When Godwin's Law Met The Streisand Effect
from the take-it-down,-you-nazi dept
Okay, here's a fun post for a Friday evening: Earlier this week, I was at World Hosting Days, where I gave a keynote speech about the importance of CDA 230 and things like intermediary liability protections -- and why they are so important to protecting free speech online. The emcee of the event was Mike Godwin, who (among his many, many accomplishments over the years as an internet lawyer and philosopher) coined Godwin's Law. The organizers of the event, realizing that they had the guy who coined Godwin's Law and the guy (me!) who coined the Streisand Effect in the same place at the same time, thought it might be fun to have the two of us talk about these two memes.
And, voila. Here's the video of the two of us discussing it. We're also planning to release this as a podcast soon, so if you already listen to the Techdirt podcast and want to wait for that, feel free... But, if you want to skip ahead and watch/listen now, go for it.
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Filed Under: godwin's law, mike godwin, streisand effect
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For some odd reason, this reminds me of the Erdős–Bacon number
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erd%C5%91s%E2%80%93Bacon_number
For some odd reason, this post reminds me of that number.
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So if Godwin's law meets the Streisand Effect...
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Re: So if Godwin's law meets the Streisand Effect...
No, it means Mike is trying to hide Hitler’s remains from public view by abusing the DMCA.
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Re: So if Godwin's law meets the Streisand Effect...
Hitler is suing websites to prevent all those nasty things being said about him?
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Re: So if Godwin's law meets the Streisand Effect...
It's Schrodinger Mike! It's Mike and Hitler. And Barbra. And dinosaurs. And this would probably make an awesome movie.
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I may have not been so sure about you, but the EFF seems to be. And that's good enough for me.
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Re:
I remember this maxim from my childhood: "Always be polite. Being polite is a stock you never run out of, allows people to want to work with you, costs you nothing, and can enrich you through the good will of others."
In my life, I've never had good luck in money, investments, jobs. The only area I consider I've been blessed with great fortune is other people. And I am very grateful for that. Some are rich in monetary terms, and I guess that's OK. But I am rich with my friends and acquaintances, and I consider that a treasure beyond price.
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Re: Re:
~ from A Stroke of Midnight by Laurell K. Hamilton
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Re: Richard Stallman, on the other hand, is a complete - ahem
I am grateful to him for creating the GNU project and the GPL, and I listen to what he says, but I’m not sure I’d like to talk to him.
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Re: Re: Richard Stallman, on the other hand, is a complete - ahem
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Re: Re: Richard Stallman, on the other hand, is a complete - ahem
If you do manage to get to one of his talks, he may surprise you with St. IGNUtius.
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Re: Re:
Nah, you're always allowed to criticize if they are shitbags.
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Why not just jump to the end?
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this thing i see often
we the people of earth united and ended it....and hung those involved
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Re: this thing i see often
Godwin’s Law is not an actual law, you know. People who invoke it without knowing what it actually means other than “stop comparing people to Nazis” do so out of ignorance. It is more or less an informal guideline meant to keep arguments from devolving into petty namecalling and rhetorical low-blows—and to end an argument when it does go there.
You can compare groups and people to Nazis; doing so without a strong argument for the comparison invokes Godwin‘s Law. If you want to make the comparison, be sure you can back it up.
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Re: Re: this thing i see often
I never liked Godwin's law, but the reason was, as you wrote, because of the people who use it poorly. Also, the "law" part is too often interpreted as an absolute, encouraging some to overestimate their understanding of the world. However, my dislike for Godwin's law, itself, may have been unfair.
When words gain social power, they'll be used to attack others, even when inapplicable. IMO, 'arguments' are already a devolvement, but that may just be semantics.
It is not enough to dislike nazis or think they are bad. Even the most righteous of dislikes mean little if you don't understand the hows and whys of an evil. The triggers and causes don't go away just because a significant manifestation of an evil collapses. - Just look at current events: we are apparently still fighting The Civil War; we have a President that defended actual nazis, with a disturbing number of people plainly agreeing; Police who have little problem beating up mostly peaceful protestors, did virtually nothing to white supremacists and nazis that clearly engaged in premeditated violence.
Many (perhaps all) of the constituent components that made up 'nazism' is still present in society and day-to-day life. Since nazism was supposed to be a near universally recognized evil, it was useful to compare today's components to the components that helped create the reviled events of nazi Germany. Instead, I feel, the use or misuse of Godwin's Law helped suppress this vital discussion. Progress was presumed not demonstrated.
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Re: Re: Re: this thing i see often
Your final paragraph is the reason why Mr. Godwin himself stated in the aftermath of those events that if you're referring to actual Nazi's, you aren't invoking Godwin's law. I'd say that a Neo-Nazi is close enough to be covered by that statement.
I don't understand how many of us in America seem to have become such poor students of history. Can't we understand that this level of divisiveness is bad for everyone? If the far-right gets the Civil War Part 2 that they seem to be pushing for, don't they understand that they won't be in the majority? Some of us liberals do enjoy firearms enough to own some of them after all.
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Re: Re: Re: this thing i see often
You really encounter discussions being shut down when there are valid comparisons, via overuse of Godwin's Law claims? I can't imagine a discussion being vital and also capable of being shut down by this or other issues or derailment. I haven't been everywhere, but i have been a lot of different places on the net for a very long time, and i haven't encountered this. I have seen an occasional feeble attempt, but these have hardly had any effect other than to add to discussion how Godwin's Law may or may not apply.
Many components of Nazism were always with us. Of course they still exist. I hardly argue that Godwin should be misused, but there are plenty of other comparisons if any are, in fact, needed. This is a thing in itself - people distance or remain ignorant of the actions and history of their own cultures, states, etc., because comparing something to a fairly remote and "dead" episode of world history is easier. Sometimes i personally find a nazi comparison pointless, where something is bad enough in its own right. Would one have called Stalin / the Soviet Communist party "nazis" at the time? The brutal authoritarian natures which we like to use for these comparisons are essentially the same.
Apparently i find this highly interesting. Sorry about the wall of text.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: this thing i see often
I agree with the first paragraph.
Yes(ish). But, I don't remember or care about those. Simply shutting down discussions is blunt and easy to detect, easy to condemn, easy to avoid. The problem is the more subtle ways discussion is guided away from the reasonable and even deteriorates into argument. Unfortunately, nazis were not inhuman "monsters", whose actions were so far from typical that it is has no modern relevance.
Good comments... The nazi regime is relatively recent, their sins grotesque, the events "baffling" ("how could this happen?", etc), its attributes relevant. This collective memory is powerful. If this power isn't used to impress upon us warnings and wisdom then it will have some other effect (and it has). To borrow a phrase, "nature abhors a vacuum". I agree with (and have used myself) the point about this be 'fairly remote', but this is unavoidable. It can be mitigated a bit. For example, we could recognize that the nazis literally used aspects learned from America's racial caste system. Yikes! When related subject matter is discussed, this is the kind of thing adults should collectively come to grips with. Instead we develop collective delusions and myth-making. The conditions of today are NOT THAT SURPRISING!...
Anyway, I'm not blaming Godwin or his law. I don't want Mr. Masnick to ban me for insulting his BFF. :)
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Uniting Godwin and Streisand?
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Re: Uniting Godwin and Streisand?
OTOH, JLVD filing the action in Texas is crap, and the action should be dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction.
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