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this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2023
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I understand that censorship can be misused, but I also understand trying to fight faschistic right-wing propaganda and demagoguery is more important than trying to stick to general liberal ideals like "free speach", if radically following those ideals lead to bad outcomes.
So yes, I am in favor of not giving people that are against democracy a platform to push their lies and propaganda. With the current level of education and media literacy in the broad population, lies are much easier spread than that countered. Ignoring that means giving them their victories.
Facts are boring and feelings can easily be abused and misled.
I don't have an answer where the line is, and where and how censorship/blocking/deplatforming is effective. I just think that this isn't a simple issue.
But I would mostly agree that this shouldn't be decided by ISP companies. They probably shouldn't have a TOS. And if you ask me, they are infrastructure providers, so they have a monopoly, and therefore they should be non-commercial and under democratic control. Because democracy has proven to be a good way to handle monopolies.
I agree the situation looks helpless regarding fighting missinformation but conversation is the only viable tool. Failing that, when the topic is important enough, then only the tool of violence remains. A person about to blow themselves up in a crowd likely can't be talked out of it. Hopefully the situation isn't so bad that a lot of people are like that. I think it's better to promote education rather than trusting anyone to draw a line on what speech I can't hear (or say).
You can have conversations with people, but first you have to somehow stop the constant onslaught of propaganda meant to keep people in an easy to manipulate mental state.
You need to give them room to breath first, then you can start working with them to take their fear away and let them reflect on their preconceptions.
I think improving people's well-being is the best bet to give people the time to potentially become innoculated against manipulation. Stopping propoganda reaching people may contribute to that. Does getting caught censoring not backfire to a high degree ("they're trying to hide the truth")?
Yes, improving the well being is the best way, but doing that is very difficult and takes time. There are so may reasons why people are unwell in the US: suburbia, car centric infrastructure, housing, education, ...
If you are transparent about what is censored and why, your aren't hiding it.
After WW2, Germany created a law against Volksverhetzung and later expanded this into laws against hate speech, which was adopted in similar ways in other countries as well.
The law seems to work well, it is not perfect, but at least the right needs to be much more careful in what they utter. Of course free speach absolutists where concered about it, with slippery-slope arguments, but their concerns where unsubstaniated so far.
When it comes to government instead of a business then I am more certain and am of the free speech absolitish kind. Even though I believe speech can hurt, indeed has killed (e.g. driven to suicide my fellow LGBT people), there is simply no one I can trust to decide what speech I can hear.
I have little faith that any holocast deniers has anything worth hearing but I wouldn't say they could never have even a grain of truth. What effect are those laws having switch social backlash does not?
You fight them by blocking them and moving on.
Just because you don't want to see something doesn't mean nobody else should.
Blocking people is only useful to protect your own mental health. Ignorance of issues will not solve them on their own.
I don't see a suggestion here to fix the rise of demagoguery in the west. Pushing people out of the general public perception will help against stochastic violence against minorities.
The side who censors is always the side that knows it has the incorrect position