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Referencing McCarthy’s “friendly” networks and TV shows misses the point. “Disgusting” viewpoints can today be had on Drudge Report and numerous other places fr

Referencing McCarthy’s “friendly” networks and TV shows misses the point. “Disgusting” viewpoints can today be had on Drudge Report and numerous other places friendly to that viewpoint. Murrow had spent much of the previous year criticizing McCarthy’s attacks on freedom of speech and association. The equivalent today would be Rachel Maddow giving an entire episode to Trump to do with as he wished. Murrow did not have to do this - in fact he was under great pressure to just drop the thing entirely by his network. He did so because he thought it right to expose his audience to ideas other than his own. Many in the news business felt the same at the time.

notafraudster 8y ago
It may well have been that I've missed your point. Can you make your point a little clearer. In the subject being discussed, the two actors are Patreon and far-right commentators. In the metaphor, presumably Murrow stands in for Patreon, and McCarthy stands in for contemporary far-right commentators. What I presumed to be your point is that a commitment to pluralism, as manifested by Murrow giving McCarthy a platform, would be good because McCarthy would expose his whole ass on television and so be embarrassed out of public life. I took it to be the case that you were drawing the historical parallel because everyone knows how McCarthy's story ends and so people who want a similar ending for Carl Benjamin should take note. But I don't understand the metaphor. McCarthy wasn't hoist by his own petard, he was deplatformed. That is to say that the thing that made him irrelevant was not the public becoming deeply convinced his ideas were wrong, but elites who gatekept his access to a public platform voluntarily deplatforming him. The Senate censured him. After the censure, no one worked with him in the Senate, or talked to him. The news stopped covering him, and the bureaucracy stopped returning his phone calls. He eventually went away because everyone ignored him. In the metaphor, if we want to learn from McCarthy how to make assholes go away today, the takeaway would be to deplatform them. I agree this is a valuable historical lesson. If that was not the point, then I assumed perhaps a secondary point was that Murrow giving McCarthy a platform was good for a commitment to pluralism -- i.e. people should be able to be exposed to bad ideas, because a little poison makes your brain stronger. Accepting for a moment that this is true, I don't see the metaphor here either. In a world where there are three primetime news options, each of those options has a powerful ability to give or remove a platform, and that's reflected in the Murrow story. Only Murrow could give him a platform. But today, that's not the case. It was not possible for McCarthy to start a TV station in the analogy. Today, all of these far-right people can easily (and do) start their own media outlets. First, there is a major cable network who will platform anyone on the right. Second, if they reject you for being too extreme, you can move to Breitbart or TheGatewayPundit or Infowars or really anywhere else. You can tweet on Gab. It's closer to the scenario immediately after the revolutionary war. Many newspapers would not carry what they viewed seditious speech. When speakers could not write op-eds in contemporary newspapers, they simply started their own, problem solved. No one argued that it was a violation of Matthew Lyon's free speech that newspapers wouldn't run his "Adams Is A Tyrant" op-ed. He just started his own newspaper. And no one would argue that printing companies had to sell him the press, nor did trading outposts have to carry his newspaper, nor did skilled typesetters have to work to typeset. Everyone could contractually choose not to do business with him. Luckily for him, enough people agreed that they would do business with him, and so he kept speaking. If people think Patreon is really mean for denying Rhodes Scholar Milo Yiannopoulous a financial lifetime, they can come up with another way to give money. May I suggest the literally hundreds of cryptocurrencies, giving us more options than ever to pay? Don't like cryptocurrencies? Nothing stopping Brain Genius Carl Benjamin from taking money via the mail or finding a payment processor run by someone who agrees with him to take bank transfers And then my other point was that in the metaphor, a journalist gave a platform to a US senator. Patreon isn't deplatforming US senators, and neither is anyone else. They're deplatforming extreme fringe people. Maybe you like Carl Benjamin, you do you, but the historical parallel isn't McCarthy, it's legitimately socially fringe figures, like George Lincoln Rockwell. I don't think anyone gave him an episode of TV. So if the point of the metaphor isn't that "pluralism is good" and it isn't that "sunshine is the best disinfectant", and Patreon isn't a metaphor for Murrow, and McCarthy isn't a metaphor for Benjamin, then what exactly is the point? It's not clear to me.
- slededit 8y ago
  This is in direct reference to the line: > If you wanted a real audience, even in older times you would've needed a newspaper to print your thoughts, or a publisher to help with your books. The point is that getting this "help" was much easier in the past. Even people who vehemently disagreed with you would share their platform. Circling back to Patreon, today's norms are qualitatively different from when our rules of "private platforms" were developed. If a significant portion of publishing platforms retained open minds then it was OK to have others that chose not to. Regulation was not required. Now that this norm of fairness has been lost if we want to retain open communication of ideas on the internet then we must bring back the notion of a common carrier. Referencing the fact that the rules are the same as the past ignores how the world has changed around us.
  - notafraudster 8y ago
    What is the basis for the claim that it was easier in the past than now to get help sharing your content? What is the basis for the "norm of fairness" being claimed? What time period is being held up as the "past" here? So far the evidence presented is that there existed a journalist in TV 50 years ago who gave an episode of his television show to an elected Senator who was a political opponent. The countervailing evidence is the existence of a wide variety of mainstream platforms including some who haven't banned NASA Candidate Carl Benjamin; the zero cost of creating a new website on your own and the proliferation of platforms and sites specifically for far-right content; and that there are more publicly active far-right nuts than at any point in history and they receive less political opprobrium and better access to organized politics than any time in the last 100 years. Take the Daily Stormer: This is an avowed neo-nazi website that denies the holocaust and uses its web platform to specifically target harassment and violence against Jews and feminists. They have no access to visa but still manage to accept private funds and use crypto. The founder of the website is a legal fugitive and a digital nomad. We're not even talking about legal far-right content like Carl Benjamin, we're talking about a guy actually under court indictment for inciting violence and harassment, and the site has a bigger megaphone than ever. And by the way, they even got dropped by Cloudflare, the website that literally doesn't ban anyone or cooperate with authorities or harassment C&Ds. But they're still online and they're still hating just as hard. Is there really a major barrier to entry for Carl "Wheel of Logic" Benjamin? As to the notion of allowing web platforms to be common carriers, I am indifferent, but also don't feel it's relevant. I trust that Patreon doesn't want to be one. One way you can tell that Patreon doesn't want to be one is that they have never asserted themselves to be a common carrier, they have always banned certain types of content (even though the types of content may change over time), and the fact that they are happily banning far-right figures right now. If they wanted to wash their hands of it, they presumably would. Do you get the sense that Patreon's executives are doing this under extreme duress and really they would just love to host MENSA King Carl Benjamin? I guess it's really possible that the evil VISA SJWs are ruining the daily lives of the Free Speech Protestor Patreon Staff, but I somehow doubt it. So if allowing web providers to be classed as common carriers doesn't solve the problem, what then? The alternative is that common carrier status is not a protection a provider can choose to avail themselves of, but rather a regulatory requirement of anything deemed to be infrastructural online. If you are proposing this, that sounds interesting. I think it would take approximately 5 seconds for a Christian VPS provider to object to hosting gay porn, but if you think it's a good use of regulatory muscle to prevent that injustice, then go for it. Maybe you recognize that's silly and instead of all web infrastructure, the suggestion is that suitably large or critical web infrastructure would be a common carrier. In this case, Patreon and Twitter are both enjoined from banning nazis, although maybe Kickstarter still could. You'd also paradoxically create a situation where Gab could ban feminists but Twitter couldn't ban Carl "The Touch Of Woman Deprives Me Of My Genius Juices" Benjamin. It is pretty amazing to me that someone would propose reviving notions of trust regulation and busting to secure safe spaces for diaper baby nazis to cash internet welfare while whining about jew feminists... especially in a world where we don't apply any pressure to abuses by Google, Facebook, or Amazon against, you know, everyone. But I salute your commitment to free speech, I guess.

notafraudster 8y ago

It may well have been that I've missed your point. Can you make your point a little clearer. In the subject being discussed, the two actors are Patreon and far-right commentators. In the metaphor, presumably Murrow stands in for Patreon, and McCarthy stands in for contemporary far-right commentators. What I presumed to be your point is that a commitment to pluralism, as manifested by Murrow giving McCarthy a platform, would be good because McCarthy would expose his whole ass on television and so be embarrassed out of public life. I took it to be the case that you were drawing the historical parallel because everyone knows how McCarthy's story ends and so people who want a similar ending for Carl Benjamin should take note. But I don't understand the metaphor. McCarthy wasn't hoist by his own petard, he was deplatformed. That is to say that the thing that made him irrelevant was not the public becoming deeply convinced his ideas were wrong, but elites who gatekept his access to a public platform voluntarily deplatforming him. The Senate censured him. After the censure, no one worked with him in the Senate, or talked to him. The news stopped covering him, and the bureaucracy stopped returning his phone calls. He eventually went away because everyone ignored him. In the metaphor, if we want to learn from McCarthy how to make assholes go away today, the takeaway would be to deplatform them. I agree this is a valuable historical lesson. If that was not the point, then I assumed perhaps a secondary point was that Murrow giving McCarthy a platform was good for a commitment to pluralism -- i.e. people should be able to be exposed to bad ideas, because a little poison makes your brain stronger. Accepting for a moment that this is true, I don't see the metaphor here either. In a world where there are three primetime news options, each of those options has a powerful ability to give or remove a platform, and that's reflected in the Murrow story. Only Murrow could give him a platform. But today, that's not the case. It was not possible for McCarthy to start a TV station in the analogy. Today, all of these far-right people can easily (and do) start their own media outlets. First, there is a major cable network who will platform anyone on the right. Second, if they reject you for being too extreme, you can move to Breitbart or TheGatewayPundit or Infowars or really anywhere else. You can tweet on Gab. It's closer to the scenario immediately after the revolutionary war. Many newspapers would not carry what they viewed seditious speech. When speakers could not write op-eds in contemporary newspapers, they simply started their own, problem solved. No one argued that it was a violation of Matthew Lyon's free speech that newspapers wouldn't run his "Adams Is A Tyrant" op-ed. He just started his own newspaper. And no one would argue that printing companies had to sell him the press, nor did trading outposts have to carry his newspaper, nor did skilled typesetters have to work to typeset. Everyone could contractually choose not to do business with him. Luckily for him, enough people agreed that they would do business with him, and so he kept speaking. If people think Patreon is really mean for denying Rhodes Scholar Milo Yiannopoulous a financial lifetime, they can come up with another way to give money. May I suggest the literally hundreds of cryptocurrencies, giving us more options than ever to pay? Don't like cryptocurrencies? Nothing stopping Brain Genius Carl Benjamin from taking money via the mail or finding a payment processor run by someone who agrees with him to take bank transfers And then my other point was that in the metaphor, a journalist gave a platform to a US senator. Patreon isn't deplatforming US senators, and neither is anyone else. They're deplatforming extreme fringe people. Maybe you like Carl Benjamin, you do you, but the historical parallel isn't McCarthy, it's legitimately socially fringe figures, like George Lincoln Rockwell. I don't think anyone gave him an episode of TV. So if the point of the metaphor isn't that "pluralism is good" and it isn't that "sunshine is the best disinfectant", and Patreon isn't a metaphor for Murrow, and McCarthy isn't a metaphor for Benjamin, then what exactly is the point? It's not clear to me.

slededit 8y ago
This is in direct reference to the line: > If you wanted a real audience, even in older times you would've needed a newspaper to print your thoughts, or a publisher to help with your books. The point is that getting this "help" was much easier in the past. Even people who vehemently disagreed with you would share their platform. Circling back to Patreon, today's norms are qualitatively different from when our rules of "private platforms" were developed. If a significant portion of publishing platforms retained open minds then it was OK to have others that chose not to. Regulation was not required. Now that this norm of fairness has been lost if we want to retain open communication of ideas on the internet then we must bring back the notion of a common carrier. Referencing the fact that the rules are the same as the past ignores how the world has changed around us.
- notafraudster 8y ago
  What is the basis for the claim that it was easier in the past than now to get help sharing your content? What is the basis for the "norm of fairness" being claimed? What time period is being held up as the "past" here? So far the evidence presented is that there existed a journalist in TV 50 years ago who gave an episode of his television show to an elected Senator who was a political opponent. The countervailing evidence is the existence of a wide variety of mainstream platforms including some who haven't banned NASA Candidate Carl Benjamin; the zero cost of creating a new website on your own and the proliferation of platforms and sites specifically for far-right content; and that there are more publicly active far-right nuts than at any point in history and they receive less political opprobrium and better access to organized politics than any time in the last 100 years. Take the Daily Stormer: This is an avowed neo-nazi website that denies the holocaust and uses its web platform to specifically target harassment and violence against Jews and feminists. They have no access to visa but still manage to accept private funds and use crypto. The founder of the website is a legal fugitive and a digital nomad. We're not even talking about legal far-right content like Carl Benjamin, we're talking about a guy actually under court indictment for inciting violence and harassment, and the site has a bigger megaphone than ever. And by the way, they even got dropped by Cloudflare, the website that literally doesn't ban anyone or cooperate with authorities or harassment C&Ds. But they're still online and they're still hating just as hard. Is there really a major barrier to entry for Carl "Wheel of Logic" Benjamin? As to the notion of allowing web platforms to be common carriers, I am indifferent, but also don't feel it's relevant. I trust that Patreon doesn't want to be one. One way you can tell that Patreon doesn't want to be one is that they have never asserted themselves to be a common carrier, they have always banned certain types of content (even though the types of content may change over time), and the fact that they are happily banning far-right figures right now. If they wanted to wash their hands of it, they presumably would. Do you get the sense that Patreon's executives are doing this under extreme duress and really they would just love to host MENSA King Carl Benjamin? I guess it's really possible that the evil VISA SJWs are ruining the daily lives of the Free Speech Protestor Patreon Staff, but I somehow doubt it. So if allowing web providers to be classed as common carriers doesn't solve the problem, what then? The alternative is that common carrier status is not a protection a provider can choose to avail themselves of, but rather a regulatory requirement of anything deemed to be infrastructural online. If you are proposing this, that sounds interesting. I think it would take approximately 5 seconds for a Christian VPS provider to object to hosting gay porn, but if you think it's a good use of regulatory muscle to prevent that injustice, then go for it. Maybe you recognize that's silly and instead of all web infrastructure, the suggestion is that suitably large or critical web infrastructure would be a common carrier. In this case, Patreon and Twitter are both enjoined from banning nazis, although maybe Kickstarter still could. You'd also paradoxically create a situation where Gab could ban feminists but Twitter couldn't ban Carl "The Touch Of Woman Deprives Me Of My Genius Juices" Benjamin. It is pretty amazing to me that someone would propose reviving notions of trust regulation and busting to secure safe spaces for diaper baby nazis to cash internet welfare while whining about jew feminists... especially in a world where we don't apply any pressure to abuses by Google, Facebook, or Amazon against, you know, everyone. But I salute your commitment to free speech, I guess.