My current view is that while I want to promote openness and free speech that can really only work in a context where the person exercising their speech feels some necessity to use it responsibly and in an honest way.

On the internet that takes a lot of self control because the social norms of every day life don’t always apply because:

  • no one knows who you are
  • there is not a human being right in front of you that you might feel empathy for
  • there are no consequences to anything you say
  • not all posts are even by humans.

With all these taken together there is a compelling argument that speech may need to be more highly regulated on the internet than in face to face interactions. However there are people with legitimate ( beliefs and ideas honestly held that they wish to discuss ) views that I worry are going to be silenced and further marginalized.

This is bad for society because if people get dismissed or pushed aside it just breeds resentment, distrust, and more misunderstanding. I think as we start defederating and making decisions we are setting up a dangerous situation where it becomes potentially easy to defederate for the wrong reasons.

For instance “we think they are being racist” or “they are spreading misinformation” could have unintended consequences. Some religions and communities might have beliefs that appear to be pseudoscience or even discrimination. However if these are honestly held beliefs that they are willing to engage in civil discourse around I don’t think it’s right to actually block them.

This is likely just the beginning of a much larger discussion so what are your thoughts?—

  • Shihali@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    4·
    1 year ago

    You deeply misunderstood my argument and threw in gratuitous insults. So I’ll try to explain it again with a character.

    Jane Churchlady is a social conservative. She believes that God disapproves of homosexuality. She thinks same-sex marriage shouldn’t have been made legal, and she says so. She votes for the local right-wing party, but she can’t bring herself to vote for the racist far right party. Jane Churchlady will not change her belief that God disapproves of homosexuality, and isn’t willing to lie about it to stay on a social network.

    What do you do when Jane Churchlady registers for Lemmy?

    1. If you let Jane Churchlady stay, she says that while she prays for gay people, they are sinful in the eyes of God.

    2. If you ban Jane Churchlady, she’s out of your feed, but she registers for Gab instead and starts voting for the racist far right party after reading the posts there. Because you tried to deplatform her, she has been radicalized. If you hadn’t tried to deplatform her, she wouldn’t have switched to Gab and wouldn’t have been radicalized.

    3. If you’ve got a third scenario, tell me what happens to Jane Churchlady.

    • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      You already answered your own question…

      Jane Churchlady will not change her belief that God disapproves of homosexuality, and isn’t willing to lie about it to stay on a social network.

      Then her opinion isn’t built on rationality and it’s useless to try and convince her she’s wrong, there’s no reason to tolerate her on an instance where “no bigotry” (or something similar) is a rule. The good news is that other instances will welcome her if she absolutely wants to join Lemmy… It’s still much harder to find these instances or other alt-right social medias than to find platforms that are actually moderated. Why? Because the vast majority of people still don’t want to discuss with people from either extremes (tankies or alt-right). So in the end chances are she’ll just give up and stop taking part in discussions about gay rights.

      Sure, some fall down the deep end, but you’re still ignoring the fact that it’s much easier to recruit people if your recruitment campaigns are tolerated than it is if you’re trying to do it by JAQing, hiding messages, contacting people one by one or other similar tactics used to make people fall down a rabbit hole.

      You’re scared for Jane and you want to protect her by exposing thousands more to the message instead of making it hard to find the people who want to share the message… That makes very little sense to me 🤷

      But the way, if you felt insulted it might be because the hat fits, my last paragraph was purely rhetorical.

      • Shihali@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        If you’ve already concluded that Jane Churchlady, a figure I constructed to be a social conservative who isn’t an extremist, is in reality an extremist then we’ve been talking past each other for quite a while.

        So you’re very worried that if Christian bien-pensants are exposed to Jane Churchlady saying that gay marriage is against the will of God and she’s praying for gay couples, several of them will think she has a point and drift rightward, and preventing that is worth driving Jane Churchlady herself into extremism? I’d discounted the possibility that Jane Churchlady would convert anyone rather than be a nuisance. I can follow your logic now, although your conclusion that building a fence around bien-pensants is worth outright handing a 10-20% market share to extremists is a hard pill to swallow.

        But the way, if you felt insulted it might be because the hat fits, my last paragraph was purely rhetorical.

        Your answer to being called out making a backhanded accusation is to make another backhanded accusation?

      • Feweroptions@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Ah yes, the good old “if I insinuate or say something awful about you and it offends you, it’s because you’re guilty.”

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Anyway, if you hang around racists or homophobes or genocide deniers, you don’t contradict them and you fight for their “right” to share their bigoted opinions then what does that make you? 🤔

          I’m not talking about OP, I’m talking about the “not so extremists” that they mentioned in their post. If these people decide to join those getting deplatformed instead of questioning why they got deplatformed then maybe it’s because they’re closeted racists or homophobes or genocide deniers. If OP felt insulted by that then it’s their problem and yes it might be because they feel concerned because they would rather join those getting deplatformed than question why spreading shit in everyone’s plate shouldn’t be tolerated.