GlyphFeb 20

RE: https://hachyderm.io/@mekkaokereke/116103661147175039

Mekka's take on the methodological implications on the (lack of) cross-tabs on this study are on point, but there's another thing to look at here: our definition of "platforming". So much discussion of "platforming" is conducted from the perspective of "are these ideas dangerous, is it OK to let people hear these dangerous ideas". That's not what is happening. The speech acts involved are not "conveying ideas" and letting people analyze them.

Show threadGlyphFeb 20
One way to look at this is to say "oh, algorithmic feeds make people more racist" but the way that attitudes are being measured, the entire way that attitudes *work*, is actually showing something different here: what algorithmic feeds do is *allow racists to efficiently find each other*. "platforming" in this context is not allowing people to hear racist ideas, it is allowing people to *build a command and control network for white supremacist violence*.
Show threadGlyphFeb 20
If nazis are dropping bombs on you by flying planes that communicate by radio, blowing up their ground control radio towers or jamming their radio signals is not "censorship". Similarly, deplatforming is not about preventing their "dangerous ideas" from winning in the "marketplace of ideas", it is about disrupting their communications so they cannot organize and build power to kill people.
Show threadGlyphFeb 20
Freedom of speech is important and I do believe that we need to be careful when we punish people for speaking. But the american left needs to contend with the cold hard fact that Fox News needs to be made illegal *somehow*. We have seen the results, the violence and death which is the result of this "speech". The right has been dancing on the line of the Brandenburg test for decades now: causing violence with speech, then pretending they couldn't have known the violence would be caused by it
Show threadJames Widman

@glyph personally i think it's highly suspect that, if you defame only *one* person, then you open yourself up to a civil lawsuit that you could lose; but if you defame *millions* of people by their association with a race, religion, or ethnicity, and if you do it in such a way that it could incite violence on a government-sized scale...

There's no legal penalty for that. The offense is in a totally different, incomparably worse category of harm, and yet there is no penalty.

Feb 23 at 3:02amWeb
Show threadJames WidmanFeb 23

@glyph also note that the e.u. is well ahead of the u.s. on this point:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_10_of_the_European_Convention_on_Human_Rights

also, germans have been warning us about this for years.

Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights - Wikipedia

Show threadRAOFFeb 23

@JamesWidman @glyph yeah, I've not really fleshed out the idea, but a lot of the Fox News harm is basically “libel, but diffused over a population”, and we have a tool for ameliorating diffuse harms; government action.

Broadly, what if you had a department tasked with suing on behalf of populations?

We have something like this in Australia in the Human Rights Commission and it's not terrible (it's probably one of the many, many reasons that US-style Conservatism is much less popular here, but it's certainly not wildly successful at its ostensible aims!).