The solution now, as it always has been, is Neutral Point Of View.
“This group wants to pass laws that give LGBTQ people equality under the law. This other group wants to pass laws that criminalize LGBTQ people for existing. Being neutral, I must conclude the arguments on both sides are equally valid and equally worthy of the same coverage.” — you, probably
Neither is true. You, of all people — who had to be told you were violating copyright! — should know how easy one can violate copyright via unintentional ignorance.
Modern word processors live and die on the functionality you would turn into a goddamned microtransaction. Being able to copy-paste text, regardless of the source, is what keeps people from having to re-type entire parts of a document in a different place. Remove that functionality and “pirates” won’t suffer…but ordinary people will.
As others have pointed out, your proposals for copyright checks are a logistical impossibility. Here, your proposal becomes outright insanity. A full-text database of every written work still under copyright somewhere in the world that could be checked in the blink of an eye is an impossibility. A microtransaction version of copy-paste that functions as a collection agency, with no guarantee that the payments will be given to the appropriate parties? That is so far beyond impossible that you’re getting into “you would need all six Infinity Stones to make this a thing” territory.
Oh, and one more mistake you made: If copy-paste functions were to become a microtransaction, you would’ve needed to pay me for copy-pasting part of my comment into yours. For all your handwringing about “pirates” and stopping copyright infringement, even you couldn’t resist infringing on the automatic copyright granted to my comment by the Berne Convention. (Fair Use is a defense, not a right.) You’re no better than the “pirates” you decry, save for the fact that you have a defense for your infringement.
And since you failed to directly answer the question, I’m going to copy-paste myself (and pay myself for the privilege): How would a word processor application be “more robust” if its core functionality — word processing — was stripped out because said functionality could allow someone to violate copyright?
With the repeated and blatant anti-creator moves Twitch has been engaging in at this point you almost have to wonder if they are trying to tank the platform.
Tank it? No. Sanitize it? Absolutely. Amazon makes the site less…“creative” in general and advertisers — or potential buyers — think of Twitch as more appealing to throw money at. No mainstream advertiser would want to associate with female streamers wearing bikinis in a hot tub. But every advertiser will always want in on the cash flow involving the latest Call of Duty.
If you remove ways to break copyright with the product, the product will be more robust as a result.
I can violate copyright with Notepad++. How would that application be “more robust” if its core functionality — word processing — was stripped out because said functionality could allow someone to violate copyright? Please note that “it could have a copyright database” or anything along those lines is not an answer.
His administration also ignored COVID-19 until it got so out of control that even Donald “I lie as easily as I breathe” Trump couldn’t ignore the existence of a global pandemic. The only reason he did all that shit with the vaccine is because he forced his own hand in that regard. Thousands of people died before he ever thought to order the development of a vaccine. Don’t give a murderer credit for preventing deaths his own indifference would’ve caused.
You can choose to look at the context of the conversation and determine what was meant by it, or just see "right?" and assume bad faith.
Or — and stick with me, because I know this might shock you~ — I can do both. I don’t appreciate that rhetorical gimmick, but I can route around it if the argument before it is sound. Yours wasn’t, which is why I called out your use of the gimmick: You wanted me to agree with you on a point of argument I couldn’t agree with, and using “right?” would make me seem unreasonable no matter how minor my disagreement. (“He can’t even agree to this? He must be out of his mind!”)
You wanna suckerpunch Koby or Brainy with that shit? Go right the hell ahead. But come to me with that shit and I will always be “unreasonable”.
Asking for confirmation of agreement is not a rhetorical gimmick.
As far as I’m concerned, it is. The trick to that gimmick lies in asking me to agree with a conclusion that I don’t share so you can have the upper hand in an argument. (Your aimed-below-the-belt snipe about “keyword matching” isn’t helping your case in that regard.)
I know how bullshit that trick is. That’s why I don’t use that gimmick outside of the rare case of passive-aggressive sarcastic bullshitting. I mean, that is the best use for that kind of rhetorical trickery, right~?
Right now we, as a country, face a major first amendment issue. If Democrats dictate a law it will allow for unlimited censorship. If it manages to be held off for Republicans to decide it will end moderation as a whole.
I assume that, with this paragraph, you’re referring to the efforts to repeal Section 230.
Democrats want to repeal 230 because they think services such as Twitter aren’t moderating enough speech — that those services are “letting” TOS-violating speech stay up because…reasons. Their thought process in repealing 230 goes like this: “We repeal 230 and they’ll be forced, by threats of lawsuits, to moderate far more than they do right now.” But any repeal of 230 wouldn’t repeal the First Amendment — i.e., it wouldn’t “allow for unlimited censorship”.
Republicans want to repeal 230 because they think services such as Twitter are overmoderating speech — that those services are “censorsing” conservative speech and ideas (you know the ones…) because of an anti-conservative bias. Their thought process in repealing 230 goes like this: “We repeal 230 and they’ll be forced, by threats of lawsuits, to carry conservative speech no matter what.” Their repeal of 230 wouldn’t “allow for unlimited censorship”. It also wouldn’t “end moderation as a whole”…although it would prevent most moderation, even the “non-destructive” kind, from ever happening because of the threat of being sued over it.
Repealing 230 would do nothing to stop actual censorship. If anything, it might encourage censorship by encouraging companies to stop hosting third-party speech, since 230 would no longer prevent services from being held liable for such speech.
And moderation still wouldn’t be censorship, no matter how much moderation feels like censorship to you.
I’ve yet to see anyone present an argument that fully placated all people, nor one that protected the very right in the list.
Okay, let’s look at that list.
Right to expression
Twitter moderation doesn’t infringe upon this right. A person who has a tweet/account deleted from Twitter still has the right to go elsewhere and say the same things that made Twitter moderate them. Thinking otherwise is to believe in the “I have been silenced” fallacy.
Right to not be burdened by others’ expression
I’ll assume here that you refer to the right of association. Twitter moderation doesn’t infringe upon this right, either. What would infringe upon this right is the idea that Twitter must sandbox speech it would otherwise delete — that it must host speech against the wishes of the owners/operators — or else it is (somehow) a censor.
Right of private property, including one’s self
Tangential to, but not wholly the same as, the above question. The right of association gives me the right to tell someone to fuck off while in an open field owned by no one; property rights give me the right to kick out someone who I’ve told to fuck off but won’t leave my home.
Right to not suffer undue burden
People suffer undue burdens all the time — sudden deaths of family members, debilitating diseases, financial hardships, you name it. Nothing in the laws of Man or God (whichever one you worship) says people have a right to be free of such burdens.
Moderation doesn’t fuck with anyone’s rights. Forcing “non-destructive” moderation to prevent “censorship” would, at the bare minimum, violate the right of association and property rights. You can’t balance the idea of “non-destructive” moderation and the right of Twitter to choose which speech it will and will not host without infringing upon that right. Nobody can.
I support moderation that is not by it’s nature destructive
Therein lies my entire point: You see “destructive” moderation as censorship. If you dislike censorship and would want to see it stopped (which I hope you would!), you cannot then turn around and say “oh that form of censorship is okay” — it weakens your entire stance on censorship.
I see it as a perfectly acceptable to purging from existence in the immediate environment.
Assume a platform owner don’t want to host speech such as Ku Klux Klan propaganda — even if it’s “hidden away” by sandboxing it. Do you want them forced to host that speech so they aren’t “censoring” a white supremacist terrorist organization?
I can balance non destructive moderation as acceptable against deletion.
Yes or no: Can you perfectly balance the desire of platform owners to not host offensive/repugnant speech with your desire to keep them from deleting/“censoring” it, such that platform owners aren’t forced to host speech?
But many many would undoubtedly take to the public about how wrong it is to “censor”.
Like, say, the same people you claim have been censored by Twitter — the people prevented from speaking by way of having their tweets/accounts deleted by Twitter? Because that sounds like the “I have been silenced” fallacy in action.
do you truly believe hardened democrats … would simply quietly go to another platform?
No. But I’d also call them ignorant if they equated Twitter moderation with censorship. I don’t care about political ideology on this point; I’m not playing that game.
The definitions of “censorship” that I have seen mention acts that can be part of moderation, but they don’t explicitly mention moderation — and yes, I’d prefer to split hairs so I don’t equate moderation with censorship and thus sound like I’m against moderation/in favor of the compelled hosting of speech.
The changeover in leadership may have helped quash the subpoena, but the fact that it was ever issued in the first place — and the notion that people who helped craft this subpoena are still working at DOJ after the presidential transition — raises questions the DOJ should be answering.
Moderation was conducted without censorship via many ramps. And many communities moderated internally not by censoring (deletion) but by moving out of context, disruptive, or out right “bad” comments to the proper place or the sandbox. In many cases using a shadow link and including a reason for the move.
And many others moderated by deleting bullshit they didn’t want to host, not even in a sandbox. That wasn’t censorship. It was moderation — the intentional curation of a community via proper consequences for violating the rules of that community. The people whose posts were deleted could repost their speech somewhere else; no suppression of speech ever occured in such situations.
Deletion falls under censorship by the prevailing academic definition.
And the interpretation of that definition should be narrowed to exclude deletion-as-moderation because moderation isn’t censorship. Unless Twitter is actively trying to keep a banned (ex-)user from posting somewhere else, Twitter isn’t trying to censor anyone when it bans people for violating the TOS. Unless Twitter has actively prevented someone from posting somewhere else, it has never censored anyone by preventing them from posting on Twitter. Moderation isn’t censorship.
I’m not suggesting twitter should leave everything up and alone and ignored. At no point did I EVER make that statement.
Your arguments present two ideas: censorship is bad, and moderation is censorship. For what reason would you want to stop censorship in all its forms except one?
Also, let me draw your attention to a comment you avoided addressing directly:
Beside which, if you keep on referring to moderation as censorship, you make it easy for politicians to destroy the net by making moderation decisions.
I have One Simple Question for you now. Yes or no, Lodos: Do you believe the government should have an absolute and irrefutable legal right to prevent any privately owned interactive web service from deleting legally protected speech that the owners/operators of said service don’t want to host?
Censorship bad. Twitter censoring bad. Twitter censoring is legal.
Legality is irrelevant. Logically, if you believe censorship is bad, and you believe censorship must be stopped, you must therefore believe even “legal ‘censorship’ ” (i.e., moderation) must be stopped. I can safely assume the first two propositions are correct. For what reason is the third incorrect? (“Property rights” is not an answer.)
Not that it is likely but what if Twitter was purchased by a Republican company and started selectively “moderating” anything Biden posts the Republican Party disagrees with?
People would likely stop using Twitter — or at least use it less — as they search for a less nakedly partisan alternative. (And hey, all the Parler and Gab assholes could finally have Twitter back.) I already left Twitter and have an account on a Mastodon instance, so it wouldn’t really bother me…except for having to keep track of which artists I follow would be leaving and where they’d be going.
they already selectively enforce their rules
Show me a moderation team that doesn’t.
From censoring based on “community moderation” to censoring to corral and dictate.
And if Twitter, Tumblr, etc. were able to “corral and dictate” on their own, you might have a point. But they can’t, so you don’t.
Now, if you want to talk about how payment processors and credit card companies use their immense power to help put the kibosh on adult content? That is either censorship or aiding censorship; it’s a damned important topic, too. But Tumblr choosing not to host porn, regardless of the reasons why? That shit ain’t censorship. Neither is Twitter deleting posts that support Old 45’s Big Lie.
there are other definitions than the one you use, and content moderation fits some of those definitions
I don’t support any definition (or interpretation thereof) of “censorship” that classifies moderation as censorship.
I do, however, apologize for putting words in your mouth that didn’t first come from it. I don’t like it when people do it to me, and I should be more careful about doing it to others. My bad; will do my best to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
On the post: Steam Still Can't Seem To Keep Its Hands Off Some 'Sex Games' Despite Hands Off Policy
Still not an answer to my question, but when have you ever directly answered a question I’ve posed with an answer that is wholly on-point.
On the post: As The US Press Withers, Glorified Marketing Aims To Take Its Place
“This group wants to pass laws that give LGBTQ people equality under the law. This other group wants to pass laws that criminalize LGBTQ people for existing. Being neutral, I must conclude the arguments on both sides are equally valid and equally worthy of the same coverage.” — you, probably
On the post: Twitch Yanks Advertising Revenue From Popular 'Hot Tub Streamer' With No Warning Or Dialogue
Twitch has the right to do what it did; that doesn’t mean I have to think what it did was right — or stop myself from saying so.
On the post: Steam Still Can't Seem To Keep Its Hands Off Some 'Sex Games' Despite Hands Off Policy
You made two mistakes here:
You assume only pirates use Notepad++; and
Neither is true. You, of all people — who had to be told you were violating copyright! — should know how easy one can violate copyright via unintentional ignorance.
Modern word processors live and die on the functionality you would turn into a goddamned microtransaction. Being able to copy-paste text, regardless of the source, is what keeps people from having to re-type entire parts of a document in a different place. Remove that functionality and “pirates” won’t suffer…but ordinary people will.
As others have pointed out, your proposals for copyright checks are a logistical impossibility. Here, your proposal becomes outright insanity. A full-text database of every written work still under copyright somewhere in the world that could be checked in the blink of an eye is an impossibility. A microtransaction version of copy-paste that functions as a collection agency, with no guarantee that the payments will be given to the appropriate parties? That is so far beyond impossible that you’re getting into “you would need all six Infinity Stones to make this a thing” territory.
Oh, and one more mistake you made: If copy-paste functions were to become a microtransaction, you would’ve needed to pay me for copy-pasting part of my comment into yours. For all your handwringing about “pirates” and stopping copyright infringement, even you couldn’t resist infringing on the automatic copyright granted to my comment by the Berne Convention. (Fair Use is a defense, not a right.) You’re no better than the “pirates” you decry, save for the fact that you have a defense for your infringement.
And since you failed to directly answer the question, I’m going to copy-paste myself (and pay myself for the privilege): How would a word processor application be “more robust” if its core functionality — word processing — was stripped out because said functionality could allow someone to violate copyright?
On the post: Twitch Yanks Advertising Revenue From Popular 'Hot Tub Streamer' With No Warning Or Dialogue
Tank it? No. Sanitize it? Absolutely. Amazon makes the site less…“creative” in general and advertisers — or potential buyers — think of Twitch as more appealing to throw money at. No mainstream advertiser would want to associate with female streamers wearing bikinis in a hot tub. But every advertiser will always want in on the cash flow involving the latest Call of Duty.
On the post: Steam Still Can't Seem To Keep Its Hands Off Some 'Sex Games' Despite Hands Off Policy
I can violate copyright with Notepad++. How would that application be “more robust” if its core functionality — word processing — was stripped out because said functionality could allow someone to violate copyright? Please note that “it could have a copyright database” or anything along those lines is not an answer.
On the post: The Flopping Of Trump's Blog Proves That It's Not Free Speech He's Upset About; But Free Reach
His administration also ignored COVID-19 until it got so out of control that even Donald “I lie as easily as I breathe” Trump couldn’t ignore the existence of a global pandemic. The only reason he did all that shit with the vaccine is because he forced his own hand in that regard. Thousands of people died before he ever thought to order the development of a vaccine. Don’t give a murderer credit for preventing deaths his own indifference would’ve caused.
On the post: The Flopping Of Trump's Blog Proves That It's Not Free Speech He's Upset About; But Free Reach
I rarely see anyone using that rhetorical trick in good faith. Experience has taught me to consider it a bad faith move regardless of who does it.
On the post: Scammers Use The Public's Fear Of Copyright Culture To Trick People Into Installing Malware
Congratulations, copyright maximalists — you’re no better than scam artists now.
On the post: The Flopping Of Trump's Blog Proves That It's Not Free Speech He's Upset About; But Free Reach
Or — and stick with me, because I know this might shock you~ — I can do both. I don’t appreciate that rhetorical gimmick, but I can route around it if the argument before it is sound. Yours wasn’t, which is why I called out your use of the gimmick: You wanted me to agree with you on a point of argument I couldn’t agree with, and using “right?” would make me seem unreasonable no matter how minor my disagreement. (“He can’t even agree to this? He must be out of his mind!”)
You wanna suckerpunch Koby or Brainy with that shit? Go right the hell ahead. But come to me with that shit and I will always be “unreasonable”.
On the post: FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr Not Interested In Baltimore Prosecutor's Request To Have The FCC Investigate Her Critics
To be fair, going full Republican isn’t exactly a dealbreaker these days…
On the post: The Flopping Of Trump's Blog Proves That It's Not Free Speech He's Upset About; But Free Reach
As far as I’m concerned, it is. The trick to that gimmick lies in asking me to agree with a conclusion that I don’t share so you can have the upper hand in an argument. (Your aimed-below-the-belt snipe about “keyword matching” isn’t helping your case in that regard.)
I know how bullshit that trick is. That’s why I don’t use that gimmick outside of the rare case of passive-aggressive sarcastic bullshitting. I mean, that is the best use for that kind of rhetorical trickery, right~?
On the post: The Flopping Of Trump's Blog Proves That It's Not Free Speech He's Upset About; But Free Reach
I assume that, with this paragraph, you’re referring to the efforts to repeal Section 230.
Democrats want to repeal 230 because they think services such as Twitter aren’t moderating enough speech — that those services are “letting” TOS-violating speech stay up because…reasons. Their thought process in repealing 230 goes like this: “We repeal 230 and they’ll be forced, by threats of lawsuits, to moderate far more than they do right now.” But any repeal of 230 wouldn’t repeal the First Amendment — i.e., it wouldn’t “allow for unlimited censorship”.
Republicans want to repeal 230 because they think services such as Twitter are overmoderating speech — that those services are “censorsing” conservative speech and ideas (you know the ones…) because of an anti-conservative bias. Their thought process in repealing 230 goes like this: “We repeal 230 and they’ll be forced, by threats of lawsuits, to carry conservative speech no matter what.” Their repeal of 230 wouldn’t “allow for unlimited censorship”. It also wouldn’t “end moderation as a whole”…although it would prevent most moderation, even the “non-destructive” kind, from ever happening because of the threat of being sued over it.
Repealing 230 would do nothing to stop actual censorship. If anything, it might encourage censorship by encouraging companies to stop hosting third-party speech, since 230 would no longer prevent services from being held liable for such speech.
And moderation still wouldn’t be censorship, no matter how much moderation feels like censorship to you.
On the post: The Flopping Of Trump's Blog Proves That It's Not Free Speech He's Upset About; But Free Reach
Okay, let’s look at that list.
Twitter moderation doesn’t infringe upon this right. A person who has a tweet/account deleted from Twitter still has the right to go elsewhere and say the same things that made Twitter moderate them. Thinking otherwise is to believe in the “I have been silenced” fallacy.
I’ll assume here that you refer to the right of association. Twitter moderation doesn’t infringe upon this right, either. What would infringe upon this right is the idea that Twitter must sandbox speech it would otherwise delete — that it must host speech against the wishes of the owners/operators — or else it is (somehow) a censor.
Tangential to, but not wholly the same as, the above question. The right of association gives me the right to tell someone to fuck off while in an open field owned by no one; property rights give me the right to kick out someone who I’ve told to fuck off but won’t leave my home.
People suffer undue burdens all the time — sudden deaths of family members, debilitating diseases, financial hardships, you name it. Nothing in the laws of Man or God (whichever one you worship) says people have a right to be free of such burdens.
Moderation doesn’t fuck with anyone’s rights. Forcing “non-destructive” moderation to prevent “censorship” would, at the bare minimum, violate the right of association and property rights. You can’t balance the idea of “non-destructive” moderation and the right of Twitter to choose which speech it will and will not host without infringing upon that right. Nobody can.
On the post: The Flopping Of Trump's Blog Proves That It's Not Free Speech He's Upset About; But Free Reach
Therein lies my entire point: You see “destructive” moderation as censorship. If you dislike censorship and would want to see it stopped (which I hope you would!), you cannot then turn around and say “oh that form of censorship is okay” — it weakens your entire stance on censorship.
Assume a platform owner don’t want to host speech such as Ku Klux Klan propaganda — even if it’s “hidden away” by sandboxing it. Do you want them forced to host that speech so they aren’t “censoring” a white supremacist terrorist organization?
Yes or no: Can you perfectly balance the desire of platform owners to not host offensive/repugnant speech with your desire to keep them from deleting/“censoring” it, such that platform owners aren’t forced to host speech?
Like, say, the same people you claim have been censored by Twitter — the people prevented from speaking by way of having their tweets/accounts deleted by Twitter? Because that sounds like the “I have been silenced” fallacy in action.
No. But I’d also call them ignorant if they equated Twitter moderation with censorship. I don’t care about political ideology on this point; I’m not playing that game.
On the post: The Flopping Of Trump's Blog Proves That It's Not Free Speech He's Upset About; But Free Reach
Two things.
Don’t use that “right?” rhetorical gimmick on me; I’m well aware of it and I don’t like it.
On the post: DOJ Dropped Its Subpoena For NunesAlt Twitter Account One Week After Twitter Called Bullshit On Its Demands
The changeover in leadership may have helped quash the subpoena, but the fact that it was ever issued in the first place — and the notion that people who helped craft this subpoena are still working at DOJ after the presidential transition — raises questions the DOJ should be answering.
On the post: The Flopping Of Trump's Blog Proves That It's Not Free Speech He's Upset About; But Free Reach
And many others moderated by deleting bullshit they didn’t want to host, not even in a sandbox. That wasn’t censorship. It was moderation — the intentional curation of a community via proper consequences for violating the rules of that community. The people whose posts were deleted could repost their speech somewhere else; no suppression of speech ever occured in such situations.
And the interpretation of that definition should be narrowed to exclude deletion-as-moderation because moderation isn’t censorship. Unless Twitter is actively trying to keep a banned (ex-)user from posting somewhere else, Twitter isn’t trying to censor anyone when it bans people for violating the TOS. Unless Twitter has actively prevented someone from posting somewhere else, it has never censored anyone by preventing them from posting on Twitter. Moderation isn’t censorship.
Your arguments present two ideas: censorship is bad, and moderation is censorship. For what reason would you want to stop censorship in all its forms except one?
Also, let me draw your attention to a comment you avoided addressing directly:
I have One Simple Question for you now. Yes or no, Lodos: Do you believe the government should have an absolute and irrefutable legal right to prevent any privately owned interactive web service from deleting legally protected speech that the owners/operators of said service don’t want to host?
On the post: The Flopping Of Trump's Blog Proves That It's Not Free Speech He's Upset About; But Free Reach
Legality is irrelevant. Logically, if you believe censorship is bad, and you believe censorship must be stopped, you must therefore believe even “legal ‘censorship’ ” (i.e., moderation) must be stopped. I can safely assume the first two propositions are correct. For what reason is the third incorrect? (“Property rights” is not an answer.)
People would likely stop using Twitter — or at least use it less — as they search for a less nakedly partisan alternative. (And hey, all the Parler and Gab assholes could finally have Twitter back.) I already left Twitter and have an account on a Mastodon instance, so it wouldn’t really bother me…except for having to keep track of which artists I follow would be leaving and where they’d be going.
Show me a moderation team that doesn’t.
And if Twitter, Tumblr, etc. were able to “corral and dictate” on their own, you might have a point. But they can’t, so you don’t.
Now, if you want to talk about how payment processors and credit card companies use their immense power to help put the kibosh on adult content? That is either censorship or aiding censorship; it’s a damned important topic, too. But Tumblr choosing not to host porn, regardless of the reasons why? That shit ain’t censorship. Neither is Twitter deleting posts that support Old 45’s Big Lie.
On the post: The Flopping Of Trump's Blog Proves That It's Not Free Speech He's Upset About; But Free Reach
I don’t support any definition (or interpretation thereof) of “censorship” that classifies moderation as censorship.
I do, however, apologize for putting words in your mouth that didn’t first come from it. I don’t like it when people do it to me, and I should be more careful about doing it to others. My bad; will do my best to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
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