Why Do Republican Senators Seem To Want To Turn Every Website Into A Trash Heap Of Racism & Abuse?
from the important-questions dept
Imagine if you could be sued for blocking other users on Twitter, or limiting who could see your Facebook posts. Or if every website were full of racial slurs, conspiracy theories, and fake accounts. Parental control tools could no longer prevent your kids from seeing such heinous content. If that sounds like the Internet you’ve always wanted, then you’ll love Republicans’ new “Online Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity Act” and “Online Content Policy Modernization Act!”
In 1996, Congress agreed, almost unanimously, that users, websites, and filtering tool developers shouldn’t face such legal risks and that it was imperative “to remove disincentives for the development and utilization of blocking and filtering technologies.” That’s why Congress enacted Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. But a few weeks ago, after yet another Trump tweet raging about “biased Big Tech,” three Republican Senators rushed to introduce legislation that would turn the law on its head. Sen. Lindsay Graham followed suit with his own bill that would do essentially the same thing. Trump’s Department of Justice has proposed to gut Section 230. Never mind that Section 230 was authored by a Republican congressman who still defends the law.
Today, Section 230 broadly protects users, websites, and developers of filtering tools (built into operating systems, search engines, or services like YouTube — or that you can install yourself) when they exercise their First Amendment rights to decide what content or users to block or “restrict access” to. This new bill would sharply curtail such content moderation. To avoid liability, a defendant would have to prove the content was “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, promoting self-harm, promoting terrorism, or unlawful.” That covers only a fraction of the Internet’s awfulness. Even the vilest statements could not be removed or filtered unless tied to the harassment of specific users or the clear glorification of violence. The bill doesn’t cover spam, fake accounts, clear hate speech, or clear misinformation. That last exclusion is intentional: it was Twitter’s timid moves in May to put warning labels on Trump’s tweets about mail-in voting that quickly led the White House to issue an executive order calling for legislation to “reform” Section 230.
Republicans aim to stop content moderation for “political” reasons. But it would invite litigation over even truly neutral restrictions. Nextdoor.com limits discussion of national political issues to special “groups,” so that the site can focus on hyper-local issues. But the bill would no longer protect such segmentation. If a medical school wanted to keep its students focused on studying science rather than arguing about politics, enforcing that rule wouldn’t be protected either.
Republicans complain about “Big Tech,” but their bill would expose everyone to lawsuits. Trump himself has invoked Section 230 to avoid liability for retweeting allegedly defamatory material. FoxNews.com reserves the right to block “offensive” comments on its site, as Breitbart.com does for “inappropriate” content. Even Parler, the conservative “free speech” alternative to Facebook reserves broad discretion to remove any content that they consider “disruptive” or that creates “risk” (not just legal risk) for Parler.
Section 230 protects not just the providers but users engaged in content moderation — such as those who manage Facebook pages and groups. Reddit relies on users to moderate its 130,000 “subreddit” communities, while the English Wikipedia depends on 1,131 volunteer administrators to resolve conflicts. Would you volunteer if you knew you could be sued by disgruntled users?
Republican proposals would open the door to creative plaintiffs’ lawyers to sue anyone who feels aggrieved for being “censored.” Yet it won’t do what Republicans want most: allow the FTC, Republican state attorneys general, and MAGA activists to sue “Big Tech” for “deceiving” consumers by not delivering political “neutrality” as (supposedly) promised. The reason consumer protection agencies have never brought such suits, and courts have tossed out private lawsuits, isn’t Section 230. Back in 2004, left-wing activists petitioned the FTC to sanction Fox News for not delivering on its “Fair and Balanced” slogan. The Republican FTC Chairman dismissed the petition pithily: “There is no way to evaluate this petition without evaluating the content of the news at issue. That is a task the First Amendment leaves to the American people, not a government agency.” Offline or online, the courts simply won’t adjudicate questions of media bias because they’re inherently subjective.
Section 230's protections are vital to the Internet, where both users and providers make editorial decisions about content created by third parties at a scale and speed that are simply unfathomable in the world of traditional publishing. This new bill attempts to use Section 230’s indispensability to coerce the surrender of First Amendment rights. That violates the “unconstitutional conditions” doctrine. In 1969, the Supreme Court upheld imposing special “Fairness Doctrine” conditions on broadcast licenses only because it denied broadcasters full First Amendment protection. But the Court has repeatedly said that new media providers enjoy the same free speech rights as traditional publishers — and has struck down fairness mandates on newspapers as unconstitutional.
Republicans fought the Fairness Doctrine for decades. Their 2016 platform demanded “free-market approaches to free speech unregulated by government.” Yet now they want an even more arbitrary Fairness Doctrine for the Internet. They should remember what President Reagan said when he ended the original Fairness Doctrine in 1987: “the dangers of an overly timid or biased press cannot be averted through bureaucratic regulation, but only through the freedom and competition that the First Amendment sought to guarantee.”
If, despite a lack of any solid evidence, conservatives persist in believing that social media are biased against them, they should vote against it with their clicks and dollars. Switch to Parler, if you like. Just don’t be surprised when you find content like this on the site:
By comparison, #Section230 has 262 “parleys” (posts) — roughly 20% as many as #JEWS). And this is just the tip of a very large iceberg that includes “parleys” like this (note the gruesomely pro-Holocaust account name:
Parler has chosen not to remove such content — but Section 230 would protect the site if it did. Not so if Republicans got their way.
Let that sink in. When Republicans complain about “hate speech” being used as an excuse for censoring conservatives, this is among the content they’re saying should stay up. Because... “bias.”
Ironically, Parler has engaged in selective moderation of hate speech to make the site seem just respectable enough to attract Republican politicians like Sens. Ted Cruz, Sen. Rand Paul, and Rep. Devin Nunes. The site clearly blocks any variant of the n-word in hashtags — which are wildly popular on Gab, which Parler has rapidly eclipsed as the “free speech” network. Gab offers a clear picture of what social media would look like if Republicans succeeded in narrowing Section 230’s protections. This is what an “uncensored” Internet looks like:
If anything, it’s difficult to appreciate how widespread such content is on both Parler and Gab because, unlike Facebook and Twitter, they only allow users to search hashtags (and names of users and groups), not the contents of posts. But one thing’s clear: while Parler blocks the n-word in hashtags, they definitely don’t block it in posts.
Is this really what Sens. Wicker, Blackburn and Hawley really want the Internet to look like? Do they really believe Section 230 shouldn’t protect websites when they remove such heinous content? Or do they believe that that removing such content would still be covered by Section 230 because it would fall into the category of “harassing” content already explicitly protected by Section 230.
The NTIA’s petition to have the FCC rewrite Section 230 defines “harassing” content as having the “subjective intent to abuse, threaten, or harass any specific person.” You don’t have to be a lawyer to see how narrow that definition is. If a neo-Nazi posts something like one of the above hashtags as a reply to a black or Jewish user, yes, that might qualify as “harassing,” but simply ranting about both in his own posts would not be directed at any specific person — so websites wouldn’t be protected for removing it. Republican lawmakers might claim they take a broader view of what should qualify as “harassing,” but it’s hard to see why any court would agree. In any event, what Members or their staff say they intend is irrelevant; what matters is the plain text of the statute. If they want to make their intention clear, they need to pick other words and put them in the statute.
More importantly, hate speech is just one category of noxious content that websites could be sued for removing, hiding or labeling if Republicans have their way. The same goes for conspiracy theories, misinformation about COVID, vaccines, and voting, etc. For example:
Could moderating anti-vaccination misinformation be covered by the term “promoting self-harm?” Again, that’s a huge legal stretch — especially because the “harm” at issue here is primarily not to the “self” but to the children of parents duped by anti-vax content, and to those in society who get infected because vaccination rates fall below levels needed to achieve herd immunity. Even if a court decided that the term might cover some anti-vax content, websites would have to fight it out in court, and courts might rule differently in different cases.
If you want those things for yourself and your children, go to Gab or Parler. Just, please, stop trying to turn the rest of social media into those sites. And don’t complain when those sites fail to attract advertising. What respectable brand in America would want to advertise its products next to such content?
President Reagan’s answer would have been clear: private companies should be free to make their own decisions, especially when the alternative is a true cesspool of everything that is worst about humanity. Sadly, today’s Republicans don’t seem to care about anything beyond making political hay out of repeating the same baseless claims that they’re being persecuted.
Hashtag: #Snowflakes.
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Filed Under: 1st amendment, case act, content moderation, doj, lindsey graham, online content policy modernization act, online freedom and viewpoint diversity act, section 230
Companies: facebook, gab, parler, twitter
Reader Comments
The First Word
“Businesses can't be forced to bake cakes for gay people.
You can't be told to wear a mask.
You can't be told who you can sell a gun to.
But social media companies should be forced to publish your hate speech?
"Small government," right?
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View by: Time | Thread
Possible reason
Because they seem to want to turn the whole world into a trash heap of racism and abuse -- and they have to start somewhere?
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Re: Possible reason
What's wrong with the White House as a trash heap of racism and abuse?
In case that's going to be cleaned out eventually, there are already replacements standing back and standing by.
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Talk about the ultimate rhetorical question...
Why? Because more civilized platforms keep giving the boot to the assholes, the sites that welcome the assholes have only a relative smattering of people because most people would sooner go swimming in literal sewage than join platforms overflowing with the personifications of it, and being a bigoted loser(but I repeat myself) isn't nearly as fun when you don't have a captive audience to disgust/shock.
Why do they keep trying to force platforms to host the scum of the internet? Because they've realized that if sites have the ability to choose whether to host them and their buddies more often than not they won't, and will instead show them the door and tell them that if they want to wallow in their own filth they can make their own platforms to do it on, just don't be surprised when no-one uses them.
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Re: Talk about the ultimate rhetorical question...
What if there were no rhetorical questions?
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Why Do Republican Senators Seem To Want To Turn Every Website Into A Trash Heap Of Racism & Abuse?Because their base is full of Racists and Abusers. But remember, this is only for THEIR racists and abusers. If someone is perceived to be on the 'other side' says something mean, then they want something done about it post-haste! How dare those websites not protect their good old fashioned family values of bigotry and misogyny!
...sorry still salty after the debate... /rantover
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It's still valid.
I still remember in 2017 when Shakespeare in Central Park performed Julius Caesar and much pearl-clutching was done over Caesar and Calpurnia dressed like Donald and Melania Trump.
It's a tradition among Shakespeare troops -- in the US at least -- to dress Caesar and Calpurnia like the first family (at least when they're not doing togas, which few do. Obama-like Caesars appeared during the Obama administration without controversy.
But for Trump, oh the outrage! After all the accusations of whining and snowflakery on the left (that's a word now), I had thought the rule now was that everyone was tough and didn't get to complain.
Nope. It was a double standard, especially given Trump's thin skin and impulsive tweeting.
The inequality party was only getting started.
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Re: It's still valid.
They have very very fragile souls, these Republicans. They melt so fast, it makes global warming real.
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Re: Re: It's still valid.
"They have very very fragile souls, these Republicans."
[Citation required]
I'm not sure we can assume republicans have souls these days.
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No toon can resist...
Well, as the first debate showed us, white supremacy is Trump's shave and a haircut trick. And his presidency (really from the day of his election victory) has been making xenophobia and scapegoatism acceptable establishment narrative.
They really really want it so bad and they've gotten used to not caring what the public thinks. Except for their (small but fervent) public.
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Businesses can't be forced to bake cakes for gay people.
You can't be told to wear a mask.
You can't be told who you can sell a gun to.
But social media companies should be forced to publish your hate speech?
"Small government," right?
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Re:
Oh the smallest, only as large as it needs to be to force specific people/companies to do what they want them to at any given moment and no larger.
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Re:
"Small government," right?
Yup - small enough to fit inside a woman's uterus.
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Will they also stop donations for political reasons, like all donations to political parties?
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All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
"When a commercial platform de facto replaces the public forum, then either free speech must be enforced on that forum or free speech dies."
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Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
So rather than supporting real free speech, you are supporting compelled speech, by calling that free speech. Free speech only means you can publish your speech at your own expense, and/or with the voluntary assistance of others.
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Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
Will you shut up, man?
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Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
Exactly
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Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
And where is this de facto public forum that is also a social media company? Is it Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Google, Youtube, TikTok, Snapchat, Parlor, Gab, 8chan? Please do tell me, which one of these social media companies have become the de facto public square?
And please tell me, what are the criteria that makes a company the de facto public square such that they lose their 1A rights?
When did all public lands close down their town squares forcing people online?
When did this happen? I don't remember hearing about any legal decision that stated social media companies are now part of the government in relationship to the 1A.
If the government can't force a bakery to bake for a gay couple, why should they force companies to host somebody else's speech?
Where did you even get this statement anyway? Legal opinion? Federal Law? Your asshole?
Why do you hate the first amendment so much? (Never mind, don't answer that)
Also, I live in Seattle, and there is a very robust "public forum" downtown where all sorts of people espouse their political opinions on a daily basis. So I can say with a high level of certainty, that the public forum has not been replaced by any social media company here.
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Re: Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
"So I can say with a high level of certainty, that the public forum has not been replaced by any social media company here."
Well, no, but as that certain group of people have it, when they stand in Seattle's physical public square and people boo them out for shouting about "how the joos are taking yer jobs and the black folks is comin' for yer wimmin' "...that's when YOU all "censor" the poor trodden-upon racists and bigots.
The Very Fine People and Proud Boys all have to believe that - the religious belief they hold is that they are superior, after all.
Meaning they "know" themselves to be heroic underdogs being set upon by the unthinking masses rather than just incredibly unpleasant people with horrifyingly EVIL world-views.
A racist and/or bigot is already at war with the majority of the world and used to seeing everyone else as the enemy. When that's the premise they hold it's natural to discard any "facts" to the contrary...
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Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
Please tell us which commercial platform has replaced the public forum? Just one!
I've asked you the above before, but for some reason you can't give an answer - which means your self-made little "quote" has nothing to do with reality and everything to do with your wishful thinking that hate-speech, bigotry and other unwanted content won't be moderated away from private property.
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Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
No one said that, no one believes that, and that's unrelated to the issue here.
"When a commercial platform de facto replaces the public forum"
That has not happened and will not happen.
"then either free speech must be enforced on that forum or free speech dies."
That makes no sense at all. That's a total misunderstanding of what "free speech means."
Also, why do you keep posting that as a "quote" here. Who are you quoting. A Google search shows you posting that here repeatedly, but nowhere else. If you're quoting yourself, it's a dumb, misleading, and just silly quote. If you're quoting someone else, who?
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Re: Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
More important than what you say, it's what you do. The original comment has now been censored. No obscenity was mentioned, but mere disagreement is enough to get the leftists here to demand that the speech gets shut down. I rest my case.
And so it answers the original post with perfection: Republicans want to do it because leftists are abusing section 230 to shut down unobjectionable free speech on the basis of mere disagreement. Thanks for demonstrating!
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Re: Re: Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
If you keep on claiming that you decide where what you say is acceptable, some people here will exercise their right to get you comment hidden, which is not censoring. Free speech includes the rights of other to refuse to listen to you.
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Re: Re: Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
Leftist?
What's that?
It's their business isn't it?
Should they be forced to bake a cake too?
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Just an FYI for you: At no point in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case was anyone at the bakery ever required to bake a cake for anyone.
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Forced cake baking
I'm pretty sure cake houses with leftist owners are happy baking wedding cakes for anyone and adhering to public accommodations laws.
They might have issue with hate-cakes, but they'd have as much issue with whites must die hate-cakes as much as blacks must die hate-cakes or Israelis must die hate-cakes. Hate-cakes seem just terrible.
But even then, the cake-shops I've encountered will still bake the cake. They just won't write your hateful message on it. You just have to take it somewhere else, or write it yourself.
Jack Phillips of Masterpiece Cakeshop just seems to me a sad, sad man who is using his faith to justify petty behavior because he's broken inside. The behavior is contrary to both American values and Christian values as I understand them. But neither of those are what they used to be.
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This is pretty much what happened with Azucar Bakery: Rather than put anti-gay messaging on cakes ordered by a Christian customer (who was looking for anti-Christian bias in bakeries because of the Masterpiece case), the bakery offered to accomodate him by baking the cake he wanted and selling him what was needed for putting decorations on the cake. Their rule wasn’t against Christian messaging, but against hateful messaging of all kinds.
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Re: Re: Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
More important than what you say, it's what you do.
Sure, and so far, Koby, you've shown that no matter how many times people explain stuff to you, you never learn, and continue to make the same stupid mistakes.
The original comment has now been censored.
No, the original comment was voted down and minimized by the community. Many people responded to it, but many people -- with good reason -- seemed to find it stupid, off-topic and trollish. The fact that you repost that same line over and over again, while it's not even remotely directly relevant to the story only supports that claim.
No obscenity was mentioned
So what? The community has found it trollish -- again with good reason.
but mere disagreement is enough to get the leftists here to demand that the speech gets shut down. I rest my case.
Almost everything you state here is wrong. First off, it was not mere disagreement. Lots of "mere disagreement" is not voted down on this site. We have lots of interesting discussions where people disagree. But when your form of "disagreement" is to post debunked talking points, trollish idiocy, and talking points that have already been shown to be stupid, then goshdarnit, Koby, some people are going to vote down your comment.
Don't like it? Grow the fuck up, snowflake.
Second, what's this nonsense about "leftists"? I'm not a leftist. Just because you're a MAGA fool and people here are pointing it out doesn't make them leftists. Stop with the tribal bullshit and grow up.
Third, no one is "demanding" that speech get "shut down." They are saying "stop acting like a troll." Only you're too fucking stupid to recognize that, and have to play the whiny victim. Why are you always such a baby, Koby? GROW THE FUCK UP.
And so it answers the original post with perfection:
Only if you're incredibly stupid or disingenuous. Which is it, Kobes?
Republicans want to do it because leftists are abusing section 230 to shut down unobjectionable free speech on the basis of mere disagreement.
JFC, did you read the post above you? You call that "unobjectionable"? Get the fuck out.
And no one is "abusing" Section 230. As Chris Cox recently noted, the whole point behind 230 was so that anyone could moderate HOWEVER THEY WANTED in order to create narrowly focused communities. Not one giant community for you little whiny assholes to force people to stew in your ignorance and bigotry.
So, fuck off.
That's my free speech for you. Don't like it? I don't give a shit.
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Then how come all it takes for me to read it is a single mouse click? CHECKMATE, ATHEISTS.
We’re not “shutting down” your speech because of political ideology or disagreement. We’re shutting your dumb ass down because your dumb ass keeps saying that Section 230 and the First Amendment should have some sort of “neutrality” component attached to the rights those laws protect.
Moderating speech based on disagreement with political ideology is not “abuse of Section 230” (or “abuse of the First Amendment”). It’s a privately owned web service deciding what is and isn’t acceptable speech on said service. If you can read that entire article above this comments section and still believe the law should force Twitter, Facebook, etc. to host racial slurs, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and links to Kenny G videos, you’re fucking stupid and you should be called such until you get your shit together in a backpack and take it where it needs to go.
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If you don't like the time-out corner stop acting childish
More important than what you say, it's what you do. The original comment has now been censored. No obscenity was mentioned, but mere disagreement is enough to get the leftists here to demand that the speech gets shut down. I rest my case.
Bullshit(several time over in fact), people are simply tired of your dishonesty and are treating you appropriately, which in this case means flagging your comments such that they are hidden behind a single mouse click.
It would be one thing if you were actually engaging in an honest discussion, answering questions, making your case and defending it when requested, but as has been made crystal clear at this point when it comes to social media all you're interested in is making the same bald assertions, strawmans and/or gross misrepresentations , and then as soon as someone calls you on it either changing the subject or going silent, only to repeat the cycle the next time 230 comes up.
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Re: Re: Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
Except your speech isn't being shut down... Your original comment is even still viewable with a single click. You're undermining your own point.
On a side note: your quote doesn't really make sense from a logical perspective. The logic behind that quote is effectively the online equivalent to "If enough people walk into this privately owned shop, it becomes a public place. Therefore, we can talk to the other customers however we want and the owner shouldn't be allowed to kick us out of their store."
It doesn't work that way in real life, so why should it online?
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Re: Re: Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
leftists are abusing section 230 to shut down unobjectionable free speech
That's... not how 230 works. It isn't how anything works.
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Re: Re: Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
And just when you got an insightful voted comment you come and remind us that you're a shitposter with this dreck.
Wasn't Parler supposed to be this utopic Republican final solution to all this leftist Facebook and Twitter nonsense? Wasn't it supposed to be free of all this big tech moderation or the leftists? What happened there?
Oh, right - you knuckledraggers abandoned it because even after taking your ball away and swearing to take things into your own capable hands you still manage to fuck it up...
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Re: Re: Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
"The original comment has now been censored."
No, it's not. I can read it perfectly.
"No obscenity was mentioned,"
Your stupidity and constant lying on this subject are both obscene, especially as you prove you're not a violently deranged idiot on other subjects.
"Republicans want to do it because leftists are abusing section 230 to shut down unobjectionable free speech on the basis of mere disagreement"
...which is their free speech right. Why do you hate free speech?
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Re: Re: Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
"And so it answers the original post with perfection: Republicans want to do it because leftists are abusing section 230 to shut down unobjectionable free speech..."
Again with that fucking bullshit, Koby.
I realize that you may know you are lying through your teeth with every breath whenever "free speech" comes up, but I'll state it once again; The owner of private property showing an unpleasant asshole the door is neither free speech violation nor censorship.
And when private citizens refuse to hear you by voting your comment down that isn't censorship either. It's just private citizens reading what you had to say and condemning it.
Apparently private property doesn't exist and no one is allowed the freedom to choose who to hear in the world you advocate.
You trying to push that garbage by calling it "freedom of speech" is like listening to someone justifying rape by quoting the Bill of Rights.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
"Apparently private property doesn't exist and no one is allowed the freedom to choose who to hear in the world you advocate."
No, as ever he's just unhappy that when other people have the choice, they choose not to hear him. When the roles are reversed and he wants to choose who he gets to be exposed to, he would claim that it was a violation of his rights not to be able to choose.
The stupidity is matched only by the hypocrisy.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate sp
"The stupidity is matched only by the hypocrisy."
You can't even call it hypocrisy. The core of the pseudo-religious belief a racist holds is that anyone who holds other views than s/he does is by default "inferior".
Why should an untermensch be allowed the same rights and privileges extended to the übermensch? THAT is the core premise the alt-right builds all their arguments around.
And that's why Koby and every other alt-right troll to weigh in on the issue of free speech goes utterly silent every time you ask certain questions.
It's not that they don't have an obvious and appropriate answer, but they all know that being misled hateful leftist liberals most people just won't accept the explanation that; "Obviously anyone defending lesser being like n_ggers, Qu_ers and Jews is inherently wrong so their speech is worth less than ours!"
So when the hypocrisy question comes up they shut up, because from the start equal rights isn't their game.
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Re: Re: Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
I thought you guys were going to go the Parler - the conservative bastion of freeze peach?
Whatever happened to that grandiose plan to stick it to the "leftists?"
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Re: Re: Re: Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
It's been mentioned before, but they tried that - and realised that not even they want to hang out with people like them. But, because they had a taste of the numbers and the grift opportunities available elsewhere they want to have that back by force, not by just not being assholes..
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Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
There is no possible good-faith reason for Koby to make this deliberate choice to knowingly repeat debunked lies like this.
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Re: Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
As I stated in a previous comment, Koby's argument now slid down to the demagoguery level of a rapist trying to justify himself by quoting the Bill of Rights.
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Re: All speech that you disagree with is hate speech
You can quote misinformation all you want, it's still a lie.
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"Or if every website were full of racial slurs, conspiracy theories, and fake accounts."
So, you think republicans want to turn the entire internet into Twitter?
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One man's hate speech is another man's free speech they might say
This law makes no sense . Even Conservative websites would be flooded with spam and fake news . Even 4chan blocks certain content and blocks spam. The trump government wants to attack big tech for doing basic moderation
Someone could sue a random Conservative website for blocking spam or for instance
removing posts that contain weird q anon
conspiracy theory's about certain politicians
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Oh, but conservative websites and services won’t have that happen to them because they’re special~!
…yeah no the Republican morons who think of this stuff can’t see past their own noses and think about the consequences, intended or not, of what they’re trying to do.
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Re:
Oh, but conservative websites and services won’t have that happen to them because they’re special~!
Well, more because no-one actually uses them, as that's where the trick comes into play where when it's pointed out that forced moderation would strip every platform's rights to moderate the argument is made that it would/should only apply to the really big ones, the ones that people actually use and which currently keep kicking the assholes off, because they're so very vital you see, leaving the smaller platforms that are currently festering pits of human sewage to moderate as they wish.
That this is spitting in the face of the free market by punishing companies that run popular platforms because the free market has decided that having asshole-friendly platforms isn't a great way to draw in the users or advertisers is of course conveniently ignored and brushed aside.
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It's funny how everyone uses the "leftist" platforms/sites, and of course therefore they are now the "public square" and should be subjected to laws meant to keep governments in check regarding the People's rights. Oddly, the general population doesn't seem to want to use "conservative" alternatives generically, and "conservatives" can never seem to stick to the "conservative" alternative sites.
It's because no one wants to live in your socially conservative shithole. Not even your run-of-the-mill conservatives. (Even if they parrot the stupid censorship line or other ridiculousness when they are feeling particularly tribal.) It's the reason awful speech gets moderated on "leftist" sites, and why the general population won't move to your alternative hellpits. Same reason for both things.
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That’s because they always figure out — too late for their own good, natch — that those alternatives won’t ever attract anyone but conservatives/the alt-right. And if conservatives on social media need one thing, it’s the ability to dunk on liberals where the liberals can see it. After all, why would liberals on Twitter care about conservatives doling out “sick burns” on Parler if that means such bullshit stays off Twitter?
Major conservative personalities who advertised Parler on Twitter kept their Twitters for a reason. Even they knew Parler was more likely to be a shitpit within a month (if that) and less likely to give them a bigger audience.
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No, because AG Barr will call his prosecutors off. Trump already has stated that he will continue the presidency regardless of the election outcome because the ballots are a disaster. So the Department of "Justice" will stay in "conservative" hands, and even if it doesn't, the courts are freshly loaded with conservative judges with often less than stellar legal qualifications but the (far-)right preconceptions, and those are not going to go away anytime soon.
So conservative websites and services won't have that happen to them, at least to a similar degree, because justice in the U.S. has become special.
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GOP motto: "If you can't say something nice about us, then you can't say anything at all." ("Oh, yeah... 'nice' just means when you agree with us.")
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That's a... thing?
#JEWSARENOTWHITE
And yet, some how Jesus totally is.
A part of my brain is overloading like an I, Mudd android.
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Re: That's a... thing?
"And yet, some how Jesus totally is."
Consider that we're talking about racist morons able to tell native americans to "go back where they came from" and who have taught themselves to ignore factual reality since childhood.
40% of a population being creationist is frightening. In european nations that number is around 5-15% at most. But here's the thing - the US stands alone in that much of the citizenry, religious or not, have also been taught to distrust science in general.
In a nation where getting "book learnt" is considered suspicious and apparently - by many conspiracy theories - how you get invited to the NWO or Illuminati...it's weaksauce if all that happens is that a semitic middle-eastern prophet is whitewashed into a blue-eyed blonde.
Remember that Hitler - short, black-haired, and sufficiently suspected of having jewish ancestry he included himself and Jesus Christ as exclusions to the racial purity laws he wrote - became the role model of a pseudoreligious movement which held the tall, strong, blond, blue-eyed "Aryan übermensch" as the pinnacle of humanity.
I'd argue that a collective form of insanity or psychosis exists. If everyone around you insists the sun is a square and the sky is green then eventually you will stop believing in your lying eyes.
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"Why Do Republican Senators Seem To Want To Turn Every Website Into A Trash Heap Of Racism & Abuse?"
Because that's their base?
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Headline answers itself: because they're republicans. Their whole thing is being racist, fascist-enabling abusers.
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Because the republican base of elderly racists is dying off, and doing so at an accelerated rate because of their policy. They've reached the limit of what they can do via gerrymandering to optimise the amount of power per voter so now they're trying to recruit. They refuse point blank to remove the racism, bigotry and misogyny from the party platform, so their go to strategy is brainwashing and grooming, things they regularly accuse others of. By forcing websites and academic institutions to host hate speech and spam, they're hoping to radicalise as many they can, give them someone else to blame for their lives, some dreaded other they can lash out at, rather than the never ending river of right wing uber capitalist policy driving the English speaking world toward the fascist cliff.
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Intolerance: the inability to accept the existence of people who hold ideas and beliefs you dislike.
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Tolerance is not a moral precept; it is a peace treaty. Anyone who disrupts the peace doesn’t deserve tolerance. Whether someone considers “peace” to be freedom from racial slurs or freedom from people of other races is entirely on them — but all the same, if their idea of “peace” doesn’t jive with a broader societal vision of “peace”, they shouldn’t expect much tolerance from people who share that broader vision. Racist assholes aren’t victims because they get asked to take their racist bullshit elsewhere.
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Bigotry, holding that a one race, class, sexual preference, or political or religious ideology is superior to all others, are not an ideas that should be tolerated.
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You make that sound like a moral deficiency. Bigotry is a tribal survival strategy. That's why it works as a cohesive factor in small-scale communities and why it easily sticks and people are susceptible to it.
It doesn't work well with a society based on global interaction and based on judging people on their individual deeds and merits.
It's not as much "are not an ideas that should be tolerated." as we simply cannot afford to entertain bigotry and still arrive at a cooperating peaceful society of everybody actively involved in the diverse society of the U.S.
It may be somewhat more workable for isolated island states. But for the U.S. this ship has sailed: the country has moved beyond the Pilgrim Fathers arriving on the May Flower to get away from people they could not get along with and instead start rooting out the natives they could not get along with.
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That’s “they’re not ideas that should be tolerated” with a bunch of extra words.
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There is a difference between "ideas that should not be tolerated" and "ideas we cannot afford to entertain".
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No, there really isn't. I can tolerate a racist existing in the world, but I don’t have to tolerate their racist beliefs for even a microsecond.
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Who They Are vs. What They Do
A racist is someone for whom racist notions are part of their identity. That's who they are.
A racist can engage in racist behavior, or choose to not do so, possibly because they recognize that racist behavior and expressing racist sentiments tends to do harm to the community. I've known business owners who've specifically recognized their own prejudices, and have chosen to distance themselves from the hiring process (in order to hire the most capable, rather than the ones he liked the most, because capitalism).
Compare: The majority of pedophiles or people with pedophilic attractions are still sexually attracted to kids, but knowing acting on those attractions are both harmful to children and illegal, they refrain from doing so, and seek to express their feelings in more socially acceptable ways.
But yeah, our society cannot afford to entertain ideas that some people based on their race are superior or more deserving of civil rights than others. The social contract at the foundation of the United States of America is equal treatment under law.
It just happens to be a foundation we've entirely failed to establish or enforce that it's undermined the country, so now even its continued existence is precarious. We really cannot afford to entertain notions of inequality.
And this undermining is reflected in our entire legal system, in which people are arrested, convicted and sentenced for who they are not what they did. The particular crime or victims are incidental, and are justification to put the marginalized away or put them down. And we see this based on who we don't arrest: white collar criminals who cause more loss of life, property damage and precarity than all the petty crime combined. By orders of magnitude.
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"No, there really isn't. I can tolerate a racist existing in the world, but I don’t have to tolerate their racist beliefs for even a microsecond."
As Uriel describes it, a Racist is someone who can not live without his ideals. Your refusal to let him scream bigoted slurs is simply you directly assaulting his personal existence.
So it's really the other way around. Racists can not tolerate the existence of non-racists. Why do you think every nation to openly embrace racism through history has been so persistently at war with everybody else until that nation was finally dismantled?
This is the biggest issue most liberal-thinking people have. As a social demographic we are ill-equipped to realize that the very fact that we possess the quality of tolerance means that to a racist we are the enemy. It's exactly the same as a religious fanatic not being able to acknowledge the right of unbelievers to exist.
That's why every white supremacy group in the US actively advocates for violence and hate liberal white people with an almost greater fervor than they do black people in general.
The elephant in the room no one really wants to talk about is this; That US racism has already led to an unpatchable divide between anyone who believes in equality and those who don't.
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What is the difference?
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Well, for example it's not immoral for a physicist to believe in a perpetuum mobile, but it's still not a good idea to hire such a one to a position where his beliefs will lead to wasted resources and lead others into wasting time and effort.
I am aware that the voting populace under the U.S. electoral system chose to delegate decision-making about foreign policy, medical decisions, teaching priorities, economy and international relations to a village idiot who does not have the competence, intelligence and humility to understand that wishful thinking is no substitute for expertise acquired through years of learning.
Such an idea is one we cannot afford to entertain, but it certainly does not as such constitute immorality even if some of the results defy morality.
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Then why should we tolerate it?
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Because we cannot prohibit people from feeling in a certain way. You cannot fight stupidity by prohibiting it. You can only fight it with education, and you are never done.
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You…you’re really not getting what I’m saying, are you?
When I say “tolerate an idea”, I don’t mean “tolerate the existence of the person who holds that shitty idea” — I mean “tolerate the actual shitty idea being expressed”. I can tolerate the existence of someone who believes in White supremacy, but I won’t (and don’t have to) tolerate their shitty White supremacist beliefs. They’re free to feel however they want. But they’re not entitled to have me suppress my feelings so they can express their shitty ideas in public, to have me stick around if I want to leave, and to stay on my property if they’re using my property to express their bullshit ideas.
Tolerance is not a moral precept; it is a peace treaty. We can tolerate the existence of those who violate that treaty, in that we can say they don’t deserve to die for expressing shitty ideas that disrupt the “peace” of a given community. But we don’t have to let those ideas into our communities in the first place, and we don’t have to let those who express those ideas stay in our communities out of a misguided belief that we must “tolerate the intolerable” to a point where we allow actual intolerance for the existence of other people to take root.
Fuck racists, fuck misogynists, fuck anti-Semites, fuck homo- and transphobes, and fuck all their enablers. I don’t have to like the fact that such people exist. I have to tolerate it. But I also don’t have to let them take up space in my community — and no one can force me to think, say, or do otherwise.
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"Tolerance is not a moral precept; it is a peace treaty. We can tolerate the existence of those who violate that treaty, in that we can say they don’t deserve to die for expressing shitty ideas that disrupt the “peace” of a given community."
Here's the recurring problem though - to racists the very fact that tolerance exists is a casus belli. Bigots of all stripes but white supremacists more clearly than most are at war with everyone who doesn't share their particular world-view. It's the same as reglious fanatics and for the same reason - because racism is a sort of toxic religion.
And I suppose that explains so much about the actions of the alt-right. They know damn well they are respected by literally no one so when anyone in any position of perceived authority drops a word of affirmation they all come running, tails a-waggin' to hump and sniff the leg and crotch of Dear Leader who finally gives them some love.
"I don’t have to like the fact that such people exist. I have to tolerate it."
You really don't. As far as I'm concerned "tolerance" of others is a part of the social contract. Those who are knowingly, willingly, and persistently bigoted and/or racist have rejected signing that contract. I hold no obligations towards them, in tolerance or otherwise. And neither do you.
The distinction between unconditional tolerance and the social contract is important and will become far more current once those Very Fine People and Proud Boys are done standing back and standing by.
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At war with everyone
I am wary of painting all xenophobes as at war with everyone given we just went through (are still going through) a phase where Muslims are all believed to be radicalized jihadists looking for an opportunity to become a suicide bomber.
Bigotry is a spectrum. I am clear that the more different someone is to me, the longer it takes me to warm up to them, and that's a far reach from wanting to categorize all brown people as un-American and needing to be deported.
And we've seen enough incidents of people who were radicalized long enough to get embarrassing tattoos who then were able to come to their senses later, often after an identity crisis and soul-searching. These people speak to a hypothesis that bigotry comes from a combination of dysfunction and precarity. We've seen this in history where hunger and want correlate with hate-based violence, scapegoating and anti-intellectualism.
This line of thought has also allowed me to separate religious identity from religious practice. I can respect Islam while still see that misogynistic practices (forced hijab, denial of education, denial of social opportunity) are bigoted and inappropriate in modern egalitarian society. All faiths have to select which of their scriptures apply and which don't, and so when (for example) Christians choose to discriminate against gays, but don't choose to give away their excess wealth to fight poverty, it's conspicuous. One can have a religious identity without being a jerk about it, and plenty of people do just that.
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Re: At war with everyone
"I am wary of painting all xenophobes as at war with everyone given we just went through (are still going through) a phase where Muslims are all believed to be radicalized jihadists looking for an opportunity to become a suicide bomber."
It's not the same, Uriel-238. Racism goes beyond just xenophobia. The one who fears the different can learn and with knowledge that fear goes away.
The racist holds the belief that other people have inferiority or taint as an inborn quality.
Yours and mine tolerance is itself the enemy of someone who believes human equality is based on "race". Because to someone like that we are the enablers, abetters, and race traitors - made the more hateful because the fact that not being part of the deplorables we pose the cognitive dissonance of somehow being parts of the "chosen" who work against the racists ideals.
"And we've seen enough incidents of people who were radicalized long enough to get embarrassing tattoos who then were able to come to their senses later, often after an identity crisis and soul-searching."
And unfortunately that's a decided minority. A re-evaluation of your life's principles usually comes either after a traumatizing formative event which most people are fortunate enough not to experience or a complete upheaval of your social and family life.
To someone still guided by racism, tolerance is the great adversary, even beyond simply being "jewish", "black", or "muslim".
"One can have a religious identity without being a jerk about it, and plenty of people do just that."
...and often have to take a lot of scripture very casually to do so. It's not comparable. A religious person can state that the principle of all humans being brothers outweighs the same scripture's call for homosexuals to be considered abominations, for instance. Racism holds the belief of racial superiority as their actual godhead. Intolerance is the core belief.
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Semantics of racism
When I talk about racism, when I've talked with it with folks in the psychiatric sector, to racial studies majors -- or really to college students in general; I'll get to that -- racism has always been about casual presumptions of differences. Indulging racial stereotypes.
They're not all negative. Black guys we assume play better basketball. Asians, we assume, are better at math and are pressured by parents to study hard.
There's a moment even in the The Walking Dead (the video game) S01E02 in which Kenny and Lee (the player) come across a big lock. Kenny asks Lee if he knows how to pick it.
Lee (who's already well established as a high-school history teacher) asks And why do you think I'd know how to pick a lock?
Kenny says, Because you're...urban?
That's racism as I understand it. It's presumption based on race. And it happens casually enough and often enough that we need a word for it so we can air what's going on and cultivate sensitivity.
When one believes that one race is naturally superior to another, that's racial supremacism or scientific racism, which is the pseudoscience that drove the Nazis towards eugenics towards a master race, and was the argument against interracial marriage. (Curiously, even Malcom X' autobiography gets into the notion of mongrelizing the black man by interbreeding with whites.)
As for belief, yes, a lot of people suffer from attitude polarization but that can fortunately change, at least for people willing to consider they might be wrong. Polarized attitudes, it seems, come down to beliefs that in some way serve the believer at a personal level, and changing that is tied to finding how that need can be fulfilled without an antisocial belief.
What's interesting to me is in the USwe once knew ideological racism is bad for the country. We once understood that the system only works with social equality and an ironclad rule of law.
It's the reason racist-thinking households had to have rules about conversation in mixed company. Around the time Nixon was switching to the Southern Strategy George Wallace's career was tanking and his open racism was a considerable factor.
I think Trump's popularity is because those sentiments still exist even when we know they don't serve the society. But a lot of people are desperate, especially in economic precarity, to have permission to be openly racist. (He only says what the rest of us is thinking) Trump gave them that permission.
Racial Supremacist views are typically accompanied by a lack of self esteem and a lot of anger, and like religious views, they're based on ideology. It's based on some kind of authority (valid or otherwise). In contrast casual racism comes from the same categorization process our heads use to decide which snakes will poison you and which stakes eat those snakes. We watch Chinese Wuxia shows on TV and think Asians all learn martial arts as kids. (It comes with their chopsticks.)
We can clarify, I think, by talking about casual racism vs. ideological racism when it's one of those things and not the other.
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Taking scripture casually
The old testament has a lot of Wipe them out! All of them. Spare not even children or cattle. and even the Romans thought that was a bit over the top.
There's also the thing that most Christians don't want to sell off all their belongings, take only a cloak and walk the earth, preaching. All of the Abrahamic faiths seem to love capitalism more than they do their faith. (To be fair, trade helps keep the peace, so I can see the appeal.)
I've gone into why there are 40,000 denominations of Christianity, and why it's possible to argue scripture means what you want (or doesn't mean what you don't want).
But yeah, we have news that in a recent SCOTUS ruling dissent, Thomas and Alito implied they'd roll back Obergefell v Hodges (federal legitimization of same-sex marriage), clearly believing the religious right to discriminate against LGBT+ surpasses the rights of LGBT+ people to have full citizenship.
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I'm thinking we should get David's definitions of "tolerate" and "entertain" because they don't seem to be the same as the ones everyone else is using. Not being snarky, I just think that could be the root of this disagreement.
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The core precept of these Republicans who are trying to make the existance of people and speech they dislike illegal.
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Just want to know.
How much SPAM is blocked tho?
Isnt that free speech??
Or just blocking trade?
The bigger the site the better the target for Adverts and SPAM.
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Somebody got a price on my head
please help julius white get to the problem
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