It’s been nice to see ordinary Americans open up to life in China but everyone is acting blind to their censorship. Makes me thankful for the fediverse and being able to self host my own instance.
It’s been nice to see ordinary Americans open up to life in China but everyone is acting blind to their censorship. Makes me thankful for the fediverse and being able to self host my own instance.
It’s far easier to lie than it is to correct a lie. When the Nazis come out into the open they spew a stream of lies in minutes that can take months to refute, leaving the field to the lies to spread and fester.
And that’s even assuming you think refutation works at all. (Protip: it works so rarely that you can treat instances where it did as statistical aberration.)
Try one of their lines and I’ll refute it in 2 sentences…
None of what you said is a good argument for censorship in my opinion.
You’ll disagree with it. You won’t refute it. You’ll walk away feeling better and convinced that you “won” but in reality you’ll have just marked yourself as an “enemy” to be ignored. (The human brain is very adept at compartmentalizing things.)
Actual refutation of a toxic idea whose seed has been planted requires detailed deconstruction and reconstruction. It is time-consuming, it is exhausting, and it is unreliable to boot. (C.f. above that compartmentalizing of things.) There is a reason why governments and centuries come and go but culture remains recognizable over the millennia. Once minds are set, they’re ludicrously difficult to unset.
I’m going to guess, however, that you will not take this to heart. Ironically for the same reason that your “refutation” (actually mere disagreement) won’t take.
Refutation does not equal correction in this circumstance. Simply discrediting their rhetoric in a discussion does not necessarily reverse the effect it has on the less critical-minded. They can overwhelm via a strategy of “lie early, lie often”.