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--- politics:mypolitics [2024/04/18 15:22] – Owen Mellema
+++ politics:mypolitics [2024/04/18 17:41] (current) – [Censorship and Twitter] Owen Mellema
@@ Line 447: / Line 447: @@
 Indeed, I predicted that the Elon takeover of Twitter would be the very beginning of the end of the dominance of leftism in popular culture. I am not sure if we will see an actual fascist government with concentration camps and the Stasi, but we will certainly see very onerous ideas gain mainstream approval.
-The cause of this was not a lack of censorship on social media platforms, but rather the overabundance of it. A regime of censorship creates a society of people that are vulnerable to censored ideas.
+The cause of this was not a lack of censorship on social media platforms, but rather the overabundance of it. A regime of censorship creates a society of people that are vulnerable to censored ideas. The vulnerability of the people justifies further censorship.
+An idea is like a disease. A healthy person is exposed to many diseases in their lives. Being exposed to these diseases bolsters their immune system, which makes them stronger and more resilient. As has been often noted, a child that is secluded from others in an attempt to keep them safe from disease ironically turns out to be more sickly than others, because they are vulnerable to the first disease that they encounter. Thus, a policy of seclusion creates a problem that justifies further seclusion. However no seclusion is perfect -- germs cells are small, they can get anywhere, and nowhere is perfectly clean. Thus it is not a good idea to seclude a child, even if you intend to do it forever, because no regime of seclusion is perfect, and eventually the child will get deathly ill.
+In the same way, an intellectually healthy person is exposed to many bad political ideas. Instead of being tossed back and forth by bad ideas, he is able to see the flaws in the ideas. He can then share those flaws with others. This creates the basis of a society of strong, wise men who are able to think effectively about the world. In an ideal society, some amount of fascist rhetoric would still exist, but people would be so aware of these ideas that the counter to them would be obvious.
+Ideas are not bad because some authority says they are. Bad ideas are bad because ultimately they just are. Wise individuals are able to make the distinction between good and bad ideas **on their own**, without relying on an outside force to do this for them.
+The effect of censorship is to cloister people away from these bad ideas, which reduces their resistance to them. A society of people that have been exposed to some fascist rhetoric is much more resistant to fascism than a population of people that have never been exposed to that rhetoric.
+On the internet, censorship is carried out by moderators of platforms. The idea is somewhat good in theory, if a person is exposed to fascist rhetoric, there is a chance that they will become fascist themselves, thus the idea is to limit the influence of these people. However, what *is* fascism? Is all critique of black people fascism? Is all praise of white people fascism?
+Moderators feel that they have the power to stamp out bad ideas before they even begin. Yet they often either don't know which ideas are so bad they ought to be censored, or they go "mad with power" and instead use their censorial power to bolster a regime. They might, for instance, feel that capitalism is a form of fascism, and therefore ban any praise of capitalism. This may bolster their chosen regime of socialism. Thus they transition from "protecting people" to "controlling people" -- for ends they consider to be good.
+The control that moderators feel they have, however, is much different from the control they really have. At best, moderators can only control what goes on on their platforms. Other platforms, and, indeed, real life, are outside of their purview.
+The result of internet moderation is that people with marginally right-leaning ideas are removed from the platform, but they don't simply cease to exist. Instead, they go to another platform, which will not ban them. In these platforms, extremist rhetoric festers and grows, away from open debate. They are able to hear what "normal" people say, and are able to respond to it. Yet, "normal" people can't hear what they are saying. Thus, extremist rhetoric becomes more and more powerful, and normal people become more and more vulnerable to this rhetoric.
+As this process continues, these alternative platforms grow in relevancy. A small army of extremely radicalized individuals is formed, and instead of idly expressing opinions, they begin to deliberately target outsiders with propaganda campaigns, by joining platforms with the sole purpose of disruption. The problem will mean that moderators will need to be increasingly vigilant, spending increasingly more time and money to combat the incursions and the new recruits.
+At a certain inevitable point, the flip will switch, and the censored ideas will become so relevant that they enter the mainstream and usher out the old regime. This is what happened with Elon. Censorship effectively ended on Twitter, and the result was as I expected.
+The genie is fully out of the bottle, and the effects will likely continue for several years. Non-far-right platforms will fall, one by one, either by having their leadership replaced, like Twitter, or simply fading into irrelevancy. Since most Americans have some online presence, there will be a rather huge influence on politics.
+This is not a problem with the left per se, but rather a problem with whatever political ideology happens to be dominant. Likewise, free speech is supported by whichever ideology is subversive. At this current moment, fascism is a subversive ideology, whereas liberalism is a dominant ideology. The question is, therefore, whether this cycle will continue forever. It's very possible. However, I foresee that in the future people will be more aware of this.
+If any group of people is going to return us to a healthy society, it will likely be the group of people that eventually will usurp the right after they take power (assuming that this will happen). I think that because the ideology of the right seems to be more friendly towards censorship, even if they lack the proper authority to actually censor.
 ===== The Future of Politics =====