It's hard to measure, but it does often bring attention to them when we have these discussions. I do feel the left's online attitude is firing back more than it's helping them. More than anything it makes people who had no position to take a side, which benefits those that are banking on the controversies the most.
China is particularly problematic because they are huge and powerful. I agree it would be better to use democratic countries instead, but since that's not gonna happen, I'm glad companies are at least moving to smaller countries.
> I can't name any deplatformed views that aren't hate speech. If you can, I'd like to hear about them to broaden my views.
This is the initial comment we are discussing. It’s a pretty specific choice of words, so it’s not unreasonable to continue the discussion based on a reasonable interpretation of those actual words.
That claim is the specific issue being discussed, so I don’t think it’s a distraction. If you’re interested in some other issue, then by all means openly discuss that.
If the challenge was just to name any event that has occurred that didn’t involve hate speech, then sure, we can list many such events.
No, that's ebg13 trying to narrow the scope of the discussion so they don't have to address the issue. The same thing that's happening in this subthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21143570
Your quote is a response to throwawaysea's comment, which is clearly much more general than that:
>Leaving aside culture wars waged by individuals, I see institutional tightening on free speech all over America. I see it in big tech companies, where only a progressive monoculture exists with no psychological safety for other viewpoints. I see it in censorship applied by defacto digital public squares like YouTube. I see it in the left's rampant use of deplatforming to silence opposing views. Increasingly, I also see it in universities (see this incident at the University of Washington today https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-university-of-was...).
Frankly, all those things that people are going "is it deplatforming?" pretty much are deplatforming, but I figured pointing out the distraction tactic was worth more than engaging in the argument over definitions.
>they were buried under poorly understood and debunked science and statements that were easily misunderstood.
I didn't read his essay or follow this case at all, but from Wikipedia it seems he was arguing that biological differences between the sexes are a driving factor for the lack of women programmers at Google. That's a position that's solidly backed by the science.
And he based some of his example on "facts" tht were debunked in the 70s. In fact i think i remember one of his argument was so easily recognisable as debunked that i thought "Well, writting a paper on sociology without having ever read sociology papers, who taught this guy?". It's not even Donning-kruger, because he did not even had the basics.
I mean, come on, if it was a paper in any other field, even economy, people here at HN would have either ignored him or called him out.
Anyway he was dumb and should not have been fired (unless this essay looked like his work at Google).
The point of my downvoted comment is that Damore is not a good example of censored speech. You guys are on here discussing the essay because it is famous. Millions of people read it. Not sure why I was downvoted for pointing that out except that there seems to be a cult of defending the guy.
Millions read it only because of the backlash, but what about all the people who didn't speak up because of the fear of getting abused by angry mobs and fired? You can't pretend a censorship attempt isn't one just because it backfired and failed.
Maybe there's also an effect where people try to be controversial in order to get attention, because it plays in to a narrative that makes a lot people feel better about themselves because they find someone to blame for their problems. Don't you think?
Not just the US. I think this is being driven by the social dynamics of the Internet. Things like filter bubbles and click-driven journalism. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter shape discussions in particular ways that are very different than offline.
The parent, in a reply to a sibling comment to mine [1]:
> Yes, totally agree. These big companies must be broken up, or treated with a much greater degree of regulation (effectively holding them to the standards that the government is held to, as sole provider of some functions).
I am sympathetic to breaking up big companies (albeit because of a dislike of private consolidations of power, rather than a commitment to freedom of speech). But their alternative proposal is exactly the scenario to which I was referring.
I somehow missed that. His proposal sounds much more narrow however, targeting only companies that have become a "sole provider of some functions". I do think breaking up the monopoly is a no-brainer in this scenario.
I agree with breaking up the monopoly! But again, it's because I dislike concentrated power in general, not because of their power over speech specifically.
My issue here isn't with the idea that we do something about large tech companies. It's the proposal to abridge legal freedom of speech, masquerading as an attempt to protect free speech. OP is presenting this as an objective argument about freedom, when really they just don't like where the lines are drawn.
I think we mostly agree. I was just replying to the idea that people are calling for the government to force speech, which felt like a weird notion (though when it comes to the political extremes, I'm sure both sides would love nothing more than total control over what's acceptable speech).
Wouldn't it better for MIT's reputation if people weren't jumping to the conclusion that one of their professors would willingly rape people? Did anyone actually believe Marvin Minsky of all people would do that? I wonder what he will have to say about this when he gets unfrozen.
Using the word assault causes people to believe a different thing happened. It says nothing about the gravity of each kind of crime except that they shouldn't be the same.
The only reason "sexual assault" covers what allegedly took place is because the expression was redefined in the first place to cover two separate things, which is exactly the problem. Stallman called not for redefining "sexual assault" as you put it, but for undoing a redefinition that puts it at odds with how those terms are conventionally used and causes unnecessary confusion.
And "free software" makes people believe that the software costs nothing, but Stallman's position there isn't to suggest that we should always use a different term. Why not?
I agree the expression "Free Software" has the same problem. However the alternatives also have some problems. He discusses that here: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
(I'm sure you've already read it, but it's always worth a re-read)
I'm partial to the term "Libre" myself, though in this case it doesn't matter much, since it's a concept that people aren't familiar with anyway and you have to explain it no matter what word you use.
