[The New Yorker] Alex Jones, the First Amendment, and the Digital Public Square

Yes... yes it actually is relatively new.

 

Huh? It’s clearly commercial available now and being used.

It doesn’t matter if it’s new or not.... that’s just a distraction to the issue at hand.

 

It's a fair concern.

I disagree strongly with most right wing new-media darlings like Molyneux, PJW, Gavin McGinnis, etc. But what I do know is that they are very explicit and consistent in their denunciation of violence & harassment.

One of David Pakman's best points on this is that, statistically speaking, whenever anyone gets an audience large enough, there comes a point where we should expect that even a rational, valid criticism of someone will result in some lunatic being inspired to do harm to the subject of that critique.

It's a problem that has no clear solution. The one thing I am certain of, however, is that censorship typically only makes this problem worse and not better.

Even as a straight white male, if I'm the target of someone's ire simply because of my immutable characteristics due to their radicalization by someone who hates straight white males, then I think the best tool at my disposal is an open platform that allows me to persuade people against hating me.

 

How can you know deepfakes are "relatively new"? (What does that mean in numbers?) Do you agree that there is much technology that the public has never seen?

How do you know the CIA did not develop it? Did they tell you so?

I don't need evidence. You do. You say that deepfake technology is new. I say, is it? Animation is quite old. Disney's first computer animated film came out in 1995. What was the FBI/CIA level of computer animation in 1995? At least better than Disney, right?

 

What hill are you trying to die on here, and why? This doesn't seem like a rabbit hole worth diving down.

 

I'm just saying, I highly doubt that this **** got invented a year or two ago. Take it as you will.

(Note that the Pelosi video, successful enough to be tweeted by the president, was not even deepfake technology.)

 

I really don't want to sound like I'm combative and that zero hate crimes agaisnt white males for the sake of being white males has ever occurred but at the end of the day, you are a part of a majority. You are not often isolated. Minority groups like Muslims or Jews are, hence there is a significantly higher chance that a Muslim or Jew might be singled out for harassment than a white male because they are easily identifiable amongst an American crowd. Strength in numbers. Also, the narrative that the left is against "white males" comes from the likes of Crowder, Shapiro Molenuex etc. It doesn't necessarily come from the left at least the vast majority of the left. Anti-Muslim rhetoric comes from the MAJORITY of right wing YouTube personalities. It's a severe difference I think you have a blind spot for.

Also right wing personalities have a long history of making explicitly violent claims and then backtracking them as "I was just joking". Look at Gavin as a easy off the top example.

I disagree with the open platform part. Youtube political channels are self contained in bubbles. A Ben Shaprio/Crowder fan isn't going to have David Packman videos in his or her recommended feed.

 

Hollywood developed it, it's just easily accessible now to the point that anyone can do it and that is the issue.

I think we are going to enter this odd world where we have to keep a check on this stuff. It's going to really suck for dictators and authoritarians in other countries as this is the perfect tool to frame your enemies into whatever you can imagine.

Right now, there's still a bit of uncanny valley for deepfake videos but I can't imagine them getting worse...but yeah, this is another topic for another thread and I'm sure it'll pop up down the line.

 

Many Americans are Muslims or Jews.

 

Okay? Muslims and Jews consist of 3% of the population in the US and those populations are often concentrated. A Muslim can travel to middle America and be the sole Muslim in a 50 mile radius.

 

What if I told you that I was a minority in the town I grew up in? At the college I went to? In my profession? In my religion? In the neighborhood I live in?

This has not been my personal experience. Clearly not all on the left have an axe to grind against straights, whites, or males, but you can obviously bet that anyone who does is almost certainly on the left.

I don't deny that at all. Most of the critics we have of Islam are on the right, or at the very least decidedly not on the left anymore -- mostly because leftists have chased away all reasonable critics of Islam from their own tent. I don't know if it is fair to say that most right wingers are anti-muslim (whatever that means) but obviously most critics of Islam are not on the left.

 

So?

You know a Jew when you see him, do ya?
And a Muslim?

What's a Jew look like?

 

I don't know. Ask Nazis how they isolated them and systematically put them in death camps.

 

OMG now you're pulling the Holocaust in? You are shameless. You're on the Nazi side, d******d. You know the Jew just by looking at him. What does he look like?

 

There is reasonable criticism of Islam and then there is high horse criticism of Islam as in criticism of Islam not from a sincere standpoint to solve problems but to feel better about yourself that you aren't a Muslim. That is the standpoint that the right wing criticizes Muslims. You can see this with how they handle homosexuality when they only defend gay rights in context to Muslims. Also, the lead figurehead of the right currently, Donald Trump, explicitly in third person proudly claimed a desire to ban all Muslim immigration with a cheerful crowd. That isn't criticism of Islam. That is systemic hatred of all Muslims.

 

You're a college English teacher?

 

Tell us all how to easily identify a Jew.

 

Are Muslims easily identifiable? Why are you not taking offense to that part?

 

You could also ask the Muslims how they isolated and systematically killed the unbelievers.