Free speech absolutism has not worked very well. Usenet was overrun by neonazis and all the interested discussions moved to moderated newsgroups/mailing lists/forums. A genocidal terrorist organization made effective us of various social media platforms to recruit large numbers of people to their cause and the world is a better place now that they have been banned.
Right now we are missing one of our best chances to end the COVID pandemic -- widespread vaccination -- because too many people are spreading lies about the vaccine on social media.
There is plenty of room for legitimate political debate, where people passionately advocate their preferred policies on various issues, without having to give a platform to people who are not arguing in good faith and whose real purpose is to advance a violent agenda. The cost of "free speech" is not "giving terrorists a platform to recruit and spread propaganda" and the politicians of Ben Franklin's generation actually did understand that (shortly after his death Congress passed the Sedition Act, which banned false statements about the US government to prevent foreign agents from destabilizing the newly formed country).
> Right now we are missing one of our best chances to end the COVID pandemic -- widespread vaccination -- because too many people are spreading lies about the vaccine on social media.
That's mostly a trust issue. If you silence their concerns you're just going to confirm that it's a grand conspiracy theory. You have to fight misinformation with the truth, with dialog, not with censorship.
It's a trust issue for some; others simply don't want to be told what to do. The more you shove the "get vaccinated" message in their faces the more they dig in and reject it.
the "concerns" are mostly coming from a small number of people that you probably wont be able to convince. Better to not use your platform to amplify them
This should be a non-issue. If these 12 bad guys have no points, no arguments, no good faith motives - that’s them against the entire western scientific community, the entire media, almost all politicians, celebrities, unions, vested interests…
How do you explain these “12 people” aren’t immediately shut down with all the facts?
Because facts aren't enough to win an argument. Especially when people pushing false conspiracy theories don't care about being consistent or accurate.
Especially when you need to "win" with over 95% of the population and not just a plurality or majority.
Also sadly some news media, some politicians, (don't know about labor unions sadly would not be totally surprised)some celebrities and vested interests are pushing harmful anti-vax agenda that hurts everyone.
And how many people did those neonazis actually effect? How many more people saw that and immediately criticized the neonazis who wouldn't have seen them before?
The answer to your questions are very many, and some. The numbers are of course relative, but consider the following:
During the 1980's early internet, white supremacist groups were among the first[0] to being using the new medium for organization and information purposes. They used it then to publish among other things a list[1] of "race traitors" etc including name, address, phone number, promulgate misinformation, gaslighting established norms and history (ex: Holocaust Denialism), and develop strategies for what can really only be described as terrorist indoctrination in many respects.
Some of the group involved killed a man with automatic weapons and hijacked an armored car with millions in cash to finance a separatist uprising. One of these was Louis Beam[2] who was a quite violent seditionist, and developed the "lone wolf" militia cell structure which is familiar today. Beam used these telecommunication/internet networks to create and distribute a lot of white separatist information. His activity goes on and on, it is quite vile in all respects. He has been charged and acquitted of sedition.
In this academic piece by sociologist Chip Berlet[3], he recounts attempting to counteract the white supremacy BBS with an anti-racist BBS at an Anti-Klan symposium. The understanding of BBS was quite poor at the time. By the 1990's the white-supremacist BBS network had grown quite a bit, distributing newspapers and operating file transfer and messaging services into a national network of neonazi BBS including Stormfront[4], which is of course still in operation, and is quite influential. They successfully transitioned to the ordinary internet and also AOL, using them as very effective recruitment tools.
Neonazi/white supremacist/separatist/seditionist groups have used the internet very effectively pretty much from the beginning. Perhaps this is an effect of Johnathan Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory[5] as well as some kind of operationalized Poe's Law--race rallys thrive in protective shade. KKK marches and the like are routinely confronted by anti-racist counter-protests, but the current nature of online discourse continues to provide an asymmetric advantage to these types of activities. The old "Filter Bubble" doesn't lend many opportunities for normal people to insert themselves in the radicalization process...this could possibly be better than worse.
The literature on this is vast, exploring how a normal person can become radicalized into a racist white separatist is a strange rabbit hole to descend.
There exists a kind and inspiring man named Daryl Davis[6] who is pretty good at converting KKK/supremacists (he has many surprising success stories) away from this kind of behavior, but notice how his methodology requires a personal touch and much compassion. How many "more people saw that and immediately criticized the neonazis who wouldn't have seen them before?" is not a very good discriminator for this activity at all. Effectively, "None" is the real answer to your question.
The fact of the matter is that toxic memes and divisive trolling are consumed by people while on the can, idle-ly (or perhaps compulsevly) skimming social media and whatnot. The uncritical ingestion of this kind of thing simply habituates people to these kind of beliefs. I don't think a person who has fallen for this stuff is necessarily bad at first blush, and surely have many possibilities for redemption, but the effort required is really not the kind that is easily rallied.
It's a complicated notion, but it boils down to the fact that you have to fight Hate with Love.
Can you answer my questions? They paint a different story than what the NYT is telling you.
I'm being very sincere I want to get to the truth. If one person of a specific group does something bad and it gets mainstream news does the size of that group and overall impact it has increase? Of course not.
If there are less neonazis now than in the early days of the internet then doesn't that mean that having the ability to see their information actually exposed their bad ideas and allowed people to see them for what they actually are? Consider it.
I am struggling to see how this relates at all to how I have answered your rhetorical questions from before.
As you are well aware, it is a material thing how the structure of this kind of indoctrination occurs in society and this I have adequately described, albeit very briefly, as it has a long and colorful history.
I would like to answer your question in another fashion: Is Stormfront the KKK?
The argument that we should let neonazis/etc. parade their ideas around in public so that the world can see them for who they really are has become a lot less convincing because neonazis have refined their tactics (see e.g. "boots for suits"). They are not parading their hatred. Today they start with softer language, focusing on the supposed struggle of white people in America, how non-white people seem to be getting a leg up at the expense of white people, etc. Once they have drawn someone in, someone who for whatever reason found that the "great replacement" or "white genocide" theory resonated with them, they start to give the "explanation" for all the problems -- out of sight, away from people who might criticize them.
Right now we are missing one of our best chances to end the COVID pandemic -- widespread vaccination -- because too many people are spreading lies about the vaccine on social media.
There is plenty of room for legitimate political debate, where people passionately advocate their preferred policies on various issues, without having to give a platform to people who are not arguing in good faith and whose real purpose is to advance a violent agenda. The cost of "free speech" is not "giving terrorists a platform to recruit and spread propaganda" and the politicians of Ben Franklin's generation actually did understand that (shortly after his death Congress passed the Sedition Act, which banned false statements about the US government to prevent foreign agents from destabilizing the newly formed country).