Not Easy, Not Unreasonable, Not Censorship: The Decision To Ban Trump From Twitt...
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Not Easy, Not Unreasonable, Not Censorship: The Decision To Ban Trump From Twitter
from the there's-a-point... dept
When I started writing this post, it was about Facebook's decision to suspend Trump's account indefinitely, and at least until Joe Biden is inaugurated in a couple weeks. I had lots to say on that... and then Friday afternoon, Twitter decided to ban Trump's Twitter account permanently. This is a bigger deal, not just because it's permanent, rather than indefinite, but because so much of Trump's identity over the last four years (and before that) is tied up in his Twitter account and followers.
Certainly, all of this has kicked off a whole new storm from across the political spectrum. You have Trump supporters who are furious and (falsely) claiming that this is "censorship" or unprecedented and heavy handed (it is none of those things). Then you have Trump haters who are screaming about how this is all way too late and is trying to close the barn door after the horses have long since bolted. I think neither argument is accurate. Will Oremus has a long (and very interesting!) look over on OneZero about how Facebook supposedly chucked out its own rulebook to come up with an excuse to suspend Trump's account:
Yet Facebook’s “indefinite” ban on Trump marks an overnight reversal of the policy on Trump and other political leaders that the social network has spent the past four years honing, justifying, and defending. The unprecedented move, which lacks a clear basis in any of Facebook’s previously stated policies, highlights for the millionth time that the dominant platforms are quite literally making up the rules of online speech as they go along. As I wrote in 2019, there’s just one golden rule of content moderation that every platform follows: If a policy becomes too controversial, change it.
Zuckerberg’s claim that Facebook has allowed Trump to use its platform in a manner “consistent with our own rules” is laughable. The only thing that has been consistent, until now, is Facebook’s determination to contort, hair-split, and reimagine its rules to make sure nothing Trump posted would fall too far outside them. The Washington Post wrote a rather definitive account of the social network’s yearslong Trump-appeasement campaign earlier this year. Among other Trump-friendly measures, the Post noted, “Facebook has constrained its efforts against false and misleading news, adopted a policy explicitly allowing politicians to lie, and even altered its news feed algorithm to neutralize claims that it was biased against conservative publishers.”
And Twitter is also justifying its decision by saying that the reason was a rules violation:
We assessed the two Tweets referenced above under our Glorification of Violence policy, which aims to prevent the glorification of violence that could inspire others to replicate violent acts and determined that they were highly likely to encourage and inspire people to replicate the criminal acts that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
This determination is based on a number of factors, including:
I don't need to post the factors. You can take a look yourself if you want. So, Oremus is mostly correct that they're making the rules up as they go along, but the problem with this framing is that it assumes that there are some magical rules you can put in place and then objectively apply them always. That's never ever been the case. The problem with so much of the content moderation debate is that all sides assume these things. They assume that it's easy to set up rules and easy to enforce them. Neither is true. Radiolab did a great episode a few years ago, detailing the process by which Facebook made and changed its rules. And it highlights some really important things including that almost every case is different, that it's tough to apply rules to every case, and that context is always changing. And that also means the rules must always keep changing.
A few years back, we took a room full of content moderation experts and asked them to make content moderation decisions on eight cases -- none of which I'd argue are anywhere near as difficult as deciding what to do with the President of the United States. And we couldn't get these experts to agree on anything. On every case, we had at least one person choose each of the four options we gave them, and to defend that position. The platforms have rules because it gives them a framework to think about things, and those rules are useful in identifying both principles for moderation and some bright lines.
But every case is different.
And no matter what you think of Trump, his case was different.
The regular rules could never apply to Trump because Trump is not a regular person. And, no, not even comparisons to foreign leaders are apt, because as silly as American exceptionalism is, the United States is still different than nearly every other country in the world. And, it's not just the position he's in (for the next few days anyway), but also Trump's willingness to use his account to make pronouncements unlike pretty much any other world leader (or at least, world leader of consequence).
Trump is, perhaps, the perfect example of why demanding clear rules on social media and how they moderate is stupid.
As for the question of why now? Well, clearly, the context has changed. The context is that Trump inspired a mob of goons to invade the Capitol building this week, and there remain legitimate threats that his cultish followers will continue to do significant damage. Certainly some people have insisted that this kind of violence was always a risk -- and it was. But it had not actually erupted to this level in this fashion. Again, we're talking about context. There's always more context.
And given that the situations are always edge cases, that the context always matters, and that things are always shifting, you can totally see why it's a reasonable decision to ban Trump from their platforms right now, based on everything else going on, and the likelihood that he might inspire more violence. I think it's worth reading Ben Thompson's analysis as well. He's long explained the risks associated with banning Trump from these platforms, and suggested why they should not have in the past. But the thing that changed for him, beyond even just the threat to democracy, is the threat to the rights of both individuals and companies to make their own decisions on these things:
Remember my highest priority, even beyond respect for democracy, is the inviolability of liberalism, because it is the foundation of said democracy. That includes the right for private individuals and companies to think and act for themselves, particularly when they believe they have a moral responsibility to do so, and the belief that no one else will. Yes, respecting democracy is a reason to not act over policy disagreements, no matter how horrible those policies may be, but preserving democracy is, by definition, even higher on the priority stack.
Turn off Trump’s account.
But here's the more important point -- especially directed at the people who will falsely claim that this is somehow censorship: President Trump is not being censored. He is not being limited. At any moment of any day (certainly for the next two weeks, and likely beyond) he can walk out of his office and have every major TV news channel (and every internet streaming platform) broadcast whatever he wants to say, and people will see it.
And to those who think that Twitter should have done this earlier, or that it would have made a difference, recognize that your concern is not so much with Twitter, but with Trump himself. Remember that while Trump might not be able to send a tweet right now, he still (literally) has the power to launch nuclear missiles at Twitter's headquarters. And, really, that's the problem. Trump is obviously too toxic for Twitter. But he's also too toxic for the White House. And the real complaint shouldn't be about Twitter or Facebook acting too late, but about Congress failing to do their job and remove the mad man from power.
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Filed Under: adaptability, censorship, consequences, content moderation, donald trump, free speech, platforms, rules, section 230, social media
Companies: facebook, twitter
Reader Comments
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 5:53pmI don’t like that it took this long to do it. But I’m glad they did it.
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wereisjessicahyde (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 6:57amRe: Re: this long to do it (things yo momma says)
"flowery bouquet"? More like Word Salad.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 11:52pm
Re: Re: this long to do it (things yo momma says)
Facebook, Twitter & co. don't really want to invite political scrutiny unto themselves. Political scrutiny means laws may be introduced which are disadvantageous to them, or which otherwise introduce red tape.
The Trump dilemma is such that if you terminate his account, then he could move to retaliate against you. Even if he does need to be terminated, it may be easier to "let someone else go first" and attract his ire. Or to experiment with something small, and see what happens.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 12:29am
if you terminate his account, then he could move to retaliate against you
Twitter could easily cite the First Amendment in its defense. The law doesn’t (and shouldn’t) force Twitter to host anyone’s speech. No one should have the power to make Twitter do that — and that includes a sitting president.
Or do you want a precedent that says a platform you own must host someone else’s speech no matter what?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 7:51am
First Amendment says that the government can't RESTRICT your speech.
Why are you putting things into it that aren't there?
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nasch (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 11:48am
Re: Re:
First Amendment says that the government can't RESTRICT your speech. Why are you putting things into it that aren't there?
If you would like to learn about the first amendment and compelled speech:
https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/933/compelled-speech
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Rocky, 11 Jan 2021 @ 1:43pm
Re: Re:
If I compel you to speak something you don't want to say with the help of the law (ie the government), you weren't free to say what you really wanted, hence it's a first amendment violation.
There are caveats to this, but they don't exist within this discussions context.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 2:43pmCompelled speech
And yet, abortion providers are compelled in several states to read to their clients a state-endorsed statement featuring false claims about the abortion process and its effects. And this was upheld by the (captured) US Supreme Court.
At the same time a similar law in California was ruled unconstitutional which required Crisis Pregnancy Centers (religious centers that routinely pretend to be abortion providers to pressure pregnant moms to carry to term) to reveal they were not abortion providers and that there are abortion providers nearby.
Double standards.
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nasch (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 3:11pm
Re: Compelled speech
And this was upheld by the (captured) US Supreme Court.
Can't find that one.
At the same time a similar law in California was ruled unconstitutional which required Crisis Pregnancy Centers (religious centers that routinely pretend to be abortion providers to pressure pregnant moms to carry to term) to reveal they were not abortion providers and that there are abortion providers nearby.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Institute_of_Family_and_Life_Advocates_v._Becerra
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 8:53am
The government could host an all-legal-speech neutral forum or just take over USENET, or the people could migrate back to USENET, which was "all or nothing" in that you accepted all of its speech or none (within a newsgroup). A USENET with verified identities might work.
They can't be forced to host speech they don't want to host, but they can't for anyone to take them seriously if they ban too many people for the wrong reasons. The market has punished censorship in the past, such as with AOL and Yahoo.
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Toom1275 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 9:16am
Re: Re:
If you see "preventing active and imminent terror threats" as "the wrong reasons" that's a you problem.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 2:18pm
If the market decides Twitter should be punished, so be it. But let’s not get the law involved with punishing Twitter because it exercised its right to moderate speech on its property.
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Toom1275 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 9:14am
Re: Re: Free speech
Back in the real world, private platforms are not, and can never be, the public square, no matter how much idiot sheep like "Richard" lie that they'e monopolies or confuse them for actual utilities like internet service.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 8:40pm
Re: Re: Re: Free speech
But idiot pai said the internet is not a utility, so... anything on the web can't be a first amendment platform
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nasch (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 3:12pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Free speech
They’re rights are supposed to be “inalienable”, ie their data cannot be traded and sold by third parties.
Where is this prohibition on trading data found?
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Uriel-238 (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 3:14pm
Taxpayers already paid for the internet
For the internet, maybe, but not for the Twitter service on the web.
You could suggest that a state or federal government make a public Twitter service that goes by a maximum-free-speech policy. But when it comes to social programs, I'd prioritize universal healthcare and food access.
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PaulT (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 11:06pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Free speech
"Taxpayers already paid for the internet long ago, it belongs to them."
Try not paying your ISP bill for a month and use that argument when they cut you off. I'm sure if will go over really well.
In any case, those taxes paid for the development of the infrastructure the internet operates on. They did not pay for anything that a website like Twitter uses, which runs on a mixture of privately developed code and open source components, while the web itself was invented at CERN using European tax money. Your taxes didn't pay for a single line of code at Twitter.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 7:16pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Free speech
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Twitter =/= the Internet
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The internet wasn’t built or run by the government.
- Unfortunately, there is no law or constitutional right that prevents your data from being traded and sold by third parties.
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PaulT (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 11:21pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Free speech
"The internet wasn’t built or run by the government."
...and even if these people want to push the DARPA narrative they love, despite the fact that the current internet developed far from that by mix of private enterprise and open source projects no longer resembles that, we're explicitly not talking about that infrastructure here. We're talking about the web, which is a totally different thing.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:12pm
Re: Re: Free speech
Cool story bro. Prove it in court.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 7:14pm
Re: Re: Free speech
Twitter isn’t a monopoly. There are plenty of other social media sites out there. Nor is it a public utility.
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PaulT (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 11:08pm
I'd always predicted that they would leave the account completely untouched until the day he left office. It was a mutually beneficial relationship - Trump got to say whatever he wanted, even stuff that would get most people banned a long time ago, while Twitter got the benefit of the increased traffic his ravings brought to the platform.
But, the orange maniac couldn't be happy with that. He first used it to try and spread so much false information about the election he lost that Twitter felt compelled to place warnings on every virtually Tweet about how he was lying. Then, he went too far and inspired actual insurrection.
I'm not surprised they took this long, as they were clearly putting up with him until January 20th. But, they essentially had to do this now, else face some major pushback later on if further deaths occurred over something they could have prevented - not direct liability, but you can bet that they will be the number one target if they kept hosting calls to violence against both houses.
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nfnnln780, 10 Jan 2021 @ 2:56pm
Content Moderation at scale of 1 manchild..
How do you moderate someone who limits a moderators choice's to a mute button (see Presidential Debates), or a perma-ban? (see Twitter). Nothing in Section 230, the 1st amendment or the principles of free-speech, prevents Trump from being held accountable by the people he is accountable to.
The Voters: He lost
Republicans: You could have said or done something. Or voted to impeach him.
Democrats: You impeached him, and it looks like you will again. You also won the Presidential Election & the Georgia run-offs in the senate.
Politicians will politician, but at the end of the day they are elected to represent the people. Thus the authority & will to act against a lawless President is in their hands. They must own their inaction.
The President can be held accountable by conventional laws. It could have been done at his 1st impeachment. It can still be done via State & Federal authorities and a 2nd impeachment....All without destroying free speech or the internet.
PS, I too am glad they banned him. Twitter is in a tough spot. Half the ppl enraged it took so long, the other half pissed because he has been banned.
Prior to the events of Jan 6, 2021, banning POTUS from Twitter would have been untenable.
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Bloof (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 5:58pm
If they'd acted when he first started using the platform to peddle racist conspiracy theories we wouldn't be in this mess, but better late than never, I suppose.
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TKnarr (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:25pm
If they'd acted then, he'd still have been pedding racist conspiracy theories to his base and they'd be believing them and acting on them. Plus he'd've had more reasons they'd believe to claim he was on to something because look how the Deep State's trying to shut him up. We'd've still ended up here, just that we really wouldn't've seen it coming because we wouldn't've seen it until it erupted.
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Thad (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:38pm
Re: Re:
If they'd acted then, he'd still have been pedding racist conspiracy theories to his base
So's Alex Jones, but not nearly as many people can hear what he has to say now that he's been kicked off social media.
Deplatforming works.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 7:39am
Re: Re: Re:
The reason that not as many people hear what he has to say is because not that many people can be bothered to follow him to where he can speak.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 10:11am
Re: Re: Re:
Not sure about that - in Hong Kong they mnaaged to organise quite a protest despite the ban of most apps and heavy censorship. I am not comparing the two movements, just making a point about overall effectiveness of the bans.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 9:03pm
I'm going to guess that a removal earlier in his presidency would have lead to court cases eventually declaring that large platforms have a duty to be open as a political forum, especially for political speech from politicians, with the argument that they are the modern day public square and that companies that are vital to the internet can't be playing favorites (as argued by pockets on the right for years). I honestly still wouldn't be surprised to see that ruling at least entertained in the future (as well as such laws trying to force such an effect to eventually be debated in some of the larger red states), however the fact that they only removed these accounts for reasons much less purely political (linking it to actual violence), and at a time when Trump will be out of office before any dispute would be settle would make Trump a much worse plaintiff to lead such a charge to pursue such a result.
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nasch (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 12:36pm
Re: Re:
with the argument that they are the modern day public square
They aren't. They are very clearly private property.
companies that are vital to the internet can't be playing favorites
The First Amendment says otherwise.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 7:22pm
Re: Re:
There have been multiple, recent court cases, including at least one from the Supreme Court, that have explicitly ruled that large platforms have no such duty at all, and §230 pretty much makes such a thing impossible. As a result, I’d say the courts would not rule that way.
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techflaws (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 10:43pm
You mean, back in his birther days?
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 11:04pm
Definitely. If he got banned back when he was peddling the birther garbage way back in the day, so much of this garbage would have never happened
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That One Guy (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 6:14pm
Just own it...
Better late then never I guess, however while it may be unreasonable I just wish they'd own their part in this rather than go with the bogus excuses. They didn't kick Trump off because he broke the rules, they kicked him off because it finally cost more to keep him on than they stood to gain from having him on the platforms, and it was close enough to inauguration day that it was about to be a moot point anyway. Remove those two factors and I've little doubt that he'd still be posting whatever he wanted unchecked, just like he has for years.
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crade (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:07pmRe: Just own it...
They didn't kick Trump off because he broke the rules, they kicked him off because it finally cost more to keep him on than they stood to gain from having him on the platforms
It's kinda tomaeto tomahto when it comes to capitalist companies.. "unless we feel it's worth more to us to otherwise" is implied in every rule
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:45pm
Re: Re: Just own it...
This, they don't care about morality or being decent. They're just doing it now because the heat is on them, and that's why they need to be reigned in; NOT given endless amounts of power to do what they want.
What they need is the stick, and we're giving them the carrot by saying that they know what is best on their platforms. That's clearly not the case, so why let them decide anymore? This has just opened the path to them removing more and more of their competition under the guise of 'cleaning their service'.-
Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:55pm
Re: Re: Re: Just own it...
What endless amounts of power is this?
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PaulT (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 11:09pm
Re: Re: Re: Just own it...
"that's why they need to be reigned in; NOT given endless amounts of power to do what they want"
I'm interested to hear why you think they have this magical power, especially if you think it extends beyond their own property.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 8:13am
Re: Re: Re: Just own it...
Shut up trump no one likes you breathing.
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crade (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 6:07am
Re: Re: Re: Just own it...
Not directly but they are reflecting what their customers care about which is maybe even better
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 7:25pm
Re: Re: Re: Just own it...
I haven’t seen evidence that anyone else is in any position to make better decisions, least of all the government.
Also, what “competition” have they removed? Trump wasn’t a competitor to Twitter.
Basically, there’s no evidence that I can see that there’s even a problem that actually needs to be solved here, let alone a better solution than the one we already have.
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Rocky, 11 Jan 2021 @ 1:50pm
Re: It is censorship
Did Twitter suppress Trumps ability to use whitehouse.gov to communicate?
Did Twitter suppress Trumps ability to call a press-conference at the Whitehouse?
Did Twitter suppress Trumps ability to have interviews with friendly media?
Did Twitter suppress Trumps ability to go out on the Whitehouse lawn with a megaphone?
The point is, nobody is entitled to an audience at someone else's expense because that would violate their rights.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 6:34pm
To all conservatives whining censorship:
To all conservatives whining about censorship right now, you always said:
"Let the market decide."
"It's a private company, they can do whatever they want. Don't like it, start your own business."
Based on the reactions I've seen from the right about this, they're not living up to their own standards at all. You made your bed, now you have to sleep in it.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:59pm
Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
Well, the majority of Obama-era Democrats are just like Reagan-era Republicans, so yeah.
But the point here is rather "eat your own dogfood" rather more than anyine necessarily believing lies about "free markets" which are anything but, and have never existed.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 6:40am
Re: Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
"majority of Obama-era Democrats are just like Reagan-era Republicans"
Only in some specific things like maybe economics, but they were very different in other areas such as civil rights.
Also, Obama did not rely upon a ouija board.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 7:47pm
Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
I thought the word censorship implied that the person being censored was then unable to speak, be it in town square or on the net.
Most censorship claims I see involve a situation where the person could easily find an alternative medium for their speech.
If people wish to converse, it is beneficial if they were to speak the same language.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:56pm
Re: Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
It also not only implies, but completely specifies that a government is causing it to occur.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 12:10am
Someone can (try to) censor without being a government official. Threats of violence or personal ruin if certain speech is expressed counts as an attempt to censor.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 5:44am
Re: Re: Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
"It also not only implies, but completely specifies that a government is causing it to occur."
Wrong.
You are conflating the words censorship and First Amendment.
These two things are not the same, they do however overlap.Further point, Causing it to occur, as you put it is not required for the government to violate the first amendment.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 10:41pm
Re: Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
I thought the word censorship implied that the person being censored was then unable to speak, be it in town square or on the net.
Some people on Techdirt like to say that, but it's common usage to refer to non-governmental actions as censorship. For example, The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror VIII (5F02): "Oh, hi! As the Fox Censor, it's my job to protect you from reality." The term is used even for edits not required by governments, like censorship on MTV).
The creators of TV shows were always free to go elsewhere, perhaps to cable or direct-to-video. And the music censored on MTV could be heard on the albums.
The ACLU gives this definition:
Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups. Censorship by the government is unconstitutional.
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stine, 9 Jan 2021 @ 7:05am
Re: Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
I don't believe its censorship, but I do think its a direct violation of "Knight First Amendment Institute, et al v. Donald J. Trump,et al".
This means that has directly violated the order in said case.
Also, all of president Trump's tweets, re-tweets, and their replies need to be saved as part of the permanent record.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 1:06amRe: Re: Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
I don't believe its censorship, but I do think its a direct violation of "Knight First Amendment Institute, et al v. Donald J. Trump,et al".
It is not even remotely in violation of the ruling in that case. That case only noted that if a government official creates a public space, then they cannot discriminate on the basis of speech.
That's got nothing to do with Twitter shutting down Trump's account.
Also, all of president Trump's tweets, re-tweets, and their replies need to be saved as part of the permanent record.
That is the job of the National Archives. Not Twitter.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:24pm
Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
I was just pointing out the inconsistency -- conservatives have historically been rabidly pro-corporate, but aren't now that the tables have turned.
A perfect example that would be familiar to many Techdirt readers would be the Pruneyard standard. For those unfamiliar, due to a unanimous Supreme Court decision in the early 1980s, the common areas of shopping malls (which are of course privately owned by large corporations) are open to free speech, and so long as the speakers are behaving in an orderly manner, the corporate mall operators legally cannot eject them. Republicans and the political right railed against it for decades. "Build your own shopping mall," they'd say. But now that's it's conservatives on the recieving end of corporate power, only now is it a problem. Conservatives wanted to give corporations carte blanche -- and to paraphrase the Epistle to the Galatians, "you reap what you sow."
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:29pm
Re: Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
Editorial note: only in California.
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Toom1275 (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 10:10pm
Re: Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
There is, of course, the fact that pruneyard has nothing to do with private online platforms though some disingenuously try to claim otherwise
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 5:50am
Re: Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
Quite the stretch .. and only in CA.
Good job. -
Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 8:40am
Re: Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
"conservatives have historically been rabidly pro-corporate"
More precisely, they have been pro-power, with the tacit understanding that that means them. Occasionally, the ones that wield the power are on the other team. That takes some getting used to.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 11:27pm
That it is not illegal, nor a violation of the First Amendment, does not mean that it is not censorship.
If you can go to another platform and say what got you booted from the first one, it ain’t censorship. Trump can go to Parler and say whatever the fuck he wants. Twitter can’t stop him. Neither can anyone else.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 7:30pm
Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
Let’s say that it is censorship. That’s just a purely semantic argument that makes no difference. If it’s legal and not done with government power, it’s not a free speech issue.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:46pm
Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
I'm not conservative, and I've never said that, but you're an idiot if you ever once believed that line of thinking, and you're a damned fool if you suddenly believe it now because they're doing something you like.
Agreeing with the multi-billion dollar tech company is all the more reason to suspect their motivations. Sure, they got rid of Trump now, but what about tomorrow? Or the day after? Would it hurt to think more than one step ahead of your current situation?-
Stephen T. Stone (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 11:31pm
Agreeing with the multi-billion dollar tech company is all the more reason to suspect their motivations.
But it isn’t a reason to say what Twitter did is illegal or censorship.
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Rocky, 9 Jan 2021 @ 7:34pm
Re: Re:
Imagine for a moment that the date is January 8th, 1905. President Roosevelt tells the newspapers that he wants them to publish an opinion piece he has written but they refuse. Is that censorship?
In regards to Trumps use of Twitter, he's technologically illiterate and those who ran his account in the beginning showed him how the app worked since he was very skeptical about it. When he realized how easy it was to use and most importantly, how easy it was to get some kind of validation for what he posted he couldn't stop using it. It was never about him wanting to appear like he was a human being, it was all about stroking his ego.
Anyway, no one is entitled the use of someone else's private property. If Trump so desperately want to communicate with people, it so happens there is a site he can use without restrictions or moderation, it's called whitehouse.gov
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 5:55am
Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
Not sure what your point is here.
Should not have cancelled trump account because ... what?-
Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 8:59am
Re: Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
Because Trumpist republicans are entitled brats who think restrictions are for other people and power is for them (or at least their unworthy heroes). Simple, really.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:50pm
Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
Read and understand this article otherwise you are making a comment based on wishful thinking, and which has no relevance to the real world.
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Rocky, 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:59pm
Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
One would hope on a tech website people would grasp the difference between claiming to be a publisher and having the right to censor, and claiming to be a platform where you cannot be held liable for what people say on your website.
One would hope that you would grasp the difference between a social media platform and a publisher. Also, should social media platforms be liable for what people say on it?
Claiming to be both a platform and a publisher is illegal and conflicts with 2 sets of laws.
And which laws would that be?
As long as twitter claims they are a platform they can't be a publisher.
Yes they can. They can publish their own speech, they can comment on others peoples speech, while at the same time being a social platform for others, because otherwise they have lost their 1A rights.
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Toom1275 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:25pm
Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
Newsflash:
The tech website absolutely knows the subject.
You, on the other hand... not so much.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 7:37pm
Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
That is a false dichotomy. A platform can be a publisher, a platform has the right to moderate content on its website freely, and a publisher can be held not to be liable for what people say on their website if they didn’t—in part or in whole—create or develop the content, receive exclusive rights to publish the content, or hire someone else to create or develop the content. There is no law, let alone two, that says that someone can’t claim to be both a platform and a publisher. Furthermore, there is no law that makes a distinction between platforms and publishers.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 7:41am
Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
...You do realize that only Leftists are saying "Muh private platform" these days, right?
Even LIBERTARIANS are saying "This is too much!"
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 8:22am
Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
Ya, so people move to Parler and what happens, Everyone starts banning the app!!!
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PaulT (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 11:08pm
Re: Re: To all conservatives whining censorship:
Which is their right to do so. They can still operate, you just can't force people to host you against their will. This is the free market in action. If you dislike this, did you consider NOT being a bunch of white supremacist hatemongers trying to violently overthrow a democratically elected government? People who aren't like that don't seem to have a problem with a choice of venue.
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Paul Alan Levy (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 6:39pmWhy bother explaining if what you say is so foolishly reasoned
Yes, Twitter has every right to decide who will use its platform. And yes, there is every risk that, in the future, Trump will again misbehave in violation of its ever-shifting rules.
But for this litigator who detests Trump, and took vacation time at work to spend twenty pre-election days in 2016 and 2020 opposing him in swing states, the explanation they gave is a silly one. On a law school exam, it would get an F for poor reasoning.
The mischaracterizations of the facts, and the conspiracy-mindedness that the blog post reflects, resemble, for me, the briefs that the Trump lawyers and their copycats have filed in their various frivolous lawsuits attacking the elections
The two posts they quoted do nothing to "glorify" violence. What this comes down to is that Twitter says Trump has been banned because some of his supporters (in unspecified instances) are reading what he said in various ways. And MISreading what he said, I might add.
Sure he praises his supporters --- the 7500000 voters who supported him. He calls them patriots. He says they should be respected. So what's wrong with that?
He says he won't be at the inauguration. Yes, a break with tradition, but good riddance!
Twitter says there are plans for armed protests and another attack on the Capitol. THAT is very bad. But Twitter does NOT say that Trump is involved in that planning OR that he tweeted anything about them. I did see a report that Trump had retweeted some of those statements. But the report also said that Twitter had cited those retweets in its decision and plainly it has not. And, because the Twitter account has been deleted in its entirety, I can;t verify that (does anyone have any screenshots?)
When Twitter justifies its decisions by posting this kind of mindless blather, it just tends to suggest that what it has done is arbitrary. And THAT is not useful.
AND its enforcement is even worse. CNN reports that @POTUS contained a statement that Twitter's ban on his account was "coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me."
Is criticizing Twitter now banned on Twitter?
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:47pm
Re: Why bother explaining if what you say is so foolishly reason
Criticizing any major platform is always banned on that major platform if it gains traction. That's why people should be extremely suspicious of the fervor in which they declare that sites very similar to its own are extremist and need to be removed.
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Bloof (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 5:22am
Re: Re: Why bother explaining if what you say is so foolishly re
I remember when rightwingers got an anti twitter hashtag trending saying they were leaving and going to Parler for free speech, they weren't banned, the tag wasn't banned either, and the majority of them tweeted through their supposed departure and still tweet to this day.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 9:01pm
Re: Why bother explaining if what you say is so foolishly reason
Uh, no, he's totally been inciting people to riot for ages.
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PaulT (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 11:12pm
Re: Why bother explaining if what you say is so foolishly reason
"On a law school exam, it would get an F for poor reasoning."
Is "we need to get this asshole off our property because he's starting to cause us more trouble than he's worth" a legal argument?
"Is criticizing Twitter now banned on Twitter?"
No, but if you feel so strongly about how bad a platform is, why are you still using it instead of their competitors?
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Paul Alan Levy (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:57am
Re: Re: Why bother explaining if what you say is so foolishly re
Had they simply given your explanation it would have been honest. But the explanation they gave was basically dishonest.
As for your second point, I rarely use Twitter anymore. But the question was a tad rhetorical.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 11:35pm
Is criticizing Twitter now banned on Twitter?
Criticism of Twitter wasn’t banned when I was still on that platform. I’ve no reason to think it’s banned six months later.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 12:42am
Re: Why bother explaining if what you say is so foolishly reason
But for this litigator who detests Trump, and took vacation time at work to spend twenty pre-election days in 2016 and 2020 opposing him in swing states, the explanation they gave is a silly one. On a law school exam, it would get an F for poor reasoning.
I don't disagree that Twitter's stated reasoning directly is unconvincing on its own, but this isn't a legal brief, and we are not limited to the evidence presented in their reasoning. What we do have is the wider context of what happened in the world this week, and the way the President has acted to egg on his supporters -- who have already indicated they are planning to do more damage and more violence leading up to the inauguration.
Given that context, their reasoning now makes more sense.
The two posts they quoted do nothing to "glorify" violence.
Again, that removes the unique context of the circumstances, which is the main point I tried to highlight in this post.
AND its enforcement is even worse. CNN reports that @POTUS contained a statement that Twitter's ban on his account was "coordinated with the Democrats and the Radical Left in removing my account from their platform, to silence me."
Is criticizing Twitter now banned on Twitter?
Not at all, and frankly, that's silly. Twitter has had going way back, fairly strict rules against anyone who seeks to get around one of their permanent bans by using another account. And that's exactly what was done with the @POTUS account. That's what got it banned -- not the speech. The fact that it was obviously Trump himself tweeting and trying to get around the ban.
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Paul Alan Levy (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 5:03am
Re: Re: Why bother explaining if what you say is so foolishly re
Mike, I completely accept your response to my second point -- it was a somewhat rhetorical point, but I agree in retrospect that it was an ill-considered one (although I WOULD say that platforms ought to allow some sort of right of reply to a ban).
And I agree that if Twitter had given the reasons that you articulate, the explanation for its decision would have been coherent. But for those platforms that are as broadly used as Twitter and Facebook are, it does seem to me that there is a moral or social obligation, certainly not a legal obligation, to be transparent about their decisions to remove users. Reasoned explanations are a form of accountability. We all praise companies for their transparency reports, for example, when they describe censorship decisions that have been forced on them by governments.
Issuing a plainly fallacious statement is not consistent with that moral obligation and it is an evasion of accountability.
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Paul Alan Levy (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 5:05am
Re: Re: Re: Why bother explaining if what you say is so foolishl
Kinda like the Peter Parker principle -- with great power comes great responsibility. It applies to Trump but it also applied to Twitter.
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Rocky, 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:42am
Re: Re: Re: Why bother explaining if what you say is so foolishl
And I agree that if Twitter had given the reasons that you articulate, the explanation for its decision would have been coherent. But for those platforms that are as broadly used as Twitter and Facebook are, it does seem to me that there is a moral or social obligation, certainly not a legal obligation, to be transparent about their decisions to remove users.
There are basic 2 things here that needs to be taken into consideration:
- As a user, I want to know what specific behavior got an account banned/moderated so we can learn from it.
- As a social platform, I don't want to go into specifics of banning/moderation decisions so users doesn't learn how to game the system.
How do we reconcile those two things? There is no easy answer unfortunately.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 7:54pm
Re: Definitely Censorship
"It's kind of like saying that the telephone company can ban you from using a telephone because you still can walk outside and talk to people."
Actually, it is nothing like that at all.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 11:41pm
Twitter can’t ban you from using Parler or Gab. Twitter can’t stop you from joining a Mastodon instance. In what way is being banned from Twitter like losing access to your phone line?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 10:14am
Re: Definitely Censorship
It's kind of like saying that the telephone company can ban you from using a telephone because you still can walk outside and talk to people.
Yeah! I mean, in terms of Trump, what can he do? Can't send out a press release anymore, amirite Koby?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:16pm
Re: Definitely A stupid analogy
A telephone company can definitely ban you from using their service.
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Rocky, 10 Jan 2021 @ 8:46pm
Re: Re: Definitely A stupid analogy
They can't ban you for what you say.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 9:11pm
"They can't ban you for what you say."
I'm pretty sure most telecommunications TOSes have a clause forbidding the use of the service to commit crime (such as fraud). In which case they can by contract ban you over what you say.
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Rocky, 11 Jan 2021 @ 1:14am
Re: "They can't ban you for what you say."
Of course, because criminal behavior isn't free speech, or at least not in a democratic country.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 12:57pm
Re: Re: "They can't ban you for what you say."
Well, this is true once you criminalize speech. I was thinking of defrauding service customers or selling them contraband, but once we decide (say) preaching Islam is illegal, that's no longer free speech too.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 7:08pm
Re: Definitely Censorship
“The telephone company”
Which one?
Lol lol lol
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 7:53pm
Re: Definitely Censorship
It's kind of like saying that the telephone company can ban you from using a telephone because you still can walk outside and talk to people.
Not at all.
If you’re banned from Twitter, there’s still Facebook, Gab, Parler, Reddit, YouTube, 4chan, 8kun, private Mastadon instances, etc., all of which provide more-or-less the same service that Twitter does and via similar means. Not to mention the rest of the internet is still available to you. If the telephone company bans you from using their phone lines, you can’t use the telephone at all.
Twitter actually hosts users’ content on their property. A telephone company merely transmits it through their property.
The nice thing about free speech and the Constitution is that the rules are already written. They don't change and morph depending on who did or didn't win an election.
That is true, and they definitively say that a private person like Twitter can ban whomever they want for whatever reason they want whenever they want from their privately owned and privately run property (their platform).
If there was a coordination between twitter and democrat officials, then clearly this was a 1st Amendment violation.
I wouldn’t say “clearly”, but it’s not impossible. However, 1) I haven’t seen any evidence that there was any such coordination, and 2) only the Democratic officials, if anyone, would have violated the 1A—Twitter would not be liable for any allegations of a 1A violation.
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PaulT (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 11:25pm
Re: Re: Definitely Censorship
"If the telephone company bans you from using their phone lines, you can’t use the telephone at all."
Well, define "telephone company". I know the US has a major problem with lack of competition, but even there I believe that in most places you have a choice of at least a couple of mobile providers, and possibly more than one landline option, along with a multitude of VOIP services that might allow you to make calls. So, even that analogy is rather faulty.
"A telephone company merely transmits it through their property."
They're also a public utility, that comes under different rules.
"I haven’t seen any evidence that there was any such coordination"
You can't see things that don't exist, unlike these people who seem to thrive on hallucination.
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Christenson, 8 Jan 2021 @ 7:17pm
Encouraging violence by omission
Trump did encourage the mob, but mostly by omission...
Trump claimed the election was stolen, encouraged the rally, then talked about fine people (just like at Charlottesville) when they started doing bad things. He did nothing to ensure that rally stayed peaceful.
It's very important to remember that the words of the message matter little, it's the intent and the effect on the hearer that matter.
As to the tweet on @potus: It feels a lot like twitter felt a bit like an angry parent -- banning the real donald trump account seemed to have no effect on what was tweeted, so they escalated. The last lie (election fraud) cost two lives by violence on Wednesday, so where is this one going? Perhaps not legally, but it's not a big stretch for twitter to feel that last tweet from @potus was leading to violence against twitter itself.
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Koby (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:29pm
Re: Encouraging violence by omission
Trump did encourage the mob, but mostly by omission... Trump claimed the election was stolen, encouraged the rally, then talked about fine people (just like at Charlottesville) when they started doing bad things. He did nothing to ensure that rally stayed peaceful.
Those were the original concepts of America, that when some people explained what was going on, others became outraged and demanded action. And that's a good thing, and why the First Amendment exists. It appears that you are unable to tolerate dissent when the outrage is directed against your opinion.
There is no such thing as collective punishment here in America. We are individuals, and noone is responsible for the actions of other adults. Noone is under any obligation to modify their political opinion based on how others might or might not react. (And before anyone thinks of going there, fires in movie theaters are not a political opinion.)
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TFG, 12 Jan 2021 @ 10:57am
Re: Re: Encouraging violence by omission
Shouting fire in a movie theater is also potentially protected 1st Amendment Speech... but doing so might still get you banned from the theater by the theater management.
Meanwhile, shouting falsehoods about a rigged election and telling people to go to D.C., march down Pennsylvania avenue, and fight could very well not be protected speech, since it directly incited a coup attempt.
And, like shouting "Fire!" in a movie theater, it got Trump kicked out of the theater, by the theater management.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 7:21pm
>They didn't kick Trump off because he broke the rules, they kicked him off because it finally cost more to keep him on than they stood to gain from having him on the platforms....
Now, be fair. The rules are an approximation on how much a particular tweeter or tweet stands to cost, or gain, them. Twitter is (mostly) not banning illegal speech--the bar for that is pretty high. Twitter is aiming for a mass audience, and they ban stuff that would make that audience uncomfortable.
And that's OK.
As for me, I do not wish to be part of that mass audience, but I bear Twitter no ill-will either. Twitter is just the medium; it's the human race which speaks from hearts filled with ... well, evil. That evil comes in all shapes, and ... I even find it in some of my posts.
But I, as a random guy with a keyboard, am not in a position to influence most of those corrupted hearts. There is no gain in trying to out-bigot the bigots, to mass-hate the mass-haters. Online, moderation ("we don't talk like that here, please be more polite or leave") is the best we can do. Offline is where the real opportunities to influence people occur.
So, don't expect Twitter's move to change hearts, or even to spread civility elsewhere. It just makes their customers less uncomfortable on their site.
And that's OK, because that's all that they can do.
Meanwhile, I visit Techdirt instead, where the level of discourse is sometimes more civil. But even at Techdirt, hatred, contempt, and bigotry are socially accepted towards some people or groups, but not towards others. And that's also evil.
OK, pardon me while I go try to get the log out of my eye. And get that speck checked by an optometrist, would you?
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That One Guy (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 7:46pm
Meanwhile, I visit Techdirt instead, where the level of discourse is sometimes more civil. But even at Techdirt, hatred, contempt, and bigotry are socially accepted towards some people or groups, but not towards others. And that's also evil.
I'm curious as to which people or groups would those be, and please, be specific, because details and context matters.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:34pm
Re: Re:
More than that "hatred contempt and bigotry" are not socially acceptable on Techdirt. From what I have seen when people drink that cool-aid too deeply before posting they tended to get called out and/or flag (which I think are clear signs that it is not socially acceptable).
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:00pm
I do not hear anyone claiming trump voters will go away.
Hopefully some, or even most,of them will realize that Donald has tossed them under the bus just like he did to his VP and his brown shirts. -
Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 9:04pm
No kidding they aren't going away. They've always been here, in various numbers and flavors.
Thanks for the insightful newsflash.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:17pm
Cool story bro. You sound just like every other sore loser in history.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 5:16pm
Wait, I know this one...
Last I checked the biggest protest in recent history was the Women's march, the day after the 2017 inauguration, featuring 1.5 million women (and some men) in pink pussy hats. Another 1.3 million gathered at city and county centers across the nation.
None of Trump's protests got even close, despite Trump's declaration that his numbers were huge.
All those women didn't go away. And they're still organized. I think when Trump and his Boogaloos decide to start a civil war, they'll find they're on the wrong side of the war story narrative.
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That One Guy (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 7:51pm
I'll pose a question I recently asked in another thread, changed slightly to better reflect the circumstances: Would it be censorship if a club were to tell an unruly or obnoxious customer to leave the premises for harassing the staff and/or bothering other customers, and would or should the answer to the previous question change depending on how popular the club was in that city?
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:53pm
Re: Re:
A club removing someone isn't censorship, every club in town collectively deciding that a certain type of person could not visit or use it would be.
Definition 1 from Merriam Webster's dictionary of 'Censorship'
"the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security."Nothing about that involves the government. Censorship only happens when the weilders of power come together to agree on something. News outlets can and have censored, book publishers can and have censored, trying to compare things that people are required to go through in order to speak truth to power to a nightclub that's optional to visit is disingenuous at best.
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That One Guy (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 9:46pm
Re: Re: Re:
A does not become B just because it happens multiple times. If a private company telling someone to leave wouldn't constitute censorship then multiple private companies wouldn't either, it would just be the same action occurring multiple times.
Running with that idea though leads to some unpleasant consequences you might not have considered though, for example if a group of racists became known in a town and several businesses decided that they'd rather not have that sort of scum booking events in their stores then refusing to host events by that group would under your definition qualify as censorship, since that would be multiple businesses refusing to let them speak on their property, which is just a titch absurd.
"the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security."
If I decided to set up shop in your front-yard and wax poetic to people passing by about the glory of the FSM and how those that refuse to follow his holy word will be damned to lousy beer and STD riddled strippers in the afterlife, and you decide for some strange reason that you'd rather not have me doing that, are you suppressing my speech? What if all of your neighbors do the same, such that I cannot speak the good word on any of your lawns, have you suppressed and censored me then?
If you want to claim that a privately owned platform telling people 'not on our property' counts as censorship rather than moderation and discretion then you've watered the term down such that it's effectively meaningless, and you're welcome to do so I suppose just don't be surprised when people don't take any future claims of censorship seriously.
News outlets can and have censored, book publishers can and have censored, trying to compare things that people are required to go through in order to speak truth to power to a nightclub that's optional to visit is disingenuous at best.
No one is owed a platform to speak from. If a news station doesn't let you speak on their show you have not been censored, nor is it censorship if a book publisher decides that they're not interested in what you want them to print, even if you think, or are even right, that what you've got to say is important. If the government or possibly a similarly powerful entity steps in and tells them that they aren't allowed to let you speak that's another matter entirely, but so long as they're the ones choosing then no, it's moderation or discretion, not censorship.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 8:18pm
Re: Re:
Yes that could count as censorship. Again, they'd have a good reason to censor, but that does not change the fact that they are using their power to silence him.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 10:48pm
they are using their power to silence him
On their property and only their property. He can go to any other property that will have him and continue to speak. Your right to speak freely doesn’t give you the right to an audience.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 11:53pm
Twitter can’t censor you. Censorship involves someone violating your right to speak freely. Getting banned from Twitter doesn’t do that.
Censorship is none of these things:
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the loss of an audience you were never owed
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the loss of your spot on a platform you were never entitled to use
- criticism (or the social consequences) of your speech
Censorship is someone violating your right to speak freely. That usually involves threats of lawsuits, jail time, or even violence. Twitter does none of those things when it bans someone. Twitter can’t do them.
You’re not owed a spot on Twitter. You’re not owed access to its userbase. You’re not entitled to make Twitter give you an audience. Feel free to argue otherwise, but you’ll need one hell of an argument to avoid looking like an entitled ass.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 8:28pm
Censorship involves someone using their power to prevent you from speaking, or intimidate you into not speaking. It does not stop being censorship just because other platforms exist. A platform may have every right to censor you, but that doesn't make it not censorship and not a violation of the principle of free speech.
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Toom1275 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:16pm
Re: Re:
Censorship involves someone using their power to prevent you from speaking, or intimidate you into not speaking
And by your own definition there, you admit there was never any "censorship."
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 12:29pm
Not even private censorship
It would be censorship if Twitter said, you can’t post here because of something you said somewhere else. Private censorship does exist, but this isn’t it.
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That One Guy (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 1:22pm
'We've seen how you act and have no interest in hosting that.'
I wouldn't even count that as censorship, as I can easily see a person getting the boot from one platform for breaking the rules or otherwise making themselves so toxic that their current platform no longer wanted them around trying to set up shop on another platform, only for that other platform to decide they didn't want to deal with the same problems and preemptively telling them to keep looking, which would be a reasonable response.
(It would be similar to a particular person getting a reputation as an unruly and obnoxious drunk being banned from one bar, and other bars deciding ahead of time that they don't want to subject their staff and customers to that behavior either.)
Now if the first platform told or 'suggested' that the second platform not host the individual, that I could see wandering into censorship territory, as it would no longer be just multiple parties coming to the same conclusion but one attempting to influence others into coming to the same conclusion they did with the goal of keeping certain people unable to post.
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PaulT (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 11:12pm
Re: Not even private censorship
"It would be censorship if Twitter said, you can’t post here because of something you said somewhere else"
Not really, as you still have the power to keep saying that stuff in those other places. Twitter is not in the wrong for saying "hey, we saw what you did elsewhere, we don't want that behaviour here". If you're caught breaking the house rules in Vegas, it's not a bad thing if the casino tells you that you're not allowed to go back inside, nor is it a bad thing if other casinos on the Strip tell you that you're also not welcome in their property after they find out what you did.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 6:12am
Re: Re:
" The idea that censorship is purely a government activity is created by the people who want to censor everyone the most."
Censorship and Freedom of Speech (1st amendment) .... are not the same thing.
Word lawyering - lol
Private business on private property conducting private activities do not need to adhere to any of your ill conceived ideas about what your rights entail.
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Toom1275 (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 7:42pm
Made new rules to ban Trump, or undid the dumb rules that were the only reason they didn't ban him since 5 years ago?
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Uriel-238 (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 7:53pm
The VIP rule makes sense
If you have rulers of state (or of large institutions) on your communication service and they are reasonable it allows the service to act as a red phone. The notion is, so long as we're still talking, no one is shooting yet.
(Oh and do you know about the missile fleet flying your colors off the coast of my port? They're making my generals nervous.)
The problem is when you have someone who is not reasonable, and just uses it as a platform to radicalize his base.
Two-way mass communication on the internet scale is still rather new and we're still figuring out what works and what doesn't. Also there's money in having VIPs and celebrities with active accounts.
So much money.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 9:06pm
Re: Re: The VIP rule makes sense
Er, what?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:36pm
Re: Re: The VIP rule makes sense
Are you sure you comprehended the paragraph you responded to?
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 4:00pm
"closet fascist"
Yeah, I don't think I made the argument you think I made.
VIPs talking to each other and relaying important information to the people: good.
VIPs lying on mass media and making contrafactual claims to incite loyalists to violence and subversive action: bad.
Does that help?
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Uriel-238 (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 7:44pm
Meanwhile and relevantly,
_Parler_has been deplatformed from Google Play, and Apple has given it twenty-four hours to manifest a sound moderation policy or get deplatformed.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:02pm
Re: Meanwhile and relevantly,
yea go to their main web pages and get the direct apk
Its still out there you just gotta click a few more times-
Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 9:08pm
Re: Re: Meanwhile and relevantly,
No kidding. funny how that absolute power of censorship controlling our society works, innit?
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JoeCool (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 4:06amRe: Re: Meanwhile and relevantly,
"Sound moderation policy", yeah I want the company that has to put suicide prevention nets around its chinese factories to tell me what sound moderation policies are.
What does one have to do with the other? Nothing. You do know that suicide rates for those workers is lower than the general population, right? Also, most American skyscrapers have provisions to try to stop suicide attempts. That in itself means nothing more than the owners of the building are worried about liability lawsuits from relatives of people who try to commit suicide using the buildings. You also seem to think that those factories are owned and operated by Apple when Apple is merely a customer. A big customer, yes, but still just a customer.
If you want to complain about not taking Apple seriously about moderation advice, try pointing to their App store or something similar rather than oversea factories that supply them (and many other companies) some parts.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 12:35am
Re: Meanwhile and relevantly,
There need to be some serious anti-trust laws implemented against Google and Apple here. Force them to allow for alternate app stores, side-loading, and so on.
I'm not even conservative. Many serious problems have arisen from Google and Apple's absolute power. Abuses of monopoly, high fees, limited selection, deplatforming platforms like Tumblr (the source of my main gripes with Apple) on a whim until it crippled itself.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 8:01pm
Re: Re: Meanwhile and relevantly,
Google very much does allow side-loading/alternative app stores on Android devices.
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PaulT (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 11:26pm
Re: Re: Re: Meanwhile and relevantly,
...and even if they didn't, they can't actually stop you from installing a non-Google version of Android or a competing OS that does allow such things.
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PaulT (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 11:28pm
Re: Re: Meanwhile and relevantly,
"deplatforming platforms like Tumblr (the source of my main gripes with Apple) on a whim until it crippled itself"
Tumblr was crippled by it's wrong-headed anti-porn crusade, not by Apple.
Oh, and here's a hint - if your service that operates as a fully functional website that can be accessed through any browser is crippled by not having an easy app (many of which are just HTML5 shells for browser access to begin with, so don't really do much else than a bookmark would), it's probably not something that most people are that bothered about accessing to begin with.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 2:07am
Tumblr was crippled
I thought Verizon bought Yahoo and had a morality stick up its butt so it banned adult material on Tumblr. Less a crusade and more of a dumb corporate policy.
I guess that's an anti-porn crusade maybe. Sony had a similar anti-porn stance which killed Betamax and did damage to the markets of the PlayStation offerings. I never thought of it as a crusade so much as a policy based on the specific tastes of upper management.
Kinda like Too many notes for the royal ear.
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PaulT (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 2:59am
Re: Tumblr was crippled
True, crusade might be putting it a bit too strongly, but generally speaking it was that purge that led to the exodus of regular users, not its availability on the app store vs the web.
"Sony had a similar anti-porn stance which killed Betamax"
Erm, are you sure about that? I don't recall an anti-porn policy, just that the cheaper cost and longer tapes made VHS the best choice for that industry to adopt. I could be wrong, having only seen that particular battle from afar when I was too young to think about porn, but that's how I always understood it.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 3:06am
Re: Re: Tumblr was crippled
According to Wikipedia:
On November 10, 2015, Sony announced that it would no longer be producing Betamax video cassettes
Do not regard me as a valid source. I don't know what to think anymore.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 3:10am
Tape length and machine cost
Also [according to Wikipedia] VHS machines were cheaper and the tapes could record more time. I just remember the Beta picture was better, and the machines worked for longer.
I remember it being a story I was told before the internet.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 3:12am
A common story.
While it has been claimed that VHS won over Betamax due to the greater availability of pornographic movies on the format, the evidence on hand suggests that pornographic availability did not have a major influence.
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PaulT (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 4:53am
Re: Tape length and machine cost
Yeah, that's really my recollection. Betamax was more expensive (due to Sony's ongoing insistence at creating expensive to licence proprietary formats rather than participate in open standards - see also Memory Stick, UMD, MiniDisc, etc) and was restricted on runtime, especially when compared to alternate speed settings on the VHS tapes. They were technically superior, but at the time the novelty of getting a long video on a cheap tape was more important that image quality.
It's quite likely that the fact that the porn industry chose VHS as a result of all this was a driver for certain types of traffic, but I suppose it's also likely that it wasn't relevant. Having grown up in the UK, where hardcore porn was by default illegal, and my memories of Betamax is a brief period following the ironically placed 1984 Video Recordings Act where the rental stores had both formats before also defaulting to VHS, I can't speak to the American experience. But, I'm fairly sure that Sony's attitude to pornography was not a real factor.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:03pm
lol - wut
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 9:09pm
Re: Re:
seconded
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That One Guy (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:05pm
... what? Giving him the boot from social media is not in any way removing him from history, it's simply telling him 'you can still speak, but you're not going to be doing it from our property anymore'.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:24pm
It's funny how so many folks have started appearing who claim not to agree with Trump but have promptly started to bend over backwards to suck his orange phallus now that he got punished once after inciting his supporters and getting his bigly feefees hurt.
It's almost like rats abandoning a sinking ship but nah, couldn't be. After all these very fine people said they don't support Trump, right? The fighting to death on his behalf is pure coincidence...
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 9:12pm
No corporation cares about right or wrong, that's mandated by law. Why is it always only about "tech" companies with you types?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 6:21am
Wow, now US foreign policy and UN human rights discussions are censoring your opinions on your apple phone?
Why not switch on wifi and go their webpage?
No 5G coverage? Is 5G censoring you also?-
Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 10:52am
Re: Re:
"Why not switch on wifi and go their webpage?"
Opps, too late. Can't do that either.
Have to completely rebuild. I read some of the app devs are unwilling to support it.
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crade (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:19pm
The took parler off the Google play store too, but thats ok because they can still use successful trumpist platforms on awesome trumpist phones bought from great trumpist markets from their alternate reality where trumpists somehow made all that stuff without science, then they can use those to discuss how reality is for wimpy losers
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 8:22pm
They should do what we do and proclaim to the world how they want Google and Twitter to control most discussion on the internet because someone did the bad thing.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 9:12pm
Re: Re:
Says you.
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Christenson, 8 Jan 2021 @ 9:50pm
Re: Re: Re: You missed the invisible /sarcasm tag!
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 6:28am
Re: Re:
Who is they?
We? Does that include me? Because you never asked.
Do google and twitter control most discussion on the internet? From where does this claim originate?
Do you think that communication platforms should allow the coordination of terrorist activities upon their private property for which they are liable for what goes on there?
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crade (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 11:45am
Re: Re:
Not control most discussion on the internet.. just, you know, google and twitter should maybe control google and twitter..
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 5:03am
Amazon has decided not to host parler, so parler is looking for a new home, and expects to be down for a week or so.
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PaulT (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 5:56am
Re: Re:
I saw that, which raises the question of how incompetent their IT guys are if they don’t have a good enough disaster plan in place, especially if they only hosting on cloud services. I have scripts that can duplicate our entire infrastructure in about an hour on a different host if needed.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 7:16am
Re: Re: Re:
Their problem may be in finding a new hosts, especially seeing how toxic they have suddenly become. Companies do not like coups, as they can create an unstable business environment.
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PaulT (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 7:34am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Of course, but any competent admin there must have predicted this possibility and made contingency plans. It might not be as simple as switching your terraform config to azure when aws isn’t available due to the controversy, but if you’re on cloud infrastructure and it takes a week just to come back up, you’re doing something wrong.
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PaulT (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 11:16pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Well, that's what happens when you encourage things most people don't want to be associated with. They can either change their business model to something other than "honeypot for people banned from polite society", deal with the fact that this business model restricts their options, or set up their own infrastructure to work with. They have options, it's their own problem if they don't like them.
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Toom1275 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 9:18am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Perhaps they'll copy Stormfront's tactic, and seek hosting in Russia where their content is actually illegal for no reason than to fuel their userbase's delusions of persecution when they're banned.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 10:06pm
shut up, Meg
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techflaws (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 10:49pm
Let's see how this plays out then.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 11:46pm
Conservative Views
I doubt they're going to decide that a given ideology is bad. We already moderate for a number of very specific kinds of speech:
Obscenity and vulgarity (in family friendly forums)
Hate speech
Incitement to violence
Copyrighted material (e.g. Beatles tunes)
Dangerous recipes (e.g. bomb-making)
State secrets (actionable operational intelligence)Conservative speech that doesn't fit into these categories (e.g. military adventurism, arguments for small government) generally doesn't get moderated out.
Conservative speech that does (e.g. religious homophobia, white man's burden) will be more susceptible to moderation.
However large speech platforms like Facebook and Twitter rely on a large amount of automation and triage, which doesn't treat all cases equally (and often not very well.) But this effect doesn't have a conservative bias, and screws everyone with the same level of consistency.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 12:06am
Or, to put it another way...
Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views
Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?
Con: LOL no…no not those views
Me: So…deregulation?
Con: Haha no not those views either
Me: Which views, exactly?
Con: Oh, you know the ones(All credit to Twitter user @ndrew_lawrence.)
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 6:17pm
Wrong!
US state law and federal and many other countries assume that if you can read the posting in their jurisdiction then their law applies.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 11:26pm
I'm honestly mixed about this.
If Trump didn't directly entice violent (and I don't know if this is the case), and that they banned him because his wording could cause other people to act violent, then this thing sounds scary and dangerous. Am I missing something here? I am hoping that this isn't a "butterfly effect" reason of a ban.Also this is a very dangerous argument:
"President Trump is not being censored. He is not being limited. At any moment of any day (certainly for the next two weeks, and likely beyond) he can walk out of his office and have every major TV news channel (and every internet streaming platform) broadcast whatever he wants to say, and people will see it."
Why I find this dangerous is because nearly everyone can find a different way of promoting free speech. If Sony banned cracks of bottoms in DMC5, players could go to Xbox One's version of the game. If someone says "I don't agree with Trump and Biden." on Twitter, then had their comment removed by Twitter, the person could just go to YouTube and say it on there instead. Being able to have these possibilities does not change the fact that it's still restricting free speech (i.e. restricting the freedom of any legally protected speech being spread). Almost any lawful speech will have an alternative way likely.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 11:28pm
Forgot to attached email...
I added an email to this comment, hopefully my IP address can be scanned with the email and with the comment that didn't have the email. But if that won't work out, then oh well I guess. Haha
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 6:31am
Re: Forgot to attached email...
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jan 2021 @ 11:32pm
By free speech, I meant "legal speech".
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 6:32am
Re: Re:
No such thing
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Uriel-238 (profile), 8 Jan 2021 @ 11:35pm
Inciting violence
He did tell those at his morning rally to go to the US Capitol building and stop the electoral college count.
And considering they attacked press corps along the way, the crowd seemed prepped to fight.
Also there's the whole bombs thing.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 12:04am
it's still restricting free speech on Twitter
Twitter can’t stop Trump from using Parler to spread his bile. If it could, that would be “restricting free speech”. But Twitter admins have every right to decide who is welcome and what speech is acceptable on Twitter. The law doesn’t (and shouldn’t) force any platform to host all legally protected speech. For what reason should Twitter be an exception?
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Space5000 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 12:34am
=Disclaimer, same person, just recently made an account.=
I'm not accusing Twitter as violating the first amendment as I think the meaning of censorship is a bit more broad. Though I was using "free speech" a lot if I'm remembering correctly but I don't think I was saying that Twitter banning any lawful speech is a violation of the first amendment.-
PaulT (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:18am
Re: Re:
The point is - Twitter aren't restricting any free speech. They're just saying that if you violate their terms of service you can't use their property to express it. This is not a problem.
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Bloof (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 12:23am
Being denied the largest available audience is not being censored, Trump has no more of a right to a twitter account than he does to hold a rally at any venue he chooses. Denying him the ability to walk out onto the middle of the field during the superbowl halftime show to start giving political speeches is not the start of some slippery slope toward robbing anyone of their rights, it's just applying the same rules to a powerful person that we're all subject to, rules we agreed to when we entered someone else's property.
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Space5000 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 12:38am
Re: Re:
When I was stating what censorship was, I was mainly referring to the mere definition of it. A company can legally stop a lot of lawful speech, despite that, it's still censorship if it fits the definition of censorship.
Perhaps the reason why I was concerned was because of the main debate of banning people for having a political opinion.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 6:36am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
So now political opinions are being outlawed?
Please tell me more, I have not read nor heard about this one, is it another Qanon story?
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PaulT (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:21am
Re: Re: Re:
" A company can legally stop a lot of lawful speech"
No they can't. They can stop you using their property to express it, they can't stop you expressing speech elsewhere. What's the problem with a business being able to refuse access to disruptive customers?
"the main debate of banning people for having a political opinion"
That debate is, frankly, bull and is normally used by people who can't defend their actual speech. Scratch any right-winger's argument about how they were banned for having a political opinion, and you'll usually find some other reason they were actually banned. Usually it's abusive behaviour, spreading dangerous misinformation or outright white nationalist propaganda, but there's usually a reason that's not merely because they had a political opinion.
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Space5000 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:42am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I think I was mainly trying to point out that the argument the person made is a bit dangerous, which can be so dangerously broad.
I'm not trying to say that "censorship" is always bad. Just that to say that "it's not censorship" because "it's possible to say it elsewhere" is a bit ridiculous and basically suggests that censorship probably doesn't even exist.
Regardless if constitutional rights are violated or not, if I was banned from protesting "Trump is a loser." on the street outside, but not from swinging it around inside my house, then by the one 'logic', I am not being censored just because I can still say it in my house. Yet, I'm restricted from stating it outside and can barely spread the message to other people.
Going back to the political opinion debate, I do think it can sometimes be morally debatable outside of current law when it comes to censorship in general regarding one-sided political sides in lawful popular media websites.
Hope I'm being more clear here.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:54am
Censorship exists. People get censored all the time. But being told “we don’t do that here” — and getting kicked out if you keep doing “that” — isn’t censorship.
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PaulT (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:27am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
“ Just that to say that "it's not censorship" because "it's possible to say it elsewhere" is a bit ridiculous”
The point is that Twitter have the right to moderate their own platform, and you have the right to go elsewhere if you’re not happy with their rules. If your local bar kicks you out for being disruptive, your right to drink has not been curtailed. But the preferable solution for everyone is for you to find a different bar to drink in, not for the bar to be forced to let you in against their wishes. That’s a violation of their rights...
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 5:18am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Can the RNC stop DNC people discussing DNC policy on their site, and vice-versa? If so, why can't any site have a bias, whether deliberate or as side effect of moderation efforts?
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That One Guy (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 10:08am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I'll repeat something I said in another comment, which is that you can call a private platform kicking someone off their property censorship rather than moderation/discretion, but in so doing you're weakening the word to the point that it loses any impact. When censorship can range from the government telling everyone 'that person is not allowed to speak, period' and a private business deciding that they'd rather not host a particular person's speech to say 'they've been censored' rather looses any kick.
Can they still speak, or have they just been told to leave a particular building(digital or otherwise) and can speak just fine elsewhere? Those are two very different things, so by watering down the term to include both you've essentially made the claim of censorship useless at describing what took place, and you might as well just toss it out entirely and stick with a more lengthy explanation of what happened, which is what you'll have to do every time at that point since the word 'censorship' has been made effectively meaningless.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:45am
Do you think you’re owed this spot on Techdirt?
If the answer is “no”, what makes you think anyone is owed a spot on Twitter?
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:59am
Trump getting banned from Twitter isn’t censorship. I’d call it censorship if it were. But it isn’t — so I’m not. You haven’t convinced me that a man who can call a press conference to say “fuck you, Twitter” has been censored. I doubt you ever will.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:37am
He's been [banned] from Twitter and Facebook. And in two weeks he won't be able to have those press conferences.
So what? He can still start his own social media network or join Parler or whatever. Loss of an audience is not a violation of civil rights, no matter how much you feel like it is.
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PaulT (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:47am
Re: Re:
“ He's been censored from Twitter and Facebook. And in two weeks he won't be able to have those press conferences”
Yet, he still has thousands of other ways to be heard, including ones you will never have.
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techflaws (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 4:24am
Re: Re:
And in two weeks he won't be able to have those press
conferences.And nothing of value will be lost. But wait, are you seeing the TV networks won't report on him anymore? Really?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 6:43am
Re: Re:
"He's been censored from Twitter and Facebook."
For the sake of argument - ok. But so what?
Do not try to say his 1st amendment rights have been violated because that is bullshit. The government had nothing to do with it. -
Bloof (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 8:05am
Re: Re:
He has access to a hell of a lot of heavily trafficked websites, the sympathetic right wing press would love to provide him with a soapbox, he also has his the money to hire someone full time to run his personal twitter -like service. He has the email addresses and phone numbers of millions of people who want to hear what he has to say, so even without twitter, he has more options to be heard by a wider audience than anyone on this website, including the owners.
Trump is not being silenced or censored, he broke the rules of a private platform. The slope he is on is not slippery, he is waddling down by choice.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 8:34am
Re: Re:
"He's been censored from Twitter and Facebook."
No he's been kicked off of Twitter and Facebook, which is their right as private companies. Twitter and Facebook do not owe anyone access to their services, they could kick off anyone who doesn't pledge allegiance to the mole people if they want. Probably a poor business decision but it is an option.
"And in two weeks he won't be able to have those press conferences."
In two weeks he won't be in the white house, why should he be able to have White House press conferences? He can have other press conferences if he wants, like at Mar a Largo, or perhaps at 4 Seasons Total Landscaping (provided he pays the conference fee and rents a roto tiller). But no, he is not allowed to have White House press conferences after he leaves office.
Anyone can have a press conference, but they are not owed attendance by the press, or anyone for that matter. In point of fact I routinely hold press conferences in the living room about the state of the lights in the house, yet the main stream media has never once responded to my invites.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 8:39am
I routinely hold press conferences in the living room about the state of the lights in the house, yet the main stream media has never once responded to my invites.
Big Bulb is keepin’ you down, man~
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 12:52am
Censorship is silencing someone by government means. Trump is in part being silenced (on Twitter) by Democrats instructing social media platforms to do so. By that construction, you could say the government is wielding it's influence against him.
It is admittedly justified censorship, as he is violating the spirit of incitement precedent, even if he isn't violating the letter of it.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 8:07pm
Re: Re:
I’d also add that censorship could involve use of violence to suppress speech, but simply removing you from the premises is not.
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techflaws (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 3:04am
Re: Re: Re:
Oh, so you have millions of followers? Really?
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PaulT (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:15am
"Am I missing something here? "
Apparently. Trump has spent years getting special treatment from Twitter that would get (and has got) pretty much anyone else banned from their platform years ago. He's moved further and further into spreading disinformation and outright lies since he lost the election, leading to Twitter having to put a disclaimer on virtually every single one of his posts about that election. On Wednesday, he addressed a crowd that had been whipped into a frenzy with repeated lies about how the election had been "stolen", calling on Mike Pence to override the public vote, and when he didn't do that, Trump inspired the crowd to march on the Capitol building and attempt insurrection.
The tweets he just got banned for weren't isolated incidents. They're straw that broke the camel's back, with Twitter not really wanting to be associated with the cult's next planned attempt to violently overthrow the will of the people.
"Being able to have these possibilities does not change the fact that it's still restricting free speech"
Free speech does not give you the right to use someone else's private property to express it, and that's not a problem if the government aren't enacting the restriction. This has always been true, it's just recently that a small group of loud whiners have decided that Twitter should lose their private property rights.
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Space5000 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:35am
Re: Re:
For the first paragraph under quote, that's interesting. It's still a bit hazy for me to tell if this is obviously violating the Twitter's rules but I'm not frustrated if the reasoning was against something very likely to be creating a high risk similar to open crowds during a pandemic.
For the reaction under the second quote, you're right for the most part (hate speech and maybe a couple of other topics are a bit hazy) on the property thing, other than that, I was mainly trying to say that even if a company can censor a legally protected speech, it would still fit the definition of censorship, which isn't even the same as saying "My rights are violated.". I think there are some video game censorship that are silly and somewhat debatable, but I'm not saying my rights are violated.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:50am
Nintendo telling a publisher to remove troublesome content from a game prior to release on the Switch isn’t censorship. That publisher can publish their uncensored game on Steam. Censorship literally requires that your rights be violated — that you be prevented from speaking your mind. So Twitter can’t censor anyone.
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Rocky, 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:14pm
Re: Re:
Context matters, and the term uncensored in the context of games means it will contain sex, violence, blood, gore and other things that isn't appropriate for all audiences.
Now, if you actually look up the etymology for the term uncensored in the context of games you will quickly find that games was actually censored by the government which was found unconstitutional by the SCOTUS.
These days, the term means that a game is intended for a mature audience (see ESRB ratings for example).
In short, you are wrong because you couldn't be bothered to understand the context.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 5:43pm
Re: Re: Re:
When did the government actually censor games? As far as I know, the closest they came was attempting to require ID to buy things that were rated for adults.
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Rocky, 9 Jan 2021 @ 7:45pm
Re: Re: Re: Re:
See Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 7:28am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Yeah, they just couldn't sell it to minors - that's about the same as requiring ID, which I said. They were perfectly free to sell it to everyone else.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 8:09pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
That’s still censorship since it was done under government influence.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 3:52pm
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"When did the government actually censor games? "
Some game publishers self censored in response to threats from political pundits and government officials.
For example, Hot Coffee.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:00pm
The Hot Coffee situation is a bit of a misguided argument. Rockstar took the code out of GTA San Andreas because of social blowback and legal threats, yes. But it’s not as if they were removing anything that was legitimate, accessible, meant-to-be-seen content.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:37pm
GTA San Andreas
There was the whole murder-simulator accusation, and we eventually realized [Jack Thompson](Jack Thompson) was just crazy and needed to be deplatformed. He got disbarred at any rate.
Curiously, these days, when I think of Murder Simulators I think of mafia-style games like Among Us which have the pacing of cozy murders (in contrast to FPS deathmatch or capture-the-flag multiplayer games which are more sporty).
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 1:28pm
Re: Re:
Hey guys. Could we stop using the "flag" as "disagree"? My comment was not abusive, trolling, or spam.
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Space5000 (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 4:14pm
Then why is it called "censorship" whenever there is usual talks about specific regional version of games blocking specific content then? I don't rely on popular opinion a lot, but from a common perspective and how one of the definitions out there for "censorship" does not specifically say anything that limits the definition of censorship to lawful speech violated, I believe it might be a bit fair to ask this question.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 7:04pm
Regional blocking
Regional blocking is usually due to state laws and policies and it's based on where you are.
And yes it gets legally-gray if your region's internet needs are only served by Comcast, and Comcast decides you can't use a given website (and blocks it). But we're not supposed to have regional monopolies in the US. That's also the point of net neutrality (which Trump's guy Ajit Pai was glad to nix).
Of course these are about receiving content, not about posting or publishing content.
Law Enforcement is limited when it comes to restricting what you can say, but no website is required to host what you say.
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PaulT (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 11:16pm
Re: Re:
"Then why is it called "censorship" whenever there is usual talks about specific regional version of games blocking specific content then? "
Because those are usually government mandated?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 6:50am
Re: Re: Re:
"if a company can censor a legally protected speech, it would still fit the definition of censorship, which isn't even the same as saying "My rights are violated.""
What do you mean by the phrase legally protected speech?
You can not call the cops on some business because they do not let you rant upon their property. Well, you could but might regret it.
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Space5000 (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 4:20pm
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I think I intended that "legally protected speech" is speech that isn't breaking the law. I was also saying that censorship is not always equal to the first amendment being violated.
Though granted, sometimes it could be debatable. (e.g. Twitter censoring any lawful political speech in favor of particular side).
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PaulT (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 11:21pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"I think I intended that "legally protected speech" is speech that isn't breaking the law. "
Totally different thing. You can say or do things that are perfectly legal, but still get told you're not welcome on private property as a result. It's perfectly legal for me to tell the local bar owner that his daughter is a whore, but I wouldn't expect to be welcomed with open arms after that.
"Though granted, sometimes it could be debatable. (e.g. Twitter censoring any lawful political speech in favor of particular side)."
Which, as you keep being told, has absolutely fuck all to do with the first amendment. No private company is compelled to be neutral, whether that's Breitbart deleting and banning posts from anyone to the left of Mussolini, or Twitter kicking off Nazis. An actual first amendment violation would be the government mandating that sites host speech against their will.
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Toom1275 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 12:52am
[Asserts facts not in reality]
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:46am
The government doesn’t have the right to make Twitter host any kind of legal speech. What makes you think it should?
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techflaws (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 4:27am
they should not be the ones who decide who gets to speak and
not.Like Parler should not be able to ban me for making fun of drumpfist morons, right?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 6:52am
Re: Re:
Some people do not recognize nor understand hypocrisy.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:48pm
Hypocrisy
I switched to double standard only to find they just don't care for rule of law.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 8:16pm
They don’t get to decide to speak or not. They get to decide who gets to speak on any platform(s) they own as private persons or not. Just go to Gab, 4chan, 8kun, or (when it’s back online) Parler if Twitter and Facebook ban you from their platforms. Maybe make your own platform.
Also, a lot of people believe Trump was being insincere/weak in his “disavowal”, and I didn’t see him tell anyone to be peaceful.
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Toom1275 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 12:54am
Re: Tech circle
Godsdamn, you kool-aid-guzzling sheep are dumb.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:36am
Questioning something is fine. Buying into outright lies and treating them as truth is not. Neither is storming a government building with the intent to subvert democracy.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:57am
if you actually think that was an attempt to subvert democracy guess you never seen an actually coup.
One rioter took twist ties with him onto the Senate floor. Pipe bombs were found near the Capitol. Several of the rioters had guns of their own.
If you think that wasn’t an attempt to subvert democracy, you don’t give a fuck about facts.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:30am
pipe bombs are dangerous but seroulsly everyone made them in high school
Where the hell did you go to high school?
I was referring to most of them taking selfies sitting in chairs
They chose to break into the Capitol building and go where they weren’t allowed. They deserve to face the consequences of that decision.
to think this a real attempt of a government over throw when it was obviously not organized. Is really over the top.
And the riot was an attempt to overthrow democracy. The rioters wanted to stop the certification of Joe Biden as the next president. He won a free and fair election. They wanted Trump to stay despite his loss. What would you call a politically motivated riot meant to subvert the will of the people and install the actual loser of an election as the president?
that woman was also a person who wandered into the ground and she paid a price shot dead and unarmed.. Like to know how that happened.
“ ‘Go! Go!’ she shouts, and then two men hoist her up to the rim of a broken window. As she sticks her head through the frame, a Capitol Police officer in plain clothes fires a shot, and she falls back into the crowd. Blood starts pouring from her mouth. … ‘Nothing will stop us,’ she wrote on Twitter the day before her death. ‘They can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours …. dark to light!’ ” (Source)
she should not have been there
And that’s why she’s dead.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:06am
They marched to the Capitol because Donald Trump had told them for months that the election would be/was rigged. He offered no proof of this rigging. His own flunkies said there was no rigging. His lawyers gave no proof of this rigging to the courts. But Trump persisted in his delusion. It soon became a collective delusion among his supporters.
They marched to the Capitol because Donald Trump (among others) egged them on. He didn’t tell them to “protest peacefully” or “write letters”. He, his idiot son, and his even bigger idiot of a lawyer all but told the crowd to stop Pence and Congress by any means necessary.
They marched to the Capitol because they wanted to “stop the steal”. They broke down doors and windows, assaulted cops, and threatened the safety of Congress and the Vice President. Some of them had pipebombs and guns and twist ties. A makeshift gallows was seen near the Capitol grounds.
The rioters who attempted to subvert democracy on the 6th of January 2021 didn’t “protest” at the Capitol for the sake of “election integrity”. They descended upon, and forcefully infiltrated, the Capitol for one purpose: Keep Donald Trump in the White House, no matter the cost.
Four dead rioters. One dead cop. And Biden will still be president come the 20th. That their coup attempt failed doesn’t make it any less of one.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 8:03am
Re: Re:
Perhaps a little reading of the history behind the many coup attempts that occur worldwide would be beneficial.
There have been many and some succeed. I doubt that one could determine an outcome based solely upon their personal opinions of what transpired.
Downplaying illegal activities, what's next .. proclaiming a divine right to take over the world? -
Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:05pm
Pipe bombs
A single poorly made unworkable Molotov Cocktail and (I think) a gun replica was enough to cause vast pearl clutching and mass condemnation of the 2014 protests of the shooting of Michael Brown
But pipe bombs in the US Capitol left by violent white insurgents are somehow no big thing.
Double standards.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 9:07pm
Re: Re:
The thousands of others that did not set foot into the captial were there to protest for election integrity and the elimination of election fraud and laws that were changed leading up to the election that were unconstitutional and jeopardized its integrity.
The people who did not even try to enter the Capitol are irrelevant to this discussion. The people who did were breaking the law, and many of them attempted a coup. They’re the ones we’re talking about. You can defend the people who stayed outside until the cows come home, but it will have no effect on the arguments being made here.
Also, courts have explicitly ruled against those claims. There was no problem with the integrity of the election, no election fraud, and exactly one unconstitutional change to a law that didn’t affect many votes.
But the supreme court skirted their duty, broke the constitutional responsibility.
No, they did not. Under the Constitution, Texas has no standing to bring a case about other states’ election laws. The Supreme Court has no duty to hear a case where the plaintiff lacks standing to bring that case.
Though Justice Alito and Thomas said the case had merit to be heard
No. Alito and Thomas said that they felt the Supreme Court lacks the discretion to not hear a case where the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction (such as when one state sues another like here), regardless of whether or not that has actually has any merit at all. They did not say that the case had any merit whatsoever, and they explicitly said that they would not grant the requested relief.
John Roberts dismissed it not for merit but for no standing when 33 states sued and they had standing.
Actually, only one state sued (Texas); the other 32 merely joined as amici to file a brief in support of the lawsuit. They were not plaintiffs.
As for standing, as I mentioned above, under the Constitution, one state cannot sue another state over the latter’s election laws. The Constitution explicitly leaves pretty much every aspect of the voting and vote-counting process to the individual states. And an Article III judge (including those on the Supreme Court) cannot rule further on a lawsuit if the Plaintiff(s) cannot show that they have standing to bring the lawsuit in the first place. In order to have standing, you must be able to show that you yourself have a legally cognizable injury that can be redressed by the court. It is not a high bar, but it is a critical one. Texas could not reach that low bar. That means that they cannot be the one to bring suit over the alleged injury, so the case is fatally flawed. If your neighbor gets punched by someone, you cannot sue that person over that incident because you received no injury from it.
Have an actual trial that takes a look at the evidence instead of the constant dismisals of you filed late or you have no standing.
Here’s the thing. Judges have looked at the evidence. In every case they did look, they found that the evidence a) was inadmissible in court, b) only showed the vote-counting process proceeding normally and lawfully, or c) was contradicted and outweighed by other evidence presented and thus presumably false. The evidence was so bad that there was no need to go to a trial.
Plus, most of the cases didn’t allege fraud of any sort (which includes all of the lawsuits dismissed for lack of standing or filing late), and, with one singular exception with little impact, every one of the law changes were ruled to be constitutional as a matter of law by judges, and matters of law are generally decided well before trial if there’s no material dispute about the facts of the case.
congress do something about this election fraud and last minute changes to laws that compromised and broke constitutional law and probably most likely handed the presidency to the wrong person.
As mentioned above, the Constitution leaves most details about how to hold an election and count the votes afterwards to the individual states, and pretty much everything else is set in the Constitution itself. That means that Congress can’t actually do anything about the things you alleged. It’s a purely state and local issue.
Furthermore, as also mentioned, any presented evidence of alleged election fraud was either false or mistaken as found in several courts, and courts have ruled that those law changes were not unconstitutional. As such, there was no evidence of election fraud, and there were no law changes that compromised or broke constitutional law. (There was one thing ruled unconstitutional, but it involved a minuscule amount of votes.) Also, Congress can’t actually do anything about unconstitutional state laws. Only state legislatures and state or federal courts can do anything about those. This is another case of federalism and separation of powers at work.
As for having an effect on the election, if you combined all the proven instances of voter or election fraud with all the votes that would be thrown out absent the disputed law changes, Joe Biden still would’ve won. The margin was just too big.
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PaulT (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:32am
Re: Re:
You appear to believe that the woman was some innocent who happened to wander on to the property, and not a dyed in the wool cultist who was actively participating in the attempted sedition?
I’m not sure what news you’re reading but I suggest you expand your sources...
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PaulT (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:24am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Yes, cops tend to shoot at the mob trying to illegally gain entry to the property they’re protecting.. that’s no fear, though
“ But you don't paint thousands and thousands of others there witha a broad brush.”
What’s this thousands thing? I was only referencing the woman you referenced, and maybe the other people with her actively trying to invade government property in order to subvert democracy. What’s the problem including everyone illegally at the capitol building with each other?
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TFG, 12 Jan 2021 @ 10:53am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
The evidence has been presented in court, over 50 times. Each and every time the case has been tossed, because there is, in fact no evidence.
Trump's team tried in the courts and failed because their claims were false. They lied in public, and the lies couldn't stand, or even be really made, in the courts. So there's nothing. You've been conned. You've been sold a house when there's not even a foundation.
And those that bought into the lie, or simply found it useful for their true aims, took part in an attempted coup, with members of the invasion of the Capitol fully intending to capture and/or murder our duly elected Congresspeople.
You can cry to the heavens and perpetuate the lie all you like, but it does not change what it is: a lie. I pray your eyes will open, if not today, then someday in the future.
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PaulT (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 11:04pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"The evidence has been presented in court, over 50 times"
Now, now, let's be fair - many of those cases were laughed out of court for various reasons before they even got to the point of presenting evidence. Some of the ones that made it that far also were accompanied by Guiliani and his cronies saying things like "well, we're not alleging fraud per se...", because even they aren't dumb enough to not realise that unlike when they're talking to the cult on TV, they have to support their argument in court.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 9:51pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I’ll just address a couple of points here, especially since TFG already discussed the election-related points.
Gain entry on property they, themselves let in.
No, they forced their way in. They were not “let” in. As evidenced by the broken windows, broken doors, people going around metal detectors, and people carrying items no security guard worth their salt would ever willingly allow inside a government building.
And they don't tend to shoot unarmed people in the head facing them point-blank in the head, you dumbass.
You’re clearly new to this site, aren’t you? Also, the shot wasn’t taken from point-blank range, and the shooter was off to the side from the woman’s perspective.
Obviously, you're framing the hundreds of thousands of people that were there at the Save America march, every one of them with the intention to "subvert democracy", doesn't make it true.
No one was doing that. We were only talking about the ones who were inside the building or attempted to enter via break-in. We’re not painting the more peaceful protestors outside the building or any protestors who didn’t continue with the march at any point with the same brush as the ones who entered or tried to enter.
when they were let inside the capitol building, some saw that as a way to get the point across more democratically.
Again, they weren’t “let inside”. Also, the fact that they broke in through windows and doors and brought guns, zipties, and bombs suggests that they weren’t going for democratic demonstrations. Not to mention the vandalism and theft.
They were legally allowed to gather and assemble and make their voices heard.
Yes. No one disputes that.
They were let inside so they weren't unlawfully inside.
No, they were not “let inside”, but even if some rogue officer(s) let them through, that doesn’t make their presence lawful.
However, when escalations rose after that woman was shot in the head, I suspect the anger with those protesters was like anyone else would respond if they saw someone who was unarmed and innocent would do get very angry/upset a moral human response.
Clearly you didn’t watch the footage of what actually happened. Look, the door she was trying to get through had its glass broken by the mob, it was clearly barricaded heavily to prevent entry, and there was a man on the other side with a gun shouting for her not to go through. She may have been unarmed, but she was far from innocent; she was clearly going somewhere she had absolutely no reasonable belief she was allowed to go.
Also, the violence came afterwards? Again, you clearly didn’t watch the videos. And did you miss the zipties, guns, and bombs they brought with them? Does that sound like stuff you’d bring to a “peaceful protest” (well, except for guns being brought to a pro-2A protest)?
Seriously, a lot of people there did come with the intent to use violence. That you don’t see it is willful ignorance on your part.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 9:25pm
Re: Re:
....yeah pipe bombs are dangerous but seroulsly everyone made them in high school.
I’m glad to see that you agree the ones (it was a lot more than just the one guy) who brought zipties and pipe bombs should go to jail, and that the ones who assaulted or killed the LEOs should also be harshly punished, but I have to agree with Stephen on this one: What high school did you go to? No one in my high school built any pipe bombs before they graduated as far as I know; it certainly wasn’t common or common knowledge there.
Except in the minds of those few lone people that did the bad things the rest just strolled around and took pictures aimlessly taking trinkits.
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It was a lot more than just a “few lone people that did the bad things.”
- That’s still illegal.
Remember that woman was also a person who wandered into the ground and she paid a price shot dead and unarmed.. Like to know how that happened.
She didn’t “wander[] into the ground”. Just watch the video. She, along with hundreds or thousands of others, went to the barricaded doors that led to the hiding congresspeople and VP, and broke the glass in those doors. At that point, she climbed over two men to get through the broken glass and the barricade shouting, “Go! Go!” During this, you can see a plainclothes agent of Pence’s Secret Service pointing a gun in that direction shouting for them not to go any further. After the woman passed through the doorframe, she was shot and knocked backwards from the impact. Yes, she was unarmed, but there was no way the agent could have known that, it was known that there were others who were that were present, and she broke into the location where his VIP and many other government officials were hiding or evacuating.
This was far from “wandering”; this was a deliberate attempt to break into somewhere she clearly wasn’t supposed to go despite being explicitly warned not to at gunpoint.
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Rocky, 11 Jan 2021 @ 1:18am
Re: Re:
You do now that all the footage from the attack on Capitol Hill proves that you are either a liar or someone who is mentally ill.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 1:02pm
Mental illness
Their credulity of their leader and his allied media services is showing to be dysfunctional and has rendered them low-functional in US society (mind you, that's a high bar), but most recently and most importantly a danger to themselves and others.
But I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist, and I cannot asses them from here. Nor could one without a one-to-one interview.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 12:39pm
Asserts facts not in evidence
“Hundreds of thousands” more like just hundreds, maybe 3 thousand. Nothing compared to the 1.5 million folks who marched in the women’s March and managed not to kill any police. If you want to convince the American people (of which trump supporters are a minority) that dems stole the election, you need to actually produce some court-admissible evidence. When we started the mueller probe, we at least had a ton of evidence that Trumps folks “misspoke” dozens of times about their contacts with Russia. He asked for help from Russia LIVE ON TV. You can argue about the findings, but if a dem did that you would have demanded the same level of scrutiny. Why can’t you people accept that Donald Trump is not a very good politician, and that a lot of people don’t like him.
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Tanner Andrews (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:17pmRe: Re:
And if you actually think that was an attempt to subvert democracy guess you never seen an actually coup
I think I have seen one. Or video of it, actually, since I was down here in the City while it was happening up there.
Let's see: a fading politician and a melted lawyer stirred up a crowd to ``march down Pennsylvania'' [Ave] and stop the constitutionally required function of canvassing the electoral votes. Said crowd, so stirred, then commenced to do that thing. They broke into the seat of government, tore down the flag on that building and replaced it with their own, and by force effectively ousted the Senators and Representatives who were there to carry out the function of government.
Let's see. Ah, here it is: ``Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort''. I knew I had that around somewhere. Levying war is, roughly, assembling a body of people to effect some object by force, generally against some government. So, for instance, if you stormed the a government capital, that would probably count.
It is really hard to see how forcibly replacing the flag on the Capitol, and forcibly displacing the folks inside, can be viewed other than as levying war against the United States.
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Rocky, 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:16pm
Re: Re: Re:
Ah, but you don't understand! It was just a guided tour that got out of hand!
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:16am
Re: Tech circle
It sounds to me you are very much determined to believe a very narrow, specific (and from here, absurd) narrative.
There are many conclusions here and I really cannot imagine how you came to them, like you live in a box and only get news as interpreted by your five-year-old as he watches UAN.
Feel free to explain yourself, but I doubt you are capable of doing so.
PS: In 2000 the Democratic candidate (and his voters) totally got cheated out of the presidency, which is now history laid plain. And we just sucked it up.
At this point, considering what happened the last two times, a GOP candidate is voted in by Electoral College (and not by popular vote) I hope Americans take to the next one the way they respond to post-9/11 would-be airplane hijackers.
Because for two out of two (in a row!) they have caused immeasurable and irrecoverable damage to the United States.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:43am
\>the electorial college
\>a brill[ia]nt ideaPick one.
The Electoral College was designed to create minority rule. While I’m not one to push for the tyranny of the majority, the minority shouldn’t have that same tyranny. Or have you ignored Mitch McConnell’s refusal to bring bills up for a vote in the Senate only because House Democrats passed them?
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Toom1275 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:49am
Re: Re: Re: Tech circle
Maybe you need to be enlightened just a bit before speaking.
comprehesion helps alot. Im sorry your having difficulty.[Projects facts not in evidence]
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:53pm
"Not narrow at all"
That's not explaining yourself.
But your willingness to dismiss the US as even trying to be a democracy does inform me of your position.
Perhaps you think might should be the deciding factor that determines who rules. It's preferred by big guys and guys who can afford to hire armies.
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techflaws (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 4:31am
Re: Tech circle
He most likely did not expect what happened.
Which is why he did not go along with the crowd as he said he would?
Why did they stop the count on election night?
Because they listened to the 'stop the count' idiots?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 12:35am
I'm no fan of Trump and, as much as I support freedom of speech, I believe banning Trump from Twitter was the right thing to do.
That said, Mike - have the courage to defend your convictions and stop saying obvious censorship is not censorship but rather moderation. This is a clear case of "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter".
I have had to reevaluate many values I've treasured throughout my life over the past five years. I no longer believe a free press is an overwhelming good for society but rather a necessary evil (not referencing techdirt but most other outlets). I no longer believe little-to-no moderation online is ideal though I set my aperture for permissible speech higher than most.
I am sad to see persons and institutions that have traditionally lionized free speech contort themselves into knots to say banning people from one of the few online places where they can be heard isn't censorship. It quintessentially is. In this case it's a good use of censorship. But make no mistake that there will be many, many bad cases in the future as those who have ended up our gatekeepers for speech respond to special interest groups demanding censorship of content or people they don't like. The only question is which special interest groups will be making those calls.
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Toom1275 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 12:58am
banning people from one of the few online places where they can be heard
That's an extremely dishonest way to (mis) characterize things.
Perhaps stop you should stop tying yourself in knots so hard to pretend that there's anthing close to censorship.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:43am
Twitter is not “one of the few online places where [people] can be heard”. A person can be heard from anywhere. Twitter only offers a large potential audience for that speech. And nobody — not even Donald Trump — is entitled to make anyone listen.
If you lose a wide audience, that isn’t censorship. If you lose a spot on property you don’t own, that isn’t censorship. What makes you believe otherwise, other than your feelings?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:27am
Re: Re:
*Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:35am
Facebook; Twitter; YouTube
And yet you are here using none of those, and still being heard.
And I am here and I don't use any of them, and you and I are having a conversation.
No, I don't think your assertion is adequately demonstrated.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:37am
Re: Facebook; Twitter; YouTube
Censorship isn't all or nothing. If an Iranian political dissident was banned from communicating on all platforms except the comment section of a semi-obscure news site, that's still censorship. Because they're censored from communicating over the most heavily populated platforms.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:40am
If an Iranian political dissident was banned from communicating on all platforms except the comment section of a semi-obscure news site, that's still censorship.
Only if the government was involved with those bans. Otherwise, it’s damn close to the line without stepping over it. And the dissident could still make his own website, which is another way of communicating with people. (So is email. And Discord. And Signal, and Telegram, and Skype, and…)
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:33am
And the dissident could still make his own website, which is another way of communicating with people. (So is email. And Discord. And Signal, and Telegram, and Skype, and…)
Making their own website isn't a good example. No one would know of it. And if no one reads the site or communicates on it, it may as well not even exist.
The question here isn't one relevant for people with preexisting contacts, so Signal and email aren't relevant. Iran also blocks Discord and Telegram and pseudo-blocks Skype.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:38am
No one would know of it. And if no one reads the site or communicates on it, it may as well not even exist.
So what? You’re not owed an audience. That only you hear what you say doesn’t mean you’ve lost the right to speak your mind.
If I post something on social media and nobody pays it any mind — no likes, no boosts, no nothin’ — have I been censored?
The question here isn't one relevant for people with preexisting contacts
Except it is. Nobody is owed a connection with other humans. Not being able to communicate with others could be censorship, but it could also be people choosing to ignore an asshole. If people ignore me when I try to communicate with them, have I been censored?
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PaulT (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:50am
Re: Re:
“And if no one reads the site or communicates on it, it may as well not even exist.“
...and Twitter didn’t exist at one point, nor did their newer comptetitors.. so?
You allowed the ability to speak. You have never had a fundamental right to an audience, online or offline
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:57am
Re: Re: Facebook; Twitter; YouTube
Something tells me this Iranian political dissident is banned from communicating on all platforms not because there's some massive deep-state conspiracy to silence him but because all he says is bigoted vitriol and no one can stand to be with him for five minutes.
You haven't demonstrated either a) that you or Trump or whoever is banned from all platforms except obscure ones, just your favorite three which are far, far removed from monopolies (there are plenty of others, and you embarrass yourself not knowing how to find them) or that b) you or Trump have anything worthwhile to say and can do so without being an antisocial git.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:24am
Re: Re: Re: Facebook; Twitter; YouTube
I don't care one wit about Trump. I mentioned Iranian political dissident to distance from Trump specifically but it seems you're more interested in reading hidden meaning that didn't exist into what I said.
And you have a lack of imagination if you think only hate filled monsters would be censored without government intervention. What of private pressure groups? Or what of someone advocating domestically unpopular ideas? I bet you promoting LGBT ideas in Iran won't afford you with many Iranian private-sector businesses willing to host your speech.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:29am
I bet you promoting LGBT ideas in Iran won't afford you with many Iranian private-sector businesses willing to host your speech.
Should the law allow the dissident to force those businesses into hosting that speech? If not, your point is pointless. Those businesses can and should have the right to choose what speech they’ll host regardless of any outside pressure.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:36am
Me: This is censorship.
You: They have every right to not allow your speech.It's like you're responding to a different post entirely or are agreeing with me in everything other than word choice.
Those businesses can and should have the right to choose what speech they’ll host regardless of any outside pressure.
How libertarian of you :^)
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:40am
It's like you're responding to a different post entirely or are agreeing with me in everything other than word choice.
I’m not agreeing with you. Someone choosing not to host your speech of their own free will doesn’t mean they’ve censored you.
How libertarian of you
Should you be forced by law to host third party speech on your private property? If the answer is “no”, for what reason should private businesses be forced to do that?
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:00pm
Libertarian
Go onto 4Chan/b and take a look at some of the freest speech around. If you like you can participate.
They moderate for very few things. Commercial spam mostly. Also child porn. I think some categories (Furry porn, MLP -- porn or otherwise) are restricted to hours and zones.
And yet, they too have to moderate.
There are some places that exist that are very near free-speech zones, and they illustrate why more popular platforms moderate.
But people like you still have a platform.
Heck, 4Chan/b was a rallying center for Trump's base in 2016. Some still like him. More are critical than before.
Enjoy!
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 12:41pm
"Only hate filled monsters."
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 12:51pm
"a lack of imagination"
Indulge my lack of imagination, then, what specific speech are you angry at social media for censoring?
I'm not as well versed at LGBT in Iran as I am dissidents behind the Great Firewall of China, whose blogs I encounter, as well as news of their arrest.
Curiously they're telling a truth suppressed by the government.
Twitter is censoring Trump based on lies confirmed by facts to the contrary from multiple sources (having been thoroughly examined by dozens of judges in dozens of courts).
I'm quite aware of what censorship looks like. When books in public libraries and school curricula are challenged, when people are imprisoned for releasing information embarrassing to the administration, when media is rated outside what will be offered by resellers. Heck, when Apple decides that a book or game is outside its acceptable parameters (the iOS environment being an actual walled garden)
Go on. Present your case. I am so far unimpressed.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:36am
If you are cut off from Facebook, [Twitter], and[ ]YouTube then you are cut off from socializing with almost the entirety of the English speaking internet.
So what? You’re not owed the use of those platforms and you’re not entitled to make them give you an audience.
It is a bad faith argument (to put it mildly) to claim being banned from those platforms isn't censorship.
Except it isn’t.
It is blat[a]nt censorship. In this case blat[a]nt censorship of Trump.
He can literally call a press conference tomorrow and say “fuck Twitter” on an open mic. How has he been censored by Twitter, again?
you don't actually read the entirety of the posts you respond to
I do, though. I often quote longer comments to a degree that likely borders on absurd. But reading full comments doesn’t mean I have to take them all seriously.
you insinuated I'm one of those "facts not feels" conservative types
You’ve been arguing that your feelings about censorship are the facts. How could I avoid confusing you for one of those chuds?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:45am
> So what? You’re not owed the use of those platforms and you’re not entitled to make them give you an audience.
You keep making this argument as if it's relevant to the discussion on if being banned from a communications platform is censorship. Why don't you come out and say you believe that only governments can censor people like other critical theorists say?
> He can literally call a press conference tomorrow and say “fuck Twitter” on an open mic. How has he been censored by Twitter, again?
Censorship isn't all-or-nothing and I'm puzzled by you bringing up an example that has an expiration date of two weeks.
> I do, though. I often quote longer comments to a degree that likely borders on absurd. But reading full comments doesn’t mean I have to take them all seriously.
I've had you admonish me for not calling a cop racist when I had called the cop racist in the second sentence of a two sentence reply a few months back.
> You’ve been arguing that your feelings about censorship are the facts. How could I avoid confusing you for one of those chuds?
Gee, I dunno, maybe it's because I said multiple times it was a good thing Trump was banned from Twitter? Good lord.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:53am
You keep making this argument as if it's relevant to the discussion on if being banned from a communications platform is censorship.
The argument is relevant. You seem to believe the First Amendment guarantees someone a spot on Twitter. My argument attempts (fruitlessly, it seems) to tell you that your belief is wrong.
Why don't you come out and say you believe that only governments can censor people
I would if I did. But I don’t. A rando with a shotgun who says “I’ll kill you if you say [x]” is a censor. Someone who files lawsuits to keep speech from being heard is a censor (albeit one who makes use of government power). That the government is most often associated with censorship doesn’t make it the only censor. But censorship requires a violation of civil rights. A ban from Twitter doesn’t violate any such rights.
I'm puzzled by you bringing up an example that has an expiration date of two weeks
Trump will likely be politically relevant for the foreseeable future. That any post-term press conferences won’t be covered widely isn’t relevant to whether he can hold them.
I've had you admonish me for not calling a cop racist when I had called the cop racist in the second sentence of a two sentence reply a few months back.
…Jesus, dude. I likely spend more time on this site than you and even I don’t hold a grudge like that.
maybe it's because I said multiple times it was a good thing Trump was banned from Twitter?
That doesn’t preclude you from being a conservative.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:11am
The argument is relevant. You seem to believe the First Amendment guarantees someone a spot on Twitter. My argument attempts (fruitlessly, it seems) to tell you that your belief is wrong.
That's a beaten up old strawman you're attacking there. Let me know when you want to talk about something I actually said.
I would if I did. But I don’t. A rando with a shotgun who says “I’ll kill you if you say [x]” is a censor. Someone who files lawsuits to keep speech from being heard is a censor (albeit one who makes use of government power). That the government is most often associated with censorship doesn’t make it the only censor. But censorship requires a violation of civil rights. A ban from Twitter doesn’t violate any such rights.
So short of someone pointing a gun at you, government-backed coercion is still the only means censorship can be enacted against someone as those are violations of civil rights.
Shame the ACLU doesn't agree with you.
https://www.aclu.org/other/what-censorship first two paragraphs.
Trump will likely be politically relevant for the foreseeable future. That any post-term press conferences won’t be covered widely isn’t relevant to whether he can hold them.
If tree falls in the woods but no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound?
…Jesus, dude. I likely spend more time on this site than you and even I don’t hold a grudge like that.
You've been the wet towel of Techdirt for as long as I've seen you in the comment section.
That doesn’t preclude you from being a conservative.
I'm a liberal in the "Nadine Strossen" sense. It wasn't that many years ago that evangelizing free speech was the domain of liberals and progressives. While my views haven't changed, those of Progressives sure as hell have.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:26am
I try to avoid responding to otherwording. But…
short of someone pointing a gun at you, government-backed coercion is still the only means censorship can be enacted against someone as those are violations of civil rights
No. As the ACLU points out, private pressure groups can also apply enough pressure to censor speech. But it takes a hell of a lot of that kind of pressure. Even Twitter didn’t ban Trump when a huge chunk of the userbase was asking for that. (I’m not saying the ban is censorship. I’m making a point about pressure.)
If tree falls in the woods but no one is there to hear it, did it make a sound?
Irrelevant. A tree doesn’t have the ability to speak.
You've been the wet towel of Techdirt for as long as I've seen you in the comment section.
I’m not going to fuck you.
It wasn't that many years ago that evangelizing free speech was the domain of liberals and progressives.
I believe in free speech. Racists have every right to express their racist beliefs. The government shouldn’t stop them from doing that, either. What they don’t have is the right to make others listen to/host that speech. They shouldn’t have that right. No one should — especially the President of the United States.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:53am
I think too many people focus on race..... How many racists do you think are out there....?
I mean it sounds like one is hiding behind every tree or something just waiting to say something to you.... like something bad.
Sheez ....I know there are racists there will always be.... but for God's sake this is a good country.
Most and I mean most people are not racists just assholes and eveyone meets one. People need to put this crap to rest seriously over played over hyped.
Omg Race Race RACE ...are we running yet?
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 12:35pm
How many racists do you think are out there....?
By last count, at least 73 million in the US.
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TFG, 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:25pm
Re: Re: How many racists do you think are out there....?
I have done my research. I would like to see that you have done yours.
So. Sources required.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:59pm
Re: Re: How many racists do you think are out there....?
but now we have a documented liar and intellectual insecure President elect.
Small correction required, you description applied much more to the outgoing president whose inability to accept defeat and lies about a stolen election led directly to an invasion of the Capitol.
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Toom1275 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:28pm
Re: Re: How many racists do you think are out there....?
[Asserts facts in direct opposition to reality]
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:44pm
"Not all supporters of Trump are racists"
Yeah, I [gave them the benefit of doubt once]
(https://strangenewwords.wordpress.com/2018/09/17/boaty-mcboatface/). I have since been corrected by observations from multiple sources.I have a hypothesis that the Trump GOP hierarchy is a pyramid of chumps with each tier playing confidence games on their subordinates. While my evidence so far is only anecdotal, so far I've not yet seen a counterexample.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:45pm
Stupid markup errors.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 4:18pm
Not all supporters of Trump are racists
But his racism wasn’t a deal breaker for them.
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That One Guy (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 8:16pm
You can tell a lot about a person by who they associate with
'I'm not a racist, I just choose to belong to and support a group that includes them' isn't quite the defense they might think it is.
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PaulT (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:47am
Re: Re: How many racists do you think are out there....?
“ Not all supporters of Trump are racists”
But he is extremely popular among racists. Non-racist Trump supporters just happen to have a different mental deficiency.
“ Out with the Racist, and In with the pathological liar”
Such as not thinking that Trump is a pathological liar, which you really have to be deficient in some capacity not to have known.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 4:03am
And someone speaking without anyone around to hear it may as well not be able to speak.
I still have the right to speak even if I’m ignored, intentionally or not. Not having an audience is not the same as having your speech suppressed or your rights violated.
I don't expect to learn
At least you’re honest.
They absolutely don't have the right to make others listen to the speech, though efforts at deplatforming are tantamount to making that decision on behalf of everyone else.
Anyone upset about Trump being banned can go find him on some other platform. He doesn’t, and his cult members don’t, have the right to make Twitter host his speech.
[whe]ther the platform has the right to censor someone from their platform has absolutely no bearing on the act of banning being censorship
Except it does. Did Twitter violate Trump’s civil rights by banning him? No. Did Twitter stop Trump from using other platforms? No. Did Twitter prevent Trump from calling Fox News or some other media outlet to rant about Twitter? No.
Even under the loosest definition of the word, Donald Trump is no victim of censorship. I’ve yet to see a good argument saying he is. And you’re sure as shit not offering one.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 5:58pm
But censorship requires a violation of civil rights.
It does not.
Let's say Twitter left all of Trump's tweets up, and a court decided that one of his tweets was libelous and issued an injunction saying it had to come down. So now it's the actual government deleting Trump's tweet. Are you saying this wouldn't be censorship, even though you have the full force of the government forcing it to come down? Or are you taking the position that any restrictions on speech, even rather uncontroversial and legal ones, are a violation of civil rights?
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 10:58pm
Are you saying this wouldn't be censorship
Yes. The courts decide what speech is and isn’t legally protected. Taking down illegal speech isn’t censorship to me. Argue otherwise and you’ll be arguing on behalf of every form of illegal speech. That includes CSAM (i.e., child porn). So how far do you want to take your argument?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 1:34am
Nice try with the argument to the children. However, that is censorship, even by your standard, as they're censoring the child porn by force of law (and presumably their own moral standards).
Simply because the content is morally objectionable, and abhorrent doesn't mean the mechanism which is used to stop it could not be considered a form of censorship. If we took that logic further, we could say any ban on any content would not truly be "censorship", because we agree with the premise for banning it.
If the courts set a truly ridiculous standard, would it suddenly become censorship, or stop being so, as it fell in and out of line with your personal standards? Sometimes, censorship can be justified. However, when it comes to facilitating the most free speech possible, the courts will only reserve the facility of censorship for the most egregious of cases.
We like to think of censorship as a "bad thing", and in many cases, it is very much a bad thing. It is a very slippery slope which can be tough to control once it gets going, and we should be aware of that. But, it is a tool, just like any other tool.
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Tanner Andrews (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 11:56am
you’ll be arguing on behalf of every form of illegal speech. That includes CSAM
Sure, I'll take that one. Normally it is government that gets to decide what speech is ``illegal''. If you have a different version of ``illegal'' then please ignore the rest of this.
With that defined, however, I can fairly observe that governments strongly tend to disfavor and outlaw speech critical of them. In the U.S., we had the infamous Alien and Sedition laws in the late 1700s/early 1800s, which remain an embarrasment.
Speech seen as too sympathetic toward Russia was not only banned in the 1950s [see, e.g., American Communications Assn v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382], but those who spoke such things would find themselves investigated [see, e.g. Barenblatt v. U.S., 360 U.S. 1959], and for some time unable to travel [1950 statute rejected in 1964, Aptheker v. Secretary of State, 378 U.S. 500].
So, yes, I find myself defending ``illegal'' speech. It did not take much to be a ``communist'' in the 1950s and 1960s. Consider Gibson v. Florida Legislative Investigation Committee, 108 So.2d 729, or NAACP v. Button, 371 U.S. 415. Generally favoring civil rights for negroes was sufficient then, and with very good people on both sides, it appears to be coming back now.
And the definition of CSAM is somewhat dicey. In typesetting, we sometimes form ligatures out of `f' and `i'. Yet, if some wag suggests that a font's implementation of that is a kid performing a non-reproductive act, you may be there. (There may be other remedies available for actual abuse of kids, such as punishing the abuser, but those do not involve suppression of speech.)
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 1:41pm
>Taking down illegal speech isn’t censorship to me
By that standard, when China arrests people for publishing something pro-democracy, that isn't censorship because it is in fact illegal to do that there. I'm going to just go ahead and assume you don't really mean that; you're not that unreasonable.
So, as far as I can tell, your standard is "the United States courts are always exactly correct, and if they decide something is legal then it's censorship if a government anywhere in the world (but not anyone who isn't a government) restricts it, but if they decide something is illegal then it's not censorship to restrict it".
I mean, you could do much worse as far as standards go, but that's kind of convoluted for a definition of censorship.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 10:02pm
I disagree with you on this. Otherwise censorship could not exist since anything the government removes would be illegal and, therefore, not be censored. I cannot agree with that argument.
Furthermore, many people would argue that censorship isn’t inherently, necessarily bad. Censorship of child porn would be good censorship, so arguing that a site removing child porn under penalty of law is censorship isn’t an argument that supports child porn.
Also, you seem to be confusing what appears to be a purely semantic argument without policy or legal implications to an argument about what is good policy or law.
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PaulT (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:48am
Re: Re:
“ If you are cut off from Facebook, Google, and. YouTube then you are cut off from socializing with almost the entirety of the English speaking interneY”
What a giant pile of bullshit, but if that’s the lie you have to tell yourself to pretend you have a point here so be it
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:53am
Re: Re: Re:
I corrected by saying Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. I may as well add Reddit on there for good measure since they're included in this ban wave.
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PaulT (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:19am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
You’re still lying if you say they’re the majority of the English speaking internet though... maybe you need to look around more rather than making up lies on one of the sites you don’t think is significant enough to include in your list?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:37am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
You're delusional if you don't think the majority of the English speaking Internet is congregated around Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
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PaulT (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:51am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Define “majority”. You’re wrong whichever way you choose, I’m just interested in how to tell you how full if shit you are.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 4:05am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
What, do you think Reddit, 4chan, Something Awful, and a shrinking constellation of forums from the Web 2.0 days has more than 15% of the entire English-speaking Internet?
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PaulT (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 4:21am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I think you’re deliberately lying about the nature of the internet to make a stupid point that bears no relation to reality, or pretending that your pathetically unimaginative use of the tools you have is what everyone does.
But, hey, whatever keeps you from dealing with the real issues
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:00pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
You're making vague appeals to the "nature" of the Internet while ignoring network effects dominating social media.
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Toom1275 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:28pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
How is it even possible for Paul to "ignore" the deranged hallucinations of another person?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 10:56pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Fam, one of your team literally told everyone else's mom to get cancer because he disagreed with the article.
Your team had four years to grow up before Twitter finally decided you couldn't cope with the responsibility. Get over it.
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PaulT (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:50am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
No, I’m addressing actual reality, I was just hoping you’d go into more detail about your hallucinations so I could explain why you’re wrong. But since you’re refusing to do so, I will just state that there’s no metric by which what you’re saying is factually correct. Feel free to provide evidence I can disprove if you don’t like this
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PaulT (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 5:05am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I think you’re deliberately lying about the nature of the internet to make a stupid point that bears no relation to reality, or pretending that your pathetically unimaginative use of the tools you have is what everyone does.
But, hey, whatever keeps you from dealing with the real issues
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:09pm
"delusional"
You mean cats and porn are no longer the (vast) majority of the web?
Do you have a source for this assessment? Or is this #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:02pm
Re: "delusional"
and hey, last I heard Netflix was taking over the internet gobbling up all the very expensive bandwidth.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 1:14am
I agree, I'm not a fan of the euphemistic language myself, especially when it is overwhelming used in a deflective way. When, and if the tables turn, the other side would be happy to use it in the very same way.
On the contrary, I'm a big fan of free speech, although perhaps there is a certain level of tolerance to be had for world leaders who leverage platforms to sow discord. I don't know how to solve that problem entirely, but electing decent leaders, and breaking the cycle which leads to inept leaders getting elected could help.
Would giving diverse groups a greater voice in government help to voice the them and us patterns which dominate politics? Do we need something akin to ranked voting to weaken the constraints of the two party system, and the ability to helicopter in candidates? Are people simply too uninformed about politics? Do we need education in critical thinking skills?
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:52am
Donald Trump can literally call a press conference tomorrow and say anything he would’ve said on Twitter. He can go to Parler and do the same. He can make his own Mastodon instance and say whatever the fuck he wants.
Twitter didn’t censor Donald Trump. It doesn’t have the power to censor him.
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techflaws (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 4:35am
Dorsey is traitor scum
Why? Did he collude with Russia?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 7:46am
Re: Re:
No, China.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:31am
Sincere question for Parler users, this is different from you fine people kicking off people you don't like from your platform how, exactly?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 5:43pm
Crickets!
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:32am
Cursing mothers
Wow, I'd like to assume that Trump supporters aren't all so eager to wish ill will on others when they dare challenge the dogma of Trump, but so far, all the examples I've encountered don't bear that out.
Your facts aren't obvious to us. Feel free to cite sources, though.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:42am
Re: Cursing mothers
Trumplers are now realizing what it feels like to be on the receiving end of "drinking them liberal tears", and they've realized they don't like it - and they're trying desperately to scramble off the sinking ship, which has already hit the seabed. Weaksauce insults is all they have left.
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Rocky, 9 Jan 2021 @ 7:51pm
Re: Re: Re: Cursing mothers
You mean patriots like those who walked around in the Capitolium waving a Confederate flag?
If you are a patriot carrying the Confederate flag you are a confederate patriot, you know, the Confederation that rebelled against the USA because they thought slavery was just fine.
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techflaws (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 4:36am
Mmh, your tears are delicious, asshat.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 4:30am
it was Antifa/BLM activists disguised as trump supporters
[asserts facts not in reality]
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 5:31am
Re: Re: "assert facts not inreality"
So your point is everyone that makes you look bad is a BLM or Democrat actor... Despite those people being very publicly identifiable, and their political opinions extremely visible from their own social media for the past few years? Your stance is that all of them are secretly anti-Trump plants?
Damn, the QAnon lads are scrambling...
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 6:21am
Re: Re: Re: Re: "assert facts not inreality"
I'd pity you if you weren't on the side of fascism.
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TFG, 9 Jan 2021 @ 8:37am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "assert facts not inreality"
I see that you have drunk the Koolaid about the terrorists that invaded the Capitol.
They were 100% Trump supporters. There was no false flag operation. They were terrorists attempting a coup in support of a terrorist leader.
I hope you will wake up, and see that you have been taken advantage of by the soon-to-be-former President.
Until then, I will call you both fascist and terrorist sympathizer.
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Rocky, 9 Jan 2021 @ 7:57pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "assert facts not inreality
If I hadn't seen what you posted earlier I would have attributed this post to Poe's law.
I do wonder how the fuck you'll survive and get old with how gullible you are.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 8:04pm
Identified individuals from BLM at the Capitol
Then you have a name and a source to share with us. Yes?
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TFG, 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:22pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: "assert facts not inreality
I will continue to hope that you will wake up and see that you have been taken advantage of by the soon-to-be-former President. I won't hold my breath, but I will hope.
Until then, you continue to be a fascist and a terrorist sympathizer, desperately grasping at false narratives to ensure that it's anyone's fault but yours and those you supported.
To be very clear: BLM was not present at the Capitol raid. Antifa did not replace the rioters. It was all pro-trump supporters. It was everyone Trump invited to the Capitol. It was planned as a coup, as a way to overturn the legal results of the election. It was a terrorist act, an insurrection, and thing less. To deny this is to delude yourself. To claim anything else is to give aid and succor to enemies of the nation.
There is no other truth in this instance.
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Bloof (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 10:54am
Jimmy Dore and Tulsi Gabbart
So politically you side with a far left comedian who aspires to being the Bernie or bust version of Alex Jones that believes that the progressives aren't progressive at all if they don't screech 100% of the time like teapartiers, and a pro war, pro corporation borderline republican who's spent her career fighting against LGBQT+ rights and is doing the 'The left is all to blame for the far right's actions!' media tour in the hopes of getting a fox news gig.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 12:01pm
You're really not an American if you don't stand for what is right.
Americans don’t stop being Americans because they’re insurrectionist assholes. Hell, the United States welcomed back the gotdamn Confederacy after the War to Preserve Slavery. What makes the assholes who carried the Stars’n’Bars back then any better than the assholes who carried the Stars’n’Bars into the Capitol (for the first time!) this past Wednesday?
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Toom1275 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:53am
Re: Re: Re: Re: "assert facts not inreality"
False framing must be a profession you went to shool for.
[Projects facts not in evidence]
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 12:06pm
There's video evidence of these accounts so I know this is true.
Video of people saying “it was Antifa” doesn’t make their claims true. And of the people already arrested for their role in Wednesday’s riot, most of them (if not all of them) had made their beliefs known via social media well before then. To wit: The woman who was shot and killed inside the Capitol had long been a fervent pro-Trump conservative.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 12:29pm
"I was there, you weren't."
So why aren't you linking us to video where Kodos pulls of his human suit on the house floor?
We're in an era where Dear Leader has 30,000 false or misleading statements to his name, catalogued in multiple databases, so we have every reason to be skeptical...
...of him and of you. I'm beginning you question whether you were actually there. Are you figuring we're the enemy so it's okay to feed us false information?
Either present evidence or STFU.
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Rocky, 11 Jan 2021 @ 2:08pm
Re: Re:
So which one is it? Did you see a video saying that anti-fa was there or did you see them yourself?
Or perhaps you are just another liar, because the alternative is that you need help with your mental health.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 10:22pm
Re: Re:
Are you saying you were inside the building? Because that’s a crime and contradicts your earlier statements.
More importantly, we’re talking about people shown on video to be engaging in illegal actions who have been clearly identified as Trump supporters and who are even now calling themselves Trump supporters and did so well before this event. Many of them were also carrying or wearing Confederate flags and/or outfitted in the same clothes that other Trump supporters were. If you were not inside the building, then you did not personally see what happened inside the building, which is what we’re discussing, and thus your eyewitness account is of little relevance.
Now, you say you saw Antifa members on site doing illegal things. I should point out that you can’t really prove someone is an Antifa person rather than a Trump supporter by their outfits unless they include Antifa slogans. Do you have specific evidence of these people actually being Antifa or just speculation because they happened to be dressed differently?
Notice I’m not saying anything about what you witnessed beyond your own claims. I’m telling you what the evidence shows, what you have claimed you saw and where you saw it, and asking for clarification on what you witnessed and how it would lead to the conclusion that this was a false-flag operation.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:15pm
Antifa false flaggers
Is this about the Corvo / Soviet tattoo?
It's too bad the alleged Antifa false-flaggers didn't bother to false flag their faces. Twitter detectives have already doxed the lot and they're getting arrested, much the way the Boogaloos who burned down Minneapolis police precincts were arrested by the FBI.
I think we'll be aware of their allegiances soon enough.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:07pm
The plot thickens!
Guy Hornhat has been arrested. He is Jake Angeli aka Arizona man, Jacob Anthony Chansley charged (at the moment) [with violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. (Source: AP). Chansley's in-costume persona is well known at Pro-Trump protests and public gatherings.
Does anyone want to argue that he's really an Antifa provocateur? (Damn, Antifa is so good at this!)
Then there's Lectern Man, the guy who made off with Nancy Pelosi's podium. He is Adam Johnson of Parrish, Florida, meaning he's Florida Man in disguise. Also, father of five. He too concealed his secret Antifa allegances with a social media history of anti-BLM sentiments. He too has been arrested (on charges of theft, at least).
So raise your hand if you think that was a Russian water tentacle.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 5:14pm
More plot(ters)
Deskman (the guy with his feet on Pelosi's desk) is Richard Barnett from Arkansas, and did the FBI the courtesy of turning himself in. He's also cultivated a social media presence as a staunch Trump supporter and gun rights advocate, and believes face masks (to prevent the spread of COVID-19) is the precursor to forehead chips (to track our location and thoughts? I'm not sure why in the forehead.)
Mason-Jar was arrested in the Capitol and was identified as Falkville, Alabama man, Lonnie Coffman. Eleven Molotov-Cocktail-style bombs made of mason jars filled with homemade napalm were later found in his truck nearby. He had an (unlicensed? improperly licensed?) handgun on his person when he was arrested. An additional handgun and an M4 Carbine assault rifle were also found in his vehicle. Conversations with police revealed he knew about the bombs placed within the Capitol building.
Death-Text is Georgia man Cleveland Meredith Jr. who has a history of sending SMS texts threatening physical harm to House Speaker Pelosi. I'm not sure if this means he has a number where Pelosi receives texts or he's texting someone else saying I totally want to hurt that Nancy woman. Meredith's social media habits show that he likes Trump, QAnon claims and sharing fringe hypotheses about the less-wholesome activities of Democrats and libs. Or that's what Antifa wants you to think.
Other names arrested include: Mark Leffingwell; Christopher Alberts, of Maryland; Joshua Pruitt; Matthew Council, of Florida; Cindy Fitchett, of Virginia; Michael Curzio, of Florida; Douglas Sweet, of Florida; Bradley Ruskelas, of Illinois; Terry Brown, of Pennsylvania; Thomas Gallagher. I haven't researched them yet. Are any of these names familiar to my fellow Antifa comrades?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:12pm
Re: The plot thickens!
"Then there's Lectern Man, the guy who made off with Nancy Pelosi's podium."
I read an article about this guy, it seems some folk thought his name was Via Getty. lol
Where was that .. ahh here it is
Arrest Via Getty-
Uriel-238 (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 2:48pm
Via Getty meets Florida Man
When I discovered there's a Chinese food restaurant named Translation Server Error I decided that place needs to be a favorite noodle spot in my Cyberpunk fictional world.
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That One Guy (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:58am
Personally I just love that argument, as not only is it completely full of shit and yet another example of those cowards refusing to own their own actions but it means that not just Trump but everyone is trashing the insurrectionists, even those they thought were on their side.
They stormed the capitol and attempted to 'stop the steal' and all they got was thrown under every bus in the country when it failed, who ever could have expected that a cult headed by someone well known for betraying those around him the second they become a liability would betray those that engaged in insurrection for him when it failed?
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techflaws (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 4:37am
Re: Not Easy, Not Unreasonable, Not Censorship-WRONG,WRONG, & WR
You fucking cowards aren't even man enough to own up to the fact it was loonies from your side who did this. Sad.
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TFG, 9 Jan 2021 @ 8:38am
Re: Re: Re: Not Easy, Not Unreasonable, Not Censorship-WRONG,WRO
If you were there, you were part of a terrorist insurrection.
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Rocky, 11 Jan 2021 @ 1:30am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not Easy, Not Unreasonable, Not Censorship-W
So all the videos from the attack was fabricated? And the officer who had his head smashed in by a fire extinguisher and later died perhaps just fell down the stairs?
Every accusation, a confession.
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TFG, 11 Jan 2021 @ 11:18am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not Easy, Not Unreasonable, Not Censorship-W
Thank you for confirming that you were part of a terrorist insurrection.
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Toom1275 (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 8:32pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Not Easy, Not Unreasonable, Not Censorship-W
[Projects facts not in evidence]
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techflaws (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:41am
Re: Re: Re: Not Easy, Not Unreasonable, Not Censorship-WRONG,WRO
Real American, my ass. And still too much of a coward to own up to it. And no, I don't need to have been there to see what you assclowns did, neither does the world you've all impressed so deeply.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 3:17pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Not Easy, Not Unreasonable, Not Censorship-WRONG
Nah, the world is not so impressed. One thing is being impressed by successful coups organized in the last few years in many countries around the world, like Nicaragua in 2016. But in this particular coup the failure in the first couple of hours and the bison hat were not very impressive.
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Totally Verifiable Anonymous Source, 9 Jan 2021 @ 11:21am
Re: Re: Re: Not Easy, Not Unreasonable, Not Censorship-WRONG,WRO
^ This guy has purple skin and two noses and wears a shirt that says "I'm a big ol' liar" and also he smells bad. How do I know? I was there!
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:42pm
BLM/Antifa/Biden -- CNN, CNBC, NBC, MSNBC
Wow! You know all the words to the song!
??Build the wall!??
?Lock her up!?
??No Collusion!?
All the hits. Want to call us snowflakes??
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:20pm
Not man enough to own up...
I don't think it's a masculinity thing, but processing that
So often I've heard:
Real Christians wouldn't...
Real Americans wouldn't...
Real Republicans wouldn't...In fact, oh yes, they totally would.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 4:14pm
A Christian who voted for Trump might not be a bigot. But Trump being one wasn’t a dealbreaker for them. That alone says enough.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 10:26pm
It was a dealbreaker for a lot of Christians I know.
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TFG, 13 Jan 2021 @ 7:57am
Re: Re:
I count myself among them. However, Bhull, note Stephen's qualifier: "a Christian who voted for trump".
I imagine the Christians you know did not vote for Trump, ergo are not the ones Stephen's talking about.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 4:38pm
True Christians
Yeah, I get my policy from the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, who regards as Christian anyone who self-identifies as one.
And this is necessary because according to the Catholics, extra Ecclesiam nulla salus or No salvation outside the [Roman Catholic] Church. (They might give the orthodox churches a pass. The same goes for the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest denomination in the US. So one way or another there are a whole bunch of Americans who think you are not true Christian, whereas I do.
(The Universalists believe everyone gets salvation, Christian or otherwise, which I respect. You may think they are false, but they don't think the same of you.)
But we saw both in 2016 and 2020 that 80% of White Protestant Evangelicals and 80% of Catholics voted for the irreligious guy who lies about his convictions, who is a known adulterer and a known racketeer (by orders of magnitude compared to the other candidate). So no, I don't give Christians the benefit of doubt that I might have a few years go. They gladly discard creed for pragmatism when it suits them, and we now have demonstrable evidence that religion does not convey moral fiber at all.
Perhaps we should do right not because it's a religious edict but because there's rational cause to do it that way.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 6:12pm
Re: True Christians
But we saw both in 2016 and 2020 that 80% of White Protestant Evangelicals and 80% of Catholics voted for...
Where the heck are you getting your numbers? 80% of Catholics? That's not even close. Catholics are not white Evangelicals when it comes to politics.
"Exit polling done for NBC News (among voters who have completed voting or reached by telephone), showed that among Catholics, 51 per cent voted for Biden, compared to 47 per cent for Trump."
Pretty close to the nationwide numbers. Next time, double check your sources before you write off a huge segment of the population, would you?
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 8:01pm
Maybe Christians are not very good at Christianing
Catholics are not white Evangelicals when it comes to politics.
Are you sure you read what I wrote? I thought I made that clear.
In 2016, the White Catholics vote 60% Trump according to pew research. So yeah, I was wrong. Latin Christians were 77% Clinton supporters, so they're an entirely different voting bloc.
Still 81% of Evangelicals are staunch Trump voters, and plenty of them gave him a mulligan regarding his sinful past.
In 2020, according to Pew Catholics were closer to 50%, though the Register notes practicing Catholics (that is those that actually go to church, pay tithes, have regular confessions and so on) it was closer to 60%. It's not clear whether this includes both White and Latin.
I don't think I'm the problem when it comes to people writing off large segments of the population. I'm not the one campaigning for office telling the world that Latins are criminals and rapists.
I will never argue that someone cannot be Christian (or any other religion or ideology). Only, when someone practices their faith through discriminatory behavior or by pressuring establishment to enact discriminatory policy I will assert these actions are contrary to pluralistic civilization, and to the American Way. And that person should stop doing that and be ashamed no matter what his or her religion is.
Of course, this happens a lot. Many churches hate women and gays given they prioritize suppressing both women and LGBT+ over even their wars on hunger and on poverty. Big Religion in the US pushed to get Justice Barrett onto the bench to undo Roe (which she might not do) and assert that Incorporated persons are more equal than human persons (which she definitely will do.) So yeah, we have some big faith players who are moving to make American lives worth less.
I would argue many religious institutions are systemically unrighteous and contemptible. And this includes the CDF no matter what Pope Francis says in media spots. It's evident that religious institutions favor power and politics over creating good in the world.
And given the known character of Trump before 2016, it's telling that his religious votes were profoundly higher than Clinton's and Biden's, the reverse should have been true if Christians were consistent about adhering to their own creeds.
But instead, they gave him a mulligan.
And that taught me that sin is for other people. Untermenschen. Friends and fellow parishioners get mulligans.
You won't convince me that Christianity is worthwhile, Anonymous but you might be able to convince me you're trying really hard to do right, and to be a good Christian.
But only if you cared what I thought for some reason.
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techflaws (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:35pm
Re: Re: Not man enough to own up...
who do try to honestly live by the actual tenets of the faith
Like 'Slaves, obey your masters - even the cruel ones'?
Impressive.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 5:07am
Re: Not Easy, Not Unreasonable, Not Censorship-WRONG,WRONG, & WR
[Citations badly needed]
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TFG, 9 Jan 2021 @ 7:25am
Re: Not Easy, Not Unreasonable, Not Censorship-WRONG,WRONG, & WR
I look forward to the FBI tracking you and your terrorist brethren down.
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techflaws (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:49am
Re: Not Easy, Not Unreasonable, Not Censorship-WRONG,WRONG, & WR
I was on the grounds in the capitol on the 6th from 6 am -until
after curfew was in place and national guard was dispatched.Pics or it didn't happen.
not true at all!
You're right. There was no election fraud. Trump lost fair and square. It gives me chuckles every time that with his abysmal track record for the last years he actually thinks he could have only won.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 5:40pm
Re: Re: Re:
You know what's funny about you big brain players and how everyone can tell you're a desperate Trump toady?
It's because any time there's a huge Trump fuckup and consequences happen, your first responses are always some variation on "fuck the tech industry" or "but her emails". It's never "Trump misbehaved". Then after your arguments have been proven to be full of shit it becomes "actually I never liked the guy and didn't vote for him". Yet you'll post here on a site that gets rubbished for being "Liberal", carrying so much of Trump's water I'm genuinely surprised you haven't herniated your own spine.
Look, your side lost, you're angry, everyone gets it. The least you can do to salvage yourself is to stop pretending this anger is about any kind of righteous indignance.
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techflaws (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:47pm
Re: Re: Re: Not Easy, Not Unreasonable, Not Censorship-WRONG,WRO
I have a mind of my own and I made a decision to go to the march
and my account is my own in support to stop Biden from being
elected.Wow, you're that dumb, huh? Like that stupid bitch that said in an interview, she wouldn't have marched to the capitol if she only had known Pence had NO POWER to change the outcome - like the media outlets she does not believe told her all along.
Don't brag about making up your mind if it includes blindly believing Faux news instead of reading up on your laws, genius.
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PaulT (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 5:32am
The question you’re raising is why no conservative has managed to build a decently popular political platform, even if you weren’t lying about everything.
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techflaws (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:44am
Re: Re:
Disney owns 90% of the media and cable networks. How do I know?
Because I worked for them for a short period of time and this was
their bragging point during orientation, no sh*t.It must be true then!
Have you already stashed up on weapons? Cause "they" are coming for those next, you know!
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Rocky, 9 Jan 2021 @ 8:10pm
Re: Re: Re: Re:
The illusion of choice is what's taking place under the democrat rule. You don't have a choice to challenge the validity of election results, you don't have a choice on who your president is, Democrats already chose the candidate for you.
So all these court-cases about the election and all the extra vote-counting was the Democrats doing? Seems Trump and the GOP was even more impotent (or should that be incompetent?) than I thought.
Jeez, logic and facts isn't your forte it seems.
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That One Guy (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 8:27pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
As always with that lot, 'every accusation, a confession'. They tried to steal the election by overriding the will of the people like the losers they are, failed, and so naturally they're accusing the other side of doing that.
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Tanner Andrews (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 12:17pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
steal the election by overriding the will of the people
Why not, it worked in 2016, where the majority of the people voting picked one of two candidates and yet the electoral college picked the other. And that is not a one-off, either, since the same thing happened in 2000.
There were also some earlier cases where the popular vote did not determine the outcome. That was actually designed into the system for reasons that may not stand up well to scrutiny.
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techflaws (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:50pm
Re: Re: Re: Re:
You don't have a choice to challenge the validity of election
results, you don't have a choice on who your president is,
Democrats already chose the candidate for you.So, Republicans were held at gunpoint being unable to control election results, really? What about all the minority voter suppression tricks they've pulled over all these years? That was embedded Democrats or something?
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PaulT (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:53am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
“ With Democrats in control of both the house and senate, already having screwed America”
You do know that only just happened and they can’t be held responsible for what Mitch and his cronies did, right?
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techflaws (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:42am
And fuck you too, whiner.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:32pm
"1000 percent censorship"
Another shining example of the kind of insightful argument we can expect from Trump-supporters.
Perhaps you should stay off the internet until you come to your senses.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 7:06am
"So with Trump opposition groups from the left "
Hate to spoil your party but several republicans have expressed their disapproval of Donald's activities. Seems every day more and more conservatives are realizing their savior and king is an ass who only cares for himself leaving them with nothing but the mess to clean up.
" It's more than censorship,it's now information warfare and it's OK according to Masnick."
Information warfare is nothing new, has been going on since humans began communicating. I never read anything from Mike condoning this type of thing, got any references? Yeah, figured as much.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 8:24am
Re: Re:
Someone once told me that name calling is that last vestige of a losing argument, do you agree?
You claimed "it's now information warfare". I simply pointed out that is nothing new as you claim. But so what.
Not censored .. perhaps a statement as to what you think that means, would be informative.
Some pro claim corporations are free to conduct business as they so choose, and this is free market capitalism. These same people also seem to hold the idea that these same private businesses operating within the framework of free markets are not allowed to control the assets of said business when it involves their comments on some forum they claim is a town square public property ... are they really advocating for the government takeover of their business? Isn't that communism? I thought that conservatives hated the thought of communism, boy was I wrong!
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Rocky, 11 Jan 2021 @ 3:31am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
the real election results from data scientists
I wouldn't call them "data scientists", since they failed to understand how votes are actually counted. If you don't understand your data, any conclusions you draw from it will in most cases be biased towards the outcome you think is right, aka confirmation bias.
Funnily enough, the results in the contested districts came up the same after numerous re-counts, all the while there where observers from all interested parties watching like hawks. That can only mean that the republican observers where drooling idiots who couldn't even count to 5 on their fingers while the sly Democrats bamboozled them with a tap dance to distract them for noticing the election fraud going on, or perhaps the simple answers is just that there where no election fraud going on at all.
Seems you aren't familiar with Occam's razor..
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techflaws (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:45am
Re: Re:
or went to the school of dumbasses who will believe anything and
anythingThe projection is strong in this one.
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Matt (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 7:44am
Of course it's censorship, but it is legal censorship
Surprised this thread has gone on for so long arguing over whether it is censorship. Twitter is of course censoring Trump from Twitter which is their right to do. They are not censoring him from other apps or elsewhere in reality because that would be illegal. Censoring does not only mean suppression from a government. Companies can censor too, they just can do it legally. I can censor in my own household, and I can censor at my own business. I can't censor outside of it. It doesn't matter if any of us believe it is fair to censor him or not, we don't own Twitter. Twitter can censor within their own app for any reason. Those who don't like this will leave Twitter and those who support it will stay. This is how money works. Twitter is about making dollars and they had an easy win to appease the party that is going to own the White House, the House of Reps and the Senate which they took literally the day that party completed the sweep. (depeding on recounts)
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Matt (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:05am
Re: Re: Of course it's censorship, but it is legal censorship
Information warfare is as good a word for it as any, but it is perfectly legal. Morality is always someone's judgement call.
I think what really gets the republicans upset is that Twitter only cares about "safety" or "inciting" when there's a chance to mute or suspend a republican. But, that's their right too, it's their company, they can do whatever they want. And, fair or not, Trump just is such an easy guy to root against for most of us because he spent much of the last four years constantly mocking and insulting people. Even if we believe he had some accomplishments, the berating of non-politicians and non-entertainment/ shock anchor journalists (I don't believe there are any actual journalists left) just pissed people off. I would much prefer Twitter to just say, "We're tired of his insults and he's free to go elsewhere" instead of pretending like all of a sudden they care about safety... days before he finally leaves office and all three elected houses go Democrat. We just had a year of riots (not the peaceful protesters, those folks I admire, the actual rioters who robbed, beat, burned, and destroyed.)
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 10:39am
Re: Re: Re: Of course it's censorship, but it is legal censorshi
"I think what really gets the republicans upset is that Twitter only cares about "safety" or "inciting" when there's a chance to mute or suspend a republican."
That behavior might even be expected from a known narcissist.
Also, with most of the incitement coming from Trump supporters and Trump himself, what would one expect from twitter?It's sorta like watching one of those jackass type videos where someone's brilliant idea does not work out for various multiple reasons. While cringing, I wonder what did they think was going to happen.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 11:49am
Twitter only cares about "safety" or "inciting" when there's a chance to mute or suspend a republican
Can you name any notable Democrat that has attempted to incite a riot through Twitter?
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Mike Masnick (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 1:07am
Re: Re: Re: Of course it's censorship, but it is legal censorshi
I think what really gets the republicans upset is that Twitter only cares about "safety" or "inciting" when there's a chance to mute or suspend a republican.
This is false. People across the political spectrum have been banned from Twitter. It's just that Republicans seem to be more "oh woe is me, I'm a victim..." about it.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 6:13am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Of course it's censorship, but it is legal censo
So twitter justifiably bans trump, but allows 14k twitter users to share "Hang Mike Pense" before finally removing it, but only after the major news networks started reporting on it. Then you see Trump and conservatives going to Parlor, only to have Amazon announce that they are now dropping Parlor from their hosting.
Seems to me the Republicans are justified with their "oh woe is me, I'm a victim..." Stance.
Hell, the Dem's are going to burn 230 to the ground at the first chance they get. Then lets see what happens then.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 7:18am
lets see what happens then
You’d lose many of the places you use to spread your inanity, that’s what would happen.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 12:45pm
But it will still be gone. The funny thing is, the left will be the ones who do it.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 2:26pm
You say that as if Republicans/conservatives wouldn’t do it themselves if given the chance. (They absolutely would.)
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:28pm
Does it matter? If you get the enemy to do what you want done, does it matter that they were the ones to do it? You assume that the Republicans are the enemy in this case. I suggest you police your own back yard. Reed has been very vocal about his opposition to 230... doesn't fall far from the tree... lol
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Uriel-238 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 5:04pm
"Police your own back yard"
The whole Federal congress seems to be adverse to actually learning about tech. I'm not a nerd, but I disagree.
But both sides of the aisle don't like public individuals having a voice and being able to video-tape an incident of establishment-endorsed violence to be shown to the world. It was nice when the news-agency gatekeepers were there to make sure the narrative protected the status quo.
Non-partisan issues are not just ones that both sides agree helps the nation, but also ones where both sides agree it empowers the people too much.
This is very similar to voter reform. We're not going to see it until the people take action against the elected officials.
That's why I sometimes endorse motivating the House and Senate with cannon fire or artillery. They sometimes agree with their colleagues to act against the public no matter who voted them into office. It is a government failure.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 5:04pm
I don’t give a fuck about political affiliation vis-á-vis this subject. I’ll speak out against any politician who wants to wreck the Internet. You may want to do the same. Remember: Loyalty to a political party is a suicide pact.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 5:18pm
Your a little late Stephen.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 6:29pm
I’m sorry about your untimely death, Mr. Ghost.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 10:32pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Of course it's censorship, but it is legal c
The people sharing “Hang Mike Pence” were Trump supporters, you know?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 7:49am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Of course it's censorship, but it is legal censo
Uh, no
ONLY the right has been banned on Twitter. There have been ZERO people on the left who have been banned for violence or anything.
Tweets about "Punching nazis" are still up. Tweets from Antifa and BLM calling for violence are still up.
You really are an idiot, Mike. As soon as you're no longer useful, you'll find yourself banned as well.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 11:57am
private businesses aren't public
You made a mistake here. Do you want to know what it is?
It’s not in the sentence itself. In and of itself, that is true; a private business isn’t public(-facing). Your mistake is in conflating “private” with “privately-owned”.
Twitter is a privately owned public-facing business. That it serves the general public doesn’t strip it of any rights. It has the same right to kick out troublemakers as does a Walmart. Thinking otherwise is a mistake.
freedom of speech is protected and when it is made public, censoring the content when you are a political leader amounts to information warfare
That might mean something in this conversation if Twitter admins were political leaders.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:05am
It's funny people argue about Twitter making up rules as they go along. Like all professional online services, it says in its Terms of Service that:
We may suspend or terminate your account or cease providing you with all or part of the Services at any time for any or no reason
And in all likelyhood has said so since the service was founded.
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Matt (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:17am
I didn't argue about this at all. I agree it's their right. I said I wish they'd own it and don't pretend it's something else. Trump is a bully who insults people constantly. I'd kick him off my service too. I wouldn't pretend it was for safety, otherwise I would have kicked him off after Charlottesville.
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Lostinlodos (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 10:20am
:applause:
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:38am
The problem is when Twitter started to hold Trump to a lesser standard due to being president.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:42am
At least he conceded.
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techflaws (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:52pm
Re: Re: Re:
LOL, the link does NOT prove what you think it does. Figures.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 10:29am
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MindParadox (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 10:42am
Not censorship
I like to think of Twitter as a Christian Bakery,
And Trump as a Gay Wedding Cake!
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 11:45am
Three things.
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A cake can’t be gay.
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Masterpiece Cakeshop was never forced to bake a cake for a gay couple.
- Masterpiece lost its case on the merits at every stage but SCOTUS (where it won the case on technical grounds).
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TFG, 9 Jan 2021 @ 2:22pm
Point 1: "Gay Wedding Cake" is read as 'gay wedding' cake. AKA, a cake for a gay wedding.
Point 2: Exactly. Thus, the irony of those who would hoot and holler in support of Masterpiece Cakeshop now hooting and hollering when Twitter kicks them off.
Point 3: Which I think gives it even more irony. They will hoot and holler about something that legally had basically no merit: for Masterpiece Cakeshop, because it harmed those they hated. Against Twitter, because it's a restriction on their own hatred.
It's brought up as a demonstration of the sheer blind hypocrisy.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 10:35pm
Re: Re:
This is where hyphenation would be helpful. In future, I’d advise using “gay-wedding cake”. It’s like the difference between a criminal-defense attorney and a criminal defense attorney.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 1:54am
Aside from the figurines on top...
Is there any difference between a gay-wedding cake and a non-gay-wedding cake?
I'd assume that LGBT+ folk like the same range of cake flavors that non-LGBT+ folk like.
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PaulT (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 2:53am
Re: Aside from the figurines on top...
Yeah, that was the entire point of the case - the couple wanted the same cake they would supply to a heterosexual wedding, but the bakery refused on the basis of them being a gay couple, which was open discrimination. If they'd been asking for a special recipe or something, they might have had more of a case in defence of their refusal.
It's like the Jewish deli comparison so often brought up in strawman arguments against this - they can't refuse to sell you the same lox they'd sell to a Jewish person because you're a gentile, but you can't force them to make a ham bagel for you if they don't normally make them.
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bhull242 (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 3:54pm
Re: Aside from the figurines on top...
I guess the wedding toppers would be different… Maybe the writing (if any).
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Uriel-238 (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 7:34pm
Writing on a gay wedding cake
??❤️️Klaus and Larry 4Evar!❤️️??
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:58pm
Analogies
A better analogy would be to think of Twitter as a highway-side billboard company.
And Trump as a pharmaceutical company selling bleach injections to cure COVID-19.
One injection and never worry about 'Rona again!
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 11:32am
(>_>)
Marginalized groups holding rallies and marches against brutal state violence, occasionally resulting in property destruction after they are met with overwhelming police force.
(<_<)
A bunch of lunatic fascist toadies haphazardly forcing their way into the Capitol on behalf of an odious wannabe dictator, in vague protest of a procedural formality, with some carrying equipment signaling a clear intent to kidnap and kill people, and others accidentally tazing themselves to death, facing a police response mostly ranging from apathy to complicity.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 12:09pm
"Now where had I witnessed such scenes before? The answer: in blue-governed cities in my native Pacific Northwest throughout last summer and into the fall and winter."
False Equivalence.
Of these two cases you cite, in which one are there people screaming Hang the VP? In which case were there people who sought to hold political representatives hostage?
Take your bullshit down the hall.
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Sejanoz, 9 Jan 2021 @ 12:27pm
Jonathan Pie said it better than I ever could.
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DocGerbil100, 9 Jan 2021 @ 1:15pm
Well, now. As much as most of us would prefer not to have seen that crude attempt at a coup, the subsequent communications coming from the various Trump-supporting camps are terribly enlightening.
Few things illuminate people as well as the fictions and lies they create when under real pressure. In this case, it seems like they've mostly all fallen back to the default behaviour of psychopaths and trolls everywhere:
- It never happened;
- If it did happen, it didn't happen that way;
- If it did happen that way, someone else did it;
- If it wasn't someone else, you made us do it;
- If you didn't make us do it, you did it first;
- We're all the same really, why can't we all just get along?
None of this nonsense from the right is going to fly. It's just not convincing at all.
In particular, false flag operations appeal to the far right precisely because so many of them are psychopaths, people with reduced empathy, who enjoy gaslighting and manipulating others -- and who are far less upset by the idea of betraying their supposed principles and hurting their own side, in order to frame the other guy.
The rest of us feel some measure of cognitive dissonance just thinking about doing something like that -- the far left, especially so, given that it's such a profound antithesis of what they stand for.
The last four years have been very regrettable, but thankfully, the reign of idiocy is at last coming to it's end. They've already thrown away congress and the presidency and now, with this fiasco, they've shown the world their true colours, giving away exactly who they are and how they think.
We know their souls. Basically, they're crap.
It's time for them to go. :)-
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 8:11pm
"I saw nothing wrong with it"
You might want to give Stephen Miller a call. I'm sure he could use a bright eyed intern that has no cringe reflex.
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Rocky, 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:29pm
Re: Re:
Just because patriots stayed and protest and allowed through the gates of the capitol building and let inside only for an unarmed Trump supporter to be shot in the head would cause a conflict with anyone that saw that during a protest.
What the fuck have you been smoking? They violently attacked the police guarding Capitol Hill, they smashed windows and doors to force their way in. Media is chock-full of videos from the attack and all of the videos prove you are full of shit and a liar.
You don't have the balls to own up to what happened, you cowardly reprobate.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:41pm
Re: Re:
So you didn't want Biden... But you didn't vote for Trump.
You didn't want Trump... But by your own admission you didn't do a thing to prevent Biden the devil from taking power.
You don't like Trump... But you only admit this after you were accused of supporting him, and even then only to use as a counterpoint to justify why a Democrat-run government would be worse.
You know what this reminds me of? It's exactly the same as the Democrats who hated Hilary, exercised their right to not vote, then pissed themselves when Trump won in 2016. Remember what Trump's team did back then? Mocked their opponents mercilessly, drank their liberal tears.
So here's the question - given your conscious decision to not support the candidate you preferred, to prevent the candidate you hated from winning - what courtesy do you think you deserve, considering the courtesy that was given to those who disliked the results of 2016?
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techflaws (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:54pm
Re: Re:
an unarmed Trump supporter to be shot in the head
Who was NOT shot in the head, you lying fuck.
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DocGerbil100, 10 Jan 2021 @ 1:32am
Re: Re:
Oh, such cutting remarks! Why, I can barely read the numbers on my Killer Sudoku, through the haze of angry, bitter tears. :D
Oh, wait -- it's you, isn't it! How's life on the mountain, Beardy? I hope the recent decriminalisation efforts in your area haven't hurt your profits too much. I'm sure we'd all hate to see you kicked offline for failing to pay your internet bills.
For anybody wondering, this is the same troll who's been annoying real people on left-of-centre fora for at least a decade. His pseudo-replies here (and on posts above) are very much his classic trolling strategy -- when he's under stress, his writing style carries as strong and clear a signature as Vincent's brushwork:
- He likes to adopt a bizarre writing style or fake foreign accent, forcing readers to translate sentences in their heads and distracting them from noticing and responding to either logical inconsistencies or repetitious claims made through different sockpuppets;
- His texts are peppered with false assertions about the person he's responding to -- another distraction tactic;
- His longer responses, such as this one, tend to follow very similar paragraphic patterns -- a section of factual text, usually with falsehoods mixed in, followed by another of the same, followed by one with personal abuse mixed in, for cognitive dissonance purposes, finished off with some future predictions that are either self-evident certainties or aren't true at all.
At this point, it's all very hackneyed and unconvincing, even by the standards of career trolls. He should probably lay off the weed and concentrate on doing a competent job.
In other news, I see that not only has the orange fart managed to get himself banned everywhere, but Parler itself is getting kicked out of services across the board. As appalling as the Capitol invasion was, it's been the gift that keeps on giving, when it comes to the dismantling of the alt-right.
Civilisation as we know it is showing Beardy and his friends the door. Somehow, I don't think we'll miss them. :)
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DocGerbil100, 10 Jan 2021 @ 1:39am
Re: Re: Re:
I forgot to mention something on that list:
- He typically likes to respond to people's posts without addressing the original topic or actually answering much of anything they've said -- he'd much rather drag the conversation away to something abstract, speculative or entirely irrelevant.
So it is here.
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Lostinlodos (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 10:49am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
I assume you refer to me since I use international English. It’s just the way I learned it, and I’m pre-Twitter gen so longer posts are my preference. Any quick search for me will show I have used exactly the same writing style dating back decades. There’s nothing fake about it.
I’m not trying to troll. In my first post under this article I responded to the headline. I covered it fairly quickly as well. The ban on Trump IS censorship. AND! There’s nothing inherently wrong with that.
I make paragraphs because it’s easier to read. I hate the WoT; wall of text.
I’m sorry if you think I targeted you somewhere along the way. I probably didn’t intend to. Most times I tend to be civil, if aggressive. I only come with claws when I’m attacked personally.
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Lostinlodos (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 10:27am
Well now... I see nothing wrong with arguing in the alternative. Lol.
Sorry, couldn’t help it on this one.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:06pm
And unfortunately, Mitch is being his usual obstructionist self and refusing to bring the Senate back into session for the trial part of the impeachment until after Trump's already out. At least he'll be out of the way soon.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 3:54pm
And unfortunately, Mitch is being his usual obstructionist self....
Ignorant bigot.
It would require unanimous consent to bring the Senate back in session. Mitch, I am sure, knows some senator(s) who would not consent. You and I can't know whom that might be, unless they make an announcement.
If I had to bet, I'd bet at least one of the seven elector-objector-senators would object here also. (If I had to bet, I'd bet up to 6 matchsticks and a toothpick.)
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AC Unknown (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 4:28pm
Obligatory XKCD comic
This calls for a most well-known XKCD comic:
https://xkcd.com/1357/ -
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 6:20pm
But on the other hand, those companies have every right to decide what kind of speech they want to allow on their company's website.
Twitter has every right to shut down the President's account. They should have that right. But they shouldn't actually do it; not with a flimsy excuse like claiming the President saying he won't be at the inauguration is incitement.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 6:55pm
Re: Re:
It seems that Trumps continuing claims of election fraud was the reason it was shut down. Such claims can be considered incitement to further violence, especially since they were used for a invasion of the Capitol.
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Rocky, 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:35pm
Re: Re: Re: Re:
You do know there is a lot of videos of the attack on Capitol Hill, right? The videos actually tells another story, and the story is that you are a lying piece of shit. To be fair, perhaps you aren't lying but then it means your grasp on reality and facts is tenuous at best.
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PaulT (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:58am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
A lot of videos taken and live streamed by self-proclaimed “patriots” nonetheless, who are as far from the “antifa” boogeyman as you can get unless they’re going to claim that the entire alt right movement is secretly “antifa”
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TFG, 9 Jan 2021 @ 9:43pm
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Please stop lying. I'm sure you won't, but I'm still going to ask you to stop.
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techflaws (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 10:02pm
Re: Re: Re: Re:
False, no such statements were made and then the following
statement to invade the capital.It's funny you still think you can score points with obvious lies. As with Drumpf's hilarious claim, he had the biggest inauguration crowd where the videos (even those of Faux news and other shitty outlets) showed it was anything but.
Hey genius, there's videos of Trump's speech where he promised to storm the capitol with the MAGA crowd. Of course he LIED YET AGAIN and stayed away like the coward he is.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 7:33am
Re: Re: Re:
So if someone riots based on a claim, then we shut down that claim? Is that the standard? I'm not saying this was the same as the summer protests, but you should realize that if that's the standard we're setting, it would have unfortunate implications on other causes which have protests that turn violent.
It could be "considered" incitement, but only by someone who doesn't know or care what incitement actually entails.
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Tanner Andrews (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 7:44am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
So if someone riots based on a claim, then we shut down that claim?
No, that would probably offend the Constitution. I propose, instead, that if someone riots based on being called to Washington to riot, and then told to have a wild protest and trial by combat, and then directed down Pennsylvania Ave, that we bar such direction in the future.
We may also wish for there to be consequences for the ones who respond to the call and instruction. Being part of an armed group organized and directed to remove congress from power through use of force might be considered a ``bad thing'' in some circles.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 7:47pm
they do not have the right to shut down views they do not agree with or find offensive
You mean what Parler does?
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 10:55pm
I think it is a dangerous path to start letting companies or any group decide what can be said on massively influential platforms.
And if the law forced the owners of those platforms to host speech against their will — that wouldn’t be a dangerous path?
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jan 2021 @ 7:58pm
It's worth noting that the movement against Section 230 is bipartisan. Biden has made it quite clear that curbs against Section 230 are a part of his upcoming agenda, though odds are it won't have the "Big Tech-limiting" outcomes he wants. But then movements driven by the IP lobby have never led to the intentions they hoped for, see: SESTA.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 11:21pm
The whole Backpage Affair was Harris' thing
Kamala Harris was spearheading going after Craigslist and later Backpage when CL removed its personal ads.
All the pre-post moderation algos used to advise a user about inappropriate ads was used against Backpage suggesting it was advising traffickers how to get around anti-trafficking laws.
A hole was carved in Section 230, which not only killed personal ads (outside members-only pages) but also drove trafficked victims to the streets and killed peer-support for sex workers.
But it means we know how much damage will be done if any holes are carved out of 230, and we know Washington will give zero fucks, considering they call it a success even though trafficking is higher (though less visibly so).
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 2:09am
Re: The whole Backpage Affair was Harris' thing
To be precise, Backpage told the traffickers which keywords were prohibited, keywords which nonetheless would have made it harder for them to pitch their wares (than if Backpage had simply looked the other way at the keywords, which they instead could have done).
Some of the keywords were fairly innocuous like "greek" and "greece". If they returned an opaque error, it would have just caused confusion with legitimate users. Backpage tried to do the right thing, and in doing so, it got twisted against them. It is much like Prodigy / Compuserve.
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Rocky, 9 Jan 2021 @ 8:15pm
What you should ask yourself is what these conservative voices are saying to get moderated or banned from a service. Is it "I'm taking my children to the day-care center" or is it something like "We should forcibly occupy the Capitolium and hang that traitor Pence"?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 1:54am
Would there even still be an internet if 230 got revoked? Even if we went back to the pre-230 days with no moderation being better than moderation, wouldn't a legion of people lining up to sue you still result in you going down?
Some laws require a certain level of moderation, so you might not even be able to get away with having no moderation. It's a catch 22.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 5:22am
"There are reports on conservative websites that a lot of conservative voices are being censored."
They decided to not follow the terms of service.
Many of those who whine about being censored by individuals or businesses, believe that the constitution protects everything they have to say.
Apparently this upsets conservatives. Well, too bad.
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Ed (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 8:08pm
Tangentially
Don't know if it's worth noting at this stage, but Trump has also repeatedly played down the severity of covid-19 using twitter.
Were it not for section 230, I imagine that someone would be holding twitter responsible for 370,000 deaths in the USA.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 11:28pm
Twitter and section 230
When Twitter was smaller, it just wouldn't be feasible. Now I'm sure it would try to direct lawsuits to tweeters rather than Twitter itself, and then keep a special batch of highly-venomous lawyers to make any suit long and arduous while another lawyer countersues.
IANAL and don't know exactly how it works (so I might be thinking of it like a super-powered fight in The Boys) But I do know a legal warchest and a team of blue-haired lawyers seems to be the recipe for copyright domination.
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techflaws (profile), 9 Jan 2021 @ 10:04pm
What source do you cite? Does it include the fact that censorship refers to the act done by governments?
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Rocky, 9 Jan 2021 @ 10:30pm
Holy shit! Have Twitter suppressed and prohibited Trump from speaking?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 5:10am
Agreed.
In addition it needs to be pointed out that censorship performed by a private individual or business upon their private property has nothing whatsoever to do with your Freedom of Speech addressed within the First Amendment to the US constitution.
You have no Freedom of Speech upon the private property of other individuals or businesses, they have the right to tell you to STFU and GTFO.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 1:02am
Surprised you didnt mention Lindsay Grahams moronic response....
"Twitter may ban me for this but I willingly accept that fate: Your decision to permanently ban President Trump is a serious mistake.
The Ayatollah can tweet, but Trump can’t. Says a lot about the people who run Twitter.
I’m more determined than ever to strip Section 230 protections from Big Tech (Twitter) that let them be immune from lawsuits."
How can someone who clearly doesnt understand both the constitution and the law be a senator in this day and age??
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Rocky, 10 Jan 2021 @ 2:35am
How can someone who clearly doesnt understand both the constitution and the law be a senator in this day and age??
If you want to be crass about it, money and shady promises.
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PaulT (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 5:02am
The ayatollah? Why do I think he’s talking about Khomeini somehow and he just doesn’t understand the many ways in which this is stupid?
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:33am
how is this not censorship?
Twitter didn’t stop Donald Trump from speaking his mind. They only told him he couldn’t do it on Twitter any more.
quit using the term fascist. you are not using it correctly.
What do you call trying to keep Trump as president through acts of violence and intimidation? Because that sure as shit ain’t democracy.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 7:44am
Fascism is a merger of business and government. It allows businesses to get favored status and ignore the law while the government can do what it wants (silencing certain kinds of people from speaking for example) Kind of like what's going on with big tech.
Hey, don't yell at me, Mussolini knows more about fascism than you do, he's the guy who coined the phrase after all.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 4:46am
Re: Re:
"Fascism is a merger of business and government. "
I think a bit more is involved than just that. A dictator at the helm is also quite prevalent in a fascist government.
The US Corporatocracy does not yet fit the description of fascism, but that label is just around the corner.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:54am
Re: lone voice
lone voice believes a lot of the political bullshit, even in light of recent events lone voice claws at the last remains of a failed coup desperately clinging to the fantasy that is ProudQanonGOPNazi.
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Bloof (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 5:04am
Re: lone voice
You can tell someone's arguing in good faith when they claim nazis were on the left, because they're called national socialists, don'tchtaknow! None of the 'proud patriots' he riled up believe nazi conspiracy theories about 'globalists', the recycled blood libel Qanon stuff and other antisemitic conspiracy theories, infowars people sure weren't on the scene when that female terrorist was shot, and all the known nazis among the crowds of trump supporters, complete with nazi tattoos are all leftist plants.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 3:54am
Re: lone voice
"all of YOU need to shut up,"
Isn't that censorship?
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 8:22am
Yes or no: Do you believe the government should have the legal right to compel any privately owned interactive web service into hosting legally protected speech that the owners/operators of said service don’t want to host?
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r_rolo1 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 9:17am
No, I do not believe that the government should have the right to do what you say.
The issue is that Twitter, while having all the right to have their TOS in the way they like, has been less than stellar following their own rules at times and, in the specific case of Trump, are literally playing by ear ( like the article above states ). Sure, they are entitled to do so, but it does not give a good look to them and definitely does not make them look even handed.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 10:19am
Re: Re:
If you're referring to Twitter allowing Trump to continue posting things that would have gotten any other user banned ages ago then sure, they make judgement calls along the way. Their ToS is setup in such a way as to allow them to do so.
I agree. It wasn't a good look to have not banned Trump back in 2016.
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r_rolo1 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 3:16pm
Re: Re: Re:
And you're probably right: Trump most likely should had been banned from Twitter in 2016 based on his Twitter TOS rules ... let's call it skirting, to be charitable. Alongside with a LOT of other people from a lot of sides of the internet that clearly have a bone with other groups and that come to Twitter to vent hate and threats not only in 2016.
Now make yourself a question: why Twitter did not apply their own TOS and banned Trump and all those hateful people ( from both sides of the polical aisle, because no group of humans is made fully of saints )? The awnser about Trump was public : there was a judicial order to not do so ( one that I disagree, BTW ... the Presidency should probably have a unbannable Twitter ( public interest and such ), the person that is President not IMHO ) ... but what about all the others?
Whatever awnser you come about that, Twitter does not appear in a good light. I know, moderation is hard ( been a mod in some fora in another lifetime ) and mass moderation is even harder, but the last thing you want to appear in this kind of situations is unfair, facetious and that you only apply rules selctively or when they are convenient ( that BTW is what the autor of this article is consciously or not defending ). Nothing erodes confidence in that moderation faster than that ... and Twitter is definitely not doing a stellar work in that.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 3:43pm
there was a judicial order to not do so
No. No, there was not. The only legal order related to Trump’s Twitter account that I can think of is the one that said he couldn’t block American citizens from viewing it.
At no time was Twitter legally forced to carry the tweets of Donald Trump. That would be a violation of the First Amendment.
the last thing you want to appear in this kind of situations is unfair, facetious and that you only apply rules selctively or when they are convenient
Some decisions will always seem as if they meet those criteria. Such decisions often arise from special circumstances that few people could have foreseen — like, say, the leader of the United States federal government encouraging an attempted coup of that same government.
No moderation policy can account for everything. And nobody can count on automated moderation to account for context. All moderation is messy and imperfect. To think otherwise is to fool yourself.
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r_rolo1 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:10pm
Sure, moderation is hard ( haven't said that before? ) and mods fail ( heavens know how much ), but you know what you do when new rules are needed ? You write new rules ... or in this case make a new TOS and then apply those rules from that point on. It will be not perfect, but then you are not opening yourself so much to accusations of uneveness , just of being a rule nazi, that in this context is a lesser evil. Twitter disagres with that, given their past history of less that TOS-based decisions ( like the whole blue checkmarks thing years ago I mentioned before ) ... and they are wrong ( IMHO ) atleast from a moderation stand.
On the legal Trump thing, while Twitter in theory could had banned Trump anyway, it could be construed in court that banning Trump would automatically remove access to his past tweets in the way a live account has and thus putting Twitter in violation of the order in question. So, while you're technically right, Twitter probably saw that they would probably be in legal hot water and opening precedents they would prefer to keep shut if they actually banned Trump while he was president with a ruling like that in top of them ( just think on the mess it would be trying to balance this and EU laws ( the dreaded "right to be forgotten" ) , for a example ). Like I said, I disagree with the judicial decision anyway , but I can understand why Twitter did not want to go that way.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:55pm
it could be construed in court that banning Trump would automatically remove access to his past tweets in the way a live account has and thus putting Twitter in violation of the order in question
No, it couldn’t. The ruling in that case was about whether Trump’s personal Twitter account counted as a government-run account for the purposes of public participation. The courts said “yes, it is”. That’s why Trump couldn’t legally block Americans from viewing it. The same principle was later applied to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s account.
And archiving Trump’s tweets was not the job of Twitter. The National Archives was supposed to do that job.
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r_rolo1 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 5:11pm
Well, my take on the issue was pretty much that, given that Trump tweets were considered, like you said, a kind of governemental communication ( IMHO wrongly ), Twitter legal teams reasoned that any ban on Trump account while he was a elected official could be seen as a block attempt in the molds that were judged against and decided to not try their luck. Sure, they could win a hypotetical case of Twitter vs Trump ... or not.
About the National Archives archiving tweets ... well, if those tweets are govermental communications, they should ( in fact most probably they are required to ) archive them. But I assume that neither Twitter ( they definitely do not like third parties archiving tweets , someting that was already discussed here in Techdirt ) or the National Archives would like that ...
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 6:44pm
Twitter legal teams reasoned that any ban on Trump account while he was a elected official could be seen as a block attempt in the molds that were judged against
I’m going to explain this to you one more time. I’m going to detail it, too. If you can’t understand this explanation, I can’t help you.
Donald Trump used his personal Twitter account for government work. A court ruled that his personal account was thus a government account. Trump could therefore not block American users from interacting with his account. He could mute them, but not block them. This logic applied to all government-run social media accounts — which is why AOC got told she also couldn’t do it.
At no point was Twitter in legal jeopardy in the case. At no point did a court rule that Twitter had to host Trump’s speech. At no point did Trump file a lawsuit against Twitter to keep the service from banning him. Twitter chose not to ban Trump because they felt his tweets were of “public interest”. Banning him violated no one’s First Amendment rights.
Twitter has the legal right to boot anyone off that service for any reason that doesn’t violate the law. Booting someone for inciting violence falls within those bounds. Booting someone for saying stupid bullshit does, too. Donald Trump has no legal right to a Twitter account. Twitter has no legal obligation to let him have one. The same holds true for everyone else.
Twitter might find itself in a lawsuit over this. But it will win that lawsuit — either because of the First Amendment or 47 U.S.C. § 230. The banning of Donald Trump violates no laws, statutes, or “common law” court rulings. Anyone who believes otherwise — possibly including you — is only fooling themselves.
About the National Archives archiving tweets ... well, if those tweets are govermental communications, they should ( in fact most probably they are required to ) archive them.
That’s what I said: The National Archives, not Twitter, has the job of archiving Trump’s tweets.
neither Twitter ( they definitely do not like third parties archiving tweets , someting that was already discussed here in Techdirt ) or the National Archives would like that
I’ve tried to parse this both on its own and in relation to the preceding sentence. All I can say in response is…fucking what.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 2:13pm
You know what else doesn’t make Twitter “look even-handed”? Banning conservatives/right-wingers en masse. But do you know why it happens? Because they’re more likely to have violated the TOS than liberals/progressives/left-wingers. I mean, I’m sorry that right-wingers are more prone to using blatantly discriminatory language (e.g., racial slurs) than left-wingers, but that isn’t Twitter’s problem.
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r_rolo1 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 2:58pm
Yup, if people had banned anyone by violating their TOS, they would be right. No matter if conservative, liberal or martian . In fact I would argue they should had banned a lot of people from both sides of political spectrum already, along with a lot of less politcally affiliated people. You might argue that it would not be good for business, but that is another question entirely ...
What I'm pointing out is that if you start NOT applying your own rules ( that your legal team surely spent quite a lot of time composing ) and ban/ not ban people based on something besides your own TOS ... well, you open yourself to justified criticism. And this regardless of the banned people actually deserving or not to banned ... that TBH Trump deserved a long time ago ( IMHO ) given his repeated skirting of the Twitter TOS rules.
Worse, if you start doing what is advised in the article and argue that every case is a case, that is just a polite way of saying that rules are made to be ... malleable and just applied when it is convenient to whoever has that power at the moment. And that is not much of rule, isn't it?
P.S. Again, not defending Trump ( not American, couldn't care less for American politics, and definitely not a Trump fan ). Just pointing out that Twitter is acting in a way that if the recipient was not named Trump, there would be more outraged people around here and most likely not a article defending this action in this mold.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 3:36pm
Twitter is acting in a way that if the recipient was not named Trump, there would be more outraged people around here
Twitter was already treating Trump differently before the ban. It had given out several suspensions to an account designed to parrot his tweets verbatim. Trump’s account stayed intact. They gave him far more leeway to violate the TOS than they gave to the average user.
“Special treatment” is nothing new with Donald Trump. People are only pissed because that treatment is now against him instead of for him.
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r_rolo1 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:33pm
Well, do not include me in those "people" . IMHO Trump should had been banned long ago along with a lot of people that apparently can't have a civil conversation like the one we're having here and start spewing various stuff that Twitter already has in their TOS as bannable offenses for ages.
And yet, Twitter is full of people that make violating the Twitter TOS a way of ( digitally ) living, IMHO Trump included. All of those people are receiving that "special treatment". And yet, some argue for even more "flexible" aproaches to the issue and even laud all the "special treatment" Trump continues to have from Twitter ( this time in a diferent direction, but still "special" ) as a good thing ...
Special Treatment is special treatment, period. And you don't fix bad special treatment with even more special treatment. You fix it with fairness ... and you can't be fair while playing by ear in terms of rules.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 8:34am
Re: Mixed feelings ...
Lots of rambling text, not sure what you are trying to say.
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r_rolo1 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 9:20am
Re: Re: Mixed feelings ...
Ok, let me give you a TL:DR
Twitter is not wrong in banning Trump ( their plataform, their choice ). But it has skirted their own rules for #reasons ( justified or not ) so many times that adding one "play by ear" decision will surely not make them look more fair.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:25pm
Re: Re: Re: Mixed feelings ...
Ok, thx
I thought their rules said they could ban you for anything, anytime, anywhere, that sort of thing.
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r_rolo1 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:44pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Mixed feelings ...
Well, they do give themselves a lot of latitude in regarding how to justify a ban ( like all social media to be honest ), but they do mention some specifics , like racial profiling, direct incitation to violence, commiting crimes using the plataform and so on. Those would be hard to argue against, especially with digital proof in hand.
Other stuff ... well , in theory they can ban you for existing if they find your existence a nuisance. But they know that vague wording in theory could be turned against them if someone with resources and patience actually chalenges them legally ( something that could open nasty precents or lead to less favourable laws ), so they tend to stick to the explicitely mentioned stuff.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:56pm
Nuisance bans
It's much like the we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone conventions. Someone has to prove a pattern that indicates failure to accommodate the public based on specific patterns of discrimination.
False and misleading statements presented as fact, hate speech and incitement all are justification to refuse service.
In order for conservatives to build a case they'd have to demonstrate their tweets and accounts are being taken down for other reasons that fits a pattern that is not reflected similarly within the general population.
Has anyone presented a case like this?
Yes, this is difficult to do. And its why discriminated minorities are usually just left to languish when they can't find a job, or are underpaid, or are discharged without cause.
Also, in many states religious hatred of gays is cause to not hire / discharge LGBT+ workers who have been outed. The SCOTUS Federalist Society Six have upheld / rejected laws in order to weaken protections for LGBT+ workers in Religion-affiliated workplaces (such as hospitals).
I'd hope that our conservative peers might gain some empathy, but double standards is part of their identity.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:59pm
in theory they can ban you for existing if they find your existence a nuisance. But they know that vague wording in theory could be turned against them if someone with resources and patience actually chalenges them legally
The TOS of any service like Twitter often contains a clause that says “we reserve the right to punish you for any reason not listed above”. It’s a cover-my-ass clause, to be sure. But it allows for a service to ban someone for being a nuisance even when they’re following the TOS.
Besides, any court ruling that says Twitter must host someone’s speech would set a dangerous precedent. I doubt even you want that ruling on the books.
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r_rolo1 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 5:26pm
I definitely DO NOT want more enforced speech laws. As a EU denizern, I already have to suffer the "right to be forgotten" laws ( aka "everyone is forced to forget something in your behalf" laws, if you put it in the active voice ), thank you.
But if somene skirts your TOS without actually breaking it, that is the sign you have a TOS that is a bad fit to the situation in hand ( in that I agree with the article ) and that you need a new one along with by the book enforcing no matter who the user is or is not ...
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PaulT (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 12:31am
Re: Re:
You seem confused about the issue surrounding Trump. The reason he wasn't banned for violating the TOS was not because he was "skirting" it. They just decided not to enforce the TOS on that specific account for a while, because the attention and traffic it got them was worth more than they would get by banning him.
That's changed recently, first with his spreading dangerous misinformation about COVID and the election that required disclaimers attached to most of his tweets. Then, when he's openly inspiring violent insurrection, they decided to pull the plug. There was no reason why they couldn't have done this months, or years, ago, since he was openly breaking the TOS. They just decided not to enforce it on him before now.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 7:52am
Even the discredited ACLU is saying that this is too much.
When a group that lost all credibility over the past five years says "hey, you know, this might be too much", there's a problem.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jan/8/aclu-raises-concerns-amid-trump-twitter-ban /
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 8:20am
Bye, Felicia~ ?
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Bloof (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 8:26am
Re: JUST STOP READING TECHDIRT
What happened to Techdirt, guys? During the Obama era, they covered laws the democrats approved that negatively affected tech, but they've been so harsh to republicans since trump took power, made a slew of bad laws, approved mergers that never should have happened, killed net neutrality and gutted the FCC, all while he and other republicans make made daily pronouncements attacking tech for not letting conservatives do anything they like on their platform! Bias! Trump derangement syndrome, that's what it is!
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PaulT (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 8:34am
Re: Re: JUST STOP READING TECHDIRT
If people spend far more time stating correctly that Trump is a moron.. maybe the problem isn’t tech dirt?
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PaulT (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 8:33am
Re: JUST STOP READING TECHDIRT
Why is it that when you people comment here you always announce yourselves as utter morons up front? Wouldn’t you get further if you pretended to understand reality on the first posts?
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Anonymous, 11 Jan 2021 @ 12:03am
Re: Re: JUST STOP READING TECHDIRT
[Asserts facts not in evidence]
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Toom1275 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 9:22am
Re: JUST STOP READING TECHDIRT
It's obvious free thought from patriots and voices from conservatives are not welcome here,
[Asserts facts not in evidence]
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Uriel-238 (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 12:39pm
Alleged evidence on YouTube
Yeah, that was reported here. What's it supposed to prove?
(I didn't watch the ten-minute video. I just looked to see what it was about. So what's the deal?)
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Bloof (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 9:05am
Re: Observe all the sh*t comments
All instigated by the left, we know, definitely not the right, despite these people openly planning violence on Parler, The Donald, 4chan and other right wing platforms, the being crowds packed with people who helped to organise Charlottesville, right wing 'celebrities' like Baked Alaska, members of right wing groups like the Proud Boys and Oathkeepers, as well as reporters from the Blaze and Infowars covering it live, going from openly inciting to screaming false flag to declaring those who died to be patriots despite also being false flags when it's convenient. Donald Trump, Alex Jones and others in no way helped to instigate, nope, all infiltrators despite nobody identified, arrested or killed being shown to be left wing.
The left wing folk who caused this all just bled into the night, almost like they were never there.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 7:10pm
Re: Re: Re: Observe all the sh*t comments
Don't you get tired of the same old crapola they tell you type for them? The pay isn't much and the hours suck, no vacation and no sick leave - but ya gotta pay the bills huh.
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Toom1275 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 8:36pm
Re: Re: Re: Observe all the sh*t comments
[Projects facts not in evidence]
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Rocky, 10 Jan 2021 @ 9:00pm
Re: Re: Re: Observe all the sh*t comments
You're a paid troll, a bad actor, trying to bullsh*t readers not to actually think for themselves.
Every accusation, a confession.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 12:47pm
"The very reason why this is such a sh*t platform"
Dude, you totally don't need to post here.
You are free to find safer spaces in which to post your screeds.
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Rocky, 11 Jan 2021 @ 3:41am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Observe all the sh*t comments
I'm just accounting for what I saw.
You mean you are just lying.
There was Antifa/BLM there with hats/labeled TRUMP, but they were obviously not Trump garb or supporters.
I'm interested in how you know they where BLM or anti-fa? Do BLM/anti-fa have a special dress-code? Did they walk up to you showing their BLM or anti-fa membership cards? Did they have a secret handshake? And if so, how do you know what is is?
As evidenced by your posts and the documented facts, you are either a pathological liar or someone who needs to be at a mental institution. Well, the two aren't actually mutually exclusive.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 4:11am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Observe all the sh*t comments
It's the secret handshake
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Uriel-238 (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 12:35pm
I've made this joke before but it's sooo good.
Like ninjas, it's when you don't see the Antifa signaling gear that you know we're there.
I'm pretty sure Antifa are like Islamic Terrorists and Soviet Communists: Every neighbor, every suspicious friend, every person you don't know is one.
Even you can be Antifa yourself and not know it!
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TFG, 10 Jan 2021 @ 10:45am
Re: Observe all the sh*t comments
Your sht comment has been observed. I will now flag it for being sht.
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Paul Gregory (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 9:12am
This should worry nearly everyone
This is effectively "I don't like what you have said, or, didn't say - so you are banished." If you OBJECTIVELY look at the flagged tweets, there is nothing remotely objectionable about them.-
TFG, 10 Jan 2021 @ 10:46am
Re: This should worry nearly everyone
I have objectively looked at the flagged tweets, and have decided that they incited violence and insurrection, and are therefore objectionable.
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Anonymous, 10 Jan 2021 @ 12:02pm
Re: Re: This should worry nearly everyone
And I have objectively looked at the comments and find there was nothing that warranted them to be censored or his account to be suspended.
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Rocky, 10 Jan 2021 @ 9:02pm
Re: Re: Re: This should worry nearly everyone
Considering your other posts, objectivity is a trait you don't possess.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 2:15pm
This is effectively "I don't like what you have said, or, didn't say - so you are banished."
Someone can say something you don’t like while they’re in your home and you can “banish” them from your property. Public-facing businesses such as Walmart can do the same. For what reason should the law deny Twitter that same right?
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Thad (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 8:26pm
Re: This should worry nearly everyone
If you OBJECTIVELY look at the flagged tweets, there is nothing remotely objectionable about them.
Does "objectively" in this use mean "deliberately ignoring that he made them while armed insurrectionists were inside the Capitol, after he encouraged them to storm it"?
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Toom1275 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 9:46am
[Projects facts not in evidence]
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 2:10pm
No, what should scare you is the idea that the law should force Twitter, Facebook, etc. to host speech they don’t want to host. If you think that proposition would stop with them, you’d be wrong.
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Toom1275 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 10:27am
Re: [Projects facts not in evidence]
... but enough about yourself.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 12:00pm
"Low life adolescent insults"
And once again the double standard reveals its ghastly face. Pig iron is not a good look for you, dude.
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That One Guy (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 12:24pm
Might as well call pro-slavery confederates 'patriots'
Referring to a pack of insurrectionists losers as 'patriots' is a slap in the face of all those that actually fit that label, so congrats on making clear your utter contempt towards those that actually deserve respect.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 4:25am
Re: Re: Might as well call pro-slavery confederates 'patriots'
"You never disappoint with the condescending slander of patriots. You must not be one."
I am curious, what is your definition of patriot?
I see this term often and the context in which it is observed seems to be all over the place. In one instance it refers to those who have served or are actively serving their country in the armed forces while in another it refers to the spouses of those who are actively serving their country in the armed forces.
Lately, there are some week end warriors who also refer to themselves as patriots and then some just like to play con
Remember when your king and savior called those who serve losers? Why would a real patriot continue to serve a dictator who shows no regard for those who serve?Apparently the word patriot is abused by conservatives to mean anything and anyone they want to promote while things they do not like are socialism or liberal. No supporting evidence or rational required.
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That One Guy (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 10:02am
Inssurectionists losers are not patriots
If you're defining 'patriot' as someone who hates their county and would be happy to burn it to the ground in petulant denial rather than accept a loss, which you must be to apply it to that pack of losers then I am proud to say I'm not a 'patriot'.
Your laughable accusation might carry even the tiniest sliver of weight were the people I'm supposedly 'sladering' actually patriots, but scum insurrectionists that showed the world their utter contempt for the country and willingness to overthrow democracy rather than admit that they lost an election are anything but, and as I noted comparing losers like that to actual patriots is showing far more comtempt towards actual patriots than anything I said or could say.
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Rocky, 11 Jan 2021 @ 3:26pm
Re: Re: Might as well call pro-slavery confederates 'patriots'
The funny thing is that someone can be a patriot and an asshole at the same time, they aren't mutually exclusive. But you can't be a patriot if you attack your own country's democratic institutions, and you aren't a patriot if you defend that behavior which tells us you are just an asshole.
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Vermont IP Lawyer (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 10:58am
Editorial Discretion
This is from a Fox News article about the views of Brit Hume:
Fox News Senior Political Analyst Brit Hume is calling out big social media companies for banning President Trump's accounts based on what he says are "pure editorial judgments." "These social media companies have a legal right to do this, but they should not then pose as open platforms entitled to legal protections from the legal risks faced by publishers," he wrote in a tweet Friday night.
There is more in the article that I have not excerpted above. It is funny/sad that Mr. Hume seems to think editorial judgements might be a bad thing and that someone who makes editorial judgement ought to be treated as a publisher. As to whether he understands but does not like Section 230 or just does not undertand it, I cannot say,
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Uriel-238 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 12:52pm
"How do we know that Trump incited..."
Did you see his noon-hour go forth and take the election back speech?
Not sure you're asking in good faith. All this is easily discoverable on the web.
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TFG, 10 Jan 2021 @ 2:05pm
Re: information clarification
Here. I did some research for you:
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-trump-in-final-weeks-incited-his-followers-to-storm-the-cap itol-2021-1Put simply, he told them to fight like hell on Wednesday at a rally. "we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue, I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we're going to the Capitol and we're going to try and give —"
An unfinished thought. But he didn't have to finish it. This is incitement.And when they reached the Capitol? He told them "We love you. You're very special." This is support.
We know Trump did that because we watched him do it. We know Trump did that because it was recorded. We know Trump did that, because he did it.
Trump incited a coup attempt. He engaged in insurrection against the United States of America. He fomented rebellion and terrorist. He is a terrorist leader, and those of his followers who marched the Capitol building engage in terrorist acts against our country and our government.
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PaulT (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 12:52am
Re: Re: Re: information clarification
You say plan, I say "paranoid fantasies of man-children who refuse to take responsibility for their own actions". There's an easy way to not be banned from social media, and it's similar to the action you need to take to not be kicked out of buildings in the real world. Let's see if you can work out what that is.
"Once there's no platform the left can't control, they'll go for the 2nd and 1st Amendment next"
Because rewriting the constitution is exactly the same as people controlling access to their own private property... Your fantasies don't even make internal logical sense.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 1:48am
This was a setup
Yes, thousands of people with social media histories that paint them as fervent Trump supporters were really just Antifa supersoldiers waiting for at least four years to storm the Capitol building and make Trump look bad~. That woman with a Twitter account painting her as a Trump supporter — the woman who got shot and killed at the Capitol? Total false flag crisis actor~.
Christ, don’t you assholes have anything other than “false flag” accusations? That’s the laziest cheat in the Conspiracy Theorist Cookbook. And it’s also bullshit, given how we saw Trump, one of his idiot sons, and his moron of a lawyer egg on Trump supporters at a rally mere hours before the insurrection.
Trump is a lying sociopath who never gave a fuck about anyone but himself. He also lost a free and fair election. Get over it.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 12:54pm
"America surveillance draconian,anti-privacy"
Are you referring to PRISM and XKeyscore started by George W. Bush?
Or are you referring to the Stingray IMSI-Catchers secretly used by law enforcement nationwide until discovered, fought in court and sometimes used illegally anyway by police because no one is stopping them?
The only privacy you care about Anonymous is your own. Not mine. Not the people of the US. Certainly not fringe minorities.
Go back to school, dude.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 3:57pm
Re: information clarification
How do we know that Trump did that ?
Because we have eyes and ears, saw what he's been saying for months, including what he said at his speech right before they invaded the Capitol.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:57pm
Re: Re: information clarification
How do we know that Trump did that ?
Because we have eyes and ears…
So a third of the nation is blind or deaf?
“More than half of Americans want President Trump out of the office before inauguration day”, Ipsos, Jan 10, 2021
ABC News/Ipsos poll finds that majority fault Trump for rioting in D.C.
How much blame do you think Donald Trump deserves for the rioting that occurred in Washington D.C. this week?
33% … Not so much or None at all
(Reformatted from graphic.)
Sure, according to this poll, two-thirds of the nation faults Trump for the rioting. But the other third of the nation is still an awfully big chunk to just write off as blind and/or deaf.
From the Topline, p.6 —
This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted January 8 to January 9, 2021 by Ipsos using the probability-based KnowledgePanel®. This poll is based on a nationally representative probability sample of 570 general population adults age 18 or older.
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TFG, 10 Jan 2021 @ 5:14pm
Re: Re: Re: information clarification
So a third of the nation is blind or deaf?
Yes. Willfully so, in some cases.
Are you going to ignore the two-thirds of the nation that want him out, in your example? Two thirds is greater than one third, after all.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 5:38pm
"Are you going to ignore the two-thirds of the nation?"
Everyone who counts loves Ned Flanders.
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PaulT (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 11:52pm
Re: Re: Re: information clarification
"So a third of the nation is blind or deaf?"
It's more like they have wilfully gone full Orwell, and are just dealing with reality in a different way to non-cultists:
“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” - George Orwell, 1984
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lucidrenegade (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 4:53pm
This is all moot...
He's already back on Twitter, sort of... ;-)
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 5:30pm
Hey, Trump boys... In the likely scenario that you lads are still here, foaming at the mouth for Donald's sake, here's a tip: claiming that Techdirt isn't worth reading for its political affiliation and thus worthy of a mass exodus won't work. Not in the way you think it will, for several reasons.
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Asking everyone to leave a website because you disagree with its content is like getting angry at a vegan salad bar for not serving you filet mignon. It doesn't get you steak and your continued tantrum just outs you as a moron.
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If your concern is Techdirt not liking Trump... No fucking shit? Where have you been for the last few years? If this was the breaking point for you, you would have left a long time ago. That you're here now suggests you're only here because your endorphins are activated by self-righteous outrage, the same reason why you didn't vote Trump to prevent Biden from taking the Presidency - because you can bitch about it later. About a consequence you had the complete ability to avoid!
- Demanding that everyone else leave won't work because you're still here, trying to engage (read: insult) everyone who disagrees with you, you daft numpty! If you're going to fuck off, do it already! Go back to Parler so you can mock everyone else for having an echo chamber... With your echo chamber!
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 6:29pm
Go back to Parler
If only they could. ?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 10:18pm
I'd actually just found out about the Amazon thing. I'd try to feel sorry for them, but I suspect the effort required to squeeze out a modicum of sympathy for Team Trump would cause me to fellate myself.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 6:28pm
Congressman and conservatives comments who are violent but display conservative views are being deleted
[citation needed]
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 10:58pm
I dunno. I don’t see what’s wrong with just assuming that violent comments by congresspeople and conservatives are being deleted.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 6:43pm
Re: Deleting accounts
Congressman and conservatives comments who are violent
You don't see the problem here?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jan 2021 @ 7:05pm
Re: Deleting accounts
How might American censorship be more patriotic than that of a communist country? We will not have any of that damn commie censoring here in America, we will do censoring our own way - yeah.
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That One Guy (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 7:28pm
'Oh, you know the ones...'
Congressman and conservatives comments who are violent but display conservative views are being deleted
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant to type 'not violent' because if you meant to type what you did then you'd have just justified the bans, and in that case pray tell which 'conservative values' would those be that you think is getting them banned, and please be specific as I'm curious as to what counts as 'conservative values' that social media might not care for.
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That One Guy (profile), 10 Jan 2021 @ 10:42pm
'Curse those republican judges!'
There is actual proof, but the courts refused to hear the evidence.
Multiple courts, including those headed by judges nominated by Trump/republicans, all of which would have to be in on the fraud to steal an election for a democrat president for that conspiracy theory to even begin to have a shred of believability...
Hey, whatever you need to tell yourself to maintain that lie and denial based delusion, but I'd suggest you join the real world with the rest of us because spinning wild conspiracy theories to explain why your guy only lost because of the most complex, well planned and flawlessly executed fraud in american history, one involving massive numbers of people from both parties and multiple government agencies has got to be a hell of a lot harder on the mind than simply accepting that he lost because millions more people once again voted for the 'Not Trump' option than the alternative and this time the electoral college wasn't enough to save his ass.
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Rocky, 11 Jan 2021 @ 1:46am
Re: Twitter & Trump
There is actual proof, but the courts refused to hear the evidence. Instead, the refused to listen based on procedural matters.
Actual proof? Refused to listed based on procedural matters?
When the judges asked for the evidence none was presented. I do hope you understand what happens to an unsubstantiated claim in a court of law, it gets tossed. Just like your argument that there is "actual proof" with no attached evidence means that it's an unsubstantiated claim that isn't worth listening to.
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PaulT (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 2:31am
Re: Re: Twitter & Trump
"When the judges asked for the evidence none was presented."
More to the point - when Giuliani and his cronies were in court and not playing for the cameras, they told the courts that they weren't really alleging fraud.
https://time.com/5914377/donald-trump-no-evidence-fraud/
Funny how their claims suddenly change in the venue where they have to provide evidence for what they're claiming.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 2:33am
Funny how their claims suddenly change in the venue where they have to provide evidence for what they're claiming.
Which is also the same venue where a lawyer can be legally sanctioned for lying. Imagine that~.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 2:07am
There is actual proof, but the courts refused to hear the evidence. Instead, the refused to listen based on procedural matters.
No, they refused to listen for one of two reasons:
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The evidence was patently untrue or otherwise lacked credibility
- The Trump legal team declined to provide any evidence when asked by a court of law, where it is literally unlawful for a lawyer to lie in front of a judge
Trump, Giuliani, and all the idiot flunkies in the world can whine about a “stolen election” and claim “proof is coming”. But when they get to a court of law, they need actual evidence instead of insane ramblings or grandiose accusations. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And claiming that multiple states ran a “rigged” presidential election (but somehow didn’t run “rigged” local and state elections) requires the most extraordinary evidence to prove.
Everyone who has offered what they call “evidence” of a “rigged” election lacks credibility. So does their “evidence”. Unless you can provide irrefutable and independently verifiable evidence of a “rigged” or “stolen” election that can’t be explained away as something more innocuous, you’re no better than them.
And FYI: Trump saying “the vote was rigged” is not evidence.
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PaulT (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 2:35am
"No, they refused to listen for one of two reasons:"
Well, there were other reasons, usually because the plaintiff didn't have standing to file in that particular venue.
"Everyone who has offered what they call “evidence” of a “rigged” election lacks credibility."
Because there is none. There's essentially 2 things behind the belief that there was fraud. One is simple disbelief among hardcore cultists that they're not actually in the majority. The other is a misunderstanding of how counting votes works. These are both faults of the person complaining, not the system, so they have no credibility when they complain.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 11:00pm
No, they refused to listen for one of two reasons:
You forgot 3. The evidence did not suggest wrongdoing or anything suspicious or illegal was occurring.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 3:44am
Companies have the right to censor or moderate speech, but they aren't entitled to claim relevance once they do. If they want open, robust debate then people are going to get offended.
We already censor ourselves with many topics off-limits almost everywhere, as if they have been decided, even if reality says they haven't. There are certain views that people will applaud silencing you for having. While legal, this loses relevance the second we have to force people to agree on what they'd otherwise debate and offend people by debating.
Censorship power is inevitably abused. Discussions which are "moderated" quickly lose relevance. The type of people who make a service popular -- Trump is an example on Twitter -- are the very people who create these controversies. The courts have consistently said "find another platform" so they are not a state actor, but that misses the central issue of whether or not it makes political or economic sense to moderate. More often than not, it doesn't.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 4:37am
"Companies have the right to censor or moderate speech"
Companies have the right to control what happens upon their private property
"but they aren't entitled to claim relevance once they do."
I was unaware of this legislation.
" The courts have consistently said "find another platform" so they are not a state actor, but that misses the central issue of whether or not it makes political or economic sense to moderate. More often than not, it doesn't."
The courts say that?
Your claim about the political or economic considerations, is this from your point of view or that of a typical business? -
Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 4:46am
Companies have the right to censor or moderate speech, but they aren't entitled to claim relevance once they do. If they want open, robust debate then people are going to get offended.
In which case you need to explain why 8kun and 4chan etc. are less popular than Facebook, Twitter etc., because the actual evidence is that the more heavily moderated platforms have the larger user base.
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 5:20am
I can offer an explanation in four words (and one link): The Worst People Problem.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 1:09pm
The Worst People Problem
They’re always angry and always on the hunt for ways that they can manipulate, and that means often turning on the platform. -- Hank Green
This seems to align with my Hierarchy of Chumps hypothesis regarding the Trump GOP (and maybe the pre-Trump GOP).
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Stephen T. Stone (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 12:00am
Hierarchy of Chumps hypothesis
I’d like to read that.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 1:06am
Hierarchy of Chumps
I've mentioned it on other TD forums. The GOP is, I submit, a hierarchy of chumps in which each tier is playing a confidence game on the tiers directly below them, who are grifting those below them, and so on.
It explains why so many posters on these forums are so insistent about their outrageous claims, such as the proof of fraud during the general election (but only the presidential election) and how Antifa caused all the violence at the Capitol building last Wednesday.
According to these guys, their job is to sucker anyone beneath them in their own social hierarchy so they spout obvious untruths and insist they are veritable, just as their dear leader does to them (while passing policy entirely against their civic interests.)
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PaulT (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 5:38am
Re: Re:
"the actual evidence is that the more heavily moderated platforms have the larger user base"
Well, yes and no. A virtually unmoderated platform will always be less popular than a sufficiently moderated platform, just as a nightclub with bouncers who kick out disruptive patrons before they start shit will always be more popular than the one known to have multiple nightly brawls.
But, that doesn't necessarily hold in the other direction. If you go to any of the more notorious right-wing sites, you will usually find over-moderation, where people who voice dissenting ideas will be immediately blocked, banned and have their post history deleted. Yet, these are not ever going to be popular places, because nobody in their right mind wants to associate with the kinds of people who manage to remain unblocked.
The basic problem is that assholes on the popular sites don't understand that they're being blocked for being assholes, then they go to whine about it on asshole-centric safe spaces, where they're told it's not really their fault and so never bother to take the introspective look they need to change their behaviour.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 5:08am
Twitter stock is down almost 7% in the premarket due to their banning Trump.
Kind of like the anti-230 people, those who want to censor Trump are blaming the platforms for the fact that people tune in to watch him. The market will step in watch Trump buy Parler and file antitrust lawsuits against Apple, Google, etc.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 5:26am
"Twitter stock is down almost 7% in the premarket due to their banning Trump."
Upon what do you base your conclusion?How will Donald purchase anything, he is broke and no one will loan him any more money because he can't pay his current debts and he may be headed to prison. The orange jump suit will be color coordinated with his face.
Perhaps you misunderstand the anti-trust laws, what exactly would Donald sue over? Can an individual sue, in civil court, over anti-trust allegations?
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PaulT (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 5:43am
Re: Re:
"Upon what do you base your conclusion?"
Wishful thinking. Even if what he claims is true, a look at the trends for the stock over the last year shows it's a minor blip and is likely to recover quickly. Even if he is correct that it's a real problem - so what? A company makes less money after removing something that's a known negative to the world overall? Fine.
"Perhaps you misunderstand the anti-trust laws, what exactly would Donald sue over?"
Trump supporters are not known for their adherence to reality.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 1:12pm
"what exactly would Donald sue over?"
I think the plan was to capture the courts and appoint Trump-obedient zombies to all the benches. That way Trump could sue over anything and be awarded whatever he wanted.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 6:03pm
Re: "what exactly would Donald sue over?"
Yeah - his judges have been a disappointment to him, thank goodness.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 5:52am
Re: Re:
Refusal to deal or group boycott is an antitrust violation. If one platform bans, that's one thing, but if ALL do it...
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 6:01pm
Re: Re: Re:
When everyone obeys the laws they are guilty of anti-trust ... hmmmm.
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That One Guy (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 11:13am
Re: Re:
How will Donald purchase anything, he is broke and no one will loan him any more money because he can't pay his current debts and he may be headed to prison. The orange jump suit will be color coordinated with his face.
Sadly that part at least is no longer true, his 'give me money to steal- I mean protect the election' con job was very successful and a whole slew of idiots threw money at him, to the tune of well over a hundred million last I heard, so he may have been broke before but he's likely doing quite well financially at the moment.
Of course Trump being Trump I fully expect him to lose it in short order in some stupid stunt or another, because as his history shows he really sucks at managing money.
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PaulT (profile), 11 Jan 2021 @ 5:47am
"The market will step in watch Trump buy Parler and"
...laugh at the idiotic decision to buy such a laughably poorly run company, whose only value is to provide law enforcement with personally identifiable accounts to follow and prosecute?
"and file antitrust lawsuits against Apple, Google, etc."
I'd ask what's stopping him now since he's been in charge of the departments that file antitrust lawsuits for the last 4 years, but I realise you don't know what you're talking about...
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 7:03am
Trump has made himself toxic, with the US PGA Trump National stripped of 2022 US PGA Championship. Companies do not like the instability that comes from coups and attempted coups/
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 8:24am
It was not just a riot, it was an insurrection.
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TFG, 11 Jan 2021 @ 11:35am
And it wasn't just an insurrection. It was an attempted coup.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 2:08pm
Re: Re:
I agree. But I'd hit them all with a separate rioting charge, since intent is proven with the act itself. Prosecutors call it a DBW since no matter who says what it's going to be a slam dunk conviction.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Jan 2021 @ 10:39am
The fact that this is up for debate is ludricrous. Putting aside any and all mentions of name, title, or office, a man incited a riot. There are no "extenuating circumstances". For all those wrapping themselves in the Bill of Rights, here is a direct quote of the First Amendment:
" Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Nowhere in that text is " Breaking into buildings, disrupting government activity, assault, and theft is cool if you feel slighted" -
Ken Meyercord, 11 Jan 2021 @ 11:52am
Censorship
Those concerned about impingements on freedom of speech (left, right, and center) warn that censorship is a slippery slope, but where were these people when Amazon removed books by so-called Holocaust deniers from its shelves (but left "Mein Kampf"!) a couple of years ago. Where were you? (“First they came for the Holocaust deniers...”) -
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
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PaulT (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 5:54am
"someone who is clearly on the left, and thus a biased opinion"
That's what opinions are, genius.
"In time, censorship will come to you as well"
...and on that day, he will calmly route around that censorship using the many tools freely available for him to do so, rather than whining like a baby for someone else to rescue him from the consequences of his own actions.
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Rocky, 12 Jan 2021 @ 6:24am
Re: Re:
"and thus a biased opinion"... They do get stupider and stupider, don't they?
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TFG, 12 Jan 2021 @ 9:10am
In time, censorship will come to you as well.
By your evident applied definition of censorship, it already has, in the form of Google pulling advertising from Techdirt because Google didn't like what Techdirt was saying on some of the posts. Bit behind the times there, Jabrony.
The Brown Shirt Democrats will eat their own and you will be crying for cops and Trump to save you.
Every accusation, a confession. This is what is happening to the GOP and MAGA right now. The Trumpists, the QANON folks, and everyone who breached the Capitol are now being disavowed by their supposed allies as "ANTIFA" - not because of any evidence, but because association to them is toxic and like any criminal organization, they will dump the people who become a liability.
But it’s too late.
On this, we agree. It's too late to claim you're in the right. Sedition, insurrection, attempted coup, domestic terrorism. These are the hallmarks and result of Trumpism. This is the end result, and it's the capstone of Trump's legacy.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 3:51pm
"Brown Shirt Democrats"
We're not the ones who attempted a Beer Hall Putsch, Herr Bürger.
I totally expect to be packed on the cattle trains, not by the Democrats but by the white-nationalist cabals in our benevolent police unions. Once Biden doesn't do enough to pull Americans out of the hole Trump and Bush left us in, or if he were to actually try to defund / reform / abolish law enforcement and their murder-privileges, Trump's red-hats will be at it again.
(To be fair, the US has been digging the American people into precarity since Reagan -- the most glorious glorified of all post-Southern-Strategy Republicans -- and not helped much by Democrats thanks to an increasingly Right-wing-locked legislature and enthusiasm tempered by industrial campaign financing. But that's all history and too complicated for the likes of you.)
I suspect after Biden you guys will be itching to elect some new mini-Mussolini, maybe even a Trump Jr. And they'll start again with the private prisons and the family separations and the detention-center plague pits.
And a genocide program will be justified because the prisons and detention centers are too expensive to sustain, and no other country will take America's deported.
And, the Red-hat einsatzgruppen will find that just gunning down dissidents into mass graves is too grizzly and hard, that it's squeamish, pukey work after all. And that is why you have to build murder factories that processes hundreds of people at a time into vitrified ash activated by a technician who only looks at graphs and numbers.
But I guess, Anonymous Coward, this is to say you don't expect to be losing any sleep over shoving me up the loading ramp because I would have done it to you.
To that, I will respond with a passage from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five: I have told my sons that they are not under any circumstances to take part in massacres, and that the news of massacres of enemies is not to fill them with satisfaction or glee. I have also told them not to work for companies which make massacre machinery, and to express contempt for people who think we need machinery like that.
For me, it's something of a creed. So let me assure you now that I for one will die first before packing the trains or before saying an engine that massacres is a good, righteous thing.
But it's a bad idea even pragmatically, to let such a scheme get started. If you don't personally know a billionaire or are related to one, your spot on the boxcars is also reserved. No Allies will coming this time to stop them from cleaning house, and sooner or later you will be deemed insufficiently patriotic to not get your turn in the machine.
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Lostinlodos (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 2:28pm
Interesting op-Ed. And that’s what it is. Opinion.
I have two issues here.
Trump did not say storm the capital and break in.
So insightment isn’t a realistic reason. Especially when Democrat have called for outright murder at times.More. I despise censorship. Period. Full stop.
This is and was censorship.
“ the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.”. Saying this is anything other than censorship is ignorance or a flat out bold faced lie.That covered:
These are private companies. And they have the right to do as they wish. In this act of censorship they should loose all neutral platform protections. Then we can all move on.On censorship:
I understand the mining theatre reasoning begin censorship of dangerous rhetoric. I simply disagree. The right to sell fire in a crowded theatre is just as important as the right to yell theatre in a crowded fire.-
nasch (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 3:07pm
In this act of censorship they should loose all neutral platform protections.
There are no protections for platforms that are predicated on neutrality. So nothing to lose there.
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Anonymous Coward, 12 Jan 2021 @ 3:51pm
This is and was censorship. “the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.”. Saying this is anything other than censorship is ignorance or a flat out bold faced lie.
If it was censorship Trump wouldn't be able speak anywhere.
Regardless, nobody is entitled the use of someone else's private property, and nobody is entitled to an audience. Trump could easily have used whitehouse.gov to get his message out, but instead he had a meltdown.
I understand the mining theatre reasoning begin censorship of dangerous rhetoric. I simply disagree. The right to sell fire in a crowded theatre is just as important as the right to yell theatre in a crowded fire.
And if you yell fire in that theatre, expect to be thrown out and banned from the place because nobody want's to have assholes destroying the experience for the other patrons.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 11:12pm
Re: Re:
And if you yell “Theater!” in a crowded fire, expect people to stare at you in confusion for a moment or try to knock some sense into you.
Also, if you sell fire in a crowded theater, you should also
expect to be thrown out and banned from the place.I don’t think I need to explain why.
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PaulT (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 11:07pm
"Trump did not say storm the capital and break in"
Fortunately, the standard for incitement isn't based on a breakdown of the grammar used, there's other things to consider.
"insightment"
That's a fun misspelling from a team that lacks insight.
"In this act of censorship they should loose all neutral platform protections."
Lose. What is it with you people and your poor grasp of the language?
Anyway, no such protection exists, and if you think that's what section 230 says, I suggest you read it after brushing up on the dictionary to make sure you understand all the words.
"The right to sell fire in a crowded theatre is just as important as the right to yell theatre in a crowded fire."
I assume you mean yell fire? Sure, you can have that right, but be prepared to suffer the consequences for the damage you cause while doing so.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 11:18pm
Re: Re:
But can I have the right to sell fire? I’m asking for a friend.
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bhull242 (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 11:09pm
The right to sell fire in a crowded theatre is just as important as the right to yell theatre in a crowded fire.
I’m sorry, I know one of these was a typo, and I agree with the sentiment behind this statement, but I just got two funny images in my head:
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A crowded theater with a salesman selling burning sticks to people, and
- A crowded burning building with most people inside panicking when some guy just yells out, “Theatre!” in a British accent.
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Tin-Foil-Hat, 12 Jan 2021 @ 6:13pm
Twitter et al. wants it both ways
They've spent years attracting the eyes and ears of the public by creating the illusion of a public square.
They inconsistently moderate speech. They except powerful people from their terms of service, for example, Trump for most of his presidency. If you can round up an angry mob you can silence any users whose speech you disagree with. In fact a more powerful party can easy to shut down speech they don't via bad-faith copyright claims or accusations of hate speech. At the same time individuals often endure hate speech and threats when social media companies arbitrarily decide that this particular stalker or bully wasn't wrong enough.
I hate Trump and his ilk. I support section 230, however, social media companies want to have full control over a space that they call their own, while 100% dodging liability for that same space.
If every social media company, every service provider, every web host, every employer, every school is free to pubish or ban whoever they want, then we effectively don't have free speech.
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Lostinlodos (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 9:14pm
Re: Twitter et al. wants it both ways
Exactly!
And in reply to the RE on protectionism that is exactly what s230 does.
@Anonymous cowered .
Do you (and Never Trumps in general) not read; or do you just attack anyone who stood up for the issue at hand?
I already sided with Facebook and Twitter. It is well within their rights as a private business. I simply pointed out that by CENSORING they should loose 230 protections. An any and all civil immunity.My umbrage is with the author saying this wasn’t censorship when it hits all three legal clauses for being just that.
I also think that a private bakery has the right to refuse gay wedding cakes and a coffee shop can kick out flyer peddlers... and a Gothic Punk fashion chain has the right to kick out Jesus Saves zombies.
A theatre has the right to ban me for yelling fire.
An arsonist can ban me for yelling theatre.As of the SECOND mass exodus that has happened both birds and fake book’s users are majority sub-25. Majority Democrats. And generally anti-Libertarian. Along with being anti trump.
If their user base wishes to ban Trump, even as President, so be it.
They are no longer neutral in doing so and should now be held legally responsible for any and every post made by a user.A private business can be neutral. Or selective. The later has zero claim to the benefits of the former.
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nasch (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 10:14pm
Re: Re: Twitter et al. wants it both ways
I simply pointed out that by CENSORING they should loose 230 protections.
What would even be the point of having section 230 if providers lose its protections by moderating (or censoring if you must call it that)?
both birds and fake book’s users are majority sub-25.
Not even close.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/283119/age-distribution-of-global-twitter-users/
https:// smallbusiness.chron.com/breakdown-facebook-users-age-63280.html
Majority Democrats.
Wrong again.
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2019/04/24/sizing-up-twitter-users/
I couldn't find data on Facebook users after looking for a few minutes but it would surprise me if they're more liberal than Twitter users.
And generally anti-Libertarian. Along with being anti trump.
I doubt anybody has solid information on either of those, and I expect you made them up.
A private business can be neutral. Or selective. The later has zero claim to the benefits of the former.
Where did you get this idea that there is a requirement for information service providers to be neutral?
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Lostinlodos (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 11:11pm
Re: Re: Re: Twitter et al. wants it both ways
I intended to type 28 and not 25. My error. And that reflects your data link.
Second point. As of 12 Jan 2031 Twitter suspended 50k+ accounts and had 150K+ closures. Oh, and the headline? “U.S. adult Twitter users are younger and more likely to be Democrats than the general public”? Is that not what I said?
Fox has said that there is a 3:1 likelihood that a conservative post will be censored vs liberal on both platforms. I can’t corroborate that with actual data, but since constant retraction WaPo and anti-trump NYT are quoted with disregard to facts I’ll take it as is.
None of the Democrats wishing Trump dead when he had COVID that I know of; and none were sanctioned for supporting the burning of federal courthouses, police stations, or in the cases of Chicago and New York for telling looters where cops were responding.
Final point. I’m not a deluded Republican. I have no beliefs in neutrality of ISPs. (I for information).
But if you want protections for moderation of content it must be politically neutral.-
Uriel-238 (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 2:00am
"protections for moderation must be politically neutral."
I assume you mean by this the protections should be neutral.
But then I think political speech that invokes incitement or hatred should be...delicately put no matter which side it comes from.
(And yes, I say that as someone who has sometimes not kept my inciting speech delicate.)
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nasch (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 7:29am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Twitter et al. wants it both ways
“U.S. adult Twitter users are younger and more likely to be Democrats than the general public”? Is that not what I said?
Perhaps that is what you meant to say, and if so I agree. What you actually said is that they are majority less than 25 years old and majority Democrat, neither of which is true.
Fox has said that there is a 3:1 likelihood that a conservative post will be censored vs liberal on both platforms.
There are two obvious explanations for that. One is that those platforms prefer to remove conservative posts. The other is that conservatives are more likely to post things that violate the platforms' terms of service. Conservatives have largely chosen to believe the first one, but as far as I can tell this belief is entirely without supporting evidence.
But if you want protections for moderation of content it must be politically neutral.
Are you saying this is currently what the law states, or you wish it said that?
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PaulT (profile), 13 Jan 2021 @ 7:45am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Twitter et al. wants it both ways
"Fox has said that there is a 3:1 likelihood that a conservative post will be censored vs liberal on both platforms"
While you're a damn fool if you take the word of Fox at face value on this type of issue, that doesn't mean anything without context. There's ways to make an informed, insightful, factual "conservative" post, and there's ways to make an ignorant offensive, utterly false "conservative" post. If the latter are the ones being "censored", it's not because of the political slant.
"But if you want protections for moderation of content it must be politically neutral"
Only if you're all for government censorship of the opinion of private property owners, which would be ironic.
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PaulT (profile), 12 Jan 2021 @ 11:12pm
Re: Twitter et al. wants it both ways
"They've spent years attracting the eyes and ears of the public by creating the illusion of a public square."
No, they haven't. I know that's what Fox is desperate to tell you in order to pretend that this is some kind of free speech violation, but you're being lied to.
"They inconsistently moderate speech"
...as is their right. It's your right to use a different platform if you dislike this. It is not your right to have the government seize and control private property because you don't like it.
"I support section 230... while 100% dodging liability for that same space."
You support section 230 while opposing the only thing it actually does (absolves platform owners of responsibility for what others do on that platform)?
Would it kill you people to read the actual law?
"If every social media company, every service provider, every web host, every employer, every school is free to pubish or ban whoever they want, then we effectively don't have free speech."
Yes you do, since other than public schools, none of what you just mentioned is government operated. Why is this so hard for you people to understand? Is it because you just can't stop being such gigantic assholes that nobody actually wants to associate with you?
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