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The idea that bad people having a voice on social media causes other people to become bad people (often the argument as to why we must defederate from bad servers) is equivalent to:
Thinking violent video games cause people to become violent.
Thinking explicit song lyrics cause people to become criminals
Allowing people to be openly homosexual will cause others to become homosexual
Banning books
@freemo Being exposed to ideas can do harm.
Examples: people purporting to be leftist indulging in war propaganda. Happening right now in germany - they want war.
So, what is the distinguishing criteria, what do we need to stop?
I guess stopping the bad people is out, they do have figured it out enough to have sway.
Not accepting calls to hate might be an idea?
@admitsWrongIfProven You havent actually made the case that being exposed to ideas can do harm. Your example is a bad idea, sure, but you havent made the case that it was exposure to the idea that is the cause rather than the predisposition of the people to draw such conclusions on their own. It is very likely such ideas would largely have developed independently of exposure.
@admitsWrongIfProven I do not think people are born bad, but I also dont think ideas turn people bad.. Actions and how people are treated do, combined with poor or biased reasoning skills about how they integrate these expiernces.
Most racist people, for example, seem to be racist from a young age, in which case it is done in an attempt to be accepted by their family, usually parents. When I see a person become racist later in life it is usually because of negative experiences they had or witnessed. What ive never seen is a person who was decidingly not racist go "Hey ya know what, bill told me black people are violent, I am going to hate black people now"
@freemo Uh yeah, mean stuff comes from mean people around while you're still impressionable, that much is clear.
What i mean to say here is that ideas from varied sources are not bad, ideas that are blasted on you time and time again by people controlling the narrative are bad. Like, imagine if some very few people owned all the news outlets, they could do horrible things. Could they not?
@admitsWrongIfProven the issue you are talking about though isnt "bad people being seen causes bad people"... what you are describing is engineering the information in its totality or near totality. Controlling the narrative, preventing the ability to get accurate information. Thats a different problem but we agree is problematic.
@freemo You are right... i thought about what i perceive as the biggest threat, and you did actually talk about something else.
The thing you mocked, we agree the people pushing that narrative are annoying and irrelevant to reasonable discourse.
It both makes me happy and frightened that you understood what i meant.
@admitsWrongIfProven People on the internet are too eager to disagree... I find if you try to listen people agree more often than they realize.
@freemo Except those that want total war. Had to issue my first block because of this - some really do want war. Frightening. Anyway, some music and off to bed, sleep well and may you experience peace. You and those that want war. I want peace even for those that hate.
The narrative that ideas are bad... don't concern yourself too much. If you acknowledge it, they win. Subvert, don't accept.
@admitsWrongIfProven Sleep well, good chatting
@freemo You know what kind of idea i mean. There are different kinds.
@admitsWrongIfProven @freemo I disagree with this whole good/bad classification.
Different people have different ideas and blocking people based on their ideas equates to deciding you wish not to have any kind of interaction with those people.
I'd rather share ideas: some times I'm convinced I'm right and other people show me I'm not, other times I can explain people why they're wrong.
I believe it's better to allow conversation to happen; even if the other people say utter bullshit.
Now, this is different from blocking certain things: I'll gladly block things I don't want to see. Such as videos of extremely violent acts or pornography.
Someone claiming the earth is flat, or that covid is a conspiracy or that I should support the war in Ukraine is not something I'd block, as long as there's a person behind it actually believing that stuff. The first two are scientific theories and the third is a moral and economical opinion. I believe it's more likely to increase the amount of people who joins these beliefs by isolating them rather than including them in a larger community where they can get in touch with different people and opinions. You can observe this behavior at large in real communities: it's easier to find people more open to different ideas and opinions in large cities rather than small isolated villages.
I'd argue that it may be nice to block people who are purposefully diffusing fake information, however I'm not sure how you could distinguish them from other people. And, frankly, at that point you might very well block most newspapers.
I believe people are able to think and it's actually good to expose oneself to what other people think. I got into conversations with people who believe the earth is flat, despite all the mockery they do bring up some very solid points backed up by experimental data, which makes this flat earth thing a scientific theory, alas a useless one. But it's nice to get into a conversation and question your own surest beliefs.
All in all, I believe that communication among people should be allowed without banning based on ideology. I'd let racist people and misogynists and what you want able to be there and express themselves and their opinion, as long as they don't directly attack and harass someone specifically. I'd do this despite it being despiseful because I believe it's the better option.
@rastinza @freemo I do not wish for ideas to be censored, neither by good/bad categorization nor another one, and i am sure neither does freemo.
The comment you answered to is quite unspecific, and i must admit i don't follow my own thoughts here completely.
What i think might make sense is to think about calls to action, be it violence or hate. At some point here there might be a meaningful distinction. The general censorship of ideas is not what i meant, anyway. So in the end, we do agree on what you said.
@freemo I might not have made the case, but if you want to, i can.
People are not in themselfs bad. We see no evidence people, as a whole, are hurting others. But we can see that there is some sway to hurt.
While people generally are clueless (i hold this as self-evident, source: look outside), herd behaviour can be observed in the wild.
The obvious threat right now is humanity extinguishing itself by climate collapse. No matter, people are engaging in any other matter they can, distracting themselfs.
So it might be helpful to not use any more resources than needed. But this is not the case, everything continues as normal.
The menance i talk about is sowing the seeds of hostility: right now, ukraine against russia ist the big topic.
There was no mention of nato hostility, there is no acknowledgement of anything the western countries might have done - a pure conviction that the enemy is bad, and that we are good.
So, if we had done everything right, would the climate collapse not be a thing of the "enemy" nations?
The constant nagging of our own propaganda organs is clouding our view. Being exposed to ideas can hurt, and upon us lays the burden to push back there and still reject the pushback (earned, but not helpful) of those "enemy" nations.
People suck.