Forum anonymity

I’m far more worried about the people ‘regulating’ hate speech, than the people spewing it online. And I’m deeply surprised, when obviously intelligent people don’t see it that way. Let us, the people, regulate absurdities by ignoring or debating them, dragging them out into the light, but don’t put the power to define free speech, in the hands of the government. Ever.

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That’s all well and good, but the admins have far better things to be getting on with than sweeping up after the inevitable flame wars - dealing appropriately with flags let alone tidying topics takes time - it’s one thing to have a broader debate about online privacy and its impact on conduct, but it’s another to suggest we should just allow any and all junk to pollute these pages - people frequently applaud how positive and friendly this community is and that’s because it doesn’t appeal to those who just want to create flame wars and spew rubbish out for a rise

The idea of a park is useful here, the park is kept free of litter, obnoxious swearing and dogshit etc etc so that it remains appealing to the broadest demographic - to merely say let’s ignore the dogshit, take the owner for what they are, is missing the point that people will simply not come in or stay (facebook is ruined in this regard)- there has to be a certain amount of cleaning up, so the less of it the better - there is hardly any contentious topic that does not derail within a few posts and it’s a joyless task sweeping up after it

There’s a weighty and needed discussion in the broader context, but it’s not fair to burden a niche electronic music forum with the freedoms you might expect in other spaces

The only bothersome aspect of maintaining things this way is that people jump to assuming it’s somehow about defending Elektron - whereas it’s only ever about the manner of delivering something, not what’s delivered

fwiw to my knowledge, we’ve seen very little by way of hate speech or craftily hidden hate speech

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That doesn’t work, unfortunately. Ignoring is not always easy when you’re the one on the receiving end of harassment. You’re not going to change neo-nazis’ minds by patiently listening to their views and debating them. Truth, facts and history are irrelevant now, rhetoric is all that matters. Giving hateful views a platform only results in them spreading.

Popper always relevant (sorry for the slightly patronising comic format)

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You misunderstood me completely. What you guys do here is fine - as far as I know, you are not operating on behalf of the government, right? I was talking about laws regulating free speech.

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“It’s a paradox, but unlimited tolerance can lead to the extinction of tolerance.”

Precisely my concern, “tolerance” has already taken a turn toward the authoritarian where the state pushes its agenda and condemns those that speak out against it. Language has been weaponized and is being used to shut down criticism.

This isn’t something that will be solved here though.

We should be unwilling to tolerate jerks and their abuse, no matter if the attacks come from individuals or from the state.

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Are you gonna change a neo-nazis mind, by eroding the freedom of all of us? Will that make them go away, or will it slowly evolve our society into the kind that they want?

Richard Spencer is still afraid to leave the house, so… Yes?

Yeah, so if only they would have banned hate speech online in the time leading up to ww2…

Most hate speech is religion based. Or a twisted version of it. Somebody up there is having a laugh!

Yes - to be fair to you - I just took that one notion from your broader idea and bent it towards a thought with regards to moderating within Elektronauts - it wasn’t so much replying to you as just using the text as a jump off point for those thoughts on our little corner of the web - my bad

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No problem👍

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i don’t get the point of the discussion on this forum.
someone believes that there’s too much freedom of hate speech here?
or should this forum follow the EU trends and regularly forbid & restrict something?

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Most countries don’t have a legal definition of hate speech, and rightly so. This is mainly because it is so open to interpretation. It is pretty much impossible to write a law covering hate speech. What is hate? Who is to decide what is hate speech and what is not? Some gigantic tech companies with obvious political bias and goals?

Online its in the hands of a small (very biased) group of giant tech companies already though. Right now they already filter out certain search results/views not because it’s not relevant but because it doesn’t fit their political viewpoints. Like Google/YT/Twitter manually curating trends. If a video on YT with a message that goes against YT politics is trending it will be removed.

All in all it is very bad to only give people what they want to hear, that what confirms their believes rather than things that challenge those believes. It’s not in their interest to do so. You need to keep clicking and generating data. Not become a critical individual the steps outside the bubble of groupthink that makes up their own mind.

Anyways, I’m rambling. These are strange times where misgendering someone can cost you your job but where it’s ok to be bigoted towards others if you can base the bigotry in religion. Then it’s ok to be a bigot. Logic has gone.

Not one person here has stated that they condone “hate speech”, nor has anyone claimed there is a hate problem here, the OP however asked about the concept of ridding ourselves of anonymity. A number of us see that as problematic because that leads to censorship or much worse. Some feel that freedom of speech and anonymity are both human rights and believe that community standards should be the arbiter of decency, not some central authority.

This discussion can probably remain productive if everyone agrees to leave politics out of it.

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It’s really not that hard to use peoples’ preferred pronouns. If you’re repeatedly and intentionally misgendering a colleague or student then you deserve to be sacked.

If not always right.
This short essay was nice read - https://bigthink.com/the-paradox-of-tolerance

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Meanwhile in the UK, buying hand tools is a suspicious activity that could lead to a terrorism investigation against you. :joy:

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Rarely has the saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”, been more fitting, than in regard to this subject.

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Whats this thread about?

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It’s nice to see a moderator actually taking part in the discussion and reasoning with the apparent offenders. In public no less, perhaps the thread is back on track! :slight_smile:

But I’d say a degree of anonymity in this case can allow us, as functioning members of a community to test some limits and explore a little more than we might otherwise do in real life.
The good bit of wearing a mask.

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