There are loads and loads of laws that prohibit smoking in all sorts of places and massive sin taxes among many other things. Chalking it 100% up to public health PSAs is inaccurate
Fair point. But still a far cry from current drug prohibition and alcohol prohibition of the 20s. Not being allowed to smoke in a restaurant is an entirely different animal than mandatory minimum jail time for anyone who possesses a cigarette.
It's not even left leaning thinking. It's just socially extremely progressive neo liberalism. Most marxists would be aghast at the idea of siding with giant corporations to unperson and deny dignity to an individual with a non mainstream political opinion or what have you.
Why can't they just disagree with the analogy? After all, analogies are inherently a comparison of two different things. People are prone to reaching for analogies as essentially just an insulting oversimplification, by pointing to something Very Bad (frequently a dramatic historical horror) and simply declaring that it is equivalent to whatever they're criticizing. Part of the allure is the positive feedback back-patting that frequently comes with it, without adding anything else (e.g. your reply, and the "insanely apt" reply from a now-banned account).
Regardless, it's destructive to reasoned discourse to treat people like enemies ("cognitive dissonance" is being used as an insult here) when the only thing you know is that they disagreed with you.
He's being down-voted because it's whataboutism. It's no different than the 50 Cent Army that suddenly cares about Native Americans when the topic of the Uyghurs comes up. Yes, the red scare was bad, yes the US's treatment of indigenous people was bad. Everyone agrees about this. There's no school district in the US that uses a history textbook that says the Sioux deserved it and McCarthy had the right idea. The fact that similiar bad things happened in the past does not excuse them in the present. If anything it makes it more reprehensible that they happen today despite the example of what to do.
But there's no hypocrisy. Nobody is saying McCarthy was right or endorsing his tactics.
Edit: It appears I may have misinterpreted the initial comments sarcasm as a "if McCarthy could do it then it's fair game" rather than a criticism of modern outrage mob tactics.
> Nobody is saying McCarthy was right or endorsing his tactics.
You are correct that they are in fact not saying that; the hypocrisy is in then turning around and saying that cancel culture is right and endorsing their tactics.
In a capitalistic society where corporations hold as much power or more than governments do in our day to day lives you surely must see how this is a moral principle that must apply to them also. There's life ruining things beyond jail such as being homeless and shunned.
Yes they are entitled and we are allowed to disagree with it. That's the point everyone is trying to make. These legalistic arguments are silly and distracting.
Apparently Twitch's employees like these policies for ethical reasons, and/or their businesspeople and advertisers think these policies will bring in more money. Personally, I like these policies and I'd like to see more of this kind of proactive action. I like Twitch more knowing that they have this policy. It shows that they understand their role in shaping public discourse and are taking responsibility for it. It's a difficult balancing act, and there's plenty of ways it could be done badly, but pretending that platforms and their algorithms don't play a role in public discourse is silly.
I do feel most of this whole issue could be sidestepped with some long overdue antitrust enforcement.
>and/or their businesspeople and advertisers think these policies will bring in more money
Yes this is the reason. They will continue to stifle speech so its more palatable for corporations to run ads on their platform. Censoring art and dissent is working well for the people you agree with right now. 60 years ago the current culture would have been unfathomable. In 60 years it may be unfathomable to you again, but now you've taken the stand that it's right and just that they stifle dissent. Hope that never bites you.
I think money is a reason, but I don't think that's the only reason. If I was in a position of power there, I would endorse the same policy purely on ethical grounds, even if it for some reason harmed our relationship with advertisers. I suspect some of the employees there feel the same way.
Every theory (whether true or not) I've heard is this post modernist ideology came out of the French academia. Foucault, Derrida, etc. are who the American right wing blames for IDPOL
> The French intellectuals tend to be ... media stars. The French intellectuals are taken very seriously. They're on the front pages of Le Monde... If you want to be taken seriously, you have to have something exciting to say... And it's not easy to come up with exciting new ideas, so you have to come up with crazy ideas. Then they can make it to the front pages... One of the ways to have exciting new ideas is to tear everything to shreds and say everything is wrong: "The Enlightenment is wrong [etc.]"
Deconstructionism is a tragic mess. Tragic because the benefits it gave are getting overshadowed by base destruction with little to no return, and in fact a net cost as we relearn old lessons with real human consequences in the gap.
The popular thing to do in intellectual circles is to blame America for all of the world's problems, so it's no surprise to me that we're getting the blame for this one as well.
I'm still shocked Reddit is allowed into the wider ecosystem of tech infrastructure. Between hosting explicit gore content and very extreme pornography with borderline legality at best (Including under Alexis's and Steve's leadership allowing a jailbait subreddit to continue for years) I would have thought they'd be booted from AWS etc.
They were removed strictly for (supposed) violations of law - what reddit hosts is, at the current time, unquestionably legal.
Gab/etc were accused of inciting violence, threats of physical harm, treason, etc. Reddit hasn't been accused of anything like that recently. Regardless of reality, infrastructure companies can make their own decisions on who is guilty and innocent.
Reddit without a shred of doubt has hosted and continues to host illegal content too. I bet you'd find a goldmine of illegal content if you scanned the smaller subs.
You're right about accusations though. It seems that accusation alone is the key factor in whether you remain on AWS. Doesn't aspire confidence in AWS, does it.
Photos of the Tiananmen Square protest, arguments that Mohammed was not really a prophet of God, arguments that God doesn't exist, and maps that claim that the actual boundary between two countries are on one or the other side of disputed territory, are also illegal in many districts and countries.
Probably it would be bad if the only speech allowed on popular web sites were speech that wasn't illegal anywhere, or illegal in only a few places.
While I can't really speak to this particular objection, it would be patently absurd for Reddit to be required to be compliant with all laws in all countries, that's just inane and a completely losing battle.
If a specific country outside of where Reddit's servers are hosted has a problem with it, then they're welcome to ban it.
Are you sure? I'm on quite a few anime subreddits and they all explicitly state sexualisation of characters that are even canonically adults but have the appearance that someone could mistake as being a minor is disallowed. They are/were so heavy handed about it that there were revolts on a few of the meme subreddits, but nothing was changed as it was global rule changes, not sub specific.
