Comment by beloch
5 days ago
“The politically motivated assassination of Charlie Kirk claimed the life of a husband, father, and American patriot. In the wake of this tragedy, and amid other acts of politically motivated violence, Congress has a duty to oversee the online platforms that radicals have used to advance political violence. To prevent future radicalization and violence, the CEOs of Discord, Steam, Twitch, and Reddit must appear before the Oversight Committee and explain what actions they will take to ensure their platforms are not exploited for nefarious purposes,” said Chairman Comer.
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Reddit absolutely does have a moderator problem, as one would expect for a platform that relies on anonymous volunteers, but this might merely be the pretext for a witch hunt. e.g. The Trump administration may actually attempt to track down users who posted anti-Kirk or anti-Trump memes. It might be something even more though. There may be an attempt to coerce these platforms to start moderating in a way that's more favourable to Trump. Reddit is a hotbed of anti-Trump memes after all.
Protest is the bane of authoritarian regimes. That's why the Trump administration moved to lock down colleges so rapidly early this year. However, online social media also has significant capacity for influencing public opinion. This is why so many authoritarian regimes simply cut off internet access for their people. Others (e.g. China) have attempted to censor, manipulate, and control the internet rather than cutting it off.
Americans, and the world, should be paying close attention to these hearings. They should also pay attention to any sudden changes in behaviour of these companies. Merely being summoned to a hearing might be enough of a threat to make them give Trump all he asks for.
> There may be an attempt to coerce these platforms to start moderating in a way that's more favourable to Trump.
That’s the real comedy about this; when we like it censorship is good, when we don’t like it (Covid shutdown, anti vax, Jan 6th) censorship is bad. The double standard is shocking, yet completely normalized.
Besides any attempt to end violent rhetoric has to start with POTUS himself, theater exactly what it is.
Good things are good and bad things are bad - this fact is commonly forgotten.
If mainstream media had censored Adolf Hitler at the time, the Holocaust and the war in Europe might have been prevented. On the other hand, if they'd censored Winston Churchill, the Holocaust and the war in Europe might have been worsened.
It's like the argument for deregulation. Well, good regulations are good and there should be more of them; bad regulations are bad and there should be less of them. There's can be no serious argument for whether the number of regulations to go up or whether it should go down - that should entirely depend on each individual regulation being good or bad. Any argument that all are good or all are bad is pure irrational ideology.
I like the ones I think are good and I don't like the ones I think are bad. That's not a double standard - that's rationality. Besides what I think, there is also usually an objective measure of goodness or badness, but it's a lot harder to get at. I am not flipping a coin to think something is good or bad - I am estimating whether it's objectively good or bad. Am I a good estimator? Hard to tell.
Who is "we" in your comment?
I mean, this view of censorship is a little black and white.
Simply put in reality some censorship of some kind or I can simply 'win' by screaming really loud so no one else can even get a word in about their view.
The paradox of tolerance tells us that any view that intolerant of the existence of another person for simply existing should not be allowed as it is a terminal case. Of course electing the most violent and intolerant person we could find means we're going to have a hard time.