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Comment on Substack says it will not remove or demonetize Nazi content

It all depends on the nature and goals of the platform.

It’s one thing to create a platform for positivity and brave new world (in a good sense). It’s good we have those, and this probably should be the approach of mainstream media.

It’s another to create a truly free speech platform. You can’t claim free speech and the ideologically ban someone, even if that’s someone bad. And you should have such venues - for among 9 terrible ideas (like Nazism) lies one that is underappreciated and misunderstood, and wrongly considered to be bad. Feminism wad considered to be bad. LGBT people were considered to be bad etc. etc. And if you start banning some ideas, it leaves you with carte blanche to ban everyone you don’t like, including people who actually promote healthy and positive ideas and values, but are misunderstood.

Only leaving the first option means starting a circlejerk where no good new idea has a chance to flourish.

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SacralPlexus@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Banning nazis is not a slippery slope.

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- Sanyanov@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’ll just give an example.
  
  Recently, when discussing defederated instances, I’ve seen an interesting picture: people cheered defederating instances of Nazis and…pedophiles.
  
  An average person would see no issue here. Right, one more terrible group banned! Take those perverts down! But there’s a catch that I discovered quite a while ago, and it’s a rabbit hole like no other.
  
  First, pedophile is not a child molester. We equate the two wrongly all the time, and those words became synonymous.
  
  Second, pedophilia is an immutable trait; unlike with Nazis, no one can decide to stop being one.
  
  Third, many of the pedophile instances, including those massively banned, actually feature anti-contact pedophiles, i.e. those specifically dedicated to never ever touch a child in any inappropriate way. And early research suggests it actually helps them. We brought up some reads and scientific articles on the matter throughout discussion. Conclusion: there are uncertainties, but it seems to work in protecting kids and reducing suicide rates.
  
  And when you see something like that, you clearly understand that there’s a lot of things in the world people still heavily misunderstand, while feeling certain about the position they didn’t have 5 minutes to research on, and that people are already on the slippery slope, banning groups they didn’t have time and effort to comprehend. And there’s a lot more of that than just pedophiles, this is just a very bright example that will probably make most of those reading this uncomfortable and will illustrate the concept best.
  
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  - sc_griffith@awful.systems ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    sorry what exactly about banning nazis causes one to ban non-offender pedophile support groups. like what is the actual causal link you’re suggesting? if you just mean “I noticed random people endorse this thing I have no opinion on, and also this similar sounding thing I think is bad,” that’s not super compelling
    
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    Sanyanov@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m saying that banning Nazis comes from public opinion and perception (which is correct to my knowledge), and that banning pedophiles comes from public opinion of just the same people (which is wrong as far as I know). Both groups (third is instances full of bots and spam) are heavily banned on the Fediverse, so it’s not “some people’s opinion” but rather, essentially, a policy for majority of instances.
    
    This is to the point that the organized banning of groups that shouldn’t be banned and hate towards groups that shouldn’t be hated didn’t stop, and without venues for free speech, we may never know that and keep hating and banning those we need to support to make this world a better place.
    
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  - user91@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    If all the content on those instances was ai generated then your hot take could be taken seriously. We all know it’s not.
    
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    Sanyanov@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m talking specifically about instances with strong rules, either prohibiting any child imagery or only allowing drawings. Both types are heavily defederated from, and barely anyone makes a difference between that and literal child porn instances (which should be not just defederated, but legally banned and admins brought to justice)
    
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- Goferking0@ttrpg.network ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It is when people start agreeing with what is said.
  
  they love what I say just hate the word nazi
  
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crackajack@reddthat.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Not banning a group of people that is intolerant and promotes killing people they don’t like is totally a good idea. That worked well before…

If anyone can’t tell, my first paragraph is sarcastic.

I am aware people outside of Europe and Rwanda are absolutist on free speech but that I think it is because they have not experienced first hand what it’s like when hate speech becomes unbridled. It’s a classical liberal value to promote free speech at all cost, believing that good ideas will filter out from a stream of bad ones because they believe humans are inherently rational. Well, for many in Germany and Rwanda before, it made sense for them to kill “others” because those at the top said so. I am not going to call old school liberals naive, because of course they did not foresee free speech morphing into hate speech and then making unspeakably evil action into reality centuries later.

As a side note, the US actually thought about electronically interfering a Rwandan-government run radio station that propagates dehumanisation of Tutsis, but the US opted not to out of principle for freedom of speech. That radio station contributed to fomenting hate that led to the Rwandan genocide.

So, no-- an intolerant being intolerant has no place in society. Giving the intolerant platform will eventually stamp down others and ultimately free speech and liberty. Banning Nazis in a platform is no brainer. Like, after all they have done, why on earth would the intolerant be tolerated?

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- Sanyanov@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I see your point, and this is exactly why I say this shouldn’t happen on mainstream media - this should always be part of platforms one goes to in look for controversies.
  
  We should not allow nor tolerate Nazism or other things like that on mainstream Lemmy instances, for example.
  
  However, we have to set some place for everyone to have a voice. In many places, me calling for communism, for example, will be met with an instant permaban, with people saying I advocate gulags and bloody wars (I do not). And I always wish to have a place to voice my ideas, because I think they’re right, regardless of the sentiment that may push mainstream platforms one direction or the other. But that means you’ll end up needing a platform allowing everyone - and it should exist as well.
  
  Those are just two systems, and both are necessary for us to prosper.
  
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