They are still trying to delete/silence us, right here on Saidit.

submitted by Lilith_Fair from self.GenderCritical

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[–]motionlessoracle 36 insightful - 3 fun36 insightful - 2 fun37 insightful - 3 fun -  (15 children)

Part of me wish there's a way to donate without also contributing to help racists sounding off.

I'm not trying to attack you or make you mad, but I wonder if you've thought about the implications of a platform that bans people who say things you consider racist? How is that in any way different than a platform that bans people for saying things that men don't like?

Free speech really means anyone can say whatever they like as long as it isn't a crime. That is either valuable to you or it isn't. As soon as you allow somebody to decide which controversial ideas it is okay to have, you give one group power over others.

[–]beholdyourheart 24 insightful - 2 fun24 insightful - 1 fun25 insightful - 2 fun -  (8 children)

There's a big difference between wanting to get a group banned and not wanting to support them monetarily. I would never, ever support a platform that hosts neo-nazis with my own money, because I feel very strongly about anti-racism and don't want to give my funds to a racist/anti-semitic platform. Same way I wouldn't give Reddit money because of their misogyny.

[–]Lilith_Fair[S] 21 insightful - 2 fun21 insightful - 1 fun22 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

I agree with you generally. However, I really hate it today how the Outrage Machine keeps threatening boycotts to force companies to toe their line. That's very different from charitable donations and giving or not giving to a cause. Threatening boycotts today is another form of cancel culture and I really hate it because nowadays it's usually about something stupid, superficial, and cosmetic, that doesn't even make any real difference.

[–]beholdyourheart 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Yeah I can understand that. I think personal boycotts based on ideals are fine but the whole group outrage of 'if you don't boycott X company you're evil and needed to be cancelled' thing is ridiculous. But for me, in terms of paying to support a website, I'd rather pay to support GC making our own site so I could be confident that my money is supporting my own ideals. Since cancel culture is inherently a group concept, I don't think individuals making their own choices on who they want to support is the same thing.

[–]motionlessoracle 16 insightful - 2 fun16 insightful - 1 fun17 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Since cancel culture is inherently a group concept, I don't think individuals making their own choices on who they want to support is the same thing.

Cancel culture is millions of individuals who do not know how to cope with people they dislike, all making individual choices to harass, boycott, doxx, petition, and write letters.

I mean, I agree that choosing not to give money is different from a boycott. However, using this site is like being given a free lunch, and then declaring you don't want to leave a tip for the server because free lunches were also given to racists.

[–]Lilith_Fair[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I think personal boycotts based on ideals are fine but the whole group outrage of 'if you don't boycott X company you're evil and needed to be cancelled' thing is ridiculous.

Cancel culture is millions of individuals who do not know how to cope with people they dislike, all making individual choices to harass, boycott, doxx, petition, and write letters.

I think you're both correct. On the one hand personal boycotts as a personal choice is not actually cancel culture. OTOH, these personal choices become a collective now because of fucking Twitter. Twitter continuously create outrages to rally a mob for this or that. So while the choices are personal, normally in the past these choices wouldn't have been made in the first place. Once the mob gets loud enough, all the corporations fold and bend at the knee.

Of course in a free society people should be able to boycott companies by their personal choices. In a sane world, boycotts are for when a company is dumping toxic chemicals into the river. In a world where Twitter is the arbiter of morality, companies get threats of boycott when a lowly hourly employee at one store out of the company's 500 stores nationwide does or say something that a shrill group of people on Twitter decides is offensive. Or worse, what the one lowly employee did or said is taken totally out of context or misconstrued. It's ridiculous. It's also ridiculous when the mob threatens boycott if the head of a company voices support for the "wrong" party or politician. Why should hundreds of workers and employees who are just working to feed their families suddenly have their livelihoods threatened because I disagree with their CEO's politics? 99% of the time when people take jobs, they have no clue about the top management's politics. Most will never even meet the executive management. Should people only take jobs now if the entire company's management have "correct" views and opinions? What about people who live in places where the company is the largest jobs provider in the area? The whole thing is insane and out of hand.

[–]motionlessoracle 15 insightful - 2 fun15 insightful - 1 fun16 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

Well, think of it this way. Monetary support isn't paying magnora7's rent. It's simply the cost to have a site like this online that is currently deflecting over a million hostile connections roughly every ten minutes while we get to be blissfully unaware.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Reddit was a money making enterprise with ads, so most people could easily decide not to give them more money and still sleep at night. This site is, as far as I can tell, a lot of work and zero financial gain. If it starts costing too much out of pocket to repel the attacks, it will go offline, and then we won't have anywhere to speak again.

That's the point of the DDoS attacks. We can fight back by making sure magnora7 has the funds necessary to absorb the cost of protecting our right to free speech. You're not protecting free speech if you're only willing to protect speech you agree with.

[–]Lilith_Fair[S] 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I don't disagree. I was thinking yesterday how even 5 years ago I saw quite a bit of pushback with people repeating the famous quote "I don't agree with what you said, but I'll defend to death your right to say it". I've noticed these last 3 years no one really say that anymore. Probably because it's proven to fall on deaf ears. Really sad. OTOH, if one is to say "I'll defend to death your right to say it", I guess $5/mo donation to Patreon, comparing to death, isn't all that much to give.

[–]motionlessoracle 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I was thinking yesterday how even 5 years ago I saw quite a bit of pushback with people repeating the famous quote "I don't agree with what you said, but I'll defend to death your right to say it". I've noticed these last 3 years no one really say that anymore.

This is so true and so sad. You're right. I never see those sentiments anymore. I still believe them.

[–]Overdrive 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

You should give to magnora7.

It's not like your money would be directly going to a racist's pockets.

Do you pay taxes?

[–]Lilith_Fair[S] 14 insightful - 1 fun14 insightful - 0 fun15 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

No offense taken. However, I don't think that withholding donation is equivalent to me having power to disallow whose idea is ok or deny anyone power. Certainly donations from any source would help. But whether I'm a donor or not, I personally have no power one way or another to allow or disallow anyone on this platform. Moreover, no one is even required to ever make donation of any kind, even for causes or organizations they value. The fact that there are only 21 patrons to this site reflects that. Thousands of people are here right now, rent free. I don't think I should be singled out to be someone who must overcome something I'm not comfortable with to give financial support. How I or anyone decide to give donations should be entirely up to the person doing the giving. If it was a tax, a law, or an issue of business boycott, that'd be another matter IMO.

ETA: Notwithstanding what I said here, I'm glad to see your call for everyone to help contribute. Magnora7 appears to be a very reasonable person giving a lot to try to do something good. I think he can really use as much support a he can get.

[–]motionlessoracle 9 insightful - 1 fun9 insightful - 0 fun10 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm glad no offense was taken, because none was intended.

I'm not singling you out. I think everyone who is currently using this site needs to think very carefully about what free speech sometimes costs.

We've been spoiled for years by "free" internet services that were only free because we were what was being sold. Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, TikTok are all using you to make money. They are willing to violate your privacy quite extremely, doxx you behind the scenes, sell that data to the highest bidder, then ban you if you become inconvenient.

Saidit has no ads and doesn't sell user data, so the costs are out of pocket for magnora7. Donations are the only way this site will stay online if it needs to spend $$$ repelling DDoS attacks. It's understood that not everyone can or will donate. The point I am making is that we cannot think of saidit in the same way we think of other social media. We cannot treat this site like a free lunch.

[–]endthewoo 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Absolutist "free speech" is bullshit. By not censoring the trolls, ddosers, bullies, liars, scammers, defamers you are in effect censoring everyone else. The mods/admins are already making a choice as to who gets censored (whether they admit it or not). You allow the bad actors then effectively by omission you censor many more of the good ones.

[–]motionlessoracle 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

There's a tendency on the left (and perhaps in other groups, but I'm a member of the left so I see it more clearly) to say: this is a problem, I've thought of one solution, therefore it is the solution. Inevitably, the solution is the most obvious, which tells you something about the group proposing it. To the left, censoring speech is the first tool they grab. It's a clumsy tool, with splinters in the handle and a distressing tendency to injure both the user and innocent bystanders, but it vaguely gets the job done in the same way that a wrench can be used as a hammer.

There are alternative solutions that are far less chilling. For instance, permitting users to block other users so they never see their content puts control in the hands of individual users. The objectionable speech remains, but only for those who wish to see it, thus this option imposes no worldview on anyone. Everyone is free to cultivate their own bubble. Nobody has control over anyone else's bubble.

u/magnora7 indicated that this feature is desired and anyone who wants to take a crack at it can check out the github repository: https://github.com/libertysoft3/saidit

Another option would be to display subs and comments in a filtered way, by automatically collapsing those from users with low karma/recent account creation and hiding their posts from the /s/all feed. The comments/posts would still be visible to those who chose to look at them, but the default level of engagement with them would be low.

When trying to increase the signal to noise ratio, you can boost the signal or reduce the noise. Both approaches have limitations. Anyone who has spent time processing signals/data can tell you that removing noise (rather than preventing it from occurring) inevitably changes the signal as well. It distorts it.

[–]endthewoo 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I'm having this convo in two sub-threads here so excuse the cut and paste:

You can't have free speech without space for everyone to speak. And to create space for everyone to speak you need rules and boundaries otherwise biggest-bully-troll wins and almost everyone else is denied their speech. All the evidence - seeing how things play out in practice every single time - tells us that.

Fully open debate is a fantasy, won't ever work. Even pple who claim to be for total free speech recognise that implicitly even though they pretend otherwise (for whatever reason).

Example: you set up a sub to discuss woodworking, or organise a talk on "new woodworking techniques". By its very nature that's already constrained and boundaried, and you (or FS absolutists) probably wouldn't advocate for others to go into that space en-masse and start screaming about some entirely different topic, or posting death threats, or libel or conspiracies. You'd say let everyone who is interested in woodworking come and share their ideas, some might be good ideas, some might not - have a discussion, counter points - but you'd recognise that if a screaming mob comes in to smash the place up then saying you can't evict them bcs "censorship" makes a nonsense of how discussion, learning, and testing of ideas functions.

So, why is it that for some spaces, some topics, those boundaries are reframed as "censorship" ? Terms of debate is a thing, as is freedom of assembly, and again, it's interesting who is and isn't allowed to assemble and set their own boundaries and terms.

[–]motionlessoracle 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I'm having this convo in two sub-threads here so excuse the cut and paste

That's fine, I appreciate the conversation.

So, why is it that for some spaces, some topics, those boundaries are reframed as "censorship" ? Terms of debate is a thing, as is freedom of assembly, and again, it's interesting who is and isn't allowed to assemble and set their own boundaries and terms.

Now that I see more of what you're trying to say, I think I agree with you.

I think of Saidit as an analogue of the US government. The government in the USA cannot silence your speech, except in a few fringe cases. That is absolute freedom of speech. The US government protects your right to say what you want to say and associate with whoever you wish. Its role is protective, only. Otherwise, it leaves you alone.

I think of the subs as like states or companies. The states in the US can absolutely create more legislation, as can the counties and cities. Companies can hire or fire you for almost any reason or no reason. Companies can create codes of conduct for employees. A sub, to me, is a voluntary association. Since anyone can make a sub, having a sub that restricts speech to a certain topic or tone is not necessarily damaging. Those who disagree can easily make their own sub and discuss there. I'm on the more liberal side of politics, so I think that speech should be tolerated to the maximum degree possible, but I agree that people talking about automotive repair on a woodworking sub should be directly encouraged to move the conversation elsewhere.

Within the context of the US federal government, which extends to everything the federal government supports (like public universities), certain boundaries infringe on free speech rights and are censorship. Within the context of private property, like a corporation, more boundaries are permitted. If people on saidit want to create black people only subs, or white people only subs, I think those should be permitted. If the sub moderators want to ban everyone who isn't black (or white), I also think that should be permitted.