https://kbin.social/m/modernmisogyny
I ran across that magazine recently and every post is transphobic af. Does that fit within kbin.social’s code of conduct?
https://kbin.social/m/modernmisogyny
I ran across that magazine recently and every post is transphobic af. Does that fit within kbin.social’s code of conduct?
I have mixed feelings about this
On one hand, Daryl Davis is a hero, and his method actually works to de-radicalize people. I prefer using this method when I encounter bigots irl.
On the other hand, allowing bigoted speech in your online platform has the potential to drive away normal folks and turn your platform into the echo-chamber where bigotry flourishes that you mentioned. This is basically what happened to Voat.
I agree with this, but it’s beside the point. This isn’t a public space like a street corner, it’s a managed public/private space like a bar, where the bouncer will kick you out for abusing other patrons.
Daryl Davis does what he does in one-on-one contexts and other safe environments.
He doesn’t go on extremist internet forums and try to convince a bunch of nutjobs and trolls and violent monsters all at the same time. He would have been downvoted into oblivion where people who are looking for somebody to troll would have found him and antagonized him until he left.
A group of patrons sitting at a table in a bar, quietly discussing their TERF perspective, is entirely different from one of them walking up to a trans table and picking a fight. The former is an exercise of free speech, whereas the latter is cause for ejection.
Except it’s more like a group of patrons at a bar talking about killing a trans person, and than the next day one of them actually does it.
What kind of absurd hyperbole is that? Nobody has called for murder. And certainly nobody has committed a murder based on a call for it.
Speech has real life consequences.
“Known transgender killings increased 93% in that four-year period – from 29 in 2017 to 56 in 2021”
https://abcnews.go.com/US/homicide-rate-trans-people-doubled-gun-killings-fueling/story?id=91348274
“Transgender people over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime”
https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/press/ncvs-trans-press-release/
I don’t condone murder under any circumstances. But using 56 murders as an excuse to silence anyone online is a disgrace to the principle of free speech.
The principle of free speech, in America, has nothing to do with forcing people to tolerate hateful rhetoric. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_United_States.
As long as the government isn’t arresting you for your opinions then nothing going on here has to do with “free speech”. Individuals and corporations silencing you online is not a “disgrace to the principle of free speech”.
You’re conflating the principle of free speech with the US 1st Amendment. The 1st Amendment is predicated on the principle of free speech. The 1st Amendment is completely inapplicable here. The principle of free speech is 100% applicable here, as it is foundational to western civilization.
the principles of free speech do not guarantee you a platform upon which to spread hatred. They do not give you the right to force others to serve your positions over the internet.
there might be something to be said about “platform neutrality,” but it’s still a competition of rights that doesn’t really justify forcing a platform—especially a small platform like kbin—to host content it views as extremist, or especially likely to result in violence. Maybe you can argue that we should have higher scrutiny in the case of a monopoly or similar large social network due to the power of strong network effects, but… I don’t know how much scrutiny would you need to apply to say “aha, this company is banning terfs for insidious reasons!” no, they’re obviously banning terfs because their bigotry is dangerous and hurtful and giving them a platform just feels incredibly shitty.
A while back, I thought—well, I still do think—that platform neutrality should be used to frame the issue of large social media sites that ban talk about their competitors, like when Twitter deprioritized Substack (facebook messenger has banned competitors as well). I’d also argue this principle could be used to ban, for example, Facebook from manipulating its algorithm overtly (expliciltly, specifically) to favor a particular political party or an advertiser (outside of the ad itself—that one is already illegal, ads need to be disclosed as ads). But applying such a rule to general political standards and where you think the norm or neutral position should be is dangerous and stupid.