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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
On March 26 2026 18:43 Admiral Yang wrote:Show nested quote +Twitter is a private company. Who they choose to host has nothing to do with free speech. There's a difference between the broader concept of freedom of speech and the specifics of the first amendment of the United States.
On March 26 2026 18:45 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2026 18:24 MJG wrote:On March 26 2026 18:16 baal wrote:On March 25 2026 15:39 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 11:04 baal wrote:On March 24 2026 21:11 EnDeR_ wrote:
This is why I wanted to get your take. Your thesis, as presented, rests on convincing evidence being used successfully to debunk a bad idea. I.e. prove the idea wrong and kill it, in your own words.
You presumably agree that that doesn't really work. So does that make you rethink your approach here? How would you kill a harmful idea?
Having someone debate the bad idea with someone on the opposite side as it were has been tried. It turns out that platforming bad ideas and setting them on the same level as good ideas legitimises the bad idea and makes it spread. How do you tackle this, in your view? You are like the 3rd person who is essentially asking "if free speech works why aren't things perfect", come on dont make me answer these silly questions again. We are a deeply flawed being in a complex world, speech an open discussion is better to navigate through ideas than central censorship, that doesn't mean free speech means a perfect pink unicorn world lol. Ideas are organically discussed at the level they deserve, for example Richard Dawkins decided to stop debating young earth creationists because frankly it was beneath him, but he debated with many other people in a higher level of discussion, however there were still many atheist who discussed with young earth creationists on smaller platforms, this serves well to watchers on different levels of the discussion. Debate doesn't legitimize bad ideas, have you ever seen Dawkins debate a crazy fundamentalist and think "damn this Imam has a good point on killing apostates"? No, it shows the world that Islamists are violent and crazy. Deplatforming is a good solution to stop the spread of misinformation (or bad ideas if you will). The ‘Big Lie’ of election fraud pushed by former President Trump which culminated with the January 6 insurrection against the U.S. Capitol has profoundly reshaped the social media landscape. With @RealDonaldTrump and other prominent conspiracists no longer able to reach wide swaths of the public, misinformation about election fraud has already fallen dramatically This has been particularly effective at stopping terrorist recruitment: After being deplatformed in 2015, Islamic extremists migrated to Telegram and marginal social networking platforms. Then, in November 2019, Telegram and the EU’s main law enforcement body collaborated to clean up the remnants of the movement online. By forcing them into smaller and more clandestine digital locales, the groups ability to recruit, coordinate, and organize real-world violence significantly diminished. So this is a good argument to stop the spread of bad ideas. What it doesn't do is fix the people that have already been exposed to the bad idea: Shutting down accounts helps prevent average unsuspecting users from being exposed to dangerous content, but it doesn’t necessarily stop those who already endorse that content. When analyzing data from r/The_Donald and r/Incels, two forums that were removed from Reddit last year and later became their own standalone websites, researchers found a significant drop in posting activity and newcomers. Still, for those that continued to post on these relocated forums, researchers also noted an increase in signals associated with toxicity and radicalization. For that we would need a different approach, but Deplatforming does help to avoid new people getting infected with the bad idea. I think Twitter banning the sitting president of the United States is way worse for the world overall than whatever he could have said to his followers. I mean, I'm a libertarian and I still think its wild a corp can do that to the president, and you statists are ok with that? But back on topic, yeah deplataforming obv works in diminishing the reach of people, but does it work to kill an idea? Twitter is a private company. Who they choose to host has nothing to do with free speech. Obligatory xkcd comic: + Show Spoiler + Wow the stick man said "1st amendment" which refers to the US Constitution. That clearly means by definition the concept of free expression doesn't exist outside of the US government.
It's almost as if I was responding to a comment about a US company banning the US President...
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On March 25 2026 22:49 LightSpectra wrote:
Talking about DEI, no. But Republicans want to charge librarians with felonies for stocking books on the shelves that support what they think is DEI.
"The American Library Association (ALA) has found that obscenity allegations have largely been used to challenge books that touch on the LGBTQ+ community, sex education, race and politics."
Thats fucked up, but still not remotely the same as what Germany does, sending citizens to prison to talk about it.
More like "your strategy to prevent X from happening doesn't appear to have prevented X from happening at all."
No, I just said its a tool better than censorship to fight bad ideas.
That was true pre-social media. Now they can find an insulated bubble over the Internet and circlejerk each other into increasingly fringe beliefs.
And as soon as they expose that belief to anybody outside their circle they are immediately ridiculed, I actually know one who mentioned it IRL and boy did he get laughed at by everybody in his face.
Holocaust denialism is the lowest in Western Europe, where it's illegal in most countries (Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, and Spain until 2007). It's twice as high in Eastern Europe, where it's legal in almost all the Baltics and Balkans.
England, Denmark and Norway have also very low denialism but no censorship, also if you see the region the middle with most denialism are the muslims countries (obv antisemitism), Eastern Europe has 4 times more muslims than Western Europe.
It's working fine, we should debate these ideas even more, but you think making illegal to talk about flat earth, vaccination and other things would be better
I actually didn't say that. My idea was you should be held criminally or civilly liable if you spread medical misinformation that directly leads to the death of a minor.
Source?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/07/face-masks-cannot-stop-healthy-people-getting-covid-19-says-who
How much was it censored? Quantify it, with a source.
They don't quantify specific reasons but Facebook removed 20 millions posts about COVID missinformation, included the "lab leak theory".
The "deliberately misleading framing" is you ignoring the fact that anti-vaxxers were telling people to take dewormer instead of the vaccine.
It's supremely funny that anti-vaxxers called the general public "sheep" for believing in science and then literally took medicine explicitly labeled and shelved as being for livestock.
Yes antivaxxers are retarded, and the media were intellectually dishonest by calling Invermectin horse dewormer and so are you.
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The claim you made: "OMS deliberately propagated about masks not working early 2019 in an attempt to keep people from buying all the stock"
The source you provided: "The WHO reviewed its position on masks in light of data from Hong Kong indicating that their widespread use in the community may have reduced the spread of coronavirus in some regions"
On March 26 2026 19:19 baal wrote:
Yes antivaxxers are retarded, and the media were intellectually dishonest by calling Invermectin horse dewormer and so are you.
Oh god, you're one of the people who tried taking it, didn't you? Explains why you have such sore feelings about people calling it horse paste.
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On March 26 2026 18:24 MJG wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2026 18:16 baal wrote:On March 25 2026 15:39 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 11:04 baal wrote:On March 24 2026 21:11 EnDeR_ wrote:
This is why I wanted to get your take. Your thesis, as presented, rests on convincing evidence being used successfully to debunk a bad idea. I.e. prove the idea wrong and kill it, in your own words.
You presumably agree that that doesn't really work. So does that make you rethink your approach here? How would you kill a harmful idea?
Having someone debate the bad idea with someone on the opposite side as it were has been tried. It turns out that platforming bad ideas and setting them on the same level as good ideas legitimises the bad idea and makes it spread. How do you tackle this, in your view? You are like the 3rd person who is essentially asking "if free speech works why aren't things perfect", come on dont make me answer these silly questions again. We are a deeply flawed being in a complex world, speech an open discussion is better to navigate through ideas than central censorship, that doesn't mean free speech means a perfect pink unicorn world lol. Ideas are organically discussed at the level they deserve, for example Richard Dawkins decided to stop debating young earth creationists because frankly it was beneath him, but he debated with many other people in a higher level of discussion, however there were still many atheist who discussed with young earth creationists on smaller platforms, this serves well to watchers on different levels of the discussion. Debate doesn't legitimize bad ideas, have you ever seen Dawkins debate a crazy fundamentalist and think "damn this Imam has a good point on killing apostates"? No, it shows the world that Islamists are violent and crazy. Deplatforming is a good solution to stop the spread of misinformation (or bad ideas if you will). The ‘Big Lie’ of election fraud pushed by former President Trump which culminated with the January 6 insurrection against the U.S. Capitol has profoundly reshaped the social media landscape. With @RealDonaldTrump and other prominent conspiracists no longer able to reach wide swaths of the public, misinformation about election fraud has already fallen dramatically This has been particularly effective at stopping terrorist recruitment: After being deplatformed in 2015, Islamic extremists migrated to Telegram and marginal social networking platforms. Then, in November 2019, Telegram and the EU’s main law enforcement body collaborated to clean up the remnants of the movement online. By forcing them into smaller and more clandestine digital locales, the groups ability to recruit, coordinate, and organize real-world violence significantly diminished. So this is a good argument to stop the spread of bad ideas. What it doesn't do is fix the people that have already been exposed to the bad idea: Shutting down accounts helps prevent average unsuspecting users from being exposed to dangerous content, but it doesn’t necessarily stop those who already endorse that content. When analyzing data from r/The_Donald and r/Incels, two forums that were removed from Reddit last year and later became their own standalone websites, researchers found a significant drop in posting activity and newcomers. Still, for those that continued to post on these relocated forums, researchers also noted an increase in signals associated with toxicity and radicalization. For that we would need a different approach, but Deplatforming does help to avoid new people getting infected with the bad idea. I think Twitter banning the sitting president of the United States is way worse for the world overall than whatever he could have said to his followers. I mean, I'm a libertarian and I still think its wild a corp can do that to the president, and you statists are ok with that? But back on topic, yeah deplataforming obv works in diminishing the reach of people, but does it work to kill an idea? Twitter is a private company. Who they choose to host has nothing to do with free speech. Obligatory xkcd comic: + Show Spoiler +
While this is what free speech currently means, i think it is somewhat important to think about what free speech should mean in a modern world.
This view of free speech was formed when the main censors were state actors. Nowadays, we have big corporations which can censor at least as effectively, and do so.
I think it is similarly scary when billionaires decide what can be heard and what will vanish into the ether, completely without any oversight whatsoever. We are living in an era when most speech happens over specific private platforms, and those platforms do use their power to influence which ideas spread and which don't. Billionaires as a class are not people completely without interests, and there is no way that they do not abuse that power.
I do not know what the best way to handle this situations is, but i don't think it is to claim that censorship can only happen by state actors.
To stay with the framing from the xkcd comic, right now it is often not people telling you that you are an asshole and should leave, it is billionaires deciding that really, no one should hear the thing you are saying.
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On March 26 2026 04:36 XenOsky wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2026 18:46 baal wrote:On March 22 2026 13:25 XenOsky wrote:
The Jews who stayed probably stayed due to a lack of resources, not a lack of will. Sure they had no feet... Mexicans with a couple of bucks and worn out shoes cross the desert to go to the US with just economic incentive every fucking day. It's always the working class that pays the price and puts the dead... The problem is never religious or ethnic; it's always a class problem. racism and religion are excuses of the oligarchy to carry out their strategy... The Jewish bourgeoisie cared little for the fate of their "comrades"... they were only interested in protecting their class privileges. Some more humanitarian probably wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper or something symbolic, the rest continued living happily in the United States or South America while complaining about Nazism, having tea and eating cookies with their friends on the Sabbath + Show Spoiler + (or whatever it is that Jews do on the Sabbath) ... think about it, the Jews cared so little about what happened to the rest that they had to wait for the harshest repression to begin to defend themselves among themselves and take up arms. Armed resistance and direct action began to occur when the entire Jewish bourgeoisie had already left Europe like the cowards they are In fact, their commitment to human life was so little that one of them ended up making the genocide of Hiroshima and Nagasaki possible ROFLMAO an anti-semitic communist what a shock If by communist you mean Marxist, then u're wrong... if by communist you mean Libertarian (original use of the term) you're right. if by anti-semitic you mean anti-Jew, then u're wrong again... if by anti-semitic you mean Anti-Zionism, then u're right... I consider myself an anarcho-syndicalist, strongly opposed to the Marxist vision of a centralized state. I champion Bakunin and his ideas, and I radically despise Marxism-Leninism, which you're probably referring to. Not all left-wing ideology is communist, in a Marxist sense, but I think that would be too much reading for you; the complete works of Marx and Bakunin combined form a canon of around 100,000+ pages. That's without considering my readings of Flores Magon, Lenin, Kropotkin, Proudhon, Emile Armand, Engels and so on... You probably have no idea what Zapatismo, Spanish anarcho-syndicalism, or Latin American socialist movements are; you just throw the word "communist" at anything that sounds leftist to you, and that reflects your ignorance. Nor do I think you even have the slightest understanding of what's happening in Kurdistan or Chiapas...In fact, I don't think you could even describe which policies you approve or disapprove of; you just repeat media propaganda, and you bark communism even at the most wavering sectors of social democracy. I've dedicated half my life to trying to understand their positions; it's absolutely insulting that you appear out of nowhere calling me a communist, without even knowing what the hell you're talking about. If you want to insult me at least use the right terminology.
By communist I mean a cunt
By anti-semitic I also meant a cunt.
Ah I remember the times when I used to debate every day with a Canadian moron who also called himself left wing libertarian and idolizing places like Kurdistan, Christian and Cherán without having the slightest clue.
Anyway kinda like Dawkins I've decided that I'm not debating commies, it's beneath me.
Sucks to have wasted half of your life but I get the feeling you are quite young so it's probably not that bad.
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On March 26 2026 19:28 LightSpectra wrote:
The claim you made: "OMS deliberately propagated about masks not working early 2019 in an attempt to keep people from buying all the stock"
The source you provided: "The WHO reviewed its position on masks in light of data from Hong Kong indicating that their widespread use in the community may have reduced the spread of coronavirus in some regions"
If they thought masks didn't work why would healthcare workers use it? lol
They always knew they worked, Asia made studies decades ago and they used them in previous pandemics, do you think they weren't aware of these studies? lol they knew they just didn't want people to hoard them and create a shortage.
But please go ahead and triple down, you are going to lose badly on this one.
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You know, you could have potentially strengthened your argument by saying "Even though I personally fell for potentially fatal medical misinformation, I still passionately believe censorship is wrong". Instead you decided to rant about people who, factually correctly, called ivermectin "cattle dewormer" when people were literally dying by trying it instead of the vaccine. Now you look like the guy angrily ranting about the gubmint trying to take away his horse paste.
On March 26 2026 19:47 baal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2026 19:28 LightSpectra wrote:
The claim you made: "OMS deliberately propagated about masks not working early 2019 in an attempt to keep people from buying all the stock"
The source you provided: "The WHO reviewed its position on masks in light of data from Hong Kong indicating that their widespread use in the community may have reduced the spread of coronavirus in some regions" If they thought masks didn't work why would healthcare workers use it? lol They always knew they worked, Asia made studies decades ago and they used them in previous pandemics, do you think they weren't aware of these studies? lol they knew they just didn't want people to hoard them and create a shortage. But please go ahead and triple down, you are going to lose badly on this one.
Fauci isn't the OMS. Fauci was Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. That aside, let's provide some context here:
"In a March 8, 2020, interview, Fauci stated that "right now in the United States, people [who are not infected] should not be walking around with masks", but "if you want to do it, that's fine".[54][55] In the same interview, Fauci said that buying masks "could lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need" them: "When you think masks, you should think of healthcare providers needing them".[54][56] When Fauci made this comment, America's top surgical mask maker was struggling to produce enough masks to meet the increased demand.[56]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Fauci
Wow, almost like he said the exact thing out loud that you're alleging was some kind of grossly immoral coverup. And not only that, but it was about uninfected people, not because masks don't work. Is that why you posted a screenshot of the first paragraph of that article without the rest and without the link?
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On March 26 2026 18:16 baal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 15:39 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 11:04 baal wrote:On March 24 2026 21:11 EnDeR_ wrote:
This is why I wanted to get your take. Your thesis, as presented, rests on convincing evidence being used successfully to debunk a bad idea. I.e. prove the idea wrong and kill it, in your own words.
You presumably agree that that doesn't really work. So does that make you rethink your approach here? How would you kill a harmful idea?
Having someone debate the bad idea with someone on the opposite side as it were has been tried. It turns out that platforming bad ideas and setting them on the same level as good ideas legitimises the bad idea and makes it spread. How do you tackle this, in your view? You are like the 3rd person who is essentially asking "if free speech works why aren't things perfect", come on dont make me answer these silly questions again. We are a deeply flawed being in a complex world, speech an open discussion is better to navigate through ideas than central censorship, that doesn't mean free speech means a perfect pink unicorn world lol. Ideas are organically discussed at the level they deserve, for example Richard Dawkins decided to stop debating young earth creationists because frankly it was beneath him, but he debated with many other people in a higher level of discussion, however there were still many atheist who discussed with young earth creationists on smaller platforms, this serves well to watchers on different levels of the discussion. Debate doesn't legitimize bad ideas, have you ever seen Dawkins debate a crazy fundamentalist and think "damn this Imam has a good point on killing apostates"? No, it shows the world that Islamists are violent and crazy. Deplatforming is a good solution to stop the spread of misinformation (or bad ideas if you will). The ‘Big Lie’ of election fraud pushed by former President Trump which culminated with the January 6 insurrection against the U.S. Capitol has profoundly reshaped the social media landscape. With @RealDonaldTrump and other prominent conspiracists no longer able to reach wide swaths of the public, misinformation about election fraud has already fallen dramatically This has been particularly effective at stopping terrorist recruitment: After being deplatformed in 2015, Islamic extremists migrated to Telegram and marginal social networking platforms. Then, in November 2019, Telegram and the EU’s main law enforcement body collaborated to clean up the remnants of the movement online. By forcing them into smaller and more clandestine digital locales, the groups ability to recruit, coordinate, and organize real-world violence significantly diminished. So this is a good argument to stop the spread of bad ideas. What it doesn't do is fix the people that have already been exposed to the bad idea: Shutting down accounts helps prevent average unsuspecting users from being exposed to dangerous content, but it doesn’t necessarily stop those who already endorse that content. When analyzing data from r/The_Donald and r/Incels, two forums that were removed from Reddit last year and later became their own standalone websites, researchers found a significant drop in posting activity and newcomers. Still, for those that continued to post on these relocated forums, researchers also noted an increase in signals associated with toxicity and radicalization. For that we would need a different approach, but Deplatforming does help to avoid new people getting infected with the bad idea. I think Twitter banning the sitting president of the United States is way worse for the world overall than whatever he could have said to his followers. I mean, I'm a libertarian and I still think its wild a corp can do that to the president, and you statists are ok with that? But back on topic, yeah deplataforming obv works in diminishing the reach of people, but does it work to kill an idea? Milo Yiannopolus, Stefan Molyneux and Gavin McInnes were deplatformed into oblivion, they were the pioneers of this anti-feminist "alpha male red piller" movement, do you think their ideas are weaker now? Alex Jones was deplatformed and fined into bankruptcy (absurd amount tbh), and do you think his conspiracy theories have lost momentum? I personally think that the alpha male red pillers and the conspiracy nut rhetoric is far stronger than when these people were deplatformed.
Wait, is the argument then that the sitting president is allowed to do whatever he wants, regardless of the consequences? That's kind of messed up.
The point about not killing the idea is explicitly contemplated in the source I provided, which is entitled "why deplatforming isn't enough".
With the specific case of terrorists and antivaxxers, reducing their reach directly reduces their associated harms in a quantifiable way, i.e. fewer terrorist incidents from home-radicalised individuals, fewer children get polio.
With Alex Jones stuff it has been less effective because he pioneered a whole ecosystem which includes assholes like Andrew Tate who is still srpeading harmful content, among many others. Yes, Alex Jones was deplatformed, but not the idea of anti-feminist, alpha male red piller bigotry; this is less a case of deplatforming not working, and more the consequence of not filtering this content out which has resulted in the radicalisation of a whole generation of young boys -- arguably an argument towards more thorough deplatforming, not less.
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On March 26 2026 18:49 baal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 25 2026 22:57 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 11:04 baal wrote:On March 24 2026 21:11 EnDeR_ wrote:
This is why I wanted to get your take. Your thesis, as presented, rests on convincing evidence being used successfully to debunk a bad idea. I.e. prove the idea wrong and kill it, in your own words.
You presumably agree that that doesn't really work. So does that make you rethink your approach here? How would you kill a harmful idea?
Having someone debate the bad idea with someone on the opposite side as it were has been tried. It turns out that platforming bad ideas and setting them on the same level as good ideas legitimises the bad idea and makes it spread. How do you tackle this, in your view? You are like the 3rd person who is essentially asking "if free speech works why aren't things perfect", come on dont make me answer these silly questions again. We are a deeply flawed being in a complex world, speech an open discussion is better to navigate through ideas than central censorship, that doesn't mean free speech means a perfect pink unicorn world lol. Ideas are organically discussed at the level they deserve, for example Richard Dawkins decided to stop debating young earth creationists because frankly it was beneath him, but he debated with many other people in a higher level of discussion, however there were still many atheist who discussed with young earth creationists on smaller platforms, this serves well to watchers on different levels of the discussion. Debate doesn't legitimize bad ideas, have you ever seen Dawkins debate a crazy fundamentalist and think "damn this Imam has a good point on killing apostates"? No, it shows the world that Islamists are violent and crazy. But this goes back to your original thesis that debunking a bad idea kills the bad idea. For debate of bad ideas to work as a cure for the bad idea, then it must be true that if you show someone that they are wrong, that they will change their mind about the thing that they are wrong about. In many cases, the opposite is true, showing someone that their belief is wrong just reinforces the belief. Here's an article that makes these points a bit more eloquently: In an ideal world, rational people who encounter new evidence that contradicts their beliefs would evaluate the facts and change their views accordingly. But that’s generally not how things go in the real world.
Partly to blame is a cognitive bias that can kick in when people encounter evidence that runs counter to their beliefs. Instead of reevaluating what they’ve believed up until now, people tend to reject the incompatible evidence. Psychologists call this phenomenon belief perseverance. Everyone can fall prey to this ingrained way of thinking.
Being presented with facts – whether via the news, social media or one-on-one conversations – that suggest their current beliefs are wrong causes people to feel threatened. This reaction is particularly strong when the beliefs in question are aligned with your political and personal identities. It can feel like an attack on you if one of your strongly held beliefs is challenged.
Confronting facts that don’t line up with your worldview may trigger a “backfire effect,” which can end up strengthening your original position and beliefs, particularly with politically charged issues. Researchers have identified this phenomenon in a number of studies, including ones about opinions toward climate change mitigation policies and attitudes toward childhood vaccinations. So, the premise is flawed. Debating a bad idea does not achieve the intended goal of killing the bad idea once it has been established. You are twisting my argument into "show evidence to people and they will believe it", I've said many times that we are flawed and irrational beings. "Sun lightt" has many mechanism besides evidence, debates generate consensus thus social pressure, ridicule and other things that are sadly as or more effective than evidence itself. An average person doesn't believe the world is round due to evidence but about social consensus, and a TV show where flat earthers get dramatically embarrassed creates this social consensus through ridicule. Also to clarify again, I'm not saying free speech and debate are perfect tools, they are just far better than central censorship.
I mean, sure, take the test case of antivaxxers. A clearly bad idea that causes quantifiable harms. By any metric we can think of, this is a bad thing. Social consensus is pretty clear, it´s a bad thing. The evidence that proves that vaccines save lives is overwhelming; and yet, the idea keeps spreading.
People have tried debating it and it has not stopped the spread. People have tried ridiculing it, and it has not stopped the spread. If anything, ridiculing the idea is extremely counterproductive when you are targeting mostly moms who are convinced that not vaccinating their kids is the best way to keep them safe.
You have stated without evidence why free speech and debate are far bettar than deplatforming, but you have not provided the logic that led you to this conclusion.
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On March 26 2026 19:31 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2026 18:24 MJG wrote:On March 26 2026 18:16 baal wrote:On March 25 2026 15:39 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 11:04 baal wrote:On March 24 2026 21:11 EnDeR_ wrote:
This is why I wanted to get your take. Your thesis, as presented, rests on convincing evidence being used successfully to debunk a bad idea. I.e. prove the idea wrong and kill it, in your own words.
You presumably agree that that doesn't really work. So does that make you rethink your approach here? How would you kill a harmful idea?
Having someone debate the bad idea with someone on the opposite side as it were has been tried. It turns out that platforming bad ideas and setting them on the same level as good ideas legitimises the bad idea and makes it spread. How do you tackle this, in your view? You are like the 3rd person who is essentially asking "if free speech works why aren't things perfect", come on dont make me answer these silly questions again. We are a deeply flawed being in a complex world, speech an open discussion is better to navigate through ideas than central censorship, that doesn't mean free speech means a perfect pink unicorn world lol. Ideas are organically discussed at the level they deserve, for example Richard Dawkins decided to stop debating young earth creationists because frankly it was beneath him, but he debated with many other people in a higher level of discussion, however there were still many atheist who discussed with young earth creationists on smaller platforms, this serves well to watchers on different levels of the discussion. Debate doesn't legitimize bad ideas, have you ever seen Dawkins debate a crazy fundamentalist and think "damn this Imam has a good point on killing apostates"? No, it shows the world that Islamists are violent and crazy. Deplatforming is a good solution to stop the spread of misinformation (or bad ideas if you will). The ‘Big Lie’ of election fraud pushed by former President Trump which culminated with the January 6 insurrection against the U.S. Capitol has profoundly reshaped the social media landscape. With @RealDonaldTrump and other prominent conspiracists no longer able to reach wide swaths of the public, misinformation about election fraud has already fallen dramatically This has been particularly effective at stopping terrorist recruitment: After being deplatformed in 2015, Islamic extremists migrated to Telegram and marginal social networking platforms. Then, in November 2019, Telegram and the EU’s main law enforcement body collaborated to clean up the remnants of the movement online. By forcing them into smaller and more clandestine digital locales, the groups ability to recruit, coordinate, and organize real-world violence significantly diminished. So this is a good argument to stop the spread of bad ideas. What it doesn't do is fix the people that have already been exposed to the bad idea: Shutting down accounts helps prevent average unsuspecting users from being exposed to dangerous content, but it doesn’t necessarily stop those who already endorse that content. When analyzing data from r/The_Donald and r/Incels, two forums that were removed from Reddit last year and later became their own standalone websites, researchers found a significant drop in posting activity and newcomers. Still, for those that continued to post on these relocated forums, researchers also noted an increase in signals associated with toxicity and radicalization. For that we would need a different approach, but Deplatforming does help to avoid new people getting infected with the bad idea. I think Twitter banning the sitting president of the United States is way worse for the world overall than whatever he could have said to his followers. I mean, I'm a libertarian and I still think its wild a corp can do that to the president, and you statists are ok with that? But back on topic, yeah deplataforming obv works in diminishing the reach of people, but does it work to kill an idea? Twitter is a private company. Who they choose to host has nothing to do with free speech. Obligatory xkcd comic: + Show Spoiler + While this is what free speech currently means, i think it is somewhat important to think about what free speech should mean in a modern world. This view of free speech was formed when the main censors were state actors. Nowadays, we have big corporations which can censor at least as effectively, and do so. I think it is similarly scary when billionaires decide what can be heard and what will vanish into the ether, completely without any oversight whatsoever. We are living in an era when most speech happens over specific private platforms, and those platforms do use their power to influence which ideas spread and which don't. Billionaires as a class are not people completely without interests, and there is no way that they do not abuse that power. I do not know what the best way to handle this situations is, but i don't think it is to claim that censorship can only happen by state actors. To stay with the framing from the xkcd comic, right now it is often not people telling you that you are an asshole and should leave, it is billionaires deciding that really, no one should hear the thing you are saying.
I really don't think that "free speech" needs to mean anything different.
The options that a government has to restrict the lives of people with whom they disagree are much more far reaching and insidious than being banned from posting tweets.
EDIT:
In other social media news, Meta and Google have lost a landmark lawsuit that has deemed their apps to be "addictive, and deliberately engineered that way" and that both companies have been "negligent in their safeguarding of the children who have used them."
They've been ordered to pay out $6m in damages to a person who has basically claimed that Instagram and YouTube have ruined her life due to addiction.
If this doesn't get overturned on appeal then it might open the floodgates for many, many more similar lawsuits being brought against social media companies.
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On March 26 2026 20:38 MJG wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2026 19:31 Simberto wrote:On March 26 2026 18:24 MJG wrote:On March 26 2026 18:16 baal wrote:On March 25 2026 15:39 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 11:04 baal wrote:On March 24 2026 21:11 EnDeR_ wrote:
This is why I wanted to get your take. Your thesis, as presented, rests on convincing evidence being used successfully to debunk a bad idea. I.e. prove the idea wrong and kill it, in your own words.
You presumably agree that that doesn't really work. So does that make you rethink your approach here? How would you kill a harmful idea?
Having someone debate the bad idea with someone on the opposite side as it were has been tried. It turns out that platforming bad ideas and setting them on the same level as good ideas legitimises the bad idea and makes it spread. How do you tackle this, in your view? You are like the 3rd person who is essentially asking "if free speech works why aren't things perfect", come on dont make me answer these silly questions again. We are a deeply flawed being in a complex world, speech an open discussion is better to navigate through ideas than central censorship, that doesn't mean free speech means a perfect pink unicorn world lol. Ideas are organically discussed at the level they deserve, for example Richard Dawkins decided to stop debating young earth creationists because frankly it was beneath him, but he debated with many other people in a higher level of discussion, however there were still many atheist who discussed with young earth creationists on smaller platforms, this serves well to watchers on different levels of the discussion. Debate doesn't legitimize bad ideas, have you ever seen Dawkins debate a crazy fundamentalist and think "damn this Imam has a good point on killing apostates"? No, it shows the world that Islamists are violent and crazy. Deplatforming is a good solution to stop the spread of misinformation (or bad ideas if you will). The ‘Big Lie’ of election fraud pushed by former President Trump which culminated with the January 6 insurrection against the U.S. Capitol has profoundly reshaped the social media landscape. With @RealDonaldTrump and other prominent conspiracists no longer able to reach wide swaths of the public, misinformation about election fraud has already fallen dramatically This has been particularly effective at stopping terrorist recruitment: After being deplatformed in 2015, Islamic extremists migrated to Telegram and marginal social networking platforms. Then, in November 2019, Telegram and the EU’s main law enforcement body collaborated to clean up the remnants of the movement online. By forcing them into smaller and more clandestine digital locales, the groups ability to recruit, coordinate, and organize real-world violence significantly diminished. So this is a good argument to stop the spread of bad ideas. What it doesn't do is fix the people that have already been exposed to the bad idea: Shutting down accounts helps prevent average unsuspecting users from being exposed to dangerous content, but it doesn’t necessarily stop those who already endorse that content. When analyzing data from r/The_Donald and r/Incels, two forums that were removed from Reddit last year and later became their own standalone websites, researchers found a significant drop in posting activity and newcomers. Still, for those that continued to post on these relocated forums, researchers also noted an increase in signals associated with toxicity and radicalization. For that we would need a different approach, but Deplatforming does help to avoid new people getting infected with the bad idea. I think Twitter banning the sitting president of the United States is way worse for the world overall than whatever he could have said to his followers. I mean, I'm a libertarian and I still think its wild a corp can do that to the president, and you statists are ok with that? But back on topic, yeah deplataforming obv works in diminishing the reach of people, but does it work to kill an idea? Twitter is a private company. Who they choose to host has nothing to do with free speech. Obligatory xkcd comic: + Show Spoiler + While this is what free speech currently means, i think it is somewhat important to think about what free speech should mean in a modern world. This view of free speech was formed when the main censors were state actors. Nowadays, we have big corporations which can censor at least as effectively, and do so. I think it is similarly scary when billionaires decide what can be heard and what will vanish into the ether, completely without any oversight whatsoever. We are living in an era when most speech happens over specific private platforms, and those platforms do use their power to influence which ideas spread and which don't. Billionaires as a class are not people completely without interests, and there is no way that they do not abuse that power. I do not know what the best way to handle this situations is, but i don't think it is to claim that censorship can only happen by state actors. To stay with the framing from the xkcd comic, right now it is often not people telling you that you are an asshole and should leave, it is billionaires deciding that really, no one should hear the thing you are saying. I really don't think that "free speech" needs to mean anything different. The options that a government has to restrict the lives of people with whom they disagree are much more far reaching and insidious than being banned from posting tweets. EDIT: In other social media news, Meta and Google have lost a landmark lawsuit that has deemed their apps to be "addictive, and deliberately engineered that way" and that both companies have been "negligent in their safeguarding of the children who have used them." They've been ordered to pay out $6m in damages to a person who has basically claimed that Instagram and YouTube have ruined her life due to addiction. If this doesn't get overturned on appeal then it might open the floodgates for many, many more similar lawsuits being brought against social media companies. I mean... they are right. Modern social media is designed to keep you hooked.
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On March 26 2026 20:46 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On March 26 2026 20:38 MJG wrote:On March 26 2026 19:31 Simberto wrote:On March 26 2026 18:24 MJG wrote:On March 26 2026 18:16 baal wrote:On March 25 2026 15:39 EnDeR_ wrote:On March 25 2026 11:04 baal wrote:On March 24 2026 21:11 EnDeR_ wrote:
This is why I wanted to get your take. Your thesis, as presented, rests on convincing evidence being used successfully to debunk a bad idea. I.e. prove the idea wrong and kill it, in your own words.
You presumably agree that that doesn't really work. So does that make you rethink your approach here? How would you kill a harmful idea?
Having someone debate the bad idea with someone on the opposite side as it were has been tried. It turns out that platforming bad ideas and setting them on the same level as good ideas legitimises the bad idea and makes it spread. How do you tackle this, in your view? You are like the 3rd person who is essentially asking "if free speech works why aren't things perfect", come on dont make me answer these silly questions again. We are a deeply flawed being in a complex world, speech an open discussion is better to navigate through ideas than central censorship, that doesn't mean free speech means a perfect pink unicorn world lol. Ideas are organically discussed at the level they deserve, for example Richard Dawkins decided to stop debating young earth creationists because frankly it was beneath him, but he debated with many other people in a higher level of discussion, however there were still many atheist who discussed with young earth creationists on smaller platforms, this serves well to watchers on different levels of the discussion. Debate doesn't legitimize bad ideas, have you ever seen Dawkins debate a crazy fundamentalist and think "damn this Imam has a good point on killing apostates"? No, it shows the world that Islamists are violent and crazy. Deplatforming is a good solution to stop the spread of misinformation (or bad ideas if you will). The ‘Big Lie’ of election fraud pushed by former President Trump which culminated with the January 6 insurrection against the U.S. Capitol has profoundly reshaped the social media landscape. With @RealDonaldTrump and other prominent conspiracists no longer able to reach wide swaths of the public, misinformation about election fraud has already fallen dramatically This has been particularly effective at stopping terrorist recruitment: After being deplatformed in 2015, Islamic extremists migrated to Telegram and marginal social networking platforms. Then, in November 2019, Telegram and the EU’s main law enforcement body collaborated to clean up the remnants of the movement online. By forcing them into smaller and more clandestine digital locales, the groups ability to recruit, coordinate, and organize real-world violence significantly diminished. So this is a good argument to stop the spread of bad ideas. What it doesn't do is fix the people that have already been exposed to the bad idea: Shutting down accounts helps prevent average unsuspecting users from being exposed to dangerous content, but it doesn’t necessarily stop those who already endorse that content. When analyzing data from r/The_Donald and r/Incels, two forums that were removed from Reddit last year and later became their own standalone websites, researchers found a significant drop in posting activity and newcomers. Still, for those that continued to post on these relocated forums, researchers also noted an increase in signals associated with toxicity and radicalization. For that we would need a different approach, but Deplatforming does help to avoid new people getting infected with the bad idea. I think Twitter banning the sitting president of the United States is way worse for the world overall than whatever he could have said to his followers. I mean, I'm a libertarian and I still think its wild a corp can do that to the president, and you statists are ok with that? But back on topic, yeah deplataforming obv works in diminishing the reach of people, but does it work to kill an idea? Twitter is a private company. Who they choose to host has nothing to do with free speech. Obligatory xkcd comic: + Show Spoiler + While this is what free speech currently means, i think it is somewhat important to think about what free speech should mean in a modern world. This view of free speech was formed when the main censors were state actors. Nowadays, we have big corporations which can censor at least as effectively, and do so. I think it is similarly scary when billionaires decide what can be heard and what will vanish into the ether, completely without any oversight whatsoever. We are living in an era when most speech happens over specific private platforms, and those platforms do use their power to influence which ideas spread and which don't. Billionaires as a class are not people completely without interests, and there is no way that they do not abuse that power. I do not know what the best way to handle this situations is, but i don't think it is to claim that censorship can only happen by state actors. To stay with the framing from the xkcd comic, right now it is often not people telling you that you are an asshole and should leave, it is billionaires deciding that really, no one should hear the thing you are saying. I really don't think that "free speech" needs to mean anything different. The options that a government has to restrict the lives of people with whom they disagree are much more far reaching and insidious than being banned from posting tweets. EDIT: In other social media news, Meta and Google have lost a landmark lawsuit that has deemed their apps to be "addictive, and deliberately engineered that way" and that both companies have been "negligent in their safeguarding of the children who have used them." They've been ordered to pay out $6m in damages to a person who has basically claimed that Instagram and YouTube have ruined her life due to addiction. If this doesn't get overturned on appeal then it might open the floodgates for many, many more similar lawsuits being brought against social media companies. I mean... they are right. Modern social media is designed to keep you hooked.
I think the key element of this ruling is that the claimant was a child when they first started using social media, and these social media companies have done (effectively) nothing to stop children from using their platforms despite claiming to do so.
We already prevent children from purchasing things like tobacco and alcohol that are demonstrably bad for their health. Does social media deserve to be placed in that bracket? I think it probably does based on current evidence.
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Social media absolutely should be banned for children under 16, 18 might also make sense, hell, if you asked me, the brain is only fully mature at 24 so the cutoff might be better placed there.
Of course, good luck with doing anything like that when Meta and Google are shoveling money to Trump and are joyfully doing away with common sense safety and moderation protocols, especially in the case of Meta.
The only way to actually enforce this ban would be to mandate real ID to be able to create a Facebook/Instagram/Youtube account, plus remove anonymous access to Youtube, which is never going to happen, even if president AOC was in charge this kind of stuff would never pass the house and senate.
Best we can hope for is class action lawsuits that might happen now that there is precedent, there are a lot of children who's lives have been irreversibly fucked up by social media, so best we can hope for is for them to get some restitution from these filthy rich companies.
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On March 26 2026 19:56 LightSpectra wrote:You know, you could have potentially strengthened your argument by saying "Even though I personally fell for potentially fatal medical misinformation, I still passionately believe censorship is wrong". Instead you decided to rant about people who, factually correctly, called ivermectin "cattle dewormer" when people were literally dying by trying it instead of the vaccine. Now you look like the guy angrily ranting about the gubmint trying to take away his horse paste. Show nested quote +On March 26 2026 19:47 baal wrote:On March 26 2026 19:28 LightSpectra wrote:
The claim you made: "OMS deliberately propagated about masks not working early 2019 in an attempt to keep people from buying all the stock"
The source you provided: "The WHO reviewed its position on masks in light of data from Hong Kong indicating that their widespread use in the community may have reduced the spread of coronavirus in some regions" If they thought masks didn't work why would healthcare workers use it? lol They always knew they worked, Asia made studies decades ago and they used them in previous pandemics, do you think they weren't aware of these studies? lol they knew they just didn't want people to hoard them and create a shortage. But please go ahead and triple down, you are going to lose badly on this one. Fauci isn't the OMS. Fauci was Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. That aside, let's provide some context here: "In a March 8, 2020, interview, Fauci stated that "right now in the United States, people [who are not infected] should not be walking around with masks", but "if you want to do it, that's fine".[54][55] In the same interview, Fauci said that buying masks "could lead to a shortage of masks for the people who really need" them: "When you think masks, you should think of healthcare providers needing them".[54][56] When Fauci made this comment, America's top surgical mask maker was struggling to produce enough masks to meet the increased demand.[56]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_FauciWow, almost like he said the exact thing out loud that you're alleging was some kind of grossly immoral coverup. And not only that, but it was about uninfected people, not because masks don't work. Is that why you posted a screenshot of the first paragraph of that article without the rest and without the link?
I don't think he did it out of Malice, it is just that this out of context purposefully manipulating shit is all the information he consumes in his particular algorithm. And it more or less proves Ender's point because no matter how many times it is brought up that the version he has been taught and sold, is in fact not honest. It does nothing to penetrate his now strongly held beliefs.
Baal doesn't seem like a guy trying to trick anyone, he is just really misinformed but thinks he is the one crushing misinformation. Which is super common of those who have lost trust in experts, institutions, legacy media . He's also willing to engage and share his point of view, instead of hide behind cryptic comments.
I guess we are going to find out how effective "sunlight" is.
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I mentioned that before, but yeah, one of the hardest things about combating misinformation is the bias for people to trust what they heard first over a correction, even if there's strong factual evidence backing up the new claim. "A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on."
If baal was right and simply letting the sunlight disinfect lies was all that was necessary, he wouldn't be a walking case study of how that doesn't work. And I can sympathize with people who ideologically believe that the government should never play even the smallest part in arbitrating the truth, I really don't think someone's a dumb asshole if they're more worried about censorship than viral misinformation, but it's time to start admitting that the individualist solutions just aren't working and we have to try something different.
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I don't see how someone can have lived through the rise of social media without seeing the basic 1:1 overlap with the rise in anti-vax sentiment.
It just seems so very obvious that providing a platform for factual misinformation and giving it 'sunlight' doesn't kill it but instead nurtures it.
(I was going to assume baal was 20 something or younger but the account is from 2003 so that doesn't add up ><)
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It was Gen X and Millennials who grew up in a world where the far-right was still the fringe of politics, and the "just let them make fools of themselves, trying to ban them will only embolden them" seemed to be sensible advice from our parents that grew up in a world where the Nazis and Fascists seemed to be permanently vanquished.
So it turns out that was complete hogwash, regrettably. Society still has time to update our collective wisdom to something more evidence-based but it's not surprising a lot of people are resistant to such a thing.
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On March 26 2026 21:53 LightSpectra wrote:
I mentioned that before, but yeah, one of the hardest things about combating misinformation is the bias for people to trust what they heard first over a correction, even if there's strong factual evidence backing up the new claim. "A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on."
If baal was right and simply letting the sunlight disinfect lies was all that was necessary, he wouldn't be a walking case study of how that doesn't work. And I can sympathize with people who ideologically believe that the government should never play even the smallest part in arbitrating the truth, I really don't think someone's a dumb asshole if they're more worried about censorship than viral misinformation, but it's time to start admitting that the individualist solutions just aren't working and we have to try something different.
It's all about who's managing exposure online. More relevant in the US usually, no doubt that the private sector collaborates with military authorities when it comes to that as they can keep stability up by controlling the narrative or what individuals get to see online, even.
It's probably easy to throw fringe topics at them that they'll grab when they distract from matters that threaten said stability.
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United States44132 Posts
On March 26 2026 22:32 LightSpectra wrote:
It was Gen X and Millennials who grew up in a world where the far-right was still the fringe of politics, and the "just let them make fools of themselves, trying to ban them will only embolden them" seemed to be sensible advice from our parents that grew up in a world where the Nazis and Fascists seemed to be permanently vanquished.
So it turns out that was complete hogwash, regrettably. Society still has time to update our collective wisdom to something more evidence-based but it's not surprising a lot of people are resistant to such a thing.
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On March 26 2026 23:33 KwarK wrote:
The funny thing about this tweet is that it's the Greek lawyer's paradox. If the guy changed his mind then that would prove the lady wrong, but if she's wrong then his original opinion was correct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_the_Court
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EPT![[image loading]](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free_speech.png)
![[image loading]](https://i.gyazo.com/ee195430006696f851accd765714d7b8.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://i.gyazo.com/32ec517b0454dc59d6ae0cc2ebd26240.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/be354dfc-32db-4ad1-9106-e5f02cb1150f.jpeg)
