This just seems short-sighted more than anything. It doesn't sound like there's anything technically wrong with the extension (indeed I have often wanted just such an extension), it's merely that the "wrong sort" of people use it. Well, banning it will keep the "wrong sort" of people using it. If everyone jumped on the bandwagon and started using the extension as a generic comment section, then the bright light of day would cleanse it. Instead, by "suppressing" it, they have basically gone out of their way to create a breeding ground.
> If everyone jumped on the bandwagon and started using the extension as a generic comment section, then the bright light of day would cleanse it
Browser extensions aside, if we've learn anything over the past two years of 'Online', it's that this simply isn't true. You can't 'debate' hate speech away.
Surely you can. To believe otherwise is to believe that hate is logically sound. It's just that people's standards for what constitutes "debate" have lowered so much (thanks to Twitter and its ilk) that it no longer holds any persuasive power. Consider that most people in the West were extremely racist just a few decades ago. It didn't take free speech suppression to change this status quo.
If you can surely debate hate away, it is extremely costing for your mental health.
My own experience is that, when doing it face to face it's more easy, you can really get through someone. People are less "protected" and have more emotional connection.
But on the Internet ? I stopped trying. Every time it's the same thing: People prefer to be 'trolls' and just throw insults and bullshit all day. Unless the person is actually willing to have a real discussion, it's almost impossible to "debate" anything. As soon as you are going to try to have a real argument, an horde will just "dunk" on you throwing colorful name all around.
It's sad but i stopped believing in the possibility of having any interesting argument on the internet if it is not amongst a small community or a very moderated one.
I don't think debating is ever a good means to change anyone's point of view on any given subject. Introspection, deliberation, and personal experience, on the other hand, are good means to that end.
Teaching by example is, to my mind, the best way someone can guide others to those personal endeavors, which are the only ones that can grant deep and lasting changes in our world views and beliefs.
Anybody who has done any amount of debating knows that the 'winner' of any debate is the person who is more prepared and better at the abstract skill of "debating", not the person that is 'right' in any meaningful way. As someone who did a fair amount of debating in school I'm confident I would have won/lost every debate I partook in in exactly the same way even if I was debating the other side of the argument.
That implies that election is not about values or politics, but rather which candidate is more prepared and better at the abstract skill of "debating".
There is some major amount of cynicism to that world view, and I prefer to behave as if the world did not exist like that.
Far from it. I believe that values and politics are very important and specifically because of that we have to get away from overvaluing the traditional debate format which does nothing to effectively highlight either.
I believe the view being expressed is that you cannot necessarily reason someone out of a position they did not reason themselves into.
Confronting people who hold a belief for reasons that are not necessarily based on facts or logic can result in them doubling down instead of reconsidering their position.
And you can't debate the other side either without being called a bigot.
Look at the hatred Jordan Peterson gets, who by pretty much all measures is as reasonable a human being as you might expect to meet on average.
There are many online articles these days saying things like "yet another white male point of view" horribly generalizing all white males as the same and that is some how acceptable. It's no different that than me saying all black men listen to hip hop and have big hair. (I'm struggling to generalise but I'm sure the point is clear)
"You can't argue people out of their beliefs" is an acceptable generalization because it's mostly true. There are exceptions, but, for the most part, when a progressive talks to a fascist, for example, there is likely to be little movement in the beliefs of either. In fact, their views are likely to become more entrenched.
I think this has to do more with teaching people proper debate and communication skills than simply banning a platform because you can't teach their users proper debate.
I would argue that internet comments section is exactly what's needed actually. Simply banning them away is basically hiding it under the rug. But that's not going to do anything productive. Banning them will now re-enforce their beliefs and now they will just go to another platform which will be an echo chamber of even more similar "hate" views. This brings up 2 problems -
1. Now we don't even know what they are talking about / planning some extreme crime etc
2. Those people are now only exposed to views which agree to their own points and not exposed to opposing views. So there's nothing which would even allow them to change their minds.
Humans aren't born racist / hateful. They learn it from the environment around them. By exposing them to more counter points, you can make them unlearn that hate too.
You say they learn if from the environment around them. This is exactly right, and this is exactly why you ban racists from your open platforms.
There will always be hardcore hateful people who hide deep in the pockets of the internet. The point is to not normalise them, not let them spread their hatred in public, and not to make people think that sort of attitude is ok.
They are exposed to counterpoints constantly, and it is not changing them.
> They are exposed to counterpoints constantly, and it is not changing them.
This is not correct. This very post's topic implies they aren't exposed to counterpoints. Banning them from every platform possible doesn't allow them to be exposed to counterpoints.
Allowing hateful people doesn't mean we are normalizing it.
Also the definition of "hate speech" is extremely vague now a days.
> You say they learn if from the environment around them. This is exactly right, and this is exactly why you ban racists from your open platforms.
So you are saying that not allowing these people on open platforms where they are exposed to counterpoints (let's say 5% bad + 95% good) so that they all jump to another platform (8chan for example) where they are exposed to an even higher saturation of bad (100% bad) is good? That's basically exposing them to an even worse environment now. That's exactly what's making this situation even worse. Every mass shooting etc was planned on those worse platforms (4chan, 8chan) etc.
Even if that were true, it would still be possible to drown it. Flood the extension used by racists with an Eternal September of normal people. This is how we deal with extremist views in the real world - allowing them to sequester themselves together is what leads to the amplification chambers. Banning the extension just means that the people who already care about using it will continue to do so, while new users are pushed away.
> Browser extensions aside, if we've learn anything over the past two years of 'Online', it's that this simply isn't true. You can't 'debate' hate speech away.
When debating online, there's really two groups you need to keep in mind - the person/people you're debating, and the people reading the debate. Reading without interacting is generally accepted to be far more common than actually interacting, so that's probably the largest group. So even if you can't convince the person you're debating, you might be able to convince those who are just reading and don't have a strong attachment to either side.
Or you can give up, attempt to ban the badthink, and admit that your ideas do not have merit. Because that's what a lot of the watchers will interpret that refusal to engage as.
Not many people have an argument be it in real life or online, where one changes the other's opinion 180 degrees. But at the very least your words plant the seeds of doubt. I think it's normal that changing a point of view that you've held for many years to take time.
Why exactly would people want to share a space with racists, antisemites, and every kind of vile hatred? Why would you not go to place that does not accept that kind of utter garbage instead?
Don't you think that despite being uncomfortable with people that have opinions that you perceive as immoral, that banning them will only heighten their cause and become more radical?
It just seems evident to me that unpersoning them will force them in to a place that reinforces their own ideological biases which would make them more radical, and with being a social outcast, they'd have nothing to lose.
Rome wasn't built in a day. It might be a wretched hive of scum and villany now, but as it gets picked up by more and more people, some of those people won't be quite as extreme as the average. Unless there was someone deliberately banning users who weren't extreme enough, over time the community would inevitably become more moderate (or more likely, shrink and die).
It's practically an axiom - in any community without iron-fisted moderation and gatekeeping, the original hard core will end up complaining about how great it used to be before all the normies invaded.
With safe harbour laws the concept of editorial control comes up as a legal test that courts use to determine intermediary liability. By going this route Mozilla is now declaring that not only are they taking responsibility of what extensions they publish, but also how those extensions in turn are used by users. One level deeper of indirections.
So any site which has an EULA that forbids adblockers can use this case as a example of Mozilla exercising editorial control of extension use by users. If Mozilla is willing to exercise editorial control over users behavior for the dissenter extension, then the same apply for any other extension.
Looking in my list of extensions I can identify several which could be potential abused. I would be very sad to see the kind of restrictions that would happen if Mozilla would be forced to be liable for it.
The real question in my mind is when do browser makers start directly blocking websites they believe to be bad? After all both Chrome and Firefox are made by people with very strong political views. So far they've not abused SafeBrowsing to exercise political control over the internet, but the companies producing them are willing to block or politically rerank extensions, web links, domain names they host, news they summarise and so on.
How long do we have before browsing to gab.ai triggers a "This page has been blocked for your safety" page because a bunch of activists said the content made them feel unsafe?
This is a very good point, and one that I hadn't considered. From TFA:
> When asked for more clarity on which policies Dissenter did not comply with, Mozilla said that they received abuse reports for this extension. It further added that the platform is being used for promoting violence, hate speech, and discrimination, but they failed to show any examples to add any credibility to their claims.
If that's the case, who's to say that Firefox itself hasn't been used for these purposes?
While Brave is building from the core to the periphery, i.e. creating something based on solid fundamentals, Gab is taking Brave and polishing it a bit to their liking.
Due to this I suspect that the Gab browser will only get a following in a certain sphere, i.e. ideologigcal Gab followers. Otherwise you can simply use Brave or Chrome.
There was criticism by Eich et al. who noted that Gab is sending all kinds of data back home.
Gab seems to be focused on providing a service to their followers, without having the actual technical expertise to create something solid based on true privacy.
(I.e. it doesn't matter when we collect the data because we are actually on the right side of the fence)
Nevertheless I am excited to see where all of this is going and I welcome any additional browser, which is good for creating a competitive market.
The fact that Gab can, without much knowledge, "create" a browser interface within days shows how great Chromium is for the advancement of the open web.
The only thing that needs to be solved is the governance of chromium with it becoming the de facto standard on the web.
It's actually not true, what Eich was talking about, w/r/t data collection, and Gab appreciated the feedback. Using a Google Font is not tracking, and the YouTube/other embeds which are a feature of the extension have been made opt-in. Gab has also pointed out instances of Braves data collection and analytics gathering. Unlike Brave, the Gab team doesn't benefit from betraying user privacy, they don't want it. Of course Gab is focused on providing a service; they're building and shipping, defending free speech. I find the project very interesting: A browser that focuses on free speech, on enabling easy user modification, on refusing to be limited to what the big tech app stores say is okay... It could be a big jumping off point.
Thanks to Chromium, we are seeing a diverse range of projects emerging that cater to different groups.
Although the Dissenter extension, while a good idea, is essentially dead, there are basically no lively discussions.
So what's the point of using their product? Most users seem to think of it as a statement.
The idea of including BTC payments is certainly interesting, but it will fail, too, in the sense of Gab Browser not becoming succesful beyond a very small niche group.
Brave has been working for years to create actual incentives for the platform to flourish, it is beyond me how the Gab team thinks they can pull something similar off without any working incentive systems.
And Brave is not censoring anything. It is extremely difficult to build systems that protect user privacy, this has been ongoing for years, but not having user data is the whole point of the Brave project. If they fail with this, they won't be succesful.
The whole point of the Gab Browser is to protect free speech, even though strictly speaking no one has limited their free speech on a browser level, they could get the same free speech with using Chromium+Dissenter extension.
The idea with the Browser is to anticipate possible future censorship by Google, certainly legitimate.
Since they do not care about data, they haven't gone to great length of making sure they don't get any user data. If I remember correctly, every url visited in the Gab browser is sent to Dissenter, that's how the extension works.
The aggressivenes with which the Gab team goes against Brave on Twitter, wile taking all of their hard work without a single 'thank you', is what annoys me the most.
They seem to think free speech means everyone fighting for sensible solutions need to be "on their side", and everyone who isn't with them is against them.
Everyone's in favour of the free market until it does something they disagree with. Anyone can start a new browser. Gab could fork Chromium or Firefox, even.
Or they could probably just make a bookmarklet.
But that wouldn't get any attention and hate groups like Gab thrive on controversies like this. HN is doing them a favour here. They're not doing anything new or original (remember the Genius annotator, anyone?).
Disagreement with a particular provider or producers actions within the free market is not equal to disagreement with the free market in general. AFAIK Gab isn't calling for regulation of the market to prevent this, so there's no contradiction here.
In fact gab is participating in the free market exactly how you'd expect a believer in the free market to act, they're creating their own browser: https://github.com/gab-ai-inc/defiant-browser
HN is not doing them a favor, except when you think that HN reader are actually incapable of thinking themselves, and need to be protected from knowledge.
I refute this picture of humans.
Silencing developments with ignoring them would actually do Gab a favor, whatever that means exactly. The term "hate group" is not clearly defined, anyway, and a propaganda-term in itself, and a tool of so-called 'hate'.
.
In other words, mental gymnastics to justify that your opponents are morally wrong and you're right, and because they're wrong, I have every right to stop them by any means necessary.
I think the main difference here is that the nazi's were actually doing bad things as well as saying bad things.
In this case, bar the rare exception by individuals, these are people who are vocal that they think they're superior based on a superficial biological trait and nothing more.
Nazis also drank water and some probably even had pets.
A lot of things started because people have said bad things, a lot of things also haven't started even though some people said bad things. The problem is something has to start and in order for that to happen, action has to be taken.
Taking action based on the fact that some bad people one time said the same things is a bad idea, you're initiating the actions and inevitably they'll respond with more than just the words they started with.
The USA didn't go to war against the Nazis until they had gone well beyond even the most terrible actions, let alone speech. Almost all of Europe had already been conquered, the last holdout in the UK was getting pounded daily and the US still didn't join until attacked directly.
The core difference between then and now is that America of the mid 20th century didn't believe ideas were inherently dangerous - even the communist threat led to at worst the McCarthy hearings which are universally regarded now as a stain on America's history. What we see today is lots of Valley Ivy League graduate types who are convinced that reading a few tweets of the wrong kind wipes people's brains and literally turns them into the third Reich, in ways that nobody can stop or control. But there's no evidence for this viewpoint, and arguably it just led to the largest and craziest conspiracy theory in American history (the idea that Trump is a Russian spy).
Do you not see the problem with a monopoly deciding what is and isn't okay to say?
You're comparing people who comment on websites to nazis? Did you not get the memo about the media calling everyone they don't like a nazi - including Pewdiepie?
Do you really think these companies have YOUR best interest at heart instead of just siding with the political views of their shareholders?
I am calling nazis nazis. Gab has a very large population of actual nazis. It also is the home of people who go shoot up large crowds of people for having the wrong religion. I feel pretty confident in calling these people bad names.
I feel rather confident in saying that Gab does NOT have a very large population of actual nazis when using sane definitions for 'very large' and 'nazis'. Let's say... 10k and unironic 'Sieg Heil!'.
Or, really, anywhere close to that.
But if you use the media/leftist definition of 'nazi', which seems to be 'anyone to have ever made a politically incorrect joke or to have associated with the same', then OF COURSE you'll find a very large population of nazis. But you'll find that anywhere.
Google used its influence via Web Search to expand into the field of Web Browsers. So Google used it's Web presence to recommend Chrome.
Additionally, Google used it's Web Services (e.g. Google Mail, Google Docs, YouTube) to nudge users in the direction of Chrome. If YouTube works best with Chrome, people will flock to it.
Finally, Chrome might be the popular choice, but the most popular choice can be quite heinous in other ways.
Yes, Google promoted themselves on their own services, what's the problem with that? The influence gained from their prowess in web search was legitimate, I don't see a problem with them leveraging that. If chrome was garbage it wouldn't have helped.
And yes, Google's products and services work best inside Google's browser. There's no problem there either, they can stop you using them in other browsers completely if they like, it's their property to do with as they please.
You're free not to use chrome or any of Google's services, there are other options, so Google is not a monopoly.
> Yes, Google promoted themselves on their own services, what's the problem with that?
> And yes, Google's products and services work best inside Google's browser.
So, you're saying that you think what Internet Explorer is a great browser? Because everything Google did, Microsoft did (modulo monopoly lawsuit) back in its day.
Back in its day, IE was the freshest kid on the block. Now the history repeats itself with Chrome. And I won't be surprised if in ten-twenty years Chrome will be treated like IE today.
> You're free not to use chrome or any of Google's services, there are other options, so Google is not a monopoly.
This doesn't make a monopoly. A monopoly doesn't need to own 100% of the market. What defines a monopoly is omnipresence and leveraging existing market imbalances to expand into other markets.
Back in its day, yeah. Then Microsoft got sued for providing it free with their OS instead of people having to wait for a long download or buying a browser. Internet explorer didn't keep up, so now it's not as good as it could be. Things change over time and that doesnt change the monopoly issues.
This is the definition used by regulators so they can leverage government regulation against companies, pretty much because monopolies don't exist. The actual definition of a monopoly is a company that has exclusive control over a supply of a commodity or service, which Google doesn't have.
Leveraging your existing, earned, market power isn't bad and wont work if the product it's being leveraged for isn't fit for purpose. Google's omniprescense has been gained by providing a service that everyone likes and wants to use. I don't see what's wrong with any of that.
> The actual definition of a monopoly is a company that has exclusive control over a supply of a commodity or service, which Google doesn't have.
By strict economic definition yes, but not in terms of legality. Sometimes it's enough for a company to have 35% of the market, for it to consider to be in a monopolistic position or to wield monopolistic power.
Also, Google has definitive monopolies when it comes to services such as video hosting, phone OS, email and even commodities such as a browser. A monopoly doesn't need to provide a service or a commodity at high price for it to be considered as abusing its position.
> This is the definition used by regulators so they can leverage government regulation against companies, pretty much because monopolies don't exist.
It is not. If that was the case, Microsoft couldn't be sued for anti-trust because it didn't own 100% of either desktop or web browser.
I mis-worded my comment there so this misunderstanding is my fault. I meant the definition you provided is used to leverage government regulation and in fact your Quora link is exactly what I meant. It's used as a legal definition because otherwise they wouldn't be able to use the monopoly excuse for regulation. Either way this is only semantics and not particularly productive.
I'm yet to get anything substantial explaining why Google shouldn't be allowed to push chrome on their web search page or only allow YouTube from inside chrome. These services are their property, so they have the right to do whatever they like with them.
There are lots of email services that aren't Google, Apple are directly competing with android for phone OS and there are definitely other video hosts. Just because they're not popular doesnt mean they aren't competing. It just means Google is winning. Even in search there's competition, it just isn't as good as Google is.
> I'm yet to get anything substantial explaining why Google shouldn't be allowed to push chrome on their web search page or only allow YouTube from inside chrome.
Because it's leveraging huge existing monopolistic power. I'm not a lawyer, but it's the abuse of power that's the problem.
What's the problem with that? Simple, let's say you dislike <X>. Now Google wants <X>, but knows some or even most consumers don't like it. All Google needs to do is implement <X>. Disliking <X>, you switch to Firefox.
Google now has <X> and sites start using it. Suddenly, sites that require <X> don't work in Firefox. Firefox loses market share because it doesn't support <X>, Firefox now implements <X>.
Disliking Firefox, you change to IceFox++, which dies after it's lone maintainer dies in a sky diving accident.
Enjoy your options.
> There are lots of email services that aren't Google
Sure, and if you don't have a Gmail address and send it to a Gmail address, good luck getting past the Gmail filter. Why not join Gmail, for the supreme mail experience? Sure you can use FastMail but your friends all use Gmail.
Why worry whether your mail will get a pass from Google. Just join it. It's the optimal choice. In fact, it will soon be your only choice.
Can you name an actual example of this happening or are you stuck with hypotheticals? Because my version can go very different to yours and with no concrete examples that your hypothetical is based off there's no moving forward except in our imaginations.
E.g. Chrome implements x and prevents things from working as they should, chrome starts hemorrhaging users because people really hate x, chrome reverses the change or loses its market share.
If people don't like it enough, people stop using it. If people are willing to out up with it, it's obviously worth the inconvenience to them. So even if it goes your way, I still think that's fine, because the people who don't like it enough to stop using it will create a market for browsers without x.
As for your email problem, I've never had a problem receiving mail from non gmail addresses and if I did, I would switch mail provider. As would a lot of people.
Yes. The example is based on how Chrome dealt with DRM.
As for email, there was a story on Hacker News how maintaining mail server is getting harder and harder, since Gmail filters grow more and more zealous.
In the case of DRM, chrome is fulfilling a market desire that firefox had to follow suit with once the companies that adopted it realised their desire could be fulfilled. This is an issue with the companies implementing the DRM, not chrome saying "Yes we can meet that need that no one else is providing for". Also firefox still allows you to disable that feature, so you still have that choice not to allow DRM content.
All of this though is still based on the premise that leveraging their market influence is a bad thing, I just don't see it as an issue. If they use that influence to push a product or service that people don't like, people will not use the product and they'll have lost influence.
In the example of mail servers being "harder to maintain" because of over zealous gmail filters all I have to say is: Tough. People like not getting spam and having over zealous filters is a method of achieving that. If you want to be able to send mail to Google's mail service, you'll have to meet their rules.
I'd actually be very surprised if the filters are intentionally ruling out alternative mail because that would hurt the marketability of gmail.
In fact, that's the crux of it. That's why the legal definition doesnt match the reality of monopoly, because in order to be a monopoly you have to be providing the best on the market and if you're not, a competitor will and you stop being a monopoly.
> In the case of DRM, chrome is fulfilling a market desire
If by market you meant content creators? Then yes, yes it did.
It was a top-down decision made between RIAA, MPAA and some content providers like Netflix. Firefox was sure that Google (not being evil) would stand up to the DRM, and basically, not accept it. With Flash dying, the content providers would have to create their own browser addons and add a stumbling block for DRM. But nope, Google decided DRM was Good™ and blessed the black blob of code residing in every browser.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/05/mozilla-and-drm
Sure you can disable the option but your unaudited DRM blob is still in Firefox. You'd have to manually extract that piece of code and recompile the browser. And if you think that's a reasonable effort for average consumer, then we have nothing to discuss.
Yes, that's exactly what I mean, they're part of the market whether you like it or not and so they created a market desire for DRM in browsers. DRM isn't inherently evil, it's an attempt to protect the property rights of the producers of downloadable content. Granted sometimes this attempt is disastrously bad (e.g: any attempts at DRM before steam in the realm of video games) but as far as I can tell this browser DRM hasn't caused issues and it hasn't certainly hasn't been intrusive for me.
That's not a reasonable effort for the average consumer but then the average consumer also probably doesn't care about DRM that much, the whole computer is a giant black blob of code to them with no clue what it's actually doing. The average consumer likely just wants to be able to access their content via the internet and the DRM facilitates that by giving the option to companies that would be unwilling to distribute their content without it.
> So, you're saying that you think what Internet Explorer is a great browser? Because everything Google did, Microsoft did (modulo monopoly lawsuit) back in its day.
But not vice versa, which is among the reasons the analogy is flawed.
> a monopoly doesn't need to own 100% of the market. What defines a monopoly is omnipresence and leveraging existing market imbalances to expand into other markets.
No, that's wrong. What defines a monopoly is absence of competition in practice (the common test for which is pricing power, which demonstrates whether the market sees “competitors” in a named market segment as actual competitors or players in isolated adjacent markets), not mere omnipresence. The leveraging you refer to is abuse of monopoly if a monopoly exists, not part of the what defines a monopoly.
> No, that's wrong. What defines a monopoly is absence of competition in practice (the common test for which is pricing power, which demonstrates whether the market sees “competitors” in a named market segment as actual competitors or players in isolated adjacent markets)
Are you saying in practice Chrome has competition? Safari doesn't count by your definition since it's essentially an isolated adjacent market (with is also shrinking due to Android expansion).
> Are you saying in practice Chrome has competition?
Well, pricing power is a hard test, even in principal, to apply in a category of free products, but it does appear on first blush that feature changes between Chrome and it's competitors do induce movements of users between them, in both directions, so it does appear that there is competition in both directions even if Chrome over time is generally, on balance, winning. Actual competition analysis, though, would take lots of work.
What I was saying upthread, however, was not anything about UI a conclusion on whether Chrome has competition, but just a correction to the inaccurate definition of monopoly that was proposed.
I think one Nazi-related mistake might be forgiveable. When it keeps happening, well, you've got to start thinking the tar on the brush is from the same pot.
Didn't he pay third worlders money to hold up signs saying "death to all jews" ? Isn't that what the Nazis tried to do, somewhat successfully? The media is supposed to like him for things like that or what?
It makes perfect sense. If you create tools to ban certain types of speech, say intolerance of homophobia, what happens when a homophobe acquires those tools?
Because any tool will be eventually misused and abused.
When you start summoning demons, you don't always get to choose who the demon decides to eat... Oh, you might get to point it in the direction of your enemies to begin with, sure. But eventually it'll start eating people you like, and by that point it'll have grown far too large to control.
"Why the lucky stiff" from the ruby community wrote MouseHole, a local web proxy that could be used to inject a commenting overlay to the web. Only the participants would see it.
It was a lot of fun being able to comment on that overlay of the Internet.
Funny how even this article, which kind supports gab, always associates them with terrorism (violence for political goals) while in both cases mentioned the perpetrators used other social media networks more and with more impact.
When you get bad reputation, truth doesn't matter. Everyone "knows" they are trash so... vaguely say it's against ToS.
Right now they should pull a corporate spin, rebrand and move on. CommunityChat™ - a comment section for tribe and vibe; Share you goals, feelings and achievements with a global community of mind-liked users.
That is easy to do when you are not threatened by these people.
But they literally kill people. And they will kill many more if they gain more power. Do you think those dead people will thank you for your brave efforts?
>But they literally kill people. And they will kill many more if they gain more power. Do you think those dead people will thank you for your brave efforts?
Who are "they"? Who is literally killing people? Those are very serious accusations to just be thrown around within such a broad, imprecise, and vague message. Moreover, who are you to decide for the rest of us what kind of speech is deemed dangerous or otherwise? I don't think any collective's arbitrary criteria should automatically apply to limit free speech, if there should be a limit, that is.
These are immensely important issues that have to be decided through very careful deliberation, not just a vague sentiment or subjective impression held by a group of people, as it dictates the manner in which we communicate and express ourselves with one another, and that shouldn't be up for grabs.
So, stop paying your taxes because you're supporting the biggest terrorists of all time.
There are way more racists than you think. The ones you see on Gab are the tip of the iceberg and they're not even a fraction of a percent as violent as the state-funded ones.
If you go out looking for it, you will find a LOT more of that stuff on Twitter, Facebook, Patreon (Search for it) and Reddit. Gab is a free speech platform - similar to how phone carriers aren't held liable for what people speak on it, same way for Gab. It's not Gab's responsibility if the users are talking garbage.
I didn't go looking for it. I literally went to the page of the most popular posts, and scrolled down a couple of times.
It absolutely, 100% is Gab's responsibility for not policing their platform. In fact, they invite this kind of behaviour. This is exactly what they want on their site.
I would disagree. There is a difference between publisher and platform. If Gab was publishing illegal stuff themselves, then it would be different. Gab actively takes down speech which is illegal (action to violence type). But simple hate speech (even if it's offensive and rude) is still free speech and legally covered by the first amendment in the US.
Same way Google isn't held liable for hosting illegal pirated content as long as they take it down. But you can't go sue Google because they show you news about something which you find offensive.
They invite the worst kind of hatemongers to their site. That makes them as bad in my books. If all you care about is whether they are following the letter of the law or not, that is a very naïve and childish view.
The argument boils down to what exactly is hate speech. Something which you find offensive could be totally okay to a lot of other people. Culture, language, satire/comedy/sarcasm etc all play a huge role in what's offensive to someone. I am an immigrant from another country and things which are said there is offensive here and vice versa.
But you can argue Twitter does the same. I see hate speech against my race and gender all the time. For evidence, just look at what happens when people post "it's ok to be white". Notch did it recently: massive meltdown. Very obviously these platforms are full of people who don't think it's OK to be white, which is pure racist hatred. Where are the bans? Why does saying such an innocuous thing trigger such hatred with no response from these supposedly hate-fighting platforms?
What about all the hate towards Trump when he says good morning, have a nice day? Nothing happens.
Of course, we know why. It's because the people who run them are fine with the right kind of hate, if they believe it to be justified by history.
I wasn't saying that Gab has "good" content. I was just pointing out that press, and regular joes, associate Gab with terrorism because of 2/3 terrorism cases, In those cases the terrorists used other social media sites with a greater impact.
This association with terrorism isn't a fair representation of the truth.
See, I'd be more impressed by the "we're just defending free speech" argument that comes up so often if it was ever for anything other than racism, sexism and hate.
This is a bizarre blog post to have on the Packt website. Can anybody write these? Packt already had a bit of a low-quality book-mill smell to it, and now they're beating the "why can't the nazis catch a break" drum. Do not want.
That's not at all what I was trying to say (and reading what I wrote I can see how it could be misunderstood). The far left has obviously in very many places and at very many times been absolutely horrific.
My point was that claiming that there is an equivalence between the two in general (and specifically today in the US for example) is I believe false. Basically talking about the "far left" and "far right" in the abstract is meaningless as terms meaning nothing in and of themselves. You have to talk about it in a particular time and a particular place for it to have any meaning.
If you consider communism as far left, then yes the far left has absolutely killed millions. If you do not consider communism far left, I don't know what to tell you.
I suspect he's talking about individuals and activist groups in the US and Europe, rather than governments, state actors, and more formal armed militias and rebel groups.
Broadly speaking, one side believes that the government should only own guns while the other side believes that everyone should own guns. So that makes sense that you won't likely see a radical leftist use guns but you could very much see an authoritarian radical leftist government use weapons against it's defenceless civilians.
Expanding your criteria to encompass all of history isn't really all that helpful. Today, in the actual situation we are experiencing as opposed to political movements that have been dead for decades, the far right are more violent than the far left by a large margin.
far right are more violent than the far left by a large margin.
Not that I necessarily disagree with you, but you're going to have to define your terms more narrowly if you want your argument to hold. Which countries, who's "we", are we talking state actors or individuals, how to Maoist rebel groups in Asia and South America feature into your calculus etc.
"free speech" has become a wedge issue, a cudgel used by crypto-fascists to induce well-meaning centrists to actively fight for their cause. All you need is the thinnest veneer of respectability covering your bigotry and a stampede of individuals who nominally hate what you stand for will fight relentlessly for your interests.
In the world of the free speech absolutist, we are all obligated to sit politely on the sidelines listening to white nationalists recruit and further their cause, cheered by the health of the marketplace of ideas.
I didn't ignore you, I read your comments and pondered, and reached the conclusion that your arguments are feeble.
What you've been spouting all over the comments: people I don't like are using this tool, thus everyone using this tool and the tool itself is evil. SHUT IT DOWN! If you disagree with me, you are evil as well.
Both browsers offer sideloaded extensions as well as open source cores that can be set to use their own stores.
While troubling that they have such ability, they make their terms of use clear and do offer motivated users the ability to chose alternative plugin sources.
Neither browser allows sideloaded extensions in its standard build:
Chrome:
> As of Chrome 33, no external installs are allowed from a path to a local .crx on Windows (see Protecting Windows users from malicious extensions). As of Chrome 44, no external installs are allowed from a path to a local .crx on Mac (see Continuing to protect Chrome users from malicious extensions).
