X Is a White-Supremacist Site (www.theatlantic.com)
from schizoidman@lemm.ee to technology@lemmy.ml on 06 Nov 11:21
https://lemm.ee/post/46697942

#technology

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NomenCumLitteris@lemmy.ml on 06 Nov 11:57 next collapse

Freedom of speech is good. White supremacists or any other group ideological supporters will always find a way to communicate and share their message, regardless of the century, technology, or censorship. Frankly, doing this openly on X/Twitter versus some obscure unknown forum or encrypted platforn is a positive. Social media as a whole is susceptible to ideological campaigns from groups and other countries, not just X/Twitter.

rambling_lunatic@sh.itjust.works on 06 Nov 12:05 next collapse

Twitter is not a free platform. It actively suppresses the voices of the left and protects the far right.

I do sincerely support free speech. I think it looks a lot more like the Fediverse than Twitter.

NomenCumLitteris@lemmy.ml on 06 Nov 13:44 next collapse

Sure, I don’t object to your statement of Twitter not being a free platform, and I did not claim it was. Conversely, other social media have been also known to suppress the right and protect the left. Social media can “lean” so to speak. They are provately operated companies after all. I value free speech nonetheless.

GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml on 07 Nov 15:57 collapse

Conversely, other social media have been also known to suppress the right and protect the left

Where the hell are these socialist social media sites supposed to be? Are you going to say that it’s Lemmy, like that’s a comparable example?

natebluehooves@pawb.social on 06 Nov 15:32 collapse

Additionally, fascists need these safe spaces to convince themselves that their opinions are the majority. They don’t feel emboldened to act otherwise.

oxjox@lemmy.ml on 06 Nov 13:45 next collapse

You are so fucking wrong. I have never understood this logic that because people are doing things out in the open that it’s a good thing. They are popularizing their ideas. More people are exposed to them when they’re out in the open. Had they been operating in some obscure forum, they would lack the advertising of their ideas to others.

For what possible reason could this be “positive”? So that the rest of us are aware of their first amendment protected hateful ideas? What good does that do anyone? We just elected one of them to be president of the United States. Allowing hate speech to bloom out in the open tempers our reactions and slowly seeps into our minds as propaganda.

Freedom of speech is, in the US, something that the US Constitution promises will not be restricted by Congress. It is not something any private company is required to protect. I would argue that private companies have a responsibility to its users to ban all hate speech and report substantiated threats to law enforcement.

NomenCumLitteris@lemmy.ml on 06 Nov 14:30 collapse

For example, from a US-based perspective, a “positive” is that law enforcement agencies and the thousands of social media monitoring tools they utilize look at Twitter and other big platforms. LEO agencies have had for years the channels to monitor posts and request instantaneously from those companies supplemental information on the user or post that is being investigated. LE will be out of luck if they were attempting to immediately investigate a user on an obscure white supremacist forum hosted in Russia. That website owner and its servers would not be in jurisdiction to respond to that request.

Also, please see my other reply 1 minute before yours regarding private companies being able to ban, suprress, etc. I agree with you that private companies can run their own ship how they please, whether in the best interests of profit or ideology.

oxjox@lemmy.ml on 06 Nov 15:09 collapse

I see you’ve chosen to ignore the point about the influence this has on hundreds of millions of people.

Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works on 06 Nov 14:42 next collapse

Tolerance of intolerance. Look where that got us.

HootinNHollerin@lemmy.world on 06 Nov 16:38 next collapse

Musk does not endorse free speech at all as he has shown

GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml on 07 Nov 15:54 next collapse

Rights are not handed to us by God or by Nature, they are legal constructs, created by people. They are not immaculate or immune to criticism or alteration on the basis of what we think would be better for human society. White supremacy must be smashed to its very core, and part of accomplishing that task is making sure it’s as difficult for white supremacists to recruit and congregate as we can possibly make it.

It’s bizarre idealism to think that opposition to white supremacy will be overcome with no loss of enthusiasm or membership, that any interference actually has zero effect and we’re just better off letting them do what they want.

comfy@lemmy.ml on 08 Nov 00:22 collapse

Freedom of speech may be great in the abstract, as an ideal, but unfortunately it isn’t very useful when speech platforms are controlled by the owning class. Our speech means little compared to the speech of national TV channels, news outlets and restricted social platforms. The utopian marketplace of ideas becomes a rigged supermarket.

I highly recommend the book Manufacturing Consent, which explains some core systematic factors which shape the US mass media (also applicable to other countries) into essentially a largely-homogeneous echo chamber without the need for legally censoring opposing speech.

Frankly, doing this openly on X/Twitter versus some obscure unknown forum or encrypted platforn is a positive.

Hardly - they’re doing this to spread their message, not to have a good faith discussion and expose themselves to other viewpoints. It’s purely predatory, and removing their platform reduces their impact. Yes, they will always find ways to communicate but they struggle more to find ways to advertise and recruit without public platforms amplifying them.

SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org on 06 Nov 13:31 next collapse

So is Mastodon really, well not a site but yeah, a lot of users there are ex 4-channers or still use it and it shows.

Fedi isn’t really any better.

clmbmb@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 06 Nov 14:50 next collapse

I don’t know what instances you roam, but I don’t see any kind of nazi/fascist shit on mine and I really love that. But then again, my instance is about metal music and people usually don’t discuss politics. Also, I’ve blocked and muted everything that relates to trump and us politics. Not that it helps anyone but me.

SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org on 06 Nov 16:20 next collapse

Thankfully all the instances we’re on block heavily but there are some well known bad actors who are white supremacists and a lot of reply guys, JAQ etc people too, I’ve seen quite a few who have slipped through the cracks before.

Yeah, if your instances doesn’t discuss politics and you don’t follow anyone outside of music circles or at least don’t open anything with a political CW you likely won’t ever see it, but it’s there.

carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 06 Nov 21:11 collapse

the fascists of the fedi don’t roam free on the wider network, they harass in secret, usually in DMs or “followers only” posts

there’s also a problem with subtle white supremacy, where Black people (and other POC, but mostly Black people) will get piles and piles of harassment that’s totally unrelated to being Black you see, of course, but its not happening to white people for some bizarre reason!! (see: the many cases involving TheBadSpace where any Black person who was ever so slightly in favor of Ro and their work would get a fuckton of harassment)

(the last one is present on pretty much all social media, be it pre-Musk Twitter, Bluesky or Tumblr, but im told that it’s especially bad on the fedi)

SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org on 08 Nov 01:39 collapse

This is exactly what we mean, thanks for explaining better than we could/did!

theshatterstone54@feddit.uk on 06 Nov 18:23 next collapse

CTT claims that Bluesky is great, but I’m just not into that type of social media so while I’m on Mastodon, I don’t actually use it.

SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org on 07 Nov 00:23 collapse

Okay, however, all of fedi isn’t much better. Including Lemmy.

comfy@lemmy.ml on 07 Nov 22:40 collapse

‘ex-4chan users’ isn’t really an important criteria, especially if you’re including the people posting there before 2016. In fact, some hobby boards like /co/, /mu/ and /lit/ were notoriously left-wing. “Ex-” usually means the ones who were smart enough to leave.

But furthermore, calling Mastodon a white supremacist site is just funny. Might as well be saying that about Lemmy.

SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org on 08 Nov 01:40 next collapse

If you look at our comments we made it pretty clear that all of fedi is like that, including lemmy.

SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org on 08 Nov 01:51 next collapse

Also, ex- 4channers and fascists we have found don’t necessrily give up the language or ideas from it once they have left, no matter how ‘smart’ they were.

Both people online and offline we have met that were fash in some way have a certain energy and way of speaking to them that we find disgusting and offputting a lot of the time.

carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 08 Nov 02:46 collapse

yes, mastodon absolutely has a white supremacy problem.

and so does lemmy.

comfy@lemmy.ml on 08 Nov 11:51 collapse

Those articles are describing a very different thing. Jon is not saying (or supporting your implied claim that) Mastodon is a white supremacist service, let alone a white-supremacist community. In fact, for both Lemmy and Mastodon, they praise the responses of staff to racist content. As far as I can tell, the closest is them saying that their broader society is white supremacist and that has systematic implications on Mastodon which typical users can be ignorant or dismissive of.

jjjalljs@ttrpg.network on 06 Nov 13:54 next collapse

Yes. And no one’s going to do anything about it.

Most people are too lazy and thoughtless to stop using it .

The engineers that work there certainly aren’t going to stage a coup.

And no one’s going to just do violence to Musk.

p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 06 Nov 18:11 collapse

The engineers that work there certainly aren’t going to stage a coup.

What engineers? Musk fired all of them when he first started.

jjjalljs@ttrpg.network on 06 Nov 18:16 collapse

Surely there’s a couple people still working there.

P4ulin_Kbana@lemmy.eco.br on 06 Nov 18:34 collapse

People?

schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de on 06 Nov 14:44 next collapse

Another author who doesn’t make the important distinction between moderation and censorship.

technocrit@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 06 Nov 16:57 next collapse

Well yeah duh, it’s owned by an overt white supremacist.

P4ulin_Kbana@lemmy.eco.br on 06 Nov 18:34 next collapse

The sky is blue.

Luffy879@lemmy.ml on 06 Nov 20:36 next collapse

No, we dont need another instance of the same story of corporate greed enshittifying a platform like its ging to happen with bluesky.

P4ulin_Kbana@lemmy.eco.br on 06 Nov 21:18 collapse

I was actually referring about how obvious the title of the articles is

Luffy879@lemmy.ml on 06 Nov 21:21 collapse

Oh, sorry then. It just seemed like a really good wordplay for bluesky

mihor@lemmy.ml on 07 Nov 15:25 collapse

I believe it’s red these days. 🥴

ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml on 06 Nov 18:50 next collapse

America is a white-supremacist country.

I know that sounds controversial, but that’s the ideals of the president elect of the country, who won the popularity vote.

SweetCitrusBuzz@beehaw.org on 06 Nov 20:27 next collapse

Most ‘western’ countries are.

carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 06 Nov 21:17 next collapse

the USA (and canada, and australia, and new zealand, and many more) are settler colonial states that were born out of mass genocide dictated by white supremacist rhetoric.

these states are white supremacist to their core

GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml on 07 Nov 15:46 next collapse

It was still a white supremacist country under Biden and all previous Presidents and it would have been so under Kamala. This isn’t something that gets changed by elections.

ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml on 07 Nov 15:51 collapse

That’s true, but that wasn’t my point. My point was that the majority of the population voted for someone who does have white-supremacist ideals - whereas Biden and Kamala do not.

GarbageShootAlt2@lemmy.ml on 07 Nov 16:01 collapse

That’s a silly argument. Biden (aside from being an unrepentant segregationist!) acted as an active agent of white supremacy, and Kamala would have too, just like every President has.

As an aside, it wasn’t the majority of the population. It wasn’t even the majority of the voting-eligible population. It was like a little over a quarter, I think.

comfy@lemmy.ml on 07 Nov 22:32 collapse

America, the state, is white-supremacist and has been since birth. Absolutely. Although that’s not good logic for explaining how. I doubt most voters for Trump did so because of his or their racist views, there were plenty of other policies (sorry, ideas and themes) Trump platformed on that appealed to them.

The amount of Democrat supporters again surprised at how non-whites can possibly vote for Trump on a non-trivial scale is a testament to why it’s important to understand voting patterns beyond race ideology, beyond “Trump is a disgusting racist, only a white supremacist would vote for them.”, especially if you’re on the ground trying to organize your community to create the positive changes neither candidate can offer.

whodoctor11@lemmy.ml on 06 Nov 21:26 next collapse

I think it’s shit that some leftists continue to use Xitter. If all social media is a simulacrum of public space, Xitter is the one where this is clearer. It is not a dispute space, is literal owned by a nazi.

68silver@beehaw.org on 11 Nov 12:42 collapse

X is way better than the original twitter.