Technology
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
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Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
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Freedom of speech is good. White supremacists or any other group ideological supporters will always find a way to communicate and share their message, regardless of the century, technology, or censorship. Frankly, doing this openly on X/Twitter versus some obscure unknown forum or encrypted platforn is a positive. Social media as a whole is susceptible to ideological campaigns from groups and other countries, not just X/Twitter.
Twitter is not a free platform. It actively suppresses the voices of the left and protects the far right.
I do sincerely support free speech. I think it looks a lot more like the Fediverse than Twitter.
Additionally, fascists need these safe spaces to convince themselves that their opinions are the majority. They don’t feel emboldened to act otherwise.
Sure, I don't object to your statement of Twitter not being a free platform, and I did not claim it was. Conversely, other social media have been also known to suppress the right and protect the left. Social media can "lean" so to speak. They are provately operated companies after all. I value free speech nonetheless.
Where the hell are these socialist social media sites supposed to be? Are you going to say that it's Lemmy, like that's a comparable example?
You are so fucking wrong. I have never understood this logic that because people are doing things out in the open that it's a good thing. They are popularizing their ideas. More people are exposed to them when they're out in the open. Had they been operating in some obscure forum, they would lack the advertising of their ideas to others.
For what possible reason could this be "positive"? So that the rest of us are aware of their first amendment protected hateful ideas? What good does that do anyone? We just elected one of them to be president of the United States. Allowing hate speech to bloom out in the open tempers our reactions and slowly seeps into our minds as propaganda.
Freedom of speech is, in the US, something that the US Constitution promises will not be restricted by Congress. It is not something any private company is required to protect. I would argue that private companies have a responsibility to its users to ban all hate speech and report substantiated threats to law enforcement.
For example, from a US-based perspective, a "positive" is that law enforcement agencies and the thousands of social media monitoring tools they utilize look at Twitter and other big platforms. LEO agencies have had for years the channels to monitor posts and request instantaneously from those companies supplemental information on the user or post that is being investigated. LE will be out of luck if they were attempting to immediately investigate a user on an obscure white supremacist forum hosted in Russia. That website owner and its servers would not be in jurisdiction to respond to that request.
Also, please see my other reply 1 minute before yours regarding private companies being able to ban, suprress, etc. I agree with you that private companies can run their own ship how they please, whether in the best interests of profit or ideology.
I see you've chosen to ignore the point about the influence this has on hundreds of millions of people.
Tolerance of intolerance. Look where that got us.
Musk does not endorse free speech at all as he has shown
Freedom of speech may be great in the abstract, as an ideal, but unfortunately it isn't very useful when speech platforms are controlled by the owning class. Our speech means little compared to the speech of national TV channels, news outlets and restricted social platforms. The utopian marketplace of ideas becomes a rigged supermarket.
I highly recommend the book Manufacturing Consent, which explains some core systematic factors which shape the US mass media (also applicable to other countries) into essentially a largely-homogeneous echo chamber without the need for legally censoring opposing speech.
Hardly - they're doing this to spread their message, not to have a good faith discussion and expose themselves to other viewpoints. It's purely predatory, and removing their platform reduces their impact. Yes, they will always find ways to communicate but they struggle more to find ways to advertise and recruit without public platforms amplifying them.
Rights are not handed to us by God or by Nature, they are legal constructs, created by people. They are not immaculate or immune to criticism or alteration on the basis of what we think would be better for human society. White supremacy must be smashed to its very core, and part of accomplishing that task is making sure it's as difficult for white supremacists to recruit and congregate as we can possibly make it.
It's bizarre idealism to think that opposition to white supremacy will be overcome with no loss of enthusiasm or membership, that any interference actually has zero effect and we're just better off letting them do what they want.