Thread by @kentbye

1/ What's so unsettling about happened on Wednesday is it marks the beginning of a new cycle of violence, & not the end. This is the physical manifestation of @johnrobb's concept of "Networked Tribalism" on the right, & I expect it to continue in 2021.🧵👇

https://twitter.com/kentbye/status/1325683972995653633

2/ These two images from the attempted insurrection contrast the maturity of tactical sophistication vs a more harmless tourism of sedition. Whether you fall onto on side or the other, then @johnrobb says lessons will be learned from this first iteration.

https://twitter.com/johnrobb/status/1346891149731049472

3/ I doubt there was really a master plan for what to do once they got inside. But there's probably a lot of foreign adversaries who were watching who no doubt got a lot of ideas about how this movement could be exploited for the benefit of their country.

https://twitter.com/File411/status/1347780685310918657

4/ Blaming Facebook & Twitter for 100% of all of what happened this past week is technological determinism. A significant factor is a polarized political context within a media market that cultivates it, combined with algorithms of big tech platforms that amplify filter bubbles.

5/ Any website has the ability to ban anyone they want. Speech can be regulated on private property, & there's no "public square" online. The issue is anti-competitive monopoly practices of Big Tech + the laziness of culture to create viable alternatives.

https://twitter.com/thedextriarchy/status/1347736784042651649

6/ How Big Tech got so powerful:
Tech architecture: Network Effects drive Culture
Culture: People chose platforms with the biggest audience
Market: Companies sustained by cultural behaviors
Law: Lack of anti-trust enforcement of anti-competitive monopoly practices for too long

7/ According to the US government, every website is "public" according to the Fourth Amendment's third-party doctrine, meaning any information given to Facebook, Twitter, Parler, etc (including all DMs) can be subpoenaed as evidence used for prosecution.

https://twitter.com/kentbye/status/1287832258947084288

8/ @johnrobb is a military analyst who studied the guerilla warfare tactics in Iraq. Biden will likely pass new domestic terrorism laws catalyzing domestic counter-insurgency efforts against the more radicalized, anti-democratic populism of the Right.

https://twitter.com/johnrobb/status/1347893019748552704

9/ People who stormed the Capitol believed they were the last line of defense liberating our democracy from a stolen election, which is a baseless belief legitimized by 147 Republicans who voted to overturn election results in states they happened to lose.
nytimes.com/2021/01/07/us/…

10/ Right-wing media filter bubbles have cultivated the context for an Anti-Democratic Populist movement being led by Republicans like @HawleyMO, @tedcruz, & @TTuberville.
Here's what one of Hawley's major donors told the Missouri Independent about it:
missouriindependent.com/2021/01/07/maj…

11/ Here's the deeper context:
Market: Thriving right-wing media ecosystem
Culture: Baseless claims amplified by insular media ecosystem
Law: An Anti-Democratic Populist Republican movement
Tech architecture: Big Tech companies are banning & censoring Anti-Democratic Populists

12/ Also, there's a good chance Democrats will impeach Trump.
Are there 67 senators willing to convict?
Depends upon how much political influence Trump supporters & Anti-Democratic Populism have, but also what Trump does between now & then.
Either way, polarization will escalate.

13/ As Anti-Democratic Populists are banned from Big Tech, the Streisand Effect will be invoked catalyzing even more interest in these forbidden ideas that will fester unchallenged within @parler_app echo chambers & eventually fully decentralized networks:

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1347560559697391618

14/ One challenge for the upcoming domestic counter-insurgency effort is differentiating between the legal expression of Free Speech rights of protest vs the more radicalized Anti-Democratic Populist movement's seditious intent on overtaking/destroying institutions of government.

15/ 2021 will be year of decentralized architectures (P2P DWeb, Signal, & blockchain) catalyzed by FB/Twitter banning people, Anti-Democratic seditionists getting arrested via social media posts, DDoS cyber attacks, & USG anti-trust breaking up Big Tech.

https://twitter.com/kentbye/status/1347689826284310534

16/ Correction via @TootsMagoon to #12 that impeachment of the President requires 2/3 of the Senate who is "present," and not 2/3 of 100 (or 67 as I incorrectly stated.)

https://twitter.com/TootsMagoon/status/1347981342592487424

17/ Why do I say Republicans made baseless claims of election fraud? Because @DemocracyDocket documented Trump & allies lost 62 of 63 courts cases, & @marceelias says there was not a single case where the court found enough evidence to merit fraud claims.

https://twitter.com/kentbye/status/1347449746529472514

18/ Here's the Dialectics Driving 2021:
Tech architecture: Centralized vs Decentralized Architectures
Market: Big Tech vs Anti-Trust
Culture: Filter Bubble Polarization in Left vs Right + Anti-Democratic Populist Insurgency
Politics: Maintain Institutions vs Destroy Institutions

19/ I expect increasing tensions throughout all of 2021 between the status quo of Institutions (Consensus-Driven, Democratic Rule of Law + Centralized Big Tech)
VERSUS
Revolutionary Rebellion (Chaos-Driven Political Disruption + Decentralized Tech Alternatives & Anti-Trust).

20/ Big Tech banning Trump will free platforms from toxic behaviors that violate their terms of service, but thinking it solves the underlying core disease of cultural polarization is a Fallacy of Technological Determinism.
There's many elements of culture

https://twitter.com/kentbye/status/1147535170775343105

21/ One solution to Big Tech is the metaphorical "buy local" alternatives of cultivating a viable #indieweb & decentralized #DWeb.
This is something the culture can do right now.
It also means not always choosing the cheapest price or biggest network.

https://twitter.com/noahjnelson/status/1348013092291022849

22/ Another thing you can do is directly support creators, artists, & media through direct subscriptions or peer-funded Patreons [Here's mine:
patreon.com/voicesofvr].

Listen & support independent sources like @gaslitnation who accurately predicted Trump

https://twitter.com/kentbye/status/1347374009768235008

23/ Websites have the right to ban anyone because they're private property, but even 1st Amendment has Free Speech limits with "fighting words" doctrine as applied to physical violence, but can be metaphorically extended to website Codes of Conduct & ToS.
law.cornell.edu/wex/fighting_w…

24/ Free Speech purists usually are not aware of the implications of the Fighting Words doctrine or the human rights concept of "dangerous speech" that violates the liberties of others.
There's ethical tradeoffs between freedom & security.
@brittanheller:
voicesofvr.com/789-human-righ…

25/ There's MANY exceptions to 1st Amendment free speech like incitements to violence, libel, slander, child pornography, threatening the President, DMCA violations, etc.
Claiming you're free from censorship means not moderating harmful or illegal content.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St…

26/ What's the boundary between Free Speech & Dangerous Speech?

"Dangerous Speech is any form of expression (speech, text, or images) that can increase the risk that its audience will condone or participate in violence against members of another group."
dangerousspeech.org/about-dangerou…

27/ Centralized Big Tech platforms have been the defacto police of dangerous speech & harassment. They've historically done a terrible job reining it in (ask any woman, LGBTQ, BIPOC, etc).
But it's also a cultural issue not solvable via purely Technological Deterministic means.

28/ As soon as Anti-Democratic Populists move to completely decentralized networks & encrypted, peer-to-peer communication networks, there isn't going to be any Technological Deterministic "Ban Hammer" method of mitigating Dangerous Speech, aside from banning underlying P2P tech.

29/ Being able to mitigate harmful content on completely decentralized networks will come down to some form of self-policing or other hash-based tech solutions. Mitigating harassment & dangerous speech will require more relational ontologies & more peer-driven, ethical practices.

30/ Political discourse has already reached a toxic level of gaslighting.
@GOPLeader says impeachment would "divide" the country, but yet supported many of Trump's authoritarian-inspired efforts to undermine & overturn the election.

https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1347666836310138887

https://twitter.com/jonfavs/status/1347974092008214530

31/ We need justice & accountability for the attempted coup & some of Trump's crimes before we skip straight to "unity."

We need a Truth & Reconciliation Commission to hear the truth.

https://twitter.com/RBReich/status/1317614803704115200

https://twitter.com/tribelaw/status/1345436435738996743

https://twitter.com/joelockhart/status/1348034799156518915

https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/1325552892980375557

32/ We can't achieve "unity" until we reconcile the tension of polarized opposites.
We need an "adversarial division of epistemic labor" as @AgnesCallard calls it that includes true beliefs of each side while transcending the limitations of falsehoods.

33/ Solving the issue of fundamental issue of cultural polarization & different filter bubbles of reality is complicated if one side is actively working towards destroying the other side -- and when BOTH sides believes that it's the OTHER side that's trying to eradicate them.

34/ Democrats see Anti-Democratic Populist Right trying to undermine the institutions of democracy.
Republicans see the President getting deplatformed by Big Tech driven by liberal values of dangerous speech & media that goes against their concepts of what Free Speech should be.

35/ This introduces the "Paradox of Tolerance" in pluralistic philosophies:

"Does it makes sense to be tolerant towards those who are intolerant of our own tolerant position?"

"Are there not some things the pluralist is intolerant towards?"

See Friend:
link.springer.com/chapter/10.100…

36/ Each polarized extreme has decided the other side is an existential threat to their very existence & should not be tolerated.
What's the solution?
When BOTH sides mutually sit in the paradox of the tension of the opposites seeing truth & limitations in a reconciling third POV

37/ This concept of the reconciling third & sitting in the tension of the opposites comes from Jung. But it also has historical connections to Hegel's dialectical process, and all the way back to the Socratic Method as Callard describes above.
frithluton.com/articles/terti…

38/ Sitting in tension of the opposites can happen at 1-on-1 scale, but it's more difficult at the sociological & cultural scale.
It requires mutual consent, tolerance, & a willingness to explore issues with open-minded nuance beyond ideological dogmatism.

https://twitter.com/kentbye/status/1348061440192573440?s=19

39/ Trump refused to accept he lost the election.
He spread baseless conspiracy theories of election fraud, amplified by a right-wing media ecosystem, backed by 147 Republicans, & culminating with a seditious insurrection by a hapless mob believing they were liberating Democracy.

40/ Impeaching Trump w/ all 100 Senators voting to convict would be a step in the right direction of justice, but we need to hear Trump speak the truth about his crimes. (HA! Right?)
But Truth & Reconciliation Process facilitate that Reconciling Third POV:

https://twitter.com/kentbye/status/1348045161826111489?s=20

41/ But since that's likely never going to happen, we're left with the paradox of trying to be tolerant with people & perspectives who are actively trying to destroy the foundations of our existence while deplatforming is creating filter bubbles happening at the platform level.

42/ This is where @lewgord's concept of "epistemic closure" comes in handy when saying, "That person supports Trump, I have everything I need to know about them."
But humans are not closed math formulas.
We're complex relational beings to be discovered.
voicesofvr.com/918-philosophe…

END/ It's not everyone's role to be on the frontlines of directly engaging with folks on the opposite side of a polarity who would like to eradicate your existence without mutual consent or tolerance. But I'm hoping it can happen without violent insurrections & all-out civil war.