BF2S Forums Freedom of Speech, the Internet, and You

Dilbert_X wrote:

The europeon powers are griping about Trump being banned by twitter, try to keep up.

they said it has uncomfortable implications. just like the owner of twitter himself said. he doesn’t want to police discourse. but 6 people died because a populist demagogue, who has used twitter as his main megaphone, tried to stage an insurrection. 

criminal activity gets you banned. who knew? as i said above, this is why i can’t host child porn on a server or plan terror attacks on a chat app. these services have TERMS OF USE.

i highly doubt the european leaders are mourning trump’s ban in any substantial way. they’re out for american big tech companies anyway. learn to read some subtext.

everyone involved in this conversation has said it’s problematic if tech companies start playing an active role in censorship.

but as i’ve said above, a far bigger problem has been tech companies’ inaction on other fronts. up until very recently facebook didn’t moderate political adverts of any kind. people were being shown straight-up lies, often times engineered to be as provocative as possible. where’s the accountability here?

tech companies doing nothing has caused untold damage to democratic norms in recent years. they have colonised the spaces formerly occupied by traditional news media and ‘moderated’ (and legally liable) channels.

the debate has had to be forced on several occasions.

tax revenue has very little to do with it. but, er, yes, politicians come up with a line on something that also involves positioning and manoeuvring on their behalf. are you new to planet earth or something? is this why you just recycle U.K. politicians’ press releases without wondering why? you blessed soul.

really? what does the FTC do then? the US has lots of federal laws on advertising and messaging in other domains. the tech companies are long overdue being brought in line with other industries and business models.

compare putting out a campaign-funded tv spot to a facebook advert campaign. one is highly accountable and subject to extensive laws and the other has effectively become cyber misinformation enlisting ‘dark arts’ big data manipulators and mercenaries like cambridge analytica. the difference is stark.

Last edited by uziq (2021-01-17 01:07:12)

ok dum dum

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

I make cat toys and give them attention.

+1

I'm fine with watching superhero films, but I haven't found any that I like in recent years. I'll still watch Batman 89 on a lark though.

OK

I'm not fine with restricting freedom of speech. I'm fine with a social media platform exercising ban powers when a user violates the rules they agreed to when they signed up for the platform. Yes the power of tech companies should be conversed about on a legislative level and checked. State officials using social media for official business should also be checked. Facebook/twitter/etc. need to be beholden to the same kind of rules papers and news channels need to abide by.

You know how many times I've heard conservative talk show hosts hang up on callers? Trump gets banned and suddenly you're conscious.

And I've said I'm fine with Trump being banned, but it does raise issues.

Also, where's the "long-winded manifesto?" A couple paragraphs in three pages of humoring your bizarre opinions. Gonna need to ask uzique for binding advice on such a gutbuster.

Exactly, you should start work on it now.

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Gonna need to ask uzique for binding advice on such a gutbuster.

legally or adhesively?

i have to advise you that all of my edicts here are non-binding and as such are pro bono.

Edited some stuff for the people at the old folks home I work at.

"mass rapes against women was a common occurrence on both sides of the war" became "mass attacks against women". I don't like using the word rape at all for anything. Especially in a school. Next week I am going to mention the "Rape of Nanking" but will instead use refer to it as the "Nanking Massacre".

Self censorship? I agree with the Social Justice Warriors that 'Rape' shouldn't be used to describe non-sexual assaults.

Did you ever notice how many bad words either start or end with the letter R?

Americans raped their way across France during WW2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_duri … _of_France

it's not exaggerated. the bigger problem with japan's use of 'comfort women' is that they've never just admitted to it, or apologized.

japan is even now trying to take legal appeals to the international courts over their use of korean comfort women. japan just won't admit to it, not in korea, china, or the philippines, despite it being a widespread and institutionalized practice for their military.  hundreds of thousands of women were rounded up and kept as sex slaves for years at a time. we're not talking rape and looting, here. we're talking sex slaves.

germany has expressed contrition over the crimes of the nazi era; japan hasn't.

More than 100 employees at the Associated Press have signed an open letter calling for more information about the recent firing of 22-year-old journalist Emily Wilder.

Wilder's ouster, and the newswire's lack of candor about its cause, has caused a rare uproar inside the storied news organization.
Monday's open letter said the lack of communication about Wilder's firing "gives us no confidence that any one of us couldn't be next, sacrificed without explanation. It has left our colleagues — particularly emerging journalists — wondering how we treat our own, what culture we embrace and what values we truly espouse as a company."

Wilder was fired last week after just two weeks on the job. In a statement on Saturday, Wilder said she is "one victim to the asymmetrical enforcement of rules around objectivity and social media that has censored so many journalists -- particularly Palestinian journalists and other journalists of color -- before me."

Before joining the AP, Wilder was an active member of pro-Palestinian groups at her college. She was a proponent of Palestinian human rights and a critic of the Israeli government. She is Jewish. And she is a believer in journalism. She joined the Phoenix bureau of the AP after ten months at The Arizona Republic. "I was proud to land a job at the AP," she said.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/24/media/as … index.html

So no one not even the lady knows why the AP decided to fire her. Right wingers were making a big deal about her past working for a pro-Palestinian group at college before the firing though.

In other censorship news:

Florida on Monday became the first state to regulate how companies like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter moderate speech online, by imposing fines on social media companies that permanently bar political candidates in the state.

The law, signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, is a direct response to Facebook’s and Twitter’s bans of former President Donald J. Trump in January. In addition to the fines for barring candidates, it makes it illegal to prevent some news outlets from posting to their platforms in response to the contents of their stories.
...
The Florida law makes it illegal to bar a candidate for state office for more than 14 days, in a move that would seem to outlaw the kind of permanent ban the social media platforms applied to Mr. Trump’s accounts. Companies would be fined $250,000 per day for cases where they barred a candidate for statewide office. The fine is lower for candidates seeking other offices.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/24/tech … cians.html

The obvious gay governor of Florida is going to put his state through a costly legal battle with Facebook in order to score political points. It's a shame that both Facebook and Florida can't lose in this battle. Still it would be funny if Facebook decided to just pull the plug on providing services to Florida in response. That would really test just how committed to culture war people in Florida are when they lose facebook access. But of course a corporation flexing on a state isn't good for anyone regardless of who that state is made up of.

Reddit on Wednesday banned an active COVID misinformation subreddit. The move comes after other subreddits called on the site's administrators to take more action against the spread of false information about the pandemic and vaccines.

An admin post in r/RedditSecurity confirmed that the subreddit r/NoNewNormal, which was full of COVID misinformation, was banned. Though the admin confirmed there's been a "pronounced" increase in COVID denial since July -- the same month federal and state governments began implementing vaccine mandates for employees -- the reason for the subreddit's banning was its connection to more than 80 brigades. A brigade involves members of one subreddit flooding another subreddit, usually to harass the other users.

/r/NoNewNormal was fun. I sometimes would post their stuff here. A dark day for freedom of expression.