And weren’t those westboros stalking funerals and such? That is literally the definition of American free speech — stand on the corner and shout your nonsense and you cannot be put in jail. Social media is a vastly different scenario.
Social media is the equivalent of giving these people space in a newspaper or on TV. In fact I'd say it has a much greater reach than either of those things and it doesn't have the same level of moderation. Newspapers and TV shows have producers, editors, and legal teams making sure things don't get out of hand. Westboro and the KKK were fringe groups that you had to go way out of your way to find and nobody would have given them space in a newspaper or on TV to spread their hate. Basically they never would have had a platform in the first place. If they had been given a large platform I have no doubt they would have radicalized large numbers of people. White Nationalism is nearly identical to the ideology of the Klan, and it has radicalized a huge group of people because it was given a huge platform. People in general are really dumb and really easy to brainwash with propaganda. Also if you force a company to provide a platform, you are actually infringing on that company's right to free speech. Or at least that's currently how our laws work. I'm going to say something that you are going to find distasteful. I think smart people have a duty to protect dumb people from bad ideas and misinformation. As covid has demonstrated, misinformation can get you killed. Deplatforming is a way for us to do this with our current laws.
Westboro was on the news all the time when I was a kid. The media also pushed lots of Klan scares despite the organization itself withering. Newspapers are also not worldwide and providing input from any individual citizen from their laptop or phone. Some people run their businesses through social media. It's a lot closer to a utility or telephone communication at this point. Imagine if you were denied phone service because you were suspected of being a radial Biden supporter. Right. What sort of situation are we going to be in if this clownshow becomes the main outlet for information? It's not just violent Nazis who are being banned and censored, and eventually more people you might like or agree with will also be banned and censored, and not for the reasons you expect or find to be justified. That's just the way free speech works. You have to deal with a few fringe loons to actually have the freedom to say what you want. I'm really not concerned about debating white supremacists or radical leftists for that matter. I have many times, and they are on the wrong side of the facts. Why are we scared to debate morons who are going to get stomped into the ground any real debate? Many of the Westboro loons were actually attorneys and typically managed to say and express what they wanted. No one really cares now, and society has moved further and further away from their loony ideas such as the anti-gay bullshit. Censorship didn't destroy them. It was barely even a factor. Far superior values and ideas did. Many of the censorship advocates of the 80s and 90s were fundamentalist Christian wingnuts, and they had real influence in government at that time. Very little of their vile ideas were censored, yet their ideas utterly failed. Western society is the most pro-gay rights it has ever been, a welcome change to how things were 20 to 25 years ago. Censorship had almost nothing to do with it.
Doing a news story about Westboro or the Klan isn't the same thing as turning the stage over to their ideology. They can say whatever they want. They can rave on the street corner with the other derelicts. I'm talking about taking away the stage and the megaphone. A more recent and more relevant example would be Alex Jones. He had a cult of followers who did horrible things like harass the families of murdered school children from Sandy Hook. Deplatforming was very effective in taking him down. You don't hear much about him. He has lost his ability to radicalize new people. He was driven to the fringes of the internet and hardly anyone followed him there. He can still say whatever he wants. We just aren't giving him the stage he once had.
Of course arrest the violent dullards who rushed the Capitol or organized that abortion. That is happening, and those clowns are done. Most of the recent purging was not related to that. Some people just discussing this topic, most of whom are vehemently against it, are getting demonetized, banned, ect. My concern is I don't want all the discussion to come from mainstream media and social justice activists. Enforcement of these ambiguous terms of service is incredibly inconsistent and at the whim of multinational corporations. I've seen vile shit from terrorists and gangs up on social media, yet people mocking activist journalists with the innocuous phrase "learn to code" were instantly banned. Mobs of activist loons are permitted to endlessly torment dissenters, but retaliation (of the legal, verbal manner) will get you purged. I think this is going to have many undesirable, unintended consequences down the road that will affect everyone.
I’ll be honest. This barely effects me. I cut cable out years ago, only have poorly maintained (as in not checked in years) Facebook/Twitter/whatever accounts, and get my news from Apple news and some far left subreddits. I am well entertained but rather uninformed outside of election years. So when I hear about people getting booted for whatever on Instagram, I think “why you tying your life to the gram?” not “rights are being restricted”. It’s a matter of perspective. I suppose if I was trying to make a living off being internet famous, or trying to show off my confederate flags and African savanna kills for clout... yeah it could feel like my freedoms were being trampled. But are they really? One thing you brought up, [mention]AKS [/mention], that I hadn’t considered was the comparison to a phone company. It’s an interesting analogy. Personally, I compare them to the postal service. But I suppose social media platforms are a blend of the two plus some newspaper mixed in. Really a unique beast in terms of communications. I think the answer is if people feel damaged by uneven applications of the tos, they can litigate. Washington state has laws against discrimination over political affiliation, maybe others do too. A better, more American solution? Take your business elsewhere. Or better, don’t even play that game. Like I said, I haven’t and I’m none the lesser for it. But I’ll stick to the argument that unless they are discriminating against a protected group then they can probably do whatever they want. The free speech thing doesn’t really apply here and it would be very tricky to prove anyways. And although it’s an interesting comparison, these aren’t utilities, you don’t get municipal Facebook like running water or electricity. Hell, you don’t even pay for it. And get ready for more of it. Cancel culture is here to stay. Gen Z is the most tolerant generation yet, and the least tolerant of intolerance. Each year the kids lean into the SJW style more. And I fear that, for better or worse, the right wing conservative is being painted as intolerant. They are the new Parent/Teacher group going after sexy lady wrestlers in the 90s. Or whoever went after Nintendo for putting shrooms in kids games in the 80s. Yes, they’ve become everything they vowed to destroy. Honestly, I blame copyright laws. It’s made it very easy to take down content at the drop of a hat. They’d rather just remove the offending material than risk the lawsuit. And if all the kids want something and are reporting it or whatever, you bet your ass the company’s are going to comply. They can’t risk the data/user loss.
no joke. these people screaming omg muh free speech being taken away don't even know what that means. hell, twitch streamers are dealing with the fact that they're banning people for just saying the word simp there now. when you're using someone else's platform, you play by their rules.
Just build your own Facebook or Twitter? That's quite obviously not something many have the resources to do. Even those that have tried to create competition can get choked out of existence via monopolistic practices, i.e., larger companies can just yank the infrastructure right out from under you (collude to block payment, advertising, distribution of your app, block you from using servers, ect.) unless you also build all those things from the ground up yourself, also an enormous cost very few are capable of doing. It barely affects me directly also. The majority of what is being purged are views I don't particularly like. I do not have a Twitter account, and I check my Facebook account 2 or 3 times per year. My concern is a few enormous corporations deciding what the rest of the world is allowed to say and who can say it, and I do not believe their moderation and curation have my best interests or anyone else's best interests as high priorities.
Facebook came from somewhere. It replaced MySpace. Google was started in a garage. It was almost sold to yahoo. AOL gave way to Comcast which might give out to Starlink. Remember your internet history. Saying you can’t build websites or buy servers is a cop out. Don’t treat these companies like irreplaceable institutions. Tik Tok and Discord are already replacing them. Something else will replace those. You can absolutely take your business elsewhere. I keep reading that there are 80 million of them, they can bail each other out of jail but can’t buy a server room? They can’t develop wireless technology further? If the deepstate is coming for them, why do they keep relying on its own tools? There is a thing called the deep web Ive heard of. Somehow sites survive out there in the internet badlands in-spite of google delisting them. Somehow they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps and sold heroin online for years. Yeah, you can take your business elsewhere. If you build it. They will come.
The Zoomer generation. Where calling someone a simp is the lowest, dirtiest insult (for some reason). @AKS Many of these people could easily start their own platforms. Isn’t Trump supposed to be some hotshot multimillionaire? They don’t want that. The point was to turn lots of people into raging fascists, conspiracy nutjobs, and white supremacists and you can’t do that on a large scale with fringe websites. You do that by putting your propaganda on the same platforms people use for celebrity gossip and sharing pictures of their kids with grandma.
You can make a website and post whatever you want to it. But Facebook and Twitter can curate what you market to their users. The are a marketing platform itself marketed as "social media". Personally, I don't think they do enough. YouTube is overrun with scammers that used to only be allowed airtime between 2-5am on local access TV.
@supersonic Youtube personalities are just the modern equivalent of the ShamWow guy or Billy Mays from OxiClean. They all want to sell you something.
McConnell is saying the mob was "fed lies and provoked by Trump." Rats fleeing a sinking ship. I'd say McConnell found his spine, but turtles have shells. So I guess he found his shell again.
Absolutely. The only way the GOP remains viable is if it distances itself from Trump, white nationalism, and QAnon insanity.
Trump won't be attending the inauguration and it sounds like he left a nasty note for Biden. I'd really like to know what's in it. He's talked about forming his own party. That would be amazing. The GOP would be split into two parties, neither of which would be viable.
Well, Biden wasn’t my ideal candidate but as long as he doesn’t kill like 400k Americans in a year he should be ok. Maybe 200-250? Leave some room for improvement.
I'll take a mediocre status quo president who will surround himself with competent people over whatever that clown show was
He's definitely a huge flight risk. I do wonder where he would go. It would have to be somewhere that won't extradite. I don't know if the Russians would want him at this point.