Ok, so I booted Flashlight relatively early on in the Minneapolis-now-America thread. TLS is starting to wear thin on my would-I-get-drinks-with metric; there are currently three reports open. Anyone else starting to feel the same?
TheLonelySquire. Yes, and I'm not entirely comfortable with it. However at the same time it's 2020, not 2002. The internet is a dramatically different place to what it was when WF was created and that world is rapidly vanishing. If I recall when you owned the board pornographic material had to be banned as it could reflect on you professionally. In modern times, and especially with the debates going on around social media right now, there is definitely an increased expectation of sites to consider who they give a platform to. I don't necessarily agree with that, however it is the way the world is going. Even a decade ago, if someone tied me to here as a moderator and was to bring up a Tasvir post or the like I feel like I could have made a pretty good case for not being involved and show how the board self-moderated as explanation of how it shouldn't reflect on me. Now...not so much. Internet trolling, fake personas, 4chan are all well known. Reddit has made mainstream news with discussion of its moderation. In most cases what you allow is what you are taken to endorse. Again, don't necessarily think that's a good development, but barring a time machine it's what we have to deal with.
There's a larger issue that I think is missing from the discussions around free speech. In the past, if you wanted to be considered "edgy" or "controversial" you spoke out in favor of things like gay rights, civil rights, drug legalization, anti-colonialism, and similar topics. Or just used a lot of obscenities. All of those things, in one form or another, are now so mainstream that there's really nothing that you can say on the topics where you can expect any kind of pushback (which is what a lot of people were really looking for when they championed the kinds of things that I mentioned). They may not be things that are happening (most recreational drugs are still illegal, and I don't even have to describe the state of civil rights in this country right now), but it isn't at all shocking to see someone saying, "All drugs should be legal" or "All cops are bastards." So what is an attention whore to do if they want to get a reaction out of lots of people? The easiest way to push folk's buttons right now is to throw out a racial slur or advocate rape. So that's what they do. And the fact that we're dealing with a medium that makes discussions requiring subtlety and nuance difficult, exacerbates the problem. (It's even worse when you're talking about a site like Facebook where it is effectively designed to push content calculated to enrage you in your direction.) For all our claims of being a rational society that embraces diverse thought, the truth is that emotional reactions and binary thought processes are easily triggered in all of us. The folks saying that if one is going to object to the use of racial slurs against BIPOC, then one also has to object to racial slurs used against white people, do have a bit of a point. After all, neither use is respectful of human beings. The difference is that one comes loaded with over 400 years of oppression and genocide, while the other doesn't, so the priority should be in minimizing (though not eliminating the use) of the one set of terms, while not fretting the other until such time as the other set is almost completely unpalatable in use. And while as a Cishet white male, I shouldn't really have a say in when the use of certain racist terms are acceptable, I will say that I can see times when their use isn't something that should be struck down. To cite Twain's Tom Sawyer, the use of the term as the name of one of the heroic characters says more about the society in which that character lives, than it does the character himself. There are numerous other examples out there as well. Granted, today the appellation for Jim does make people feel uncomfortable, but that was undoubtedly Twain's point (Twain spent his final years campaigning against King Leopold II's genocide in the Congo, so I think it's safe to say he wasn't the kind of guy who'd embrace folks who happily throw out the n-word on a routine basis). But again, to deal with that in detail, you really have to push the limits of what this medium is capable of. If one looks at the history of suppression of free speech in the US, one can easily find examples of so-called "well-meaning laws" that were so over-extended that they did real harm to society. The Comstock Act being the prime example. Because while not only did it prevent the distribution of pornography through the mail, it also blocked the distribution of medical textbooks through the mail, because they contained descriptions and images of reproductive organs. While there is ample room for debate on what constitutes porn, how available it should be, and its impact upon society, there is no room for debate on the idea that medical textbooks should be suppressed. (Though one could argue what constitutes a medical textbook and that those which presently solely harmful information should, at the very least, not be promoted with the same legitimacy as those written by actual medical experts.) I don't think that there should be a hard line on certain terms and their use, there absolutely must be some kind of line. Not because we're trying to stifle people making a legitimate point in a manner that's uncomfortable, but because people are simply saying it to deliberately harm others in a way there's no equitable means of retaliation. BIPOC have no generic term they can throw against a racist that has as much hate and pain wrapped up in it as the n-word does. Now, if the BIPOC happens to know the person using that term well-enough, they can potentially dredge up something in response that will be nearly as harmful to that specific individual. But that's something that can't always happen and random passersby won't pick up on just how cutting the comment was. We're not always going to make the right call, and even when we do, there's going to be someone who objects to it, but we do have to make that call. Because if we don't, we're not going to have people using this forum to push the boundaries of oppression (while I might not agree with Libertarianism, I would object to anyone saying that it's stated goal was to oppress others), we're going to have people who use this forum to promote things like hate and genocide. There's enough of that going on in the world right now as it is, we don't need to be contributing to it in any way.
Nope, that's enough of this. https://wordforge.net/index.php?threads/shooting-interrupts-trump-briefing.120422/#post-3270373 I've giving him a week. Frankly, could be a perm for all I care.
Dude's an edgelord for sure, and probably an idiot as well. But he's within the rules as far as I know. Y'all shouldn't be too far into banning people you don't like, unless it infringes on your host rules or something like that. And no, I'm not gonna advocate for anyone's release from banning either.
