Why Twitter's Alt-Right Banning Campaign Will Become The Alt-Right's Best Recruitment Tool
from the control-alt-delete dept
If there are two points worth hammering home on matters of free speech, they are that defenders of free speech must be willing to defend speech they don't like and that the solution to bad speech is more good speech. I would argue that Western democracy as a whole can be defined as a political version of the Socratic Method, by which the electorate engages in public debate, constantly questioning the other side, in order to produce the most optimal thoughts. For those that value this method of discourse, it's instantly recognized that it only works if you have opposing views. To that end, it's imperative that we not only allow, but feverishly welcome, different points of view.
But this kind of thinking is currently under assault in America, and from both sides. The latest example of this is Twitter's recent decision to carpet-ban an entire slew of accounts linked to the so-called "alt-right" movement.
The social media platform has suspended accounts of several high-profile users associated with the alt-right movement, CBSNews.com reported Wednesday. These include Richard Spencer, Paul Town, Pax Dickinson, Ricky Vaughn and John Rivers.
Spencer, among those suspended this week, has been a leader in the alt-right movement since creating a website for it in 2010. He's president of the National Policy Institute, which describes itself as "dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States," and has been described as a white supremacist.
Let's get some caveats out of the way. First, Twitter is a private entity and can refuse participants in this manner if it likes. Nothing about this violates any kind of law. Second, many of the accounts in question did give voice to speech and ideas that are the most putrid form of racism and identity politics. This is not optimal thinking or speech. And, where accounts were used to actually harrass and abuse others, we can leave our outrage at the door.
But that isn't the case with all of these accounts. Even Spencer, a leader of this racially-charged speech, has not been found to do any sort of harrassing. Yet his account and that of his website were banned as well. In other words, many of these bans appear to be motivated primarily, if not solely, by idealogy as opposed to any actionable abuse. And that's a bad idea for a number of reasons.
First and foremost, it legitimizes one of the main claims of the alt-right movement: that it suffers censorship within the marketplace of ideas.
It’s precisely the perception of arbitrary and one-sided speech policing that drives so many young men toward radical, illiberal politics. On campus especially, but also in the corporate world—and now on social media—they perceive that wild and wacky things can be said by some people, but not by others. By useful comparison: On the very same day that Twitter suspended the accounts of some alt-right users, DePaul University forbade a scheduled appearance by the broadcaster and writer Ben Shapiro. Shapiro is not an alt-rightist; in fact, the Anti-Defamation League reported last month that Shapiro is Twitter's single most frequently targeted victim of anti-Semitic abuse by alt-rightists. But Shapiro is a scathing polemicist and provocateur—an alumnus of the same Bannon-Breitbart empire that incubated Milo Yiannopoulos—and DePaul expressed worry that his appearance on campus might provoke violence.
The culture of offense-taking, platform-denying, and heckler-vetoing—now spreading ever outward from the campuses—lets loudmouths and thugs present themselves as heroes of free thought. They do not deserve this opportunity.
Bad ideas, if they are indeed bad, are susceptible to attack from good ideas. Unless we now think that American culture as a majority would line up with alt-right thinking, the only weapon needed against such thinking is a better alternative line of thinking. If we instead take Twitter's lead and simply try to put a lid on speech we don't like, it will only serve to solidify the feeling of victimization amongst those speakers, while leading others to seek them out to find out what all the fuss is about. Strangely, it might be Americans' natural tendency to want to stick up for victims of injustice that lead some to join the ranks of those that would spread injustice to others. And this would be supercharged by companies like Twitter leaning on censorship, achieving the opposite result of its intention. That's not a good strategy.
The other problem is that it's difficult to cease going down this censorship road once you've begun. And if the arguments of small-"l" liberalism are so weak that they cannot combat ideas we think are bad, then our arguments are bad and we should think up new ones. But trying to silence others isn't the answer. Look at every major step forward on matters of social justice, be it the end of slavery, economic progress, secularism or LBGT rights, and you will find they all have something in common: an opposition. It's already been proven that good speech can defeat bad speech, and that good ideas can defeat bad ideas. That's all we need. We don't need to be coddled by our social media networks and we cannot win a fight we never are able to have.
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Filed Under: alt right, free speech, opinions, platforms, richard spencer, viewpoints
Companies: twitter
Reader Comments
The First Word
“made the First Word by Dark Helmet
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That way future hiring managers could know exactly who they are getting as an employee.
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https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20161113/00431436029/let-them-eat-facts-why-fact-checking-is- mostly-useless-convincing-voters.shtml
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The "C" Word
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The left could learn this lesson
If the left would stop the name calling and labeling and come to the table ready to discuss policy and ideas, this country might get somewhere. It is the person who can't defend their ideas who use these tactics.
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“the alt-right movement: ... suffers censorship within the marketplace of ideas”
I think their fear, and quite a justified one, is that they would end up talking to themselves. Any open, competitive communication channel, where a range of viewpoints gets represented, inevitably takes on what they label as a “liberal bias”.
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Re: The left could learn this lesson
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Let's at least be clear about terminology
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Re: The left could learn this lesson
On the other hand, the blame seems kind of curious; if views could so easily be refuted with a little bit of research and critical thinking, are the ones who hold them guilty of similar kinds of laziness for falling for them?
Whose responsibility is it to be aware of the details of a matter in question?
...which is an entirely unrelated issue, admittedly.
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Re: Let's at least be clear about terminology
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Geigner - did you listen to the D.C. press conference Richard Spencer gave a few months ago after Hillary put a spotlight on the neckbeard neo-Nazis known as the alt-Right? If so - how can you possibly take them seriously? He spent almost an hour memeing off at a crowd of D.C. political staffers, military officials, balding reporters, and Think Tank members. He literally tried to explain to them how important "dank memes" are. He explained to them a trollish political interpretation of "don't be a cuck".
He created a logo for the alt-Right that was a mix of KKK hoods, an Illuminati reference, and shitty retro wannabe cyberpunk style synthwave
There is nothing about him that should be taken seriously. Nothing about the alt-right should be taken seriously by anyone.
In fact, continuing to take them seriously will end up convincing them that their theatrically racist speech has actual political merit. That would be the worst conceivable outcome as it'd create actual bigots out of memeing trolls.
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For everyone calling the alt-Right the "alt-Reich" or Nazis - stop. It's the equivalent of pillowtalk to them. They dozens of memes idolizing Hitler is the theatrically provocative manner common to imageboards.
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Which leaves Twitter tacitly approving of what's left.
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Re: The left could learn this lesson
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Re:
Quite a suggestion about a group that had a heavy hand in electing our soon-to-be President....
"In fact, continuing to take them seriously will end up convincing them that their theatrically racist speech has actual political merit. That would be the worst conceivable outcome as it'd create actual bigots out of memeing trolls."
What I'm advocating for is the allowance of a public rebuke to them. Scorn is a wonderful antidote to idiocy, but we can't levy our scorn if the alt-right is disappeared from our conversations....
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Re: The left could learn this lesson
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Re: Let's at least be clear about terminology
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There is a better way
So instead of Twitter's I'll-conceived idea of playing whack-a-mole, let's approach this through the lens of a DDOS. There should be a three tiered system for getting shut down, and it can be automated.
1. Any account that outputs beyond the acceptable mean would initialize attention.
2. This account would then be scanned for hate-speech, or repetitive keywords through retweets. The accounts that are retweeted, then would also enter analysis, then add to the loop.
3. Finally, if the account meets the pattern of the first two, it is subject to arbitration and can argue for return of service. If it is unable or uninterested in the return of service, the associated accounts would then be scanned for attempts to re inflate a new account that this (likely) account is replaced with.
This will allow speech, but not tweet farms in Macedonia or otherwise. The alt-right gets to remain at the table, but only if they're civilized.
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Re: The "C" Word
state censorship may be one of the most egregious forms, and may have legal protections (at least theoretically), but private, 'legal' censorship is still censorship...
in fact, i will maintain that the censorship-lite practiced here with flagging posts which are superficially hidden IS a form of censorship, albeit crowd-sourced and about as mild as censorship can get... regardless of whether it is done by popular acclaimation, it is still a form of censorship...
(AND about the only form of censorship i dont get too upset about since the content is still available...)
worst and most insidious of all, is the self-censorship we all engage in for this hysterical, uber-PC era...
EXACTLY WHY i go 'overboard' in many of my posts: i am both staking a claim to say whatever fucked up shit i want to say, which gives YOU ALL the space to voice your not-so-fucked-up shit... further, this crazy person from crazytown advocating for -say- stringing up ALL the politicians, gives room for less extreme people to carve out a reasonable landing spot... otherwise, WHAT incentive is there for politicians to have a change of heart ? ? ?
no, you milquetoasts need a crazy person to provide the impetus your ineffectual voting and sternly worded letters to the editor wiil NEVER accomplish...
you're welcome...
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Re: Re: The left could learn this lesson
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Re: The left could learn this lesson
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Re: Re: The "C" Word
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Did they? Before Hillary gave a /pol/ meme a national platform, they were a primarily obscure Internet subculture content with nihilism and provocation on social media.
Hell, rumor is that Buzzfeed blackmailed m00t into banning them from 4chan. If true, Buzzfeed is in part responsible for forcing a containment board leakage onto the rest of the Internet.
Bannon isn't alt-right - he's just a neo-nazi that embraced the alt-right for exposure vs blindly hating them like Stormfront hates The Daily Stormer.
Bannon isn't spouting off a bunch of Internet memes for one thing. Instead, he unironically believes in topics that trolls ironically pretend to believe in.
Even before Hillary's mistake of feeding the biggest piece of sustenance ever fed to trolls in the history of the Internet, troll king Andrew Aurenheimer was continually expressing disbelief at how insane 2016 (a.k.a. (current year)) has been and how trivial it's been to troll mainstream media outlets into printing false stories of IRL events based on nothing more than a few tweets.
"What I'm advocating for is the allowance of a public rebuke to them. Scorn is a wonderful antidote to idiocy, but we can't levy our scorn if the alt-right is disappeared from our conversations...."
Agreed. Within the alt-right, there is a form of much milder (but still worrying) unironic racial identity politics. It would be healthy to argue them away from believing in that....
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Re: Re: Re: The left could learn this lesson
Both "sides" are guilty of having outrage mobs that got people fired. Identity politics is pure idiocy and hurts everyone, regardless of political policy learnings.
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Bakeries
First, Twitter is a private entity and can refuse participants in this manner if it likes.
If Twitter were a bakery it wouldn't be allowed to do that!
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The left could learn this lesson
Oh, you mean the one that was a huge asshole to Nintendo customers and was moonlighting a second job that was extremely bad for Nintendo's "family friendly" image and broke company policy?
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Re: Which leaves Twitter tacitly approving of what's left.
Now if anyone on the Left ever took responsibility for the hateful, hypocritical stuff they say, something might happen, but no, they'll ignore it and Twitter won't have to do a damn thing.
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Re: Bakeries
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If The Alt-Right Gets A Reboot ...
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Re: Re: The "C" Word
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Eh
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Re: The left could learn this lesson
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Re: Re: Re: The left could learn this lesson
I think you're just proving his point.
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Re: Bakeries
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Re: Let's at least be clear about terminology
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Re: Eh
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Re: Re: The "C" Word
I used to read all of Out_of_The_Blue's crap, and enjoyed his insanity too, a bit, kinda' miss him(her?) also.
Anyway was raised catholic, so I guess it is just a suffering thing, perhaps.
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"unless"? NO. "especially if"!
Well put.
Unless we now think that American culture as a majority would line up with alt-right thinking, the only weapon needed against such thinking is a better alternative line of thinking. [emphasis mine]
I completely disagree with your caveat.
The more popular the sentiment that you oppose becomes, the more important it is to oppose censoring it, as with all censorship.
Otherwise it may not be long before it is you yourself (or your more radical allies) who are the target of that very censorship you were, in desperation, trying to wield in your favor.
You might think this would be an obvious principle. Perhaps it is somewhat less-than-obvious because people tend not to enjoy exploring the consequences of failure, even when (especially when?) failure is imminent.
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History repeats?
And before you go accusing the Conseratives/Right Wing of the only ones who would do that, remember that NAZI stood for the National Socialist German Workers' Party. To quote Wikipedia, "Initially, Nazi political strategy focused on anti-big business, anti-bourgeois, and anti-capitalist rhetoric, although such aspects were later downplayed in order to gain the support of industrial entities, and in the 1930s the party's focus shifted to anti-Semitic and anti-Marxist themes."
Even today we see the beginnings of anti-Semetic thought in the Democratic Party fringe. Before you say it's the fringe and not the mainstream, remember before he took control of the Party, Hitler was in the fringe as well. History can and often repeats itself in the most unsuspected places.
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Re: "unless"? NO. "especially if"!
Sigh.
I neglected to notice that comments don't obey html markup.
So, one more time:
Well put.
I completely disagree with your caveat.
The more popular the sentiment that you oppose becomes, the more important it is to oppose censoring it, as with all censorship.
Otherwise it may not be long before it is you yourself (or your more radical allies) who are the target of that very censorship you were, in desperation, trying to wield in your favor. You might think this would be an obvious principle. Perhaps it is somewhat less-than-obvious because people tend not to enjoy exploring the consequences of failure, even when (especially when?) failure is imminent.
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Re: Let's at least be clear about terminology
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Re: Re: The "C" Word
http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/10/when-confronted-with-extreme-opinions-extremists-become- more-centrist/
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The left could learn this lesson
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Re: Re: Let's at least be clear about terminology
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Re: Re: Bakeries
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Re: Re: Bakeries
It has been enacted and opposed by politicians - that makes it a political belief.
I don't think the bakeries ever refused to make a cake for a particular person they just didn't want to make a cake with a slogan on it.
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He who strikes the first blow admits he's lost the argument.
Yet, when we look at the rules that most companies/organizations/groups/individual people employ to police the various Electronic Bulletin Boards of our age - how many of them are truly 'explicit'? Heck, from what I have experienced over the years - most are merely a series of sandboxes... http://blog.chinadaily.com.cn/blog-135031-35735.html ... to which I need to put on a variety of tutus to visit and interact with.
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Re:
I believe you misunderstood me. I didn't say that all speech that is labeled harassment is bad speech. What I said was that if Twitter decided to limit the bans to accounts it could clearly demonstrate were harassing other Twitter users, we could leave our outrage at the door. At some point, we must concede that Twitter is a company designed to incorporate as many users as it can. If a Twitter user is harassing others and causing them to cease using the service, particularly if the language used is threatening or violent, I can completely understand why Twitter would want to ban that person to foster the staying of the other users.
Bans over pure ideology, on the other hand, are a whole different animal.
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Re: "unless"? NO. "especially if"!
The more popular the sentiment that you oppose becomes, the more important it is to oppose censoring it, as with all censorship."
I didn't put the passage you're responding to as well as I could have. The point I was trying to make is that true alt-right thinking is still a tiny minority in the country, and there's no reason we can't combat it with speech and win. It might be different if 98% of the country was goose-stepping around. The fight might take different forms if that was the case, but I still wouldn't be advocating for censorship.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: The left could learn this lesson
I recall a recent instance where a supposed minority was actually a majority (electorally speaking) who just kept quiet until the polls opened.
I realize that alt-right is not "the right", but when presented with the binary choices we have on election day they stand as a part of the ruling majority, and as such can't easily be marginalized.
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Re: Nazis too deserve their voice
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Re: Let's at least be clear about terminology
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Re: Re: "unless"? NO. "especially if"!
Your intended (and now clarified) meaning looks perfectly clear as it stands.
I initially failed to grasp, somehow, that the toolkit might hold many more than two tools, and that censorship needn't be among them.
Catastrophic reading comprehension failure on my part. All better now.
Anyways, thank you for administering an extra clue.
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Re: “the alt-right movement: ... suffers censorship within the marketplace of ideas”
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Freedom for whom?
//If there are two points worth hammering home on matters of free speech, they are that defenders of free speech must be willing to defend speech they don't like and that the solution to bad speech is more good speech.//
but the "more good speech" solution only actually works if there's enough of it to counter the bad speech. In practice, people get targeted and harassed until they're successfully censored by people who are often more noisy, obnoxious, and committed to making such speech than the targets are.
Nobody should have to devote large chunks of their time to countering abusive gits telling lies and spreading muck. Is that really the only solution to horrible speech?
To be a target is to be alone, and unless we are willing to band together to support individuals and groups being battered online your sentiments will only ever be sentiments; they have no practical value. There's also the echo chamber problem to be addressed; what happens when you're not part of an echo chamber and not considered a protected individual or group? You're on your own, aren't you?
I've seen people pushed offline because few if any of the valiant free speech defenders were willing to come to their aid. It's not on, Tim. There has to be another way. If counter-speech is the answer, shouldn't there be some kind of service to provide it on behalf of those who are being drowned out by the volume of noise from their abusers?
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Re: Re: Re: The "C" Word
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Re: Re: The left could learn this lesson
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Re: Re: Re: Let's at least be clear about terminology
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Re: Freedom for whom?
There is another effect of free speech, it allows more people on the fringes of extreme views to participate, this often leads to fragmentation of extremist views. Suppression of a viewpoint usually leads to a smaller but more organized and dedicated group supporting a viewpoint.
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Re: Re: Freedom for whom?
In one case, a staff writer for National Review was driven offline because he'd adopted an African child and the alt-right didn't like it. They went after him, his wife, and the rest of his family. How utterly deplorable!
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Re: Re: "unless"? NO. "especially if"!
I don't consider that harassment or anything (although it's damn rude!) but when these people take it into their heads to go after someone it's not pretty and there seems to be little in the way of counter-speech on their behalves. Meanwhile, the hateful messages they're spewing become normalised because "everybody" is repeating it.
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Re: History repeats?
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The Last Word
“Re: Re: Re: The left could learn this lesson
And "the Right" got a Nintendo PR representative fired for the content of her (distasteful) thesis in college.Both "sides" are guilty of having outrage mobs that got people fired. Identity politics is pure idiocy and hurts everyone, regardless of political policy learnings.