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From reporting by The Daily Dot.
Conservative psychologist/alt-right guru Jordan Peterson officially announced that he is launching what he calls a "free speech platform" known as Thinkspot.
Peterson insists that Thinkspot will adhere to his principles of anti-censorship so strongly that the platform will only ban or remove users if it is ordered to do so by the U.S. court of law. Because there's no way that could go horribly wrong.
Peterson also mentioned that Thinkspot will have a minimum word count as opposed to a maximum. "If minimum comment length is 50 words, you're gonna have to put a little thought into it," Peterson said to the right-wing outlet NewsBusters. "Even if you're being a troll, you'll be a quasi-witty troll."
Thinkspot is being marketed as a creator-to-consumer payment processor such as Patreon while also serving as an alternative to services such as Twitter and YouTube.
Thinkspot has an intended release date of August 2019.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 16 2019, @08:45PM (12 children)
Did you miss the part where it said he's conservative? Duh.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 16 2019, @10:02PM
Exactly. We need crowdsourced propaganda! Trick whole sections of the working class into bartering their political power away to propagandists! Why should the rich leeches pay for their own propaganda when they can get the working class to fund imperialist propaganda with their own wealth?
(Score: 3, Informative) by julian on Monday June 17 2019, @01:12AM (5 children)
Let me show you what "conservatism" looks like online when you allow anything that doesn't violate the law. This experiment is currently being run on a website called Voat [voat.co]. I encourage you to check it out for yourself. The comment sections are especially illuminating. It was established as a censorship-free alternative to reddit.com. Here is a list of the current top post titles:
So that's what completely uncensored "conservative" free speech will look like on JP's website before too long.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by khallow on Monday June 17 2019, @03:57AM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @02:40PM (1 child)
>> Sure, I wouldn't want to read about that stuff either.
Do you mind if I ask why? Just by reading, it doesn't mean you agree with it. I was under the impression that by exposing oneself to various ideas, one can avoid echo chambers and confirmation bias. No?
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Monday June 17 2019, @07:34PM
Suppose it were even as the title claims. So what?
People aren't "shaking off" belief in God nor becoming more gullible. It's a wish fulfillment headline.
South Africa wasn't a "white country" in the first place.
In each of these titles, basic premises are broken. No point to going further.
Standard fallacy deployment in the title. No reason to continue.
There's a lot of noise out there. We need to filter it out or it's garbage in, garbage out.
(Score: 1) by Snort on Monday June 17 2019, @02:49PM
Can we use reddit.com/r/chapotraphouse as an avatar for the left and "everything they stand for?" That is essentially what you are doing by simply citing voat.co. That is but one outlet. There many, many more places where people congregate and share ideas.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @06:37PM
Doesn't SoylentNews have a pretty similar policy, though? I'd rather just deal with speech I think is bad than ridiculous, open-ended censorship rules created by mega-corporations.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Reziac on Monday June 17 2019, @06:50AM (4 children)
Yeah, cuz nowadays the epithet "conservative" is shorthand for "literally Hitler".
Anyone who thinks Dr.Peterson is conservative, let alone alt-right, has been listening to his critics, but has not been listening to him. He's basically a centrist with classical-liberal beliefs, tempered by a pretty good dose of realism.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @01:28PM (1 child)
Then tell me how "centrists with classical-liberal beliefs, tempered with a pretty good dose of realism" managed to get what is basically the most disgusting public figure in the entire U.S. sitting in the oval office ?
Talk is cheap. Actions are what matters. When conservatives talk, they are poor oppressed, misunderstood, and villified victims of the evil liberals trying to take away their free speech (and guns). But when they act, a sexual predator, child molester, egocentric, psychopath, compulsive-liar, megalomaniac, con-man with more than 1300 civil lawsuits against him who's destroyed countless small businesses and ruined countless lives ends-up President of the United States.
If that's what conservative "values" lead to, then every single action and campain aimed at silencing and eradicating them is totally justified, just like chemotherapy is totally justified for eradicating cancer.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Monday June 17 2019, @02:41PM
Because you aren't the US. Enough people, a near majority had other ideas about who was more disgusting.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @03:12PM (1 child)
You are mischaracterizing Peterson. I had the misfortune of watching and analyzing a two hour segment of his.
Philosophers are in three camps: the mathematicians who rule logically, the insightfuls who can deal with subjectives usefully, and the armchair who make bad claims to stir shit up.
I figure Peterson is only kept as a prof for publicity. In the two hours, he didn't actually make any correct argument. Not one. He made lots of feelie arguments and a few lone true statements, but he didn't argue in good faith. By the end I wasn't even upset or disappointed, as I paused, analyzed, and added to the tallies of flaws in reasoning. I was numb to his bullshit beyond being able to spot the many open flaw in his statements. He is a TV charlatan, a crowd-riler, not a true philosopher.
"a centrist with classical-liberal beliefs, tempered by a pretty good dose of realism." implies coherence. He's incoherent. He's certainly no realist. Not unless you call my drunk uncle who points out that "blacks are in jail more per capita, so they are, literally, more criminal, so it's good that they're targeted by the police" a realist. Having the nerve to speak with confidence isn't the same as speaking truth.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday June 18 2019, @01:49AM
I've watched (well, mostly listened on the side) upward of 500 hours of Peterson's stuff, including most of his university lectures. The no-particular-subject talks tend to ramble (and often back-reference previous talks, so you kinda need to be in the loop to know what he's getting at), but the lectures that have a mission are densely packed and generally stay focused, tho you might not realise what the focus is til he reaches the end and pulls it all together. Sometimes he has what I regard as wrongheaded ideas, or is just plain wrong (mostly when he wanders too far out of his field), but you could say that about everyone.
And if he's so incoherent, explain why he routinely packs the house at $200/seat, and everyone listening with intensive concentration. And as to his Youtube channel... 2,090,136 subscribers, 105,016,646 views (some of his univ lectures have topped 200k views). Obviously he's got *something* to say to a LOT of people.
And don't forget he has over 20 years as a professor. He's not some come-lately hired to make admin look smart.
But I can see why he actively annoys today's shallow thinkers: he asks that you truly examine your beliefs down to their core, and it's a rare leftist (or religious fundamentalist, the usual segment who apply the label "charlatan") who ever really does so, given the entire Marx-spectrum philosophy is a matter of faith, by definition not to be questioned. (And I'd say the same about the extreme right, but most who claim that label are, in the light of day, actually somewhere left of Stalin.) And he really annoys the snowflakes, because he refuses to kowtow to their crap.
If you want a somewhat better picture of what he's about than you'll get from some randomly selected talk (which may have been one of his lesser lights), I'd suggest his guest appearance on Honey Badger Radio, or for more depth, any of his university lecture series. Or maybe the video that brought him to general attention, where he stands up to serious harassment from the aggressive-snowflake brigade.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.