To be clear though, that is not the issue that Abbott and Republicans are trying to regulate.

Big Tech (FB, Twitter, etc) would like nothing more than to have robust battles, flamewars and other fights between engaged left and right spectrum folk. It is the misinformation they deplatform from any side of the political spectrum and since the Right does it way more they feel targeted.

Aside from that I am not sure I would agree anyway. Why should I not be able to create a Huff Post for Left leaning issues/politics and allow it to get huge? What is wrong with targeted segments?

Surprise surprise, Trump's new SM platform will be heavily moderated to ensure posters stick to their TOS.


Trump 'TRUTH Social' developing content moderation practices to ensure 'family-friendly' community

When TRUTH Social launches later this quarter, the Trump Media & Technology Group social media platform will already have stringent content moderation practices in place to ensure it is a "family-friendly" online community, company CEO Devin Nunes told Fox Business...

..."We want to be very family-friendly, we want this to be a very safe place, and we are focused on making sure any illegal content is not on the site,"...

Now Twitter and FB et al need to drop moderation and TOS as those are evil for liberal owned sites!!

/consistency

If Trump is in favor of moderation then they are obligated to do the opposite.

That is not very surprising.

The heart of Trumpism's popularity online is the alt-right movement, with its frenetic online activity and recruitment. But that popularity is pretty far from winning elections. To do that, you need to mesh its messaging from this with mainstream ideology.

That isn't the easiest thing in the world. The core of the alt-right movement might have a lot of momentum and frenetic activists, but it isn't exactly polished. Most platforms that cater to this crowd tends to become rather bloated with fetish porn and Nazism.

I think the heart of Trumpism success was that a lot of the messaging from the alt-right got changed before it hit sites like Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. Their filters, instead of stopping the extremism became social sifts that forced a refinement of the messaging into a form palatable for voters and potential supporters. The alt-right and its roots are very good at this, having more than a century of practice in the art of fostering intellectual "champions" who could get their message into a form fit for popular books and newspaper submissions.

Today many of the most extreme ideas of this movement have become mainstream and are touted daily by hugely popular media and social media personalities and politicians. Replacement theory, cultural marxism, islamophobia etc. But of course, in its refined form.

Of course, this isn't a phenomena somehow uniquely limited to the alt-right. You can definitely see something similar happen with left-wing extremism. But the scope here is smaller. Left-wing extremism (in my very anecdotal take) simply doesn't seem very concerned becoming mainstream, rather it seems to pride itself on loathing the mainstream.

This is a really good post.

I never thought of the role that FB and SM play as the one refining and softening the hardcore alt right message into more digestible and acceptable chunks that the masses can identify and accept as opposed to type of visceral rejection that type of message might get without such moderation. Of course the 'like' function sifting and sorting and then pushing forward what works will always get to the message, ultimately, that reaches the most people without turning them away.

I've mentioned in the past how Alt Right messaging just like Conspiracy theory messaging requires healthy ecosystems, or forums such as SM, to invade and infect, to survive. Their own spaces tend to become echo boxes and circle jerks that quickly flame out without the tension of arguing against the 'others'. It is that argument that defines them.

As you point out the far left alt messaging does not need to seem to need that in fact seems to want to purge that. They seek the echo box. They want to drive out other voices. They want a self re-enforcing message and the circle jerk applause of e3veryone echoing 'we are right'.

I would say that limits the alt left far more than the right, as the left is not really seeking converts. They are always seeking to diminish their group (eat their own) thru increasing levels of purity tests, at each point pushing out the next level of 'manufactured' offenders.

What do you think are examples of left wing extremism? I’m not doubting it exists, just having a tough time coming up with something like great replacement, which at his heart, is an attack on Americans of non white non European descent. There is simply no other substance to it. They might say trans inclusion is an attack on chtistian values or something, but that doesn’t strike me as fair.

I'd argue that getting the right to soften their message is far from the worst thing - maybe we can do better but what? The huge obvious mistake is those on the left who are so determined to push so many people into the arms of those on the right and then make damn sure they stay there.

I think 'softening the message' is the biggest problem.

And by softening I do not mean, changing the intent or desires, but just providing words that do not sound as harsh or divisive.

In the past I think many more moderate people held some of these more ls desirable views (racist, xenophobic, etc) but they felt a certain shame of push back against that part of their nature that made them TRY to do better and be more. 'I might not 'trust' that black guy at work organically but I am trying to give him a chance and to do so'.

People like Archie Bunker actually helped people shift towards more tolerance as they gently made people see how the worst of their ideals were viewed.

The 'softened' message as per the internet or the best race hustlers, instead takes the concepts Archie Bunker would be laughed at for and dresses them up as strengths to be rallied behind. They do it in a way that focus on self, nationalism and 'positive' concepts such as 'protecting the children (from reverse racism, etc).

Social Media being able to sift for what draws in, instead of repelling, is allowing for a huge swath of people who are more centrist to find and rally around racist and xenophobic intolerant ideas soft sold and dressed up today as positive concepts.

Yeah it's been an ongoing conversation. I think the more we force them to soften their language the better. I'll caveat that by saying if we dont engage as much as possible with the people for whom they needed to soften the language then it might well switch to being a bad thing.

Social media has strengtss and weaknesses. I understand why the right want to draw people into their camp and cut them off from the rest of us. I dont understand why some on the left are so determined to help them

ya I am in the opposite camp on that.

I never had much issue with peoples bigotry being out loud and proud and them wearing it in an obvious way. I felt I better knew who to avoid and those who held the views more quietly were trying to subvert them and be better people and not letting those views impact how they engaged with 'other' people at work or in the grocery store.

I feel the more people are socialized to hide it and also given softer language they are able to embrace to justify it the more danger a younger version of me ends up working under such a person and does not realize why they keep getting passed over for promotion or bonus as their boss is waging their own quiet war against giving more power to the 'others'.

I think we decades where things were consistently getting better and then sadly this second race ('other') war has been sparked up setting everything back.

And to that comment I think progressive and wokeism is largely responsible for that. I agree with most things woke but do not think you impose it at the end of a shovel you are slamming into others faces. I think todays wokesters (most of whom are privileged) are seeking fights far more than solutions and they want to polarize people so they can point at the bad people and virtue signal how good they are in contrast.

i think the wokesters turn far more moderate people into extreme people very deliberately to the detriment of the people they are OOBOOing for. They do more harm than good.

I agree with most all of this. Trying to stop someone from saying what's on their mind almost never turns out well.

It is good to at least be able to discuss it. Plus a good excuse for old forum classics.

Warning contain pre-softened language


and a funnier version

A dangerous view. We tend to forget that the most horrific politicians of European political history were prior to the horrors they inflicted very popular politicians both at home and abroad, many of them very adept at wording their views in a way that made them edible for newspaper print and were by large amounts of people seen as very reasonable.

We see a mirror reflection of this trend over the last two decades, extremism has once again gone mainstream by being molded into rhetoric that people find appealing until the extremism is normalized. On the 6th of January for example, many right wing extremists participated in an attack on the American congress while openly carrying Nazi and right-wing extremist symbols, standing shoulder to shoulder with self-professed "conservatives". Today, even many of the people they attacked are making excuses for them and pretending nothing special happened.

I accept it's dangerous. It's all dangerous. The most dangerous views being the ones that think they can make it safe

I also think that isolating a massive swath of the elctorate into the hands of the right is particularly dangerous.

I have absolutely no idea what "make it safe" means or what it is meant to convey. I have merely stated that the filters of social media have effectively acted as a sift that allows the rhetoric of the millions of active right-wing extremists online to creep into mainstream discourse in a form that have made it into mainstream politics. These are people who in their original fora are calling for race wars, execution of political opponents, genocide and work out strategies to make their ideology a reality.

They don't want to debate with people like you and me, they dream of lining us up against a wall and pulling the trigger. If they took those thoughts one step further, they might actually see the glaring flaw of their ideology (apart from the complete lack of empathy) - but they pretty much never do.

Their white-washed manifestos have now effectively become the talking points of mainstream pundits and politicians who reach hundreds of millions of people combined.

There is no "safe way" way out of this.

I'm srongly in favour of not allowing calls for race wars etc. Using moderation and the law. in fact not allowing it is exactly what i argue for.

Of couse and I very much dont want to help them get what they want.

I also dont want is them to have a huge share of those hundreds of millions to themselves.

Absolutely that's what I was saying. So the fact a strateey isn't safe is not a criticsm of it. Any people who think they have a safe way are deeply misguided. Complacancy is the biggest danger imo

So the debate is on how to best handle it. I argue for politcal correctness, hate speech laws and trying to reduce polariation (among other things). I know some disagree.

I don't think that is the disagreement.

The disagreement, as I read it was that some of us think SM has served a very bad purpose by distilling the desired (by some) elements of white supremist, xenophobia messaging into the most populace and allowable chunks. The ones that resonate the best, get the most engagement, and don't get banned as they take the harsh words and harsh edges off and are better at putting the more repugnant aspects behind a veneer of deniability while often being fairly obvious, at the same time.

You seem to be saying 'you think that is good. You want that harsh edges gone and better language to be used'.

I'll speak for myself and say I felt you were more concerned with 'civil language improvements' at the expense of (or not paying attention to) the increased spread that has come from that.

I agree that SM has served a very bad purpose but uninventing SM is not an option so it's about regulation and laws. Same as with everything. I dont think anyone has been more pro regulation and laws than than me so even if you disagree with how In think it should be handled, it's simply not the case that I haven't been paying attention to the spread.

In fact its precisely because of SM that many years agao I saw that the balance had switched in favour of hate speech laws. I have argued that case many times.

edit: and to correct what may be misunderstanding. I think softening the extremism on SM is a very good think but that in no way implies it will bring it back below SM levels.

As to why that might be important...




Musk believes the platform should be largely unmoderated.

More evidence if it was somehow needed that regualtion is vital. It is not up to an individual - especially not a very rich one.

(Not about musk in particular.)

i highly doubt musk believes it should be "unmoderated". he's just another in the long line of people that ACTUALLY believe it should be moderated as he sees fit.

he is known to constantly sue people to attempt to "moderate" and control their speech.

Any adult who looks up to musk as some savior/tony stark/hero for humanity is a straight up rube. He is more PT Barnum than engineer. He is one of the best salesmen ever. I've built my life around sales so I don't hate the guy for being amazing at it. I just can't help but view his followers as pure bumpkins

If states like Texas have their way, meaningful moderation of popular social media platform may soon become impossible. Texas passed the following statute, which effectively prohibits social medial platforms with more than 50 million users from doing anything to "block, ban, remove, deplatform, demonetize, de-boost, restrict, deny equal access or visibility to, or otherwise discriminate against expression." There are limited exceptions for content that promotes violence, sexual exploitation of children, etc.

https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB20/2021/X2

A federal trial court in Texas temporarily enjoined the law, but the Fifth Circuit lifted the injunction.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/12/t...al-speech.html

This seems like a recipe for chaos.