The point in which they become the de facto public square" sounds pretty reasonable to me
That's not really an answer, that's just another way of framing the ill-defined standard.
Twitter was launched in 2006 with a handful of users. In 2010, it had around 10-million US users. Today, it has around 70-million US users, which is just under 25% of US internet users.
At what point did it become the "de facto public square"?
Okay - but let's be clear. Without Section 230, there is no Twitter, no Facebook, no YouTube, no Wordpress.com. All those services - and all the millions of much smaller online services - would be put in a position where they had to legally review every single thing hosted on their sites. So while microblogging, sharing, video, and blogging websites might emerge, they would be extremely different: they would only have a very slow trickle of content, a handful of new tweets/posts/videos by a handful of users every day. The independent blogosphere would be much smaller - a platform like Wordpress.com would only be able to host a few blogs and maybe publish like one post from each of them per day, so anyone who doesn't know how to set up their entire own blogging site on their own server would be SOL.
Note, by the way, that by "on their own server" I really mean like a server they set up in their home. Because web hosting companies are also covered by Section 230 - so without it, there would be nothing like GoDaddy or Namecheap where you can just go sign up and pay and immediately have a web host that you can upload stuff to. Anyone offering hosting services would have to review and approve everything posted by every website.
Incidentally, this comment of yours would not be here on Techdirt, if Techdirt was even able to exist. At best it would be held for moderation (probably for days or even weeks - we are a tiny team) or, more likely, we'd have never had comments in the first place and indeed comments would not be the norm anywhere on the web. It would instead function far more like a broadcast medium, with a few large media players dominating everything and no meaningful way for individuals to comment, react, criticize, or publish their own material.
So if we accept your condemnation of section 230, then: is the world I just outlined the one you want to see? Or do you have a different proposal?
The especially interesting part is when he would, on occasion, add to the bottom of the article some little blurb like, "This week in 1366 this guy invented this thing that would eventually become the basis of this wonderful thing we all use today."
Um, yeah. That was my idea, and it did not end when I took it over - I did it for over two years of these posts. And it wasn't on occasion, it was every single week. You really need to double-check your memory on this.
I stopped because, once we started cycling through the years, it became harder and harder to find stuff relevant to Techdirt on any given week that I hadn't already used in a previous year (and harder to keep track of whether or not I had used something before). A couple times I accidentally re-used ones then realized later, and that was when I decided it was time to drop it.
However, if that's something people would like to see come back, I can start doing it again.
What points? All you've asserted is that patents and copyright are, by definition, good for innovators, and that thus our criticism of them makes us anti-innovator. You know perfectly well, of course, that we have made lots of detailed criticisms explaining why we believe those things are harmful to innovators despite supposedly existing to protect them. You don't seem capable of addressing that. You're the one who has never actually responded to our arguments in the slightest.
No, I'm simply providing an example to demonstrate how everything you say comes across as childish and disingenuous and confrontational and stupid. Though I don't know why I bother, because you continue to do a good job of demonstrating it yourself.
See, to have a real discussion, you should define something honestly and then proceed to make your case for why you disagree with it. Baking your condemnation into the "definition" is just dumb, childish rhetoric.
Personally yes, I'd generally describe myself as a liberal and a progressive, though there are plenty of things people assume about both those labels that don't describe my beliefs too. But of course, I live up here in the socialist hellscape of Canada, so if I said anything else they'd probably ship me off to the gulag right? You can give your speech about us awful "flaming liberals" now, if you like.
The only effective counter is to actually be more reasonable than them, consistently.
By what metric of effectiveness are you measuring that, though? It is very hard to say what is "effective" in a debate, especially on the internet in a public forum. There's no measurement of how many people actually had their minds changed or their beliefs strengthened/weakened by either side.
I would say there is just as much reason to believe that being "reasonable" in response to a widely discredited, retrograde idea being espoused someone you know is not going to discuss it in good faith - e.g. "white people are genetically superior" - actually makes them seem more legitimate to many onlookers, and invites them to spread their disingenuous and flawed arguments. You are left attempting to pick apart the flaws, but they are not beholden to logic or consistency and can simply pontificate while constantly shifting goal posts, leaving the overall impression to some of the uninitiated that you are "losing" the argument.
"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert."
Jean-Paul Sartre, widely applicable to many kinds of bigots
Oh, I've watched lots of raw footage, and pretty much zero mainstream media coverage. And yes, the police completely dropped the ball - stunning incompetence, and significant reason to believe at least some of it was intentional.
What I deny is the suggestion that the police were simply looking the other way in order to allow "leftist thugs" to cause violence.
What I saw in the raw footage included:
Groups at the Unite The Right rally formally assembling squads armed with shields and sending them out to cause trouble
Walls of protestors with shields bearing Nazi symbols blocking off their section of the park (police get significant blame for this too, since they gave them their blessing to manage their own entrance, even while knowing that the last minute swap of the designated protestor/counterprotestor areas meant many people arriving were trying to get into the wrong quadrant of the park)
Alt-right figures rushing down lines of counterprotestors in order to get into the park a full hour after the rally had been declared an illegal assembly
The scheduled Unite The Right speakers turning down a secure police escort into the park at the very last minute - leaving the police with the impression that, as the officer who had been in charge of organizing the escort put it, "they do not plan on this going well"
Oh, and, a nazi murdering a woman with his car. The police get blame here too of course, since they redeployed the officer on that corner after she radioed for backup because things were getting out of hand, leaving absolutely no police presence (just a couple sawhorse barricades) at a crucial intersection. But that doesn't reduce the blame on the murderer himself, nor the stain on the unabashed nazi rally that brought him to Charlottesville and helped drive him to murder.
The characterization of Unite The Right as a nice, reasonable free speech rally disrupted by leftist thugs is bullshit. It was a vile and angry nazi rally containing many, many people who were actively courting violence and conflict.
On the post: Grandstanding Idiots In Congress Attack Social Media For Censoring Too Much And Too Little Without Understanding Anything
Re: Re:
The point in which they become the de facto public square" sounds pretty reasonable to me
That's not really an answer, that's just another way of framing the ill-defined standard.
Twitter was launched in 2006 with a handful of users. In 2010, it had around 10-million US users. Today, it has around 70-million US users, which is just under 25% of US internet users.
At what point did it become the "de facto public square"?
On the post: Grandstanding Idiots In Congress Attack Social Media For Censoring Too Much And Too Little Without Understanding Anything
Re:
Okay - but let's be clear. Without Section 230, there is no Twitter, no Facebook, no YouTube, no Wordpress.com. All those services - and all the millions of much smaller online services - would be put in a position where they had to legally review every single thing hosted on their sites. So while microblogging, sharing, video, and blogging websites might emerge, they would be extremely different: they would only have a very slow trickle of content, a handful of new tweets/posts/videos by a handful of users every day. The independent blogosphere would be much smaller - a platform like Wordpress.com would only be able to host a few blogs and maybe publish like one post from each of them per day, so anyone who doesn't know how to set up their entire own blogging site on their own server would be SOL.
Note, by the way, that by "on their own server" I really mean like a server they set up in their home. Because web hosting companies are also covered by Section 230 - so without it, there would be nothing like GoDaddy or Namecheap where you can just go sign up and pay and immediately have a web host that you can upload stuff to. Anyone offering hosting services would have to review and approve everything posted by every website.
Incidentally, this comment of yours would not be here on Techdirt, if Techdirt was even able to exist. At best it would be held for moderation (probably for days or even weeks - we are a tiny team) or, more likely, we'd have never had comments in the first place and indeed comments would not be the norm anywhere on the web. It would instead function far more like a broadcast medium, with a few large media players dominating everything and no meaningful way for individuals to comment, react, criticize, or publish their own material.
So if we accept your condemnation of section 230, then: is the world I just outlined the one you want to see? Or do you have a different proposal?
On the post: Grandstanding Idiots In Congress Attack Social Media For Censoring Too Much And Too Little Without Understanding Anything
Re: Re:
Simple question: a monopoly on what, precisely?
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: July 8th - 14th
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On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: July 8th - 14th
Re: Re: Re:
The especially interesting part is when he would, on occasion, add to the bottom of the article some little blurb like, "This week in 1366 this guy invented this thing that would eventually become the basis of this wonderful thing we all use today."
Um, yeah. That was my idea, and it did not end when I took it over - I did it for over two years of these posts. And it wasn't on occasion, it was every single week. You really need to double-check your memory on this.
I stopped because, once we started cycling through the years, it became harder and harder to find stuff relevant to Techdirt on any given week that I hadn't already used in a previous year (and harder to keep track of whether or not I had used something before). A couple times I accidentally re-used ones then realized later, and that was when I decided it was time to drop it.
However, if that's something people would like to see come back, I can start doing it again.
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: July 8th - 14th
Re:
On the post: Fake News Is A Meaningless Term, And Our Obsession Over It Continues To Harm Actual News
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Et tu
debating the points I’ve made
What points? All you've asserted is that patents and copyright are, by definition, good for innovators, and that thus our criticism of them makes us anti-innovator. You know perfectly well, of course, that we have made lots of detailed criticisms explaining why we believe those things are harmful to innovators despite supposedly existing to protect them. You don't seem capable of addressing that. You're the one who has never actually responded to our arguments in the slightest.
On the post: Fake News Is A Meaningless Term, And Our Obsession Over It Continues To Harm Actual News
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Et tu
On the post: Fake News Is A Meaningless Term, And Our Obsession Over It Continues To Harm Actual News
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Et tu
On the post: Fake News Is A Meaningless Term, And Our Obsession Over It Continues To Harm Actual News
Re: Re: Re: Et tu
>*"I believe Techdirt's opinions about how to promote innovation are flawed and counterproductive"*
Your childish nonsense:
>*"Techdirt is decidedly against innovators"*
Spot the difference?
On the post: Fake News Is A Meaningless Term, And Our Obsession Over It Continues To Harm Actual News
Re: Re: FakeNews=Spin
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: July 1st - 7th
Re: Re: Re: Re: Openly Supporting Socialism
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: July 1st - 7th
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Openly Supporting Socialism
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: July 1st - 7th
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Openly Supporting Socialism
From my reading, the liberal agenda would give everybody free everything, and no one would work
Then it's a very unsophisticated reading.
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: July 1st - 7th
Re: Re: Re: Openly Supporting Socialism
See, to have a real discussion, you should define something honestly and then proceed to make your case for why you disagree with it. Baking your condemnation into the "definition" is just dumb, childish rhetoric.
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: July 1st - 7th
Re: Re: Re: Openly Supporting Socialism
Personally yes, I'd generally describe myself as a liberal and a progressive, though there are plenty of things people assume about both those labels that don't describe my beliefs too. But of course, I live up here in the socialist hellscape of Canada, so if I said anything else they'd probably ship me off to the gulag right? You can give your speech about us awful "flaming liberals" now, if you like.
On the post: This Week In Techdirt History: July 1st - 7th
Re: Openly Supporting Socialism
On the post: NY Times, Winner Of A Key 1st Amendment Case, Suddenly Seems Upset That 1st Amendment Protects Conservatives Too
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: role reversal
On the post: NY Times, Winner Of A Key 1st Amendment Case, Suddenly Seems Upset That 1st Amendment Protects Conservatives Too
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The only effective counter is to actually be more reasonable than them, consistently.
By what metric of effectiveness are you measuring that, though? It is very hard to say what is "effective" in a debate, especially on the internet in a public forum. There's no measurement of how many people actually had their minds changed or their beliefs strengthened/weakened by either side.
I would say there is just as much reason to believe that being "reasonable" in response to a widely discredited, retrograde idea being espoused someone you know is not going to discuss it in good faith - e.g. "white people are genetically superior" - actually makes them seem more legitimate to many onlookers, and invites them to spread their disingenuous and flawed arguments. You are left attempting to pick apart the flaws, but they are not beholden to logic or consistency and can simply pontificate while constantly shifting goal posts, leaving the overall impression to some of the uninitiated that you are "losing" the argument.
On the post: NY Times, Winner Of A Key 1st Amendment Case, Suddenly Seems Upset That 1st Amendment Protects Conservatives Too
Re: Re: Re: role reversal
Oh, I've watched lots of raw footage, and pretty much zero mainstream media coverage. And yes, the police completely dropped the ball - stunning incompetence, and significant reason to believe at least some of it was intentional.
What I deny is the suggestion that the police were simply looking the other way in order to allow "leftist thugs" to cause violence.
What I saw in the raw footage included:
Groups at the Unite The Right rally formally assembling squads armed with shields and sending them out to cause trouble
Walls of protestors with shields bearing Nazi symbols blocking off their section of the park (police get significant blame for this too, since they gave them their blessing to manage their own entrance, even while knowing that the last minute swap of the designated protestor/counterprotestor areas meant many people arriving were trying to get into the wrong quadrant of the park)
Alt-right figures rushing down lines of counterprotestors in order to get into the park a full hour after the rally had been declared an illegal assembly
The scheduled Unite The Right speakers turning down a secure police escort into the park at the very last minute - leaving the police with the impression that, as the officer who had been in charge of organizing the escort put it, "they do not plan on this going well"
The characterization of Unite The Right as a nice, reasonable free speech rally disrupted by leftist thugs is bullshit. It was a vile and angry nazi rally containing many, many people who were actively courting violence and conflict.
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