Because people insist that Something Must Be Done and the state's not doing it. Even EU regulators don't want to do things, they want to push big tech firms to do it.
Beatings are unlikely though. It's not something you can do with a datacenter.
How are people so utterly naive as to think Facebook would not be awash in terrorism, calls for death etc. if it were not censored?
People are rightly upset Facebook is being used to forment ethnic wars in other countries, if you think things are 'bad' now, imagine what FB would be like unfettered?
'Here I am cutting off the heads of XYZ group, please send money!'
All systems will be abused, and the systems to censor them will be abused ... so we have to do our best with all of that.
It's a bit ridiculous all of this is happening, that OnlyFans guy should probably be in jail.
Yes, I agree that moderation is important and I think Big Tech companies are trying to do this job under difficult conditions. But someone said that they didn’t like private companies taking state responsibilities, and I’m wondering what the statist alternative would actually look like? Maybe that governments run their own social networks, similar to how they maintain public parks where people can gather? Not sure how it would work. People complaining about private companies doing the moderation don’t seem to be proposing alternatives to it.
Yes, there should be public social networks. Even if it is slow and you have to clean your spam every day, it is now as essential as roads and electricity. Governments around the world guarantee the right to free speech and association but in practice this isn't happening. I wonder which country will be the first one to launch a public utility messaging/social feed app.
This isn't a position that social media companies wanted to be in. Blame the people who demand that the social media companies act as censors. This all started when people stirred outrage at a Coca Cola ad appeared before an ISIS video on Youtube and demanded that companies boycott Youtube ads.
I'm really sorry about that, but how do you want people to act? That's why I don't get the whining on 'cancel culture'. Half the baby boomers generation (the middle/upper class part) keep telling their kids and others to 'vote but don't protest' and then, when told their generation controlled every vote target, 'vote with your wallets.
Unless you've never used this phrase or equivalent, you don't get to complain about cancel culture. My generation (well, the one following mine rather) is just applying the advice.
I grind my teeth everytime I hear middle/upper class people complaining at boycotts and 'cancel '. What do you want from them? They can't protest, because of violences against statues and McDonald's, They can't strike without getting teared down by most MSM(and because they need to live and nobody's donating to them anymore, except me and a couple people who remember where they came from), and they don't have representative who look like them and actually did the same job. And always, the patronizing 'haha, they can vote with their wallets'.
Well, now they do, do you want to prevent that too?
>> I grind my teeth everytime I hear middle/upper class people complaining at boycotts and 'cancel '. What do you want from them?
> I want them to present their views, and attempt to convince others of the merits of those views.
> I don’t want them to use bullying, intimidation, authoritarianism, or violence to force others to adopt (or pretend to adopt) their viewpoint.
Are you really equating "not choosing to buy stuff" and "not choosing to watch/attend stuff" with violence? Listen, I get it - you think you're entitled to a revenue stream, that whatever nonsense you build deserves money. Here's the deal though, the free market is also about the spender getting to choose what they spend money and time on. If you don't like it, too bad - no one owes you agreement nor money just because.
Well you quoted a bit about boycotts that included a question about alternatives. This type of quoting is often a technique to declare "the text after this before the next quote is a response". So when you then responded with a point about wanting them to make arguments instead, and emphasized it with "not ... violence", you sure seem to have equivocated them. If that wasn't your intent, my bad and I have no idea what you were intending to say.
The second conclusion assumes you made the violence point of course and is basically substitution:
boycotts = violence = not spending money
People are generally entitled to not have violence directed at them.
(becomes)
People are generally entitled to not have not spending money directed at them.
So you think the yellow jacket movement were riots. Fine.
By the way, they did convince other they should be supported. Most strikes in my country start with 40 to 60% support (because we actually have political education), and after a day of CNN-like 24h hours news, by billionnaire-owned medias, you see a 10% drop in support. Easy to convince for some more than for others, right?
But anyway.
----------------
>> I grind my teeth everytime I hear middle/upper class people complaining at boycotts and 'cancel '. What do you want from them?
>I want them to present their views, and attempt to convince others of the merits of those views.
>I don’t want them to use bullying, intimidation, authoritarianism, or violence to force others to adopt (or pretend to adopt) their viewpoint.
Yes, so convincing 1 to 5 percent of the population on social media and ask them to boycott a product or a brand is fine then? Exactly my point. Or do you think this is bullying (that would be rich tbh).
Like i said, if you actually said once "vote with your wallet", you don't get to whine about boycotts. I know hundreds of people who boycotted Total (or shell, i was a kid and doens't remember) after one supertanker shipwreck that polluted hundred of miles of coast, were you against this boycott too? Once everybody, including children spend hours cleaning beaches and trying to save birds, once the protests didn't even make national news anymore, and blocking the refinery was met with police force, what do you think they could have done? burn everything? Or boycott one of the dozen companies who who do the same thing anyway, no matter how inefficient that is? What were their options as "resilient adults"?
You see, i know most people complaining about cancel culture agree with boycotting when this doesn't really affect them or their political views. I have uncles who are so hypocritical about it, it mades me laugh to ask them "what should you do" because i love to make them sweat a little.
> I'm really sorry about that, but how do you want people to act?
I want people to think more critically about cause and effect rather than spend all their effort on "raising awareness", which encompasses several behaviors, but the worst of which is spreading exaggerated anger.
> told their generation controlled every vote target,
Boomers control the vote because they're the ones that bother to show up, especially for elections that don't appear on people's social media feed. Seniors are 15x more likely to vote for mayors than those between 18-35 [1]. Fewer than 20% of people know the names of their state legislatures [2]. Meanwhile, there is no shortage of outrage on social media on issues that state legislatures vote for like gerrymandering and now abortion. Rather than research which state representatives are pro-choice, activists would rather yell loudly at the Supreme Court to resign and whine about being disenfranchised when that doesn't work.
> vote with your wallets
Voting with your wallet in this context would be to stop watching Youtube videos. However, they don't want to do that, and instead would rather making exaggerated claims of Youtube supporting ISIS. So social media companies reacted with their half-assed solutions that lead to situations like what is described in the article. Now, you're seeing people making exaggerated claims about Facebook wanting to be censors. I seriously doubt that people actually give a damn about ISIS videos with a few dozen views or the well-being of pornstars. Rather, they really just trying to raise awareness about evil corporations, which is the case with most of the comments here. However, none of this actually contributes to our collective intelligence of how to actually regulate tech or enact anti-trusts. At best, this anger may cause Facebook to do a little more due diligence about adding people to their terrorist watchlist, but the real problem people care about isn't solved.
> I seriously doubt that people actually give a damn about ISIS videos with a few dozen views or the well-being of pornstars. Rather, they really just trying to raise awareness about evil corporations,
Lizard brain just knows that it likes it when the number in the top right goes up. Lizard brain knows that vapid comments and over the top calls to action make it go up faster.
But which generation/social class are the mayor candidates from? Why vote for a representative who doesn't represent you? That was never explained to me. Now, i still vote, but i'm also steadily middle-class and richer than 50% of the people of my country (by wealth, in my 30s).
And voting with your wallet is boycotting. If you boycott, you have to explain to the company why. I'm boycotting Lactalys and Nestle dairy products since 20 years, are you against that too? Or is only the demonstrative boycotts with social media reach you're agaisnt? And in this case, isn't it disingenuous? "I'm pro boycott only if the company doesn't know why you're boycotting them".
There is no justification imho. Like i said, if you ever use the phrase "you should vote with your wallet" or similar, you don't get to whine about boycotts and cacnel culture, this state is your own doing.
> Meanwhile, there is no shortage of outrage on social media on issues that state legislatures vote for like gerrymandering
As there should be - it’s one of the most abhorrent things that legislatures of all stripes have attempted, and those responsible should be held accountable. They have removed any ability to do so via electoral means, and should probably be reasonably happy that people complain on social media instead of something more physical.
Of course they wanted to , they could have denied such requests and let matters go to courts of law, where such matters should be resolved anyway. But it would put a slight dent on quarterly profits so , in the words of Sheryl Sandberg , "I am fine with this"[1]
If Facebook is shoving things in my face that I do not like, then I stop using Facebook. I haven't logged-in for over two years because of that.
If a company I buy products from is spending that money on things I vehemently disapprove of, then I am well within my rights to stop being their customer.
This isn't "cancel culture", this is me choosing how I spend my time and money. What I find onerous are all the people telling me that I'm a bad person for exercising these liberties.
So what I'm hearing is that billionaires who are no longer simply satiated by consumption, are not actively trying to undermine social order to gain power?
Well that wiki page was a wild ride. I don't completely see how it relates, but it was worth reading. I will think about this next time I see complaining on slack about perks being removed :)
"In the years after the failure of the Homestead strike, O'Donnell found himself --blackballed-- from returning to work in the steel industry. Needing to adopt a new career, he moved to Philadelphia and took a job as a newspaper reporter.[12]
In about 1903, O'Donnell accepted a position in government employment as a deputy to the Pennsylvania state factory inspector.[13] This job placed O'Donnell in crowded Pennsylvania tenements and poorly ventilated factories on a regular basis, and he subsequently contracted tuberculosis as a result.[14] Stricken seriously ill by the disease, in November 1905 O'Donnell left the Northeast for the warmer and drier climate of the Southwest, accompanied by relatives, in an effort to regain his health.[14] Newspaper accounts from December of that year place O'Donnell in the city of El Paso, Texas.[15]"
