Opinion POTWR 2019 Vol 7: Change My Mind That The Word "Platform" Is Orwellian

[Cubo de Sangre]

So we agree that 5A is out, right? 2B or not 2B--that is the question.

No. The usual course of action is to post what one wishes to publish on these platforms and people are being told to restrain themselves from sharing certain viewpoints under threat of being removed. But it doesn't matter since there is no question regarding "to stop or prohibit the publication". That's exactly what's happening.

 

[Higus]

That is what I am concerned with here.

Do you really think I am so sympathetic to the alt-right that is being targeted?

They are censoring political speech. Misnaming someone is political speech. Hell, denying the Holocaust is political speech.

Someone once said something to me about dating a girl who cheated on her boyfriend when you first hooked up with her, and it has always stuck with me.

"If she will do it for you, she will do it to you."

How long until your political ideas are deemed dangerous and offensive?

You are evoking the slippery slope. Just because someone is kicked off a platform does not mean they don't have the right to say what they want on a different platform, or that eventually less controversial opinions will be targeted. Even if it isn't clearly defined at the moment, there are probably some reasonable points on a spectrum where an idea shifts from "good" to "neutral" to "bad". It is possible to ban a bad idea from a platform without affecting the good ideas, while the neutral ideas get sorted out one way or another. White Supremacists, for instance, are an easy target to get rid of, and there shouldn't be a lot of debate on the merit of allowing them to continue based on the strengths of the ideas of White Supremacy in itself.

 

[BarryDillon]

But they are. Misnaming is 100% evidence they are in fact doing this.

I don't know what misnaming is. Can you provide a definition and an example, please?

 

[VivaRevolution]

You are evoking the slippery slope. Just because someone is kicked off a platform does not mean they don't have the right to say what they want on a different platform, or that eventually less controversial opinions will be targeted. Even if it isn't clearly defined at the moment, there are probably some reasonable points on a spectrum where an idea shifts from "good" to "neutral" to "bad". It is possible to ban a bad idea from a platform without affecting the good ideas, while the neutral ideas get sorted out one way or another. White Supremacists, for instance, are an easy target to get rid of, and there shouldn't be a lot of debate on the merit of allowing them to continue based on the strengths of the ideas of White Supremacy in itself.

I 100% support the supreme courts decision to allow KKK marches. I 100% support the right of people to believe the Holocaust is fake.

I don't believe that bad ideas win because they are heard.

Nor do I believe that silencing them will make them go away.

The slippery slope is real.

 

[Higus]

I 100% support the supreme courts decision to allow KKK marches. I 100% support the right of people to believe the Holocaust is fake.

I don't believe that bad ideas win because they are heard.

The slippery slope is real.

That's fine, but a KKK march is in public space and people can believe whatever they want. I'm speaking from the platform owners perspective. There is a clear, definable line between what happens in real life and online spaces.

 

[Fawlty]

Yes, and I show my context by saying there is plenty of good censorship, like laws against child porn.

You show your context, by still refusing to engage in debate with this language, when that point has been conceded.

Your argument is that the Orwellian use of the word "platform" is a sneaky way of censoring speech, and that legal speech, no matter how offensive, should be hosted on websites that are "democratized" or perhaps in essence "too big/too important to censor."

When we look at the workings of your argument, I see it lacks convincing reasons to consider the word "platform" a use of doublespeak (and when we've dug into "censorship" I've noticed a resistance to clear, unambiguous uses of the term in context).

While the Orwellian question on platforms leads into your argument and isn't necessarily central to it, it's close to being circular reasoning. I don't think we can proceed on that premise (it's blown, imo), but thankfully we don't have to because it's not central to the argument that Facebook is too big to censor at this level of information democracy.

When we get to that part of the argument, you say that information is democratized. As I understand the term, it just means the level of common access is increasing. We saw the same thing with the printing press and papermaking when people no longer had to be rich to access books, so it's not entirely unfamiliar to us as a concept. Gates of knowledge in both cases have been blown open (we now have in Wikipedia a gigantic, free, democratic encyclopedia that is very useful despite its astonishing shortcomings and political infighting). Only proprietary corporate and academic information remains locked away (aside from government secrets), and I do want the academic knowledge released, because it is holding back human progress (namely, mine). So I'm very sympathetic to some of the feelings that freedom of information is very desirable and important.

When people like Jones break the terms of service on the platform he is using, the owners of that platform may "censor" him, though as we've established it's not like government censorship at all, and it would be better to use less ambiguous terms than "censor" to avoid doublespeak.


Let's address "change my mind." What you've done is assert something and then ask people to challenge it. You've not made a proper argument here. It's like a preemptive commitment to contrarianism. As I pointed out, the term "democratization of information" is about the level of public access to information, and not necessarily relevant to the rights of private discernment, platforming, censorship, association, etc. The first thing that comes to mind is that Jones has his own website (where, by the way, he has terms of service very similar to YouTube). But that is on you, as addressing those things should be part of your argument. This "change my mind" stuff is not useful, it's bad form unless it contains an argument and not just a string of assertions, like that it's better for terrible ideas to be given the biggest platform and broadcast as loudly as possible. You haven't done enough work here.

 

[Trotsky]

No. You know that censorship is a bad thing. We all know this.

The only time it isn't bad, is in extreme scenarios.

That is what you are trying to avoid. That once the word censorship is invoked. The bar for the use of censorship is raised very high, and for very good reason. Censorship is very dangerous.

This is such a bad post, man.

I mean, you started it out with:

And then you doubled down on, almost to a level of parody, the noncentral fallacy that Higus pointed out just a page before.

 

[MikeMcMann]

No. I am saying they are lying, and need to be called out on it.

That they use the word platform to avoid responsibility of silencing speech.

It maybe your right to silence speech by removing someone from your property, although utilities can't do that, but that doesn't mean it would be supported by people.

What the word platform is, is mitigating opportunity loss. It is bean counters trying to have there cake and eat it too.

They want to be able to appease their advertisers, and not experience the backlash from the public that supports free speech, a idea we have all been indoctrinated into as a shared value.

Ya, you cannot silence speech in the Internet Age. You need look no further than how a site like HuffPo found its audience and managed to grow.

There are certain people who cannot find a platform for their speech. If they try to create it no one will come. It is undesired and unpopular with enough critical mass to be sustainable. But they have learned they can piggyback off others platforms and basically troll with the same garbage that gets no traction on its own platform and game an audience that way.

Its the easiest thing in this day and age to create your own platform and get out your speech if its desired. If its not then you better hope you can piggyback on someone else and that they allow you because they see mutual benefit otherwise you are asking for the platform to allow him to be a parasite. Potentially hurting their platform, costing them advertisers and revenue, etc all to give him one he cannot build himself.

 

[Jack V Savage]

No. The usual course of action is to post what one wishes to publish on these platforms and people are being told to restrain themselves from sharing certain viewpoints under threat of being removed. But it doesn't matter since there is no question regarding "to stop or prohibit the publication". That's exactly what's happening.

But again, you're not stopping publication by not choosing to host it.

Also, no one liked the Hamlet joke? Bah.

 

[MikeMcMann]

So why not this same principle with the telecoms?

Why do we need net nuetrality, but not an electronic bill of rights?

Why should telecoms be a utility, but not social media?

Part of the flaw of that line of thinking is that there are fewer consumer options for telecoms compared to social media outlets. Telecom regulation is a matter of consumer protection, not speech. If a telecom decides to fuck over its consumers, there may be no other options to provide an essential service. Compare that to Social Media and there are lots of options to choose from, or if someone is inclined, the barrier to entry is negligible in comparison to starting a telecom provider.

Telecoms would be compared to Roads and Social Media, places to congregate and interact along that road.

Telecoms are infrastructure and often paid for with layered gov't subsidy and protection. you cannot just start a competitive telecom and start digging up the roads or putting in the infrastructure.

Social media compares more to a restaurant or social interaction spot along that road.

So blocking your use of the road is entirely different than blocking your restaurant choice. You can start your own restaurant or platform like HuffPo did if your message is popular. But you cannot go conduct your own business in the restaurant if they don't like it and if they find it adverse to their interests.

 

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

OP seems to make the assumption that "de-platform" is a euphemism for "limit speech". It's always seemed clear to me that while you don't need to keep something from ever being said, you also have no obligation to give the speaker a microphone. De-platforming is really just taking the microphone away.

There was a pretty sensible NYT article about this last year that stirred up some commotion, I'm sure it was posted here a couple times too.

 

[MikeMcMann]

As posted earlier, "de-platforming" is the definition of censorship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship



Your and the other poster's unwillingness to admit this is evidence of exactly what @VivaRevolution is talking about (i.e. the deliberate use of a term that distracts from the nature of what's taking place). Is there some harm in acknowledging this simple fact?




No fallacy on my part. The word means what it means and you're welcome to agree with something being censored, but that agreement doesn't change the facts.

As for the MLK being a criminal, someone can commit crimes and not be considered that. Same as someone can tell some lies and not be considered a liar. Twitter can engage in censorship without being thought of as a censor. Nice try though.

I'm just catching up with this thread but think you are being pretty disingenuous here.

First off 'context' does matter and in particular full context. I can pick through parts of the definition and say they do not apply or apply only generally.

But the main issue is your labelling anyone who does not share your view as not being "honest" is a problem.

I sometime go to Speaker series where anyone can volunteer to present a topic and people can attend and pick their presentation as interested.

You, a controversial speaker, see the room for your speech is empty. No one cares to attend. But the room next door with another topic is full and you jump in before that speaker starts, and are told to leave, you have not been censored. You can go into the room that was set aside for you and speak to the empty room.

To try and apply a literal definition (well he was prevented from speaking) to suggest you are being censored because you want to talk to the full room, is asinine.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

But again, you're not stopping publication by not choosing to host it.

I already addressed this angle. Let's take another approach after looking again at the definition of censorship.

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient".[1][2][3] Censorship can be conducted by a government[4] private institutions, and corporations.

What are the forms of censorship that can be conducted by private institutions and corporations?

Telecoms would be compared to Roads and Social Media, places to congregate and interact along that road.

Telecoms are infrastructure and often paid for with layered gov't subsidy and protection. you cannot just start a competitive telecom and start digging up the roads or putting in the infrastructure.

Social media compares more to a restaurant or social interaction spot along that road.

So blocking your use of the road is entirely different than blocking your restaurant choice. You can start your own restaurant or platform like HuffPo did if your message is popular. But you cannot go conduct your own business in the restaurant if they don't like it and if they find it adverse to their interests.

Switching gears a little, do you consider Trump's use of Twitter the domain of the people (as covered under the Freedom of Information Act)?

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

OP seems to make the assumption that "de-platform" is a euphemism for "limit speech".

It is.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

I'm just catching up with this thread but think you are being pretty disingenuous here.

Then I guess we have nothing to discuss.

 

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

It is.

I think you missed a bit of that post.

 

[Cubo de Sangre]

I think you missed a bit of that post.

I read it. Doesn't seem to contradict the part I quoted.

 

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

Another distinction: let's say you value free speech as a method of "experimenting with ideas" or something like that, where people need to be able to spontaneously voice their immediate thoughts in order for the "market" of ideas to function and select.

"Platforming" is not analagous to that. To offer a platform is to deliberately select from among the pool of ideas and use some amount of finite resources to amplify what was selected. It's perfectly legitimate to question why certain ideas are chosen and if making them louder is really the best use of an institution's time and energy (not to mention its reputation).

 

[Tycho- Taylor's Version]

I read it. Doesn't seem to contradict the part I quoted.

You left out the actual argument and made an empty assertion.

I thought this was supposed to be a more discursive thread, or something.

 

[MikeMcMann]

The use of unambiguously bad things like rape and animal abuse are meant to expose those wavy-gravy objections like "it wouldn't be hard to get worked up about" and force people to address this with respect to the issue here, which is the demand that companies host things they don't want to host, and associate themselves and their advertisers with things they don't want to be associated with, which is their right at their discretion.

You don't understand the word "platform" if that is your response. They are not taking "someone's" platform, they are denying the use of THEIR OWN platform. If we can't get past this critical fact, I don't have a lot of hope for the discussion.

if you don't let me on CNN to discuss my flat earth theory you are taking away my platform.
Particularly if it was in the pre-internet days. CNN, Science shows, all need to let me on to air my view too.