[liberationtech] Sacha Baron Cohen: Facebook would've let Hitler buy ads for 'final solution' | The Guardian

[Lorelei Kelly]

Thanks for posting that Masnick piece.  In reading it, I am reminded of
some of the most important behavioral science reading we did in grad
school.  We were studying human behavior in systems of oppression--the
"banality of evil" is commonly known. See Hannah Arendt writing about Nazi
collaborators.  and the Milgram Experiment.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment>  i.e. when people are
not given obvious choices, they obey perceived authority figures to awful
ends.  Our professor ( Lee Ross at Stanford) pulled apart these experiments
in an interesting way. First by pointing out how people behaved badly in
Milgram (by raising the shock level behind the screen, despite the
screeching subject)  because they had no obvious red button to stop the
whole thing i.e. they had no obvious agency to act otherwise.

Second, Lee pointed out that the "banality of evil" with the Nazi
collaborators was a challenge to understand philosophically for the human
spirit and human nature, but he posit an alternative, what he called "the
banality of virtue."  Basically that people do good things the vast
majority of the time and in fact, we don't even notice it.  As an
outstanding example he used the Dutch who hid Jewish asylum seekers during
the war.  When asked why they did it, they offered no grand heroic visions,
i.e. they thought it was just the normal way to behave.   I wrote a piece
on this here if anyone is interested--in response to the decline of
civility during the 2016 elections
<https://www.huffpost.com/entry/civility-is-a-national-se_b_9547890>.

I think our task is to engineer a way to favor the "banality of virtue"
into technology. I'm sure it can be done if we think enough about the whole
system, including the incentives built into it.

LK

On Sat, Nov 23, 2019 at 12:33 AM Yosem Companys <ycompanys at gmail.com> wrote:

> Indeed. I'm just a list moderator and organizer. Other than try to keep
> the peace on the list and foster technology for development and defend the
> values of the UN Declaration of Human Rights online, I don't believe it's
> my place to take any positions on these issues. As a human being with all
> the bounded rationality that entails, I prefer to foster robust debate,
> listen, and learn from crowd wisdom.
>
> On Fri, Nov 22, 2019 at 9:23 PM Eric Tykwinski <eric-list at truenet.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Usually just a lurker on this forum, but this is nuts…  At least you are
>> just quoting him and not supporting his ideas.
>> Under his philosophy, TOR would be shut down, so would every Tier 1?, as
>> a network engineer that gives me creeps, but everyone on the internet that
>> passes the traffic would have to assume responsibly.
>> At least I can give Mike Masnick’s rebuttal:
>> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191122/00412943432/sacha-baron-cohen-is-wrong-about-social-media-wrong-about-section-230-even-wrong-about-his-own-comedy.shtml
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Eric Tykwinski
>> TrueNet, Inc.
>> P: 610-429-8300
>>
>> On Nov 22, 2019, at 3:23 PM, Yosem Companys <ycompanys at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> “Internet companies can now be held responsible for paedophiles who use
>> their sites to target children. I say, let’s also hold these companies
>> responsible for those who use their sites to advocate for the mass murder
>> of children because of their race or religion. And maybe fines are not
>> enough. Maybe it’s time to tell Mark Zuckerberg and the CEOs of these
>> companies: you already allowed one foreign power to interfere in our
>> elections, you already facilitated one genocide in Myanmar, do it again and
>> you go to jail.”
>>
>>
>> https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/nov/22/sacha-baron-cohen-facebook-would-have-sold-final-solution-ads-to-hitler
>> --
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-- 


*Lorelei Kelly at loreleikelly @BeeckCenter @GeorgetownFellow and Director of
Congressional ModernizationThis! Modernizing Congress: Bringing Democracy
into the 21st Century
<https://beeckcenter.georgetown.edu/report/modernizing-congress-bringing-democracy-into-the-21st-century/>TL:DR?
Listen to this podcast
<https://scholars.org/podcast/modernizing-congress>for an overview.*
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