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See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Sounds perfect Wahhhh, I don’t wanna

One thing I really love about you weird internet nerds here on Rationalist Tumblr is your lower-than-average level of hypocrisy.

Basically all of you who would be skeptical about granting legitimacy to right-wing vigilantes in the after-effects of politically-motivated vehicular homicide by one of the right’s outgroups are also skeptical about granting legitimacy to left-wing vigilantes in the aftermath of politically-motivated vehicular homicide by one of the left’s outgroups.

You are all doing much better than what I’m seeing on Facebook right now.

the rationalists politics
maybesimon
maybesimon

you know that facebook post that goes like ‘this is why white culture doesn’t exist and i can trace my heritage back to europe so i’m (specific country)-culture and not (white)-culture’? like i don’t want to shit on the author because its not that important, but it’s such a stupid approach? only an american would think that. white americans are not white irishmen, or white dutchmen, or whatever, they are white americans. white americans with dutch heritage are so different from white dutch people, so saying that white americans don’t have a white american culture but instead some sort of weird? european thing? its just bullshit. i mean, americans go to shopping malls and eat a lot of sugar and smile all the fucking time and are very enthusiastic? and care about some weird form of football for some reason. i’m not saying that the author can’t take pride in their heritage or can’t go to cultural parties or anything, i’m just saying that its not the same

mitigatedchaos

You know why they do that, right?

racepol
flakmaniak
sadoeconomist

I was thinking of posting something like ‘Daddy, what was the Statue of Liberty like?’ ‘Oh, it was beautiful and inspiring, but we had to blow it up because the French gave it to us, and the French Third Republic was racist’ ‘I wish I could have seen it’ ‘Wow, you support the French Third Republic, what are you, some kind of Nazi?’

But I know better than to use the word ‘daddy’ on this website

mitigatedchaos

You’re ignoring the 1:5,400,000 timelines where I come to power and her glowing laser eyes gaze endlessly out over the sea, ready to guard the Union with hundreds of megawatts of star-searing power at a moment’s notice.

flakmaniak

Dammit if you aren’t an obvious supervillain, but I’ll be damned if I don’t want to vote for you anyway. I would definitely support any candidate whose slogan was “Put lasers in Lady Liberty”.

I guess I just love grandiose symbols. (Please tell me you’d also upgrade Mount Rushmore. And build some monument to humanity’s might on the moon.)

mitigatedchaos

While other parties believe in vague rhetoric like “Making America Great Again” and “bringing harmony to our divided nation”, the National Technocratic Party believes in specific, measurable, achievable policy goals, such as those outlined in our Enhanced Civil Defense Plan for the Weaponization of National Monuments, our whitepapers on lunar war, and in the 2028 Prediction Budget produced by the Central Committee.

Source: sadoeconomist politics shtpost victory for national technocracy
sadoeconomist
sadoeconomist

I was thinking of posting something like ‘Daddy, what was the Statue of Liberty like?’ ‘Oh, it was beautiful and inspiring, but we had to blow it up because the French gave it to us, and the French Third Republic was racist’ ‘I wish I could have seen it’ ‘Wow, you support the French Third Republic, what are you, some kind of Nazi?’

But I know better than to use the word ‘daddy’ on this website

mitigatedchaos

You’re ignoring the 1:5,400,000 timelines where I come to power and her glowing laser eyes gaze endlessly out over the sea, ready to guard the Union with hundreds of megawatts of star-searing power at a moment’s notice.

shtpost politics augmented reality break supervillain chronofelony victory for national technocracy
funereal-disease
imrix

https://thinkprogress.org/german-town-pranked-neo-nazis/ I found this and thought of you, @funereal-disease. The empathetic way of fighting Nazis.

funereal-disease

I LOVE THIS

If violence is the only means of resistance you can think of, you aren’t thinking very hard.

mitigatedchaos

I admit, I chuckled at this idea.

Nazism is really not a healthy ideology to hold, the better to raise money to support exiting it.

Source: imrix politics torches in the night
bambamramfan
bambamramfan

So in the discussion over whether internet companies can deny hosting to Nazis (such as here and here), I admit I see both sides. I understand the concerns that this grants too much discretionary power to large establishments about what speech is allowed on the internet, and I understand that “Nazis marching in the streets with torches and the organizing thereof is different and inimical to civil society.”

My question is, can anyone offer an argument for why private companies should get to choose this?

Like on the anti-Nazi side, everything they say makes a case for why it should just be illegal to host this violent, reactionary rhetoric.

And on the pro-free-speech side, everything they say makes a case for why no gatekeeper is pure enough to decide who does and doesn’t get to speak.

But what’s the logic for “maybe Nazis get to organize online, maybe they don’t, and that decision should be up to the rich people who control internet companies?”

shieldfoss

It goes like this:

“Nazis can do whatever they want on their own time but this is my server that I’ve purchased with my money so therefore it’s me that gets to decide what pages are hosted on it.”

It becomes significantly more cloudy when we get to registrars like godaddy. They are a government-monopoly-by-proxy through ICANN.

bambamramfan

Okay so I thought people weren’t going to take the naively deontic argument here, which is why I skipped it. But very well.

One, as @mitigatedchaos these aren’t really about “your property,” in as much as the CEO’s making these decisions often are not the shareholders, but managers entrusted to make the shareholders money (or other complicated legal entities”. These people have a ton of leniency in those decisions, but “what speech should be expressed” is generally not in the CEO job description. Maybe they make good decisions or bad, but I have trouble seeing fundamental property rights being worked up for the managers making these decisions. If it was a vote of shareholders that would be different.

But two, more importantly, I assume I am talking with people who think the internet should be largely content neutral. People who do not want Google to stop listing supporters of Bernie Sanders. People who don’t want Twitter blocking any criticism of feminism. People who’d be afraid if TWC stopped delivering content about either the Democratic or Republican parties. Maybe you wouldn’t be sure such actions are illegal, but you sure as hell would feel they are unethical.

Most people who are comfortable with Nazi’s getting deplatformed this way are so because they believe Nazi’s (or at least their current rioting actions) are different than just another point of view.

If you think a web company should continue to host political opinions they disagree with, but not that of Nazis organizing armed rallies, which I really do think is a reasonable point of view, then why do you think that question should be up to the CEO of the company?

(Or, to avoid the hot button topic of government regulation - I can see the argument for all hosts are open to Nazis, and the argument for no hosts being open to Nazis, what’s the argument for some hosts being open to Nazis?)

mitigatedchaos

I’m not sure I would agree even if it were a shareholder vote.

Limiting legal liability is an absolutely extraordinary concession on the part of the state, not only to CEO but also to shareholders.  The ability to even get the right-of-ways necessary to even construct those cable lines also depends on state power.

Especially as institutional size increases, the potential damage from legal liability also increases.

Therefore, in my opinion, “but it’s my server” has only fairly weak standing as a moral argument for large or even mid-size corporations.

(There are, of course, other considerations, too. Corps resisting warrantless surveillance of customers in the US is overall a good thing, for instance.)

the invisible fist the iron hand
shieldfoss
bambamramfan

So in the discussion over whether internet companies can deny hosting to Nazis (such as here and here), I admit I see both sides. I understand the concerns that this grants too much discretionary power to large establishments about what speech is allowed on the internet, and I understand that “Nazis marching in the streets with torches and the organizing thereof is different and inimical to civil society.”

My question is, can anyone offer an argument for why private companies should get to choose this?

Like on the anti-Nazi side, everything they say makes a case for why it should just be illegal to host this violent, reactionary rhetoric.

And on the pro-free-speech side, everything they say makes a case for why no gatekeeper is pure enough to decide who does and doesn’t get to speak.

But what’s the logic for “maybe Nazis get to organize online, maybe they don’t, and that decision should be up to the rich people who control internet companies?”

shieldfoss

It goes like this:

“Nazis can do whatever they want on their own time but this is my server that I’ve purchased with my money so therefore it’s me that gets to decide what pages are hosted on it.”

It becomes significantly more cloudy when we get to registrars like godaddy. They are a government-monopoly-by-proxy through ICANN.

mitigatedchaos

Limited Liability Corporations are government constructs that receive very powerful special protections (it’s in the name), and thus I don’t see it as the same as a personal server.

Source: bambamramfan the invisible fist
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