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>But I think my point is clear: there are oodles of places you can write and post whatever you want. Awesome, so we agree there are oodles of places BLM and le

>But I think my point is clear: there are oodles of places you can write and post whatever you want. Awesome, so we agree there are oodles of places BLM and leftists can protest that are not high traffic roads, freeways, main streets, federal courthouses, etc. They can protest in the Mojave desert, they won't be censored there. >I'm certainly against "wrongthink" ... There's wrong, there's false, there's stupid. There isn't any wrongthink in my conception of the world. Awesome, so we both agree with the objective fact that Blacks commit more violent crimes per capita than any other race. That's a fact, that's neither wrong, false, nor stupid.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
Conflating arbitrary electronic messaging systems and public protest, despite obvious relationships between the two, doesn't seem very relevant or useful to me. And sure, your second paragraph states a fact. But facts are fairly useless without context, and as David Byrne sang 3 decades ago (and no doubt many others wrote in centuries before that) "facts all come with points of view". A fact by itself is just a fact, and in many contexts (particularly if the fact is an observation about human behavior/society), not very interesting. The interesting part is: what do you plan to do with it?
- throwawaygulf 6y ago
  >Conflating arbitrary electronic messaging systems and public protest, despite obvious relationships between the two, doesn't seem very relevant or useful to me. There's no conflation, Twitter and Facebook are the modern day public square. >But facts are fairly useless without context False. >The interesting part is: what do you plan to do with it? Nothing. That mere fact will most likely get [flagged] and [dead]ed within the next 24 hours specifically because it is "wrongthink". If you don't agree with my above post being flagged and deaded due to being an inconvenient fact, then we are actually in agreeance.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    > There's no conflation, Twitter and Facebook are the modern day public square. I've argued against this POV here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25648997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25648997 That said, I'm not opposed to them becoming the modern day public square. It just doesn't happen because a bunch of people think it already has. New legislation to make social media a public utility? I'd support appropriately constructed forms of that. But de facto isn't de juris, and for now these are private corporations running their own private messaging systems.
    - throwawaygulf 6y ago
      >I've argued against this POV here And spoonjim and ghaff kicked your teeth in. >That said, I'm not opposed to them becoming the modern day public square. Saying that "you don't need to use FB/Twitter, you can write your own blog" is like saying in 1789 "You don't need to be allowed to distribute your pamphlets in front of Faneuil Hall in Boston, you can exercise your free speech on the top of a mountain in Colorado." To which you said: >Being able to speak "only" from one's own blog only makes discovery difficult, it does not limit people's access post-discovery. This applies to a random mountain in Colorado as well. Discovery is difficult, but after people discover it, they're free to go back ad much as they want. >But de facto isn't de juris That's literally how "town square" is defined, de facto, not de jure. You're literally arguing for our position without realizing it.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
        in 17XX, the mountain top in Colorado (a) wasn't even a part of the country (b) even if it was, remained several thousand miles of arduous cross-country travel from the entire population of the newly emerging state. People would almost certainly die en route to hear your pontifications. There's zero comparison with a browser address bar. Even if you posit the top of Mt. Washington rather than a peak in the as-yet undiscovered (by northern Europeans) Rockies, the difference remains unchanged in more or less every essential way. And actually, "town square" isn't defined at all, de facto or de jure. In the USA, there's essentially no standing right to speak in a public place. You can't be stopped based on what you say, but you can routinely be stopped from speaking at all. This is, perversely, one of the things that makes London's Hyde Park Corner so unique: there is an accepted policy (not law) that you can't be stopped from speaking there unless engaged in incitement. This fallacy of "the public square" is just that - a fallacy. Since independence (and certainly before it), there was no freedom to speak in a public space without being blessed by some authority. It was only the printing press that was really "free speech" , in the sense that you could print anything and make it available and the 1st amendment could not prevent access to it. And btw, "kicked your teeth in" as a description of that thread exchange seems like a great reason to avoid further interaction with you. ghaff was supporting my POV, and spoonjim's comment was downvoted (and incidentally wrong). Even if they had both disagreed with me and presented a cogent argument supporting their positions, "kicking teeth in" is a particularly violent metaphor that I prefer to see left unused.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

Conflating arbitrary electronic messaging systems and public protest, despite obvious relationships between the two, doesn't seem very relevant or useful to me. And sure, your second paragraph states a fact. But facts are fairly useless without context, and as David Byrne sang 3 decades ago (and no doubt many others wrote in centuries before that) "facts all come with points of view". A fact by itself is just a fact, and in many contexts (particularly if the fact is an observation about human behavior/society), not very interesting. The interesting part is: what do you plan to do with it?

throwawaygulf 6y ago
>Conflating arbitrary electronic messaging systems and public protest, despite obvious relationships between the two, doesn't seem very relevant or useful to me. There's no conflation, Twitter and Facebook are the modern day public square. >But facts are fairly useless without context False. >The interesting part is: what do you plan to do with it? Nothing. That mere fact will most likely get [flagged] and [dead]ed within the next 24 hours specifically because it is "wrongthink". If you don't agree with my above post being flagged and deaded due to being an inconvenient fact, then we are actually in agreeance.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  > There's no conflation, Twitter and Facebook are the modern day public square. I've argued against this POV here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25648997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25648997 That said, I'm not opposed to them becoming the modern day public square. It just doesn't happen because a bunch of people think it already has. New legislation to make social media a public utility? I'd support appropriately constructed forms of that. But de facto isn't de juris, and for now these are private corporations running their own private messaging systems.
  - throwawaygulf 6y ago
    >I've argued against this POV here And spoonjim and ghaff kicked your teeth in. >That said, I'm not opposed to them becoming the modern day public square. Saying that "you don't need to use FB/Twitter, you can write your own blog" is like saying in 1789 "You don't need to be allowed to distribute your pamphlets in front of Faneuil Hall in Boston, you can exercise your free speech on the top of a mountain in Colorado." To which you said: >Being able to speak "only" from one's own blog only makes discovery difficult, it does not limit people's access post-discovery. This applies to a random mountain in Colorado as well. Discovery is difficult, but after people discover it, they're free to go back ad much as they want. >But de facto isn't de juris That's literally how "town square" is defined, de facto, not de jure. You're literally arguing for our position without realizing it.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
      in 17XX, the mountain top in Colorado (a) wasn't even a part of the country (b) even if it was, remained several thousand miles of arduous cross-country travel from the entire population of the newly emerging state. People would almost certainly die en route to hear your pontifications. There's zero comparison with a browser address bar. Even if you posit the top of Mt. Washington rather than a peak in the as-yet undiscovered (by northern Europeans) Rockies, the difference remains unchanged in more or less every essential way. And actually, "town square" isn't defined at all, de facto or de jure. In the USA, there's essentially no standing right to speak in a public place. You can't be stopped based on what you say, but you can routinely be stopped from speaking at all. This is, perversely, one of the things that makes London's Hyde Park Corner so unique: there is an accepted policy (not law) that you can't be stopped from speaking there unless engaged in incitement. This fallacy of "the public square" is just that - a fallacy. Since independence (and certainly before it), there was no freedom to speak in a public space without being blessed by some authority. It was only the printing press that was really "free speech" , in the sense that you could print anything and make it available and the 1st amendment could not prevent access to it. And btw, "kicked your teeth in" as a description of that thread exchange seems like a great reason to avoid further interaction with you. ghaff was supporting my POV, and spoonjim's comment was downvoted (and incidentally wrong). Even if they had both disagreed with me and presented a cogent argument supporting their positions, "kicking teeth in" is a particularly violent metaphor that I prefer to see left unused.