*points at various threads on this very forum*
Given the right environment and careful moderation, it's very possible.
Well my first thought was Facebook. I went on a pro-life advocacy page earlier and the comments were filled with pro-choice advocates going on about how the stats were wrong, videos were faked, etc. The pro-life advocates were similarly going on about how the stats were right, videos were raw, etc. Shortly after the comments diminished into ranting, hating, cursing, insulting and ultimately died off.You seem to be laboring under a misapprehension here, namely that that sort of behavior and the thought processes behind it are somehow caused by the internet. They're not. The people you meet and interact with every day of your life offline are the same people that say stupid, ignorant things and refuse to engage in good-faith arguments online.
*points at various threads on this very forum*
Given the right environment and careful moderation, it's very possible.
You think that this herd of cats regularly comes up with conclusive answers?
It seems to me that any time I am online and get into an argument (or am reading one) in which the people arguing are severely polarized into two sides of an argument, then many times it eventually falls into insults and finally offrails into people personally attacking each other and their views or beliefs.
Do you have an opinion? Does the Internet discourage people having intellectual debate and actually coming to conclusive answers? Do you have any experiences or evidence to back up your claim?
The internet encourages thoughtful, intelligent discussion and if you disagree I hate you.
The internet encourages thoughtful, intelligent discussion and if you disagree I hate you.
Do you have an opinion? Does the Internet discourage people having intellectual debate and actually coming to conclusive answers? Do you have any experiences or evidence to back up your claim?It's probably somewhat sideways to the intent of the question you're asking, but I would probably argue that the internet has done more to encourage intellectual debate and coming to (the next best thing to) conclusive answers than any human invention since relatively effective courier mail.
I think the internet is too big to generalize an answer to this question. Some places and formats are worse for arguing, and some are better.
Do you have an opinion? Does the Internet discourage people having intellectual debate and actually coming to conclusive answers? Do you have any experiences or evidence to back up your claim?It's probably somewhat sideways to the intent of the question you're asking, but I would probably argue that the internet has done more to encourage intellectual debate and coming to (the next best thing to) conclusive answers than any human invention since relatively effective courier mail.
Evidence: Internet enabled academic/experimental/economic/etc. cooperation and communication and the freakishly improved capabilities we've had in that field since the internet started to propagate. There has not existed a point in human history where we were as physically capable of holding robust intellectual debate as we are now, and there's frankly any number of fields (academic or otherwise) where that's incredibly visible -- basically any that's seeing any meaningful degree of international cooperation would be a dead-on example thereof. Even if there has been some sort of reduction of the average level of discourse, the sheer expansion of the amount is what I'd call a gigantic net positive, even if that leads to its own problems.
Yeah, you have ridiculous "safe spaces" like Neogaf, you have Bay12 which allows free debate, and then you have places like /pol/ which.. well... they kind of defy classification. Point is, there's a spectrum.I think the internet is too big to generalize an answer to this question. Some places and formats are worse for arguing, and some are better.
Very much this ^
It can also vary by the people arguing.
I believe that there are places on the internet moderated in the same fashion as debates. I don't know where they are, but they have to exist, after all, debate clubs exist, if we can have things like that inreal lifemeatspace, we must also have them on the internet.
In any case, point out how an argument isn't an argument, and occasionally you can stop the circlejerk for just a little bit. In any case, pro-life versus pro-choice is such a venomous argument that nobody really listens to the other side, as one side is motivated by religion or squick factor
Nah, what you're actually talking about it school. School discourages intellectual discussion and debate, the students never learn how to hold an argument in turn, and then they become self-centered bigots with anxiety issues few of them realize they have.
Why do you think most arguments inevitably degrade into festering mounds of hate spittle? No one wants to admit they may be wrong as they obsessively guard their ideals and opinions with fury and abandon. They never learned how to learn, and instead were taught to shoot down and ignore everything that goes against anything they already know.
It seems to me that any time I am online and get into an argument (or am reading one) in which the people arguing are severely polarized into two sides of an argument, then many times it eventually falls into insults and finally offrails into people personally attacking each other and their views or beliefs.
Do you have an opinion? Does the Internet discourage people having intellectual debate and actually coming to conclusive answers? Do you have any experiences or evidence to back up your claim?
It encourages debate, but not the changing of opinions.
People could agree to disagree... it ain't likely for people to change their minds on the subject or even acknowledge that maybe the other person is right about something. (Wherein someone else comes in to take the torch when one drops out. >.>)
It seems to me that any time I am online and get into an argument (or am reading one) in which the people arguing are severely polarized into two sides of an argument, then many times it eventually falls into insults and finally offrails into people personally attacking each other and their views or beliefs.Tbh go to any site like the chans where moderation is lack and everyone treats attacks and insults as par the course completely honest no holds barred intellectual discussion takes place where nothing is sacred, nothing is assumed and everything can be attacked. Since everyone is anonymous and there is no advantage to building up/preserving a reputation/gaining ebin pointsssss the system does not turn into a hugbox and flamewars do not take place because there are no egos (which is why people who try to avatar get shut down by everyone else as quickly as possible). It's pretty good for intellectual discussion especially when it comes to democratizing intellectual debate, so it's not just in the realm of the pretentious and state approved (hence why China, Google and Western politicians spout such bizarre rhetoric that shitposters are shitposter terrorists just as dangerous as cheeky jihad bandits) muggy warts. The one flaw is that it relies on users continually creating new content and new ideas in the free market of ideas, and usually as a certain board kultur grows in popularity the free market of ideas tends to switch away from quality discussion to a watered down, mass marketed parroting should the lowest common denominator ever outnumber the people actually contributing. Then there's shills and spammers, which you don't get in real life. Well, I guess you do get those in real life. But on the internet shills and spammers can really take advantage of groupthink to crush intellectual discussion. Peer pressure is powerful, few people want to be someone who stands out to the crowd, hence why people of political persuasions all flock to their own communities in real life and online. But on the internet this is so easily abused, with one person through many accounts becoming a crowd unto themself to influence the rest, give orders and guide the narrative. Another thing is that with mods, shills, facebook, twitter, youtube and so on able to silence certain narratives by shadow banning, delisting, deleting, doxxing and diluting, on most mainstream sites of discussion the only debate that can take place are within approved boundaries. So you could look for some small community with no gestapo or secret FBI mods where the discussion is good, but usually such places discuss outside approved boundaries on the fringe where the diversity of opinion can be narrower, so you have a place where anyone can say anything but many say little out of the ordinary.
Do you have an opinion? Does the Internet discourage people having intellectual debate and actually coming to conclusive answers? Do you have any experiences or evidence to back up your claim?
Then there's shills and spammers, which you don't get in real life. Well, I guess you do get those in real life.You get more shills on TV that real life or he internet. TV commercials are nothing but unsolicited shills.
Completely forgot to mention as well the SJWs trying to push for a SAFE NEW WORLD IN THE CURRENT YEAR (http://i.imgur.com/nYNRmq4.png)
STOP HATETHOUGHTING ME (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=153692.msg6568673#msg6568673)
Completely forgot to mention as well the SJWs trying to push for a SAFE NEW WORLD IN THE CURRENT YEAR (http://i.imgur.com/nYNRmq4.png)
STOP HATETHOUGHTING ME (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=153692.msg6568673#msg6568673)
I found the source of this, a major forum called NeoGAF. I don't want to link to that thread in particular, but it's a pretty good example of the internet stifling discussion. In this case through biased moderation filtering out dissenting viewpoints. What doesn't get deleted is simply ignored. I don't go to other forums often, but what I see there really makes me happy to be a part of this one.
You heard it here, folks. People trying to help other people leads to the USSR. Clearly, all poor people, minorities, and various groups facing discrimination and/or oppression must die of exposure to prevent this horrible fate. Do your part to fight the SJW menace! Shoot a hobo today!
You heard it here, folks. People trying to help other people leads to the USSR. Clearly, all poor people, minorities, and various groups facing discrimination and/or oppression must die of exposure to prevent this horrible fate. Do your part to fight the SJW menace! Shoot a hobo today!A concerted effort by the government to force cultural change.
I seriously have often wondered what it is about "being offended!!" that drives people to always FIND something to be offended over.
You heard it here, folks. People trying to help other people leads to the USSR. Clearly, all poor people, minorities, and various groups facing discrimination and/or oppression must die of exposure to prevent this horrible fate. Do your part to fight the SJW menace! Shoot a hobo today!
I don't want to shoot anyone, but if I were going to, I'd much rather shoot a self-aggrandizing bigoted university student sheltering their hatred beneath the aegis of progressivism than a homeless person.
You heard it here, folks. People trying to help other people leads to the USSR. Clearly, all poor people, minorities, and various groups facing discrimination and/or oppression must die of exposure to prevent this horrible fate. Do your part to fight the SJW menace! Shoot a hobo today!
No no no. Shoot a social justice warrior.
Nah, if I were going to shoot people involved in that nonsense, I'd be shooting the ones that are complaining about it. I can actually find large numbers of those in driving distance. Rabid SJW stereotypes barely exist outside the internet (or on it, really), but people frothing about political correctness and whatnot are literally down the street in numbers that require more than fingers and toes to count.I live in London, I can tell you rabid SJWs don't come from the internet, they merely go on it. Dyed armpit hair and problem glasses as far as the eyes can't see, shitlord
Nah, if I were going to shoot people involved in that nonsense, I'd be shooting the ones that are complaining about it. I can actually find large numbers of those in driving distance. Rabid SJW stereotypes barely exist outside the internet (or on it, really), but people frothing about political correctness and whatnot are literally down the street in numbers that require more than fingers and toes to count.I live in London, I can tell you rabid SJWs don't come from the internet, they merely go on it. Dyed armpit hair and problem glasses as far as the eyes can't see, shitlord
More worrying, these fucks are in power trying to ban all problematic speech.
Remember: Whenever you're raging helplessly about "SJWs censoring and controlling and ruining the internet," you're thinking exactly what the media wants you to think.
When you're wrecking the inventor of Javascript and Nobel laureates, banning thoughtcrime from campuses to countries and you fucking dominate the politics of three continents you are far more than annoying. Just look at Oxford and Cambridge - two intellectual centers of Western civilization and the world. They don't (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/11904376/Oxford-University-Student-Union-bans-free-speech-magazine-because-it-is-offensive.html) give a (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/13/banning-shouting-down-speakers-universities-risk) fuck (http://new.spectator.co.uk/2014/11/free-speech-is-so-last-century-todays-students-want-the-right-to-be-comfortable/) about free speech or challenging ideas, they want to get rid of everything they find problematic. These centers produce the leaders of tomorrow and the majority of middling managers and controllers of the Western world. 1 in 7 world leaders studied in UK Universities (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-29361704). This is a staggering amount of influence that lets people get away with the witch hunts, curtailing free speech from University to State level (last year they tried banning criticizing Islam (http://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2015/04/free-speech-campaigners-concerned-by-ed-milibands-vow-to-ban-islamophobia--without-defining-what-he-means) and Feminism (http://i.imgur.com/eZ02ZX2.jpg). The latter of which you will note have great enthusiasm for censoring and false flagging, and just so happen to be sitting in the U.N. making the case for making a "safe" internet.SJWsInternet moralists* have as much political power as cats. They can sometimes be annoyingly noisy, or scratch furniture, or chew cables, or piss on the bed, or puke on the keyboard, or... well, whatever they do, the point is that being a nuisance does not make you powerful.**
* I prefer this term because it has less usage as a snarl word for non-stupid, non-internet people.
** This is one of the Iron Rules of Politics, in case you haven't noticed.
^Pretty much this. Frumple just happens to live in a place where they're more reserved. In europe and parts of south america, SJW dweebs are everywhere and often have connections with the government, who's all too happy to use them cannon fodder and leverage to silence all opposition and have them lobby for anything the government wants. Cue calling all oposition "fascists" and silencing any speech that doesn't support their own.These aren't fringe crazy cat ladies, control the Academia and you will have the future leaders and consumers all on the same page. They've decided in this case that all must be fighting all that is problematic by any means necessary, there are no such things as bad tactics and only good targets. Remember, racists are subhuman, and racists are people I don't like.
Hell, look at Brazil, who's currently fighting to remove a 12 year old corrupt as all hell lefty government from power. The only guys actualy defending the government are the so called "social movements" that claim to "represent the opressed minorities", and who just happen to gain ludicrous ammount of public funding, and some of them may even have ties with south american dictatorships. Things are getting specially heated now that Argentina kicked Kirchner and her cronies out.
SJWs have as much political power as cats.People baking Jihad cakes for instagram, people trying to summon skinwalkers, people tipping tinfoil hats; they've got as much power as cats. Funny on the internet. SJWs are much more.
*snip*There are quite a few things in that post, but here's just a quick note Re: colleges:
EDIT: Also, LW: Everyone's heard that Rochdale stuff so many times that you can stop posting it now, thanks. It's blood-curdlingly heinous and wrong, but (at the risk of sounding callous) so what? There's nothing we can do about your shitty corrupt officials in your country---we can only hope that you guys will succeed in smoking them out of their offices and throwing them in jail, if that's what they deserve.Because it's relevant?
Because it's a direct fucking result of the PC era?Only if Cyril Smith and his ilk are your prototypical PC-SJWs.
There are quite a few things in that post, but here's just a quick note Re: colleges:One notable thing about our Unis is that our student loan system is not in fact a loan system but a hybrid system where higher earning graduates subsidize the education of lower income students. It is disguised as a loan system so young high earning students don't realize that they're paying for someone else's education.
I've only seen that shit happen in hugely expensive and prestigious private universities à la Oxbridge and Ivy League. There's nothing---not even the earliest warning signs---of that sort going on in rinky-dink Finnish state universities, for example.
I wonder why that is?
Only if Cyril Smith and his ilk are your prototypical PC-SJWs."If social services feared to tread to avoid causing offence, and perhaps complicating wider work within the Pakistani community, then that has proved a terrible error. For giving offence is as nothing compared with the grotesque offences that eventually transpired. (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/sep/27/abuse-rochdale-brutality-blind-eye)"
Maybe the problem is not progressive politics per se, but that British society is for a large part being run by pedophiles and pigfuckers?
Just asking.
EDIT: Also, LW: Everyone's heard that Rochdale stuff so many times that you can stop posting it now, thanks. It's blood-curdlingly heinous and wrong, but (at the risk of sounding callous) so what? There's nothing we can do about your shitty corrupt officials in your country---we can only hope that you guys will succeed in smoking them out of their offices and throwing them in jail, if that's what they deserve.I'm not asking you to do anything. You said these people are mere nuisances, no more than cats. The same people who scream at me for eating a chicken sandwich also possess a vote, are particularly fond of jobs in media and also happen to make up the intellectual and political elite of the Western world. There are also a lot of them. They have considerably more political power than "cats." Fluffy cats is an adorable, impotent image, easily brushed away. If you've heard this enough then you know why these people are far from impotent and far from fluffy, they cannot be brushed so easily away and their failings give rise to blood-curdlingly heinous consequences.
Are you really that determined to refuse to accept political correctness and the power of the word 'racist' had a mighty strong part in allowing Rothdale to continue?You mean whether PC-talk was used as a weapon by the shitheel officials? Of course it was, why would anyone deny that? It's a legitimate super-weapon in anyone's hands.
I don't. He doesn't. Read more carefully.Since this thread seems to be in danger of turning into an SJW-bashing circlejerk with little self-awareness, I'm encouraging everyone to read these words of wisdom on the subject of "internet safety/justice," or whatever you'd call it. (http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/05/cyberbll.html) It's by one cynical and disagreeable old misanthrope, but regardless, I found it eye-openingly astute and true for the most part.Spoiler: A few key points: (click to show/hide)
Remember: Whenever you're raging helplessly about "SJWs censoring and controlling and ruining the internet," you're thinking exactly what the media wants you to think.
Well, you're only thinking exactly what the media wants you to think if you think that anonymity is the reason.
(Seriously, this guy just called the 4th estate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate) impotent.)
You mean whether PC-talk was used as a weapon by the shitheel officials? Of course it was, why would anyone deny that? It's a legitimate super-weapon in anyone's hands.Guns don't have causes or motives either. This one is perhaps weird in that it is a cause in of itself.
What I'm saying is that progressive politics was presented as the primary justification for the cover-up, but it was hardly the primary cause and motive, or an end in itself.
Remember that Shitstain-Smith (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Smith) had turned the constituency into a private pedo-brothel for decades before the Pakistani shitstains arrived: he was allowed to abuse as many British kids as he liked, everyone knew, the police did nothing. He died as recently as 2010, and most of the Pakistani abuse took place when he was still de facto the most influential man in Rochdale. This sick fuck had created a culture of systematic abuse and silence for his own sick benefit, and you're surprised when more sick fucks arrive from Pakistan and start exploiting the system? I don't find it surprising at all.I'm surprised that despite all my repetitions you missed that this was not localized to Rochdale. This is happening all over England in constituencies where the progressive councilors were not pedophiles as well. Rotherham, Oxford, Telford, Peterborough, Banbury, Ayelsbury and most recently Bristol as well. The only thing in common is that every time it was Muslim men from Southern Asia or Africa and the police and councilors knew they were targeting schoolgirls as young as 11 and covered it up, with one exceptionally horrid case where police arrested a father trying to save his own daughter. Under a left-wing government which wanted mass immigration for the sole purpose of making it "truly a multicultural country" we ended up with progressive councilors covering up rape gangs to maintain social cohesion and avoid accusations of being racist. This is the action of peoples committed to progressive social projects and social justice, not to serving their constituents. You can't get any more obvious.
Reading it, and all I can say so far is that this guy does not know how to make a clear point. At all.
EDIT: Okay, I think I finally got to his actual point for the whole damn article. People are encouraged to critique the "evil" in the world because it's profitable to the media and does nothing to actually change anything. So they make money and sustain the status quo. People would rather read things they know are awful for the satisfaction of venting than actually go out of their way to make some actual change happen.
A very nice lineup, but more and more news media sites are now openly opposed to anonymous discussion on their news pages.Words, words, corporate words, but let's keep in mind that the noisiest sources of death threats and similar internet excrement at the moment are "non-anonymous" fake accounts on social media. And Facebook et al. are really, reeeally effective at deleting fake accounts, aren't they? (*nudge nudge wink wink*)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/12/technology/12comments.html?_r=0
So, they ARE actively working against the anon commentary demographic. (and creating a nice little echo chamber for themselves) Either this is brilliant, or they are making themselves irrelevant.
If it that sort of situation was a brittish only thing, then mayhap, but thats not what can be observed worldwide. It really is specially jarring in how heinous the whole thing is embroidled in pedophilia, but the phenomenom of using SJWs the guise of progressiveness to justify terrible policies and hide crimes is not confined to angloland.Hey do you recall when EA claimed people voted them #1 worst company (again) (http://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2013/04/09/ea-voted-worst-company-in-america-again/) in the world because clearly EA was a shining bastion of progressivism and everyone else were racist gayslayers? They aren't the first true shitlord to have sent themselves thousands of anti-gay posts because of how utterly scummy they were. Really interesting to hear what's going down in South America, I wouldn't expect them to have to deal with this shit too.You can keep pretending they're just loud, harmless idiots, but the observed reality clearly points otherwise.Spoiler: On South America (click to show/hide)
En resume: The problem isn't progressive politics, its the fact they're being maliciously used to disguise other interests, which is made very easy and abusable due to the fact that you absolutely cannot question anything deemed "progressive" without a titanic political correct mob calling you a huge worse than hitler racist/sexist/gay-bashing mario bigot.
1. Media wants to know everything about you because your identity is their cash-cow.That's more social media's thing than media
2. Media hates privacy because it can't be monetized like a public identity.
3. Media teaches you to hate privacy as a matter of principle: you can only be a good person if you (ostensibly) """have nothing to hide."""
4. Media does nothing to "protect" their users from "anonymous" "attacks," because that's where all the sexy clicks and controversy is at. It also allows them to maintain the status quo and the "privacy/anonymity is bad" narrative ad infinitum
5. Enjoy your life as a biological content generator in the Matrix.
Can't help but agree with this. Its unfortunate but hey. The 1st amendment just like the 2nd is antiquated. These are things which need to be revised for the new age that we are and will be living in. The founding fathers did not have internet or a lot of other things we have today. America is really one of the only developed countries that still clings to these particular ideas of freedom.Americans, please fight rabidly to retain your freedoms. The internet can produce intellectual discussion... But it's just a medium. It needs free speech and free flow of information. Don't throw it away so callously, there really is no other place on this planet that will legally let you speak your mind and it's seriously under threat in the USA. Intellectual discussion without free speech is like science under the inquisition's eye. I would never have thought it would get to this point where someone being called toxic is sufficient grounds to destroy them.
Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got, 'till it's gone?Nah it's even worse because you won't even know it's gone. With things like delisting and bread and circus distractions you don't get streisand effects because people don't know what's being censored or if they're being censored or if the mainstream narratives are all there is to it. Then there's self censorship of course, with moderators and janitors not just trying to control their own communities, but also disrupt, destroy or take over communities not yet under their control.
ORmoder
How americans sacrifice freedoms for the illusions of safety and comfort, and thus deserve neither.
Last year, Pew conducted a study on how social media lived up to its promise of breaking elitist-imposed conformism by allowing a more democratic sharing of unpopular opinions. Using the controversial issue of the day—the Edward Snowden leaks—what they discovered was that social media’s horizontal model was creating a far worse culture of conformity than before. In fact, people were twice as likely to share their opinion about the Snowden controversy in person (86%) than on social media (42%); and regular users of social media were far more prone to self-censorship and group-think both online and off-line than those who weren’t regular social media usersWhich suggests that the internet is an active detriment to mass intellectual discourse, and places where it happens are exceptions to the rule. The SJW raids of 4chan I find are an entertaining insight into this, and do suggest that commercial interests are merely part of a larger progressive hatred of anonymity. I remember the first half-hearted raids where SJWs tried flooding the imageboards with porn and the Anons never really noticed they were being raided, or when they tried flooding /q/ with requests to delete the "problematic" boards until /q/ got deleted. Then luggage lad saga happened, all the Anons from /d/ to /mlp/ and even some of the massive anarchic ones like /b/, /v/ and /pol/ got holocausted by SJW infiltrators. Different from Scruffy who hit /tg/ (and I always love that it was a mod from /d/ that blew the first whistle here, even Slaanesh likes freedom of speech, or perhaps just blowing whistles), the quality of the boards reached critical shit and never recovered. They didn't become SJW but /int/ tier shitposting had become the norm, disruption had been achieved where subversion was impossible. Plus there is that amusing phenomenon where internet communities create cryptolects to identify outsiders, identify the ingroup and to confuse mainstream lurkers. That's why you have dialogical heteronormative transpanromantyc polybigendermysigony or the dank memes UUUU POO POO PEE PEE e.t.c. that no one who has not lurked for a while would understand.
What profit is gained from this? There is nothing to market in silencing something, and they would be losing the opportunity to publish a catchy headline. The only profit is political capital. Why does the CIA fund the BBC? Why does the EU fund the BBC? Why does Putin fund Sputnik and RT? For profit? No, narrative control.Right, but look at the bigger picture: Let's say that the BBC "silences" an incident involving crime, immigrants, revolting vice, etc. etc., and then Baitfart or some other "truthy" site picks up the story and adds a healthy dose of ass-facts and hyperbole to boost its sexiness to masterbait levels. Then the "censored" story goes viral and Hatebook et al. are filled to the brim with progs and wingnuts screaming bloody murder at each other. And then the BBC---along with every other news outlet in the country---publishes a billion articles and editorials about the "controversy" and how terrible, terrible it all is (and of course, Milo & the Boys also get their chance to scream "CENSER SHIP" until they're puking blood). The answer to "why did the BBC relinquish those clicks" is that they ultimately didn't. Nothing was really censored because censorship is a fucking joke on the net---the governments know it, Hatebook knows it, and even the BBC knows it. They just cannot publish it outright because of certain political aspects, as you said, but also because they've got a brand to maintain: their main selling-point is that they're not The Sun. "The BBC is a bland and inaccurate, but at least respectable media!"...so very British, so very safe.
https://pando.com/2015/02/04/the-geometry-of-censorship-and-satire/I commented on that piece in the progressive thread. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=103213.msg6652675#msg6652675)
Someone on bay12 posted this before, I've forgotten who? Anyways it's all about this culture of conformity.
Comment sections are poison: handle with care or remove them
Comments are often regarded as a right but they can do more harm than good. In the absence of strict moderation, we’d be much better off without them (http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/sep/12/comment-sections-toxic-moderation)
These fucks are the same ones on Neogaf
I commented on that piece in the progressive thread. (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=103213.msg6652675#msg6652675)I find the topic of whether the West is better or worse than Russia in this regard very much like arguing whether the West loses more people to drug addiction than Russia or not
real censorship is most successful when you don't know it's there.Nailed it, and is my tl;dr
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-34592186
A lengthy planning document from China's elite State Council explains that social credit will "forge a public opinion environment that trust-keeping is glorious", warning that the "new system will reward those who report acts of breach of trust".
A national database will merge a wide variety of information on every citizen, assessing whether taxes and traffic tickets have been paid, whether academic degrees have been rightly earned and even, it seems, whether females have been instructed to take birth control.
Credit systems build trust between all citizens, Wen Quan says.
"Without a system, a conman can commit a crime in one place and then do the same thing again in another place. But a credit system puts people's past history on the record. It'll build a better and fairer society," she promises.
better and fairer
better and fairer
better and fairer
As well people being more willing to open up in person then "over the internet" is common.Except that we saw with the Snowden leaks, people were twice less likely to voice their opinion on the matter than they would in real life. Anonymity is one factor, another is that what you say on the internet does not necessarily come down if you wish to retract it. What you say in real life disappears with the wind and people's memory, on the internet it's there for good
One takes effort and the other doesn't
The real question is, "does modern society in general discourage intellectual discussion and debate?" If we want to enhance the ratio of intellectual discussion to other discussion, we should look deeper than media such as the Internet. Education on how to be critical about media could be a start.Please no, Western education is already anti free speech we do not need critical media studies any more than we needed critical theory studies.
Peace Journalism is now a globally distributed reform movement of reporters, academics and activists from Africa to the Antipodes. Academic courses are now being taught in the UK, Australia, the USA, Mexico, South Africa, Costa Rica, Norway, Sweden and many others.http://www.peacejournalism.org/Peace_Journalism/Welcome.html
Peace Journalism is defined “when editors and reporters make choices - of what to report, and how to report it - that create opportunities for society at large to consider and value non-violent responses to conflict” (Lynch and McGoldrick, 2005)
It also doesn't take any effort to lie or hide things about yourself online. I think "people open up more over the internet" is a pretty big oversimplification based mainly on gut logic.
QuotePeace Journalism is now a globally distributed reform movement of reporters, academics and activists from Africa to the Antipodes. Academic courses are now being taught in the UK, Australia, the USA, Mexico, South Africa, Costa Rica, Norway, Sweden and many others.http://www.peacejournalism.org/Peace_Journalism/Welcome.html
Peace Journalism is defined “when editors and reporters make choices - of what to report, and how to report it - that create opportunities for society at large to consider and value non-violent responses to conflict” (Lynch and McGoldrick, 2005)
I'm so glad I have peace journalists willing to lie, suppress and spin in order to "highlight peace ideas and initiatives from anywhere at any time." Warms my loins, truly, to know the pursuit of impartiality isn't even fucking worth it. Fuck actual victims, we peace narratives now.
*massive tl;dr*Great post! All that detailed stuff about British media is mighty interesting, but I'm not going to get into it right now (too time-consuming). I'll just make another comment on the phenomenon at large, to figure out what we're actually talking about here:
I dream of a world where use of terms like "rape culture" and "cisnormative" and "privileged" are rightfully recognized as telltale indicators of severe paranoid insanity similar to "illuminati", "contrail", "fluoridation", "jet fuel can't melt steel beams", or wearing a hat made out of foil.
A false comparison. Gossip magazines are worthless, yes - but they do not make false pretenses of being a trustworthy news source. A "global reform movement of reporters, academics and activists from Africa to the Antipodes, with academic courses being taught in the UK, Australia, the USA, Mexico, South Africa, Costa Rica, Norway, Sweden and many others," teaching editors not only to control narratives but teach them that they must is considerably, considerably worse.It's no worse that regular journalism, which is designed to create opportunities for society at large to consider and value the latest celebrity gossipSpoiler (click to show/hide)
A false comparison. Gossip magazines are worthless, yes - but they do not make false pretenses of being a trustworthy news source. A "global reform movement of reporters, academics and activists from Africa to the Antipodes, with academic courses being taught in the UK, Australia, the USA, Mexico, South Africa, Costa Rica, Norway, Sweden and many others," teaching editors not only to control narratives but teach them that they must is considerably, considerably worse.It's no worse that regular journalism, which is designed to create opportunities for society at large to consider and value the latest celebrity gossipSpoiler (click to show/hide)
Here is where I personally draw the line on such issues--
Does the person trying to "step up" use thier resources to actually give voice to a social minority (as in a charity group that provides enabling services, but has no message of its own)-- OR-- Does the person trying to "step up" raise their resources to raise their own voice, on a topic they innately can know nothing about?
The former, I have no problem with. This is a good thing, and allows actually repressed or disadvantaged people to hold the mic, and let the world hear them.
The latter, I have a serious problem with. This is a bad thing. It is hypocrisy incarnate, as instead of the actual situations faced by the targeted minority getting spoken about, it is instead purely the opinion and rhetoric of people of privelege, working themselves into a rabid lather over what they THINK those people experience. This poisons the actual social discussion by parading a caracature of the problem around with such loudness and grandure, that the actual voices of the actually disenfranchised gets smeared with it. This makes people who would otherwise be sensible, and sympathetic toward solving actual adversity become adverse to even listening, because of how radically batshit the characaturized version is.
Recent example from history:
Hearing about communism in the soviet union, from people who lived in the soviet union.
vs
Hearing about communism in the soviet union from Joe McCarthy, and his cronies. (Or from Stalin's PR machine, either one is just as bad.)
It is important to keep in mind that there does not need to be an obviously malign agenda, like with the prior example. People can truely mean well with thier interjections-- The problem persists though; They are raising their own (imagined) perception of the problem, rather than using their resources to hand the mic over to people that actually experience the problem. When that happens, they drown out the signal, and make only noise.
It is more that SJWs kind of "Talk for them" and if the group they are speaking for disagrees well "They are just brainwashed".
Not that the reverse doesn't happen where a group goes "No one can have an opinion on this unless they are us"
--
So you get a LOT of situations where the SJWs are offended by something that the group in question is not.
A huge example is Speedy Gonzales from Loony Toons who have been banned for YEARS because "White People" thought it offended Mexicans... when in fact it was the opposite the Mexicans thought it was a great and positive character.
And honestly the examples are rather long if I chose to list them all.
Y'know, the SJW thing came up at my dinner table the other day. I reckon it boils down to this- the folks behind it are the folks that are empowered by the moral right that they feel they are deserved by their moral indignation. They don't need to logically defend their position, it's locked behind a sense of righteous superiority. Similarly, they'll get all indignant if they feel that the topic of their stance is improving (gender awareness, etc) and they're losing ground on a topic they can feel angry about.
It's about being right, and frankly, there's a very strong desire for netizens to be right. Here then is where we'll see the notion that internet discussion discourages debate, since people will go where they feel right and where other people feel they are also right, and so dissenting voices can get squelched. See also the terms 'hugbox' and 'circlejerk.'
I don't think, however, that these occurrences are the products of the internet itself, nor does it limit discussion- all involved are still people, and it's people with whom we have discussions. It's a human issue, and one maybe exacerbated by the tools the 'net provides.
Arguments get just as crazy, inconclusive, and even more violent when you're there in person -- the internet doesn't necessarily amplify it, it's just that the folks screaming get heard beyond the boundaries of their buildings.
I prefer the older term, "echo chamber"-- eg, staying with a group with the same opinions and worldviews, since that reinforces the existing opinions and worldviews of the individual who stays there.
Recent example from history:This is not a flattering comparison. In your example, what possible motive could communists from the Soviet Union talking about communism have for talking one way or the other?
Hearing about communism in the soviet union, from people who lived in the soviet union.
vs
Hearing about communism in the soviet union from Joe McCarthy, and his cronies. (Or from Stalin's PR machine, either one is just as bad.)
It is important to keep in mind that there does not need to be an obviously malign agenda, like with the prior example. People can truely mean well with thier interjections-- The problem persists though; They are raising their own (imagined) perception of the problem, rather than using their resources to hand the mic over to people that actually experience the problem. When that happens, they drown out the signal, and make only noise.It is most amusing reading of blind and deaf Victorians complaining about those trying to help them making their pains most pronounced.
Another great example of both these phenomena would be the two-faced sanctimonious money-grubbing crypto-nazis who run Autism SpeaksThere is a story here that demands explaining
I'm not talking about gossip magazines, I'm talking about the TV news, most of which is either celebrity gossip (including some news which at first glance appears to be legitimately politically informative; "OMG Hillary Clinton used a poor choice of words to describe the Bengazi attack!?") or else sometimes even just regular gossip (Human interest pieces. The Jonbenet Ramsey murder. etc.)You'll have to be more specific which TV news channels you're talking about. American? Which is erm... Not the highest quality around.
I'd consider myself progressive, but I don't particularly like people who think delusionally and think everyone else should join them in their delusional thinking, whether they're "progressive" or "conservative." For example, if you think that disagreeing with someone is equivalent to personally attacking them. Or anyone who ignores facts in order to believe a more convenient story for their worldview. For example, the forensic evidence proves that Michael Brown was charging when he was shot and killed - but that doesn't accord with the narrative so it's ignored for unreliable witness testimony. Of course, for many people it's entirely believable that the police would fake forensic evidence to exonerate an officer - practically every time there's a shooting with a video released later it seems like the initial report by the police officers involved is completely untrue.The George Zimmerman case was even more blatant in this regard, where a hispanic man shoots a black man who was sitting on top of him smashing his head into the pavement because he was angry about losing a fight and wanted to beat someone else up instead to get his pride back, Murrican media actually edited his police phone call to make it sound like he was a white supremacist who chased down an innocent black kid and gunned him down in cold blood - even editing out his head wounds in order to keep the reaceb8 real. The saddest thing was, despite the whole debacle occupying Murrican media for months and even Obama picking sides (conveniently detracting from the whole mass surveillance thing) no one watched the trial themself :/
On the original subject, it's certainly possible to change your opinion in an internet discussion. Not getting into giant flamewars helps. Keeping an open mind helps. Recognizing when someone is right when they tell you that you're wrong helps (and controlling the urge to try to justify or make excuses for when you post something dumb and someone calls you on it, because doing that just tends to lead to flamewars).Possible, better done with anonymity - no need to save face.
Yes, "echo chamber" is definitely preferable, as it doesn't falsely differentiate Social Justice Warrior phenomena from it's counterparts on the right (such as fundamentalist churches, capitalist/Randist-objectivist/Mammonist forums, the NRA, goldbugs, and Stormfront)What part of the differentiation is "false"? What does someone demanding you check your privilege have in common with people telling you BUY GOLD BUY GOLD? Why would a Randian in the free market of ideas not warrant differentiation from the safe space of an SJW? Why would a fundamentalist group whose streams are prone to internet raids not warrant differentiation from SJWs that organize their social justice on those same media? Mammonists, I must say I have never seen them before. Stormfront and SJWs have the most similarity of them all, but they are not the same any more than communists and nazis are the same despite their great similarities (not surprising given which side of the oxbow they align themselves with). Take 5 minutes on Stormfront or SJW (https://www.reddit.com/r/StormfrontorSJW/) where you have to guess whether what was said was said by a neo-nazi or SJW after all the group labels have been obfuscated. Those 5 minutes are pretty much all you need to recognize the patterns in writing style, rhetoric and lexis which marks whether one's a neo-nazi or SJW. They both want to exterminate their outgroups but that's where the similarities end. These differences extend all the way through organizational structure (decentralized vs network) to tactics (protocols vs rules). Even the most similar groups only appear similarly in obnoxiousness; and certainly not in influence. This is the equivalent of people talking about jihadist terrorism and then some bloke keeps chanting "BREIVIK" - dilution of discussion achieved
Another great example of both these phenomena would be the two-faced sanctimonious money-grubbing crypto-nazis who run Autism SpeaksThere is a story here that demands explaining
The George Zimmerman case was even more blatant in this regard, where a hispanic man shoots a black man who was sitting on top of him smashing his head into the pavement because he was angry about losing a fight and wanted to beat someone else up instead to get his pride back, Murrican media actually edited his police phone call to make it sound like he was a white supremacist who chased down an innocent black kid and gunned him down in cold blood - even editing out his head wounds in order to keep the reaceb8 real. The saddest thing was, despite the whole debacle occupying Murrican media for months and even Obama picking sides (conveniently detracting from the whole mass surveillance thing) no one watched the trial themself :/
It was quite disheartening to see a non-partisan issue become partisan, but it was especially intriguing to see that in spite of progressives and republicans facing off, both had either picked the right or wrong side both for the wrong reasons, neither having actually reviewed the evidence; only what had been presented to them by the scummy media.
Do you have any citations/evidence for any of that, from a reputable source?This messy thread (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=128753.msg4416463#msg4416463)
Whispers: You misattributed the first quote block to Bohondas. It came from me.Sorry m8, I try to rush through these as quickly as possible
To clarify that one point:No, they will tell you with political slant, they are products of communism from the former soviet union
When discussing how communism affected the daily lives of ordinary people in the former soviet union, it is better to ask and hear from the common, ordinary people who lived their daily lives under communism in the former soviet union. They can tell you difinitively, without some political slant, exactly how life there was.
If you were to hear onlh Stalin's PR, you will hear only roses and sunshine about it.Adding more disinfo does not truth make
If you were to hear only McCarthy's views, you would only hear doom and gloom about brainwashing, and other stuff concerning the dreaded "red menace."
Both Stalin and McCarthy had lots of influence over the media of their respective hemispheres. They crowded out the actual signal (people saying how life there is/was) by saturating it with thier own version as they saw it.I've seen tumblr signal boosting and have come to the conclusion their theories on how truth comes about is poo
Depending on who you asked about life in the soviet union, it could vary from marginally backward but not altogether bad, to downright hellhole. (I know all about the Holodomor. I lost family.)My matrilinial blood runs with the blood that flowed through a commie official, he was supposed to have been executed but he escaped and they forgot about him after he changed his identity
Similar happens when you talk to actual people that fall into disadvantaged demographics. What they say ranges from the "seriously, this is being blown out of proportion" side of things to the "OMG, this shit is fucked up and ruining my life!" side of things.That's a difference in tactics, tactics which SJWs employ
if you listen to the denialists, they will favor the "nothing to see here citizen, move along" angle, while the SJW focuses on the "OMG! it's ruining people's lives! we gotta act NAOW!!" angle.
The problem is that much like McCarthy and Stalin, the denialists and the SJWs have vastly more time and resources to spend promulgating their version of "Truth", which detracts and blots out the actually disadvantaged people's actual voices.
*clicks link*Have pity - if you felt fatal dread by scrolling through it, consider the exhaustive task it was for the foolish souls who wrote it all
*scrolls looking for links leading to sources for any of the quotes or anything in your OP... Doesn't find them*
(No, I didn't read any of it, and I stopped before I hit the end of the post because it was taking ridiculously long just to scroll through it)
If you don't want to cite anything because it's too much effort that's fine. Maybe you're just making stuff up. Maybe you're getting it from Alex Jones? Who knows? I'm not going to waste time googling everything you say.
Whispers:If you selected random mainland Chinese and asked them on their opinion of the Hong Kong protesters, you would just be hearing the PRC's narrative.
I did not mean to imply that listening to the stalin PR or McCarthy doomspeak together would give a picture of reality. Far the contrary. I was trying (but clearly failing) to point out the dangerous and poisonous effects of those messages hogging the channel of discussion.
The former residents of the USSR may have political slants, but selecting them at random, and correlating thier anectodal stories, one can arrive at a better semblence of factual truth than one could ever get by listening to stalin and McCarthy. That is why I favor turning up the volume on this tiny part of the channel, and trying to bandpass filter out all the shit being thrown by the disinformation junkies.
That trend applies equally well to the disinformation being brandied about by the SJWs and the denialist factions. I would rather see and evaluate the many anectdotal stories of women hitting glass ceilings, gay men being denied promotions for being gay, or minorities getting jilted on prices or in due process than I would like seeing the SJWs and Denialists go round and round like a pinwheel.So jump from what one faction's saying to what one faction's saying?
At least with the many anectdotal accounts, some semblence of what actually went down is possible to reconstruct. You cant get that with the cherry picked "facts" the two major actors shitting up the scene hurl about like so much ape feces. Witness testimony is the weakest kind of evidence, and I appreciate that fact. However, when dealing with a social problem that can only really be investigated through exploring testimony, hearing as much actual testimony as is possible is the sensible approach to reaching a decision on the severity, and thus appropriate level of corrective action, of said problem.
I am not a fan of fixing every problem with a righteously wielded hammer, like SJWs seem to advocate. Nor am I a fan of simply pretending that such problems simply dont exist, like the denialist factions seem to advocate.I don't think anyone likes someone else thinking for you, heck one of the current charting pop songs is going on about how "don't tell me what to say." Frame the narrative though and through peer pressure you can get everyone on the same page, much more readily than if just commanded to by an ideologue
I want to collect as much useful information about such problems as is possible, so that I can analyze that information, and reach the most sensible conclusions I am capable of reaching. I am not a fan of having others think and decide for me. As such, I am strongly against big players hogging the channel and distorting information essential to reaching that end. It pisses me the fuck off. That's why I hate SJWs. They insist that they have done the thinking for you, and that you need to blindly accept their version of the problem's scope, and blindly accept thier proposed solution.
The digital society furthers human flaws and selectively rewards development of convenient half truths. The untested truths spun by different interests continue to churn and accumulate in the sandbox of political correctness and value systems. Everyone withdrawals into their own small gated community, afraid of a larger forum. They stay inside their little pounds, leaking whatever truths suits them into the growing cesspool of society at large. The different truths neither clash nor mesh. No one is invalidated, but no one is right.
*shrugs* Would still say that, correct or not, that still describes something better than what was before it. Even with the "gated communities" of the internet, you still get a lot of exposure to other views and whatnot, massively more than what insular societies would see just a few decades back.Nope, the wild west of the internet was a hell of a lot better than the gated communities today where you can get b& for saying the wrong thing and no one will even notice. Total segregation occurs and the only time they're exposed to outside ideas is combative but close minded.
Before, it was entirely possible -- and damned likely -- to go pretty much your entire life in one of those little ponds, except the ponds were defended often to the point of violence.The USA is too damn big, people in the states have all they need in the world and don't need to ever go abroad :P
You still have many places in the world, even with internet exposure, that are like that -- even in the goddamn US I've met what's probably dozens of folks now that's shared stories of spending twenty, thirty years, their entire formative years and much of their young adulthood, without ever meeting/getting within speaking distance or exchanging any words of note with, say, a liberal, or a hindu, or a black person, and talked to older folks that literally spent everything but the last decade or two in that kind of situation. Nevermind anything substantial or any "clashing or meshing", it just outright didn't bloody happen.This surprised me until I realized it was pretty much the norm across the world, the farther you get away from interconnected infrastructure and the globalist world "touristy areas" everyone finds you an oddity. Which is funny, because I find them odd ^_^
From just about everything I've seen over the last near-three-decades now, even the most echo-chambery and protected of internet echo chambers doesn't even remotely approach how insular things can -- and pretty often do -- get outside of it.I've seen things
The ease of communication and equivalent actions to movement, the general lack of reliance on conforming for goddamn survival... stuff like that makes a genuinely massive world of difference when it comes to mitigating those flaws that blurb was talking about. I'd say pretty strongly that if you think the internet exacerbates those flaws, you haven't seen much of their manifestation in the wild :-\I've had people cut me off because I joyously maintained that eating chicken was ok, you think I say this lightly? I'm dead serious m8
I've had people cut me off because I joyously maintained that eating chicken was ok, you think I say this lightly? I'm dead serious m8
They did both of those actuallyI've had people cut me off because I joyously maintained that eating chicken was ok, you think I say this lightly? I'm dead serious m8But they didn't actually shout at you or touch wih their unwashed hippie hands...
They did both of those actuallyI've had people cut me off because I joyously maintained that eating chicken was ok, you think I say this lightly? I'm dead serious m8But they didn't actually shout at you or touch wih their unwashed hippie hands...
What honestly possesses people to believe that assaulting or yelling at someone because of a difference of opinion is acceptable?Human idiocy?
The point is hat ypu can't do either of those things over the internet. The closest you can do is TYPE IN ALL CAPS.But you can take it off the internet, get someone arrested for cyber-assaulting you or call a lynch mob or whatever.
The point is hat ypu can't do either of those things over the internet. The closest you can do is TYPE IN ALL CAPS.But you can take it off the internet, get someone arrested for cyber-assaulting you or call a lynch mob or whatever.
Huh. Okay, this is a good reason to revive the thread. Nice catch, LW, I didn't hear a whisper of that.Twitter has responded to this threat by ignoring wikileaks (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jul/23/twitter-users-erupt-dncleaks-disappears-from-trend/)
Every example I've heard of someone banned from Twitter was a genuinely horrible troll account deliberately making life worse for other people. Why would anyone want to start a service aimed at attracting that kind of behavior?1. Well what examples have you heard?
Every example I've heard of someone banned from Twitter was a genuinely horrible troll account deliberately making life worse for other people. Why would anyone want to start a service aimed at attracting that kind of behavior?To exploit a niche market? Scum has money, too, and advertising funds est. It'd probably be difficult to maintain anything in particular (look at the many attempts at chan alternatives, ferex), but if you can make a buck you can make a buck.
In short: My own twitter, with blackjack and hookers
Accusing wikileaks of that is like accusing amnesty international of supporting torture rofl xDIn short: My own twitter, with blackjack and hookersSounds like "state interests, social engineering or feudal information control" to me.
The internet encourages thoughtful, intelligent discussion and if you disagree I hate you.