You pose the question "tell me how this is a winning strategy?" as a challenge. So, here is my attempt.
Just to clarify, I have a lot of sympathy for the position that you, Greenwald, Frank, and others are arguing. I love the spirit of it, even. I have both conservative and progressive friends and I just want everyone to feel content that they have been treated fairly, whoever takes home the elections.
Whether or not a strategy is winning, depends on what metric is used to evaluate it. I don't think the metric being used by the shutdown-ers is "Democrats' ability to win elections". The problem that my leftie friends talk about (all the time) is the growth of the various strands of the alt-right. They are estimating/predicting that unless extraordinary tactics are used to hinder the ability of these movements to 1) coordinate their activities, and 2) persuade newcomers to join them, then these movements will grow to a significant extent. Shutting down Parler would be an example of 1), since this makes it difficult for the members to communicate among themselves. Banning alt-right leaders leaders from social media would be 2).
They also predict that if those movements grow too much, they will start being a constant problem that causes significant harm to society (I suppose the Capitol Riot would be one example - Donald Trump's many weird attempts to influence the election appear to be another).
If we think of the strategy as an attempt to "take one for the team" and take a hit in the polls in order to suppress a future (or contemporary?) problem, then it's a little bit easier to argue.
First, can banning extremist users make it more difficult for them to coordinate? I'd say it's reasonable to believe so, although with modern technology it's probably impossible to completely stop it. They can pay each other with bitcoins, or use any of the hundreds of strongly encrypted messengers/social media apps. But banning them on mainstream services still inconveniences them since it can make it more difficult for them to reach out to new people, and if any of them are less than decently tech-savvy it's goodbye for them.
Second, will it stop recruitment? It's difficult to say, but arguably yes since on the mainstream platforms they can benefit from exposure through the content recommendation algorithms used by Youtube et. al. An obvious counter-point would be to just adjust the algorithm to artificially punish them instead. This can even be done in secret, so avoids the negative PR of holding a censorship campaign, or a hypothetical Streisand effect.
This could be done more carefully and in more depth, but I'll stop here. I'll add that I agree that these politicians seem to be weirdly unaware of how bad it looks, and strangely unaware of how much of a trade-off the strategy really is: we are sacrificing our liberalism in order to (maybe) slow the growth of an illiberal, dangerous movement. This is not supposed to feel like a no-brainer; it's actually a dilemma!
Erik. I love your work. But have a fundamental disagreement with the way you are coming at this issue. I think you’d agree that every other statement from just about any right wing pol or media member is a lie. Perhaps you’d also agree that fascism is on the march in the USA. Fox News and right wing radio are enormously popular here so the idea that conservatives have no outlet just isn’t true. So here’s where you and I disagree. I think your conclusion is basically - fascist propaganda isn’t nearly the problem that the way the liberals are trying to deal with it is.
Deplatforming trump has worked out pretty damn well.
You pose the question "tell me how this is a winning strategy?" as a challenge. So, here is my attempt.
Just to clarify, I have a lot of sympathy for the position that you, Greenwald, Frank, and others are arguing. I love the spirit of it, even. I have both conservative and progressive friends and I just want everyone to feel content that they have been treated fairly, whoever takes home the elections.
Whether or not a strategy is winning, depends on what metric is used to evaluate it. I don't think the metric being used by the shutdown-ers is "Democrats' ability to win elections". The problem that my leftie friends talk about (all the time) is the growth of the various strands of the alt-right. They are estimating/predicting that unless extraordinary tactics are used to hinder the ability of these movements to 1) coordinate their activities, and 2) persuade newcomers to join them, then these movements will grow to a significant extent. Shutting down Parler would be an example of 1), since this makes it difficult for the members to communicate among themselves. Banning alt-right leaders leaders from social media would be 2).
They also predict that if those movements grow too much, they will start being a constant problem that causes significant harm to society (I suppose the Capitol Riot would be one example - Donald Trump's many weird attempts to influence the election appear to be another).
If we think of the strategy as an attempt to "take one for the team" and take a hit in the polls in order to suppress a future (or contemporary?) problem, then it's a little bit easier to argue.
First, can banning extremist users make it more difficult for them to coordinate? I'd say it's reasonable to believe so, although with modern technology it's probably impossible to completely stop it. They can pay each other with bitcoins, or use any of the hundreds of strongly encrypted messengers/social media apps. But banning them on mainstream services still inconveniences them since it can make it more difficult for them to reach out to new people, and if any of them are less than decently tech-savvy it's goodbye for them.
Second, will it stop recruitment? It's difficult to say, but arguably yes since on the mainstream platforms they can benefit from exposure through the content recommendation algorithms used by Youtube et. al. An obvious counter-point would be to just adjust the algorithm to artificially punish them instead. This can even be done in secret, so avoids the negative PR of holding a censorship campaign, or a hypothetical Streisand effect.
This could be done more carefully and in more depth, but I'll stop here. I'll add that I agree that these politicians seem to be weirdly unaware of how bad it looks, and strangely unaware of how much of a trade-off the strategy really is: we are sacrificing our liberalism in order to (maybe) slow the growth of an illiberal, dangerous movement. This is not supposed to feel like a no-brainer; it's actually a dilemma!
Erik. I love your work. But have a fundamental disagreement with the way you are coming at this issue. I think you’d agree that every other statement from just about any right wing pol or media member is a lie. Perhaps you’d also agree that fascism is on the march in the USA. Fox News and right wing radio are enormously popular here so the idea that conservatives have no outlet just isn’t true. So here’s where you and I disagree. I think your conclusion is basically - fascist propaganda isn’t nearly the problem that the way the liberals are trying to deal with it is.
Deplatforming trump has worked out pretty damn well.