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from the I-Disapprove-of-What-You-Say,-But-I-Will-Defend-to-the-Death-Your-Right-to-Say-It dept.
From an editorial in the Otago Daily Times out of New Zealand, Censorship a Trojan Horse:
It's an oft-cited maxim that the news media is the "fourth estate" upon which a healthy democracy stands.
It ensures the three traditional powers of state — the legislature, executive and judiciary — can be critiqued, challenged and curbed from quietly drifting into the arms of corruption and authoritarianism.
A free, fair, open and uncensored media is an antidote to state power and, for all its failings (and there are many), should be treasured as such. There are many countries around the world whose people would give anything for such a freedom.
Yet calls for the banning of certain opinion pieces, cartoons and commentary have risen in recent months, especially from those using social media, a world where such talk is becoming a trend. It is a trend we must confront.
Censorship is to suppress the harmful, the unacceptable, the obscene and the threatening from the media and other forms of public communication. Like a virus attacking democracy from the inside out, it was traditionally the tool of the dictator, though it is one used by many in power.
[...] It pays to query what those demanding censorship — be they celebrities, social-media activists or anybody else — see their ultimate goal as being.
To reduce hurt? To make the world a better place? Possibly, and those motivations are laudable. But the method employed to achieve them is not.
While censorship may be meant as a figurative horse upon which a better future rides, inside the belly of that horse lurks an army of conformity, quite capable of unwitting oppression.
History shows what happens when the fourth estate is no longer free to table all opinions.
It is a bleak picture. Without the disinfectant of exposure, power and ideals tend to corrupt even the most seemingly incorruptible.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:41AM (2 children)
Well, there's plenty to observe, for sure :)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday October 03 2018, @07:29AM (1 child)
Oh yeah. Thousands are flowing in daily as they are banned worldwide. Somehow twitter banning entire political parties in other countries is not deemed foreign interference in an election. Some would be puzzled by that, but of course it makes perfect sense to anyone Dark Enlightened.
We are to the point a lot of shell shocked normal "basic bitch" conservatives are having to get on gab after being banhammered. It is a big culture shock for those people suddenly seeing vast vistas of political discourse they never really thought existed. They had heard the media rave about some of them since they know first hand that the media exaggerates and lies about their own politics they assumed it was all just fevered dreams of Brock and his kook crew. Then they suddenly encounter not just nazis, but discover the nazis have warring subgroups; neo-nazis, neon-nazis, anime-nazis, alt-nazis, nazi-nazis, larper-nazis, furry-nazis and those aren't even the strangest groups in the bestiary. They had heard of the Alt-Right's existence perhaps, but suddenly encountering all of those ideas that are entirely outside the normal left-right-libertarian debate. And while they might have heard of Alex Jones, there are conspiracy theories he won't touch, but there are people there who delight in them. It is an experience, to say the least, for most of them. Imagine how that first week for a recently deplatformed "mommy blogger" goes. Some can't take it and leave, but many stay. Minds are being expanded. Whether that ends up being good or bad we shall soon learn.
And the amazing thing is I have been watching their numbers. Assuming they are actually allowed to get the money being raised in their current ICO, I'l predicting they will have the resources to get to positive cash flow. They should break even somewhere around a million users assuming the subscriber percentages and cost per sub stay stable and the move off of Azure wasn't too disruptive. They are at 700K now and growth is accelerating so they should hit it this year or very early next. Their burn rate is amazing, @Jack's custodial expense line for Twitter HQ probably exceeds Gab's entire operating budget. The budget at gab is bigger than Solynetnews but not a lot more zeros. Lean doesn't even approach what they are doing, because they know there is no VC available and no big cash out by selling the company at the end of the plan. But people are paying for Pro accounts because they really don't have many options remaining. The days of rolling a fresh account on Fakebook and Twatter are done, they are keying off your phone's fixed ID to kill dup accounts so when somebody gets banned now they usually stay banned unless they have tech skills or throw money at the problem by buying a new burner phone... which gets banned anyway after a week or two.
So having an account gives one a front row seat to something new being born. Something wonderful or something awful, too early to say. Whatever it becomes, @Jack made it. along with Zuck. Had they only banned the few hundred most offensive accounts gab couldn't exist, and if somebody built a platform anyway it would be a small echo chamber. The mass banning drove in the one thing needed to make it work, an audience. The pointless banning of the gab app from the stores only provides the required daily reminder of being oppressed by powerful forces that is binding the "Gab fam" into a community. Pointless because almost every Android device can simply sideload the app and they have now expended the effort to supply a Progressive Web App version for iOS that can be installed outside of the iTunes Store.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:56PM
Pretty much. I've been on Gab since a month after it opened. Went from mostly the disgruntled to mostly the loons to now rapidly becoming mostly the banned and disenchanted. Gab came along at the right time, with the right policies, to scarf up everyone else's discarded customers. We got half of Brazil in one fell swoop. And newbies who speak up will encounter something unique: an actual welcoming committee.
I have a Pro account (as the obvious), but mainly to keep Lists, cuz it's gotten so busy that if you don't spend all day there, you miss everything you want to see (and there *are* some folks who are worth my regular attention). Otherwise, I mostly read folks I follow; don't see any point in swimming in the unfiltered sewage. I give it a look now and then, just to see what the negative-karma types are doing, but it's seldom pointful... as you say, it's mostly Fringe Wars and Rejected-by-Alex-Jones, and rather resembles an inverse Twitter. But up in the air and light, the level of discourse is generally way better than I've ever seen on other microbloggy type sites.
What's really croggling... I seldom post original material, mostly I repost this and that and replies to other folks, but have somehow accumulated 1500 followers, which is about 1450 more than I'd expected. As someone's /. tagline reads... "I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?" :)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.