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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   3318 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 17, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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a website with numerous sub-communities each enforcing their own specific orthodoxy on their members, or a website in which the members of every community have to adhere to exactly one orthodoxy?

Well we can make this argument one stage removed no? Reddit is simply one of many websites enforcing certain values, if you don't like them you can go to another website - it is itself a 'sub-community' of all websites.

  • -10

Ah yes, the old "if you don't like it, start your own website" argument.

Then someone does start their own website, and woke people don't like that, and immediately start hitting said website with DDoS attacks and putting pressure on their hosting providers and payment processors to drop them as clients.

You seem to be operating from the assumption that woke people, as a group, actually respect people's rights to hold and express political opinions they disagree with. I have absolutely no idea how you arrived at such a manifestly preposterous idea, when the last 10-15 years of Western politics have largely consisted of woke people loudly and explicitly announcing that they do not.

"if you don't like it, start your own website"

They could and they did! Patriots.win is still up and running. Where do you think you are now?

So you're not even going to acknowledge my point then, cool.

I was responding to you, specifically your smug mockery of 'start your own website', which was silly because that's exactly what they were able to do.

Kiwifarms, though I don't necessarily agree with Cloudflare's decision, was clearly not just banned just for its ideological proclivities.

Kiwifarms, though I don't necessarily agree with Cloudflare's decision, was clearly not just banned just for its ideological proclivities.

"No no, you don't understand, woke people are totally fine with people starting their own websites/social media platforms/blogging platforms in which they can express non-woke opinions without fear of censorship. It's just a complete coincidence that woke people attempted to get every such sufficiently large website shut down - not because these websites allow non-woke opinions to be expressed, you understand, but for the entirely impartial reason that these websites were being used to promote hate speech/doxxing/misinformation/harassment/pyramid schemes/fraud. No no, woke people totally respect people's freedom to express opinions with which they disagree, no two ways about it."

Here is where I list several historical examples of woke-friendly platforms being used to promote hate speech/doxxing/harassment etc.

"No bad tactics, only bad targets."

I'd never heard of patriots.win prior to this conversation, but it's still a terrible example to illustrate your point that "if you're not woke, you can just start your own website and woke people will leave you alone":

If woke people are happy for conservatives to express pro-Trump opinions (as long as they do it in their own space) - why is patriots.win being labelled a hate website, and facing constant threats of being unhosted ever since its inception?

In a vacuous sense, it's true that the mods of /r/The_Donald were "able" to start their own website, but they faced an uphill battle to do so in a manner that I'm sure even you'll concede no woke website would ever have faced.

was clearly not just banned just for its ideological proclivities.

Hard disagree. People wanted to ban KiwiFarms for the ideological leanings of its userbase and for their unabashed mockery of woke people, so they went looking for something other than "not being woke" they could pin on it as a reason for banning it, even though you'll find woke people doing exactly the same things (or worse) without comment. "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime".

https://www.change.org/p/cloudflare-com-tell-cloudflare-to-stop-hosting-patriots-win?source_location=topic_page

I honestly can't tell if you're trolling. 26 signatures. 26. Change.com. You definitely are.

https://www.adl.org/glossary/patriotswin

I'd say that description is pretty indisputable. Which bit do you think is inaccurate?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/pro-trump-discussion-board-faces-possible-shutdown-over-violent-racist-posts-11610819176

Paywalled.

an uphill battle

I don't think you've demonstrated that. The only potential evidence here is the paywalled WSJ article which I can't read, can you quote the relevant sections? I would note though that it is still here.

Hard disagree. People wanted to ban KiwiFarms for the ideological leanings of its userbase and for their unabashed mockery of woke people, so they went looking for something other than "not being woke" they could pin on it as a reason for banning it, even though you'll find woke people doing eactly the same things (or worse) without comment. "Show me the man and I'll show you the crime".

This is more or less unfalsifiable reasoning, because whatever evidence I give of other justifications for their ban you will dismiss as motivated reasoning/manufactured. So not sure what I can say here. Also, FWIW Kiwifarms is still up and active.

can you quote the relevant sections?

Archived version:

An influential pro-Trump discussion board active in the buildup to the Jan. 6 Capitol attack faces the prospect of being shut down by its web-hosting company for allegedly fostering white supremacist and violent extremism.

Robert Davis, senior vice president of Epik Inc., told The Wall Street Journal his firm warned TheDonald.Win it might be dropped within days if it fails to better cull what he said are discussions glorifying violence, propagating white supremacy and fomenting extremism.

“They need to recognize the critical role they play as an inspirational place rather than a hotbed of extremism,” Mr. Davis said. “Epik has no tolerance for anything that incites hate or violence.” If the site didn’t fix the problem speedily, he added, “they’re gone from Epik and it will be hard for them to get service anywhere.”

This is more or less unfalsifiable reasoning, because whatever evidence I give of other justifications for their ban you will dismiss as motivated reasoning/manufactured.

Yes, because any number of websites could fall under the same reasoning or worse, but it's only Kiwi Farms that they apply the standard to. This is besides the fact that in particular for Kiwi Farms, many of the justifications are outright lies.

Also, FWIW Kiwifarms is still up and active.

Not without an uphill battle. They're still being attacked by the same ex-Googler transgender trans activist who spends all day sending emails reporting the site for violations of every single provider's AUP.

The point being is that "start your own website" is a huge fig leaf, because they can't just come out and admit that they are opposed to ideologically-opposed groups merely existing, so they always have to find another socially-acceptable reason for shutting the site down.

Find me an example of a right-leaning/anti-woke website that woke people didn't try to shut down, then I'll concede your point that woke people are totally happy for right-leaning people to express their opinions, as long as they do it in their own space. You have yet to provide any examples of this: the best you've done is say "yes, woke people do try to get anti-woke websites shut down, but not because they were anti-woke, and anyway not all of these cancellation attempts were successful so why do you care."

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