> Yet people blame Twitter when someone posts a tweet with hate speech. This is a dangerous direction for the world to be moving in.
Not to diminish the issue, but this is mostly an American problem as far as I see it. I realise these are also American companies, but conflating the entire world to be in danger is a bit disingenuous imo.
MANY European countries (speaking from a Scandinavian perspective) don’t suffer from this, and while there’s a danger of American policies trickling down, that has been severely diminished in the past decade as there’s a movement of all of us (that I’ve seen) sort of re-evaluating our admiration of the US that was built in the 90’s - 00’s.
From the outside this isn’t a direction the world seems to be moving in. Just more crazy US spiralling.
In Germany you can get your house searched for a tweet. Not for terrorism or any egregious crime, a viral example was because a politician has been called a penis. I believe the UK has similar issues. This is far worse than the situatuation in the US.
Not the smartest choice to make yourself identifiable, but such legislative blunders still need to be corrected.
I don't believe a house search is some trivial policing. I think the state failed again to protect reasonable rights. And yes, the hate speech legislation of Germany should be adapted to the 21st century. This won't happen politically, because society currently loves pointing fingers at small missteps. A wrong joke and you get a shit storm.
It is the usual suspects, you hate women or are a racist are the most common accusation. People really start forgetting what these qualifiers really mean. And I believe they get far too much political support and that this isn't a healthy development.
Eh I mean, there's been a rise of extremism all across Europe. It's not quite accurate to say it's an exclusively American thing. Hate speech is rising and there's a case to be made that it's because extremists find each other on the internet (Doctorow calls it a "jihadi recruitment tool" in the article).
...what if the rise in so-called "extremism" is a direct result of government policy leading to poorer outcomes for the average person. If you study history people tend to become tribal not long after life gets hard. If I was a government think tank I'd surely blame the internet long before I blamed my rent seeking laws that inordinately effect the average worker.
Unemployment is artificial! That's the mistake everyone makes here! Unemployment in the US over the last decade has been a function of ZIRP and nearly limitless fed money. It's not real. This is the same econometric snake oil they sell the country when they talk about the inflation rate. No one mentions it's a rate. For example, if we go through the next year with 8-10% real inflation they will report the inflation rate somewhere between 0 and 2%. Wow, stunning! Despite evaporating wealth they've somehow made everything look great. This doesn't even consider the unemployment number is doctored. It only includes people actively looking for work. If you got tired of looking and took 3 months off (as is custom among developers) you are no longer "unemployed" according to the fed definition.
So why doesn't that matter? Because the "employed" are not gainfully employed. They work longer hours for less wages. Longer hours because the competition pool is larger, and less wages for the same reason PLUS inflation.
The average joe may not understand this. But he certainly understands that he can't take vacations, he can't get sick, his electric, gas, and food bills have all doubled or even tripled (in some regions). Despite working, objectively, harder than ever he seems to only get further behind. This makes Joe angry. When Joe can no longer blame the government either due to perceived incompetence or manipulation by think tanks, he is soon to blame his neighbor.
This is the secret of the majority of "extremism" that makes the news. They will certainly sell it as racism, or sexism, or fascism though.
Having a job that doesn't pay enough to afford to pay rent & utilities, buy food, pay off college loans. I could go on. Just saying unemployment is low doesn't capture the nature of the working poor. Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickel and Dimed covers this well. People who work in software and make six figures tend not to be squeezed to afford the basics, except perhaps if they have to live in one of the highest COL cities in the US, but there are millions in the developed world that hold 2-3 jobs and still barely afford living.
Fuel prices are at an all-time high, and fuel companies are posting record profits. Rent is at an all-time high. Mortgages are getting insane because we have double-digit inflation and insanely high interest rates. Saving are worthless because of double-digit inflation and insanely high interest rates not actually being passed on except where it benefits banks. Food prices are at an all-time high and farms are going to the wall because they're being paid scrap prices for everything they sell.
Unemployment is at an all-time low? That's great, but people are working their backsides off and cannot afford to eat or heat their homes.
In the UK we have had twelve years of the right-wing extremist Conservative government and their "economic austerity" to "right the ship". What this has meant in practical terms is that wages have not risen in twelve years, taxes have gone up and up and up, and public spending has gone down and down and down. We had the woefully inept Kwasi Kwarteng who blew £60 billion off the UK's economy by raising taxes on the poorest and cutting them for the richest, collapsing most people's private pension pots. We went from roughly 40,000 people in the UK using food banks in 2010 when the Tories took power to 2.5 million people using food banks in 2022 - and these are not just "poor people" who the tabloid trash papers sneer at "well somehow they can afford mobile phones and TVs, why can't they afford food" - no, there are people on £30-£40k per year, who simply cannot afford to feed their families because they have to choose whether they keep the lights on, buy food, or pay their mortgage.
The political right have over the past 20 years done incalculable damage to the world.
I can't speak intelligently about UK centre-right, but here in Aus our Liberal party (as in classical liberal, centre-right) are almost indistinguishable for our Labor (centre-left). Big spending, big government and so we are seeing many of the same problems you mentioned.
I wonder why only the "populists" speak out about these problems, and then why most populists movements are led by extremists. It's not like fascists or communists ever had or have real economical solutions for healthcare or housing or environment, yet they constantly gain votes claiming exactly that (without detailing, of course). Why are all the big traditional parties only paying lip service to the real problems of the little man, even while pretending they represent them? And no I'm not sarcastic, this is a real question which bothers me extremely.
Parties don't really represent interest of their voters. They fish for votes to obtain political power, but they represent the interests of the people who run them (and their friends and patrons) - who are, generally speaking, not their voters.
Thus, traditional parties represent the interest of some subset of the established elites. Which means that the current socioeconomic arrangement is broadly in their advantage. They know that those problems are real, but they can be only solved by giving up some part of the pie. And organizations are much more selfish than individuals, so they never give up unless they believe that the alternative is to lose even more (hence why a messy revolution somewhere else can often do wonders).
Definitely. Might have been unclear but I was trying to speak specifically about the “blame the platform not the people” mentality I was responding to.
Fully in agreement extremism is on the rise and the internet aids this.
A counterpoint is that if the companies running these platforms are run by American companies, then their efforts to combat hate speech will be disproportionately focused on English language and American hate speech. This can allow it to flourish elsewhere.
Not to diminish the issue, but this is mostly an American problem as far as I see it. I realise these are also American companies, but conflating the entire world to be in danger is a bit disingenuous imo.
MANY European countries (speaking from a Scandinavian perspective) don’t suffer from this, and while there’s a danger of American policies trickling down, that has been severely diminished in the past decade as there’s a movement of all of us (that I’ve seen) sort of re-evaluating our admiration of the US that was built in the 90’s - 00’s.
From the outside this isn’t a direction the world seems to be moving in. Just more crazy US spiralling.