Apparently there’s an issue with some instances banning users for criticizing authoritarian governments. Is lemmy.world a safe place to criticize governments?

  • GarbageShootAlt
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    1 year ago

    this is an illustration of why enforcing ideology is not a good idea

    This reminds me of people saying the government shouldn’t “legislate morality,” i.e. be involved in or have a stance on moral issues. In both cases, it seems to me to be oblivious to the status-quo that ideology/morality are already enforced in those respective domains and there is no end in sight for that.

    The admin who kindly gave me some of his time indeed already shared the basic ideological tenets of the administration policy. The deplatforming of rudeness, of crassness, and of, uh, “lumping one type of people into a group indiscriminately” are all ideological concerns unless you want to look at it merely as market concerns, as though that changes the fact.

    It’s also common practice to at least nominally ban the spreading of misinformation, though our host gave no indication of doing that, and this again is also a highly ideological tenet. If misinformation drives engagement – and we know it can – why ban it? Presumably because it is also a social ill, or because you want to have a positive reputation, etc.

    But these are things that are obfuscated in the “Discourse,” thanks in part to the wonderful legacy of classical liberal authors who wanted to find a way to make their ideology look like non-ideology (see Locke using faux a priori arguments to protect the property rights of monopolists).

    If you want a comparison, I’ll use the Republican whipping-dog because you are probably familiar with it. Repubs talk a big game about “Small government.” “The government that governs best governs least.” “The most terrifying sentence in the English language is: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” And yet, though they are not alone in this, they are perhaps the most enthusiastic supporters of increasing the power and funding of police and the military! That doesn’t seem like “small government” to me! But that’s because when they talk about “government” in this context, that’s not what they mean, they mean a very narrow subset of laws mostly connected to austerity and corporate deregulation that they want to promote. This kind of double-talk is a rhetorically powerful tool for derailing critical thinking by essentially baiting the listener into conflating cases that are very different.

    The blanket denouncement of “enforcing ideology” reminds me of that. Sure, there are bad ways to do it, and you provided an example, but that does not mean it cannot be done well and it obfuscates that it is already being done! The question is not about whether or not to enforce ideology, but what ideological lines to enforce and how. The status quo is not neutral just because we have been habituated to it!

    Edit: Total aside, but I don’t believe in natural rights (I think human welfare is better advanced by other frameworks), I was just speaking in terms of the ideology of the Constitution, which does support that idea.

    • DudePluto@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Difference between enforcing democratically accepted ideology and enforcing that which is not. You mentioned that you thought speech that questions natural rights should not be given a platform. I pointed out that you’re applying an ill-defined and subjective term, and so it’s just not wise

      • GarbageShootAlt
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        1 year ago

        Please read what someone writes a little more carefully before trying to do gotchas. I said:

        Of course, my answer is that some speech is worth protecting and some is not and questions of natural rights have nothing to do with that,

        i.e. natural rights are not relevant to useful questions about moderation. I only use the term to call the concept irrelevant. Then I said:

        so the chauvinistic redditors posting social credit score memes that were tired years ago and thoroughly debunked don’t need a platform

        My complaint is letting people post low-effort* memes and misinformation isn’t worthwhile, and if your concept of “Free Speech” conflicts with that, then that concept should be replaced by something better because you’re just caping for garbage.

        *please don’t get debate club about this term, it’s a waste of time. Shit that is just a jpeg copied and reproduced endlessly so you can get updoots to the left because winnie the pooh is evil is low-effort. If someone does their own bespoke photoshop of the bear copulating with a tank, it is not low-effort, though you should ban that person for other reasons (obscenity, etc.)