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Post by justlikeyou on May 1, 2022 9:12:07 GMT -5
A website is private property, in a way, and that's why it gets weird and into a gray area. Imagine you had create a web forum like this one, about baking bread. And then some jerk comes in and lectures and rages about politics, spamming the forum with stuff you don't want. It would be your right, as the owner of the website, to kick them off. (At least that's how I'd like it to work.) Twitter is so big that it seems different. It becomes more like the "public square". But I still think they should be free to kick people off. People can use other web sites and communication systems. The fact that the lemming herd is too lazy to do that, is not Twitter's fault. There were reports in the last year of cooperation between google and facebook on what we might euphemistically term "coordinating moderation actions". There were also reports of what were essentially backchannels between the US State dept and other USGov entities and the groups in google and facebook who were engaged in that. Essentially, a government employee, appointee or elected official was the one who banned and deleted. Didn't read much past the headlines so I'm not sure if twitter was also involved, but the fate of the NYPost story about the laptop seems to indicate they were. Do you have any inside knowledge about that? I agree that a private company isn't bound by the 1A in these types of policies, but the blur between big government and big business (aka, one of the prominent elements of fascism) is currently such that this principal is no more absolute than that of free speech. To put it in terms of an analogy, what if John Mitchell had successfully suppressed the Woodward and Bernstein story back in '74?
The censorship of Americans like Justin by a private company is troubling but the week he was suspended from Facebook, there was a worrisome new player in the censorship of Americans online—the U.S. government.
In a July 15, 2021, press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki revealed that senior White House staff “is in regular touch” with Facebook, Twitter and other social media platforms regarding posts about COVID-19, while the Surgeon General’s office is “flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread” what the administration has declared as “disinformation.” The administration simultaneously released a blacklist of individuals it declared as “super-disseminators” of so-called COVID “disinformation“ or “misinformation.”
Now these dominant social media platforms and the White House are openly collaborating to eliminate social media posts about COVID-19 that the administration finds objectionable, and to cancel or suspend the Facebook and Twitter accounts of people who raise issues about COVID they don’t want the public to see.
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Post by Deleted on May 1, 2022 11:00:04 GMT -5
Twitter, like most tech companies with web software, runs on servers (computers) that sit in data centers in various places in the world. You can buy or rent these servers. Twitter is not running on US gov't hardware. I know this because I'm a software developer and I work on systems like this all the time. Twitter makes billions of USD per year. You can rent a web server from Amazon for about $5-10/month. Of course that's not enough to run Twitter. They probably spend $millions/per on their servers. heh heh ... tell that to Parler. Parler displayed shocking incompetence when they rented virtual servers from Amazon, and had no back up plan or diversity in their infrastructure. Well, it was incompetent if their reason-for-existence was to push the limit with free speech. I suppose there are other explanations, like maybe they started as a normal social media company, and only tried to pivot to controversial free speech after they were committed to the Amazon (AWS) infrastructure.
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Post by laughter on May 1, 2022 11:23:25 GMT -5
heh heh ... tell that to Parler. Parler displayed shocking incompetence when they rented virtual servers from Amazon, and had no back up plan or diversity in their infrastructure. Well, it was incompetent if their reason-for-existence was to push the limit with free speech. I suppose there are other explanations, like maybe they started as a normal social media company, and only tried to pivot to controversial free speech after they were committed to the Amazon (AWS) infrastructure. This seques nicely into the 230 issue, and let me use another analogy: We didn't hold AT&T liable for Tony Montoya's drug deals in 1980, but AT&T had to help with wiretaps under a court order. So far, so good, right? How would Amazon's action against Parler translate into that analogy?
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Post by Deleted on May 1, 2022 11:37:20 GMT -5
A website is private property, in a way, and that's why it gets weird and into a gray area. Imagine you had create a web forum like this one, about baking bread. And then some jerk comes in and lectures and rages about politics, spamming the forum with stuff you don't want. It would be your right, as the owner of the website, to kick them off. (At least that's how I'd like it to work.) Twitter is so big that it seems different. It becomes more like the "public square". But I still think they should be free to kick people off. People can use other web sites and communication systems. The fact that the lemming herd is too lazy to do that, is not Twitter's fault. There were reports in the last year of cooperation between google and facebook on what we might euphemistically term "coordinating moderation actions". There were also reports of what were essentially backchannels between the US State dept and other USGov entities and the groups in google and facebook who were engaged in that. Essentially, a government employee, appointee or elected official was the one who banned and deleted. Didn't read much past the headlines so I'm not sure if twitter was also involved, but the fate of the NYPost story about the laptop seems to indicate they were. Do you have any inside knowledge about that? I agree that a private company isn't bound by the 1A in these types of policies, but the blur between big government and big business (aka, one of the prominent elements of fascism) is currently such that this principal is no more absolute than that of free speech. To put it in terms of an analogy, what if John Mitchell had successfully suppressed the Woodward and Bernstein story back in '74? I don't have much inside info there. There are channels, and they have legit reason to exist. Whether something got abused here and they got involved in banning the NYPost story, I don't know. Hopefully more evidence/reporting comes out if they were. One pattern I've seen in the covid fantasies is that if people can imagine how something might theoretically be abused, some of them will invent stories that it was abused, truth and nuance be darned. As far as the legit reasons that these companies talk to government: as you probably know, we have traditional criminals like actual terrorists and child traffickers, as well as Russian and Chinese spies and "influencers" on our social media saying things to try to damage the US and Western governments and society, as well hackers, which some of these companies can monitor or even "honeypot" at times. [*] I don't think we should be banning things (as Russia and China seem wont to due), but we need some improvements. Perhaps more clarity about who people really are. Elon talked about limiting anonymous accounts. I think they're mostly toxic. I don't mind seeing Chinese propaganda with a tag that says "this is Chinese state media", or "We Jei is the Chinese ambassador". But when they astroturf a bunch of lies to destabilize my home country, making it look like it comes from "Billy Bob in Kentucky", it starts to p*ss me off. [*] They set up systems that appear vulnerable but are actually sophisticated. The attacker thinks they broke in, but really they are being watched or counter-attacked.
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Post by Deleted on May 1, 2022 11:44:24 GMT -5
Parler displayed shocking incompetence when they rented virtual servers from Amazon, and had no back up plan or diversity in their infrastructure. Well, it was incompetent if their reason-for-existence was to push the limit with free speech. I suppose there are other explanations, like maybe they started as a normal social media company, and only tried to pivot to controversial free speech after they were committed to the Amazon (AWS) infrastructure. This seques nicely into the 230 issue, and let me use another analogy: We didn't hold AT&T liable for Tony Montoya's drug deals in 1980, but AT&T had to help with wiretaps under a court order. So far, so good, right? How would Amazon's action against Parler translate into that analogy? In my opinion, companies like Amazon that offer server infrastructure should be able to offer it under a certain standard legal contract that says basically: you can do anything allowed by the US (or other specific) government. That way companies that do not want to deal with woke censorship could look for that simple label, sort of like looking for "USDA Organic" at the grocery store.
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Post by laughter on May 1, 2022 15:54:55 GMT -5
There were reports in the last year of cooperation between google and facebook on what we might euphemistically term "coordinating moderation actions". There were also reports of what were essentially backchannels between the US State dept and other USGov entities and the groups in google and facebook who were engaged in that. Essentially, a government employee, appointee or elected official was the one who banned and deleted. Didn't read much past the headlines so I'm not sure if twitter was also involved, but the fate of the NYPost story about the laptop seems to indicate they were. Do you have any inside knowledge about that? I agree that a private company isn't bound by the 1A in these types of policies, but the blur between big government and big business (aka, one of the prominent elements of fascism) is currently such that this principal is no more absolute than that of free speech. To put it in terms of an analogy, what if John Mitchell had successfully suppressed the Woodward and Bernstein story back in '74? I don't have much inside info there. There are channels, and they have legit reason to exist. Whether something got abused here and they got involved in banning the NYPost story, I don't know. Hopefully more evidence/reporting comes out if they were. One pattern I've seen in the covid fantasies is that if people can imagine how something might theoretically be abused, some of them will invent stories that it was abused, truth and nuance be darned. As far as the legit reasons that these companies talk to government: as you probably know, we have traditional criminals like actual terrorists and child traffickers, as well as Russian and Chinese spies and "influencers" on our social media saying things to try to damage the US and Western governments and society, as well hackers, which some of these companies can monitor or even "honeypot" at times. [*] I don't think we should be banning things (as Russia and China seem wont to due), but we need some improvements. Perhaps more clarity about who people really are. Elon talked about limiting anonymous accounts. I think they're mostly toxic. I don't mind seeing Chinese propaganda with a tag that says "this is Chinese state media", or "We Jei is the Chinese ambassador". But when they astroturf a bunch of lies to destabilize my home country, making it look like it comes from "Billy Bob in Kentucky", it starts to p*ss me off. [*] They set up systems that appear vulnerable but are actually sophisticated. The attacker thinks they broke in, but really they are being watched or counter-attacked. ok, this is my last public reply on this. The channels between government and the platforms are what pierce the defense that the platforms are private and thereby not subject to 1A. It's one thing to use them to enforce the law, it's quite another to enforce perspective and suppress the political speech of the opponents of whatever regime is operative at the time, and in my opinion there's really no room left for a balanced open mind that is clear and objective on what happened with the laptop story. The channels between the platforms raise anti-trust issues. As far as deceptive practices such as anonymous accounts, that's very similar to gun control in that the criminals will violate whatever laws you pass anyway. Consider this: what is the difference in outcome between the Washington Post publishing a story that scandalizes a politician based entirely on anonymous sources on one hand, and a social media psyop run by a bot farm, on the other? In terms of what you propose, it's not even that you'd allow one (anonymousey "journalistic sources") and try to prevent the other (webanons), but you see the "journalists" enjoy wide ranging and long-established legal protections.
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Post by andrew on May 2, 2022 2:51:18 GMT -5
The government's reaction to Musk buying twitter was to propose a 'ministry of truth'. I think that pretty much says everything about twitter's relationship with government in the last couple of years.
Other examples of corporate oligarchy include alternative news sources now being banned from paypal and gofundme. I note that some these sources are actually traditional left sources (as opposed to Biden's fake/plastic progressive left). The traditional left has been sceptical about American/NATO foreign interests, and as such, are sceptical about the Ukraine narratives. These must be censored of course. So now it's both the 'right' and 'traditional left' being censored.
Without alternative news sources we'd probably never have found out the lie about Iraq's alleged WMD.
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Post by andrew on May 2, 2022 3:05:34 GMT -5
That's 'cause noone who's listening has an interest in shutting you up. That's not always true I speak my mind too freely sometimes maybe you can speak your mind as freely as you like when you are supporting the oligarchy. There's some astonishingly 'hateful' stuff on twitter that escapes censorship because it's the 'right kind' of hate.
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Post by justlikeyou on May 2, 2022 10:06:15 GMT -5
Without alternative news sources we'd probably never have found out the lie about Iraq's alleged WMD. Yes, the "alts" have played, and continue to play an important role in waking up the masses to geo-political realities. Many in the world will be shocked, and angry, when it is revealed that many long-trusted media sources and personalities have actually been pushing deliberate lies/misinformation/fake news to an unsuspecting public, while those deemed liars were actually telling the truth all along. It is all now coming to a head now as propaganda can not stand up to the facts/truth in the light of day. Buckle up. It's going to be a very interesting summer.
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Post by justlikeyou on May 2, 2022 20:50:07 GMT -5
And but of course computers aren't TMT-ing it like their human counterparts. Interesting though that after losing Twitter the humans called the Biden Admin are setting up a Ministry of Truth or whatever they are calling it. Nah. It won't be computers making the decisions. It will be politicians who know best who will be.
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Post by stardustpilgrim on May 2, 2022 21:22:00 GMT -5
The government's reaction to Musk buying twitter was to propose a 'ministry of truth'. I think that pretty much says everything about twitter's relationship with government in the last couple of years. Other examples of corporate oligarchy include alternative news sources now being banned from paypal and gofundme. I note that some these sources are actually traditional left sources (as opposed to Biden's fake/plastic progressive left). The traditional left has been sceptical about American/NATO foreign interests, and as such, are sceptical about the Ukraine narratives. These must be censored of course. So now it's both the 'right' and 'traditional left' being censored. Without alternative news sources we'd probably never have found out the lie about Iraq's alleged WMD. Not true, lots of people (msm included) had serious questions about Powell's "yellow cake" speech to the UN before the war even started. Nobody needed the click bait exploitative 'alts' to see that. Correct. Bush and company basically rolled the dice, they were sure upon invading Iraq they would find WMD. Saddam didn't help himself by claiming he had WMD. Turned out, he didn't.
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Post by lolly on May 3, 2022 3:21:12 GMT -5
The narrative on 'disinformation' is foreboding, so I don't mind the counter movement, though it's publicly led by a guy who wants put chips in yer head (and of course collect all the data for AI).
There is a transhumanist trend. 'The future's gonna be weird" ~ Elon Musk.
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Post by andrew on May 3, 2022 3:53:32 GMT -5
The government's reaction to Musk buying twitter was to propose a 'ministry of truth'. I think that pretty much says everything about twitter's relationship with government in the last couple of years. Other examples of corporate oligarchy include alternative news sources now being banned from paypal and gofundme. I note that some these sources are actually traditional left sources (as opposed to Biden's fake/plastic progressive left). The traditional left has been sceptical about American/NATO foreign interests, and as such, are sceptical about the Ukraine narratives. These must be censored of course. So now it's both the 'right' and 'traditional left' being censored. Without alternative news sources we'd probably never have found out the lie about Iraq's alleged WMD. Not true, lots of people (msm included) had serious questions about Powell's "yellow cake" speech to the UN before the war even started. Nobody needed the click bait exploitative 'alts' to see that. Questions and challenges occur in an environment in which they are allowed to occur, so regardless of who was asking those questions of the government at the time, they WERE the alternative view. 20 years ago, this could still happen. In a 'ministry of truth' age, no alternative views could sincerely arise, whether these views arise from within 'acceptable' institutions, or from Alex Jones/David Icke! Even with covid, a good amount of what has been questioned (and somewhat censored) over the course of 2 years, has turned out true. If the ministry of truth has its way, these questions wouldn't see the light of day at all.
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Post by andrew on May 3, 2022 3:57:13 GMT -5
you can speak your mind as freely as you like when you are supporting the oligarchy. There's some astonishingly 'hateful' stuff on twitter that escapes censorship because it's the 'right kind' of hate. I figured it was just an across the board algorithm running behind the scenes flagging key words and such. And but of course computers aren't TMT-ing it like their human counterparts. Well, I assume there are algorithms running too, but the particular way that folks are banned suggests to me that it's more than just key words. For example, I think you can say the word 'Ivermectin' without getting banned. There's a clear political slant to the algorithm ('political' there covers views ranging from covid, to transgenderism, to Ukraine). I've seen folks suspended/banned from twitter for quoting from reputable medical journals.
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Post by andrew on May 3, 2022 3:58:09 GMT -5
Not true, lots of people (msm included) had serious questions about Powell's "yellow cake" speech to the UN before the war even started. Nobody needed the click bait exploitative 'alts' to see that. Correct. Bush and company basically rolled the dice, they were sure upon invading Iraq they would find WMD. Saddam didn't help himself by claiming he had WMD. Turned out, he didn't.
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