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> But let's not pretend that Twitter and Facebook hold information monopolies with equivalent power to the government's ability to censor. Those private entiti

by RhysU 6y ago

> But let's not pretend that Twitter and Facebook hold information monopolies with equivalent power to the government's ability to censor. Those private entities can censor in excess of the government. They are scarier.

stonogo 6y ago
Get back to me when Twitter has the power to round up everyone who read a given story and have them executed in the street, because that's what government censorship can look like. It's not limited to some partisan nerd toggling a flag in a database somewhere. I think you should probably take this opportunity to re-evaluate the relative powers of these entities.
- onecommentman 6y ago
  I think the discussion is focusing on levels of the US government and what has been experienced by the public under that government since its founding. Actual exercised power by US governmental entities. The discussion of other governments will probably lead this thread into a swampy delta and it will lose its motive force.
  - stonogo 6y ago
    I'm not sure why the artificial limitations on comparison; Twitter and Facebook are wholly active and engaged in markets with governments with such histories. Anyway, if you want such examples, look to the Mexican Dirty War for many, as well as the Banana Massacre. The latter of course was merely a threat to deploy the Marines, but the reasoning announced was not strikebreaking but because the strikers were "subversives"; that is, the US claimed to want them silenced not for what they were doing but for what they were saying. In the past, I would have said that Posse Comitatus would have prevented such behavior from being directed toward American citizens, but after seeing the mutual-law-skirting nature of the Five Eyes approach, as well as the presence of Federal troops in law enforcement roles in US cities over the past year, I'm no longer confident.
  - dnautics 6y ago
    > I think the discussion is focusing on levels of the US government and what has been experienced by the public under that government since its founding Get back to me when twitter can order an airstrike against an minor and enjoy qualified immunity.
    - briantakita 6y ago
      The Chinese Communist Party is being accused of many human rights violations against the Uyghurs, Falun Gong, Christians, factory workers, etc. There are also allegations that the CCP is interfering with the United States government & election process. If these violations are true, then Twitter & the Big Media is complicit in obfuscating evidence of collusion & hidden business partnerships between the Vice President via his family & the CCP. If these allegations are not true, then the public conversation has been censored & the story of censorship overshadows investigation which would absolve the innocent parties. Either way, the public deserves to have direct access the truth.
- thu2111 6y ago
  People are alarmed by these moves because they represent a wider trend in which the left increasingly does not recognise the right as politically legitimate, i.e. they do not believe non-leftists should be allowed to exist. Tech firm activist censorship is merely one visible (or not so visible) aspect of this. But it's not the only aspect. The very same sorts of people with the very same views are also in government institutions in abundance, as we've seen in recent years with the descent of the various left-wing elites into conspiracy theories about Russia - theories that were then used to try and effectively block implementations of public votes, on the belief that surely the public could not possibly reject their enlightened governance unless they were being manipulated. This isn't purely a US thing. The UK has the same problems. Recently one of the government's advisors on COVID was complaining (on Twitter!) that the BBC had agreed to unfairly rig a debate she was involved with, but hadn't properly enforced that rigging: https://twitter.com/SusanMichie/status/1311234012283899904 https://twitter.com/SusanMichie/status/1311234012283899904 A lot of the British political class lost their minds over Brexit. You saw incredible things, like politicians running as candidates of the party saying they'd implement the decision, and then switching post-election to the party with saying they'd void the vote and never leave. They had flat out lied to voters about their intentions. That happened quite a few times. There were many other tricks deployed too. They fundamentally didn't believe in the legitimacy of their political opposition and were willing to manipulate the electoral processes to try and "win" despite having lost at the ballot box.
  - davvolun 6y ago
    > People are alarmed by these moves because they represent a wider trend in which the left increasingly does not recognise the right as politically legitimate, i.e. they do not believe non-leftists should be allowed to exist. Those two things aren't remotely the same. The legitimacy of the right in the U.S. is an open question when they participate in direct voter suppression, gerrymandering, continually lose popular votes but still gain controlling power of the strongest apparatus of the government, have used that power to appoint (shortly) 16 of the last 20 SCOTUS Justices going back to 1969 using rules they are quite literally making up on the spot. "Consent of the governed" is a valid question under these scenarios. But you need to provide some very strong evidence "they [the left] do not believe non-leftists should be allowed to exist." You're using some very strong language based on very weak arguments. The fact you, presumably, pass off things such as Russian interference in fair and free elections as "conspiracy theories" should, god willing, be absolutely damning to your credibility. Or that "herd immunity strategies," as mentioned in the tweet you link, should be presented as a valid and equal alternative strategy to NOT LETTING PEOPLE DIE; you're arguing flat-earthers should be given equal footing in a debate with NASA.
- zo1 6y ago
  > "[...] have them executed in the street, because that's what government censorship can look like." We're discussing western first-world governments for the most part, and short of some crazy world-altering event or war, they most certainly do not have the actual power to do this.
vkou 6y ago
All that a private entity can do is toss you off their platform. If every single private website threw you, and your views off the internet tomorrow, you'd return to the age of tyranny and darkness... That ~every human being on earth lived in prior to ~1995. The horror! In contrast, your government can kill or imprison you, if you say something it doesn't like - but for some strange reason, nerd culture spills gallons of ink on the thesis that private censorship is scarier. This is a serious case of misplaced priorities.
- thu2111 6y ago
  Sure, so Chrome and Safari blacklist your websites. You're only back to 1995, the horror. Then Amazon refuses to sell your books. And VISA refuses to let people buy them, if they find them in an alternative outlet. What's the big deal, you're only rolled back to the 1980s. And then they go a step further and say, if you're assisting in the distribution of these books, we'll cut off your AWS and payment processing services as well. Hey, you're only rolled back to the 1940s. People can still photocopy the sheets they got from a friend manually as long as the companies they rely on don't find out, right? The problem here is that a small number of large companies are being captured by extreme left-wing political activists who don't recognise disagreement as being legitimate. Trying to figure out how much private sector censorship is OK is a distraction. The problem here is the ever increasing power of Marxists inside large powerful institutions, often smuggling their ideologies in under the guise of 'diversity' or 'inclusion' programs (which are inevitably about conformity and exclusion).
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    > The problem here is that a small number of large companies are being captured by extreme left-wing political activists who don't recognise disagreement as being legitimate. While this may be true of the rank and file, the policy people (like Liz upthread or Joel Kaplan) are always political activists/lobbyists because the gig is talking and convincing political organisations of things. And please note that there's been a bunch of stories about Facebook particularly, intervening on the right-wing side a bunch - how does this support your theory about left-wing activists?

by RhysU 6y ago

stonogo 6y ago

Get back to me when Twitter has the power to round up everyone who read a given story and have them executed in the street, because that's what government censorship can look like. It's not limited to some partisan nerd toggling a flag in a database somewhere. I think you should probably take this opportunity to re-evaluate the relative powers of these entities.

onecommentman 6y ago
I think the discussion is focusing on levels of the US government and what has been experienced by the public under that government since its founding. Actual exercised power by US governmental entities. The discussion of other governments will probably lead this thread into a swampy delta and it will lose its motive force.
- stonogo 6y ago
  I'm not sure why the artificial limitations on comparison; Twitter and Facebook are wholly active and engaged in markets with governments with such histories. Anyway, if you want such examples, look to the Mexican Dirty War for many, as well as the Banana Massacre. The latter of course was merely a threat to deploy the Marines, but the reasoning announced was not strikebreaking but because the strikers were "subversives"; that is, the US claimed to want them silenced not for what they were doing but for what they were saying. In the past, I would have said that Posse Comitatus would have prevented such behavior from being directed toward American citizens, but after seeing the mutual-law-skirting nature of the Five Eyes approach, as well as the presence of Federal troops in law enforcement roles in US cities over the past year, I'm no longer confident.
- dnautics 6y ago
  > I think the discussion is focusing on levels of the US government and what has been experienced by the public under that government since its founding Get back to me when twitter can order an airstrike against an minor and enjoy qualified immunity.
  - briantakita 6y ago
    The Chinese Communist Party is being accused of many human rights violations against the Uyghurs, Falun Gong, Christians, factory workers, etc. There are also allegations that the CCP is interfering with the United States government & election process. If these violations are true, then Twitter & the Big Media is complicit in obfuscating evidence of collusion & hidden business partnerships between the Vice President via his family & the CCP. If these allegations are not true, then the public conversation has been censored & the story of censorship overshadows investigation which would absolve the innocent parties. Either way, the public deserves to have direct access the truth.
thu2111 6y ago
People are alarmed by these moves because they represent a wider trend in which the left increasingly does not recognise the right as politically legitimate, i.e. they do not believe non-leftists should be allowed to exist. Tech firm activist censorship is merely one visible (or not so visible) aspect of this. But it's not the only aspect. The very same sorts of people with the very same views are also in government institutions in abundance, as we've seen in recent years with the descent of the various left-wing elites into conspiracy theories about Russia - theories that were then used to try and effectively block implementations of public votes, on the belief that surely the public could not possibly reject their enlightened governance unless they were being manipulated. This isn't purely a US thing. The UK has the same problems. Recently one of the government's advisors on COVID was complaining (on Twitter!) that the BBC had agreed to unfairly rig a debate she was involved with, but hadn't properly enforced that rigging: https://twitter.com/SusanMichie/status/1311234012283899904 https://twitter.com/SusanMichie/status/1311234012283899904 A lot of the British political class lost their minds over Brexit. You saw incredible things, like politicians running as candidates of the party saying they'd implement the decision, and then switching post-election to the party with saying they'd void the vote and never leave. They had flat out lied to voters about their intentions. That happened quite a few times. There were many other tricks deployed too. They fundamentally didn't believe in the legitimacy of their political opposition and were willing to manipulate the electoral processes to try and "win" despite having lost at the ballot box.
- davvolun 6y ago
  > People are alarmed by these moves because they represent a wider trend in which the left increasingly does not recognise the right as politically legitimate, i.e. they do not believe non-leftists should be allowed to exist. Those two things aren't remotely the same. The legitimacy of the right in the U.S. is an open question when they participate in direct voter suppression, gerrymandering, continually lose popular votes but still gain controlling power of the strongest apparatus of the government, have used that power to appoint (shortly) 16 of the last 20 SCOTUS Justices going back to 1969 using rules they are quite literally making up on the spot. "Consent of the governed" is a valid question under these scenarios. But you need to provide some very strong evidence "they [the left] do not believe non-leftists should be allowed to exist." You're using some very strong language based on very weak arguments. The fact you, presumably, pass off things such as Russian interference in fair and free elections as "conspiracy theories" should, god willing, be absolutely damning to your credibility. Or that "herd immunity strategies," as mentioned in the tweet you link, should be presented as a valid and equal alternative strategy to NOT LETTING PEOPLE DIE; you're arguing flat-earthers should be given equal footing in a debate with NASA.
zo1 6y ago
> "[...] have them executed in the street, because that's what government censorship can look like." We're discussing western first-world governments for the most part, and short of some crazy world-altering event or war, they most certainly do not have the actual power to do this.

vkou 6y ago

All that a private entity can do is toss you off their platform. If every single private website threw you, and your views off the internet tomorrow, you'd return to the age of tyranny and darkness... That ~every human being on earth lived in prior to ~1995. The horror! In contrast, your government can kill or imprison you, if you say something it doesn't like - but for some strange reason, nerd culture spills gallons of ink on the thesis that private censorship is scarier. This is a serious case of misplaced priorities.

thu2111 6y ago
Sure, so Chrome and Safari blacklist your websites. You're only back to 1995, the horror. Then Amazon refuses to sell your books. And VISA refuses to let people buy them, if they find them in an alternative outlet. What's the big deal, you're only rolled back to the 1980s. And then they go a step further and say, if you're assisting in the distribution of these books, we'll cut off your AWS and payment processing services as well. Hey, you're only rolled back to the 1940s. People can still photocopy the sheets they got from a friend manually as long as the companies they rely on don't find out, right? The problem here is that a small number of large companies are being captured by extreme left-wing political activists who don't recognise disagreement as being legitimate. Trying to figure out how much private sector censorship is OK is a distraction. The problem here is the ever increasing power of Marxists inside large powerful institutions, often smuggling their ideologies in under the guise of 'diversity' or 'inclusion' programs (which are inevitably about conformity and exclusion).
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  > The problem here is that a small number of large companies are being captured by extreme left-wing political activists who don't recognise disagreement as being legitimate. While this may be true of the rank and file, the policy people (like Liz upthread or Joel Kaplan) are always political activists/lobbyists because the gig is talking and convincing political organisations of things. And please note that there's been a bunch of stories about Facebook particularly, intervening on the right-wing side a bunch - how does this support your theory about left-wing activists?