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[–]endthewoo 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

For the site, there is no way to win and no solution, because if they shut down the offending posts, they would become a site that censor, and loses its fundamental appeal.

And this is why 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.

[–]Lilith_Fair[S] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Problem is who is the authority to decide which ones are trolls, bullies, liars, etc? Reddit apparently decided the WE are the trolls, bullied and liars. Because no one can truly be a just arbiter, the best option is still to have open platform free for all so someone can counter argue. Magnora7 has set this place up to try to avoid right wing extremist takeover. (ie no downvote, no ads, the pyramid of debate) Maybe his model can be further perfected?

[–]endthewoo 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

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.

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

What you said still doesn't answer the question of who sets the rules? Who sets the boundaries? How far the boundaries are acceptable?

You said there can be no free speech for everyone without some form of censorship, which you describe as rules and boundaries, or else the bullies and trolls take over. From what I'm seeing though, the bullies and trolls have succeeded actually in places like Reddit, Twitter, etc that did exactly what you said. Here on saidit, there are some seriously crazy antisemitic and racist posts, but TBH I don't find them bullying. I find them disgusting and abhorrent for sure, but none of these loons did anything to shut down anyone who disagree. Crazy enough they actually want to debate people. If you check out what they posted here, you'll find they want to engage you in a conversation. If anyone has too much time and want to talk to them for kicks, they can. It'd probably be better time spent going to the insane asylum and talk to someone there. Bottom line is, none of them (At least the crazy ones on this site) have even remotely tried to shame people who disagree with them, call them evil, tried to destroy the livelihood of people they disagree with, or ostracize them openly. None of them had brigaded us or anyone else. They're many horrible things for the views they hold, but they in fact are not bullies as far as on this site is concerned. If other people won't join the site, it's not because these loons are bullying them out. It's simply because they can't stomach seeing such horrible speech.

As for trolls, you can deal with them like trolls on any site. Ignore them. If everyone ignore them, they'll stop. (unless it's a coordinated False Flag cultural attack).

So as regard to this site, what you're really saying is that the users with horrible views should be somewhat censored so that more other people with more correct views can come and speak. What that sounds like is that the bullying is actually to be done on people with wrong views, not the other way around. Let's stop the loons from talking so better people can come and take up more space.

Look, I have the same concerns as you. I don't know the solution either. But there are fallacies in the options you suggested. Now that I've been on this site for a few weeks, what I realized is that there are just loons with no power sprouting nonsense. They dominate the front page because no one is starting and engaging in conversations on other topics. And there are options for rules and boundaries because we have utilized those to exclude them specifically. Those rules are what keep us off the front page. Otherwise, just check the upvote numbers and long strings of arguments. I guarantee you our posts here would be flooding the front page and this site would look like a GC site.

Edit: typo