Not getting involved is not getting involved. You might take this as an indirect endorsement of content. But by that logic, a site with no moderation simultaneously liberal, conservative, and centrist because all are allowed. I guess you can say that it's political, but because it allows all content it's political nature is all-encompassing. Calling a completely apolitical stance political is sort of like calling Atheism a religion. It's arguably correct but it's really the absence of religion.
Also, I think your whiteboard with a swatstika analogy demonstrates the shortsightedness of this sort of "inaction is endorsement" line of thinking. What about a candidate who's family was personally affected by the Holocaust and is so mortified to see the swatstika that they are too uncomfortable to even do anything about it? What about a South Asian candidate for whom the symbol doesn't elicit a reaction because of it's prevalence in South Asian culture? Or what about a candidate who thinks, "the people at this company definitely aren't Nazis, clearly this was part of diagram or something."
> But by that logic, a site with no moderation simultaneously liberal, conservative, and centrist because all are allowed.
We aren't (and haven't been) talking about political ideals, but hate speech. A website that doesn't take action on hate speech is allowing and condoning hate speech.
> Calling a completely apolitical stance political is sort of like calling Atheism a religion. It's arguably correct but it's really the absence of religion.
We're not talking about apolitical stances like "I like chocolate." We're talking about hate speech, which is implicitly political.
> Also, I think your whiteboard with a swatstika analogy demonstrates the shortsightedness of this sort of "inaction is endorsement" line of thinking. What about a candidate who's family was personally affected by the Holocaust and is so mortified to see the swatstika that they are too uncomfortable to even do anything about it?
Isn't this just even more evidence to suggest that an employee not taking action is an action itself?
What-aboutism is great, but it doesn't really matter in this context, right? "What about a candidate who's blind" etc etc. I defined a hypothetical scenario to prove a point in response to the above hypothetical scenario.
Reducing the scope to content you categorize as "hate speech" doesn't change the problems with trying to claim that refusal to remove content condoning that content. Say group X posts content proclaiming superiority over group Y. And group Y also posts content proclaiming superiority over group X. Say website does not take action on either instance of hate speech. It would follow that the website is condoning two contradictory views.
The reality is that hosting content is not condoning it. An approach of "we're treating this like a whiteboard, we are not going to be involved in taking action against particular content" isn't an endorsement of anything. Whatever objectionable content someone might post, another person could post the complete opposite.
Not getting involved is exactly that: not getting involved. Ultimately, this claim that refusal to take action against hate speech is the same "inaction with respect to _____ is condoning ______" rhetoric that's been trotted out time and time again. At best, it's a misguided effort to inspire opposition to harmful views.
People don’t change their opinions on the internet, so I’m not going to change your mind. This just such an upset tingly misguided stance it’s hard to even brush it off. I’m unsure what the negative side effect of suggesting opposition to harmful views, but that’s on you I guess.
There are entire books discussing whether inaction is action, so that debate is clearly not getting solved here. I just ask, how do you think Facebook’s stance (the same as yours) is working out?
> People don’t change their opinions on the internet, so I’m not going to change your mind. This just such an upset tingly misguided stance it’s hard to even brush it off.
I would say the exact same thing regarding your misguided claim that refusal to censor content amounts to endorsement of it.
> I’m unsure what the negative side effect of suggesting opposition to harmful views, but that’s on you I guess.
Where did I write that there are negative side effects of removing content? All I wanted to dispel is the false claim that lack of censorship is a political stance.
> I just ask, how do you think Facebook’s stance (the same as yours) is working out?
Also, I think your whiteboard with a swatstika analogy demonstrates the shortsightedness of this sort of "inaction is endorsement" line of thinking. What about a candidate who's family was personally affected by the Holocaust and is so mortified to see the swatstika that they are too uncomfortable to even do anything about it? What about a South Asian candidate for whom the symbol doesn't elicit a reaction because of it's prevalence in South Asian culture? Or what about a candidate who thinks, "the people at this company definitely aren't Nazis, clearly this was part of diagram or something."