2223
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
2223 points (97.9% liked)
Technology
34849 readers
63 users here now
This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.
Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
It is literally ad hominem, that is the definition. We aren't discussing whether we can trust Meta or not, we're discussing a specific topic.
It definitely is, but again, we aren't discussing a person or an entity, we're discussing a topic related to that person or entity. This isn't a discussion on whether Meta should be defederated or not, frankly that's simple, just join an instance that defederates with Meta or don't, or build your own! There's a ton of freedom here.
And I'm not saying ad hominem arguments can't be used, but when an argument is entirely made up of ad hominem points while discussing a specific topic it isn't a good argument.
Also, side note, as for trust I definitely don't think we can trust corporate entities, but I also don't think we can entirely trust the Fediverse as it exists already. We know there's been an influx of bot accounts, moderation tools aren't great yet, and every platform attracts bad actors.
Thanks for the tip! Haven't been able to get that working well here, I think I was missing the exclamation mark.
i mean, the root comment of this chain literally says "how about we defederate them because / not because". it's not exactly an unrelated topic.
whether or not it's okay to defederate from someone just because they're evil is a good question though, but i still don't think it's an ad hominem. an ad hominem, in the popular understanding and in the sense presented in your pyramid chart, is a fallacy of devaluing an argument because of the one who said it. it's like i said "i don't believe gravity exists because it's the zuck who said it", not "i don't trust the zuck as a person and therefore don't want to work with him".
i think the argument you present here takes ad hominem to an absurd extreme, where literally any discussion of a person would become an ad hominem. it could technically fit a definition of an ad hominem, and yeah, a lot of arguments are just arguments of definition where we posit that the other person discusses the topic with our own definitions, by which they're obviously wrong. so to avoid that, yeah, under this definition it would be an ad hominem, but under this definition it means little that something is an ad hominem, discussing a person doesn't automatically devalue an argument.
the thing that earned ad hominem its low spot on your pyramid are the incorrect and baseless conclusions inherent in the former definition presented here, not the mere presence of a person in the argument. your latter definition is definitely valid, but it's unconventional and isn't consistent with the pyramid.
I responded directly to the "literally killed XMPP a decade ago" and later the very vague "they're not blameless" arguments, not defederation in general. I don't think I'm taking ad hominem to an absurd extreme, because I never actually set out to discuss generics like "can we trust Meta?", just the specific topic of their blaming in "killing" XMPP.
I also think ad hominem arguments have their place and the reason they're so low on the pyramid is because they should be backed up with actual evidence that works it's way up the pyramid.
E.g. "should we defederate Meta" > "Yes, they aren't trustworthy" > "Why they aren't trustworthy" > maybe "How could they use misuse the fediverse" etc.
It takes longer sure, but the point gets across better and I think if we actually thought like this there would be a lot more solid arguments for why Meta should be defederated instead of just parroting ragebait that we've seen in memes.