> Often the posters don't even believe what they're posting.
When I used to visit 4chan for entertainment in 2009, I believed this too, but the veil came off a long time ago.
If you have a board where it's acceptable to pretend to be racist, antisemitic, etc, then eventually your board will fill with actual racists, antisemites, etc.
/r/The_Donald started as a subreddit where people thought the idea of Trump becoming POTUS was hilarious, stupid, could never happen, and people cheered him on for the lulz. Over time, it became a home base for his most rabid supporters.
Back on the original point, do you know what you call someone who pretends to be racist?
>much of what's posted on 4chan is ironic, deliberately inflammatory
This hasn't been plausible, much less true, for 10 years. I don't know how anyone can look at, for example, Payton Gendron's manifesto and say it's ironic. Were the bullets he fired ironic as well?
There is an entire generation of users, who are probably the bulk of users now, who were never in on the "joke" (if there ever was one).
There is a huge difference between "livestreaming a shooting on facebook", and writing a 200 page manifesto about how /pol/ redpilled you. I guess all 200 pages were just "banter". The guy practically wrote a book on being radicalized by /pol/, and that to you, is the same as opening up Facebook and clicking the "record" button.
I thought the same the first time I heard about a livestream murder on FB. I thought: I'd shut that feature off instantly if I were in charge. No way I could live with my conscience if someone used my platform for murder attention.
> I've been flagged here in the past merely for correcting dangerous nutritional information
That made me curious, so I went looking for the flagged comment. Upon reading it, I'd a hazard a guess that it's flagged not "merely for correcting dangerous nutritional information" but referring to the people who disagree with you as "HN brainlets".
We learned why you don't give anti-Semites the benefit of the doubt many decades ago. "It's just a joke" up until it isn't, and by then it's far too late.
The NZ mosque shooter's manifesto was almost literally one long 4chan meme thread. There were pages and pages of images and charts and memes that were (and still are) posted to 4chan every day. He openly stated he wasn't always racist and that /pol/ significantly changed his mind on the matter.
We take it serious because innocent people being murdered is serious.
> images and charts and memes that were (and still are) posted to 4chan every day
Look, if people posting charts and memes you find distasteful bothers you this much, you frankly don't belong on the internet. And you can post the opposite perspective on 4chan, without censorship: you can be pro-Communist, anti-Ukraine, pro-CCP, whatever.
And if I wanted to, I could probably play the same game as you and mine the Nashville shooter's manifesto for examples of influences to target for censorship, except strangely, for some reason, they won't release it.
> if people posting charts and memes you find distasteful bothers you this much, you frankly don't belong on the internet
You're missing the point.
It's not that it's merely "distasteful". I would put shock content like Goatse, 2girls1cup, Mr Hands, and Tubgirl into that bucket.
It's that racist content is actively harmful and encourages others to be actively harmful.
There's no victim when someone posts a video of two girls eating each other's shit, but spreading racist hatred encourages and emboldens racists which then results in hate crimes.
How many 4chan memes would it take to turn you into a racist murderer? I don’t know about you but for me the number is NaN. All the memes in the world cannot do it.
People seek out ideological justifications for acting out their violent desires, which are inculcated by broken and atomized social environments. The ideology is the excuse, not the cause.
I haven't used it regularly since the pandemic, but back then it was one of the few places (along with /sci/) where the "lab leak" hypothesis could be openly discussed. Anons regularly dug up questionable gain-of-function papers published by Shi Zhengli and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and archived them. Meanwhile on HN back then (in 2020), outright suggestions that it came from a lab would get you -2 [flagged] [dead].
I don't care. 4chan is one of the few large forums remaining on the internet where there's no downvoting, no flagging, and no dang-esque tone policers. I would be much more sad to see it go away than this place.
It must be hard for you if your idea of free expression requires absolutely no limits. I personally think it’s a bad faith argument and you’re not actually interested in reducing radicalization.
Society isn’t a system we can reason about in absolutes. The spirit of the law says that you can’t tell “fire!” in a crowded building, I think we collectively agree that there are limitations on free speech and we’re fortunate to let the courts map out the nuance rather than a mob or a dictator.
Nothing is absolute... but for example, in my country (former socialist one), things like affirmative action would be considered very racist, while some countries (mostly USA) consider affirmative action anti-racist. If I argue with an american about this, which one of us is racist, and who decides that when it comes to censorship?
Which courts? American ones, that approve of affirmative action, or ours here, that don't?
Do you really need courts to settle a verbal (well.. written) argument online?
Yes, it's just one of many examples where cultural differences cause issues, and where two people consider themselves "good" and the other one "bad" and in turn, censor all speech, since both are racist in atleast some of the courts.
I guess I'm suggesting each countries courts of course decide what's best for their country.
You imply (but I am not convinced) that there are serious consequences for having one opinion or the other on these "cross country" online communities. I suspect instead that for the more nuanced issues like affirmative action there will just be the usual arguing back and forth and little else.
Very interesting, thank you. I’m taking a law class at a local community college and have a research paper due next week- I think this is going to be my topic.
Humanity has never had to deal with global echo chambers where individuals who are mostly harmless on their own can come together and feed on their common rancor.
> Humanity has never had to deal with global echo chambers where individuals who are mostly harmless on their own can come together and feed on their common rancor.
Do you not realize that "echo chamber" describes this place, and any place with groupthink enforcement mechanisms (voting, karma, flagging, and excessive moderation) much more accurately than 4chan? For example, HN groupthink has endorsed low-carb and ketogenic diets almost since its inception, and as a consequence, has also promoted the dissemination of dangerous health misinformation, like LDL cholesterol denialism and downplaying the risks of excessive sodium and satrated fat consumption.
Do you have a specific definition of "nazi" in mind we can apply in a reasonable way?
The usual problem I see is anti-"nazi" rhetoric quickly descends into dehumanization rhetoric about how such people don't deserve to live, should be ejected from all civil society, and must be relentlessly persecuted by every legal and social mechanism possible; in fact, all the suspension of every civil right is acceptable if it means stopping nazis. At the same time, it seems that almost everybody who lived in 1940 would be considered a Nazi by today's rather loose standards, and everybody tries to paint their opponents as nazis (even conservatives have the rather inept 'actually, Nazis were SOCIALISTS" retort) and apply this sort of rhetoric to what even 10 years ago was a completely mainstream liberal.
Certainly 4chan is full of reprobates of every flavor. But if you live in a society where the existence of Nazi rhetoric is actually dangerous, well, you've already lost your free society. People don't read deranged Internet rants and become mass murderers unless they were born in raised in an already broken, atomized society. The ideology is the excuse for the violence, not the cause. And unfortunately, this sort of rhetoric (we have to do whatever it takes to stop nazis) is also indicative of an worsening social environment.
And typically, in worsening social environments, where a variety of ideologies become excuses for broken and/or desperate people to become violent, the government will become more and more totalitarian in response. And we’ll cheer it along.
And then all you have to do is define "everyone who disagrees with me is a nazi" and you've got not only full-blown censorship but also the moral high-ground!
I know, I know for the sake of appearances we don't define everyone who disagrees with us as a nazi, that would be too obvious (although we still do alot).
We describe the broad spectrum of perfectly main-stream, otherwise unremarkable views (but that disagree with us) as "nazi supporters", dog-whistlers etc.
If someone is stupid enough to fall for the lackluster logic of Neo-Nazis then I see that as a problem with our public education, not with the moderation policy of a website. Sure, enforcing "correct" speech at all times could potentially lead to more harmony in society, but I would much, much rather invest in empowering people to think critically for themselves. Many are already able to resist the persuasiveness of propaganda, ads, conspiracy theories, and extremist groups that are all around us today. Teach this skill of resistance instead of trying to baby-proof society.
Glad to see some others around here call out dang for being a tone policer, and a bad one at that.
He constantly butts in where he doesn't belong, to claim that good discussion is "flame wars". HN truly is overly moderated and would benefit from less heavy handed moderation.
Is this one of those times when you claim something is a joke because you believe it, but you also know how ridiculous your belief is? None of the actors in Inglorious Basterds were Nazis, nor in all probability are the actors in a production of The Sound of Music.
Internet antisemitism is of course not Rodgers and Hammerstein, but wide sweeping falsehoods don't prove anything about anyone.
