Now image you've done what seems impossible despite countless people telling you it wont work out. You are in the top 1% of fame. Now someone tells you your other ideas are wrong. And that you cant actually achieve x goal. And that you don't know what you are talking about when you talk about y. And that you are sick and need to take meds to fix yourself.
Would you believe them? Or would you believe yourself?
I think Kanye is sick and needs help but I can see almost anyone falling into the exact same trap hes fallen into if they lived his life.
Kanye is a garden variety manic-depressive. It has likely been exacerbated by stress and self-medicating with the wrong drugs, causing instability, paranoia and delusion. Bipolar disorder is genetic, it doesn't develop due to no one being able to say "no" to them.
What you are describing, however, is one way that Narcissistic Personality Disorder can develop. Successful individuals are more at risk of NPD. One of the biggest issues is that NPD patients usually don't suffer, so they rarely seek treatment, which can correct if not cure the disorder in under 2 years, rare among psychological disorders. But the symptoms of NPD not only include an exaggerated sense of self-importance, but also an inability or fear of criticism, and exceptionally strong denial. Narcissists don't listen to anyone, such as those that are trying to help them, yet they require constant admiration.
It is likely West has one of the more benign flavors of NPD, at least, I haven't heard he is violent nor of reports of him berating and belittling others (though I do not follow celebrities). I think his biggest problem is BPD and drug abuse (though the self-medication may be keeping him alive, it is far less than an ideal solution), but due to the combination with NPD and vast wealth, and probably being surrounded by those that will never deny him his insane impulses, he's probably not going to get help until he bottoms out in clinical major depression for months, if he survives it. BPD must be maintained, and if it isn't, inevitably the train leaves the rails.
I find it basically impossible to empathize with him. I just wouldn't ever be in that situation. "Rising against adversity" is not the story I'd be be using here so much as just a typical strongman bravado leading to an absolute disconnect from reality.
I would wager greatly that it's not that he's grown cynical to people saying he can't do something, but that he's become delusional from people telling him a genius. People who convince themselves that they're smart do this thing where they have an idea, and conclude that because they've come up with it and they're smart that it must be a well reasoned idea.
It’s almost as if his whole thing was to successfully market himself to be associated with the title of the “most successful rapper of all time”.
But I have to give him that other than such an illustrious title, I do hear of him in countless contexts other than music: his marriage, his shoes, his renaming himself, his presidential ambitions, his beefs with other actual artists, and now his purchase of 4chan.
His father was a photojournalist for the main newspaper in Atlanta and his mother was a Fulbright scholar. He grew up in a solid middle class suburb and he attended a magnet school for gifted kids before getting a scholarship to the American Acaedmy of Art. He started producing music for artists directly out of high school and was producing for Roc-A-Fella within 3 years of starting out in the music scene.
It was at Roc-A-Fella that he decided to be a rapper, and it took him all of 2 years to produce The College Dropout.
He lived an incredibly charmed life before he ever started rapping.
I assure you, I really tried to make sense of what she was saying to me. She was beautiful, and I was interested in her. (I say this to emphasize how hard I was trying to make sense of it all.) But, in the end, I just could not follow. Maybe she had a kind of ADHD. But my point is that her "mental illness" likely went no further than that.
I can't follow Kanye either—though I am far less motivated to do so, by comparison. But, the guy is successful. I'm tempted to give him the benefit of the doubt that, like the young lady in my story, he may know what it is he's saying.
Slim Shady stands up [0].
[0] - https://iamyourtargetdemographic.com/2011/08/30/kanye-west-v...
West has had success as an entertainer and as a businessman - I believe he has a successful shoe company. He's famous. If he thinks he can take on Parler, that seems like a crazy challenge but one he is well equipped to take on. I would certainly believe in myself - even if I thought it was low probability I'd feel certain that it was possible.
I got an early taste of his mental illness. He started maybe 5 songs, each of which he would cut short in the middle to rant about the sound being off. He was completely unhinged and rambling each time. After 20 minutes he simply walked off stage and that was that.
Ever since then, I've found that his illness has been very evident in the art itself. It precludes me from enjoying it, and there's been a number of times I've felt terribly sad seeing these signs celebrated by those who don't see the connection (which is not to suggest that they should).
All that said, I've never even considered this perspective, so thank you for sharing it. It makes a mountain of sense, and makes the whole situation that much sadder (and more complex).
Just think about it... if you've been a success for so long and suddenly aren't, who would you blame? If you didn't say anyone but yourself, you're not Kanye.
https://slate.com/technology/2015/06/tim-hunt-on-women-scien...
It's almost as if there is something that happens once you have a major, incontestible success, that you come to believe that your victory had little to do with luck and more to do with destiny or some inherent quality that you possess, and therefore the one masterpiece is a shadow of what is to come.
That foolish idea has led to many great follies.
I don't want to get off topic here, but talking about Kanye West as "arguably the most popular hip hop artist of all time" should also come with that argument attached to justify such a grandiose statement. I mean, I need to see some Claire Danes w/red yarn vibes to even begin to understand that position.
You can talk of Kanye and Swift in the same sentence (never had a struggle meal, I see your nick Taylor ;) ), but Kanye vs. Nas? Jay? J. Cole? Sheeet, even Em? I don't even know if there are metrics that could make that statement valid unless you restrict it to some weird "early 'aughts" sub-generation.
I challenge thee to numbers, graphs and beyond all - cultural import! <gauntlet slap>
is he ranked that somewhere?
if so, i'm definitely getting old and out of touch with pop culture, and i'm from the Chicago area so grew up with everything available on the radio.
I don’t think he’s even recognized as being in the top 3. There are so many much better than him, such as Eminem, Tupac, Snoop Dogg.
So it makes sense his ego would be making it hard to see the world as it is, EVEN IF he didn't have any mental illness at all.
At least try considering the possibility that his lived experience is valid.
Ok.
> A Twitter rep told The Post on Sunday afternoon that West’s account “has been locked due to a violation of Twitter’s policies.”
> JP Morgan Chase may have notified West of its decision to end its banking relationship with him
> In a statement to CNN Business on Saturday, a Meta spokesperson said content from West’s account was deleted for violating the company’s policies and a restriction was placed on his account.
Doesn't sound like it is a complex if Twitter, Chase, and Meta/FB have all taken actions against him recently.
I've never seen a human being who more obviously "sought the approval of others." He has this weird negative charisma; like there are some people who light up the room by being in it. It's not that he darkens the room -- but it's that he needs the light from others. It just felt like he needed everyone to really like him, and I could so easily see how someone could take advantage of that.
> 6 DE Code § 2705 (2019): Any person who has attained 18 years of age shall have full capacity to contract; provided such person has not been declared legally incompetent to contract for reasons other than age. Any person who has attained the age of 18 years shall become fully responsible for that person’s own contracts.
So I'd presume it would come down to what Delaware's Court of Chancery expects for someone to be "declared legally incompetent to contract." I'd imagine that's not something done lightly.
(IANAL)
Same situation.
Can't a rich dude buy a company without goofy rumors being spread (scammed into buying Parler)?
Having a celebrity owner increases the value.
I find this take interesting -- Kanye is insanely successful in multiple categories. He is very eccentric and always has been.
> Kanye is now a Black Hebrew Israelite
That said, calling him mentally ill or having a breakdown is a bit... odd. There are tens of thousands of "Black Hebrews", there are MANY more Scientologists. Is Tom Cruise mentally ill? Maybe, but people can have different beliefs than me and I wouldn't call them mentally ill.
Regarding Pete Davidson...
> “The 78 media outlets that called me an abuser when I was tryna get that heroin addict away from my kids that was tattooing my kids’ names on him, Skete, Pete Davidson…” said West. Davidson has spoken about his struggles with drugs and borderline personality disorder in the past.
https://news.yahoo.com/kanye-west-hits-pete-davidson-0413485...
I think a lot of the tabloid press is trying to make Kanye sound crazier than he is. That's how they sell stuff. Don't get me wrong, he's a bit off and he'll say things in a hyperbolic way (which is accurate.. but the connected dots don't always make sense).
Anyway, my point is I think dismissing someone as "mentally ill" for having different beliefs or opinions is probably not the best. It's a fair opinion, but I wouldn't assess it that way. He's acting rationally for his belief set.
Kanye himself has said, in the past, that he has bipolar disorder and has had manic episodes. His family has corroborated that, and his wife was open about taking responsibilities during the bad days.
Believing in a lot of conspiracy theories, in isolation, also doesn’t make someone “crazy”.
I don’t know the man, neither does anyone here so far.
My interest is in seeing more social media migrate to open, federated protocols.
1. https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2022/10/09/tw...
Celebrity or not, his actions seem similar to the mentioned illness.
This is a black man who is a unicorn in two industries. One of the most successful black people of all time. Who is fighting to establish black ownership in those industries.
Here’s his latest full interview where he goes into detail on what he’s been saying. I highly encourage you to watch at least the first 20 minutes:
https://odysee.com/@ArchAngel:e/Ye-on-The-Media-The-Kardashi...
“I respect what the Jewish people have done and how they brought their people together” he isn’t just spewing anti semitism he’s making a principled stand for his people owning more of the industries they run and airing specific problems. Feel free to engage with them.
(YouTube is censoring it because I guess you can critique whites and other ethnic groups all you want, but not Jews). I’m not endorsing anything here, but it’s clear he’s far within the realm of sanity. Accusations against someone’s sanity are of the ultimate nature, it’s a shame you lob them so.
But in it he actually clearly addresses everything you mention: Pete, Gap, Corey, and more. All of your points he has logical explanations for and I highly doubt you’re familiar with then since it seems you only follow Instagram posts, which is ludicrous.
In it I hear someone who is incredibly well controlled, who is speaking clearly and logically, and who has legitimate greviances borne out of experience. In fact I was surprised, as he’s always been a bit of a spaz in interviews (nothing too unusual, just within range ADHD, stress, narcissism would be my guess), so I was expecting worse. But if anything he seems more rational and grounded than ever.
Every time he says something that deviates from the accepted narrative, he is attacked and dismissed as "crazy", "insane", "sick". Many non-normative geniuses throughout history have been treated in this manner.
Before anyone strawmans this, he does occasionally say things that should be condemned, particularly over the past week. Understandably people are focused on those remarks, but two things can be true at the same time.
1. He has been systematically marginalized and labeled as "crazy" every time he presents an alternative viewpoint. This has been going on for years.
2. He overcorrects when placed in a box. The more people try to control him, the more he tries to break out of that box by being purposefully provocative.
The irony here is I'm not condemning West. I'm recognizing the terrible situation he's in. It's your analysis that's uncharitable to him, not mine. I think he's a victim in this story.
Did the self-proclaimed HN doctors question his decision to collaborate with Adidas, Nike, etc by becoming a fashion designer with his Yezzy label which made him a billionaire? They didn't care in the first place; but because of Parler now they care?
> 1. He has been systematically marginalized and labeled as "crazy" every time he presents an alternative viewpoint. This has been going on for years.
> 2. He overcorrects when placed in a box. The more people try to control him, the more he tries to break out of that box by being purposefully provocative.
Well the same people who are calling him "crazy", "insane", "sick" are the same who believe everything that is said by the media. You go against the media narrative and they will punish you. Criticising and exposing some of the media's lies and the cancelling will happen and Ye knows that.
This also explains the unexplained downvotes because it is all true.
If this is the case why hasnt someone tried to take power of attorney or something similar here?
My grandma is beginning to look like she has dementia. But we, as a family, aren't at a point where we're thinking of taking away her agency. She's a proud woman and always has been.
In many cases, its probably better for the person for them to keep their agency. If they're only going to lose money, its really not that big of a deal. We're more concerned about what if she has a fall by herself or other such issue. But those things won't be solved by revoking her agency.
But just because someone is mentally ill (dementia, bipolar, or even schizophrenic) doesn't mean they deserve to lose their agency and get power of attorney invoked over them.
Has anyone close to you been in a mentally ill situation? Have you ever tried to tell someone you love, someone you trusted, someone you used to look up to that their mental capabilities have declined and that you no longer trust them to watch over themselves? And if so, do you think taking away their ability to use their bank account is the solution to that problem?
There's a lot of stuff there, among other things:
> West said that he often has suicidal ideation. In a 2019 interview with David Letterman, West stated that he has bipolar disorder.
There is, at least in principle (and certainly for people who can afford lawyers, as he certainly can) a very high bar for this. As there should be.
Would you say the same about a schizophrenic who refuses to stay on his meds and ends up ranting at people while living under a bridge?
People with bipolar disorder sometimes won't take their meds for a variety reasons, one being they seek the energy of manic episodes (one in my acquaintance had only had one major manic episode in her entire life but she put up with depression for years in hope of having another one).
Kanye West has stated in interviews that he's a.) bipolar and b.) doesn't take his meds because they interfere with his creative process. This man is not well.
His wife's new boyfriend got their kids' initials tattooed on his neck. That's deranged and suggesting that an angry response is evidence of mental illness is way into "positing unnecessary entities" territory.
Bizarre. In a way, good on them for editing the weirdest stuff out... But really probably shouldn't have used any of it when someone's so clearly in such a bad state?
I mean it really is just driving clicks/views/profit from someone's poor health, in a nasty sort of way (i.e. not to say news or obituaries etc. are bad) isn't it?
You say this as if the latter isn't a direct result of the former.
I read that unlike Elon he didn't sign a binding deal to buy for a set price. Just an agreement to consider a purchase. So if he's "sick", apparently not as much as other people.
0. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/04/entertainment/kanye-west-two-...
Second, it's not clear what statement by The Gap he's talking about, but my guess is that this is related to the delayed launch of his product line:
https://www.billboard.com/culture/lifestyle/kanye-west-gap-p...
The "coordinated message" here appears to be "it is bad that children were killed".
It's a (sad) reality that if you're doing any kind of public relations you need to plan for the very real possibility that your giant brand launch is going to coincide with a national tragedy.
Devil's advocate: there's no way this isn't the case for Kanye, right? Why is this mental illness sparking up later in his life? Why was he able to achieve everything he's achieved 1996 -> 2012 (Roc-A-Fella -> The College Dropout -> My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy era) without these "mental illness" bouts?
This is key to understanding bipolar: it has an "upswing" phase in which someone has more energy and less inhibition. Increased self-belief as well. It can, if you're lucky, be just the right thing to catapult someone into incredible creative works.
The risk is that risk-taking may not pay off, and the inhibitions may have been there for good reason. Not to mention that there's also a downswing phase which looks like depression and comes with elevated suicide risk.
It's possible that he's exhibited symptoms for far longer but it was brushed aside under the guise of kooky genius. I mean, the Taylor Swift thing was, what, 2009?
Anyone who has dealt with/supported folks suffering from mental illness (and I definitely qualify, there), will tell you that mental illness gets worse, as you get older.
A young man that compulsively washes his hands, may well end his life, flying around the world in a sterile airplane, keeping his piss in canopic jars.
Ya know.
"George Bush doesn't care about Black People".
"Taylor, I'ma let you finish..."
MBDTF came out in 2010. That was around the beginning of social media entering the mainstream (Kanye joined Twitter in July 2010).
So up until MBDTF, he didn't have a device in his pocket that allowed him to broadcast his unfiltered thoughts to millions of people. Up until that point, his public image was likely carefully managed by his label and management. All of his interviews were probably overseen by them. They likely only allowed interviews where he was asked pre-approved questions and gave canned answers. If he went too far off script, his label likely stepped in.
It's clear now that he has a lot more freedom with handling his own image. He's been signed to his own label since 2016 which probably afforded him a lot more power over his career. He had a few moments prior to 2016 but he didn't really go off the deep until 2017.
TLDR: what you saw as stable behavior prior to 2017 or so was probably the result of a curated image created by his label and management.
[1]: https://anchor.fm/dissect/episodes/S2E1--Kanye-West-The-Elep...
FYI (for the down-voters): https://www.verywellmind.com/clang-associations-380072 https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/clanging-schizophr...
I have been following self proclaimed free speech absolutists(because I too, believe in free speech but don't believe it exists) and they are totally not the kind of people that say "I hate what you say but I will die defending your right to say it". In all places, these people are curating comments and posts to push agenda.
The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
Yet again, I like that Musk and Kanye kind of people claim that they want free speech because at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it. This is in contrast with the pure fascist where they cannot be held responsible for anything because they don't claim virtue in first place. It's a bit like companies doing greenwashing, which can be exposed when they don't deliver on their claimed virtues versus companies who don't even claim such virtues and instead pretend that it doesn't matter. Those who claim virtue are better even if they ultimately fail.
The argument in favor of absolute free speech for me was basically “let everyone hear everything and make up their own mind”. This presumes that people are swayed by the content of an argument. This is a false assumption, people are mostly swayed by the volume of the argument. This is well documented in psychological research. Now, if everyone had the same level of visibility for their personal speech this would just lead to an ersatz version of opinion democracy, where the most often held opinions would rise to the top, which wouldn’t be a bad thing.
But people don’t have equal visibility. The reach of a wealthy or famous person is so much greater that in the political arena basically only the speech of the wealthy and famous ends up having enough volume to convince people, even if it starts out wildly unpopular and even if it is objectively false. Social media are especially sensitive to this thanks to the ability to buy access to views without the viewers even realizing, to micro-target audiences, and to have zero independent vetting of what is said. This then perverts absolute free speech into a weapon used by the powerful to deceive and subvert democracies.
That’s why I think that to protect democracies we must have some limits on the ability to get speech amplification through (social) media, but I don’t have a hard and fast rule for what that should look like. It is far easier to say “let everything pass” but that is the easy way out and ultimately bad.
It's like living in darkness, and then someone invents light, and everyone cries "more light", and it's great, and then after a while the light gets so bright that it's blinding, making the light useless for its original purpose of letting you see things, and yet we still cry "more light" because we're afraid of going back to the darkness.
I don't know what new thing to replace the rallying cry if "free speech" with. Something about signal-to-noise ratio, but all the alternatives involve trusting people to moderate, which is obviously an undesirable property compared to the original concept, but I think it might be simply unavoidable. At a high enough level, free speech itself can be used to eliminate free speech.
There was a time period when the left was for free speech and the right was wanting to constrain it. Maybe its just a giant pendulum - there is no right/left difference when it comes to free speech - everyone wants to censor / filter the speech of the opposite side.
If things come in cycles, then I expect the right to take over more and more (see the european shift) and then for them to slowly become in favor of censorship. Maybe then - if we are lucky - the left will remember that censorship is always the enemy even if it helps them currently.
Freedom is a good in and of itself. Our rights don't need to serve a larger purpose.
Imagine asking for permission to read a book and being asked, "but what good would you reading this book do for society?" The answer of corse is that it doesn't matter -- our civil rights are not transactional -- they do not exist to serve others.
That's only half the story. The other half is tone. I have been persuaded against several beliefs that should have won me over if volume were the only consideration due to the quality of the writing. "These people type like morons, it's probably a belief primarily found amidst the stupid", as it were.
It’s not completely free speech here, but seems close and mostly pretty good results follow.
Well, you're the only person I've ever seen suggest that social media distribution be limited by author rather than viewpoint. Although I disagree, I'm not quite sure how that could be managed, either.
Controls on speech get perverted far worse and far faster, every single time. There is no perfect system where we can make everyone infinitely wise.
> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
Sounds like a hint to me. There are more free speech sites, e.g. saidit.net. I would wholeheartedly recommend staying away from it: it's a cesspool, like the other reddit wannabes. Voat also comes to mind. Freedom of speech on such sites only serves to say the worst of the worst, and that will predictably include escalating aggression towards other users.
This is exactly the right question to ask. I'm convinced that it's not possible to have constructive "free speech" social media platform. There's always the need for moderation.
It makes it hard to start a new platform. People start free-speech platforms with good intentions of having open debate about controversial topics. But they quickly get overrun by hate mongers and trolls, and become too noxious for most people to read. Intentional or not, it's a good strategy by the existing platforms to kick out the nasty people, ensuring that they're first to sign up for every new social network.
If someone is a racist bigot, they shouldn't be physically restrained(deleting posts is like physically covering someones' mouth) from being bigots but they should definitely be known for it. Then it's up to the community to decide how to interact with those people. That's how we do it in real life and works pretty well.
Another thing is the amplification: people pretending to be multiple people. This is also an issue, giving wrong impression about the state of the society and must be solved.
Lastly, we need some kind of spread management. We have the problem of BS getting huge traction and the correction getting no traction. Maybe everyone exposed to something should be re-exposed to the theme once there's a new development. For example, when people share someone's photo as a suspect and it turns out that the person in the photo is not the suspect, the platform can say "remember this Tweet? Yeah, there are some doubts about it. Just letting you know". The implementation of it wouldn't need a ministry of truth but an algo to track theme developments.
IMHO if Musk manages to solve these few problems, which I think he can, a free speech social media is possible.
I think the better question is, what harm does not having a free speech platform do? I think the answer is fairly evident when you look at how the ability to control speech has been used throughout history. The justification, I would also suggest, has always been the same as the ones being advanced now. People act like it was social media that revealed the fact that the masses will say terrible things when allowed, but in fact that was the common opinion for most of history.
To ensure that ideas that people want to be censored or deplatformed can be evaluated by others who want to see what they are.
If people are not able to read oposing viewpoints, it makes them less able to understand them, and why they are wrong.
Like it or not Twitter is about as good a compromise as you're going to get. The "free speech" places like Truth Social and Gab will happily boot you off if they don't like you. Twitter have a TOS where they are very forgiving - for the most part issuing suspensions for violations and allowing you to delete TOS-breaking tweets rather than banning you. The line for Twitter seems to be when there is actual real-world harm that can be directly attributed to your actions on the platform. So if you're getting banned from Twitter you need to have fucked up big time
I still think he is the best thing that came out of Paypal, but arguably that is not a tall order.
I've been on Gab since its inception - the only type of comments/users that get booted are those who engage in illegal speech. Illegal speech != distasteful/hateful/politically-charged/racist/sexist/divisive/etc.
https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-re...
Is hate speech right? In most cases, probably not unless you're saying things like "f..k all pedophiles who rape children", then it's righteously motivated. Is it legal? Yes. This is a very important distinction and what gives the USA its unique character and distinguishing trait among ALL other nations who do not have these types of freedoms codified in their constitutions...in fact, in many countries you'd be sacked quietly for saying the "wrong" thing - where "wrong" is defined by whomever happens to be in power (e.g. Russia, China come to mind)
Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does wiggle its eyebrows meaningfully in causation's direction.
Free speech on small fringe sites somehow doesn't count because it's not forced on people that don't want to see it. It's pretty clearly not a free speech issue at this point.
There's lots of things demonitized and not getting recommended.
But what else is censored?
Here, you've solved it. "The free market", both users and advertisers, demand content moderation. If you want to attract users, you need a website that isn't a cesspool of 'toxicity'. If you don't want to drive away those who actually pay for your website (advertisers), you'll need to moderate.
Reddit has proved this out - they started out trying to say they're hands off, and they'll only remove illegal content (ignoring how troublesome that is to define for a global website), and they've slowly learned over the years that they cannot grow their website with those policies.
You could say that you don't want to grow your platform, and stay a small niche, which is totally fine. That's what gab and parlor and 4chan are. We have them already!
And you'll know the death-knell for reddit is here when they crack down on the porn.
Agreed. Truth Social/Parlor as "Free speech" spaces is 100% laughable.
> The only somewhat free place I've seen is 4Chan but it contains so much toxicity, that's its barely bearable.
AKA: Every totally-free-no-holds-barred-speech sites, there is a reason it's a stupid goal held by people either too naive or those using it as a dog whistle.
> Yet again, I like that Musk and Kanye kind of people claim that they want free speech because at least we can hold them responsible when they don't deliver it.
Yes, because we have such a good track record of holding liars accountable...
> This is in contrast with the pure fascist where they cannot be held responsible for anything because they don't claim virtue in first place.
I can't even with this line. We have plenty of fascists running around claiming mountains of virtue and lying through their teeth. Their base/audience continues to blindly follow them and holding any of them accountable (especially by their base) is a pipe dream.
> It's a bit like companies doing greenwashing, which can be exposed when they don't deliver on their claimed virtues versus companies who don't even claim such virtues and instead pretend that it doesn't matter.
Again, this just isn't happening at scale.
> Those who claim virtue are better even if they ultimately fail.
False.
Free speech in the way it was envisaged in the constitution presumes there is a feedback loop back to the emitter of the speech. Anonymity breaks that feedback loop. Anyone who tells you that free speech without consequences has ever existed pretty much anywhere is lying to themselves and to you.
If you want anonymity you need some measure of bounds on speech in those places.
Anonymity is only a deterrent when you are the odd one out. When the President of the US is the one spouting the insanity you don't have to hide anymore.
Yes, because in the real world - if you say something hateful enough to the wrong person - you'll get your head knocked off.
So people have some sort of filter.
When you take that away - the trolls with no lives come out just to agrivate people because misery demands company.
Everyone thinking "we need free speech on Twitter" has lost the plot, and, as you mentioned, the revealed preference of people who claim they want free speech is actually toward heavier moderation (but moderation they like).
Most of them go on Twitter for one kind of content, and on Parler or "Truth" Social for another kind, and they don't really want the streams to cross. We used to have this in the 90's and early 2000's. The question is how to get it back.
a) new entrants can't exist ( Parler, Truth.. whatever ) b) the rules are so generic that they ensure given platform can ban whatever
And this is why people clamor for simple free speech slogan.
If this is how we understand it, then we do need free speech.
Most people who declare their affinity for a value or policy or position merely do so tactically; they think that there's a short-term relationship between the furthering of some movement and their ability to get closer to what they want. Such people are allies when convenient.
Really? They've never defined free speech, so how can we hold them accountable?
The idea of a "free speech absolutist" is a complete joke destined for legal consequences. For example, I don't think they mean free speech is the ability to post obscene content, threats, state secrets, corporate IP, or any other legal restrictions on free speech: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_free_speech_exce...
Plus, there are all kinds of free speech reductions they could make, like only allowing palatable content onto top trending recommendations. So, you're not banning free speech, but you're actively restricting it based on what's attractive to advertisers or even the general public.
If they said "all legally permitted speech on our platform will be given the same protection and visibility based on metrics that do no include the meaning of the speech", then that would be something concrete that we could hold them accountable to.
Free speech opponents always like to point to these examples when the topic of free speech comes up, but I've never seen free speech advocates use an example of any of these as examples of problematic censorship - instead, they (we) point out voluminous examples of unfashionable opinions being removed. In fact, if Kanye or Musk came out and said "free speech except for" and listed your (specific, easily definable) examples, I'd still agree with them that they were advocating for free speech.
I posit that this is the unavoidable result of free speech absolutism.
People like their idea of what absolute free speech will be like, but they don't like the real thing when they see it.
It's unclear from your comment. Are you saying that Musk and West are our free speech champions and everybody else is a poser?
Because Musk and West do not care about free speech either. It's the problem these rich idiots all claim to have: "I need a platform where my voice can be heard," while their voice already gets top spot on the trending Twitter page and on newspaper front pages.
Of course Michael Spicer said it better: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrqhgTjFkLo
And even 4chan has rules and mods to enforce them.
What free speech has meant historically is "I don't believe the government should be able to criminalize certain kinds of speech." It never meant "I am entitled to insert garbage into someone else's newspaper or book" until people started misappropriating the term.
Most people who are in favor of free speech, are perfectly fine with you personally clicking the block button.
Instead, what they don't want, is a centralized platform preventing consenting parties from engaging with each other.
See the difference?
What's the plan to do that when they censor all dissent on the platforms they just bought?
The only thing these networks censor is anything that is illegal in their hosted jurisdiction i.e the US.
welcome to true free speech on the internet. the worst and most abrasive of the bunch drive everyone away.
Almost as if allowing absolute free speech has consequences, almost as if there was a reason absolute free speech isn't a thing anywhere in the world... we might be onto something
I’d argue that every place that allows every kind of speech without restriction will eventually degenerate into a cesspit. You lose the reasonable people quickly because they don’t want to deal with the toxicity and it’s all downhill from there.
> The paradox of tolerance states that if a society is tolerant without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or destroyed by the intolerant. Karl Popper described it as the seemingly self-contradictory idea that in order to maintain a tolerant society, the society must retain the right to be intolerant of intolerance.
If that was done, then there would be far less issues here. Those who want free speech focused platforms could create them, and those who didn't want to use them wouldn't have to. The problem at the moment is that not only is there no place for free speech online, but any attempts at creating one can be bullied off the internet by an angry mob on social media because of companies and PR.
These are people who have a track record of evading responsibility.
This is a common but I believe overstated, even naive, ideal. What exactly does "holding them responsible" even truly mean? If a company is greenwashing and they are still emitting carbon, what really is the difference between the company who never claimed to care at all? The carbon is emitted all the same. "Oh, the stock price would fall because investors would lose trust." But greenwashing is a dime a dozen these days and I think the investors/upper class know that greenwashing is just marketing and don’t truly expect/care about the cause.
Regarding this, how does anyone hold Parler accountable for making a platform of "free speech"? Either you sign up or you don’t. If you sign up and complain they aren’t extreme enough, they don’t care or at least they don’t have any material reason to care. If you don’t, where else are you going to go? Twitter? But the whole demographic is people who didn’t like Twitter in the first place and want to be with their kind. So how do you "hold them accountable" without say, legislation, regulation, and government oversight, something today’s "free" speech advocates are opposed to?
It's incredibly tiresome, not just online but in real life. There is no freedom vs control debate. There's just the people who advocate arresting those who teach their children inconvenient truths vs those who advocate arresting those who use naughty language.
Yes, this is what you'll end up getting on so called 'free speech' platforms. Because, unfortunately, these days what people really mean when they say 'free speech' is actually a veil for them to say hateful things about marginalized groups of people.
And what might we learn from this?
What does "holding them responsible" look like? Making pseudo-anonymous comments on HN calling them out?
Giving them the benefit of the doubt at this point that they are acting in good faith seems hopelessly naïve and exactly the smokescreen they are looking for. They're saying whatever Bullshit(tm) it takes to get through this week with the best possible outcome, and you want to circle back in a couple years? No one will care or remember remember what the initial statement was.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Bullshit#Lying_and_bullsh...
It's very interesting that you don't see the straight line between "absolute" free speech and toxicity.
Absolute free speech IRL is moderated by physical and emotional stimuli and inhibitions against direct confrontation and bucking social norms. There are also legal repercussions, such as libel or defamation suits, for particularly harmful speech. The anonymity, and lack of accountability or feedback to one's words makes people far less inhibited online.
You've found the problem. There _are_ "anything legal" online spaces, and they _suck_. There's no way to have 0 moderation and not have the place turn basically into 4Chan.
If people really want to be on totally free speech platforms, they can just go on 4Chan, but what they really want is to force everyone else to engage with the toxic shit they want to say and no one else wants to hear.
* it was not actively illegal (CP, terrorism etc)
* hacked info
* deadnaming trans people
Is that not the case anymore?
Edit: typo
Easy. Allow all legal speech, but make it very easy for each individual user to block what they don’t want to see.
Maybe even allow external providers to offer filters. Like an App Store but for content filters.
Let each individual decide how much and what kind of censorship they want.
How do you propose to do that, if you can't hold reddit, twitter et al accountable for the same today?
That is what happens when speech is free from consequences.
Can you give examples?
A lot of posters are claiming Kanye is mentally ill and unable to manage his own affairs. What is the direct evidence of this? And I don't simply mean "provide examples of opinions he's said that I don't understand or care for".
I think it's pretty dangerous to be labeling people involved in the national dialogue as mentally ill without a diagnosis, or at least some substantial and direct evidence. This label could be weaponized by an authoritarian political movement in a very dangerous way if that's the precedent we're using.
One such was, according to him, an occasion when "they handcuffed him, drugged him, put him on the bed".
Now despite this, I also don't agree with just handwaving the discussions then, like, oh he's mad, so everything strange thing he does must be because of that. I think that it's perfectly valid to be mentally ill on one hand, and a huge asshole on the other. A strong motivator for sure, but illness is not a character trait, mental or not.
https://people.com/music/kanye-west-opens-up-about-bipolar-d...
On a second thought, I'd also like to add that the human psyche is not a solved problem. An average outside observer absolutely can't tell if an out of place thing is because of illness, or something other than that. Even the "standard" way to recognize and classify mental disorders, the DSM-5, changes from one edition to the other.
We could even say that mental illness is defined by falling significantly out of alignment with the median mind of society. A mentally healthy person in our modern society might be seen as completely insane and unwell in a hunter gatherer tribe.
But we generally don't get to work out who was just mentally ill with no value and who was a value add until well after their death.
"Society honors its living conformists and its dead troublemakers."
I think this is a lot less dangerous than you think. When people throw around terms like "groomer", "nazi", and "abuser" with reckless abandon, labelling someone as "bipolar" hardly compares. Ultimately anyone that agrees with what Kanye is saying will not be swayed by the label, neither will those who disagree with him by the lack thereof.
A lot of the commentary about his mental illness seems to be focused on trying to find an explanation for why his ideas and positions seem to have radically shifted in the last few years. Honestly, it kind of gives him an "out". If he was not afflicted by some kind of mental illness when he called for "Death con 5", his actions are even more morally suspect.
Go to Speakers Corner and have a go. Put up a website. Buy a TV/Radio station, or Internet provider.
Censoring individual twits is one thing, but banning entire account is a different thing, because now it restricts your ability to interact with elected officials.
Besides, equal time rule demands that TV and radio stations(private and public) give equal time to competing politicians. There are exceptions, but logically it should extend to social media and video hosting sites, because they are today’s version of radio and TV stations.
On top of that, I would argue social media became the only mean of public assembly, which is a protected right, during Covid lockdown. Politicians pay attention to twitter, you can’t assemble by the city hall with banners to express your opinion, because you are to stay home. The next closest thing is to swarm twitter and facebook, given how closely they watch trends there.
There is no fundamental reason this is an unchangeable true. A lot of the noise around Section 230 repeal and other laws being passed in places like Texas are designed to alter exactly this norm.
Personally I am not sure if I would change it or not, I am just pointing out that it is far from written in stone...
If we required artists be 100% free of mental illness, we would not have Van Gogh, Georgia O'Keeffe, Kusama Yayoi, Michelangelo, Brian Wilson, etc. Let him be him, enjoy what he creates, and take it all with a grain of salt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art
Just learned about this at the Mori Art Museum, since your username is dudeinjapan.
- Kanye just had his bank account closed by JP Morgan (for what appears to be his beliefs)
https://www.tmz.com/2022/10/13/kanye-west-bank-jp-morgan-end...
- Kanye was kicked off instagram & twitter
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/kanye-west-ins...
- It's still unclear exactly why both occurred. Supposedly it's antisemitism, but he also just wore a "white lives matter" shirt
https://nypost.com/2022/10/07/kanye-west-defends-white-lives...
The connection between all of this could lead someone to want to buy their own social media company.
Ye saying he's "going to go defcon 3 on the Jews" is absolutely antisemitic and absolutely why he got restricted on Twitter. [0] That's the tweet that was received moderation, and its subject matter is very clear. I don't see how one could be unclear of why that got removed or unclear that's it's antisemitic.
Wearing a shirt doesn't magical erase one's behavior. "White lives matter," "All lives matter", it does not matter; what a shirt says won't make his antisemitic comments not antisemitic. Kinda like staring a sentence "I'm not a racist but..." doesn't make whatever racist comment that follows not racist.
As an aside him wearing the shirt isn't in support of Jews or white lives, it's him being funny/ironic. Read your own source. When you have a "<minority> lives matter" it's about speaking up for an un/under-represented group. White lives matter is a joke, as they are the majority. To paraphrase your source, it's funny because it's a black man stating the obvious.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/09/entertainment/kanye-west-twit...
The recent statements about Jews and the "white lives matter" thing are both after that letter. That it was instead retaliation for "his beliefs" is a convenient inference his camp is happy for people to draw though.
The article quotes Kanye on this one:
> "I went to JP Morgan but of course they won't give me no deal flow cause Jin Ulrich is on the board of both adidas and JP Morgan."
This sounds like an accusation of conflict of interest. How is this related to his beliefs?
In my opinion controversy and political incorrectness are Okay. I don't think people should be too concerned about hurting others' feelings when discussing objective phenomena or expressing their own opinion (as long as they acknowledge their subjectivity) . Nevertheless obvious (although not to everyone) absurd, blatant lies and manipulations shouldn't be covered by the free speech umbrella. I wish people could correctly judge what they read themselves, taking what they read and what they feel critically, but many apparently can not.
This would be a good rule, but there's no objective, especially no objective phenomena.
So what remains is that we can strive to be truthful, while trying not to be hurtful. Assertive communication, I-messages (communicating one's own account, instead of putting the other in focus), studying fallacies and trying to avoid them, things like that.
"Capitalism is the problem", "modern employment is wage slavery". These are absurd, blatant lies meant to manipulate. Would you have statements like that removed?
Humans are fallible. We like to think we could build something where people can talk freely, but if the ability to censor something we don't like is presented, at some point nearly everybody will take that action because they personally deem it necessary for some greater good.
Ultimately, protocols that cannot be altered or censored (at least without significant and difficult amounts of effort) are what are necessary to obtain true free speech.
There are some groups that are understanding this, and working accordingly. LBRY for example, says exactly this in their "what is LBRY" article:
> Building protocols, not platforms, is the best way to secure a free, open internet.
As long as people use centralized services that are susceptible to fallible human intervention, that fallibility will be acted upon.
Centralization was adequate back when the internet was first brewing. Many people had common interests, people were respectful of others' data often enough that encrypted network protocols weren't deemed necessary. Now, encryption is almost required because so many people have bad intentions. The internet has grown, and so have the amount of conflicting demographics using it.
Just as we had to adopt encryption on a wide scale to keep the internet usable, adopting decentralization at a wide scale will be too. And that includes making it easy enough for normies to access that they think nothing else of it, much like how they don't care what encryption is, as long as there's a lock icon in their search bar.
Child Porn, Revenge Porn, National Defense secrets leaking, instructions for Chlorine Gas masquerading as instructions for making Play-Doh, libel and slander, weaponized disinformation, doxxing, harassment, threats of violence.
I get there are advantages to avoiding censure, in many extremely important situations.
But don't pretend like it doesn't also hurt people.
It doesn't necessarily have to be super expensive to run what is essentially a forum, especially if it's not going to hit massive scale. The only problem is that I don't think owning these platforms will give the kind of cultural relevance that these wealthy far-right types are chasing. So at some point they're going to lose interest and then you're back to the business model problem.
Ye on Parler will present a pretty clear challenge to US norms of freedom of speech - he is a vocal anti-semite (whilst at the same time claiming to be Jewish)and I doubt very much that ownership of any platform will moderate his views.
You know, there's a name for this. It's called a black Israelite.
Its one of the ways we are able to identify dirty money in politics as when they do that its easy to track it as opposed to a cash infusion from the platform owner.
Not to excuse his actions. I'd rather like to know wtf he's talking about and why.he would say something like this.
It makes sense that the "more free" platforms tend to attract people from the right because highly moderated platforms tend to censor right wing discussion more than left wing discussion. More extreme people are kicked off each platform successively until they end up places like 4chan. The opposite would be true if the mainstream advocated right wing politics, forcing left wing people onto the fringes. Similar to what happened pre-internet with the 60s counterculture, left wing ideas were found in the underground, whilst mainstream media pushed right wing ideas.
Is it though? A lot of this free speech stuff usually boils down to "I wanted to say the n word on facebook". I'm not aware of any conservatives being arrested by the US government because they advocated for free market capitalism.
On the other hand, society resolved through politics (such as Affirmative Action) that the compound interest and lasting synergistic effects of historical discrimination should be compensated for somewhat. The only way to do that is through more discrimination (i.e. relatively penalizing the least historically discriminated-against people).
I suspect this selective enforcement of the rules is one kind of such relative penalization.
What I don't understand is why do private companies take it upon themselves to do this. Is it genuine stakeholder concern (in conflict with profits)? ESG criteria giving them access to cheaper funding or tax breaks? Plain marketing? Virtue signalling?
Are you sure? It's been a few years since I purged all social media from my life, but three years ago, it was going around and seemingly well-documented with screenshots that saying "men are trash" would get your post auto-deleted and your account sanctioned on Facebook.
This seems like another of those things where extremists on all sides believe they're being uniquely persecuted and some other side of the spectrum is given free reign, when more likely than not most mainstream platforms are pretty centrist.
Moderation[0] is not censorship. It just means having a productive conversation and debate without name-calling, slurs, and other malfeasance. "Trash" is not a harmful word, but inciting violence against an ethnic group definitely is harmful. There's also historical baggage attached to ethnic groups such as the Jews who were persecuted in an actual war and genocide. "Men" is too generic.
I'm not supporting Ye or any of his bullshit, but some of the comments on here are really chillingly authoritarian.
Parler isn't going to be able to maintain "free speech" even if they or Kanye want it to, which I seriously doubt anyway. They don't "have it now" and they won't have it tomorrow either. Still, it's strange how HN flips so violently against free speech when the content is obviously offensive and low quality.
People need to be better stewards of their own beliefs, not simply shielded from malicious, dim or unsavory ones out there in public.
As an aside, I can't believe celebrities have the sway they do. Today's breed talks like such imbeciles; I have no idea how they keep people's interest.
My belief is that public forums with reach into the tens or hundreds of millions are fertile ground for nationalist and genocidal movements, and they will be used for that purpose if it is not actively prevented.
Moderation of wide-reach public forums with the goal of preventing movements causing mass death and misery is perfectly consistent with my own beliefs about the value, conditions, and limits of free speech. You might believe differently, even oppose these beliefs, but the idea that the only correct stance is yours and all moral, rational people will converge on it is ridiculous.
What are you thoughts on free speech regarding misinformation or election denial?
When so many republican candidates reject the result of 2020, what's the right answer? Allow them to continue to divide the country up until half of the populace no longer trusts the democracy and starts another civil war?
Correct, because they allow EU users to sign up and therefore has to comply with various European countries content laws (including GDPR). Depending on their size and amount of users they could also be forced to store data on EU servers. They would have to remove material illegal in some countries if they have users from said country, i.e German users on Parler posting Nazi material are committing a crime, Parler needs to be able to remove it in time, or face consequences.
Same goes for HN. Sure many small services that let EU citizens sign up on them fly under the radar, but won't for long when more and more people complain to the authorities.
Look at Truth Social, it's not available in the EU because they would face fines if it was and they know it.
In the end it's pretty simple. Do you allow EU users on your platform? Then you need content moderation.
This is not an HN phenomenon. NYT/WaPo and the left machine is operating on anti-free speech mode right now in combination with Big Corporate + ESG. (See Cloudflare and Kiwifarms issue recently).
this is the result of years of propaganda enacted on an unsuspecting, smartphone-using populace. before the smartphone, the venn diagram of "advocate of free speech" and "Internet user" was a circle—look how far we've fallen since then.
Free speech, and by free they mean speech that they can control.
I feel old and confused.
I feel there's already disproportionate discussion here about a person and their cult of personality here. This doesn't feel quite in the spirit of HN. Even during the Elon Musk Twitter debacles there was still separate threads about the business dynamics and whether he is playing some kind of 4D chess. The attempts to quickly discredits Ye West's other accomplishment feels borderline like anti-blackness, except with the passive aggressive pretense of being concerned about his mental well-being. For example, Kanye West was part of the Fendi intern cohort which, as a former fashion design student myself, I find to be far more exclusive and prestigious than a Google internship (which I was offered). He's not just a musician but he's behind the scenes for making other established artists including Jay-Z and Beyonce, also billionaires. Even the title of the article being "Kanye West is buying Parler" feels disrespect when he said he goes by Ye, now. This is inconsistent with tech's community plight of respecting self-identification.
This is a community to talk about entrepreneurship, so let's talk about that. How are people jumping to the conclusion that he is being "scammed" without even knowing the terms of the deal? On that note, how much do you think this acquisition will go for? I noticed Parler has 3.3K ratings average 3 stars on the IOs App Store and Truth Social has 121k, averaging 4.5 stars. I will go out on a limb and question whether the 4D chess with Twitter and Parler will somehow involve Truth Social / DWAC.
Entrepreneurship is something you do for a living. A mean to get satisfaction and something you do to feel good.
You can have the best numbers but still be despised by the business community because of the way you act, and similarly nobody in the business community would trade places with you despite your amazing numbers because the way you act denotes mental illness. Money is worth nothing if you have mental illness.
It's exactly the case for Musk and West.
Let's hope he finds and accepts help.
Musk and Trump's audiences, I'll admit to guessing about this, are passionate for sure, but:
- In Trump's case, tech literacy is low, the average age is relatively high, and disposable time they have, is probably low
- Musk's audience is undoubtedly tech literate, but I would guess that the age demographic is similar to Trump's, and would further guess their disposable time is similar, if not lower (we nerds barely have time for HN!)
Kanye's audience though... They're young, and they already live online. I can't imagine it overtaking Twitter at any point in the future, but I can definitely imagine the venture gaining more traction than Trump's attempt. And that will encourage other similarly minded business people to support his venture.
This is most critical for judgements that lead to consequential decisions and actions. Whether you love someone or hate them, those feelings lead to bad outcomes if not based on correct information and reasoning.
He becomes Kanye. Apart of this is a challenge to his audience. Do you STILL listen?
Or maybe they don't give a damn because they are also financially benefiting from this guy's mental illness?
If I wanted racist-idiot-news, I'd go to reddit.
It may be hard to understand for some, but there are topics that make people highly uncomfortable. These people prefer an environment that 'protects' them from fringe ideas.
The issue is, the 'Overton Enforcement' doesn't work when a large minority (say, 30% of users) has ideas considered highly controversial to the majority of users. Most people actually do want to live in a bubble most of the time so being exposed to these opinions undermines their sanity.
A 100% free speech platform could work fairly well though if it was sophisticated enough to understand what a user does and doesn't want to see and then only occasionally expose them to controversial content. Kind of like TikTok's 'for you' page but with less censorship. Or, perhaps, let users control their exposure directly. Twitter doesn't have the technical capability to pull this off though so they are stuck with occasionally infuriating large minorities of users.
A simple solution would be federation - let people build and choose their own bubbles instead of forcing everyone into a one giant bubble. That's how it works in real-life.
