Comment by willstrafach
8 years ago
To be clear, my confusion is due to the fact that sites like Gab and certain Chan boards host this type of content, yet they do not have issues. And again, I am not understanding why social media websites are to blame for what may happen as a result of them creating their own websites or joining hate-friendly ones, versus what seems more sensible: Blaming infrastructure providers when they actually do take actions against clients due to speech, which appears to be your actual concern, right?
No, that argument makes total sense to me as well. You're right that there are plenty of hate sites like the two you mentioned that don't have issues.
I also wasn't trying to attack the existing social media sites, either. I think it makes absolute sense for them to kick the trolls and hate crowds off their platform; strong moderation makes for strong communities (HN being one good example).
Mostly, I think I was trying to point out that "go somewhere else" is a solution that only works to a certain extent. Against a relentless enough opposition, there isn't really a true "public square" you can absolutely fall back to on the modern internet. I don't know what the actual argument behind my pointing that out is, just… contributing a fact, I guess.
Don't have issues?
Gab was banned from the Play Store. If you want to use their mobile app you have to flip extra switches and download it yourself.
Voat was the target of massive DDoS attacks. Also, apparently, people posting child porn there then immediately reporting it to their ISPs to try and get rid of them.
Quillette posted the views of 4 scientists on James Damore's memo and was DDoSd off the net for days.
You have to understand that this isn't a simple case of go get your own infrastructure. The sort of people who want to eliminate "unhealthy speech" on Twitter want to eliminate it everywhere, and will use whatever tools they can get their hands on to do so. Including attacking whatever is set up to support those who are getting booted off other platforms.