That sentence doesn’t propose banning people for extreme content but for who they happen to be regardless of how they behave in the forum.
Saying that certain people who belong to a certain social group that’s generally accepted in good company to be the outgroup should be banned outright, seems to advocate something that’s very similar to bullying.
I do think it makes sense to ban users who only join a forum like LessWrong to push one particular political perspective. Those people might be “Nazis” but they could also have many different causes.
The moral of the story is: if you’re against witch-hunts, and you promise to found your own little utopian community where witch-hunts will never happen, your new society will end up consisting of approximately three principled civil libertarians and seven zillion witches. It will be a terrible place to live even if witch-hunts are genuinely wrong.
You have to ban some things to implement basic standards. For instance, here are the list of banned topics from a space I used to moderate (well, still do but it’s mostly quiet now):
-Racism, virulent political ideologies, etc. - even if they’re clothed in “scientific” guises. “HBD” and the like are explicitly not welcome.
-Harsh, insulting language. Telling someone you think they’re wrong is fine, cursing them out isn’t.
-Pornography or any other sexually explicit or highly suggestive content.
-Any form of “doxxing”, offsite harassment, etc. except in cases of preventing serious crimes—and if we ever get to that point things will have gone deeply wrong here!
These sorts of restrictions have not in my view led to bullying—instead, in many respects they’ve led to there being a safer space, where people don’t have to worry about certain types of bad content that can be prevalent online.
LessWrong is a forum that does have basic standards without banning people for their political views. It has different dynamics of how content standards are enforced then banning.
That sentence doesn’t propose banning people for extreme content but for who they happen to be regardless of how they behave in the forum.
Saying that certain people who belong to a certain social group that’s generally accepted in good company to be the outgroup should be banned outright, seems to advocate something that’s very similar to bullying.
I do think it makes sense to ban users who only join a forum like LessWrong to push one particular political perspective. Those people might be “Nazis” but they could also have many different causes.
As Scott writes:
You have to ban some things to implement basic standards. For instance, here are the list of banned topics from a space I used to moderate (well, still do but it’s mostly quiet now):
These sorts of restrictions have not in my view led to bullying—instead, in many respects they’ve led to there being a safer space, where people don’t have to worry about certain types of bad content that can be prevalent online.
LessWrong is a forum that does have basic standards without banning people for their political views. It has different dynamics of how content standards are enforced then banning.