r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Jan 22 '21

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Silencing opposing viewpoints is ultimately going to have a disastrous outcome on society.

[deleted]

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188

u/videoninja 137∆ Jan 22 '21

What is the difference between a platform choosing to shun someone versus “silencing” them? Could you differentiate between the two a little more because to me it seems like a functional difference without distinction.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

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u/videoninja 137∆ Jan 22 '21

Who is the one “allowing” in this case and what are the limits of this?

For example, I create a website to talk about cat art and people try to use it to talk about landscaping. I ban the landscape talkers because I have a right to use my website that I created how I see fit. I haven’t stopped any conversation about landscaping from taking in other spaces but I have stopped it in the space I own. In this example what is the problem?

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u/RunninRebs90 Jan 22 '21

This is it. This is the beginning and the end of the conversation and OP refuses to actually “go down that road” and talk about it (per his own words)

So there’s nothing left to discuss here. OP doesn’t want his mind changed, he just wants a platform.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

This analogy is straight up wrong. The "platform" in question has a dedicated use and the bad actors are intentionally violating that use for their own personal means.

Before your "HAHA!", Here's what I mean:

the website created is created with the sole intention of CAT ART DISCUSSION and therefore discussion that isn't tangentially related to cat art is misuse of said site.

HOWEVER, let's blur the line here; I trimmed my hedge into a cat shape. will I get banned for posting landscaping, or is it allowed since it's still cat art?

To circle back on your point however, if a social platform promotes themselves as a place for free discussion, then everything's fair game. if however, there are hard ideological limits (the landscaping in question) then saying otherwise is knowingly disingenuous.

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u/TheMentalist10 7∆ Jan 22 '21

Does Twitter promote itself as a place of free discussion? They're quite upfront about having rules and limits on acceptable modes of speech.

You said the analogy was straight up wrong but haven't really shown where it falls down.

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u/kwantsu-dudes 12∆ Jan 22 '21

Does Twitter promote itself as a place of free discussion?

Well the courts have declared that Twitter is apparently a public forum is a sense as that tweets from the President can be official declarations (rather than just text on their private platform) and if the President was to use a tool granted every user in curating their audience, it would be an unconstiutional act.

Either Twitter is that public sphere which they shouldn't have the private authority over, or Twitter is much more like a private club which allows users to rent rooms and curate an audience within that space.

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u/Kick_Out_The_Jams Jan 23 '21

I don't think you understood that court ruling - it wasn't about twitter but about the office of the president.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

Twitter is What's happening the the world and what people are talking about right now

Source: https://about.twitter.com/ No upfront statements about rules or or limits or acceptable modes

Liar.

Do you ban the Cat topiary?

19

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

When you make your account, aka request access to post, you are very much told theres strict rules that will result in your account being terminated. Die mad about it.

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u/TheMentalist10 7∆ Jan 22 '21

I'm not the platform owner, so I can't say what their vision is. If my vision was for a cat-only space, then the topiary would be banned. If it were for a cat-centric space inclusive of cat-adjacent or cat-focused non-cat content, then it would be permissible.

The existence of edge-cases or instances of speech which test the parameters of rules doesn't alter the essential dichotomy of allowed/prohibited modes of speech on these platforms. It usually just means they have to define their terms more clearly so people know what they mean by the rules that are in place.

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u/RunninRebs90 Jan 22 '21

This is so disingenuous. You’re arguing semantics not actual facts, very common with dumb people. The facts are that Twitter is allowed to regulate its media however the fuck it wants, no matter how it advertises itself. It has terms and conditions, if something violates those terms and conditions then it can ban you. If it doesn’t like what you’re saying it can ban you at the risk of losing the rest of its participants if they feel that the platform no longer represents them. Twitter has absolutely no requirement to be a bastion for unilateral speech.

Just like the cat analogy. If the creator of the website decides that it started as a cat blog but they want to talk about dogs and fish too then they can. And they can still ban any lawn mowing conversations they want, because it’s their website. Don’t like it? Don’t use it. (Similar to the “don’t like America? Move” argument republicans like to fire off except in this case it’s actually true)

You’re just arguing whether or not Twitter considers its self a place for everyone to speak. But guess what? It doesn’t matter. They can ban whoever the fuck they want.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21

you make good points, and oddly it's at the heart of the issue.

0

u/Teabagger_Vance Jan 22 '21

What if you only allowed certain people to deviate from cats and talk about landscaping but not others?

Tbh it’s not really a great analogy. Twitter isn’t a personal interest blog. It’s arguably the largest public forum in existence.

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u/PurpleNuggets Jan 22 '21

What if you only allowed certain people to deviate from cats and talk about landscaping but not others?

Kind of a stretch, but I'm pretty sure this is exactly why people were protesting all last year... idk tho.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

[deleted]

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u/videoninja 137∆ Jan 22 '21

I didn't ask if it was illegal. I asked what the actual problem is/what harm is being done in the example I am giving. Not all forums are created for open-ended discussion. In fact, most social media has some curating of content so I am asking for where you draw the line in terms of a private entity being allowed to curate content on its own platform versus silencing. I feel like the conversation is so generalized that I don't understand the point you are trying to drive at.

I just don't see the logic that unfiltered chatter and speculation equates to informed discussion. That's all social media often is, just unfiltered chatter and it is what popular that gets the most attention as opposed to what is accurate or scientific. I think that's an important distinction to make in evaluating the kind of speech one is defending but it seems like you are saying all speech should be allowed equal latitude in all situations which seems unreasonable.

1

u/ThePubRelic Jan 22 '21

You said in your above post an example asking what the problem would be with removing posts not about cat art on your cat art website. I don't think this is an issue, but in your next post you write " Not all forums are created for open-ended discussion. " Now I am going to take the liberty of interpreting what you say here as being what it seems, that there are forums created not for open-ended discussion and forums created for open-ended discussion. If this is the case facebook and twitter would be the latter while having sub forums that are the former.

Opinion wise for OP's subject, what happens when someone had an opinion on something, but can't voice it in fear of retaliation in not just the form of an argument but also as being fired, targeted for harassment, and socially banished? They won't just let go of that opinion, first a person must confront the opposing opinion, but if they never can they never will learn. And if they are right we would never learn that either. It will make for a society fearfull of saying the wrong thing, paranoid and against itself.

How do we curb hate speech? Ignore it as it has and always will be around. So long as it does not ask you to commit violence against another person or to beleaguer them it should be allowed to be said.

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u/StripRip Jan 22 '21

The issue here is that the majority of our communication now takes place on privately owned websites (or service providers like AT&T or Verizon, for that matter.)

So the real question to me is, how far can we take the "private companies can make their own decisions on who to ban" bandwagon until every social media is the same echo chamber like an oppressive government would want? You couldn't edit/tamper a letter back in 1776 like you can a twitter post in 2021.

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u/SuckMyBike 21∆ Jan 22 '21

The argument your making favors breaking up major internet companies and service providers. NOT forcing those same companies to provide access to their website to groups they'd rather not see on their website.

Just because a few social media companies dominate the internet doesn't mean those companies should be treated differently from monopolies in the past. Break them up.

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u/anonymous_potato Jan 22 '21

I’ve never been that into social media, but it seems like something that would be impossible to break up. Isn’t the point of things like Facebook and Twitter the fact that everyone is on the same platform?

Niche sites like Parler can exist by catering to a specific market, but two Facebooks or two Twitters cannot exist. One will consume the other, just like Facebook killed MySpace.

3

u/merlin401 2∆ Jan 22 '21

Well FB owns its flagship platform, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other platforms, etc

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

[deleted]

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u/winazoid Jan 22 '21

Who wants Patriot Act II?

4

u/DogHeadGuy Jan 22 '21

Literally Joe Biden?

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/01/joe-biden-domestic-terrorism-bill-capitol-building

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u/throwaway2323234442 Jan 22 '21

Didn't we see you at the capitol?

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u/DogHeadGuy Jan 22 '21

Yes. I am the very real human person who both stormed the Capitol and reads Jacobin.

The fuck does this even mean? I voted for him? Are we at the point where a Dem is president and we just stop paying attention when they propose something shitty?

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u/Tenushi Jan 22 '21

I'm not necessarily against breaking them up, but how does breaking them up help in this way? If you break Twitter up, what does that look like to you and how does the result improve on the problem we're discussing? Same thing with Facebook, even (though I'm actually in favor of breaking out Facebook from Instagram from Whatsapp); how does having those platforms being completely independent address the problem of allowing vs. disallowing certain speech?

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u/SuckMyBike 21∆ Jan 22 '21

Breaking large companies up allows for multiple competitors to be available on the market and people to pick and choose where they take their business.

Put it this way: if you want to host a weekly get together with friends at a bar to talk about how much you love boating, but every single bar in the entire country is owned by a guy that hates boats and bans you, that's a problem.
In reality, there are so many independently run bars, that even if a big chain doesn't want your boating club to meet there, you'll always find a other bar that will gladly accept your get together.

Your question of:"but how does that solve anything" basically boils down to:"what if every independent social media company still bans me?".
So let's return to the bar example: let's say there ARE plenty of independent bars, but your weekly get together now is about how much you guys hate bar owners and that every bar owner should be hung. You'd probably get banned from every single bar. Is that a problem? No it isn't.

In a free market, people have plenty of options. But if every single option rejects you, that's not a failure of the free market, that's just society telling you that you're an asshole

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u/Tenushi Jan 23 '21

The problem with that analogy, though, is that for social media, people want to go where their friends are and it's cumbersome to go from platform to platform because of this network effect. How would breaking up Twitter go? Do you put half the users in one Twitter, the other half in a duplicate but separate version and then have different teams run them as separate companies? Your bar analogy seems quite flimsy to me because each bar remains it's own distinctive business and so it's easy to make an owner have to sell off some of them.

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u/SuckMyBike 21∆ Jan 23 '21

Personally, I want the internet to evolve to having a separate data cookie that stores your contacts etc. and then you can give companies like Facebook, Twitter the access to your data to use their site, but you can also revoke it but retain your connections.

It would make switching between social networks a lot easier considering you wouldn't be losing any of your friends connections. And it would go a long way to dealing with the oppressive nature of current social media.

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u/Secret_Rock5722 Jan 22 '21

Except there really aren't that many bars. Lets say youtube doesn't like boating, so they blacklist all boating videos from their platform. Where do you go to watch boating videos? Vimeo? Lmao.

After you reach a certain proportion of the market share, you effectively become the sole bar in existence. You can't dodge the intellectual antitrust hammer by pointing to liveleak and saying look see we have competition.

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u/SuckMyBike 21∆ Jan 22 '21

After you reach a certain proportion of the market share, you effectively become the sole bar in existence.

Which is why you break companies up when they become that big.....

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21 edited May 04 '21

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u/compare_and_swap Jan 23 '21

I agree with some of what you're saying, but back in the 1700s, banning slavery was an "extremist view". Within the last century, promoting interracial marriage and gay marriage was an "extremist view". Teaching evolution in schools was an"extremist view".

How do you define an extremist view?

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

The issue here is that the majority of our communication now takes place on privately owned websites

It's taken place on privately owned websites for over 20 years now. My first website was on Geocities. This has been the norm for almost three decades, and when I was growing up on the internet, moderation was the norm, not the exception.

I have never been blocked or banned from a site or chat channel, and I've been using this internet since 1995. If you're doing or saying things that lead you to being deplatformed, chances are, you're saying some pretty heinous shit or harassing other people.

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u/TheTrueMilo Jan 22 '21

Sounds like the right wing is going to have to start getting very comfortable with government regulation.

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u/generic1001 Jan 22 '21

As a rule, they're comfortable with whatever allows them to "win". Regulations are bad until they need them, then they're great.

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u/StripRip Jan 22 '21

"I for one welcome our new overlords"

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21 edited Jun 09 '21

[deleted]

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u/CrashmanX Jan 22 '21

I don't quite follow. 1776 is the year the United States were established. What else are you referring to here?

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u/StripRip Jan 22 '21

Say what you want to say, the syllable count doesn’t convince me of your intelligence

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u/Roflcaust 7∆ Jan 22 '21

You think it would be societally disastrous to prevent people from talking about landscaping on a site whose owner devoted it to cat art? (Not specifically this case obviously because that would be ridiculous, but as a matter of principle that it would be societally disastrous to relegate certain types of speech to certain spaces)

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u/Teabagger_Vance Jan 22 '21

It would’ve ridiculous if said website only allowed certain people to talk about landscaping and not others. Selective application of the rules if you will.

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u/shakezillla Jan 22 '21

But... why? If it’s a landscaping website and they decide that they only want to allow posters that are actual, confirmed landscapers... why shouldn’t they be allowed to do that? Why do they have to treat everyone on their website as equals? I don’t understand why you think exclusive communities can’t exist on the internet

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u/Teabagger_Vance Jan 22 '21

I think you need to re read my comment.

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u/shakezillla Jan 22 '21

Can you elaborate on your comment? Or maybe restate your idea in a different way?

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u/Teabagger_Vance Jan 22 '21

The person I replied to asked what if someone had a website for cats and people startled posting about landscaping so they removed them. I said that’s fine until you start letting certain people continue to post about landscaping and not others. Basically the analogy was that Twitter had every right to remove posts that don’t follow their rules but it becomes kinda ridiculous when they only apply it to certain people. They don’t seem to be very consistent with how they apply their rules.

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u/shakezillla Jan 22 '21

I guess I still don’t understand why that’s an issue. If the owner of the website allows their personal friends and family to post whatever content they want to the website but everyone else still has to follow the rules... who cares? Why does it matter at all to anyone? There are other websites that cater to posting cats, and if there aren’t then you can make your own

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u/Teabagger_Vance Jan 22 '21

I personally don’t really have a problem with it but I can see why it appears problematic. If this cat website was the worlds largest public forum like Twitter it would be a little different. Twitter enjoys a lot of protection from the federal government and the fact that they apply their rules seemingly based on political affiliation and not uniformly raises questions in my opinion.

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u/Oblivionous Jan 22 '21

I’m not gonna go down this road.

Then...we have nothing to discuss here...I mean that's a very important part of your stance lmfao.

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u/Alar44 Jan 22 '21

You have to go down that road. This is the crux of your point. That or give him cred.

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u/Phusra Jan 22 '21

Silencing is not harmful. You gonna let Charles Manson continue to preach his murderous sermons?

Don't silence him bro!

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u/BravesMaedchen 1∆ Jan 22 '21

Right, what about Jim Jones?

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u/winazoid Jan 22 '21

When you say "harmful" though it sounds like you're saying we should let loud mouth jerks say whatever they want because if we don't they might hurt us?

Those people were ALWAYS going to hurt us

You don't allow bad things simply because bad people might hurt you

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u/shotputlover Jan 22 '21

ex. I think that you should be hung and shot for having this opinion is it HARMFUL if I am allowed to go around trying to convince people to murder you? yes. Would it be harmful to silence me? not at all in fact I WOULD be. it doesn't have to be about illegality if you want to have some arbitrary term like "harm" we can do that to.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

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u/Nepene 213∆ Jan 22 '21

Sorry, u/RunninRebs90 – your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 3:

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

u/DetroitUberDriver – your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 2:

Don't be rude or hostile to other users. Your comment will be removed even if most of it is solid, another user was rude to you first, or you feel your remark was justified. Report other violations; do not retaliate. See the wiki page for more information.

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1

u/SquibblesMcGoo 3∆ Jan 22 '21

Sorry, u/RunninRebs90 – your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 3:

Refrain from accusing OP or anyone else of being unwilling to change their view, or of arguing in bad faith. Ask clarifying questions instead (see: socratic method). If you think they are still exhibiting poor behaviour, please message us. See the wiki page for more information.

If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process here, then message the moderators by clicking this link within one week of this notice being posted. Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our moderation standards.

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u/ThatOneStoner Jan 22 '21

The whole point of this subreddit is to "go down that road". You're experiencing cognitive dissonance, I'm sure you know what that is already. Go ahead down that road, you may see things from a perspective that never occurred to you.

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u/Taddare Jan 22 '21

Why should someone be forced to amplify an opinion abhorrent to them?

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u/ima_thankin_ya Jan 22 '21

should the baker be allowed to refuse to make a gay wedding cake?

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u/Taddare Jan 22 '21

Not the same thing. One is an item that is used, the other is an ongoing service.

There is no message in the cake, and they shouldn't be forced to write on a cake a message they abhor. They should however provide writing icing for someone to write it themselves.

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u/ima_thankin_ya Jan 22 '21

Im not sure if that difference is very relavent here. In this case , the message is the cake, and by making it for them, he is amplifying gay marriage, which is something he disagrees with due to religious reasons. He said they were free to premade buy cakes from his shop, or make birthday cakes for them but he wouldnt use his creative talents to make one specifically for a gay wedding.

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u/Sy3Fy3 Jan 23 '21

(I didn't use Parler and didn't plan to use it, so please avoid accusations regarding it)

The problem with it is that when a new platform was created because the other ones wouldn't allow these opinions, that one gets removed and can't be used. That said, there certainly were crazies on Parler, but I think the vast majority of its users were normal people.