Sam Harris announces he's deleting his Patreon for freedom of speech violation.
- Thread starter mario_O
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Please go and educate yourself about the history if the KKK, you are embarrassing yourself.
You really need to dial back on "educate yourself" and "embarrassing yourself". Is very juvenile. What are you even trying to accomplish?
EDIT: I clarified my post later, not that you care.
I mean, an adult is saying that comparing people to the KKK only means they are idiots, what other responses you expect?
Juvenile is strolling into a discussion with (apparently) 0 historical context and acting offended when people point it out.
Clearly he wasn't using historical context there. (What would that even mean?) He was trying to insult them.
Somebody correct me if I'm wrong but last time I checked Patreon is a privately owned company (or publicly traded) and not part of any government.
So them refusing to service bigots is not actually an issue?
Or do they want "big government" to step in and tell Patreon they have to service bigots?
So them refusing to service bigots is not actually an issue?
Or do they want "big government" to step in and tell Patreon they have to service bigots?
The apologist notion of coddling bigotry so as to avoid the slippery slope of "censorship" as opposed to the actual consequences of letting it pervade social media is...concerning, to say the least.
Not to say everyone spouting that is in themselves bigoted, but I'd like to think it at least displays massive ignorance on their part. We tried "proving them wrong" and it didn't work -- never has, never will.
Not to say everyone spouting that is in themselves bigoted, but I'd like to think it at least displays massive ignorance on their part. We tried "proving them wrong" and it didn't work -- never has, never will.
the absolutely hilarious thing about this is the second things will turn to shit they'll probably the 1st ones against the wall during the revolution.
Yes, comparing the moral fibre of journalists with people who hunted and burned humans alive doesn’t warrant further thought, he was only trying to insult them. Galaxy brain shit right here.
Fuck me I laughed so hard at this.
I mean we do it all the time on ERA. Have you seen Fox News threads? It's not something I support/care about doing. And usually Fox News deserves it. I'm just saying that that specific quote does not seem that outrageous. I'm not trying to justify his opinions.
Sam Harris is the best example of smart people being really dumb sometimes.
His affinity for right wing ideology is gross and disappointing.
His affinity for right wing ideology is gross and disappointing.
Yes, that is abundantly clear, and I am saying that can only stem from a deficit of knowledge of what the press is being compared to.
What comparisons to Fox news are you talking about?
I think the main problem is that the atheist intellectual movement placed so much emphasis on debate rhetoric rather than encouraging actual scientific literacy. It wasn't as noticeable back when they were debating evolution because they had over a literal century of public debate in their favor to call back on, but even then you saw a lot of blowhards who were just parroting the same arguments they read on Panda's Thumb in an exaggerated manner.
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Nazi propaganda. (which they probably take as compliment) We should really step up our insult game.
Oh, you don’t think Fox News is infested with literal nazis and white supremacists? Have you missed the last 2 years?
Thread title should be updated to better reflect the situation: "Sam Harris announces he's deleting his Patreon to show solidarity with neo-nazis & fascists"
Because that's precisel what's going on from Sam "we should nuclear first strike the Middle East" Harris
Because that's precisel what's going on from Sam "we should nuclear first strike the Middle East" Harris
Oh goodness, this too. It's like the main educational point was to teach people that rationality = repeating latin phrases to people you disagree with.
Sadly, it isn't just limited to online atheism. Jordan Peterson fans are the absolute apotheosis of it. Anything you say about the man is either confirmation bias, or taken out of context, or ad hominem.
I think Fox News is the worst thing that currently exists in the US. I believe that they are worse than Trump (at least he is not ideological). That said they aren't quite Nazis... yet...
I would suggest you follow more twitter accounts or pages that denounce their nazi hosts or guests, but I know that kind of thing highly offends you so I will just end this here.
Why would it offend me? I hate Fox as is, I don't need more reasons to hate them. Hannity alone is worse than whatever cesspool they manage to invite. And over 3 million people watch hims daily.
Some people think that social media has become the new "town square" and thus should be regulated by the government. A guy I follow (who's normally pretty left in his beliefs but is an idiot on free speech) think that because Trump tweets nobody should be banned from Twitter because he's the president. Which is an embarrassing take to be honest.
It's a very American-centric take on top of that. People all over the world use social media. It's better for these companies to remain independent instead of being publicly owned. It would be a tremendous loss for mankind if social media became region locked due to being publicly owned.
These threads always end the same way:
"Stop calling everybody Nazis libs!"
It's like the only argument some even have.
They are White Supremacists, fine. The pearls can be unclutched. I think some people use the term nazi just because it's easier to type out than White Supremacist or Nazi sympathizers and enablers.
"Stop calling everybody Nazis libs!"
It's like the only argument some even have.
They are White Supremacists, fine. The pearls can be unclutched. I think some people use the term nazi just because it's easier to type out than White Supremacist or Nazi sympathizers and enablers.
Racists being deplatformed is the trigger that made right-wingers open to the idea of regulating private companies. Trashing the environment and screwing over consumers was a-ok to them. As if we needed any more evidence of how pathetic and full of shit these despicable fuckers are.
there are two possible interpretations and the blend between them probably varies by specific person
1. the 'free speech advocates' want bigotry to have a platform and will make any argument available to keep those platforms up.
2. the 'free speech advocates' find being denied a chance to receive attention a more relatable problem than getting harmed by white supremacists, so they feel more empathy for bigots denied a platform than groups that get fucked over when bigotry is normalized.
Fox News is literally filled with Neo Nazi and Nationalistic propaganda, whether you like it or not. It's no different from places like Info Wars and Breitbart in its core messaging.
On the other hand, Vox and Salon weren't telling people to put on white robes and go hang some folks, last time i checked.
But you know all this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/7o7t7o/do_you_agree_with_sam_regarding_the_masterpiece/
So basically it's okay when it's a gay couple, because that's based on a immutable characteristics and the free market will sort it out, but if you don't serve an alt right grifter based on their actions that's an attack on free speech.
Dave Rubin, Sam Harris, Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson are all the same. It's a free speech issue when the view is a right winger, anyone else and it's the free market
So basically it's okay when it's a gay couple, because that's based on a immutable characteristics and the free market will sort it out, but if you don't serve an alt right grifter based on their actions that's an attack on free speech.
Dave Rubin, Sam Harris, Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson are all the same. It's a free speech issue when the view is a right winger, anyone else and it's the free market
And both groups can go fuck themselves.
But thanks for the explenation!
Because they think ‘free speech’ is the only argument they have to justify their defense of support for racist, hateful, bigoted shit that doesn’t reflect horribly on them or the people they are defending.
These private companies effectively have a monopoly on speech on the web. They are too powerful in that regard
Yeah, capitalism sucks, but it's also not really in violation of anyone's free speech when they're kicked from a platform.
They are free to spew their views on like minded sites like voat and pol.
Not gonna happened sadly.
infinite's position deserves a little more discussion than just that however... as the internet becomes more and more necessary as an utility the availability of speech and who provides that will become more and more important.
I’ve seen
Edit: oops here's the rest of that comment. I've seen a lot of stuff by Dawkins in recent years that give me the impression he fucks with 'race realism'. As for Hitchens, I think he's a contrarian for vanity's sake and he's endorsed some ugly things inso doing. Not kept up with Dennett for years but his white old man beard strongly suggests to me he's a good guy.
Oof
That is some top tier shrieking into the void. The unmistakable futile rage of someone who facing irrelevance and going broke. Nice pivot at the end though hahahaha
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Then we're looking into regulation and that needs oversight. Should a private company be forced to host Nazi ideology just because removing it would violate the free speech of the user against the wishes of the owner of the site? If social media is that powerful, should it be government regulated and, if so, which government considering the platforms are world wide and places have their own variations on laws of what is acceptable?
Fascism and Nazi ideology never died. All they did is change their PR strategy. End goal is the same.
Charlottesville was a massive PR disaster for them as they showed their true colors and killed someone.
Right now you've got immigrant children getting numbers on their forearms and there was a famous argument here some time ago whether those were "concentration camps" or not.
As a species we have the capacity to learn from our history and we should.
plenty of places to talk on the internet that's not those three sites, you are using one right now.
I'm 100% for government regulation of social media to be honest.
And just so we're not confused, I don't think we're at the point yet where a few oligarchical sites have the power to disenfranchise someone completely, but I could definitely see a route there from here.
Hmm I guess I’m looking at things from the anlge of the fact that these platforms have already banned and policed lgbt and civil rights activists groups while they let these alt right dudes cook for mad long. You can’t trust them to do the right thing. so I think they should be regulated as they are becoming powerful entities in the realm of speech on the web. Sure you can use a bbs or whatever if they get too tyrannical but let’s be real here you’ll be on the fringes of acceptable thought and out of the discourse with the way things are headIng. Idk
I think emergent intranets would quickly spring up and start replacing our current internet en masse if things got too bad. There are too many savvy, marginalized people to allow a truly hostile actor to completely remove speech.
Like, imagine if social media were government regulated, and then some authoritarian government replaces our current one and has access to all the levers. They could, just as quickly as the companies themselves, shut down and even criminalized speech deemed bad. In such an extreme case you'd see a true internet 2.0 pop up likely along the same lines as the first internet, starting in colleges and spreading from there. It wouldn't be the net we're used too, but it'd be a means for underground communication none the less.
In the meantime, I guess the best thing to do is to lobby for less monopolistic control over internet speech?
That’s gonna be rather difficult to pull off in America as freedom of speech is enshrined in the constitution. And at that point social media would be the least of my worries. I mean what if that tyrannical government brought back slavery?
I see that this thread too has the "I don't know anything about what this guy believes but I think you're going to far in calling him a Nazi" canard
As someone who knows very well what Sam Harris has at least professed, people are definitely being hyperbolic calling him a nazi. We can infer a lot from his stated positions and the people he interviews and socializes with, and one of those inferences is not "he wants a white ethnostate with an authoritarian militaristic government".
Doesn’t he interview people a step below that though? I don’t care for applying the nazi label to him or not but he clearly has some fucked up politics
