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Texas Could Push Tech Platforms to Censor Posts About Abortion

• baremetal 3y ago
  The slippery slope of censorship. However I am anti-abortion. I used to be pro abortion, I was a hardcore liberal just a few years ago, before covid (still not a Trump supporter, just rabidly apolitical now). And considering what the federal government has been doing censoring the right via tech platforms when it goes against their narratives.. aw shucks I can't get behind censorship. Sorry Texas.
  • nicodjimenez 3y ago
    Censorship is inevitable to maintaining the power structure, the question is who controls the censorship and whether the approach taken to censorship makes the people strong or weak.
    • baremetal 3y ago
      No I don't agree that censorship is inevitable. You are gonna need to back that argument up, nico. Sounds like you have drunk deeply of some authoritarian rhetoric
      • nicodjimenez 3y ago
        Not saying censorship is bad or good I’m just saying it’s inevitable.
  • krapp 3y ago
    You can't be "rabidly apolitical" and be anti-abortion and claim the government has been "censoring the right via tech platforms when it goes against their narratives," both of which are explicitly right-wing political positions.
    • baremetal 3y ago
      [flagged]
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      • t-3 3y ago
        > And the fact that tech platforms censor the right is a fact, it may be a right wing talking point but that doesn't negate it being factual just because it displeases some people on the left when they hear it. You're not wrong, but the issue is way overblown. The far left is censored just as much or more as the far right, but have much less mainstream political support in the strongly anti-socialist US. Censorship and free speech are the issue far more than political persecution of one side or another. Allowing the debate to be turned into a neolib vs neocon political battle rather than a matter of fundamental rights and Constitutional law is a mistake.
        • kelipso 3y ago
          The difference is the "far-left" by your definition is a few edgy online people making up less than 1% of the population while the "far-right" by your definition have their own established political party and makes up some 30% of the population.
          • t-3 3y ago
            I didn't give a definition of either, so I don't know where you're getting any of that from, but you're wrong in any case. Not all, or even a majority, of republicans are far right. Endorsing conservative social policies, libertarianism, or being religious are not at all equivalent to being a fascist, a bigot, or a racial nationalist.
            • kelipso 3y ago
              I'm getting the definitions from people who get banned on the big social media sites mapped to the left-right spectrum. Bans on left aligned people tend to be the edgy lefties while bans on right aligned people tend to be a lot of just to the right of center type people.
• theshrike79 3y ago
  I just hope the big platforms (Meta's mostly) either cut off Texas entirely or corral them to a separate Texas-only instance where they can't see others posts and nobody can see them.
  • the_optimist 3y ago
    Why do you hope for this? Please state it explicitly.
    • flappyeagle 3y ago
      Both sides of the divide would be happier
      • the_optimist 3y ago
        I believe you’re saying “I would be happier if I didn’t have information about other people’s opinions and lives.” That’s pretty easy to achieve. However, I don’t at all believe that is consistent with the original proposal.
      • DesiLurker 3y ago
        the logical extension of that line of thinking is to divide into 2 nations, red & blue. personally I believe Huge gigantic nations are not very well suited to implement democracy. the problem is this needs to happen for all huge nations (i.e.. china & russia) otherwise you are concentrating too much power.
        • flappyeagle 3y ago
          We have 50 states. Let them be different.
    • LadyCailin 3y ago
      The alternative is to cater to the lowest common denominator, meaning that the platforms would restrict everyone, regardless of whether or not they live in Texas.
• pornel 3y ago
  Pointing out hypocrisy doesn’t work against authoritarians. Getting away with hypocrisy is a demonstration of their power.
  • krapp 3y ago
    related: https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/hypocrisy-and-fascism-2018-08-12 https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/hypocrisy-and-fascism-2018-0...
    • rayiner 3y ago
      Trying to connect banning abortion to “fascism” is a weird angle. Abortion was illegal in the principal allied countries that defeated Nazi Germany: the U.S., U.K., and Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had legalized abortion in the 1920s, but banned it again in time to fight and defeat the Nazis.
      • netsharc 3y ago
        [flagged]
        • rayiner 3y ago
          What’s not “intelligent” is reducing everything to a scale of libertarianism versus “fascism.” Countries have more or less restrictions on abortion not because they are more or less “fascist,” but because they place more or less emphasis on reproduction as a fundamental social good. So abortion is heavily restricted in places that are objectively left wing, such as Palestine. While it’s widely embraced in authoritarian regimes like China. That’s why abortion was both made legal shortly after the communist revolution in Russia, but made illegal again when the country became worried about population on the eve of World War II. Even the most liberal social democracies in the world today ban abortion well before birth. Is that a mark of “fascism?” Both Denmark and Texas, after all, recognize the prerogative of the state to require a woman to carry a pregnancy to term. They simply have a different set of exceptions for when they will exercise that power.
• ChatGTP 3y ago
  The intent we knew is dying and once gone will never come back. I’d go as far to say as it’s already basically done. There is just too much interference with its functioning, combine this with the dangers of autonomous AI systems hacking infra, growing government weariness over recent leaks and the growing ease of spreading lies, I can’t see how it can continue. This is absolutely crazy, but here’s the thing. Because the internet is becoming so centralised and new surveillance tech has emerged, this type of censorship just seems more and more possible. More possible than anytime in history.
  • xwdv 3y ago
    I imagine a world someday where browsers no longer exist. Everything is just an app that you download and the internet is infrastructure for pushing data around to apps from content servers. Some people probably live in this world already, I know several people who spend little, if any, time looking through websites or forums. There would be no reason to have websites, because it would all just be AI garbage that has been SEOed to hell. No reason to search the web because you just ask an AI on your phone for an answer. It’s over. Perhaps some community of people will still build traditional websites, but it honestly just feels like they’re LARPing. There’s no reason to build a website over any other piece of content like a video, or images, or a game, or a story.
    • ChatGTP 3y ago
      It is an now , with the AI arms race heating up, there is true incentive to keep as much data in walled gardens as possible so you have more training data than the next guy.
  • Buttons840 3y ago
    Multiple States have already passed laws requiring everyone to upload their government papers (drivers license or passport, etc) to use social media. Things seem to be changing, that's for sure -- and fast.
    • fredgrott 3y ago
• elijah_moham 3y ago
  Bodily autonomy is a contradiction to abortion rights. Control over one's body logically implies not allowing a second body formation. The autonomy of the child overrides access to abortion since now in pregnancy, there are 2 bodies. Similarly, access to expensive and elective medical services is a privilege, not a right.
  • Timon3 3y ago
    > Bodily autonomy is a contradiction to abortion rights. Control over one's body logically implies not allowing a second body formation. There's a glaring logical error here: Control over one's body does not logically imply not allowing a second body formation, only that it requires consent. > The autonomy of the child overrides access to abortion since now in pregnancy, there are 2 bodies. But this sentence is in opposition to bodily autonomy. How does the autonomy of the fetus affect the autonomy of the person carrying them? The fetus is free to do what it wants, just as the woman is. > Similarly, access to expensive and elective medical services is a privilege, not a right. I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what a "right" is. It's not just something that you're guaranteed to get, but can also be something that nobody is allowed to ban you from. The second amendment doesn't mean that you can just waltz into a gun store and take what you want, does it?
• hestefisk 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • eastbound 3y ago
    They use their opponent’s modus operandi, it shows their opponents in a bad light when they criticize them.
    • Timon3 3y ago
      How is this the Democrats modus operandi? What have they done that's comparable to the current actions of the conservative side? The only thing I can think of is racist and sexist content, and well... you can make that comparison, but it's not a good one.
  • petee 3y ago
    Church, guns, and "Make a Liberal Cry" are apparently their only guidelines; anything that supports one of those is fair use
  • NumberWangMan 3y ago
    These positions aren't necessarily inconsistent. Many conservatives believe that abortion is murder, which is a moral position. The moral harm of carrying out an abortion is not something that can be decided by evidence. Many conservatives also believe that vaccination is a good bit more dangerous that you or I probably do, and that Covid is a bit less dangerous that you or I do. If you carry this basket of beliefs, there's no contradiction in their position. People lost a lot of trust in our institutions, due to some misinformation put out early on during Covid, and I can't really blame them. Trust is hard to gain and easy to lose, and the folks that should have been being honest screwed up. Most people don't have enough of a scientific mind, or enough of the time and energy to find reputable sources of information on important topics. Even folks on the pro-vax mandate, pro-mask mandate side. Many just got lucky in that "their side" happened to be closer to the truth in this case. And it's very hard to argue on topics like abortion, because people typically pick the most rare and egregious examples that support their side. Liberal folks will point out scenarios where anti-abortion laws lead to abused teenagers being forced to carry a fetus to term, while conservatives will point out scenarios where an abuser can pressure a girl to get an abortion in order to cover up the abuse, or a woman doesn't use birth control and just goes and gets abortion after abortion, when we should really consider it a last resort. And the crux of it, whether it's morally worse to terminate a pregnancy or force a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, is something that you can only convince someone to change their mind on with evidence if they are pretty close to on the fence already. I've had a lot of discussions with family members that disagree with me on both of these issues. If you try hard not to get angry or sarcastic, to stay calm and curious (or at least put on a really good act), to ignore the talking points and not push back instantly on everything that sounds incorrect or stupid to you, you can learn a lot about why people believe what they do. And sometimes they do make good points. And if people feel like you're listening, they're more open to listening to you.
• neilv 3y ago
  Have any tech companies already been moving away from Texas and other areas where some politicians are going "anti-tech"? (Closing offices, targeting layoffs, canceling expansion plans, etc.) Also, is anything known about whether driving away tech immigrants (with their maybe more Californian values) is an intention of some politicians there?
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• friend_and_foe 3y ago
  They're just getting in on the game. The EU does it, various European countries do it, as well as India and others. About the only ones who don't get the special treatment are China and Iran. So now US states are doing it. What do you expect? I should be able to run a website and if you don't want your people to see it, put up your great firewall or get fucked. But we decided to take a different path, where countries can charge companies and people for violating their laws when they've never set foot there and creators have to geoblock. And plenty deriding this move applauded it when it was their ideologies being protected.To those people: help us free the internet again or go cry in a corner about it. This is your fault.