For me it feels like breaking up with someone after many years. At the same time, I feel a bit dirty mentioning the name in the post title.
For me it feels like breaking up with someone after many years. At the same time, I feel a bit dirty mentioning the name in the post title.
I respectfully disagree.
First of all, on Reddit I rarely ran into right wing extremists. Do you know who I ran into a LOT? Left wing extremists. That is what tends to happen when you start polarizing discussions (both sides) and then kick out one side. The other side just becomes an echo chamber.
Second of all, this is not a problem you can ignore. Its not as if these people just magically disappear into thin air once you ban them. You can’t deplatform them because they’ll just go to another place. Where will they go? To their own moderated places, which will allow much more extreme discussions, leading to more and more polarization and problems in the real world. I think part of the problem here is that we (collectively) stopped listening to people in minor disagreements, and instead of having reasoned arguments, just kicked these people out to the curb. I honestly think that that sort of behavior from the left side of the spectrum is what fueled US polarization which culminated in Donald Trump becoming president.
You may not want to have reasoned discussions with people who are more on the right side of your political spectrum, but you HAVE to. We all have to because if we don’t, they will talk only amongst themselves and they will only fall deeper and deeper into their right wing pit. Have no illusion, the same goes for left wing extremism. Extremism on that end might still be milder, but its there alright.
I’d rather have a group of people with a few minor-and-controllable nutcases in it than a conform-with-the-rules group, and a group of dangerous terrorists outside that group.
There are examples where this was tried. It doesn’t work. People who disagree with Nazis leave the platforms, so the result is the same.
The problem is that there are no Nazis. Nazi’s stopped existing in 1945, anything after that are people that sympathize with some or all of its ideologies. The problem is that its a sliding scale and people these days are VERY trigger happy to call out NAZI! I’ve been called a Nazi on Reddit (and banned from multiple sub reddits) for literally arguing that I’m not sure how good an idea it is to give puberty blockers to kids that might be trans, specially because these blockers do have consequences later in life.
Great, now I’m a Nazi, apparently? Should I be banned now?
When IS a person a Nazi?
I’ve talked a LOT on reddit, I had over 130K karma over probably the same amount of messages. I don’t recall talking to Nazi’s much, if ever. I have had quite a few deep discussions with people on the far right part of the spectrum and it helped me a lot understanding them, where they come from, and why they have the ideas that they have. I call that progress. You can listen to somebody and politely agree to disagree.
What you are pushing for tends to end in censorship. Can’t talk about naughty things now! Can’t disagree with the masses! All look in the same direction! Don’t dare to step out of line!
It also ends in situations where douchenozzles like Trump become president of the USA because the right feels like they no longer have a voice (which truthfully, is correct), so push back harder and extremer.
We MUST allow dissenting voices. Yes, if somebody scants “KILL THE JEWS!”, you ban him of course. But if there is a conversation happening about, say, the “US bathroom issues” I think we should allow dissenting voices. As long as the conversations are respectful and thoughtful, the worst that could happen is progress.