Lately I see a lot of calls do have specific instances defederated for a particular subset of reasons:

  • Don’t like their content
  • Dont like their political leaning
  • Dont like their free speech approach
  • General feeling of being offended
  • I want a safe space!
  • This instance if hurting vulnerable people

I personally find each and every one of these arguments invalid. Everybody has the right to live in an echo chamber, but mandating it for everyone else is something that goes a bit too far.

Has humanity really developed into a situation where words and thoughts are more hurtful than sticks and stones?

Edit: Original context https://slrpnk.net/post/554148

Controversial topic, feel free to discuss!

  • goat
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    8
    ·
    1 year ago

    Has humanity really developed into a situation where words and thoughts are more hurtful than sticks and stones?

    Just Americans want this stuff. It’s a part of their culture.

    • kakes
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 year ago

      Do y’all really think this is a cultural thing? This is a human thing - always has been. Why do you guys think we’ve been throwing the sticks and stones in the first place?

      • goat
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        6
        ·
        1 year ago

        bad argument. We’ve always been shitting on the ground yet now we use toilets.

    • 🐱TheCat
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Overly simplistic take. In the USA you can carry around nazi flags and heil hitler if you want. Not so in Europe.

      I’m not arguing our approach is better, but ‘just Americans want this stuff’ is too simple to be correct.

      • goat
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yeah, Neo-Nazism is unfortunately global, and not entirely caused by the us alone.

        But Hastur’s point was that there are too many safespaces.

    • HasturOPM
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      It’s not the first time I encountered this and unfortunately I can say: It’s becoming a European thing as well.

      • goat
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        Americanisation is global.

        • HasturOPM
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Let’s accepts this as given, it takes us to the question: Why?

          I mean early globalisation brought us Donutsz McDonald’s, Coke and an obesity pandemic, fine.

          But why and when did this trend start to demand safe spaces everywhere?

          • goat
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            There are a few different reasons, and it depends on the safespaces. Some safespaces are financially incentivised.

            Really it’s the media people consume. Also doesn’t help that yanks assume everyone they talk to is from their country.