this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024
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[–] [email protected] 596 points 5 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 223 points 5 months ago (1 children)

He's such a disgusting greedy little pig boy who frankly belongs in a deep hole where nobody will find him 🙏

[–] [email protected] 70 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Saddam meme with Sadam crossed out and replaced with Spez.jpg

[–] [email protected] 60 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Interesting given that he is actually preparing for an apocalypse scenario where he hides out in a bunker only to emerge a leader of men.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich

[–] [email protected] 54 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Does he know that his net worth will be reduced to either his useful skills, or whatever the next guy gains by killing him and taking his stuff?

Seriously, you better have something real useful for your bodyguards, because they're probably the first ones that'll turn on you.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

There was some legit talk among the wealthy a while back about how to control their ~~slaves~~ servants.. and the idea of bomb collars was floated…

I can’t find the article at the moment (I’ll edit when I do because I’m still looking but my app tends to crash if I wait), but this is all totally on the up and up and it’s really fucking depressing that there are so many articles now about doomsday bunkers for the ultra wealthy… like they could have just pumped that money into fixing things but they don’t want to.. sociopaths.

Edit- found it faster than I thought!

https://archive.ph/l3Djh

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Which is why I am happy to be a metallurgical engineer who can blacksmith...

[–] [email protected] 40 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I love this idea of billionaires making bunkers. Pretty sure I can afford the quikrete and wheelbarrows needed to make this a better world.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 5 months ago

Hey I'll help fund and work that too. 💪

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Maybe thats what pyramids were for.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Pharaos were the OG preppers.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

If gdog05 can seal the doors, then they would both be tombs.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Absolutely fuck spez.

But he's right here. Just because he's a fuckstick doesn't mean he's always wrong on every issue 100% of the time.

Various forms of censorship under the flag of 'online safety' have been pushed by governments since the internet began to exist. And before that with print media and television. Censorship is not the answer. Never was. First it was for porn, then it was for video games, then it was for hate speech, it's always something.

But in the words of Captain Jean-Luc Picard,

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."

Censorship must be opposed.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 5 months ago (3 children)

I disagree since I think censorship can be desired when combatting hate speech. Maybe we just disagree how exactly we use the word 'censorship'.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Who would you have define hate speech in the US? SCOTUS?

Many citizens may agree on the definition, but I wouldn’t trust our government to draw those lines.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Many countries have working anti-hate speech laws. It’s not really a big problem for freedom of speech in those countries.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

Those countries don’t have partisan polarization propaganda preschoolers writing their legislation.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago

While often better than in the US, you shouldn't overestimate the state of democracy in other countries.

A lot of the far right parties in Europe are successfully copying the polarization tactics from the US.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Yep it's great

Hate speech ✖️

Alliteration ✔️

Simple :)

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Except for the countries that have anti-hate laws that are deliberately vague and specifically used to jail anyone who is disliked by the government. China and Russia come to mind as examples, but I'm sure they aren't the only ones.

Besides hate-speech, I'm not sure how much should be censored really. China does a lot of censoring to 'protect' their citizens from everything, I'm not sure this would be a good thing even if that really was a goal.

And protecting children from traumatising content looks like another good thing to do, but under that banner I usually see governments doing whatever they want without caring about children past using their image.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

*Freedom of Expression

We don't have Freedom of Speech, but we do have Freedom of Expression. Important difference, even though it may freak out some Americans.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (5 children)

No, the community needs to cyber bully them off the platform. They need to feel rejection for their words, not censorship. Censorship lets them frame themselves as the victim as they seek out a smaller echo chamber on the fringes. They need to learn their words will turn the community against them

We still have to live with them. We can't ignore them or silence them - we have to correct them

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You are addressing the wrong problem. You're focusing on the symptom rather than the disease.

Fighting hate speech rather than hatred itself only strengthens the hatred. As soon as you say "you mustn't say that" you validate the hatred and give it power. Look at any counterculture, positive or negative. Trying to suppress it only validates it, gives it legitimacy as being important enough for the establishment to want to suppress, and if the people who might support the hatred already don't like the people who would suppress the hate speech, you've just poured fuel on the fire.

The problem to be fixed isn't hate speech, it's hatred. It's a tougher problem to solve, but a much more important one that you will actually get a productive effect by solving it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You make a good point. Hate must be addressed at its root.

I see hate speech censorship as important for protecting the victims/vulnerable. How can we protect these people without this censorship?

Do you have any favourite examples of how a society can fight hatred?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

how can we protect people without this censorship?

We don't, nor should we try to.
Protecting people's feelings from offense is not a valid activity in a free society. The second you start down the road of 'we must regulate this guy's words and actions to protect that guy's feelings' we become a nanny state full of people with paper thin skins. We accept that one consequence of free speech is that sometimes people will say things that are hurtful. We do that because the alternative is getting rid of free speech.

Hate must be addressed at its root.

I could not agree more. Fighting hatred with hatred only breeds more hatred. But that seems to be the standard strategy today, it's okay to not just refuse to tolerate intolerance, but to be actively intolerant of those who themselves seem intolerant. It is just fighting bad with bad and the result is more bad.

The way we fight the roots of hatred is with open discourse. The people who have hate in their hearts, we do not isolate them, we do not wall them off from society, we do not practice and encourage intolerance against them. We show them a better way. We make ourselves examples of doing better, not just against the people they don't like, but against the people we don't like.

We try to build bridges and encourage communication. For all the people who say immigrants are lazy lawbreakers, we show them immigrants who are the hardest working motherfuckers there are and pay their taxes. For the people who think black people are a problem, we introduce them to black people who break their stereotypes.

For the overwhelming majority of people who have hate in their hearts and intolerance and prejudice, those feelings are based on stereotypes.
People don't join the KKK because they start in a mixed culture and then conclude black people are a problem. They join the KKK because they have stereotypes they see reinforced in media and TV.

There was a famous Black dude whose name I don't remember, but he of his own volition managed to deprogram a whole bunch of KKK members. All he did was sit down and fucking talk to them. That's it. Like sit down at the bar next to them and start a conversation. Many of the KKK members had never encountered a respectable well-spoken black person before (let alone one willing to talk to them) and were completely blown away because it broke the stereotype of a black person that they joined the KKK to fight against.
A good number of them ended up leaving the KKK and giving this man their robes on the way out. So there's this friendly black dude who has a big box of KKK robes that were given to him by ex-members he deprogrammed.

That is how we fight hate. We fight hate with love, we fight intolerance with tolerance and open arms, we fight stereotypes with exposition, we fight ignorance with knowledge.

Otherwise it's like we are saying there's too much stupidity in society so we're going to prevent people with lower IQs from attempting school. It doesn't work.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

There was a famous Black dude whose name I don’t remember, but he of his own volition managed to deprogram a whole bunch of KKK members.

His name is Daryl Davis. For anyone not familiar, he has some great videos about this on Youtube/proxies.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

That's absolutely the one! Truly great American. We could all learn a thing or two from him.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 5 months ago (2 children)

It requires them to restrict certain categories of video, so that users cannot share content on cyberbullying, promoting eating disorders, promotion of self harm or incitement to hatred on a number of grounds.

Yeh, fuck censorship. Let's all be shitbags and do that stuff instead!

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 months ago

To be fair, censorship on Reddit is already very very aggressive. I was banned for saying “yay” on a news thread about the death of the queen.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You don't have to be a porn star or even a porn consumer to oppose laws banning porn.

And you don't have to be a shitbag to recognize that, while well-intentioned, censorship is still censorship.

I have absolutely no love whatsoever for the people who would spread such crap. I would love to get rid of it. But banning the speech doesn't do that. It's like smashing the altimeter in the airplane and then declaring that you're not crashing anymore. But the reality is, smashing instruments in the airplane is never a great idea whether you are crashing or not. It just prevents you from seeing things you don't want to. And you get hurt in the process.

Censorship, historically, has never ended up anywhere good.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Porn is performed by consenting adults and consumed by consenting adults.
That's why porn made from human trafficking, revenge porn (ie leaking nudes of an ex) etc are illegal in most sane countries.
The idea being that porn doesn't hurt anyone.

Hate speech is harmful. It's purpose is to hurt people.
So yeh, it should be illegal.
I have no issues discussing hate speech. I do have issues with hate speech being used.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (7 children)

There's a big difference between hate speech and revenge porn.

A person has rights to their likeness and image. That's why anybody who goes in front of a camera, be it a porn star or a model or an actor, signs a 'model release' giving the photographer authorization to publicize and sell their images. Without that simple one page contract, nothing in the photo shoot can be published. Porn actors do that. And in fact, they usually do it on video, where the actor holds up their driver's license and says 'my name is blah blah I am a pornographic actor and I am consenting to have sex on camera today and authorize this production company to publicize and sell the resulting video' or something like that. Revenge porn victims have made no such agreement, and while the penalties are stronger because of the harm it causes them, the legal basis for having any penalty at all is simply that they did not consent to having their likeness and image publicized.

Hate speech has no such issue. It may be harmful to a person or group, but if you remove the very broad 'hatred' label, it becomes just an opinion that would otherwise be protected speech.

The other problem is that what considers hatred is very much subjective. For example, if I say wanting to own a gun is evidence of mental illness, a lot of people on Lemmy will agree with that and I will probably get upvotes. If I say wanting to use the bathroom of other than your biological genetic sex is evidence of mental illness, I will probably get banned. What is the difference between the two? Supporting LGBT rights is popular, supporting the second amendment is not. So you create the situation where the only difference between a valid opinion and an invalid one is whether or not it's accepted mainstream, and that's a bad way to go.

Also, in a free country, it is generally considered that expressing an opinion which may be detrimental to others is not in itself considered bad. If I say that people over 80 years old should require a yearly driving test, that's a valid position for me to have and nobody will call me ageist for saying it. If I say that Donald Trump should be arrested rather than elected, that is directly detrimental to a person but it would get me upvotes here. If I said that being Republican is evidence of mental illness, that is directly prejudicial against an entire group which has many different reasons for believing as they do, and it would probably get me upvotes also.

My point is, hate speech as a concept is difficult to define and when you try to ban it with censorship you are just starting down a slippery slope that will have the opposite of the desired effect. You legitimize the counterculture and do nothing to stop the real problem, the actual hatred.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I think reducing the visibility of some kinds of content can be good, especially for those under 18. E.g. when it comes to content around suicide, I think it is better if children/teenagers see "there is support for you, please speak to a charity for free on this phone number" instead of pro-suicide content.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That I would actually very much agree with. As Elon himself said in the early days of the Twitter takeover, "free speech does not mean free reach".

This is also why I think engagement algorithms are a cancer on our civilization. If it is in a platforms monetary interest to amplify the most vile anger inducing stuff, be that stuff that is actively bad like hate speech or simply divisive like a lot of political crap, that is bad for our society. It pushes us farther apart when we should be coming together to fix the problems that we can agree on.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

As Elon himself said in the early days of the Twitter takeover, “free speech does not mean free reach”.

I understood that to mean "I want to claim I'm a 'free speech absolutist' while actually only promoting things I agree with"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (12 children)

In concept I agree with him on that. I support your right to say awful shit, but I am not going to spread that message to others. Where Elon lost the plot was thinking of Twitter as a public square. It's a nice thought, but it requires the whole platform to be 100% neutral and unbiased. So it's all good to call Twitter the public square, but that's a lot harder to take seriously when the guy in charge of policing the square is heavily biased.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I agree, but what the Irish are doing is dumb. If reddit it hit with that, then so should Google and the whole of the internet, since everything can get you videos. No one should be in charge of sensoring the internet.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If you want to operate in a country, you have to abide by their laws.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

If you want to restrict your people more than the rest of the world, cut yourself off from the world wide web.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I've read your sentence multiple times and I've no idea what it means.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I mean, there's one typo where it says "it" instead of "is", but other than that it all looks to make sense enough. By all the votes it looks like most people understand it just fine.

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