaders, then 'leak' to the press that the leaders had received hate mail.)

The real question is how powerful the technology is. How effectively can you manipulate public opinion? I hardly see that issue discussed.

[0] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/2018/05/11/what-we-found-... More coverage: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/oct/30/facebook-...

[1] https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/10/22/russian-twitter-trolls-nfl... which links to https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-russian-trolls-inflamed-nfl...

EDIT: Minor edits to make my comments more consistent with the citations.

core-questions6• 8 years ago

Something tells me you haven't spent any time in the gutters of the Internet if you really think all controversial speech is funded. Plenty of people hold opinions that you might want to censor.

The "they're all russian bots!" meme is getting old, and doesn't actually bear scrutiny in reality. If you don't believe me, then go and spend some time in the darker parts of the internet to see what the discourse is like. Engage with the people there if you're feeling brave.

forapurpose5• 8 years ago

if you really think all controversial speech is funded

Not what I said at all. That Russian grassroots propaganda campaigns exist certainly does bear up to scrutiny.

wickedOne3• 8 years ago

"Technology is exciting, but people are awful, and they keep finding the worst ways to apply it." (the way the verge introduced the third series of black mirror.)

i think applies to this scenario as well.

personally i think the internet has outgrown it's "flower power" stage so we either should adjust our sentiment or do something about it

core-questions6• 8 years ago

Consider a world where the speech that you believe in is being censored by governments and corporate powers. Would you not want there to be some protection for your ability to speak truth to power?

You may disagree with the people who are doing this now, but that doesn't mean that censorship is the correct way to solve the problem. It's not going to make any of them change their minds.

we either should adjust our sentiment or do something about it

What are you implying?

wickedOne3• 8 years ago

that already is the world we live in: i think every law that constitutes the right to free speech comes with limitations, so regardless there are certain rules you're expected to abide to.

i'm not saying i disagree with anyone or that we should censor everything on the internet, i'm just saying that the internet is no longer that obscure thing where everything is rainbows and unicorns and has become of big corporate and political interest.

so we _should_ excpect it to be like the newspaper, the television, the pamflets in your mailbox, etc. (re: "I cannot tell you how sad that is to write, because when I first saw the internet way back when, I hoped that it would help eliminate the attitudes that had fueled those horrible letters to me. I naïvely thought a lone man sending a reporter a missive of malevolence could not find such refuge on the wide-open internet, where his hate would be seen for what it was and denounced and exorcised"): lies and ways to steer you have become part of the game and it's up to you to see through that.

at this point "do something about it", i think, has boiled down to "delete the internet".

323454• 8 years ago

the new york times saying that the internet is a bad thing is like the catholic church saying that the printing press is a problem

I Thought the Web Would Stop Hate, Not Spread It

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