Changing Section 230 Won't Make The Internet A Kinder, Gentler Place
from the stop-expecting-it-to dept
Tech platforms, especially the largest ones, have a problem—there’s a lot of offensive junk online. Many lawmakers on Capitol Hill keep coming back to the same solution: blaming Section 230.
What lawmakers don’t notice is that a lot of the people posting that offensive junk get stopped, again and again, thanks to Section 230. During a March hearing in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, lawmakers expressed concern over some of the worst content that’s online, including extremist content, falsehoods about COVID-19, and election disinformation.
But it’s people spreading just this type of content that often file lawsuits trying to force their content back online. These unsuccessful lawsuits show that Section 230 has repeatedly stopped disinformation specialists from disseminating their harmful content.
Section 230 stands for the simple idea that you’re responsible for your own speech online—not the speech of others. It also makes clear that online operators, from the biggest platforms to the smallest niche websites, have the right to curate the speech that appears on their site.
Users dedicated to spreading lies or hateful content are a tiny minority, but weakening Section 230 will make their job easier. When content moderation doesn’t go their way—and it usually doesn’t—they’re willing to sue. As the cases below show, Section 230 is rightfully used to quickly dismiss their lawsuits. If lawmakers weaken Section 230, these meritless suits will linger in court longer, costing online services more and making them leery of moderate the speech of known litigious users. That result could make it easier for these users to spread lies online.
Section 230 Protects Moderators Who Remove Hateful Content
James Domen identifies as a “former homosexual,” who now identifies as heterosexual. He created videos that describe being LGBTQ as a harmful choice, and shared them on Vimeo, a video-sharing website. In one video, he described the “homosexual lifestyle” this way: “It’ll ruin your life. It’s devastating. It’ll destroy your life.”
In at least five videos, Domen also condemned a California bill that would have expanded a ban on “sexual orientation change efforts,” or SOCE. Medical and professional groups have for decades widely recognized that efforts to change sexual orientation in various ways, sometimes called “conversion therapy,” are harmful.
Vimeo removed Domen’s videos. In a letter to Domen’s attorney, Vimeo explained that SOCE-related videos “disseminate irrational and stereotypical messages that may be harmful to people in the LGBT community,” because it treated homosexuality as “a mental disease or disorder” that “can and should be treated.” Vimeo bans “hateful and discriminatory” content, and company officials told Domen directly that, in their view, his videos fell into that category.
Domen sued, claiming that his civil rights were violated. Because of Section 230, Domen’s lawsuit was quickly thrown out. He appealed, but in March, the federal appeals court also ruled against him.
Forcing a website to publish Domen’s anti-LGBTQ content might serve Domen’s interests, but only at the expense of many other users of the platform. No website should have to face a lengthy and expensive lawsuit over such claims. Because of Section 230, they don’t.
Some lawmakers have proposed carving civil rights claims out of Section 230. But that could have the unintended side effect of allowing lawsuits like Domen’s to continue—making tech companies more skittish about removing anti-LGBTQ content.
Section 230 Protects Moderators Who Remove Covid-19 Falsehoods
Marshall Daniels hosts a YouTube channel in which he has stated that Judaism is “a complete lie” which was “made up for political gain.” Daniels, who broadcasts as “Young Pharaoh,” has also called Black Lives Matter “an undercover LGBTQ Marxism psyop that is funded by George Soros.”
In April 2020, Daniels live-streamed a video claiming that vaccines contain “rat brains,” that HIV is a “biologically engineered, terroristic weapon,” and that Anthony Fauci “has been murdering motherfuckers and causing medical illnesses since the 1980s.”
In May 2020, Daniels live-streamed a video called “George Floyd, Riots & Anonymous Exposed as Deep State Psyop for NOW.” In that video, he claimed that nationwide protests over George Floyd’s murder were “the result of an operation to cause civil unrest, unleash chaos, and turn the public against [President Trump].” According to YouTube, he also stated the COVID-19 pandemic and Floyd’s murder “were covert operations orchestrated by the Freemasons,” and accused Hillary Clinton and her aide John Podesta of torturing children. Near the video’s end, Daniels stated: “If I catch you talking shit about Trump, I might whoop your ass fast.”
YouTube removed both videos, saying that they violated its policy on harassment and bullying.
Daniels sued YouTube, demanding account reinstatement and damages. He claimed that YouTube amounted to a state actor, and had thus violated his First Amendment rights. (Suggesting that courts treat social media companies as the government has no basis in the law, which the 9th Circuit reaffirmed is the case last year.)
In March, a court dismissed most of Daniels’ claims under Section 230. That law protects online services—both large and small—from getting sued for refusing to publish content they don’t want to publish.
Again, Internet freedom was protected by Section 230. No web host should be forced to carry false and threatening content, or Qanon-based conspiracy theories, like those created by Daniels. Section 230 protects moderators who kick out such content.
Section 230 Protects Moderators Who Remove Election Disinformation
The Federal Agency of News LLC, or FAN, is a Russian corporation that purports to be a news service. FAN was founded in the same building as Russia’s Internet Research Agency, or IRA; the IRA became the subject of a criminal indictment in February 2018 for its efforts to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election.
The founder and first General Director of FAN was Aleksandra Yurievna Krylova, who is wanted by the FBI for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Later in 2018, the FBI unsealed a criminal complaint against FAN’s chief accountant, Elena Khusyaynova. In that complaint, the FBI said that Federal Agency of News was not so different than the IRA. Both were allegedly part of “Project Lakhta,” a Russian operation to interfere with political and electoral systems both in Russia “and other countries, including the United States.”
Facebook shut more than 270 Russian language accounts and pages in April of 2018, including FAN’s account. Company CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the pages “were controlled by the IRA,” which had “repeatedly acted deceptively and tried to manipulate people in the U.S., Europe, and Russia.” The IRA used a “network of hundreds of fake accounts to spread divisive content and interfere in the U.S. presidential election.” Facebook’s Chief Security Officer stated that the IRA had spent about $100,000 on Facebook ads in the United States.
At this point, one might think that anyone with alleged connections to the Internet Research Agency, including FAN, would lie low. But that’s not what happened. Instead, FAN’s new owner, Evgeniy Zubarev, hired U.S. lawyers and filed a lawsuit against Facebook, claiming that his civil rights had been violated. He demanded that FAN’s account be reinstated, and that FAN be paid damages.
A court threw the FAN lawsuit out on Section 230 grounds. The plaintiffs re-filed a new complaint, which the court again threw out.
Small Companies And Users Can’t Afford These Bogus Lawsuits
Weakening Section 230 will give frivolous lawsuits like the ones above a major boost. Small companies, with no margin for extra legal costs, will be under more pressure to capitulate to bogus demands over their content moderation.
Section 230 protects basic principles, whether you run a blog with a comment section, an email list with 100 users, or a platform serving millions. You have the right to moderate. You have the right to speak your own mind, and serve other users, without following the dictates of a government commission—and without fear of a bankrupting lawsuit.
Innovation, experimentation and real competition are the best paths forward to a better internet. More lawsuits over everyday content moderation won’t get us there.
Reposted from the EFF's Deeplinks blog.
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Filed Under: bad stuff online, content moderation, internet, section 230
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'... not seeing a problem.'
The sad/messed up thing is that a good chunk of the people trying to gut 230 would look at those examples as just more evidence that 230 should be shredded, since obviously the platforms were in the wrong telling a hateful bigot, Covid and everything else nutjob and a propaganda outfit to get out.
That said it is nice to have some solid examples of lawsuits that were stopped early by 230 since those are the sort of things those trying to kill 230 are, whether they realize and are honest enough to admit to or not are trying to cause more of.
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Re: '... not seeing a problem.'
People who use the word "nutjob" should be permabanned for hate speech, their identities should be revealed, and they should be declared permanently unemployable.
The perceived mentally ill (regardless of accuracy of perception) are a protected class in America. Let's also make this retroactive for anything anyone has posted online in the past forty-five years.
Be careful with that censorship hammer.
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Section 230 doesn't protect individuals, and opens people up to reputation blackmail (often paid by white-collar professionals threatened with ruin via bad reviews), defamation by a lone person with a grudge (like that guy in the Times article), and fake reviews for which the review sites are not responsible.
Innocent people can be set up for defamation lawsuits, employment lawsuits, fair-credit-reporting-act lawsuits, or suits in other countries (none of which have 230). Vigilantes often act on defamation. They say Trump's rhetoric was dangerous because it was false, the same is true of defamation. Revenge porn is another child of Section 230.
Social media acts as a publisher and should be treated as one. Section 230 is not only NOT a constitutional right, but it is not likely even constitutional.
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Koby, is that you?
Regarding all your falsehoods, here's something you may consider: All the internet platforms have a right to moderate under the first amendment's freedom to peaceably assemble, otherwise it's compelled speech. It's obvious you're a big fan of compelled speech, because you think compelled speech is permitted under the first amendment, when many US courts (including the current SCOTUS) have ruled otherwise.
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Jhon boi still posting the same debunked garbage as ever. Some idiots never change.
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Re:
[Hallucinates facts not in evidence or law]
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Love RL
Real life, sucks.
And there are so many that think certain things DONT exit, because they aint seen it or dealt with it.
Its maddening that these people are living in a world of their own and think things are perfect.
The worst thing they ever saw on TV. was the Brady Bunch and Scooby doo.
Can we get these folks to work in:
Hospice?
Mental hospital?
Join the Hell's Angels? Jokers?
Get them to work in a black community?
How about a 7/11 or Plaid Pantry, Night shift?
Adult book shop and Leather accessories?
How about working on a REAL farm for a few years?
Get them out into the fields to Pick crops.
Work in a major Emergency ward?
Forget it, Just put them in NY GAY BAR, Serving for 1 year.
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Moderation is not speech?
I am not necessarily against the idea that Section 230 is useful and doing a lot of good to enable the vibrant internet we currently have, but I see it wrong to distort "speech" in order to justify it.
A cafe (not) serving one customer is speech. A person donating money to a political party is speech. Burning a flag is speech. How is taking down (leaving up) someone's words on a website not speech? Arguably even the government's mandate that a cafe can choose to not serve one customer based on race is technically "speech".
We use a legal framework to allow and disallow some speech, to come up with a society we prefer. Government is only allowed to bar your speech as long as it hurts certain protected groups, and this is where government's "speech" ends.
Therefore 230 is more like patent and copyright. We allowed platforms to make some speech (moderation) without consequence because it brings greater good. But we disallow physical newspapers or TV stations the same protection on their speech to allow others to speak because they do not bring the same good. (We have more detailed reasons, but they are kind of arbitrary.)
If we are trying to deny moderation is speech, we cannot come to genuine discussions for whether there is actually something better than 230, because after all it is just one form of legal framework on what speech is more important than others.
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Re: Moderation is not speech?
The web sites for such entities live under the same rules as every other website, and they are protected by section 230 where and when they allow user comments. Section 230 does not apply to what they publish under their direct editorial control, i.e. articles written by or for them, or programs that they make or buy.
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Re: Re: Moderation is not speech?
Their website should be under the same protections other websites should have; I am not disputing this.
"Direct editorial control" is what I meant by "more detailed reasons". This is exactly why we need to first agree on "moderation is speech", and then which of these speech are immune and which are not, instead of "moderation is not speech".
If our society decides that "moderation when you do not have direct editorial control" is a necessary condition for 230-like immunity, then 230 should be rewritten to reflect that. Now once any website is notified of any of their user's speech, they now have "direct editorial control" of this speech and they should be given reasonable time to exercise editorial control before they lose immunity. Fair?
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Re: Re: Re: Moderation is not speech?
The distinction between editorial control and moderation
is mainly that editorial control is exercised before publication, and carried out by a person. Moderation is carried out at or after publication, and is largely is largely don by software by software.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Moderation is not speech?
Thanks for the explanation, but I understood this. What I am arguing is: a platform with no editorial control before others' speech happened is not obligated to do any moderation. This is unfair, because the platform do have editorial control afterwards, but the law shields it.
My first post argued that moderation is still speech, and speech should have consequences. Indemtifying this kind of speech maybe a good trade-off for the past, but it doesn't have to be like this forever. Admitting that moderation is speech is a good start. We can take a decade to find out what is a fair way to make platforms responsible for what they do.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Moderation is not speech?
I think the current issue in understanding is how people interpret the Compuserve (CIS) and Prodigy cases. And the artificial claim that CIS and Prodigy rulings were at odds.
Cis had no censorship since they had no moderation at all. The only things taken down were what they legally required to and only when informed such material existed. Since they didn’t moderate and didn’t remove anything not legally required of removal, the CIS won the case.
With Prodigy they selectively removed things they disagreed with. As such they knew or should have known what was posted and were liable for such information as they “allowed” it to remain.
230 allowed companies like prodigy to moderate and censor as they want, shaping the communities they control to their liking. All without fear of continual legal concerns.
230 is a protective shield; for good and for bad. Just because some of us disagree with the stupid ‘moderation’ choices companies make doesn’t change the good the law does: allow private owners to maintain the community they want.
As a side not in retrospect:
That the likes of GE and Prodigy died off quickly while the move-don’t-delete AOL and the DGAF Compuserve are still around in some form tells you where the general public was on the decisions. Both still with a large number of original users.
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No, it doesn’t. GE and Prodigy died off for reasons that are most likely unrelated to its moderation decisions. Same goes for AOL and Compuserve in re: how they’re still around.
That isn’t to say a moderation decision can’t change the fortunes of an interactive web service, though. Tumblr got rid of a good chunk of porn and became a far less trafficked service as a result. But I doubt a service willing to let just about anything fly will ever get a mass audience on the level of Twitter. I mean, who would want to deal with the Worst People Problem other than, y’know, those “worst people”?
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Re:
GEnie died because the service wasn’t self supporting, let alone profitable. Censorship probably isn’t directly related but it didn’t help.
Prodigy being family friendly was a limiting factor in further growth. Once you lock in the interested families there was little to offer everyone else having less services AND more content censorship.
AOL and CIS survived for one reason, and one alone, a dedicated user based that would not allow them to die. From very public calls to save them to private investments from users to many other things.
Both services have a loyal base.
“But I doubt a service willing to let just about anything fly will ever get a mass audience on the level of Twitter“
Here I completely agree. The public conversation aspect of the internet has changed drastically since the early 90s. Since dedicated services.
Some say for the better. Some, including myself, say for the worse.
Neither view is right or wrong alone.
We won’t ever see open uncensored services anymore, let alone unmoderated completely.
Even CIS has now bowed to the will of the corporate gods.
Being free has put the service at the call of the advertisers. Piss them off and the money dries up.
It is what it is.
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Unless you can conclusively prove GE’s moderation efforts had anything to do with that, your point is moot.
And under 230, Prodigy had the absolute legal right to moderate in such a way that it remained family-friendly. Without 230, we could possibly have seen a SCOTUS ruling that said Prodigy is liable for third-party speech — a ruling which would’ve destroyed Prodigy…and any subsequent service that dared to be anything but a precursory version of 4chan.
Unless you can prove that the moderation efforts (or lack thereof) on the part AOL and CIS are responsible for that dedicated user base, your point is moot.
I have a challenge for you.
Go to 8kun. Find any given politics-based, porn-based, or “random” board on the site that looks heavily trafficked. Surf that board for one hour without any breaks or without looking at any other website. You don’t have to view individual threads (and I wouldn’t recommend it). You need only to browse the pages of that board you selected and refresh the front page of the board for updates. You must keep all images visible at all times and view as many of them as possible at full size. You must view every video file that you come across. You must not use any wordfiltering userscripts or browser extensions to hide offensive language. (Exceptions can, will, and should be made for any CSAM you may run across as you browse.)
If you can last the full hour without feeling disgusted with yourself or humanity — without wondering why anyone would want to host that speech, would want to post that speech, would want to experience that speech — only then will you have earned the right to argue in favor of turning the entire Internet into 8kun. If you can’t…well, don’t say I didn’t warn you that you would be stepping into every circle of Dante’s Hell.
Advertisers want to sell their products to as wide an audience as possible. Must you really be told why they wouldn’t want to associate with a platform widely regarded as a home for white nationalists, bigots, fascists, Trump stans, and people who still think bleach injections could stop COVID-19 for good?
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Re:
“ And under 230, Prodigy had the absolute legal right…” and?
I don’t disagree.
“ I have a challenge for you.”
Minor correction for the hair splitters.
We won’t ever see MAINSTREAM open uncensored services anymore, let alone unmoderated completely.
‘You must you must…’
Wait, why? Just because it exists doesn’t mean I need to look at it.
“ only then will you have earned the right to argue in favor of turning the entire Internet into 8kun.”
Nobody forced you to click a link or twit or anything else you didn’t willingly choose to look at.
There’s a high difference between moving content inappropriate to the topic elsewhere and deleting it.
If I see something out of place I flag it, as a user; or move it, as a moderator.
“ Must you really be told …”
Uh, no. I understand fully. I actually wish, hope for, the day someone comes along to buy back CIS and it’s freedom. But it’s not likely to happen since the ad revenue is so high.
“ bleach injections could stop COVID-19 for good”
Still keeping that misquote lie alive i see. Wow me ANYONE with an IQ over 100 who believes that.
I’ll be here.
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Re: Re:
Then why do you want to turn the rest of the Internet into 8kun?
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Re: Re: Re:
You can’t skip over things you don’t want to read?
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
How do you know it's something you don't want to see until you've seen it, dumbass?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
By reading the content description. Be it a topic title. A post note, etc.
Sure there’s going to be fake topics and I’ll flag them as fake or misleading (if the service allows) as I go. But I’m not going to intentionally load up a nut job’s thread when I have no interest.
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What if there is no description or warning? What if that content is thrust upon you full and out in the open, such as being put into your Twitter mentions? For what reason should you have to subject yourself to content you don’t want to see for the sake of moderating it out of your timeline when Twitter could try to prevent that situation from happening in the first place?
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Re:
Republicans' singular goal is to wantonly inflict as much needless harm as possible on as many victims as possible.
Their demands to institute censorship by getting rid of the obstacle Section 230 poses to it is but one facet of their goal.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Ao you admit you're just bullshitting and don't undrrstand what you're talking about.
Your posts in this very thread prove you a liar. See how without our free speech of flagging posts, there's no way to read the thread only for sensible posts without seeing your nutjobbery.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Who sets the descriptions, and how does that avoid the problem of people like you finding that they can't tell people they disagree with how wrong they are, and claiming that the site is treating them unfairly?
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Counter-point: You can't use a platform that actually wants content that the majority of people don't want to see?
It's easier(and less stressful if not less traumatic) by far for a platform to set out rules of acceptable behavior modeled on what the majority of users would consider acceptable and block any violations at the outset than require that every user that runs across it block it themselves, and judging by the relative popularity of platforms most people prefer it that way.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
I dunno - shouldn't the same consideration be applied to porn filters or 'kid friendly' filters? Would you be fine with letting an algorithm decide then, because you know, they can always 'skip over things' they shouldn't want to read...
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Access to “pornography” is regulated by law.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
However, porn isn't the only thing those filters block, now is it?
Are you ready to open up the flood gates to your spawn in the name of freeze peach? Are companies that base their entire business model on moderation in your crosshairs, or haven't you thought it through that far?
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
In a threaded or time lined conversation, like this one, you can't avoid seeing comments that are not hidden.
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Any “reform 230” argument rests on a single idea: A service must host all kinds of legal-yet-offensive speech to prevent “censorship” (read: moderation that deletes speech). Under that idea, moderators couldn’t delete such speech — and users would need to first view it so they could then filter it.
What was that you were saying about “not needing to look at it”, again?
One is useful if the speech is appropriate for another section of the website. The other is useful if there isn’t an appropriate section or the service doesn’t want to host that speech. Most “reform 230” arguments take that “we don’t want to host that” option out of the equation. You continue to argue that moderation is censorship; your argument thus implies that any moderation that deletes speech must be stopped at all costs.
Considering the full context of the partial sentence to which you replied there, you literally sound like you’re hoping for CIS to become overrun with the kind of speech I mentioned. That, uh…that doesn’t reflect well on you, dude.
Still insisting that I’m “misquoting” even though I know both the original quote and the context in which it was said — that I’m somehow intellectually disabled — because your feelings get hurt when I accurately and truthfully point out that context, I see.
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Re:
“ What was that you were saying about “not needing to look at it”, again?”
There’s a difference between stumbling across something and flagging it, and intentionally looking at things I know will be against my tastes.
If I find Nazi shite in civil discourse about plants I’ll flag it.
“ You continue to argue that moderation is censorship; your argument thus implies that any moderation that deletes speech must be stopped at all costs.”
First I do not equate all moderation to censorship, only deletion.
A private company has the right to censor.
I’ll point it out when it happens.
Based on discussion here at this site I’m no longer supporting repeal, nor modification.
CIS existed as an uncensored, moderated, BBS platform from the 70s to the mid 2000s. Verizon turns it into a news platform that has minimal user interaction.
Many of us were paid well enough over the years to spend hours pouring over content ourselves and that of user flagging. Often with free service access and a paycheque on top of it.
I know first hand how downright evil some people can be. Most “trolls” give up when every post they make gets flagging.
The more persistent ones got slapped with a perma-flag. Every post was minimised at creation.
So there are methods that generally work. That don’t resort to complete deletion.
Context? He didn’t say it and no logical person believes he did.
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And what if someone blows into your mentions with that bullshit — for what reason should you shoulder the burden of moderating that bullshit if Twitter could at least try to prevent it from reaching your timeline first? Oh, right, I forgot — you think that would be CeNsOrShIp.
Then you may as well equate all moderation to censorship. A platform getting rid of speech it doesn’t want to host doesn’t censor anybody — the asshole is free to speak the same speech elsewhere. That deletion is a key part of curating a community; few people want to be known for coddling bigots, even by “hiding” their speech (while still actually hosting it). But since you believe deletion is censorship…well, you can likely see how commenters here have concluded that you’re in favor of compelled hosting, no matter how many times you claim otherwise.
And if they worked universally, and they didn’t present something of a “time bomb” situation in that the speech is still on the servers waiting to be discovered, maybe you would have a point. But they don’t. So you don’t.
Yes, it’s something you should look into. Specifically: When Trump raised the idea of injecting disinfectants into people as a means of fighting COVID-19, he did so after a presentation of how household disinfectants — including bleach, which was mentioned by name — could kill the COVID-19 virus on non-porous surfaces. Old 45 is a simple thinker, as are a significant number of his followers. He hears something like “bleach kills the virus” and thinks “hey let’s inject that into people to kill the virus” without thinking about…uh, let’s say “obvious side effects”. Sure, the media went a bit overboard in suggesting that Trump directly said people should inject bleach into themselves as a means of fighting COVID — that much, I’ll grant. But it isn’t hard to see how they got there, considering Trump was likely thinking that exact thought as he spoke.
Don’t blame me for the perception that a not-zero number of Trump sycophants think injecting bleach as a COVID-killer is a good idea. Blame the guy who made that line of thinking even possible in the first place: Donald “if people want to go back to the beach, they need to inject themselves with bleach” Trump.
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Re:
“ well, you can likely see how commenters here have concluded that you’re in favor of compelled hosting, no matter how many times you claim otherwise”
I respect the private property rights more than free speech rights. And therefore accept the private service has the rights to moderate at any level they chose.
“And what if someone blows into your mentions with that bullshit — for what reason should you shoulder the burden of moderating that bullshit if Twitter could at least try to prevent it from reaching your timeline first? “
I’m not sure what you mean by “your mentions”. I assume that like my threads? Then yes; a bit annoying. I can flag it to hide, or respond to it or ignore it. I wouldn’t want anyone else making that decision for me though.
‘if people want to go back to the beach, they need to inject themselves with bleach’
Anyone who is dumb enough to believe the lie of the mainstream news that Trump said inject bleach, and then went and did so, is hardly a sad loss in my book.
Another thing stated in the same paragraphing of the discussion was a, look into it, and b) with doctors involved.
So if those stupid people went and did it without a doctor and self medicated… so be it
Context. People who took one tiny comment OUT of context and injected bleach and dropped dead likely did the world a favour.
Those that listened to what the President said, and not the selective misquoting, didn’t inject bleach. (Any that did definitely did us a favour).
Those that read/heard the dems say ‘Trump said inject bleach’ and did so because someone else said the President said so, likely did the world a favour.
Much like a university student who gets drunk and sticks his pole in a light socket, I have zero pity.
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And yet, you have continually come down on the side of reforming 230 — on the side of people who want compelled hosting. You don’t accept those rights; you begrudge their existence while looking for a way to erase them.
You say you use Twitter, yet you have no idea what “mentions” are? You are woefully undereducated about social media; no wonder you think the way you do about it.
Learn you some shit on that, then we can continue that part of the conversation. (Don’t look at me to educate you. That isn’t my responsibility.)
No doctor — except maybe for a complete sociopath — would seriously consider injecting household disinfectants into people even as an experiment. (And before you say “BuT hE dIdN’t SaY hOuSeHoLd DiSiNfEcTaNtS!”: Again, look at the context of what was said directly before he brought up the idea and know that Trump is a…simple thinker.) That you’re still defending the idea — and you are, whether you realize it or not — makes me all the more sure that you really are a libertarian.
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“ And yet, you have continually come down on the side of reforming 230”
Look at my first post to this article.
I’m clearly against it.
“ You say you use Twitter”
No. I said I have a Twitter account. I don’t actively use it. Once every few months Pepsi posted a printable coupon. They stopped doing that. Or In stopped getting email notifications of them. But I don’t actively use Twitter.
I don’t use “social media” in general. I prefer the old long form commentary.Such as this.
The fast moving short jab posting never appealed to me
“ you really are a libertarian.”
Never hid that. I am what I am.
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Why keep lying that the two are at odds?
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They are: freedom to speak ends at the property line.
You do not have a universal right to speak anything anywhere.
I the same property boundaries that allow the Church of Satan to keep christians from speaking at a meeting allow christians to keep CoS philosophers from speaking at christian meetings.
Freedom of speech ends at the property line.
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"You can't use my soapbox" infringes nobody's rights in the slightest.
"It's illegal for you to say 'you can't use my soapbox'." (the censorship you want) does.
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I give in. Was that supposed to make sense?
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To people with reading comprehension.
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~~ It's illegal for you to say 'you can't use my soapbox'." (the censorship you want) does.~~
Analogy doesn’t make sense.
It’s perfectly legal to not allow someone to use your soapbox.
You own it. And that doesn’t equate to the internet: I can bar you from using my soapbox on my private property. I can bar you from using my soapbox on a public sidewalk. AND! I can bar you from using my soapbox in your house it’s my soapbox!
My soapbox my rules.
That’s not even a censorship geared analogy. Maybe I don’t want your dirty shoes on my clean soapbox.
Burying your intentions in riddles, abstracts, and poetry doesn’t make the message any more reachable.
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And once again you prove me correct.
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Undoubtedly.
But a person shouldn’t need a deep sea submersible to find the clue.
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The "Insightful" tag on my posts shows at least 5 people had no trouble seeing the sense in my post that you fail to.
Your continuing illiteracy and lack of capacity for rational thought are not my problem.
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"They are: freedom to speak ends at the property line. "
This isn't "being at odds" more than you can claim that two sides of a coin are in conflict. Or that neighboring nations are in a natural state of permanent war since they share a border.
There is no conflict between the various freedoms.
Conflict only arises when for one reason or another the freedom of the individual are infringed upon for the benefit of society as a whole. Incarceration of criminals or speeding tickets, for instance. It's only in cases such as these where conflict arises about where the reasonable border is to be drawn on when infringement is really desirable.
Some bad examples of this compromise include copyright, medical patents and FOSTA.
Some good examples include placing murderers in jail after due process, and many commercial regulations.
But freedom of speech and property rights are fundamentally not opposed.
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[Addendum]
Take moderation; everyone, including on private platforms, are usually free to say anything they like. If what they had to say was sufficiently offensive to the owner they get shown the door. After which they are still free to say anything they like. They just aren't free to visit the place they were banned from.
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"If what they had to say was sufficiently offensive to the owner they get shown the door"
Actually, it's more about what's offensive to the other people there than it is to the owner. If you spout some racist shit, the owner might secretly agree, but he may well still kick you out if you've just offended the tables of paying customers next to you.
This is what so many of the anti-230 knuckledraggers seem to forget - Twitter et al are businesses first and foremost. The reason they're moderating and banning people is not because they have some high moral standard that they are trying to impose on everyone and shape society to their will. They're doing it because advertisers and other users will go elsewhere if certain types of activity go on unaddressed.
This is why so many explicitly right-wing social networks are failing to get traction and make a profit - certain types of speech are bad for business. Not a problem if you want your KKK themed bar out in the sticks where your fellow klan members meet up, harder to run a bar in the middle of a big city with that kind of attitude. If your bar depends on attracting a lot of people and you do things that deter them instead, it will fail, same with a social network that needs mainstream traction to function.
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Well stated.
“ This is why so many explicitly right-wing social networks are failing to get traction and make a profit ”
I think they have an image issue. The majority of ‘people we want’ are already content enough where they are. opening up another place for them to go isn’t going to move them alone.
What you attract are trolls. Alt right trolls and alt left trolls. Who do nothing but fill a service with giant claim wars.
I’m not naive: there’s little doubt that services like Twitter etc occasionally toss people because they don’t like them. Left, right, and centre.
But such actions are fractions of fractions of the user base.
Most people stick with the devil they know.
That’s why windows is still the most used OS. Despite being ‘genetically’ inferior.
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You do not have a universal right to speak anything anywhere.
Now extrapolate that to social media.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Moderation is not speech?
Note:
By "artificial," pathological liar lostinlodos means "factual."
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“ By "artificial," pathological liar lostinlodos means "factual.””
They we’re not at odds. The ruling reasoning is quite clear.
One service removed nothing proactively and thus had zero liability.
One service built its entire selling pitch on active moderation. And thus was held liable for acting as a content editor.
Where are the rulings at odds?
Fill us in Toom1275
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For what reason should a service that refuses to moderate third-party speech be less liable for that speech than a service that moderates third-party speech and maybe misses a few things here in there because humanity isn’t perfect?
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Quite simple. A service that takes no active participation in the happenings has no way to know what exists without notification.
230 gives service owners the right to moderate in any method they see fit and still be protected for failing to catch illegalities.
Prior to 230 the act of moderation held a private property owner liable for editorial control when they missed things (under the premise that it would be more important to remove illegal content that that that made the owner uncomfortable).
So agin, not at odds. Passive host vs active editor.
Still No sign of alternative overlap.
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Not outside of the erroneous Prodigy ruling
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It's not that the rulings were at odds. It's that, taken together, the rulings encouraged a lack of moderation. Cox and Wyden came up with 230 because they thought that was dumb.
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Ding ding ding. Have a preverbal cookie!
230 was created to encourage more companies to moderate. From the basics of moving or hiding to the censorship of deletionism.
It was developed to give small heavily moderated components like a prodigy a fighting chance at a time wher most services were not censored.
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Re: Re: Re: Moderation is not speech?
Now once any website is notified of any of their user's speech, they now have "direct editorial control" of this speech and they should be given reasonable time to exercise editorial control before they lose immunity. Fair?
No? Circumstances change, a platform may decide that speech that they were willing to allow before isn't something they want to deal with now, and if platforms are faced with a ticking clock on moderation you're not only setting a time limit on their first amendment and property rights you're also encouraging them to moderation extremely strictly because they only get one chance.
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“Fair?”
No, it isn’t fair.
The primary issue with your suggestion lies in the “notified of a user’s speech” stipulation. Under what condition is a site “notified” — when a user submits a report, when an automated moderation bot acts on the report, or when a human moderator receives the report? Not every service will be able to process reports as quickly as you or I can snap our fingers. Potentially harmful and heinous speech could remain on the service indefinitely if the delay between a report and a human moderator eyeballing the report is “too long” under your stipulation. After all, no service would risk losing its 230 immunity by moderating such speech after the “editorial control” limits you suggested.
But let’s put this into practical perspective so you get a real idea of what I’m talking about. Let’s say that your stipulation says a service has 24 hours, upon the filing of a report by a user, to have a human moderator act upon that report — and any act of moderation after that 24-hour period, done by either human hands or automation, would result in the loss of 230 immunity.
A bigot posts a racial slur on Twitter. Someone reports the tweet at 11:54am on a Wednesday. Under your stipulation (with the conditions laid out above), Twitter’s moderation staff has until 11:54am the next day to moderate that speech. Their missing that deadline — which is exactly what happens, for reasons that don’t need exploring at this juncture — means the speech must remain up or else Twitter loses its 230 immunity.
So I have One Simple Question for you once you process this. Yes or no: Twitter, Facebook, etc. being unable to moderate bigotry because “we didn’t get to it fast enough” — is that the exact outcome you want your suggestion to enable?
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Re: “Fair?”
The example you gave doesn't work only proved 24 hours for all notices is unreasonable.
Let me give you one example that will work. A platform is required publish the list of all notices it received. Every day it has to moderate at least one notice in this list. This moderation is now not protected against 230. If "one" is extreme for you, how about 1% or a number based on size of platform?
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Re: Re: “Fair?”
Ever heard of how Hank the Angry, Drunken Dwarf won the beauty poll at People Magazine in 1998?
Never underestimate the power of internet, which means what you propose can be used in nefarious ways quite easily. You want to add complexities to something that is currently very simple and straightforward and for which only a miniscule amount of loudmouths have a problem with because they aren't allowed to be assholes everywhere.
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Re: Re: Re: “Fair?”
You don't even have to go back that far. Just look at Boaty McBoatface for evidence!
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Re: Re: Re: Moderation is not speech?
No, because that means that they can be taken to court every time they disagree with the person notifying them about a post. Just think of the damage the politicians could do with system that worked as you propose.
Take down on notice is a way to enable everybody to censor the Internet and leave it devoid of content.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Moderation is not speech?
You argued that your suggestion of "take down on notice" doesn't work. I agree, but it doesn't mean there does not exist a solution that will work.
Newspapers do actions that may have consequences all the time. They have not gone extinct yet.
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Newspapers have lawyers, who usually steer them away from actions that can get them sued.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Moderation is not speech?
We have a solution that works. It's called Section 230.
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I kind of agree. 230 is a fairly good solution that never errs on the side of making platform liable to speech it does not make, which is important.
Yet it now shields platforms from with too much immunity. This can encourage more evil platforms, as long as they keep their act in moderation. Not saying it's happening, but worrisome enough that it can happen.
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[Asserts facts not in evidence]
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How?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Moderation is not speech?
"Yet it now shields platforms from with too much immunity."
Shields them from what? The only think section 230 protects against is liability for the actions of a user. They're still liable for anything they do themselves, they just can't be held responsible for something they didn't do just because someone was on their property at the time. Where's the problem? What's encouraged that's not acceptable?
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Newspapers have editors who pick and choose what speech to publish. Twitter doesn’t.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Moderation is not speech?
"Newspapers do actions that may have consequences all the time"
Newspapers have an editor who chooses when to publish, where and how, and does so before publication. They have lawyers who will advise him on this, and defend against any mistakes he makes.
A web platform doesn't know what will be published, because it does not vet anything before a user publishes it. Because of this, they have thousands, if not millions, of times more words published by volume and they moderate the published works when made aware of them either by their automated tool or being informed by an outside party.
If your argument is that web platforms are (or should be) run like a physical newspaper, you might want to rethink the basics.
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Re: Moderation is not speech?
What has been distorted?
A café refusing to serve a customer behaving like an asshole and upsetting the other patrons is something no one will bat an eye at as being fully within the café's rights. The government have mandated that protected groups may not be discriminated against, so no, the café can't choose not to serve a customer based on race since that's discrimination.
No, patent and copyright is a time-limited monopoly enforced by the government which is nothing like 230. Someone telling you to get off their property is them declaring they don't want to associate with you by using their free speech rights. Traditional media is all curated content before it's published, an interactive service can only moderate/curate after the fact which is why laws for traditional media is different compared to interactive services.
You can't have a genuine discussion at all unless you understand it's about more than just speech, it's the whole of first amendment we must discuss then, which includes the freedom of association and moderation is just a facet of that.
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Re: Re: Moderation is not speech?
I am saying exactly that. This is discrimination is the reason the government can bar the cafe's speech, which is rare occasion the government is allowed to speak like that. The cafe's speech would otherwise be legit in all other situations.
If you read everything I said again, I did not suggest platforms have no rights to speech. I am just saying it probably needs to have consequence for its moderations, which are speech.
The fact that it is a platform so it is forced to make this speech 1B times a day would call for newer rules than TV and physical newspaper, which is exactly what 230 is doing. But it does not mean they have to be 100% immune whatever they do, which the current 230 insists.
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230 makes platforms immune from moderation because — and I think you’re gonna love this — the lawmakers who authored 230 wanted to give family-friendly platforms the right to moderate without facing lawsuits for speech they didn’t moderate. Like, that’s literally on the Congressional record thanks to Chris Cox:
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But it does not mean they have to be 100% immune whatever they do, which the current 230 insists.
How many unruly drunks should a bar be able to kick out in a day/week before they suffer a consequence for it? How many times should a store be allowed to tell people 'shoes and shirt or or no service' before they have to start letting people in regardless of how much clothing they do/do not have on or face a lawsuit for it?
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Moderation is not speech?
Sorry to break the news to you, but if a bar kicks you out, you can always sue it if you think it is not legal. The bar's "speech" has consequences.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Moderation is not speech?
You really think that you're correct about that potential lawsuit, don't you.
I wonder what'll happen when you grow up enough to realize that private property rights don't disappear just because one allows members of the public to come onto said property. There is nothing illegal about refusing to associate with someone else, regardless of one's status as the owner of a private property, or as a member of the public, or somewhere in between.
Notwithstanding the above, unlawful discrimination is a horse of a different color than the more general examples herein. But do note, the burden of proof is still incumbent upon the plaintiff to prove that the property owner committed an unlawful act.
Chances of winning a lawsuit for discrimination: difficult, but not impossible.
Same for being on the receiving end of "because I said so": don't bet the farm on it.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Moderation is not speech?
Sorry to break the news to you, but apparently a large percentage of the US population are sue-happy idiots and they will sue anyone for the slightest reason, and a majority of these cases are frivolous. And this has zero to do with you saying moderation should have consequences for platforms, or are you talking about "consequences" as in frivolous idiotic lawsuits that is a drag on society?
This also makes me wonder if you actually read the article which aptly illustrates that there are an abundance of sue-happy idiots in the US. Now, imagine if any interactive service would be liable for their moderation decisions - frivolous suits galore and then no more interactive services because the cost to operate went through the roof. Do you think you would be able to have this discussion here if that was the case? Hmm?
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“ frivolous suits galore and then no more interactive services because the cost to operate went through the roof.”
Well, that or you continue on without moderation at all.
230 didn’t stop frivolous suits. It just makes then unlikely winnable.
Opening up a giant hole in the regulation won’t help anyone. Being kicked off a private web host is not going to get anywhere. Ultimately it’s private property and you were told to get out. Then they locked the door and changed the key.
Even if you find a judge that believe like I do that hosting material doesn’t equate to association: you’ll still loose on the obvious issue.
Facetwit is private service. You don’t have a right to crap on the floor on facetwit any more than you have a right to crap on the floor in a café.
And while you have a right to free speech the private company doesn’t have to host you.
George Carlin and Dice didn’t do shows at the catholic league for the same reason Donald Trump doesn’t host the DNC. Private companies choose what to host and not host.
A private company can use, and yes, abuse, moderation in any way they see fit.
We may not like the awful decisions companies like facetwit make, but it’s their private choice to do so.
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Except it does. Choose to accept racist speech on your platform, regardless of how you feel about such speech, and your platform will be thought of as friendly to racist speech (and to racists). People will associate your platform with racism, even if you never wanted that to happen. And if you don’t believe that could happen, look at what people think of Gab and Parler (coughworstpeopleproblemcough).
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Re:
Some…
Large sites that don’t moderate are bound to have undeservings.
We dealt with that on CIS by allowing collapse flagging. AOL user the same system from early on.
Parler has flagging: you can report content that is illegal.
You can mute or block users from your feed.
That the service has bad people as well as good? So be it. That’s part of open speech.
The user can choose what to and not to view.
Only the ignorant believe Parler has no moderation. They simply don’t censor. It’s up to each user what they allow or don’t allow.
That it’s mostly Republican talking heads political commentary is what drives me away.
I support their goal. Uncensored information. Unfortunately, in my opinion, big tech has babied people for so long Parler won’t pick up the mainstream.
Especially when news coverage ignores the positive aspects of choice and ability; focusing only on this person or that one is on Parler.
Why use a site where people have different opinions when you can use facetwit and be coddled?
You know, clicking that … is so difficult! Having to CHOOSE with two clicks and not just one. Oh the horror.
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For what reason should the burden of moderating racial slurs on Twitter fall upon the targets of those slurs? For what reason should a Black Twitter user subject themselves to racialized harassment (including racial slurs) for the sake of being able to block/mute other users when Twitter could prevent much of that by moderating racist assholes off the platform? What gives a racist any more right to use Twitter than the target of that racism?
You’re not looking hard enough if you sincerely think Facebook or Twitter (you can stop saying “Facetwit”, by the by) aren’t filled with “different opinions” from all sides of the political spectrum. That neither service regards racism, anti-queer propaganda, and COVID disinformation as speech worth hosting is irrelevant — and 100% legal, no matter how much that fact hurts your feelings.
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“ For what reason should the burden of moderating racial slurs on Twitter fall upon the targets of those slurs? ”
The choice of rules belong to the platform owner. Facetwit decides what goes out and what doesn’t.
“ What gives a racist any more right to use Twitter than the target of that racism?”
Who the owner chooses to side with.
“ You’re not looking hard enough …”
I’m not looking be it facetwit or Parler or any other such 2.0/3.0 site. It’s all mostly crap in my book.
“ you can stop saying “Facetwit”, by the by”
Ohkay then. Twitface. Better?
“ no matter how much that fact hurts your feelings.”
Wrong user. My feelings aren’t hurt.
I signed up for Facebook to get coupons for Pepsi.
I signed up for twitter because some companies I support/use had made the terrible disgusting, but monetarily understandable, choice to close down self-hosted forums.
Making the platform the sole method of contact.
Instick around because sometimes progressives say stupid things and the only way to grab screenshot proof of their stupidity is to be logged in.
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"some companies I support/use had made the terrible disgusting, but monetarily understandable, choice to close down self-hosted forums."
Why do I get the idea that there's probably very good reasons why those forums were shut down, you just don't like it because you agreed with the bad behaviour that was going on that convinced them to rid themselves of that community?
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I don’t like censorship.
I equate deletionism to censorship.
I can not be swayed from my view here.
Actually the majority of the 2008 and 2014 purges was porn. Along with that majority: hacking, cracking, penetration, security, anything that could potentially run afoul of law. So yes, things I agree with.
Verizon is well known for its heavy handed actions in user content.
CIS is one of the few places I give the company credit on allowing an independent subsidiary to be independent.
FD: I’m still technically an employee even though my last paycheque was 1999. I still have “administrative access”, the power and ability to edit, modify, remove, hide, move, and ban.
I accept the world as it has become. I carry out my, now volunteer, duties by reporting tos violations that require removal to another mod. It’s enough of an out of my hands to let me sleep at night.
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"I don’t like censorship."
Yes, even though you struggle to define it a lot of the time.
"I equate deletionism to censorship."
Yes, if you invent and redefine words you can say a lot of things.
If the company involved in hosting the forum decided not to offer the forum any longer, that's not censorship. I used to host a movie blog that I eventually let expire and drop offline because I rarely updated it in the end after using Letterboxd for a better experience for me and my readers, and didn't use the URL for anything else. I didn't censor anyone commenting because I didn't want to continue paying for things I didn't use, yet according to your stupid comment I did.
"Actually the majority of the 2008 and 2014 purges was porn"
Are we playing this game again, where I have to guess what specific examples you have in mind, then presumably finding that the facts don't support your assertions when you give specifics as to what you're blathering on about?
"Verizon is well known for its heavy handed actions in user content."
Most major corporations are, especially when they affect revenue. So?
"FD: I’m still technically an employee even though my last paycheque was 1999. I still have “administrative access”, the power and ability to edit, modify, remove, hide, move, and ban."
That sounds like a terrible business model.
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It's an appeal to ancient authority. It's like the football jock who's ended up as a washed up MGTOW now trying to assert his alpha maledom by alluding to some vaguely semi-relevant accomplishment literally nobody in the 2020s would pay a passable salary for.
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“ Yes, if you invent and redefine words you can say a lot of things.”
Your well aware of my definition since I’ve posted the definitions from dictionaries enough times.
“ That sounds like a terrible business model.”
Hey: if they keep sending tickets I’ll keep dealing with them. 🤷♂️
Given it’s almost purely a news service now reposting everyone else’s news and has minimal user content facing the public it’s gotten quite rare.
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"Hey: if they keep sending tickets I’ll keep dealing with them."
Yeah, but most businesses can't rely on unpaid random people who had an association with them in the past. Bravo on you if you're not abusing the access and continuing to work for free, but hopefully you understand why most places cannot do this without serious problems.
"minimal user content"
Oh, so completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand and utterly pointless for you to bring up? OK...
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“ Oh, so completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand and utterly pointless for you to bring up? OK...”
https://www.compuserve.com/
Only because someone was bound to go looking it up and come back with ‘there’s only x number of interactive points of access’
The point was CIS had the largest paid user base for nearly 25 years. And survived.
Verizon opted to cut the paid moderation. Which cut our team to less than 50 people, that I’m aware of.
Then came a new tos and a big fat pdf rule book of things we were supposed to remove on any page or sub page with advertising. (This is where I point to advertisers calling the shots).
There now a handful of sub sites left at {name}.compuserve and /cis/ that still allow user interaction.
The message was CIS made it through the 90s with zero non-legal deletion, and half way through the 00s with minimal. Before being turns into just another landing page by corporate greed.
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"The message was CIS made it through the 90s with zero non-legal deletion, and half way through the 00s with minimal"
So, before the modern internet existed and before most of the general public was on there, it was different.
That's not in question, just the question why you think it's even remotely relevant to social media sites with billions of active users.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: cis
On the flip side CIS/Compuserve is a good example for what would happen without 230
Corporations rarely have the user in mind.
Corporate ownership comes with profits in mind. So they bow to the whims of the money holders.
First they created bizarre moderation rules from thin air.
Like “god” must be capitalised so as not to offend.
Then they block all non-verified replies on religious related topics.
Then they block all replies on the topic.
Then they block all replies. Everywhere
Some topics had a long period of having all comments held until verified by a moderator. Health and wellness was one.
Most volunteers quit in this period. Rather than read hundreds of reply’s per topic.
It’s a prime example of where things can go.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: cis
It's a prime example of how irrelevant the situation is to what everyone else is trying to address, and thus how pointless it is for you to keep bringing it up.
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Both services have automated systems that look for keywords and such to moderate, sure. (It’s probably how I got dinged by Twitter for cussing at a Verified User once.) But neither service has a “pre-publication” system that holds back posts for personalized (or even automated) vetting before the post goes live. They don’t decide “what goes out” — they decide what stays up after it goes out. Moderation is always reactive.
And under “reform 230” ideas, that owner wouldn’t be able to side against the racist because the speech of the racist is legally protected and must therefore be hosted under the principles of Freeze Peach.
Maybe they got tired of dealing with a smaller version of the Worst People Problem. Maybe they weren’t seeing enough traffic to justify keeping those forums open.
Not…really? Like, between Twitter itself and various instances of the Nitter frontend, I can take screenshots of publicly viewable tweets just fine.
Also: You’re implying that conservatives don’t post bullshit — or that you’re explicitly overlooking their bullshit because you’re aligned with them politically.
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Re:
“ And under “reform 230” ideas, that owner wouldn’t be able to side against the racist because the speech of the racist is legally protected and must therefore be hosted under the principles of Freeze Peach.”
Agreed.
Any modification takes away the rights of the private service owners.
“ Also: You’re implying that conservatives don’t post bullshit”
I’m sure they do.
But enough times I click on some sites embedded tweet and it asked for a log in: I keep it around. I can’t remember the last time I actually posted something. Probably once or twice last year.
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And considering how you keep whining about “censorship”, it’s clear that — at best — you lean towards the side of preventing “censorship” (i.e., compelled hosting).
I’ve literally never been asked to log into Twitter to see a tweet, embedded or directly. Whatever the fuck you’re doing wrong is on you.
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“ And considering how you keep whining about “censorship”, it’s clear that — at best — you lean towards the side of preventing “censorship” (i.e., compelled hosting).”
I would prefer they chose less censorious methods of moderation. But respect the private property owners’ legal rights more.
“ I’ve literally never been asked to log into Twitter to see a tweet, embedded or directly. Whatever the fuck you’re doing wrong is on you”
Obviously. It’s not really an issue though. An extra click isn’t going to ruin my day.
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And hat becomes a never ending battle as trolls keep creating new accounts, and people keep reposting content that is taken down.
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Yep. Such is the way of an open internet.
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Which makes it a battle that only the trolls can win. Why do you keep on trying to ensure that you can troll anybody you choose until they abandon the Internet as an Interactive medium?
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Because trolls who aren’t featured eventually give up. The few that don’t can’t bother anyone when their hidden. They can be read by those who want to read it. And not bother anyone who doesn’t want to read it.
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Define “eventually” in this context. How long a period of time are we talking here? Because we’ve got this one troll here who’s been pissed off for a decade about having someome quote Barack Obama at him… 👀
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No idea. Given this site has flag hiding they obviously aren’t /that/ disruptive.
In my experience most give up after a few weeks. Moving on to somewhere else where they get more views and responses.
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How many times will people being targetted block the same trolls using different names before they abandon a site?
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As long as they like the site over one user.
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And how long should they subject themselves to that harassment, hmm? How long do you think should they tolerate it? And since you so despise censorship, for what reason shouldn’t the platform step in to do something about that harassment by, say, banning the troll in a way that prevents them from getting back on the platform?
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Such decisions are difficult.
Even I have resort to actually banning people, eventually.
There are reasons. It just think it should be the absolute last resort. Not the first step.
Again I don’t understand why you and I keep arguing. The users of this site did a great job in turning my view on 230 with rational arguments.
We got there for different reasons but a win is a win. Take the trophy!
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Because you insist, with the fervor of a religious zealot, that moderation is censorship. That position, as benign as you think it is, can cause harm if other people pick up on it. They can use that position to further their goals of compelling the hosting of speech and use you as an example of a (somewhat) reasonable person who agrees with them (your sudden newfound respect for property rights notwithstanding).
By likening moderation to censorship, you are actively supporting the same people who make the same argument but use that argument to justify trying to make Twitter host speech its owners don’t want to host. You are on their side, whether you like it or not, every time you repeat that phrase.
That’s why I’m still arguing with you: You refuse to see how you’re trying to help harm the Internet because you want so much for your feelings about “moderation is censorship” to be validated. I’m not here to do that, and I won’t do that, and you will never see me do that for you or anyone else.
Moderation is a platform/service owner or operator saying “we don’t do that here”. Personal discretion is an individual telling themselves “I won’t do that here”. Editorial discretion is an editor saying “we won’t print that here”, either to themselves or to a writer. Censorship is someone saying “you won’t do that anywhere” alongside threats or actions meant to suppress speech. Moderation is not censorship, even if it involves deletion/bans, no matter how much your precious fucking feelings tell you to believe otherwise.
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Less than tactful, but answers the question.
So yes, I guess your definition works. As I am against deletion, withdrawal, withholding, of materials.
Just remember people can reach the same goal by different methods.
Something like the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Forced hosting would be devastating to property rights (which I am more concerned with than you).
It also carries association implications (which you are more worried about than I am).
Ultimately we agree however, that 230 provides protection for private service hosts who choose to moderate. Thus allowing the owners to administer their communities within their heir view. That’s a good thing!
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Now if you could stop referring to moderation as censorship, we’d be generally okay with one another (your continued support for the orange fascist I refer to as Old 45 notwithstanding).
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Your continuing presence here proves that fantasy of yours be a baseless lie.
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Did you just call me a troll?
All I do is seek rational discussion. Opening myself to other’s opinions.
Broadening my consumption.
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Eh, you’re close to the line without actually crossing it — and I speak from experience on both sides of that line.
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[Asserts facts contradicted by every piece of evidence]
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"Because trolls who aren’t featured eventually give up."
They really don't.
Irrespective your arguments are flawed because your premises are false;
1) Everyone can set up a blog on their own.
2) Everyone can dictate the rules which are in place on their own property.
3) Everyone can speak freely. They just aren't necessarily allowed to enter someone else's property to hold that speech.
4) Everyone can put up a comment on the wall of someone else's house but if the owner of said house doesn't like that comment they can take it down.
The internet never stopped being open. Platforms made rules for themselves. And they did so because the main majority of visitors to social sites simply don't want the burden to deal with trolls to be on them.
Those trolls are still free to open blogs of their own or visit sites which have a strict no-moderation policy.
There is no conflict between the principles of free speech and property ownership. There's just a conflict between trolls who feel entitled to go potty on the floor of other people's living rooms and the people who feel their living rooms aren't public bathrooms.
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And the spammers and trolls take over, users numbers plummet, and advertisers go elsewhere, social media sites collapse and vanish from the Internet. Net result you could post what you want, if you could find a site accepting user comments.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Moderation is not speech?
Unless that decision was based upon a legally protected factor(race, gender, or similar) odds are good the one bringing the lawsuit will lose, so let me rephrase my question:
How many unruly drunks should a bar be able to kick out in a day/week before the legal protections(first amendment and property rights) that allow them to do so are thrown out the window? How many times can a bar show someone the door for swearing at the staff before the next time suddenly becomes something they can be sued for and have a good chance of losing because they made use of their rights 'too many' times already?
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I bet most of you mistook my reply to be about discrimination. It was not.
If you truly have a case against a bar kicking you out, sue away. You have the burden of proof, so good luck. We definitely don't lack sue-happy people to want to sue every company out there that treats them unfairly, yet companies (those without 230 protections) are not extinct, yet, so we might have done something right?
If you agree with me that there are limited situations where platforms' could be liable due to its moderation practices, the same applies to potential platform lawsuits when 230 is slightly updated. These lawsuits are currently hard and costly to defend only because they are rare and there is lack of concrete precedents. It takes time for the first dozens of cases to be cleared though the court system for more specific doctrines to be built up for more legal certainty.
Of course, what's more important is the society to have a real discussion on whether all platforms are immune, period, or that moderations are still speech, and platforms still have their first amendment rights until the moderations (not others' speech) harm people.
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Therein lies your problem: We don’t. The only liability a platform should have for third-party speech is if it knowingly and intentionally refuses to delete illegal speech (e.g., CSAM, true threats of violence) — and that’s less a “moderation” issue than it is a “breaking state/federal laws” issue. In any other situation, the platform should have immunity from liability for speech it didn’t publish itself.
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You're saying as if speech has to be "published". Protected speech can be an action. I argue moderation is speech of the platform. This is the case platform should not have immunity for.
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In which case, you’re arguing for compelled association with speech a service doesn’t want to host. Your underlying reasoning is essentially that moderation — “the speech of the platform” — would block legally protected (yet morally heinous) speech from being on the platform. Under that reasoning, no platform could block or delete spam, porn, spam porn (those sick fucks…), racial slurs, anti-queer slurs, Klan propaganda, pro-“conversion ‘therapy’ ” propaganda, COVID-19 mis- and disinformation, and anyone who says “Yoko Kanno sucks”. Your changes to the law wouldn’t — couldn’t! — allow that happen.
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What? No! "Moderation is speech of platform" does not imply the platform blocking anything legal or illegal would be not okay. Whatever choice the platform picked is still 1A protected speech. Just that the platform can be sued for this speech, according to existing laws. Just like a newspaper can be legitimately sued for what it publishes, or sometimes what it doesn't (there's merit in some cases, just like sometimes there's merit to sue a bar from banning some customers)
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Existing law says they can’t generally be sued over moderation decisions. The law that says so is 47 U.S.C. § 230 — i.e., the same law you’re arguing should somehow be “fixed” to allow lawsuits over moderation decisions.
A newspaper has editors who decide what to publish before it is published. Twitter doesn’t moderate speech until after someone publishes it on Twitter. The two situations are not remotely the same at all.
If the bar bans customers for being Black, sure. If the bar bans customers for being belligerent assholes, hell no. The difference there is whether the bar bans someone for what they do or for who they are.
The same goes for Twitter: It can’t ban people based on race or other protected classes (e.g., religion), but it can ban people who violate the TOS by posting racial slurs aimed at people of color. Twitter has that right, and nobody — including you — has yet to adequately explain why it shouldn’t.
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"I argue moderation is speech of the platform. This is the case platform should not have immunity for."
False equivalence. Moderation falls under the "rights of association" more than it does "speech".
There is NO law under which you are forced, as a private property owner, to allow entry to other private citizens, to your own domicile. Unless you are making the case that alt-right trolls and other undesirables should be considered police forces with a warrant.
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Just because a lawsuit can be filed, doesn't mean it isn't fruadulent, nor is it a "consequence."
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The other way round. Not allowing me to sue you (with legit claims) for what you did to harm me is a lack of consequence on your action.
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Please provide evidence that shows how moderation has ever harmed you.
I’ll wait.
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It like he though the brackets would make it somehow legal.
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Why ignore the fact that moderation can never, ever hit such a bar?
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The First Amendment would like to remind you that government action is not a lawful "consequence" for exercising free speech rights in a way you don't like, snowflake.
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Agreed.
Why should anyone exercising their first amendment rights on their own property be saddled with consequences in the context of moderation? Anyone using a platform agreed to abide by the platform rules, suggesting that the platform should face consequences for enforcing the rules is bereft of reason.
They aren't 100% immune since they are still liable for their own speech, but telling an asshole to piss off because they don't want to be associated with that type of person is them exercising their right of free association. How do you propose to punish someone for that without breaking the first amendment?
As I said, you can't have a genuine discussion at all unless you understand it's about more than just speech.
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Since when is "exercising their first amendment rights" without consequences?
We have been drawing this arbitrary line on upfront editorial control. Do you propose newspapers should just be allowed to exercise their first amendment rights, and not be sued if they happened to have publish libel by others unknowingly?
If I can make a platform that moderates out everything but burglar discussions, I am still a platform that only makes moderation decisions (never "their own speech" per your definition) and protected by 230, right?
This is what I meant by "moderation is speech". We could give it a very high bar to sue someone based on moderations, but nonetheless it is speech. We could choose to be satisfied that this kind of speech is sacred and all platform be protected at all cost (like 230) or we could act more like we prefer more good platforms and hence platforms should be allowed to be protected if they have done enough. We have yet to find what "done enough" should be, not moderate-within-24hr nonsense.
A correctly-revised 230 should not make a platform stand with its "right of free association" harder than it currently does. This is not about punishing platforms. It is about allowing people harmed by platforms' moderation decisions (not the speech it hosts) to get compensation. This is what "you’re responsible for your own speech online—not the speech of others" from the article should mean.
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Don't move the goal. I explicitly said in the context of moderation.
It's not arbitrary for the simple reason that you have someone that is responsible for saying: Publish this. If the person can't be arsed to check what they actually publish, the responsibility doesn't disappear. There's a substantial difference between fixed and interactive media.
Yes, it's explicitly stated in section 230 - perhaps you should read it.
You are constructing an argument based on faulty assumptions. You are talking about speech while ignoring the rest of the first amendment. You want to punish platforms and force association with the threat of lawsuits. It's the worst kind of speech, forced.
Huh? Either you have the right of free association or not. And this "correctly revised 230", what would it say without breaking the constitution?
If the platform doesn't want to be associated with some types of content they should be sued or punished if they remove/moderate it? How the fuck isn't that ALL about punishing the platform for having the nerve to enforce their TOS and protect all other users from stumbling onto the offending dreck?
Also, please give us examples of these users who have been "harmed" by platforms and what they said to be harmed. I've heard this argument ad nauseum but I have yet to see anyone managing to back it up. And anecdotes doesn't count.
"should"... But it doesn't, not even in the eyes of the law and the constitution because forced speech is bad.
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How have I moved the goal? You can exercise your first amendment right, i.e. not being barred from speech, but everyone can sue you for your speech as they like, and that is your consequence. If your moderation itself (not others' speech) violates any law, you should bear the consequence. 230 prevents that.
It is indeed an example of why platforms can harm. If you disagree even this, fine.
Since you mentioned this the 2nd time, I might not understood what you meant by "the rest of the first amendment". Can you explain more?
When did I say I want to punish platforms at all or force them to associate? I want to lift a law that prevents them from getting sued even when they break other laws. How is allowing a person be sued on other laws (for something they did) a "threat" or forcing them to do anything?
Just like when a bar wants to discriminate someone by race, they could be sued. Just because this is your private property doesn't mean you can do anything inside. You could be in your house and you fired a gun into the street and hurt someone / made too much noise to annoy your neighbor / remodeled your house to violate building code. If "moderation" is an action you do, it should be something I can sue you for. You are good if there is not another law that says the way you moderate (remove/keep) the content is illegal.
This argument can go both ways. Why don't you give me a proof of why moderation is so harmless that anything that you do to moderate will not harm anyone?
Imagine a 230-ish law that says "no one can sue you if you sing at home". While singing usually doesn't harm anyone, what if it does? Now the victim has no way to get justice.
(I love discussing with you more on the real issue, but I don't know what I can respond if you keep alleging me of forcing speech/association or making threats to platforms, which I didn't say.)
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Moderation can’t violate the law unless it is legitimately (and provably) biased against a protected class of citizens as outlined by either state or federal law. Twitter admins can’t ban Black users from Twitter for being Black — but Black users can be banned for violating the Terms of Service.
And I hate to break this to you, but “conservative” (or “liberal”, for that matter) is not a protected class.
While the First Amendment doesn’t explicitly mention the right of association, Supreme Court rulings have determined that such a right exists. The government generally cannot compel or deny association between anyone without a damned good reason for doing so. That goes for social media, too: Nobody has a right to make someone give them a platform or an audience.
By repealing 230, you would be forcing services into one of three corners: Overmoderation, undermoderation, or shutdown. A service would have to either forgo association with most speech in favor of the most inoffensive content, associate with the most heinous and offensive speech, or refuse association with all speech. A refusal by a service to do any of the three would result in a death by 1,000 cuts…er, lawsuits. How is that not using the force of law to compel an association (or disassociation)?
Moderating speech is not, per se, unlawful discrimination — no matter how much your feelings might tell you otherwise.
The First Amendment protects your rights to speak freely and associate with whomever you want. It doesn’t give you the right to make others listen. It doesn’t give you the right to make others give you access to an audience. And it doesn’t give you the right to make a personal soapbox out of private property you don’t own.
Nobody is entitled to a platform or an audience at the expense of someone else — and that includes you. No lawsuit will ever change that fact.
How about no. You made the claim first; now let’s see you back it up.
I…
…I just…
…fucking what
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"…fucking what"
Actually causing harm by invocation, curses and seid has been covered in US law. "Alan" actually invoked early 19th century withcraft law right out of Salem.
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I'm still waiting for the examples of people who have been harmed by moderation that's not anecdotal. Unless you can produce said examples nothing you say matters since it's built upon a false premise.
And here a question for you:
If we take your premise of "harm", what about the harm to the platform if they leave up content that's inflammatory which could result in them losing investors or that it results in users disassociating themselves from the platform, how should the platform be compensated for that harm? Should the platform sue the user because of this harm?
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"Imagine a 230-ish law that says "no one can sue you if you sing at home". While singing usually doesn't harm anyone, what if it does? Now the victim has no way to get justice."
I'm not sure your argument gains credibility by invoking witchcraft law. Because by that argument I might as well state that unless you are shot dead within the year how are we going to prevent you from being the origin of the causal chain which ends with three people dead in China? You are making a Russel's Teapot claim.
Ironically the act of casting curses on another person from the sanctity of their own home has been covered fairly extensively. If someone is indeed hurt by some other person singing in their home then that already falls under criminal rather than civil law - but has a fairly impressive burden of proof to meet.
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It is about allowing people harmed by platforms' moderation decisions (not the speech it hosts) to get compensation
What 'harm' do you think people are suffering that is so bad that it deserves compensation and that isn't the result of a platform owner exercising their first amendment and property rights?
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“ Do you propose newspapers should just be allowed to exercise their first amendment rights, and not be sued if they happened to have publish libel by others unknowingly?”
Yes.
If I can make a platform that moderates out everything but burglar discussions, I am still a platform that only makes moderation decisions (never "their own speech" per your definition) and protected by 230, right?
Correct, to a degree. Such a set
Of conversment is bound to to walk very close to the line of illegal instruction. Stay on the lawful side and it’s your right.
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Re: Moderation is not speech?
"A cafe (not) serving one customer is speech."
Note how this is about a property owner refusing to tolerate a given person on their property.
"A person donating money to a political party is speech."
Note how this is a private entity giving money to another private entity.
"Burning a flag is speech."
Note how you get to do this in a public space but not in someone else's house?
"How is taking down (leaving up) someone's words on a website not speech?"
The same way your free speech isn't infringed if a bar owner refuses you entrance to their private property for some reason?
That website isn't public space, it's private property. If the government owned that website you'd have a point, otherwise it's just a false analogy - usually made in bad faith.
"Therefore 230 is more like patent and copyright. We allowed platforms to make some speech (moderation) without consequence because it brings greater good."
It really isn't. Platforms are private property. Their right to admit or evict participants based entirely on their own judgment doesn't, in the end fall under "free speech" regulations to begin with, because private property owners evicting undesirables doesn't threaten freedom of speech to begin with.
It falls under the "freedom of assembly" part of 1A and under the unenumerated rights clause - property ownership.
Copyright and patent, otoh, is basically government guaranteeing and protecting monopoly. And this is a violation of free speech.
Therefore; Copyright and patents do violate free speech, a private entity allowing or disallowing people from using their premises for speech does not.
Your argument is fundamentally invalid and based on false premises.
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Re: Moderation is not speech?
A bit of history to look at.
Prodigy, and computserve.
Both taken to court.
There Are some laws out there on what can be said on the net.
Before this FACT. these 2 were taken to court for this reason.
Freedom of speech and WHAT can be said.
1 Judge said the service should NOT remove speech.
1 judge said it was best to remove hate speech.
So if you can Make a consensus, I would think the Net would love it. Because we are ALL having a hard time with debating this, as companies have lost to both side of this.
All getting rid of 230 would do is make the SITE/owner/sever company, responsible for what is posted, as there Still would not be Any consensus of what can/cant be done.
99% of moderation comes from Spam, and Those EXPRESSING things in a way that isnt proper, and Cursing.
You cant edit the world. Every country has its regs to run things, the net does NOT have that. Until you can get the rest of the world to agree on a few things(you wont), Leave it alone.
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so the author is so pussified that he can't handle offensive content? time to grow a pair.
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In practice, no one likes offensive content, but there is an extreme minority that can't help themselves from reveling in it.
Anyone saying that they don't mind offensive content is either dishonest or they belong to the extreme minority.
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Ugh, tell me about it, I keep swearing at the local bar's staff and loudly telling people that the romans had the right idea with the whole 'feeding christians to the lions' bit and they have the audacity to keep trying to tell me to leave, they just need to nut up and stop being such wimps because I have a right to be an asshole without suffering any consequences for it dammit, this is 'murica!
(/s or perhaps /poe for the truly thick)
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…says someone who obviously has no experience in moderating a platform or curating a community. Not everyone revels in vice signalling, y’know.
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Funny thing is that without section 230 your grade school level comment wouldn’t be allowed. Thank you for making that rather crude example of why Section 230 is so valuable.
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But it also creates the concept that a platform can violate its own contract to provide service, under the flimsy excuse of "moderation".
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shut up, Meg
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"Violate it's own contract"...
Contract: Don't be an asshole or we kick you out.
Asshole: Waaahhh.. They kicked me out, they violated their own contract! Waahh, waahh, waahh
Grow the fuck up Koby.
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Better pony up that contract you signed and show where it was violated by the other party then.
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But if the website conditions the provision of service on the user agreeing to keep their content within certain standards (as defined by the website owner), and the user does not, then hasn't the user violated the contract, and is therefore subject to action up to no longer being allowed to use the website?
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If you don't want to be banned, follow the rules you agreed to, it's that simple.
Conservatives love when rules are applied to minorities and the left, but whenever the rules are applied to them, it's bias, see the entire 2000s for that, from applauding criminal behaviour from the police towards black people while murdering cops because they lost an election, railing against investigations into the shady finances of conservative groups and ignoring the left leaning groups also investigated, demanding endless investigations into Hillary's emails while ignoring all the trump appointees and family members doing the same thing, and so on and so forth.
This outrage about section 230 is because conservatives want special treatment, they want to be able to rewrite the rules they agreed to so only OTHER people get banned. Platforms aren't breaking the rules, conservatives are, and no amount of squealing is going to change that. Right wing assholes love to say 'If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.' Maybe they should think about that when they're moaning about being banned for death threats and slurs.
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if section 230 is weakened many websites will either shutdown or block all user comments and videos,
this will effect websites that serve minoritys and lgbt content or left wing content that will attract trolls and extremists who wish to upload hate speech or conspiracy theorys or content that is simply untrue.
google or Facebook will be ok as the have the money to fend off random legal courtcases.
we need more startups like vimeo ,dailymotion or tik tok to thrive
and provide competition to big tech .
getting rid of section 230 would be a diaster for free speech and the internet
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Facebook and twitter etc. will only be OK until the trolls drive of a large number of their users, when they will start to lose advertising revenue, and likely enter a death spiral. Google will be hurt if the size of the web starts to shrink.
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“Big Tech” has to be aware of the “Worst People” Problem. The question, then, is whether they care enough to keep it from being their problem instead of, say, Gab’s.
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If they have to leave all legal speech up, they cannot deal with that problem, but will suffer from it.
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People can filter anything they don't like. They can even opt-in.
This is about not liking OTHERS reading something, as anyone is free to change the channel.
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That doesn't apply when they get your phone number and address, send you death threats, and stalk you wherever you are.
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For what reason should a Black Twitter user have to shoulder the responsibility of filtering racist garbage out of their timelines when Twitter could just as easily refuse to let racist garbage on Twitter?
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Actually, it’s up to Twitter to decide if such material is on the site. If they do the user can remove it or leave the site.
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For what reason can’t — shouldn’t — Twitter delete it? For what reason should Twitter admins be denied the right to decide whether they will host racial slurs and other bigoted speech on Twitter?
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Who are you replying to. Because your reply is set under mine.
If to me how are you and I disagreeing?.
“Actually, it’s up to Twitter to decide if such material is on the site. If they do the user can remove it or leave the site.”
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They why in hell do you keep claiming that deletion is censorship, and that you are against all censorship? Can we have some constancy pleas.
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‘Keep claiming’
Because it is. Having the right to do something doesn’t mean you should.
I have the right to shoot my self in the foot too!
They have the right to maintain their private service as they see fit.
Just because they chose the most destructive way to do so doesn’t change the law.
If I can no longer access something I once could it’s been censored.
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Even if you can access it literally anywhere else?
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“ Even if you can access it literally anywhere else?”
In principle…yes.
Is a film that failed classification in the UK still available in France? So was the editing (if done) for classification censorship?
If they stand by their art and don’t release it at all was it censored in England if I can drive to France?
Having access somewhere else doesn’t change localised censorship.
Private Censorship is legal. I just frown upon it.
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Possibly. How the fuck should I know.
Arguably, yes — because the editing was done at the behest (or for the approval) of a government entity.
Possibly. How the fuck should I know.
Yes, it does. It means the original is still out there — that you might have to jump through some hoops (legal or…otherwise) to see the original doesn’t change the fact that the original still exists.
You’ve never once disagreed with me when I’ve said that you believe censorship is an evil that must be prevented. So if you dislike “private censorship”, and you believe censorship must be prevented (possibly at all costs), how can you still believe a social media service should have the absolute right to delete content/ban users?
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Ah, funny man. Lol
“ Yes, it does. It means the original is still out there — that you might have to jump through some hoops (legal or…otherwise) to see the original doesn’t change the fact that the original still exists.”
So I guess videos that were banned didn’t suffer censorship. Books that were banned didn’t suffer censorship.
The Chinese internet isn’t censored you can still get it somewhere else. It’s not gone just moved.
“ You’ve never once disagreed with me when I’ve said that you believe censorship is an evil that must be prevented. So if you dislike “private censorship”, and you believe censorship must be prevented (possibly at all costs), how can you still believe a social media service should have the absolute right to delete content/ban users?”
Easy I place personal liberty above the evil of censorship.
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I don’t respond to otherwording.
And yet, you have cotinually sided with those who want to reform 230.
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"Possibly. How the fuck should I know."
The answer is, yes, even though this idiot thinks it proves some kind of point.
"Possibly. How the fuck should I know."
In relation to the second part of that - yes you can drive/fly to France and get a copy. You can order it from amazon.fr, or do what I did when I was a kid getting hold of all the banned video nasties and get them delivered on unlabelled VHS tapes from some random guy in Greece who advertises in the back of magazines. Or, you could just buy one off a random secondhand store that doesn't check for such things. Or, of course, since you could be breaking the law with that physical copy anyway, just pirate the damn thing.
The options are endless - you just have to bear in mind that because this is government censorship, backed with legal powers to prosecute, your copy might be seized by customs or the shop stocking illegal items might be in trouble for doing so.
None of this has a damn thing to do with how private actors choose to moderate their own property, of course, but it's worth bearing in mind that the government censorship he's trying to distract the argument with is highly ineffective in reality.
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There were two points tho this.
One was to temper your ‘you can go elsewhere’ belief with a bit of realism.
The idea of ‘if you can’t go elsewhere make your own’ doesn’t really hold water. Not when most major players in hosting are tied to a single sociopolitical idealism.
Creating your own bottom up top down web service is about as doable as creating your own country.
The second issue is be careful (as I am constantly told her) how you frame censorship.
In this case saying you can go elsewhere Also opens up dangerous beliefs.
It’s possible to extend that to elsewhere beyond reason.
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[Asserts facts not in evidence]
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Example: Parler.
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An example that disproves your false narrative, nice going.
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“ An example that disproves your false narrative, nice going.”
Not at all. What it shows is the extreme difficulty of setting up anything counter to the industry standard operating procedure. They had the financial backers to keep moving past every hurdle. Many don’t.
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"What it shows is the extreme difficulty of setting up anything counter to the industry standard operating procedure."
No, what it shows is that if you're setting up a site using other people's service, you'd better make sure you're abiding by their terms of use. Parler doesn't prove anything other than the fact if you're going to repeatedly refuse to follow the rules of the people you depend on working with, eventually you'll get cut off.
"They had the financial backers to keep moving past every hurdle. Many don’t."
Many restaurants don't have the financial backing to keep moving past every hurdle, yet I don't hear people demanding that popular restaurants be crippled or be forced to compensate the failures just because they found it harder to do than they thought.
Most businesses fail in the first few years, them trying to be a web platform doesn't make them special in this regard.
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It should be noted that Parler was never more than anything but a malvertising data-scraping scam dressed up with lies about "free speech" to bait the honeypot.
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Most is not all, and for most it is people taking extremist positions that are banned. Beside which you are not entitled to force your political views onto others.
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"One was to temper your ‘you can go elsewhere’ belief with a bit of realism"
You can go elsewhere. If the BBFC demand cuts to a movie in order for it to be legally released, the cuts only happen to the UK release of the movie. You can source it elsewhere, sometimes very easily.
So it is online - if you say or do things that a particular site doesn't allow, you have millions of other places to go even if you can't do exactly what you want on a handful of the most popular sites.
"Creating your own bottom up top down web service is about as doable as creating your own country."
Yet, the vast majority of the sites you are whining about didn't exist 20 years ago.
Also, creating a web service is very easy. Creating a popular one is hard, but nobody is entitled to an audience if they haven't earned one, and even then life isn't always fair.
"In this case saying you can go elsewhere Also opens up dangerous beliefs."
Not really. Are you saying that if I kick someone out of my home because they started abusing my black friends, then I'm causing trouble and dangerous beliefs by doing so? If not, then how does that apply to doing the same thing in a virtual setting?
Explain yourself, but bear in mind we've already spent years here debunking the lazier and sillier arguments.
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"Is a film that failed classification in the UK still available in France?"
Often, yes.
"So was the editing (if done) for classification censorship?"
Yes, since it was compelled by the government in order to legally release the film in the UK.
Whatever relationship you've hallucinating between this and a private community enforcing community norms is on you, but they're not based in reality.
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I was responding to: ‘you can go elsewhere’
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Yes, you can go elsewhere. With the silly movie example, you can source the movie anywhere outside of the official UK release. Online, you have a huge number of sites to choose from. What's the problem? I don't see any unless you want to push the fallacy of freedom of speech guaranteeing an audience, in which case I have bad news since that has never existed.
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You say “the user” can moderate content. I say Twitter has the right to delete content it doesn’t want to host and ban the assholes who post it.
You put the burden of moderation on end users. I put that burden on the service — where it largely belongs. Yes, users can and should curate their own experience. But they shouldn’t be responsible for doing the job of a moderator.
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Yep, we just disagree on where the burden of work should be.
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As TD has covered in the past moderation on a large site can involve wading through such abhorrent content that those doing it develop PTSD, I think I can safely say that a platform that dumps that on users is going to be one that sees their user base dwindle really quickly if they're already established, or never garners more than a very small user base if it's a new one.
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For what reason should an end user be forced to do the kind of work that can destroy — and has destroyed, and will continue to destroy — those who moderate large services as a paid job?
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I wonder if the people doing the job and suffering from it are in the right field.
One thing I can say is the over moderation has created very soft and easily offended populations.
I get your point. I don’t necessarily agree with it but I understand what your saying.
Should people be protected from the big cruel world? Maybe. But I’m more likely to say being exposed to it should generally harden a person against it.
Maybe we’re past the point of no return and everyone needs to be protected from big bad world. I hope not. Hate and evil is neither worse nor more prevalent. It’s just that people have lost their shell in dealing with it.
That includes myself. I guess. I’ve lashed out at people for ignorant groupings and classifications.
So maybe there’s something to the softening of people in general.
I simply don’t know.
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Have you considered that maybe people are more “easily offended” because they’ve always been offended at certain kinds of content (e.g., bigoted speech) but haven’t had the chance to express that openly until recently? No, of course you haven’t. You probably think people upset about, say, anti-queer propaganda are just too “easily offended” about queer people being called f⸻ts — including the queer people themselves.
Moderation isn’t about “be[ing] protected” from the world. It’s about curating a community. In some cases, that means creating as safe a space as possible for people who are otherwise marginalized in society. Not everyone wants to go online and be reminded of how shit the world is when they check their social media feeds — including their mentions.
No, they’ve lost their taste for being polite about dealing with bigots and assholes.
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“ You probably think people upset about, say, anti-queer propaganda”
Given it’s a category I fall into:
Seeing it is annoying. Occasionally upsetting. But homophobia exists and until the bigots die out there have just as much right to their speech as we do.
“ No, they’ve lost their taste for being polite about dealing with bigots and assholes.”
Could be. Maybe I’m the ends of the generation that usually ignores nonsense.
I roll down my window and yell “want a blow job” when I drive by “[g]od hates f***” signs.
There used to be an art in trolling trolls.
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Do they have the right to a spot on Twitter? Do they have a right to make queer people listen to their speech? Do they have a right to make Twitter force queer people to listen?
And most importantly: Do you think they should have those rights?
There still is. But that doesn’t mean we need to accept their presence in private spaces where they’re not welcome — unless, of course, you think we should do exactly that because FrEe SpEeCh and DiVeRsItY oF tHoUgHt.
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“ Do they have the right to a spot on Twitter? Do they have a right to make queer people listen to their speech? Do they have a right to make Twitter force queer people to listen?
And most importantly: Do you think they should have those rights?”
Undecided. Probably not
Undecided, probably not
In the physical world the person tossed out can stand on the public sidewalk out front and heckle those who walk in and walk out.
The interwebs doesn’t have such a sidewalk.
The question for me, is if the lack of sidewalk, lack of access to the same group, should override the private rights of the property owner.
My personal conclusion is NO!!
At least until someone pro speech anti property gives me a legitimate reason to revisit the question.
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What it does have is a whooooooooooooooooole bunch of other sites and services people can use. So your sidewalk analogy bullshit is irrelevant.
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The internet is the sidewalk.
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Everyone has rights only to their own soapbox, no further. All Section 230 does is make exercising one's free speech online practicable by cutting the costs of lawsuits filed by malicious censorious frauds (such as those from "your moderation infringed on my rights" liars). It protects everyone's right to control their own speech free from censorship, allowing every opinion equal opportunity to carve out its own existence on the sidewalk of the Internet. Without it, the internet would be homogeneous and stale, as the screexhy trash you happen to politically align with drown out all discourse in filth intil amyone reasonable has left in disgust.
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To wit, here's Section 230's authors in debunking some of the deliberate lies being spread about their law by bad actors:
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“ Without Section 230, complaints about “censorship” by the likes of Google, Facebook, and Twitter would not disappear. ”
Well stated . Removing 230 alone would definitely increase the number of censorship complaints. Whilst a handful have some legs, the majority would be useless troll cases.
Forced speech would cause a major issue. A few companies will likely return to the ‘good ol days’ but the majority will likely close off user commentary or close up completely. That would further consolidate power to the rich and powerful and further consolidate expression under heavy compression of alternative viewpoints.
—non-deletion by proclamation would have all disagreeable commentary moved to the sandbox.
Forcing a site, that deletes what it doesn’t like, to host everything will create one principle feed and burry everything else in anything available.
That’s far worse than everything being available somewhere and well sorted.
Killing 230 does nothing for deletion. It guarantees the most powerful get public access and EVERYONE else gets tossed into a big pile.
A note to the Republicans who wonder through here:
Not only would repealing 230 decimate property rights you value nearly as much as we Libertarians, it would destroy your access to the public
Forcing facetwit to host Republican ideology would quickly creat a main feed where lock step partisan checkmarks are featured alone, and every other user is buried in a giant thread of noise.
If they already ban users they don’t like do you think they’ll feature you front and centre just because they can’t ban you.
Forced speech would drive them to find a legal way to make you disappear in a wall of sound.
Be careful what you wish for. Censorship is evil, but legal. Force their hand on hosting and you’ll find Senator-R and Representative-R in the same place you find turd eaters and horse lickers. The absolute bottom of a 12 day old portapotty at the beans and cheese festival.
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When I told you that your “moderation is censorship” claim could lead to real harms, this is what I meant.
In the same comment where you’re asking Republicans to reconsider going after 230, you once again refer to moderation as censorship:
That will only make conservatives recoil. As (alleged) proponents of “small government”, they won’t want censorship to be “legal”. (Unless, of course, they’re the ones who decide what gets censored; e.g., critical race theory.) They’ll want censorship to be stopped — even if that means trampling all over property rights and the freedom of association. And they’ll use the word “censorship” in the exact same way you’ve used it to justify their position on the compelled hosting of speech. (“We‘re fighting to make sure Twitter can’t censor conservatives!” and the like come to mind.)
That is what I want you to remember when I say you’re still on the side of people wanting to repeal/“reform” 230 and you say you aren’t. Whether you like it or not, your position on moderation puts you on their side — and your newfound love for property rights can’t, won’t, and shouldn’t change that.
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It’s not newfound, having the protest dumped in my front yard analogy that got me seriously considering ramifications to others.
Specifically when supplying an enclosed stage was likened to kidnapping.
But I do see were this is going. And that’s a bad place to consider.
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I doubt you’ll change your mind about referring to moderation as censorship, though. You’re so set in your belief that you’ll continue to say it despite being told how it could potentially justify some really shitty actions.
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Partly correct.
Calling deletionism censorship, however accurate, is not helpful in protective intent.
Forcing a company that chooses deletionism to host without deletionism creates a whole new set of issues.
Tyranny being high on the list of negatives.
It would stifle the ability to oppose, that exists at the moment.
Obviously when every opposition comment is buried as soon as it’s posted you no longer have conversation.
I’m the first to say that most Republicans have a bad habit:
Stab. What did you say. Oh…
It’s the same thing the new progressive movement does.
And it’s stupid.
Neither more nor less control is going to change human stupidity.
Facetwit isn’t going he end result. It’s a stepping stone.
Cis was the biggest thing till it wasn’t.
MySpace was the biggest thing till it wasn’t.
3.0 is already being chipped away by Fidel services like Twitch, FaceTime, etc.
That too will eventually be replaced.
The question is simple, what long term effects would happen without 230 on the future of tech?
It’s not pretty!
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you’re making even less sense than usual
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You know, Web 2.0, Web 3.0 Web 4…50…99?
User video that started with online companies and spawned YouTube, Daily Motion, et al out of many thousands we’ve got what? A dozen? Major ones left?
The whole social media faze that started with the likes of MySpace,
Facebook is more or less the last major player in social blogging.
Twitter is more or less the only social texting/mms service left of any note.
We don’t have to agree on how much or how little moderation should happen on services. We never will.
But 230 makes such services possible. be it Twitter deleting stuff of Parler not. Both exist thanks to 230 not allowing them to be sued out of existence.
230 not only protects those who delete; it protects those who don’t.
Video chat is now the big new thing.
Whatever the next thing will be: it won’t likely happen without 230 protectionism.
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"User video that started with online companies and spawned YouTube, Daily Motion, et al out of many thousands we’ve got what? A dozen? Major ones left?"
Yes, the constant litigation by people like the RIAA and MPAA has reduced the playing field somewhat, although you're still free to host your own video any time you want.
"Facebook is more or less the last major player in social blogging."
Just a hint: if you have to create nonsense terms to create silos you can use to pretned that Facebook, Twitter, etc. aren't competing with each other, you can just stoip because you're just misrepresenting reality yet again.
"Twitter is more or less the only social texting/mms service left of any note."
Except SMS. and texting, and the many services that offer very similar abilities (such as... Facebook's status updates?)
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“ that Facebook, Twitter, etc. aren't competing with each other,”
You’re serious?
Facebook is a blogging platform.
Twitter is a messaging platform.
They’re different targeted use!
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Yes, if you redefine their areas of business to separate them like that then sure. If you just refer to them as "social media" then no. A usual trick used by the dishonest to pretend that all competing social media platforms are really monopolies, even though that's not supported by the way people actual use them.
Also, I'm intrigued as to how tortured your redefining words to get "blog" from "Facebook" must be, because I can almost hear them screaming from here. At the very least you seem to be ignoring huge amounts of what the site does to get there.
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Translation: The free speech of "I won't say that for you."
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Counter: ‘ I won’t let that be said here’
A site hosting something someone else said does not equate to that site saying it.
That’s why it’s called “user generated content” in the first place.
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But a site giving that speech its approval either directly (through a statement from the site’s owners/operators) or indirectly (through a refusal to moderate it) does equate to that site associating itself with that speech.
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“ indirectly (through a refusal to moderate it)”
No it doesn’t! When NYT runs op-eds, it’s not the NYT supporting the piece. It’s the author’s opinion.
When the NYP or WSJ or CST runs a paid advert for “call 976-suck to suck my dick” it’s the advert buyer, not the paper.
Seriously Stephen: I KNOW you’re smarter than that. Don’t lower yourself to the crap of the GOP and Progressives.
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"When NYT runs op-eds, it’s not the NYT supporting the piece. It’s the author’s opinion."
So, there's no editor involved in the publication process if it's an opinion piece? No approval of a particular piece over and above other pieces that may have been submitted?
Weird, I could have sworn reality is the opposite of what you claim it to be. Again.
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But NYT does support the piece, regardless of whether everyone at the paper agrees with the views expressed therein. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t have run the op-ed — because to run the op-ed, someone at the paper had to make a decision on whether to run it.
Twitter doesn’t make those kinds of decisions. Speech comes first and moderation second because moderation is always reactive.
Conflating a political party currently known for fascism, hatred, and nakedly partisan powergrabs with progressivism only makes me wonder what the fuck you’re smoking, Lodos.
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How about racism. You invent multiple false cases over Trump who has condemned it all along every step of the way. But to support CRT? A bullshite flame all whites are racist? Or 16blow me? Claiming America was founded when British citizens bought slaves from British ships operated by British companies?
Trump was the first president to put people who fall into the LGBT community into power at EVERY level of government and staff.
Trump pushed aside every piece of red tape to move for a vaccination that the Dems said couldn’t happen.
When it became clear it would; they questioned the safety and effectiveness.
Now that Biden took office they bitch about anti vaxers? Well, they did spend a year saying bad juju. So suck on your eggs now that you laid them.
“ Conflating a political party currently known for fascism, hatred, and nakedly partisan powergrabs with progressivism…”
Republicans, as a whole, fit none of your statements. Not do Democrats.
So grow up and join reality. Both parties have their bullshite wings. The AOC progressives just happen to be a bit more popular because they got themselves a beautiful young lady to be their poster.
Calling Republicans Nazis because this shite dick fucks are party members… shit fuck Arianarses tend to be die hard christians. So they latch to the party where being a fantasy cloud worshiping dunce is tolerated.
Let me reiterate:
The biggest reason, period, the progressive movement is popular is because they have a little hottie as their mouthpiece.
I wonder how many followers are waiting for her to go free-the-nipple.
I’ll admit, I am. Dem titties.
And before you call me sexist remember I’m pan, prefer guys, and if she dropped her panties and whipped out a song I’d suck it just as fast as I’d like her …
But it ends there.
She’s hot, not smart.
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·"The biggest reason, period, the progressive movement is popular is because they have a little hottie as their mouthpiece."
What's sad is that you're probably ignorant and racist enough to believe this rather than understanding that the politics she adheres to (which are barely centrist anywhere else in the world) are actual positions that people believe in.
You might demand a failed gameshow host and bankrupt con artist to cheerlead for your positions when they cannot be supported by reality, but others are able to stand up for them on their own merits - whether it's an old Jewish guy promoting them, an educated woman of colour, or just a guy on the street who understands facts about the world.
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Remember: You obviously wanted this, or you wouldn’t have replied the way you did.
He may have paid lip service to the idea of condemning racism, sure. But he didn’t actually do anything to follow up his words. (And he also paid lip service to racists — or does “stand back and stand by” not ring a bell?) I mean, did he ever follow up Charlottesville with an executive order asking the FBI to investigate white supremacists or something? What did he do as POTUS — not say, do, as in “actions he took” — to show that he truly condemned racism?
Critical race theory isn’t what you’ve been brainwashed by conservative media to believe. Try actually learning what CRT is on your own for once.
It claims no such thing. The project intended “to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States’ national narrative”. Maybe if you actually read the materials in the project and tried to understand them outside of the bullshit framing given to them by conservative media outlets (which are more than happy to distort the project and other works like it to gin up white rage among conservative readership), you might learn something.
So what? He rarely defended their civil rights and kicked trans people out of the military. Installing a few token queers doesn’t grant him a lifetime pass to Pride.
Nobody thought the vaccines would be ready as soon as they were. Placing that on Democrats alone — and without any evidence that they even once tried to stop development of the vaccines — is a bullshit move and you know it’s a bullshit, Lodos. You’re so eager to blame Dems for everything that you seriously come off as a Republican lawmaker.
[citation needed]
[citation needed]
Also, many of the people in the anti–COVID vaccine crowd were also “I WANT MUH FREEDOMS” anti-maskers.
Republicans are the ones who tried to overturn the results of a free and fair election. Republicans are the ones passing voting restriction laws to shrink the franchise instead of expanding it. Republicans stand on the side of white supremacists (or at least pay lip service to such bastards because they’re in the voting base), evangelical conservative Christians who want the U.S. to be a Christian theocracy, and anti-queer bigots.
How are they not about any of the things I mentioned they are, again?
Wow. Do you really think people can’t actually believe in Medicare For All without first hearing a hot piece of ass say “we need a better healthcare system in this country”?
I didn’t call them Nazis — I called them fascists. All Nazis are fascists, but not all fascists are Nazis. Congratulations, you Godwinned yourself.
It, uh…it really isn’t as popular as you think it is, or else we’d have Medicare For All right now. And both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders were championing a few progressive causes well before AOC showed up in Congress, so maybe stop thinking AOC’s looks have anything to do with it. (Seriously, it’s like you fell out of a Breitbart tree and hit every brainwashing branch on the way down.)
Go touch grass, misogynist.
…a giant piece of shit, yes, we’re all well aware of how much you have in common with conservative men.
Is she not smart because she’s not smart, or is she not smart because the conservative media you (over)consume keeps distorting her actual words to make her sound like an idiot while simultaneously dehumanizing her into a mere sex object for their — your — desperate jackoff sessions?
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“ What did he do as POTUS — not say, do, as in “actions he took” — to show that he truly condemned racism?”
Nothing. The fbi was already investigating various racist groups.
About CRT
“CRT emphasizes how racism and disparate racial outcomes can be the result of complex, changing and often subtle social and institutional dynamics, rather than explicit and intentional prejudices by individuals.[10][11] It also views race as a socially constructed identity[10] which serves to oppress non-white people.[12] In the field of legal studies, CRT emphasizes that merely making laws colorblind on paper may not be enough to make the application of the laws colorblind; ostensibly colorblind laws can be applied in racially discriminatory ways.[13] Intersectionality – which emphasizes that race can intersect with other identities (such as gender and class) to produce complex combinations of power and disadvantage – is a key CRT concept.[14]” ~Wikipedia
“to reframe the country's history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of the United States’ national narrative”.”
1619: first it claimed the revolution was to protect slavery. Then that most colonists fought to protect slaves. Then that some.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/magazine/an-update-to-the-1619-project.html
The claim is the country was founded when the first slave ships arrived. Which is bull because in 1619 -1776 every person here was a citizen of another country, Spain, France, UK. Etc.
“Installing a few token queers doesn’t grant him a lifetime pass to Pride.”
Calling them “token[s]” is extremely disrespectful.
“Nobody thought the vaccines would be ready as soon as they were.”
Trump and most Republicans did.
“[citation needed]”
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5f60cc29c5b65fd7b8550ef9
“Also, many of the people in the anti–COVID vaccine crowd were also “I WANT MUH FREEDOMS” anti-maskers.”
And? Anyone who got the vaccination is protected from maskless anti-vaxers
“Republicans are the ones who tried to overturn the results of a free and fair election.”
Republicans presented perfectly legal objections and questioned the election. Many Dems still cling to ‘Clinton Won 16’ as well.
Both groups are wrong.
But everyone has a right to challenge.
“Republicans are the ones passing voting restriction laws to shrink the franchise instead of expanding it”
Republicans are pushing voting laws that intend to make sure only legally authorised voters can vote.
“Republicans stand on the side of white supremacists (or at least pay lip service to such bastards because they’re in the voting base)”
No actual evidence of any large percentage of Republicans being white supremacists.
“evangelical conservative Christians who want the U.S. to be a Christian theocracy, and anti-queer bigots.”
They are the same group. And yes, they are a portion of Republicans. A blight on human existence, not just the party.
“Wow. Do you really think people can’t actually believe in Medicare For All without first hearing a hot piece of ass say “we need a better healthcare system in this country”?”
That existed before her. And has gained momentum in spite of her.
“I didn’t call them Nazis”
Maybe not you specifically (I’d have to review your posts) but many, here and elsewhere, did.
t”uh…it really isn’t as popular as you think it is, or else we’d have Medicare For All right now”
That they support that doesn’t make it part of the platform.
Environment over all, core socialism , and reverse racism does. That government “socialised” healthcare falls under socialism is a happy convenience.
And both Elizabeth Warren [green]
Bernie Sanders [socialist]
“ championing a few progressive causes well before AOC showed up in Congress, so maybe stop thinking AOC’s looks have anything to do with it. “
Some. Not a locked platform.
Few could tell you who Warren even was before she brought her views to the debate stage.
Sanders was tanked by the Democrat party intentionally.
The party simply agreed to compromise within to fight the Republican platform. The progressive movement simply coalesced around AOC as a mouthpiece for all of the movements.
“misogynist”
Enjoying the pleasures of the human body does not make me a misogynist.
“a person who dislikes, despises, or is strongly prejudiced against women.” ~MSGD
Quite the opposite. There is little, if anything, on this planet that a man can do that a woman couldn’t do better.
Nobody who knows me would doubt I’m a feminist. I just happen to like sex.
“much you have in common with conservative men.”
Very little. I like fire arms.
I like meat (not red, cook that sucker properly).
I like sex (I don’t care about gender though)
I like hunting (for food only, never for sport)
So sure, not much.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Exactly.
Yes, and where in any of that is the conservative bullshit about the claim of, as you put it, “all whites are racist”?
Show me the exact bit of text from the 1619 Project — and I mean a direct quote with no ambiguity or wiggle room for any other possible interpretation — that says the United States was actually founded when the first African slaves arrived on the shores of the American colonies in 1619.
So is hiring a bunch of queer people into government jobs for the sake of saying “look at all the queers we hired, can we get your votes now”. Considering how Trump refused to name a US Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons (a position created under Obama) during his four years in office and otherwise did next-to-nothing to fight for/protect the civil rights of queer people — recall that he also wanted trans people out of the military — calling his queer hires “tokens” is at least accurate.
[citation needed]
And by that, I mean: Cite the earliest possible story you can find that says a majority of Republicans believed safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines would be available prior to the 1st of January 2021.
Fair enough, but note that their concerns were at least grounded in the reality that Trump had already pushed for the use of hydroxychloroquil as a treatment for COVID-19 (which was later proven to…not be a treatment for COVID-19). The idea that he would fast track an unsafe vaccine for the sake of getting reëlected was not something borne out of, say, the kind of unfounded anti-science paranoia that convinced all the plague enthusiasts to go without masks.
They’re protected from the most severe side effects of the disease (including death). They’re not protected from catching (and thus spreading to others) the same disease that Donald Trump said would simply go away. (How’d that claim work out for him?)
That their objections were legal doesn’t make their objections any less based on a lie. Until and unless someone presents any credible indication that massive voter fraud affected the presidential election in even a single state — and only the presidential election, since for some reason the Dems could only rig that race but not all the other downballot races in the contested states — their objections were (and still are) rooted in Old 45’s Big Lie.
Okay, so they’re pointing out that Clinton won the popular vote. And? Trump won the bullshit Electoral College thing. The Democrats didn’t object to Trump’s victory like the Republicans objected to Biden’s. And nobody did an insurrection on the 6th of January 2017 in an attempt to overturn a free and fair election in the name of Hillary Clinton.
Your whataboutism is ridiculous on this point. Nobody tried to take down American democracy in the name of Hillary Rodham Clinton. But Old 45’s followers did try to “stop the steal” and install the (popular and electoral) loser of the 2020 election as President simply because they couldn’t deal with the fact that a highly unpopular POTUS lost the election. And that says nothing about the after-the-election attempts by Republican-controlled state legislatures to restrict voting in those states so as to protect what power they still have left.
Is there any credible evidence that says anyone not legally entitled to vote in the U.S. actually tried to vote (or successfully voted) in the 2020 elections in substantial numbers? If not: The restrictions are meant to disenfranchise voters that Republicans don’t want voting.
Note that I never made such a claim. I said the GOP is on the side of white supremacists, and this is true — because even if the GOP denounces white supremacy outright, it still pays lip service to those racists with dogwhistle politics about “thugs” and “welfare queens”. I don’t see the Klan seriously endorsing leftist candidates, sooooooo…
And yet, you were the one implying that the pro-M4A position wouldn’t be “popular” without AOC leading the charge: “The AOC progressives just happen to be a bit more popular because they got themselves a beautiful young lady to be their poster.” So which is it: Is the idea of M4A growing in popularity because of, or in spite of, that “beautiful young lady”?
That you made the leap from “fascist” to “Nazi” is understandable, but you made the leap yourself. I didn’t push you.
Why shouldn’t we prioritize caring for the environment? This is the only world we’ve got, and we’re slowly killing it, and it’s slowly killing us (and all other creatures) in return.
Socialism is already baked into the United States. Social Security? That’s socialism. Libraries? Hella socialist. Police, firefighters, and every other government department/service paid for with tax dollars? Socialist. As. Fuck.
Ain’t no such thing as “reverse racism” because no other racial group has ever had the same kind of sociopolitical power to inflict upon white people what white people have done to people of color for centuries. I mean, considering the Tulsa race massacre — where white people bombed Tulsa’s “Black Wall Street”, killed Black people in the process, destroyed any chance of the Black people who built businesses there from creating and passing down any form of generational wealth, and faced little-to-no consequences for their actions — when has something exactly like that ever happened to white people at the hands of Black people?
So what?
So what? To those that did know her, the policies for which she fought were largely popular. (I mean, at a bare minimum, taxing the fuck out of the wealthy should always poll well.)
No, it didn’t. She isn’t the singular mouthpiece for progressives; no one politician is. Even Bernie, try as he might, doesn’t speak for all progressives (nor did he speak for them even before AOC entered Congress).
Implying that the only worth Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has as a person lies with her appearance does, though. And considering how you all but drooled over her in the same comment where you said she’s a dumbass, the implication that you think her only worth as a person is to serve as a living fleshlight is…less of an implication than I think you’re comfortable with admitting.
And yet, there you were, begging AOC to show off her tits because you think that’s the only worth she has as a Congressperson.
You also gave your tacit and knowing support to a man who:
installed judges on the Supreme Court who lean in the direction of overturning Roe v. Wade once and for all
refused to acknowledge Pride Month, celebrate queer people, and defend the rights of queer people both domestically and internationally
tore immigrant families apart and kept them in concentration camps at the southern border
denied the existence of a pandemic, claimed the pandemic would “go away” within days, then did what he could to make the pandemic worse by contradicting actual scientists with actual expertise in dealing with actual pandemics
insulted his political “enemies” (including people in his own party) like he was a young child on a playground
claimed there were “very fine people on both sides” of a white nationalist march and the protest against said march, which ended with the death of a young woman at the hands of one of those white nationalists
prepared to call the military into American cities to quell protests/riots in the wake of George Floyd’s death
offered few condolences for the victims of gun violence and no real solutions on how to solve the issue of gun violence
attempted to repeal Obamacare without any actual replacement plan from either the GOP or his own administration ready to pass in the wake of that repeal
…and that was after he did those things. That doesn’t even get into his attempts to overthrow American democracy via the courts (which laughed him out, as well they should’ve) and direct contact with state election officials (who ignored his requests to “find” votes for him, as well they should’ve).
So yeah, as far as I’m concerned, you have one thing in common with a shitload of conservative men: You voted for fascism, for suffering, for “own the libs at any cost” because you thought you’d get to laugh at the people you hate suffering under another four years of Trump.
Live with that knowledge at the forefront of everything you do. Die with that knowledge as the last thought on your mind.
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Re:
“Yes, and where in any of that is the conservative bullshit about the claim of, as you put it, “all whites are racist”?”
CRT emphasizes how racism and disparate racial outcomes can be the result of complex, changing and often subtle social and institutional dynamics, rather than explicit and intentional prejudices by individuals.[11][12] It also views race and white supremacy as an intersectional social construction[11] which serves to oppress people of color and marginalized communities at large (i.e gender and class)~Wikipedia
The basis of the though is racism is built into the current subconscious thought of existence. As such, all are racist even if they don’t know it.
“and I mean a direct quote with no ambiguity or wiggle room for any other possible interpretation”
https://www.philanthropyroundtable.org/home/resources/videos/videos/default-source /default-video-library/1619-vs-1776-when-was-america-founded
“It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are,”
~NYT per face2faceafrica dot com.
“So is hiring a bunch of queer people into government jobs for the sake of saying “look at all the queers we hired, can we get your votes now”. “
The difference between Trump and the presidents of the past was he placed people based on his perception of their skill regardless of their gender or sexual alignments.
It was Gays4Trump that first pointed out just how many there were.
“recall that he also wanted trans people out of the military”
Not quite. He wanted to solidify gender separation.
The US is an overly sexually fearful nation. The majority of members of the military are still conservative and religious.
They aren’t yet ready for a penis in the ladies shower.
It’s that simple.
Forcing that in what must be cohesive groups is not safe.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/21/politics/vaccine-lawmakers-backlash/index.html
Despite the partisan spin.
Finding quotes in rolling media stories with so much messing around in search engines may take a bit. I need to go back to old news feeds to find it.
The earliest I remember was just prior to the election.
“hydroxychloroquil as a treatment for COVID-19 (which was later proven to…not be a treatment for COVID-19)”
hydroxychloroquine was initially reviewed as a possibility.
Well start with:
“anecdotal accounts about hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness” ~ Fauci
but said he was waiting on results from the clinical trial
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33475900/
Shows that there is some benefits but is inconclusive about much of anything.
Not that it matters now. With a true vaccination available most (all?) studies have closed on HC.
Some Drs still supply it to infected patients. Most don’t.
“The idea that he would fast track an unsafe vaccine for the sake of getting reëlected”
And Republicans are the conspiracy nuts?
“They’re protected from the most severe side effects of the disease (including death). They’re not protected from catching (and thus spreading to others)”
Maybe. Evidence is lacking still from any scientific study as to the ability of the vaccinated to spread the disease.
If you got the vaccination it doesn’t matter if someone else didn’t.
You’re safe.
If you want to be safe get the vaccination. If you don’t get the vaccination I’m not going to disrupt my life for you.
This is easy. Republicans presented perfectly legal objections and questioned the election.
That’s their right.
Some objected on the 6th. Also their right.
And there was no insurrection.
A small group, of peaceful protestors. They were generally if not completely unarmed. They broke a few windows to get in. And a tiny percentage stole a few things.
They demanded the people they elected listen to their complaints.
They did directly not hurt anyone. They did not kill anyone. There was no armed rebellion.
What happened pales in comparison to burning federal court houses, shooting, looting, etc.
“Is there any credible evidence that says anyone not legally entitled to vote in the U.S. actually tried to vote”
Do all laws have to wait for the crime first?
“Thugs” et all.
Yes; poi’s simple warning. Trump was a simple man. Talking to the majority of the population, not the elite.
But:
https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-black-americans-commit-crime
“There is evidence in the official police-recorded figures that black Americans are more likely to commit certain types of crime than people of other races.
While it would be naïve to suggest that there is no racism in the US criminal justice system, victim reports don’t support the idea that this is because of mass discrimination.”
The reality is most white suprematists are Christians.
There pro-Christian party is the Republican Party. That doesn’t equate to Republicans are white suprematists.
“M4A” is an acronym I’m not immediately recognising.
But the progressive movement gained mainstream coverage with her as the mouthpiece for it. Prior to that it was relegated to the like of The Progressive and Mother Jones.
She pushed it to MSNBCNN and Fox when the likes of H Clinton and Gore had failed to make any real traction.
“Why shouldn’t we prioritize caring for the environment?”
The green new deal is based on the hypothesis of man-made global warming. And strives to teach the target goals regardless of the results to human life.
“Socialism is already baked into the United States”
The US is a capital based economy with a social safety net. A system I agree with. There are other aspects of social stability I believe should be accepted: eg federal health care, free education.
But I stop short of wiping out capitalism. Much of the progressive plan places the burden of the do nots, not the can nots, on the backs of the dos.
A family of 4 making $100,000 a year shouldn’t be forking over $34000.
“Ain’t no such thing as “reverse racism” because…”
Any law, order, or agreement that puts a person in a better place based solely on race is racism.
“I mean, at a bare minimum, taxing the fuck out of the wealthy should always poll well”
Why? Why should a person pay more money for being successful?
Do you not understand how that reduces a drive to success?
What possible motive is there other than jealousy or hatred, or both, to tax one person higher than others?
If you can’t figure out from that: I support a flat tax rate on all.
Not a progressive, scaling rate.
“She isn’t the singular mouthpiece for progressives; no one politician is.”
She is the most commonly presented one.
“Even Bernie, try as he might, doesn’t speak for all progressives”
Why would he? He’s a socialist.
“Implying that the only worth Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has as a person lies with her appearance does, though”
No, she may be great at many things. I just don’t agree with the vast majority of her policy.
That she more-or-less came out of nowhere and became the most public spokeswoman for the progressive movement, to say her looks aren’t part of it?
She happens to also be a VERY good speaker.
And there’s little denying a good looking AND articulate person will hold attention.
“And yet, there you were, begging AOC to show off her tits because you think that’s the only worth she has as a Congressperson.”
I have yet to find much of her Congressional practice worth supporting. So yes. Admitted.
“installed judges on the Supreme Court who lean in the direction of overturning Roe v. Wade once and for all”
I see you can single issue as well.
I was more worried about other things the Dems have been chipping away at.
“refused to acknowledge Pride Month, celebrate queer people, and defend the rights of queer people both domestically and internationally”
How many Presidents do. Because I can only thin of one recently. Biden. Because he’s in office. Do people really keep count on that?
It’s important to some. Not important to others. So be it.
“tore immigrant families apart”
He separate illegal alien collections. He separated minors from adults. There’s a safety aspect to this that’s ignored. I don’t have enough understanding to decide if it’s right or wrong.
“and kept them in [refugee] camps at the southern border”
Just like Obama did previously and Biden does today. Though when the latter got called out on it he started busing and flying them elsewhere. Dumping them on their own all over the country. With no rules, no regulations, no vaccination… helpful to ignore the incompetence of his response right?
“denied the existence of a pandemic” only in the earliest stage to prevent mass panic.
“claimed the pandemic would “go away” …” as that is what the reports at the time said.
“then did what he could to make the pandemic worse by contradicting actual scientists with actual expertise in dealing with actual pandemics”
Who a) demanded masking which may be unconstitutional, b) supporting researching all potentials for medicinal treatments, c) not trying to decimate the economy with knee-jerk reactions.
“insulted his political “enemies” (including people in his own party) like he was a young child on a playground”
And? You mean not toe the line and pretend to be nice in public?
You mean say things directly and publicly rather in back rooms where the target can’t hear?
It was nice to see someone be honest for 5 years.
“claimed there were “very fine people on both sides” of a white nationalist march and the protest against said march, “
Not everyone there defending the statues etc was a white nationalist.
I agree. There were fine, peaceful people on both sides.
Just like there are fine, peaceful people at every clash between BLM and BTB.
And in both situations both sides have thugs and hooligans intent on violence and disrespect.
“prepared to call the military into American cities to quell protests/riots in the wake of George Floyd’s death”
Yes. Rightfully. To restore order in the wake of violence, looting, rioting, the burning of businesses. Yes.
“offered few condolences for the victims of gun violence and no real solutions on how to solve the issue of gun violence”
He offered a solution. Stricter punishment for violations of law.
“attempted to repeal Obamacare without any actual replacement plan from either the GOP or his own administration ready to pass in the wake of that repeal”
Get your facts straight. He had always stood for repeal-and-replace.
“lied for years about Obama being born in Hawaii,”
A movement, that was incorrect, started by Obama’s own press team some time earlier.
“then admitted Obama was born in Hawaii”
Yes, he did. Once evidence was supplied that contradicted the Obama flyer that stated he was Born in Kenya
“without ever admitting he was wrong or apologizing for his role in the (absolutely racist) “birther” movement” he said he was wrong when he was shown proof, a birth certificate.
“That doesn’t even get into his attempts to overthrow American democracy via the courts”
By asking for recounts. A legal process.
“and direct contact with state election officials (who ignored his requests to “find” votes for him”
In context, find the missing votes. And yes, there WERE missing votes.
“Live with that knowledge at the forefront of everything you do.”
I’m content in my choices. I’m not bothered by my choices so it’s hardly at the front of my mind.
“Die with that knowledge as the last thought on your mind.
Not likely.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I’ve better things to do, so this is the last reply I have for you.
It isn’t saying that people are inherently racist. It’s saying that systems within the United States are inherently racist. The best example comes from that article from The Root I shared earlier:
CRT doesn’t say “white people are inherently racist”. It says “the systems we have in the United States are inherently racist because they were initially designed, and still continue, to benefit white people”. CRT is about looking at these systems through a lens of race so we can figure out how to best solve the problem of — wait for it — systemic racism.
Not a direct quote from the project itself. Nice try.
And if you truly believe that, I have a bridge in the Sahara to sell you.
No, he didn’t. He wanted to kick trans people out of the military. His ban on trans people serving in the military was literally meant to ban trans people from serving in the military.
And it was found, in short order, to not be an effective treatment for COVID-19. Trump and his acolytes continued to push the drug as an effective treatment anyway.
Not all the studies, no.
And I’d prefer to help keep things that way for everyone, which is why I’ll still be wearing a mask when I’m out in public. Don’t like it? Shoot me.
Their objections being legal didn’t make their objections credible — and without any credible evidence that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” in some way (which no one to date has provided), their objections were, are, and always will be bullshit.
An angry mob stormed the citadel of American democracy. They chanted “hang Mike Pence” while a makeshift hangman’s gallows waited outside. They went through the building looking for lawmakers to intimidate (or, given how some of the rioters were carrying plastic wrist cuffs, harm with physical violence). Several police officers suffered harm at the hands of rioters who were either armed or found weapons to use during the riot. One woman who was unwilling to back off from her “peaceful” attempt to enter a spot where lawmakers were being kept safe died because of her own selfish idiocy.
The whole point of the riot was, at a bare minimum, to intimidate lawmakers into ignoring the results of a free and fair election so Donald Trump could stay president. That they failed at their goal doesn’t make their Capitol putsch any less of one.
Don’t try to whitewash the insurrection again, Lodos. I’ve seen the videos of police officers being assaulted. I’ve heard the chants of “hang Mike Pence”. I know what they were trying to do that day, and it sure as fucking hell wasn’t “give lawmakers a handshake for doing their job”.
We already have laws against fradulent voting. Hell, a few Republican voters have been dinged by those laws for their fraudulent votes in the 2020 election. If the fraud these new laws are intended to prevent doesn’t exist, for what reason do we need the new laws?
Oh, Lodos.
Every racist comment you make is a fresh kick in the nuts.
And again, I didn’t say the GOP as a party are a bunch of white supremacists. I said the GOP, as a party, is on the side of white supremacy — whether Republicans like it or not — because their platform and their political language plays to the grievances of its broadest voting base (e.g., white conservative Christian men). That the grievance politics of modern American conservatism plays into the hands of white supremacists is more telling than the GOP (or you) wants to let on.
Okay. So what?
You’re upset because the people who can afford to pay higher taxes are being asked to pay higher tax rates — even when they don’t — than the people who can’t afford to pay those same rates?
Eh, depends on how much they have in the stock market and other investments. Take-home income isn’t all income.
To invest in others.
A dude who makes a billion dollars a year could sit on all that money, sure. Maybe some small fraction of it might actually go back into the economy. But if that dude were to instead invest that money into raising the wages for everyone who works beneath him, he’d be helping the economy even more than if he sat on that money. Why? Because those people will spend most of that money.
And if the dude makes half a billion the next year, so what? He will still be able to live more comfortably for the rest of his life than will a single mother of two who is crying her eyes out at 3am in the morning as she looks over the bills she can barely afford to pay on her two full-time minimum wage salaries.
Of course you do. But you’ve never thought about it in-depth, have you?
One person makes $20,000 a year. Another makes $2 million a year. Under a flat tax rate, both would have to pay 10% of their income every year. That comes out to $200,000 for the millionaire and $2,000 for the poor person. And I know what you’re saying: “Oh, that sounds fair.”
But $2,000 means a lot more to that poor person than $200,000 could mean to the millionaire because of the law of diminishing utility. The poor person might need that $2,000 for a medical emergency, or a car repair, or some other necessity that — if not taken care of — will expound their poverty even worse. The millionaire can afford to lose $200,000 and still live in far more comfort than the poor person because they have a much larger buffer between themselves and, say, living on the street.
A flat tax has no credible appeal when you consider how it would make poor people give up more of the money they need to literally survive in this wretched society and rich people would complain about how they couldn’t buy a second BMW because of taxes. So of course conservatives think it’s a good idea — after all, fewer poor people is always a good thing in their eyes, because conservatives always view poverty as a moral failing rather than a societal one.
Get some sunlight, you racist, cisgendered, patriarch-propagating misogynistic pig.
I care about a lot of issues. That the current SCOTUS was all but designed by Republicans to do away with a woman’s right to have an abortion if she so chooses — to force women to give birth, even if the child is conceived by rape or incest — is one of them.
The first POTUS to formally recognize Pride Month with an official presidential proclamation was Bill Clinton. Trump didn’t do that in any of his four years as President, by the way.
Well aren’t just the most sociopathic libertarian I’ve ever come across, to refer to groups of people in such detached and heartless terms. Are you sure you’re not a Republican? Because you sound like one.
They didn’t try to turn those detention centers into concentration camps. Trump did. And yes, I’m critical of how Obama handled, and Biden is currently handling, the immigration issue. What they’re doing isn’t ideal, and we need a better system. But at least they’re trying to be humane about it, compared with the “fuck ’em all” attitude of the Trump administration.
No, he denied the pandemic was a pandemic a month into the pandemic. That was the point where he and his administration could’ve been working overtime to stop the pandemic from spreading like wildfire, and he brushed it off with a simple “it’ll go away” declaration. The infamous “lost month” of the pandemic could’ve maybe saved thousands of lives if it hadn’t been “lost” due to the Trump administration dragging its heels on even admitting the pandemic was a pandemic.
And how’d all that work out? Mask mandates were allowed to stand, several people died because they thought they were drinking “miracle cure” chemicals that weren’t, and the economy was decimated anyway as shutdowns occured to prevent the pandemic from taking even more lives than it has. Seems like if Trump had listened to, relied on, and encouraged his followers to listen to actual experts with actual knowledge of actual science and actual expertise in their fields instead of a bunch of quacks and Mike Lindell, maybe the impact of the pandemic would’ve been lessened. But Trump belongs to the anti-science, pro-“freedom” party — the same party that, like Trump, loves uneducated white people who are so brainwashed on right-wing media that “science” is a four-letter word.
I want a president who at least tries to be diplomatic. Trump insulted anyone who so much as looked at him funny. (Unless it was Vladimir Putin, in which case Trump probably had a good fap later.)
They were marching on the side of white nationalists and in defense of monuments to men who betrayed the country in favor of upholding the institution of slavery. Even if they weren’t holding the exact same beliefs as the racists, those supposedly “very fine people” were in the company of racists that day. How “fine” could they really have been if they were marching for the cause of racism?
And if you think sending active-duty members of the military into American cities was a good idea, for any reason, you’re dumber than he was. Thank God he was talked out of it by people who knew better than to send men trained in the art of war into American cities armed with live ammo and an “everyone is an enemy” mindset.
[citation needed]
And even if he offered that solution, how hard did he push for it — or was that another part of his infamous “infrastructure week”?
I’m well aware of that. But to replace, he needed two things: The repeal of Obamacare and an actual replacement plan. Neither he nor the GOP ever had a replacement plan ready at any point in his presidency, so he could only ever repeal Obamacare and set American healthcare back a decade.
…fucking what
No, he didn’t. He never admitted he was wrong, and it took him years after the reveal of the long-form birth certificate to even say “Obama was born in Hawaii”, and he never — NEVER — apologized for his role in instigating and propagating that racist conspiracy theory. Find direct and exact quotes from Trump that prove all three of those points wrong, and I’ll concede the point. (You won’t, but I wish you luck in trying.)
He asked Georgia election officials to “find” enough votes to overturn the gap in votes between himself and Biden. (That was more than 11,000 votes, by the by.) He didn’t want to legally challenge the results — he wanted them overthrown because he couldn’t stand the idea that he lost the election.
Trump thinking more than 11,000 votes were missing doesn’t mean they were. And to date, nobody (including Trump himself) has presented credible evidence that a significant fraction of the votes he wanted “found” for him were missing.
Of course you are, you fuckin’ sociopath. You don’t care how much other people suffer so long as you’re content with voting for the suffering of people you hate.
Fuck off.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
“Not a direct quote from the project itself. Nice try.”
The project itself has changed its wording so many times it is difficult to find exact quotes on the way back machine. I’d point you to the BB article but you don’t believe they’re a reliant source.
I gave you the next best thing.
“If the fraud these new laws are intended to prevent doesn’t exist, for what reason do we need the new laws?”
Again, when is it necessary to have the crime happen first (reactionary) before creating laws to prevent further spread of the crime.
Voter is would stop 100% of ineligible in person voting.
Crime: factual stats are factual stats.
“ I didn’t say the GOP as a party are a bunch of white supremacists. I said the GOP, as a party, is on the side of white supremacy “
And I again say you are incorrect.
It is absolutely not a party on the side of white suprematists.
A tiny little fractional minority happens to be evil stupid bigots. They also happen to usually be Republicans.
The party as a whole or in part, has nothing to do with that.
American conservatism is also just one (arguably large) section of the party one that as a whole I completely disagree with even if I agree with some parts of the idea.
“Okay. So what?”
So everything.
And it’s not a “better world”.
It’s inconsistent, unreliable power. It’s excessively expensive taxation on fuel. At a time when the vast majority can’t afford electric vehicles. Not that most like the look anyway.
Cars that require the unreliable electricity supply they push. What happens when it rains? What happens when the wind doesn’t blow?
One needs only look at California to see how well green electric works out right now.
But they want to shut down every non-green source right now consequences be damned.
“You’re upset because the people who can afford to pay higher taxes are being asked to pay higher tax rates “
Yes. Exactly. Bingo. Have a cookie.
What possible point is there than wealth redistribution to pay more for making more?
Does a billionaire call the fire department more often? Do they drive on our streets more often? Do they use the public library more often?
Why should they be punished for being successful?
“some small fraction” people who make more tend to spend more.
“Of course you do. But you’ve never thought about it in-depth, have you?”
Of course I have. A flat tax starting at the current lowest tax rate at the current lowest single income bracket $14,200.49.
$1421 is the lowest level paid.
They pay that today. Raising and lowering high income taxes does nothing for the lowest filing.
So while I talk about the flat tax, which generally would kick in at a higher annual income point than current at 18k to 24k per year, you take about how the poor suffer at 10 percent and ignore how all these ‘tax the rich’ plans don’t actually lower the rates at the lower end. How they don’t ease the base income for taxation.
If they really cared about the poor and not wealth redistribution and stick-it-to-rich-man galavanting: they’d raise the bottom income level for taxation!
“Get some sunlight”
It’s raining
“you racist,”
Absolutely not
“cisgendered, “
Sometimes
“patriarch-propagating “
Depends on opinion
“misogynistic”
Wrong
“pig.”
Oink
“Because you sound like one.”
If they’re not here via the legal process, and don’t have I’d, how do we know they are family?
Is it worth letting sex traffickers and rapists stay with minors to protect the families? Or is it better to separate groups by age to protect minors?
“They didn’t try to turn those detention centers into concentration camps. “
Neither did Trump. Little changed at all over 12.5 years.
“No, he denied the pandemic was a pandemic a month into the pandemic.”
See previous post.
“Mask mandates were allowed to stand”
And as such were allowed to be implemented.
“miracle cure” chemicals”
Yes, there are idiots who did what the mainstream news lied about thinking they were hiding a cure Trump never claimed.
“economy was decimated “
Tell that to the millions of small and large businesses that shut down forever.
“I want a president who at least tries to be diplomatic. “
I want one who tells everyone exactly what they think.
“Unless it was Vladimir Putin”
‘Russia Russia Russia’
“They were marching on the side of white nationalists”
The white nationalists marched on their side.
“and in defense of monuments to men who betrayed the country in favor of upholding the institution of slavery.”
In defence of monuments to historical figures. Who fought for the rights of their home state. Among those rights was slavery. Yes. One of multiple. In some states like Carolina, Georgia, it was a main reason.
Tennessee and Virginia because the President demanded troops to fight other states.
In Missouri the split state fought itself more than anyone else. Not over slavery as an institution but over fugitive slave law. Not because it was the slaves, but if a state should respect the laws of a neighbour when they enter the host state.
“How “fine” could they really have been if they were marching for the cause of racism?”
They marched to protect history. That they were joined by another group… the enemy of my enemy…
Logical people can separate different people who March together for different reasons.
That’s the same way I separated anti-police-violence from anarchists who joined them.
“And if you think sending active-duty members of the military into American cities was a good idea, for any reason, you’re dumber than he was.”
I didn’t say I necessarily agree. But some cities were left with major parts in ruins. Seattle, Portland, Chicago, etc.
How long do you let real insurrection go on.
The National Guard was called in to protect SC after an unarmed “insurrection”.
Flee thy left when a real one happens in multiple cities.
“[citation needed]”
https://www.bing.com/search?q=trump+calls+for+stricter+gun+violence+punishments
It was a recurring premise. Stricter punishments, not reduced access to the law abiding.
“I’m well aware of that. But to replace, he needed two things: The repeal of Obamacare and an actual replacement plan.”
Blame the two sides of two chambers. He said what he wanted. Nobody got there.
“fucking what”
Error publisher, not press team.
https://www.snopes.com/tachyon/images/politics/graphics/bookbio.jpg
“never — NEVER — apologized”
He said Obama was born In Hawaii when proof was given. Beyond that, so what.
“He asked Georgia election officials to “find” enough votes to overturn the gap in votes between himself and Biden.”
No, he asked to find the missing votes. Period. He did say he expected them to be in his favour but that’s separate from find the missing votes.
Oh, and suffering is part of life. We all suffer form one thing or another.
I vote on SPECIFIC issues and those issues alone.
Given neither major party represents my views that tends to be whoever champions something important to me.
Yes, I’m as simple as that.
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"What possible point is there than wealth redistribution to pay more for making more?"
Because the people hoarding the wealth need to pay their fair share instead of being allowed to further take it from the rest of society? Especially when most of them take advantage of the public systems they don't pay in to in order to increase their profits.
If you want to talk about "wealth redistribution", let's talk about the amount the top 10% have taken from the economy over the last few decades. Only someone stupid enough to vote for Trump could look at things like this and think that the problem is that the poor don't pay enough taxes:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b9/Wealth_inequality_stats_from_Federal_Rese rve.png
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“ Only someone stupid enough to vote for Trump could look at things like this and think that the problem is that the poor don't pay enough taxes:”
Where in the Sam fucking hell did I EVER in my >40 years on earth EVER say that.
Find it. I’ll send you a Bitcoin. Doesn’t exist. Didn’t happen.
You’re now more full of shite, shit, fucks, and turds then every DOCUMENTED and PROVEN dem-fuck controlled American media company.
Seriously, step away from the Democrat co-opt media ( and for once ignore other countries, their opinion is aside from the fact).
Most!, flat tax plans RAISE the low end income beforehand 10% kicks in. Meaning more of the poor would pay 0% compared to todays brackets
You just proved to every rational person that not only can you not read; your a partisan lamb.
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"Where in the Sam fucking hell did I EVER in my >40 years on earth EVER say that."
I don't have a Trump to English translator, but in the English used by normal people then you imply such with comments like this:
Your comments about wealth distribution when it comes to asking people hoarding wealth to pay some of it back is clear.
"Most!, flat tax plans RAISE the low end income beforehand 10% kicks in."
Then apply the taxes regressively to those same people. Yes. A temporary income boost does not change the regressive nature of the tax.
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“ Then apply the taxes regressively to those same people.”
Wait, you want to help the poor by taxing the poor? Nice.
Wow.
See, I just can’t understand fairness is asking someone who has more to pay more for the same thing.
How about a real world example of how a flat tax works.
If you make less than $1000 a month (state rates vary a bit), you get a loaf of bread for free (snap). Zero tax.
If you make $2000 or more a month you pay pay $1.06 for the bread. $0.99 plus 6 cents tax.
Now let’s look at the progressive push for their sliding scale.
If you make <14000 per year you pay $0.99 for the bread.
If you make $1400 you pay $1.10 for the bread. 10% tax.
If you make $85000 a year you pay $1.24.
If you make $250,000 you pay $1.50
If you make over $1,000,000 you pay $1.79
The bread didn’t change. The annual income did.
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I've never heard of a proposal for a progressive sales tax, where did you find that?
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I'm guessing he made it up, because it's easier to attack that strawman than it is to attack a system where people who over $100k are taxed the same on that $100k as people who make lower than it. Typically, when I see people arguing about how a flat tax is fairer, what they're really saying is that they don't understand how progressive taxes work (see, for example, people who claim to have refused a promotion because their income would go higher than the next tax bracket so they assume they will make less money overall - it doesn't work like that).
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I thought I'd give him the opportunity to back it up. I'm not expecting anything.
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Not found or made up. An analogy for paying more for the same thing.
That’s what the current ax system does.
You pay MORE for the same thing as you earn more.
Pay more for the same fire department.
Pay more for the same roads.
Pay more for the same everything.
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"Wait, you want to help the poor by taxing the poor?"
Wow, how did you read my words and get exactly the opposite of what I said? The regressive tax is regressive even if you give poor people a reprieve at the start.
"I just can’t understand fairness is asking someone who has more to pay more for the same thing."
Then why have you been arguing against people doing this? The top 1% have gained a far greater share of total wealth than the bottom 50% have lost in the same time period. Why is that not wealth redistribution, but applying higher taxes to the wealthy is?
"Now let’s look at the progressive push for their sliding scale."
Do you have anything based in reality, or is that silly redefinition of things all you have. But, let's go with what you said - the poor person needs to choose between the loaf or starvation. The wealthy person won't notice the price rise even if they buy a bakery's worth of bread. Why, then, is it right that the poor person has to suffer when the people who own the companies that refuse to increase their compensation along with inflation and productivity do not?
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Wage is a separate issue.
Bread= analogy
If you replace bread with roads, fire, police, education, you are asking people with higher income to pay more for using the same things as everyone else the same amount as everyone else.
“ see, for example, people who claim to have refused a promotion because their income would go higher than the next tax bracket so they assume they will make less money overall - it doesn't work like that”
No it doesn’t. And I didn’t say that.
What I pointed out with the bread analogy is that people who make more pay a higher percentage in taxes, period.
It’s going from 32% to 35% to 37%….
It’s demanding someone pay more money for the same thing because they have more money.
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Correct. You are asking the people who can more easily afford it to pay more for those things. What is the problem with that?
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Why should one person pay more than another for the same thing?
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Because one person can easily afford it and the other cannot. How is this difficult to understand? Why should one person have a tax burden that crushes them into grinding poverty while another could pay many times more without affecting their lifestyle at all?
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“Why should one person have a tax burden that crushes them into grinding poverty”
Hence flat tax. Which in most plans to make it to a legislative floor in this country have RAISED the minimum income level for the taxation threshold. Some as high as $25000.
“could pay many times more without affecting their lifestyle at all?”
Should a person who makes 250k annually pay more for the same loaf of bread? Should they pay more for an apple or peach? Burgers? Clothing? Cars? Because your asking them to pay more for roads and and fire and police.
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"Hence flat tax"
Which is regressive and unfair to the 50% who own 3% of the wealth in favour of the 1% who own 1/3 of it.
"Some as high as $25000."
After which, the tax is regressive against those who earn less over the threshold compared to those who add several zeroes to it.
"Because your asking them to pay more for roads and and fire and police."
Services they often use more than the average poor person.
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“ Which is regressive and unfair to the 50% who own 3% of the wealth in favour of the 1% who own 1/3 of it.”
How is a lower tax on everyone bracket 3 and above unfair to bracket 2 who’s tax doesn’t change at all?
1:0%
2:10%
Maybe we could have some responsibility by cutting out pet projects with a more reasonable flat-tax plan.
“ Services they often use more than the average poor person.”
Services like what?
And that a serious question! The more money you make the less likely you are to use public services.
Again: I’m not some fuck alt right shite. It’s simple put that people against the flat tax use broad brushing and never (or rarely) come up with facts.
If you were to present something saying “uses more”… I’d be extremely interested!
But again, dodge the Mother Jones WaPo crap.
Jeff the man, not Amazon the company.
Cook the man, not Apple the company.
Sulzberger the man, not New Your Times the company.
I wonder when the lat time was one of these three entered a public library for personal use, not a photo opp.
When was the last time any of these men went to a park that they, or their company, didn’t pump funds into.
When was the last time they dialled 911 instead of *99 for their private on-site/contracted security.
If you have evidence produce it. If not; it’s redistribution.
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"How is a lower tax on everyone bracket 3 and above unfair to bracket 2 who’s tax doesn’t change at all?"
It's not. Which is why it's weird that you claim that progressive tax systems that do the same things are unfair. The only difference between the current progressive tax system and the 2 tier tax system you're suggesting is the number of tiers.
"Services like what?"
Fire, police are needed more by people who own multiple properties than those who own zero. Roads are needed more by people who run businesses that use them than someone who only uses them to get groceries, Education is used more by employers who need people to be of a certain level of education before hiring them than someone who has graduated and doesn't have kids. Other government functions such as security regulations are used way more by the rich who pile things into investments than by people who are barely rubbing 2 pennies together to keep the power on. The list goes on if you think about it for a few minutes.
"I wonder when the lat time was one of these three entered a public library for personal use, not a photo opp."
The same number of times the average poor person has ever needed to use the kinds of investments they use every day to increase their personal wealth. Taxes are paid into a pool that's used to fund all sorts of programs, your personal usage of them does not determine where your tax dollars go.
"If not; it’s redistribution."
I refer you back to the graph I posted earlier. Over the last 30 years, the top 1% have gone from owning around 24% of US wealth to owning around 32%, which the bottom 50% have gone from owning around 4% to around 2.8%.
That's wealth redistribution, but you don't seem concerned about it that way around. For some reason, it's only bad when it benefits poor people.
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You do understand there's a difference between publicly funded services and privately purchased goods and services, right? You keep conflating them as though they're the same thing, and they are not.
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What I’m doing is comparing how cost is inflated for those with more income.
You pay for them differently, taxes vs cash, but you still pay for them
Asking someone to pay more than the next person in line strikes as discriminatory to me.
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"What I’m doing is comparing how cost is inflated for those with more income."
Cost isn't inflated, though that's just the current lie you're telling.
Some people are being asked to provide more to the cost than they currently are, due to them having spent the last few decades profiting and hoarding wealth while providing no cost of living upgrades to the people who made it for them.
The cost of the meal is not going up, but the guy at the table who ordered champagne and earns more than the rest of the table combined is being asked not to force the rest to share his extra expenses.
"Asking someone to pay more than the next person in line strikes as discriminatory to me."
It may well be. The problem is, you're stupid enough to believe that the person being asked to provide what they did decades ago is paying more, but the person whose wage buying power has decreased steadily in that time is not.
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You refer to the massive 70s era Democrat tax increases that was quickly repealed back to something remotely reasonable.m? Anyone who agreed with that can shove it.
How does Jeff Bezos the man use more of our resources than any other person in this country?
How does Tim Cook, the man, use more resource than anyone else?
How does Bill Gates, the man, use more resources than anyone else?
Because we’re not discussing taxing business here. We’re discussing individual taxes.
So I offer anyone the opportunity to show how any of these people are personally using more resources than less wealthy people.
“ being asked to provide… due to them having spent the last few decades profiting and hoarding wealth while providing no cost of living upgrades to the people who made it for them.”
Bull. Absolutely completely utterly bull.
What is happening is individual people are being demanded to pay more based on companies they are attached to.
They are not hoarding personal wealth, they are wisely reinvesting it.
Your claim is wealthy people use more resources.
So: put up or shut up on personal income taxes.
Show proof these wealthy individual people are using more public funded resources and thus should spend more on them.
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Weird, I talk about the current situation triggered largely by Republican policies in the 80s (look at wage stagnation since then, compare to productivity, then compare the ever expanding gap between worker and CEO pay), and you start blathering on about a Democratic policy that was repealed before I was born. Almost as if you don't have any actual criticism of modern economic policy. But, hey let's give the rich more tax cuts that will trickle down eventually, even though the opposite has been happening for 50 years!
"How does Jeff Bezos the man use more of our resources than any other person in this country?"
I've explained this to you, but you choose to remain ignorant. Unless you're going to claim that his actions as a private citizen have not incurred public expenditure, in which case I don't know what to tell you, since I deal with reality and not the weird fantasy world you have built around yourself.
"So: put up or shut up on personal income taxes."
The taxes that billionaires find ways not to pay, resulting in a handful of people owning 1/3 of the wealth in country where people still starve and die due to lack of access to healthcare? Nah, I'd rather they pay their fair share instead of having an effective tax rate lower than the average cleaner.
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“ I've explained this to you, but you choose to remain ignorant”
You place company action on an individual person.
Not only do you want to raise taxes: you want to charge Amazon taxes, and then tax the man for Amazon’s existence as well.
How fair and decent of you.
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"You place company action on an individual person."
No, I don't. I know reading comprehension is not your strong suit, but inventing words to replace the ones I actually write won't help you do it.
"Not only do you want to raise taxes: you want to charge Amazon taxes, and then tax the man for Amazon’s existence as well."
Yeah, that's how taxes work. The company pays taxes (well, in Amazon's case not so much...), then when an employee takes home their wages they're taxed on that income according to the amount they earned.
You seem to think it's wrong to do this for billionaires for some reason.
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Again. The individual absolutely does not use more public resources than anyone else.
The talk of paying employee wages have nothing to do with the individual.
So yes. You simply want people who make more to pay more.
That’s not fairness, that’s jealousy
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"Again. The individual absolutely does not use more public resources"
Repeating it doesn't make it true.
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You have yet to give a case where it is false.
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The entirety of basic reality proves it wrong, you just decided to ignore that.
It's sad, really, but you are typical of the "libertarian" types who suckle from the Murdoch teat. You don't simply defend the rich robbing you, you demand it, then blame the people who couldn't pay more if they tried for the robbery.
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Nobody is robbing me of anything.
Yea could easily say your so far up CNN’s bum their farts smell like honey… but I won’t.
If reality says the rich, personally, use more public resources than anyone else site examples.
So far people point to the company behind them and not the people themselves.
Taxing large companies on a progressing scale makes sense. The larger they are the more resources they use.
That’s different than, say, a single man who is on the company round table.
At 10% they would still be paying more into the system than the 25kan.
Because they personally take much less out of it.
They don’t use unemployment. They don’t use Medicare/Medicaid. They use public transportation, they don’t use a lot of things the lower income groups use.
At 10% flat tax they pay into services they don’t use, at the same rate of those that use it regularly.
And by raising the bottom income rate those most dependent on social programs don’t have to fund it at all. Because they can’t afford to.
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"Because they personally take much less out of it."
No matter how much you repeat this lie, it's not going to magically become true.
"At 10% flat tax they pay into services they don’t use"
So do the poor right now, they just don't have cheerleading idiots demanding that they be allowed not to pay for them.
Bottom line - you see 1% of the rich taking 32% of the wealth and demand that they take more, despite the fact that the bottom 50% don't have 10% of that figures. Only a Trrump voter would be stupid enough to not see where this leads.
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“ Only a Trrump voter would be stupid enough to not see where this leads.”
Trump, Obama, Obama, write in, bush, Perot,
Perot.
“ So do the poor right now”
The poor would pay zero percent under a 10% flat tax under nearly all plans presented for it.
“ No matter how much you repeat this lie, it's not going to magically become true.”
No matter how many times you call it a lie it doesn’t change the truth.
Again: no Medicare, no Medicaid, no SNAP, no unemployment.
We’ve just eliminated more than 2/3 of social spending.
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"Again: no Medicare, no Medicaid, no SNAP, no unemployment."
So, not the things known to benefit society as a whole, including the economy?
"We’ve just eliminated more than 2/3 of social spending"
OK. So, what about the non-social spending?
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“ So, not the things known to benefit society as a whole”
those are all things they don’t use.
The premise is they use more of public resources as individuals. They simply don’t.
at 10% they would be the highest supporting group for funding AND not be pulling out of the same programs they pay into.
In essence paying more than their fair share already.
So again, what does an individual Of higher wealth use more of to demand a higher tax than everyone else?
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"those are all things they don’t use."
The fantasy society you think you live in, where people only pay for exactly what they use and should be exempt for supporting said society if they manage to buy their way out of it (while benefitting from the things that society provides) is an interesting one, but I don't believe it's one that's ever been proven to work in reality. In the real world, we tried giving the rich a bunch of tax cuts and the trickle down didn't happen. Whereas, in the consumer based economy it's known that giving benefits to the poor is a stimulus. So, I'll side with reality here.
"They simply don’t at 10% they would be the highest supporting group for funding AND not be pulling out of the same programs they pay into."
A false premise, but I do wonder why you think that setting the tax burden of a class that owns way more of the country's wealth then they did during the most flourishing time in American history to way less than they did during that time would be beneficial. Especially since you claim that your plan will allow the majority of the poor to bypass it completely, thus burdening the middle class much more. To my mind that only means that the 1% hoard more wealth while still benefitting from the public purse, but I do genuinely wonder what figures you base your assumptions upon. History is full of rich people who found they didn't benefit when they robbed enough money from the rest of society.
"So again, what does an individual Of higher wealth use more of to demand a higher tax than everyone else?"
Again, I listed it for you, and your insistence on ignoring the list is getting silly now. I'm going to take a wild guess and say that you think that Bezos, Gates and Trump were self made men who achieved things that any normal working class person could with their resources. Because your claims do make me think you're as removed from reality as anyone making that sort of claim.
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“ where people only pay for exactly what they use and should be exempt for supporting said society if they manage to buy their way out of it”
A 10% tax would still have the majority of people paying into things they use less of. And the richest would be paying in far more than they take out.
“ while still benefitting from the public purse,”
Any yet we still have no situation given where a wealthy individual uses MORE than any other person. I’m still waiting for an example of a wealthy individual using more of a public tax supported service than anyone of lower income.
Feel free to post that. Because until you show how wealthy individuals burden us I’ll stick with, don’t steal their money because You think you’re entitled to it.
“ Again, I listed it for you”
You posted a list of things corporations use. Not individuals.
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"A 10% tax would still have the majority of people paying into things they use less of. And the richest would be paying in far more than they take out."
I'd like to see your figures. Not that it really matters since you're still in that fantasy realm of it being good for a society if people only pay for the things they personally use. But, I'd like to see your models of it being viable.
"Any yet we still have no situation given where a wealthy individual uses MORE than any other person."
Again, I have, but you chose to either ignore them or seem to lack a basic understanding of how they apply.
"You posted a list of things corporations use. Not individuals."
No, I didn't. I posted a list of examples of things (not every thing) that a wealthy person might use directly, which doesn't include the indirect advantages they have from a stable functional economy and society.
All we're getting here is that you seem to think that the 1% should be able to pick and choose what they pay for while the middle class should just pay to make up the difference, and that funnelling your personal income through a corporation (which may or may not ay taxes themselves) is a fine thing to do. You talk about being opposed to wealth redistribution, but you are absolutely cheerleading it.
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“ fantasy realm of it being good for a society if people only pay for the things they personally use”
Well now that wouldn’t be true with income taxation, would it? Am I supposed to believe someone making 1,000,000 a year and is using more than $100,000 in public resource themselves?
“ Again, I have, but you chose to either ignore them or seem to lack a basic understanding of how they apply.”
Link to private person use of public resources please?
“ seem to think that the 1% should be able to pick and choose what they pay for”
Not at all. Nobody can chose what their taxes are used for beyond voting for people who claim to be redirecting It somewhere.
“ while the middle class should just pay to make up the difference”
Under a flat tax they’ll be paying the same rate, not higher.
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"Am I supposed to believe someone making 1,000,000 a year and is using more than $100,000 in public resource themselves?"
Well, since you are determined to pretend that they don't, we can't really discuss that. But, there's plenty of things that people pay for that they don't directly use.
"Nobody can chose what their taxes are used for beyond voting for people who claim to be redirecting It somewhere."
Yes, so a poor person paying for food stamps that they might need access to personally are still paying for resources that benefit only the rich. But, you want to let the rich get away without paying for food stamps but not allow the poor or middle class to get away with not funding what they don't use.
"Under a flat tax they’ll be paying the same rate, not higher"
You suggested 10%. Virtually nobody pays 10% on their entire income right now. So, which services need to be elmnated to make your tax plan work? I'm guessing it's not the ones that are given to the poor, even though they're proven to stimulate the economy way more than tax cuts to the rich.
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That one I can answer. By not paying a living wage, and demanding excessive productivity, he cause a drain on social safety nets and health systems. That is he passes some of the costs of running his business onto society in general.
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There's multiple reasons. Our friend here seems to think that personal wealth amassed as a result of business practices that increase costs to the public should be exempt for some reason, although obviously I disagree they should be allowed to get off the hook for that.
But, even without that caveat - the wealthy own more property which means they use public infrastructure more. They own funds and securities, which are publicly regulated, as are the banks. They tend to use the legal system a lot more, which is funded by the public. There's a lot of things that, if you're honest and apply basic common sense, they use more of than the average person.
But, no, apparently the corrupt CEO who got a big golden parachute payment when he got kicked out should not be taxed, only the people he put out of work or forced to claim food stamps to make ends meet. The people who got priced out of the property market by billionaire investors need to pay, not the guy who gets his income from renting them out to them at a large markup. Taxes are for the little guy - unless they need a bailout, of course, in which case they get a free ride and the other 99% need to pay their share for them.
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“ personal wealth amassed as a result of business practices that increase costs to the public should be exempt for some reason,”
No. I’m against easing the personal taxes of a single person based on the business that also pays taxes.
You are taxing twice.
“ own more property”
And thus pay more property taxes. Which pays for the infrastructure.
You fail to recognise that most flat tax plans, again, eliminate taxes on the “little guy” completely, reduce the number of exemptions considerably, and close most loopholes.
That investment funds are not taxed is a fallacy. It’s not hiding, or bypassing, taxes. The money WILL be taxed at some point.
It gets taxed when it’s moved out of the platform. Or taxing unusable locked value until it becomes usable is sensible.
It encourages long term investment.
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"No. I’m against easing the personal taxes of a single person based on the business that also pays taxes."
Like everyone he employs, yes.
"You fail to recognise that most flat tax plans, again, eliminate taxes on the “little guy” completely,"
So, placing a higher burden on the lower middle classes instead of the working classes. You're not making the point you think you are.
"The money WILL be taxed at some point."
Yes, it's taxed when it's transferred or use to purchase something. For everyone else this includes when they receive income from their employment. Why you think that billionaires should be exempt and the 99% they're hoarding welath away from should be forced to make up the difference is anyone's guess, but I'm seeing that you're just ignoring facts that inconvenience the continuing distribution of wealth to a small handful of billionaires.
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“ Like everyone he employs, yes.”
He employs? A driver. Private security?
You are again refusing to separate the individual from the company and the company also pays takes.
The company handles employment.
“ So, placing a higher burden on the lower middle classes instead of the working classes.”
Since their rate doesn’t change their burdens are no more and no less than they were.
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That’s not the man, that’s Amazon the company.
If you want Amazon the company. We’re not discussing corporate business taxes, we’re talking about individual income tax.
I agree companies such as Amazon use more public resources. And I’m not, necessarily against a gradient tax system on businesses.
But raising the rates on a single person who is not using anything more or less than anyone else… is not fair.
Especially as the more money an individual makes the less likely they are to use public infrastructure and more likely to use private infrastructure.
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"But raising the rates on a single person who is not using anything more or less than anyone else… is not fair."
True. But, that's not the case here, as we're discussing people who materially use more resources than the average person.
"the less likely they are to use public infrastructure"
No, they're really not, unless you ignore what public infrastructure actually consists of. Which seems to be a habit of yours - if a situation is complex or challenges your preconceived ideas, just ignore the facts that disagree with you or make you have to think for 30 seconds.
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“ True. But, that's not the case here, as we're discussing people who materially use more resources than the average person.”
Again, what are these individuals using more of.
They’re on private healthcare.
They use private transportation.
They they use private infrastructure.
So far the only passable example was more proper But they pay more property taxes on more property.
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You seem to be under the delusion that a person's taxes should only pay for what they personally use, and they should be exempt from funding anything they don't? Sorry, society doesn't work that way. Everyone pays for services they don't use, even things they are fundamentally opposed to,
"They use private transportation. They they use private infrastructure"
So, they never use public roads, public rail, public airports, public airspace, never use anything regulated on the public airwaves, never eat food that's regulated by public agencies, never use anything that utilises the public treasury or the currency regulated by them, never use public fire, police or coastguard services, never use any imports that are publicly regulated, never benefit from the public legal system, never live in an environment regulated by public regulation, never use anything that requires public embassies or that thousands of things everyone else uses?
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Oh, don’t be stupid on us. We all know your smarter than that.
I said they don’t use MORE than anyone else.
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"I said they don’t use MORE than anyone else."
..and if you can't understand how I've shown you to be completely wrong, that's on you.
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You didn’t. Using Mr Jeff you states his company uses more so not only should his company pay More but he should too.
I again state, how does a wealthy individual use more resources themselves compared to less wealthy people?
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Let’s take Wealthy Person A; we’ll call them Adam for short. Adam is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and owns several properties around the country as well as a thriving business with multinational deals. (What the business is doesn’t matter.)
Now let’s take Poor Person B; we’ll call them Benny for short. Benny has maybe a few thousand dollars in the bank at best on any given day; he works a full-time job for fifteen dollars an hour, rents an apartment he can barely afford, and drives a ten-year-old used car that gets the job done but isn’t exactly in great shape.
On an average day, Benny showers in the morning, takes his car to work (with maybe a stop at a gas station for a tank refill), works his eight hours, drives home (with maybe a stop at a fast food place for dinner), and does something recreational for a few hours (e.g., plays video games) before going to bed. Notwithstanding any unusual trips/expenses (e.g., a visit to the hospital), that is the average way Benny uses public resources: a drive to and from work on public roads and generally low usage of public utilities such as power and water.
Adam, on the other hand, makes extensive use of public roads and the United States Postal Service to have his business’s goods delivered to other businesses and individual customers. The buildings in which his business operates all have their own utility bills to pay, and they all use more power in an hour than Benny does in an average day. The homes Adam owns also have utility bills to pay, and while they may not use as much power/water if Adam isn’t actually in any of them, the bills still get paid.
Adam could easily afford to pay far more in taxes and still keep both his company and his luxurious lifestyle. Those taxes might go toward fixing the potholes in the roads Benny drives on every day—potholes that might one day cause damage to his car or cause a wreck that puts him in the hospital. For what reason should the government tax Adam less than it would Benny, if it even taxes Adam at all? And don’t say “it’ll punish success”; that bullshit argument doesn’t fly in a world where the most successful man in the world can generate billions of dollars in wealth by exploiting people working forty-hour weeks just for the right to survive another day.
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You’re still failing to look at individual taxes separately from corporate taxes. The IRS taxes those separately.
A flat tax for personal income tax doesn’t (in most proposals but not all) extend the same flat rates to businesses.
“makes extensive use of public roads and the United States Postal Service to have his business’s goods delivered to other businesses”
No he does not.
The BUSINESS does.
“and they all use more power in an hour than Benny does in an average day. “
I assume the business pays its utility bills? And again that is the business, not Adam
“the bills still get paid.”
Yes, use resource pay bill. Good on Adam.
“Adam could easily afford to pay far more in taxes”
Yes. But why should he pay more when he himself doesn’t use more?
“Those taxes might go toward fixing the potholes in the roads Benny drives on every day”
Well, that would be a good thing. Maybe they should fix the potholes before they build another pet project.
How about raising taxes on the businesses that use more resources?
“For what reason should the government tax Adam less than it would Benny”
A flat tax would tax them equally.
Seeing Benny makes 31200 per year, his federal annual race would be 3120.
The standard deduction is 12,550.
So assuming Benny had his taxes taken out (dependent-1) of his cheques he would get a $3120 refund.
If he didn’t pre-deduct taxes from pay he would pay Zero taxes.
Adam, on the other hand, let’s say his annual income is 10 mil. For sake of easy math.
His initial tax burden is $100,000.
He has investments, some of which lost money. Since he earned $100,000 in interest his income rises to 10,100,000.
He writes off his losses, let’s say his investment choices were rise to Trump supporters. Biden won so his stocks tanked. He’s lost $200,000 in value.
His annual income is now estimated to be 9,900,000.
Deductions?
Now, let’s say his dependent father needed a lung transplant. The after insurance cost was an egregious 100,000.
So he adds that as a write off.
That deduction would be $10,000.
Since the single write off he has personally is below the standard deduction he ignores is.
This he is due to pay (he filed as dependent-0)
He pays $988,745 in taxes.
Benny pays $0
How is this not fair?
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"you states his company uses more"
I know you're too much of an idiotic zealot to understand, but I have been referring specifically to his person taxes once you moved the goalposts in that direction. I'm not sure why his income needs to be separated since most of his wealth is directly related to his role as CEO - some of which has placed undue burden on public services for him to achieve - but as you asked I wasn't talking about that.
"I again state, how does a wealthy individual use more resources themselves compared to less wealthy people?"
I gave you a fucking list. Not an exhaustive one, but it's there. Has your adherence to Murdoch taught you to literally not see facts that disagree with you, or is this just a you thing?
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“ I gave you a fucking list. Not an exhaustive one, but it's there. Has your adherence to Murdoch ”
You pointed out things that are already taxed (property), properly paid for (utilities) or separate from corporate activity (shipping).
So maybe you intend to intentionally blur the request by stating they use more utilities, which they pay the same rates for, because you can’t come up with anything the year more of that they don pay for equally?
The only one here blinded from reality is you. Your either too ignorant to understand a corporation is separate from the individuals, or you simply don’t care and want to redistribute wealth because you want more.
You continually fail to show a case of a wealthy individual personally using more social paid resources than the poor.
I didn’t move the goal posts.
Company’s are taxed.
Individuals are taxed.
Amazon already paid taxes. There is zero reasonability in taxing the employees, from a driver or box puller to the CEO, for what Amazon has already paid taxes on.
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"You pointed out things that are already taxed (property), properly paid for (utilities) or separate from corporate activity (shipping)"
I pointed out many other things. Weird how you couldn't read those parts.
"You continually fail to show a case of a wealthy individual personally using more social paid resources than the poor."
I can't do much about the wilfully ignorant, unfortunately. I can be as honest with my words as possible, but if you refuse to read or understand them, there's not much I can do here.
"There is zero reasonability in taxing the employees, from a driver or box puller to the CEO, for what Amazon has already paid taxes on."
Except for the part that they do as much to avoid those taxes as possible, sure. It's a double whammy here - you support corporations avoiding paying their fair share, then you support the individuals who were directly responsible for that avoidances not paying taxes either. It would be funny if the trend wasn't for them to own 10%+ more of the country's resources than the bottom 150+ million people.
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“ you support corporations avoiding paying their fair share”
???
I do? News to me. Here, let’s ask.
Me: do you support corporations not paying based on use?
Me: I believe I mentioned maybe, raising, corporate taxes? You know, just above this post.
Me: oh. Sorry.
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"I believe I mentioned maybe, raising, corporate taxes? You know, just above this post."
I must have missed that. Are you maybe not in threaded view like I am (understandable because it can get a bit messy)? Because I don't see that claim in the comment above mine.
What I do understand is that you support the rich funnelling their personal wealth through corporations and avoiding responsibility for their own tax bill. Which is not going to end well - but again, you seem to only think that giving the poor aid is "wealth distribution", you're fine with it going the other way.
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“ I must have missed that. Are you maybe not in threaded view like I am (understandable because it can get a bit messy)? Because I don't see that claim in the comment above mine.”
I bounce to it to see a direct reference. But it’s not readable when words are one letter per line down the right side of the screen.
I did say, above (not directly) raising business taxes was a reasonable thing to do.
Something I fully support.
I also think we should do away with gains vs loss deductions. gradually!!
And replace it with literal income balancing.
Having a million dollar investment account that deposits $10 in your account as earnings should be taxed as $10 earnings.
Right now Having a million dollar investment account that looses $10000 over the year and deposits $10 is counted as $-990,010
That’s! Bull!
Your income was $10, either way.
Interest, staking, and holdings earnings are reported and recorded.
The structure of the current tax code is asinine!
Real value of earnings is ignored with profit and loss.
You should pay based on how much you made, not how much you have lost.
“ What I do understand is that you support the rich funnelling their personal wealth through corporations and avoiding responsibility”
No, not at all, see above personal tax layout.
I am against taxing people until the money is transactionable. But all money is eventually transactionable.
In very simple amounts. Investing is like loans.
If you loan out $50 and they pay you back $50, you’ve earned $10 income. If you loan a person $50 and they agree to pay you $6 per year over 10 years you pay taxes on one dollar per year.
Ignoring constant changes in % rates, you still paying the same on the $10 be it one dollar at a time or $10 at once.
“ you seem to only think that giving the poor aid is "wealth distribution", you're fine with it going the other way.”
No, what I’m against is charging one group considerably more than another to do so.
I support finding the bottom comfortable rate and charging everyone that. Excluding shipping he very people most likely to be entirely dependent on the publicly services in the first place.
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"I bounce to it to see a direct reference. But it’s not readable when words are one letter per line down the right side of the screen."
A flaw with this site's layout, use the time rather than thread option when viewing a large thread. It complicates seeing who is replying to whom a little, but you see the full comment more easily. Not a problem if you use the reply link to ensure that people know who you are replying to, though.
"I am against taxing people until the money is transactionable"
Such as the transaction where it goes from the employer to the employee? The same transaction we have to pay income taxes on?
"No, what I’m against is charging one group considerably more than another to do so."
You see, your main problem here is that you keep thinking that everything is a single transaction. This isn't a case where someone pays $X in taxes and wants service Y, but has to pay more because he paid more taxes. This is people paying $X into a pool, which is then used by elected officials to pay for the services that are required by everyone. If you want service Y from the government it doesn't cost you more just because you paid $X in taxes, it costs everyone the same. But, the rich guy might need service Z which the poor person never accesses, and it's taken from the same pool.
I'm not sure how to explain this but the point is that you're not paying more for a service if you pay more in taxes, you're paying more for the pool from which every service is taken. It's like an insurance payment - you pay but you don't claim for years that doesn't mean you are suddenly paying more money when you do claim. You don't like paying for police because you have private security? OK, but there's a lot of people who don't use national parks but pay for them, people who pay for schools and prisons and the military who don't see why they should pay, pay for coastguards even though they never go on a boat, etc.
I think you're coming from a fundamentally different place to me, but the fact is that taxes are paid to a government that then uses it for whatever it chooses, subject to the ballot box. If the rich can pick and choose because they buy their way out of the system (but don't buy their way out of the society that benefits them), there's no way it ends well. The only wealth distribution currently happening is the people who are told they can't get a wage increase to match the dollar buying power their parents or grandparents had.
"I support finding the bottom comfortable rate and charging everyone that."
But, you ignore the fundamental fact that this is a regressive way to do things that places greater pressure on the lower classes and redistributes wealth to the rich. Unless you have an actual study with actual figures that disproves what I have understood about such schemes for many years, there's no implementation of this ida that would be good for society - and after decades of promises of "trickle down" after cutting taxes for the rich, I think it would be a good idea not to do tings that funnel money further to them.
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“ Such as the transaction where it goes from the employer to the employee?”
Correct. Or the investment and loan examples.
Essential cut out all the bizarre taxes along the way, AND cut out all the dirty little deduction for losses.
“ fact that this is a regressive way to do things that places greater pressure on the lower classes”
This is the aspect of your argument I’m not following.
[Nearly] every other tax is a flat percentage. So is every other tax paid also unduly burdensome?
I don’t understand how everyone, above the minimum maximum, paying the same percentage, the same share is not fair.
See, I’m not saying they should pay less for police they don’t call, I’m saying the should cover the same percentage (a larger dollar amount) that others do.
“ promises of "trickle down" after cutting taxes for the rich”
That’s bull.
Yes, many Republicans believe in that. I don’t know many libertarians that do though.
The term predates him by a few year, and the premise by a century, but it was Ronald Reagan that championed that idea and his economic policy was a joke: Reagonomics? Whatever.
From my view I’m looking at equality. Equal taxation.
For me, that’s fair. Here The rich still supply the majority of the value.
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"Essential cut out all the bizarre taxes along the way, AND cut out all the dirty little deduction for losses"
I'll agree that streamlining the tax code is a good thing. But, since that compilation only exists in order for the rich to avoid paying as much as possible, I fail to see why handing them a free pass benefits the other 300+ million people in the country, who only have access to less than 70% of the country's wealth to begin with.
"Yes, many Republicans believe in that. I don’t know many libertarians that do though."
I don't care which tribe you associate with, I'm talking about facts. The facts are that what you're proposing hurts the lower classes and aids the rich. Even if you give the poverty-stricken a pass on direct taxation, your proposals cannot fund the social programs they depend on when the people running the corporations they work for pass them off to social programs for their income that your tax plan won't support.
"From my view I’m looking at equality. Equal taxation"
Yes, and you're ignoring the part where it aids the rich in wealth distribution to their pockets and punishes the less fortunate. That's not "fair", no matter how you spin it. Especially since the figures you proposed can not fund the federal government as it currently stands.
"Here The rich still supply the majority of the value."
Because they own most of the wealth. But, you demand they be given a further discount and be allowed to hoard more.
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“ can not fund the federal government as it currently stands”
Nope. Let’s see, where can we cut pointless spending and wasted use?
Well, we could stop giving away weapons to Israel.
We could close international bases in stable countries.
We could pull out and stop our interventionist ‘incursions’.
We could raise corporate taxes.
We could cut our “aid” programs.
Let’s end our own poverty before we send a trillion somewhere else.
Just to start.
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Reminder: "trickle-down" economics and the Laffer curve are both scams that don't accurately reflect how the real world works.
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"Bread= analogy"
Yes, a very poor one.
"If you replace bread with roads, fire, police, education, you are asking people with higher income to pay more for using the same things as everyone else the same amount as everyone else."
No, you're not. First, people use those things differently. Jeff Bezos is using roads more for his business than any poor person is, so why should he not pay a larger amount? Also, people pay for things for the good of society, it's not based on personal usage. I don't personally have any need to use education, but society is better off when public education is available to those who need it. Bezos benefits when the next pool of workers is literate enough to work for Amazon. So, we all pay, but the people with the most wealth should stop hoarding it as much and pay back into the systems that benefit them.
"It’s demanding someone pay more money for the same thing because they have more money."
No, it's saying that programs need to be funded, and the people who are hoarding a larger amount of the wealth should pay more than the people to whom they're trying to refuse a living wage.
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“ Jeff Bezos is using roads more for his business than any poor person is,”
No. His business is. And the majority of that use is via companies already using the roads. USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL…etc.
“ Also, people pay for things for the good of society”
Yes: it’s called taxes.
“ but the people with the most wealth should stop hoarding it”
Why, because you’re jealous they have more than you?
“ No, it's saying that programs need to be funded, and the people who are hoarding a larger amount of the wealth should pay more than the people to whom they're trying to refuse a living wage.”
It’s not hoarding, it’s securing the next generation.
Wage is separate from taxation.
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You keep on claiming not to be a racist misogynistic, bigot, while all the time defending a racist misogynistic bigot who made it to the white house. Its like you keep on claiming that people need not listen to you while claiming you have the right to stand and shout in a place where they can hear you.
People will believe that you are a racist misogynistic, bigot who demands the right to be heard because that is the direction you arguments lead despite you claims otherwise.
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"You're taking trump's words out of context!" lostinlodos lies, while at the same time every extreme-Right talking point he regurgitates is built on deleting and fabricating context around snippets the way Projecting Falsitas does.
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Why am I not surprised that this idiot doesn't recognise the regressive nature of a flat tax?
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"Is she not smart because she’s not smart, or is she not smart because the conservative media you (over)consume keeps distorting her actual words"
She's "not smart" because Fox told him that she was "just a bartender" and not informed of her previous achievements that include qualifications directly related to her current role. Because they can't imagine that a minority woman can be competent. Because conservatives can't imagine anything beyond identity politics and have to attack the person instead of the ideas. Which is probably because Fox told them that this was a platform to fear and not support: https://i.redd.it/6qwxnm8r9qm11.jpg
What's funny, is that if the right wing hadn't lost their collective shit over her and replaced her as the new boogey(wo)man to replace Clinton and Pelosi now that those wells are running dry, most people right now would never have heard of her outside of her own district. She'd just be another freshman representative trying to make a name for herself . She and her policy ideas are internationally famous right now specifically because the right are scared of her, and it's pretty funny.
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... other than a federally guaranteed job(not sure how well that would work out) and 'solidarity with Puerto Rico'(not sure what that means) I don't see a problem with any of those points, so the idea that those are supposed to be things to scare people(given it's Fox they're sure as hell not trying to make her look better) and that people should see that list and be horrified is telling in a rather disturbing fashion about their viewers.
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Without context I have no clue what that board is supposed to signify.
Only thing on that post remotely negative is the green new deal.
But my guess, being a reader of their feed and having previously watched fox in her run time, before the dumped the heir news programs, it was probably a hit piece on what here detailed campaign page stated.
That image is factually correct but those are campaign points. My quick reply, yes generally memory, of her page, and her position responses to the standard survey, make that image a very tame publishable bullet list.
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“ She's "not smart" because Fox told him that she was "just a bartender" and not informed of her previous achievements”
I’d forgotten about that until you brought it up. It’s not the talking point you think it is.
She’s not smart, because the vast majority of her platform is idiotic.
“Because they can't imagine that a minority woman can be competent “
Spanish as minority. Only be default. Again who’s leaning on categories and labels here. I never said anything anywhere, about her genetics in any sort of bad light. I don’t believe I ever brought that up at all.
Yes go look. Never.
Thanks for the photo though. Looks very politically correct compared to the detailed explications she had on her campaign page. Assault weapons are already banned: she’s after self reloading. Building multi family building in single family communities.
Open borders. Abolish ICE without replacement. Ignoring where it came from.
Green new deal. End private campaign donations. And major restrictions on investment trading.
I’m not afraid. I think she’s a joke.
The majority of her vote and her voice push three things: open borders, socialism, green new deal.
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Okay, let’s break down the planks of her platform as mentioned in that Fox News graphic:
Medicare For All — In other words, catching the American healthcare system up to literally every other developed country in the world.
Housing as a human right — I mean, sounds fine to me; why wouldn’t we want to have fewer people living on the street?
A federal jobs guarantee — Again, not seeing a real problem with this; the government should want to help people find jobs.
Gun control/assault weapons ban — Okay, and the problem here is…what exactly? That a gun nut won’t be able to buy an AR-15 they don’t need?
Criminal justice reform, end private prisons — Man, so far, so good with this platform; neither of these sound all that bad, especially the second one (private prisons have every incentive to mistreat prisoners for the sake of profit).
Immigration justice/abolish ICE — Contentious, sure, but if we got along fine before ICE, we can get along fine without it.
Solidarity with Puerto Rico — It’s a U.S. territory; why shouldn’t we stand in solidarity with PR?
Mobilizing against climate change — Even you think global climate change is a problem (albeit apparently one we’re too focused on solving or some shit, according to you).
Clean campaign finance — How is wanting to know who is funding political campaigns a bad thing, again?
Higher education for all — I can understand why the GOP would be against this (they prefer their electorate to be uneducated and distrustful of the educated), so of course you’d probably have a problem with this.
Women’s rights — What was that you had been saying about wanting to see AOC’s tits, again?
Support LGBTQIA+ — You’re here, you’re queer, but are you really for this, Lodos? You voted for a guy who isn’t, so…
Support seniors — Just because they’re old doesn’t mean they stop being people.
So, other than an objection rooted in “how will we pay for it” (which never seems to come up when we’re talking about the military but always seems to be an issue when we’re talking about literally anything else), what is so wrong with her platform that you think at least eleven out of the fourteen items on that list (the “vast majority of her platform”) are “idiotic”?
She is of Puerto Rican descent, you racist dipshit.
The fact that you’re so openly agreeing with racist douchewaffles who say she’s “idiotic” but offer nothing but dogwhistles about her background means you didn’t have to. (The sexist bullshit doesn’t help your case, either.)
And this is bad, how, exactly?
Okay, and…so what?
[citation needed]
We can “replace” ICE with the departments that handled immigrations and customs enforcement before they were crammed together into one agency that now has a history of legally sanctioned excessive violence against immigrants (legal or otherwise) and American citizens.
What’s so bad about wanting to do something about climate change and the economy at the same time? I mean, climate change will fuck over the economy at some point, whether we like it or not.
You say that like it’s a bad thing.
Again: You say that like it’s a bad thing.
I think you are.
You’re not afraid of her platform; you’re afraid of its growing popularity. You’re not afraid of her; you’re afraid of the growing diversity she represents in both society and government. You’re not afraid of change; you’re afraid of change that you believe will leave you in the dust.
To put it bluntly, you’re afraid of the same things that Trump followers are afraid of. No wonder you voted for him: You share their white rage.
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Re:
"Medicare For All — In other words, catching the American healthcare system up to literally every other developed country in the world."
Which, by the way, is significantly cheaper in those countries on a per capita basis than the current US system.
"What’s so bad about wanting to do something about climate change and the economy at the same time?"
Reminds me of this: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C3Mu-yhUoAAdb53?format=jpg&name=medium
"To put it bluntly, you’re afraid of the same things that Trump followers are afraid of."
Remember that you're talking to a guy who has stated that he gets 80% of his news from Murdoch and Breitbart and thinks that all other media is run by the Democratic party. He's scared of the same fictions that other Trump voters are afraid of.
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Actually currently 1/3 is Murdoch, the FoxNews dot com rss.
1/3 Breitbart which has both Republican and Libertarian slant, but is still fully independent and not against calling out GOO stupidity. As their coverage of Republican attempts to repeal Obamacare shows.
1/3 NYT
NYP hasn’t fixed its feed in a while. WSJ has gone full paywall.
So that’s three daily sources that are reliable in fixing errors, admitting mistakes, and attempting to cover the news.
Mind you though it’s the same company, Fox rarely goes editorial in their print.
Before you hammer about the Late Night opinion shows, I suggest actually looking at the news feed: Latest Headlines (all sections) - http://feeds.foxnews.com/foxnews/latest
And National @ /national
You may be surprised!
“ all other media”
Not all. Just the biggest ones. And not by the party, but by those lock-step to partisan politics.
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Re: Re: Re:
"Actually currently 1/3 is Murdoch, the FoxNews dot com rss."
"NYP hasn’t fixed its feed in a while. WSJ has gone full paywall."
Guess who owns the NYP and WSJ?
"So that’s three daily sources that are reliable in fixing errors"
Sources that are highly partisan to varying degrees and which follow a certain agenda in their editorials, if not always to the same degree in their news reporting.
This is your problem, you rattle off a bunch of sources you have convinced yourself are accurate, but then you insist that anyone disagreeing with them is not to be trusted, and you refuse to look at any external viewpoints. Bear in mind, the reason I remember these conversations is because I recognise your repetition of misleading and often debunked talking points that don't hold up to real scrutiny, and which always seem to originate in the sources you call "news".
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“Guess who owns the NYP and WSJ?“
I’m well aware. Neither of which I can access.
Hence not part of my reading.
“ Sources that are highly partisan”
Yes, all three follow a partisan directive. Democrats, Republicans, and Blue collar Libertarians.
Given that these are the three most quotes and most followed sources for the three viewpoints I see no problem reading all three: and making a rational guess the truth is a combination of them.
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"I’d forgotten about that until you brought it up. It’s not the talking point you think it is."
Weird, i see it a lot. But, if you don't believe the lie fed to you by your chosen news media, how have you arrived at the idea that a cum laude economics graduate, who was so accomplished at school that she has an asteroid named after her as a result of her science research work in high school, is "not smart"?
"She’s not smart, because the vast majority of her platform is idiotic."
Which part, exactly?
(reads rest of comment)
Oh, sure, the distorted strawman version of her platform is a little dumb. Now, how about you address her actual policy ideas - difficulty: many of them are proven to work in other countries, which don't have the same problems she's pushing to address.
She's not perfect by any means, and some of her ideas are a little idealistic, but if you're going to discuss them let's stick to the ones that exist in reality?
"Abolish ICE without replacement. Ignoring where it came from."
It came from panic over 9/11, where Bush decided to push through a lot of extra powers that likely wouldn't have prevented the attack. Which version of the story do you think happened?
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“It came from panic over 9/11, where Bush decided to push through a lot of extra powers that likely wouldn't have prevented the attack. Which version of the story do you think happened?“
Ice, like many of the new agencies, was a consolidation of multiple prior agencies. INS and Customs, and a few other smaller ones I can’t remember.
So abolish ice. Simply write, pass, and sign a bill that says poof:gone?
Ohkay. then we have no immigration control agency, not customs agency, no duties and taxes agency, … how is that smart.
That’s like the idiot GOP members that wanted to ignore Trump’s call for repeal and REPLACE healthcare law.
Simply Dissolving an agency creates more problems than it solves.
As for Cortez:
https://ballotpedia.org/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez
All I know of her policies is what her campaign posted on the official site at the time. BOP tends to be fairly reliable in it’s off-site links. So there’s plenty to choose from.
My source for election news and platforms.
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"Ice, like many of the new agencies, was a consolidation of multiple prior agencies"
Indeed. A consolidation that many believe is not working as intended and should be dismantled.
"So abolish ice. Simply write, pass, and sign a bill that says poof:gone?"
I await your evidence that no replacement is being discussed or suggested. This isn't Republicans with their "abolish Obamacare" where they have failed to present anything to replace it with, and where even reverting to the prior status quo would harm a lot of people.
"All I know of her policies is what her campaign posted on the official site at the time"
There's a canned quote there regarding abolishing ICE, but I see no implication that she has no plan to do anything afterwards. The context of the quote is one where it would have been out of place to go into finer details. That's something that's better discussed further down the line when it gets far enough to be an actual bill. I suspect she would agree with Warren's comments on the issue, but again, these places are not where finer policy points are laid out: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/06/30/politics/elizabeth-warren-ice-immigration-protests/index.html
Way more is being discussed about the issue than you're allowing yourself to see.
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“I await your evidence that no replacement is being discussed or suggested“
I haven’t heard/read of any.
Don’t put the mandate on me. It’s not perfect but if you want to dissolve the status quo: offer a resin.
I can’t show there’s no replacement offering because I have yet to read of one. As such i stand with my view of no (worth mentioning) offering has been presented.
Once again, despite the left’s mandate to lump groups, I’m not some alt right but Tard.
Ice is a disaster on many issues. Only a blind partisan fool would claim otherwise
Simply put no one has put forth an answer (better than my idea of splitting all post 9-11 conversions back to originality) that I have come across.
If you have or have read an option I’m all ears.
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"I haven’t heard/read of any"
That doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
On my company's roadmap, we have a plan to replace on older Proxmox cluster that's aged out of support and we need to find the best way to move the VMs over to a better solution. There are several ideas on the table, from utilising a newer cluster to moving everything on to Azure or a Kubernetes solution, to just consolidating the functions served by those VMs on to other hardware or cloud solutions. But, those discussions have not taken place yet.
The fact that our roadmap only announces that we plan to decommission the cluster does not mean that we have no plans, only that we haven't yet had the meetings to finalise our plans. Same here - AOC's said that she wants to dismantle ICE, but since the exact plans have not been discussed or put in the form of a bill, the exact steps to be taken are not yet known. That does not mean there's no plans or that it hasn't been considered, just that the appropriate discussions at the appropriate levels are not in progress as yet.
It might comfort you to believe that someone who opposes you politically is an idiot who doesn't know what she's doing or will just do things with zero plans, but there's no evidence that this is the case. All you've seen so far is that nothing's been finalised as yet, and thus not planned to the degree where specifics can be announced. That does not mean they're not being considered, only that it's not yet at the phase where specifics are being hammered out.
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“ but there's no evidence that this is the case. ”
It also doesn’t mean that it is not.
I’m not saying it is more or less than that.
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"It also doesn’t mean that it is not."
Absence of evidence != absence of evidence. I choose to believe that an accomplished scholar with a clear motivation to actually help people has some plan other than "do nothing" after achieving her first goal.
If you choose to believe something else that's your choice, but I'm guessing it's based on as little evidence as your "not smart" claim.
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Oh, and I'm still waiting to hear why she's "not smart" despite all her accomplishments in areas where you do really have to be smart. You not understanding her full policy positions does not reflect on her intelligence.
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[Hallucinates facts disproven by mountains of evidence you've already been provided several times over]
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Whether the papers like it or not it does mean that, because a paper chooses what they will and will not publish before it goes up so them deciding to post a particular op-ed is them giving it their stamp of approval and telling people 'we think this has enough value that we're willing to use a portion of our paper to share it with you'. If they don't want to be associated with a particular person/opinion then they shouldn't print the op-ed because once they do they've created that link by their own actions.
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You are ignoring that the speech carried by a site impacts the users of that site, making it more or less popular. If most people wanted little to no moderation, Parler, Gab, BitChute, 8kun etc, would be much more popular. However FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, et. al. have gained the most users. That strongly suggests that they are getting their moderation about right. As often discussed here, it is not perfect, but it is much better than little or none.
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"There used to be an art in trolling trolls."
In the meantime, grown ups prefer to have mature conversations without the trolls or their hecklers getting in the way of things. Best to just keep you both out of our way so that we can do so.
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"One thing I can say is the over moderation has created very soft and easily offended populations"
No, it hasn't. Me opting for a service where I can communicate with family without being bombarded with white supremacist propaganda does not mean that I'm soft of lazy. It just means I don't want to associate with those people, and choose to go to places where the bouncers keep them out.
"So maybe there’s something to the softening of people in general."
There seems to be more to the idea that people who spend their time in right-wing echo chambers turn into raging assholes who think that their convenience trumps everyone else's rights and opinions. But, there's no evidence for that, maybe you always were an asshole before Murdoch got his claws into you.
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Pretty much. And those who will be the hardest hit are those who want it. They aren't just content at shooting themselves in the foot, they arguing for blowing their whole lower body off.
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But…but…
People like Daniels are so much fun to watch. The sky is falling, the end is coming! bow down to the neon god.
They’re just as funny than the sky is falling, Earth is melting Russia collusion nuts from the other side.
It’s fun for educated individuals to listen to jagoffs. We can laugh at them. We can point and smile and say look at dumdumdum.
Stuff would be really entertaining if people didn’t start to believe it.
I understand YT’s point though. And others.
People actually believe this crap. Russian collusion and chem trails.
I just wish they treated all conspiracies the same. Take them all down.
Or leave them all up.
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Eh, not all conspiracy theories are harmful, in the sense that believing and investigating them could harm one’s self or others. Anything beneath the Science Denial level is mostly benign — not entirely, but mostly.
(And Epstein didn’t kill himself 🤫)
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Wait… she has big foot and Nessi separated from cryptids? Why?
She may want to move covid lab down a few notches to speculation as the pile of evidence grows.
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Re: But…but… -- SPECIAL CASE ZOMBIE!
Lostinlodos: 406 (special case: HOT in '21! all but first 20). 18 month gap to '19; Dec 23rd, 2018 https://www.techdirt.com/user/lostinlodos
This seems to be the new "conservative / dissent" since the "Koby" one is getting worn out.
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Re: Re: But…but… -- SPECIAL CASE ZOMBIE!
What are you trying to say? Since that makeshift no sense at all.
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It's Woody, TD's #1 fanatic and one of their obsessions/conspiracy theories relates to how often people post as they seem to think that anyone who isn't as obsessed as the site as they are(something flat out impossible to achieve as even those that own the site are less focused on it as Woody) must be part of whatever grand conspiracy rots their mind.
Or in tl;dr format: They're crazy, don't bother looking for meaning beyond that in their comments.
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Kool. I really tried to understand but it totally went over my head.
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It's more like a dog-turd surreptitiously slid under your shoe and now you stand there looking confused while trying to scrape it off...
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in-ock-you-us lee-der
AC with innoc one-liner sometimes gets in, then I can run for a few until the session mysteriously quits...
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Re: in-ock-you-us lee-der
SEE? Suddenly I'm IN! -- May be that UK TOR exit was the key. Seem to have most of those blocked lately: I tried dozens of exit nodes just tonight!
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And Techdirt increasingly takes which side of Free Speech?
The corporate side, of course. Techdirt / Maz is de facto Fascist.
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Re: And Techdirt increasingly takes which side of Free Speech?
"Goebbels was in favor of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're really in favor of free speech, then you're in favor of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favor of free speech." -- Noam Chomsky
Behind the scenes, I struggle to get comments in here.
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Re: And Techdirt increasingly takes which side of Free Speech?
As this being censored, I mean "hidden", viewpoint discrimination, as several others just today, will show.
At least Techdirt / Maz have stopped claiming are for Free Speech, now only for corporate-controlled.
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Re: Re: And Blueballs is an ignorant motherfucker...
Hey blue balls you used to be fun. Now it’s just pathetic.
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Re: And Techdirt increasingly takes which side of Free Speech?
[Projects facts not in evidence]
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I mean Google and Facebook can afford to Moderate content and block users or remove content even if the face a barrage of legal actions due to section 230 being weakened
90 per of websites don't have the money or time to deal with frivolous lawsuits
Also advertisers will flee if there's extreme content or trolls and spam on a website
If you want to know what life without section 230 is like look at China or Russia
Sites that promote free speech human rights or criticíze the government
are banned or blocked
Only bland sites that host non political content are allowed
and they are censored
Even memes or gifs that might be seen as political are removed
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"The Federal Agency of News LLC, or FAN, is a Russian corporation that purports to be a news service. FAN was founded in the same building as Russia’s Internet Research Agency, or IRA; the IRA became the subject of a criminal indictment in February 2018 for its efforts to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election.
The founder and first General Director of FAN was Aleksandra Yurievna Krylova, who is wanted by the FBI for conspiracy to defraud the U.S. Later in 2018, the FBI unsealed a criminal complaint against FAN’s chief accountant, Elena Khusyaynova. In that complaint, the FBI said that Federal Agency of News was not so different than the IRA. Both were allegedly part of “Project Lakhta,” a Russian operation to interfere with political and electoral systems both in Russia “and other countries, including the United States.”
Facebook shut more than 270 Russian language accounts and pages in April of 2018, including FAN’s account. Company CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the pages “were controlled by the IRA,” which had “repeatedly acted deceptively and tried to manipulate people in the U.S., Europe, and Russia.” The IRA used a “network of hundreds of fake accounts to spread divisive content and interfere in the U.S. presidential election.” Facebook’s Chief Security Officer stated that the IRA had spent about $100,000 on Facebook ads in the United States."
This is actually rather problematic as the government withdrew its case and the judge dismissed with prejudice. The Mueller team wanted the judge to dismiss without prejudice but the judge was not buying the Mueller teams arguments. At this stage the actions of Facebook in absence of any finding of facts from a US court and in the face of a dismissal with prejudice from the court is discriminating on national origin which is a civil rights violation.
I don't want to get in the minutia but if you look at the actual case there wasn't much of a case there. It was based on alleged e-mails which were just gmail accounts and could have been forged by anyone. The Mueller team had no way to prove the provenance of their evidence in court.
To continue to take action after the charges were dismissed with prejudice because 'they are Russian' is a clear civil rights violation.
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Corrwct, the IRA trolls's claims had zero basis in law or reality, just like yours.
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What are the chances this person works for either FAN or IRA? I'm putting it way over 50%.
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“ Conflating a political party currently known for fascism, hatred, and nakedly partisan powergrabs with progressivism only makes me wonder what the fuck you’re smoking, Lodos.”
Seriously?
fascism
“ forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy,” sounds just like the AOC groups to me!
hatred? Well it’s quite clear from most sites on the internet it’s the dems, in general, and Progrrssives, I particular pushing hatred.
Hate trump. Hate Isreal. Hate Russia, …
nakedly partisan powergrabs ; I don’t see you complaining at all about the hundred of millions of dollars politicians on both sides are raking in from “private” donors.
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"sounds just like the AOC groups to me"
It sounds like the fictionalised versions that are sold to incredulous morons on the right wing who would never actually engage with anyone outside their echo chamber. It doesn't sound like anything they've actually said themselves.
"Hate Isreal"
It's weird how the same misspellings always appear on the right wing, and people outside of that group never make the same spelling mistakes. That's always fascinating to me. Same with how using "boarders" instead of "borders" only seems to happen with the xenophobes trying to make false claims about others' immigrations ideas. Almost as if you're being programmed as to what to think instead of using your own words.
"I don’t see you complaining at all about the hundred of millions of dollars politicians on both sides are raking in from “private” donors"
That might just mean that you're wilfully ignorant, not that it doesn't happen.
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Re:
That's Hawley's censorship bills, and the entire "big tech" fantasy narrative
That's Ohio and Tennessee and Pai making competition to the big ISPs illegal
That's Gov. DeathSentence making free speech and public safety illegal in Florida
That's Republicans making democracy illegal
That's Republicans using unemployment to force people to choose between their livelihood and their life to force the economy to die during a deadly pandemic
That's republicans telling people they have no right to their bodies or existence
That's Republicans tampering with the energy market to prop up their coal and fossil donors
That's DeathSentence sending his Gestapo to raid one who countered his false COVID deathnarrative
And threatening to withhold vaccines from those who used their constitutional right to criticize his corrupt backroom deals with his property-developer buddies
That's Republicans trying to use Section 230 "reform" and Trump's illegal order to the FCC as an end-run around the constitution to silence any and all speech they don't approve of.
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Funny;
‘citation needed, facts not in evidence’
Here the link.
‘It’s not what he said it’s what he meant’
Here’s the context link
‘He still meant what he meant.’
Here’s more evidences
‘You weren’t supposed to be right he’s Bad man bad man. Waaaa!’
Yep, that’s how the anti trump rhetoric tends to go.
Can’t find any anything called falsitas btw.
falsitas : falsehood, untruth, deceit and fraud.
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The Toom types may want to keep this little tidbit from smilezilla in mind:
“Reliable source - The guy you just met.
Informed source - The guy who told the guy you just met.
Unimpeachable source - “The guy who started the rumor originally.
A clarification - To fill in the background with so many details that the foreground goes underground.”
The method of mainstream media in the USA.
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Re:
Weird, you just described the places you get your "news" from. Although I can't see which comments you're referring to due to your inability to use the reply button when it suits you, I dare say there's likely to be a lot more verifiable factual data in whatever you're complaining about than the sources you use.
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Re: Re:
It turns out Wired has an article on lostinlodos (And Koby and Shel10 and restless and Portent and...) 's playbook:
https://www.wired.com/story/far-right-social-strategy-smokescreen-trolling/
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Are you a moron, completely ignorant about civics and economics? Would you rather wallow in your misanthropy than grow up and join the real world?
Then Libertarianism is the religion for you.
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