What public debate? You're assuming equal access to the public square and an equally listening audience carefully weighing the case on its merits. This emphatically doesn't happen. In any case, how can you debate if you're in a small minority with the world and his wife at your throat? Better to hide yourself until its over, saying nothing that might provoke another flurry of attacks.
Having been on the end of a campaign of lies that ultimately saw me pushed out of an entire community some years ago, I call nonsense. There's no debate when you have a horde of trolls on one side while your jittery "friends" jump ship instead of pushing back. In my experience, it's a popularity contest. If you're not popular, you're stuffed. To be a target is to be alone -- unless you're in a "protected group" and can get some nice, well-meaning social justice warrior types on side to fight your corner. Good luck with that. There are certain words I'm still afraid to type in case the trolls come flooding back into my online spaces, insisting I continue to debate their stupid, pointless, oft-debunked drama points.
On the political front, I see the firehose effect drowning out the voices of those who care for the truth, for protecting the vulnerable, and for standing up for the environment. How the hell do you debate that without a keyboard army of your own?
Currently major platforms are kicking out the bigots and the hateful...
Good. Relegating them to echo chambers does a great deal to blunt the force of the firehose. This makes counter-speech more effective since it is no longer being drowned out. In my case, had the admins of the various sites where I posted just followed their own TOS the situation would never have broken down the way it did.
The main issue with being TOO welcoming at private platforms blocking out what is considered hateful is twofold - first, that private platform is a corporation, not our friend. Google, Facebook and Blizzard still sold themselves to China for profit even if they ALSO ban racists from their forums.
Yes they did. It's costly to do what is right but it's ultimately worth it. I'm massively disappointed in Google and Facebook.
And secondly, unfortunately all too many politicians conflate the public and private space, and those politicians all have their own little list of what they'd like not to be said in public.
Yes they do. Thankfully, the First Amendment means they can't actually stop people saying things they don't like.
Debating like we do here whenever a private platform blocks or stumbles is healthy. It's when the scrutiny stops that things go to shit in a hurry.
I can actually debate here. Decent, reasonable people like yourself and the other regulars give me food for thought. As I work to defend my positions, I find I often have to justify them, and this has to be plausible. You make me think, and that is good. However, the rest of the online world is not as civilised as TD. We should definitely scrutinise speech that may cause harm down the line, but I think you can do that without normalising it.
Eh, I was talking about Disney execs. When I'm fantasizing about things that are highly unlikely to happen, I take a lot of licence.
I suppose I should have been more specific about violence; the idea that hitting people is funny or people being hurt is funny is the problem. Shouldn't we be promoting empathy? That part about pseudorealistically depicted impressions can be applied to anyone for anything. The results of people actually believing this means they don't realise concussion can kill. Wasn't Houdini killed as a result of a gut punch bursting his already-inflamed appendix? It's the same with guns: sanitizing the impacts of bullets hitting human flesh by not showing the bloody mess that would result leads people to think that guns aren't that bad. Start showing more realistic scenes and that idea of a gun being your harmless little friend until you need it to be otherwise melts away. Remember Reservoir Dogs? We watched a man die in agony from a messy gunshot to the belly because it really does take about that long (and hurt that much) to die from such an injury.
As for the NRA, they're awful. I don't care in the least bit if they get offended about anything. Stuff 'em.
All new technology has teething troubles. While Facial Recognition has some advantages, it can only assist, not be the final arbiter. That said, I wouldn't rule it out altogether.
I think the trouble we're having with it not is not about low contrasts, it's about false positives and over-reliance. The Shiny New Thing is not necessarily magically right all the time. People who use it would do well to remember it.
Agreed. If you're using any social media platform to send a message, etc., have several accounts on different ones and a website of your own. I have a blog and use Twitter to post links to my posts. The rest of the time I'm interacting with others or retweeting other people's posts.
Generally speaking, if you're not out to cause trouble or pick on any particular individual or group, you shouldn't have any trouble with expressing your views. If, however, you want to be a jerk to other people, you only have yourself to blame if they pull the plug. There is no "both sides" to the Nazi (or other hate group) story; they want to encourage hate. Stuff 'em.
*Indeed, as In Dublin's Eamonn McCann pointed out, if you stick something into someone for their pleasure, that's bad (per Hollywood), but if you do so to inflict pain and/or death, that's okay (per Hollywood). That's ridiculous! I agree with him there.
The reaction you got is not surprising at all, it's an established fact that a majority of right-wing media/forums tend to punish people who tells the truth which doesn't adhere to the current narrative.
And that's a shame. If you can't critique your own position (I'm forever having to do so with my own as new information comes in), it's like you're in a cult, or something. It's creepy. That's the issue I have with any True Believer type.
Some right-wingers and conservatives will use the above statement to say that lefties/liberals do the same to right-wingers/conservatives who speak up.
The socialist Dan Kervick has been retweeting outright blood libel against the Uighur people (they've supposedly been teaching kids to steal, Fagin-style) because his True Believer Actual left-wing good buddies think China is Da Bomb, or something -- despite the fact that it's actually more fascist than left wing these days, having fallen in love with Western capitalism. But... four legs good, or something. Amirite? So Danny toes the Actual Far Left line without comment. Honestly, for all the guff I've heard from the right about the so-called Radical Left, they don't seem to know about this.
The problem with that is that when someone say things that are verifiabl[y] not true or taken entirely out of context and that person refuses to acknowledge that it's not very surprising they are punished in one way or another by people who actually look for the truth.
Unless they're in some kind of echo chamber that's basically a mirror image of the right wing ones. They do exist, but on the actual Far Left, not the imaginary far left, which the rest of the world would consider the middle ground. As I said Dan Kervick's feed is a classic example of this and I call the lies out where I see them. True Believer types aren't interested in the truth, they just want to push their narrative.
The Hayes Code and the MPAA mostly did a horrible job rating movies (and the ESRB fell into the same paradigm regarding video games) in which explicit violence crept its way into the more family-friendly ratings where explicit nudity and sexuality got locked into tighter restraints.
Indeed, as In Dublin's Eamonn McCann pointed out, if you stick something into someone for their pleasure, that's bad, but if you do so to inflict pain and/or death, that's okay. I agree with him there.
Part of the problem came from an unwillingness of large theaters and companies to lock NC-17 and AO products, assuming they were only of prurient interest, which meant that anything that wasn't porn was forced to negotiate back into the R-rated / M-rated category, and as such our ratings boards could exercise extremely tight control over minor aspects (such as women being portrayed as enjoying sex. The effrontery!)
The idea was to enforce patriarchal gender stereotypes, methinks. That being the case, violence meted out by manly men to protect cowering women, who would then reward them with affection, etc., was acceptable because it presented an idealised image of masculinity and feminity. I think those people would freak out over Sarah Connor or Ellen Ripley because they drove a tank over such notions.
Yes, we sometimes got good movies while those codes were in place. Spain got good movies while General Franco was still in office. But what was lost was all the good movies that were suppressed or turned into less-good movies based on the mores of the guardians. As such it ended up shaping culture into the misogynist and violent grotesquerie that we have today.
Sorry, I can only see parts of that, i.e. the part where the socially sanctioned violence of a man enables him to "get" the girl, or the part where cartoonish violence gets a pass whereas sexual activity is given a higher rating. I think there's more to the creation of the the misogynist and violent grotesquerie that we have today than movies censored by the vicar so married couples were shown to have separate beds or one foot on the floor, etc.
...One that, mind you, allows kids to see human mutilation, so long as they bleed pixels rather than blood.
Were it up to me, all violence would be 12+. Kids should never get the impression that violence or killing is okay.
Of course you realise why this is, don't you? The system is programmed to see white people as the default for what humans look like. That's why this happens. Sort that out, and the rest of the issues should be easier to resolve.
Erm... yeah... you're assuming there's no jungle between people and tigers and a large supply of rocks to chuck at them, AC. Otherwise, you've got a major victim-blaming thing going on there.
The whole facts-alternative universe many conservatives and republicans live in today can be traced back to William F. Buckley Jr's book God and Man at Yale, where he reasoned that "trying to reach the truth by constructing arguments out of facts - the premise of the Enlightenment; was a worse superstition than the Dark Age traditions the Enlightenment tried to root out" and "that consensus flew in the face of God’s laws" which led to his conclusion that "it was imperative to stop arguing based on facts, and simply promote a 'Conservative' view of the world by whatever means necessary", ie tell lies that fit the narrative.
It's no wonder many conservatives can't really connect with people who actually believe in doing due diligence when being presented with "facts".
You've just explained why @RadioFreeTom blocked me for standing up for Greta Thunberg when his mad gang was slagging her off. You've also explained why David French complained about noted liar Kevin D. Williamson (who likes to pretend the UK's NHS is a monopoly and there are no alternatives thereto, and who wants to restrict healthcare to the wealthy, who deserve it because they can afford it) being sacked from the National Review and why the National Review wouldn't correct Williamson's article despite the many times I pointed out the errors therein. As I've said many times I identify as conservative but the aversion many of them show to reality or facts that contradict their worldview is very off-putting.
For all their avowed insistence that they're all about God and the Bible, I find it profoundly disturbing that at no point do any of them have a big mad moral panic over lying and mendacity in general. Nope, nothing to see here, move along. Sigh!
Gentlemen, there's also the fact that the proliferation of hate speech tends to have a chilling effect on the speech of target groups. Pushing back against a firehose of misinformation when all you have is a water pistol is exhausting. Unless we have a plan for actively pushing back against the victimisation of target groups, perhaps we should welcome the slow-down of the torrents of hate.
Actually, no. You're calling it wrong, guys. What we'll actually have is government-approved content, all of which is deemed appropriate for the plebs and carefully crafted to keep them in line.
There will always be some kind of subversion and people playing fast and loose with the rules. Remember the Hays Code and how it affected film-making, etc.? People found ways around that and we still had great movies, etc. Now the brakes are off and anything goes, so understandably the Moral Majority types are swinging the pendulum back the other way.
As I have predicted, the Naughties (yes, I've deliberately spelled it that way) will give way to a more sedate couple of decades as we dial back on the rampant... everything (possibly in the name of morality/ the children, etc.) the world will swing right (it's a little early for this but it's happening now) until there's a sudden big shift and we'll find the straitjacket loosen, then pop. And around and around the loop will go. I think the internet is speeding this process up.
Things are going to get a lot more interesting, that's for sure.
On the post: Cloudflare Removes Warrant Canary: Thoughtful Post Says It Can No Longer Say It Hasn't Removed A Site Due To Political Pressure
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Methought there was an anti-cheerleading law, such as the one cited in the film, The Accused.
On the post: Cloudflare Removes Warrant Canary: Thoughtful Post Says It Can No Longer Say It Hasn't Removed A Site Due To Political Pressure
Re: Re: Re:
How about "keeping the public debate going"?
What public debate? You're assuming equal access to the public square and an equally listening audience carefully weighing the case on its merits. This emphatically doesn't happen. In any case, how can you debate if you're in a small minority with the world and his wife at your throat? Better to hide yourself until its over, saying nothing that might provoke another flurry of attacks.
Having been on the end of a campaign of lies that ultimately saw me pushed out of an entire community some years ago, I call nonsense. There's no debate when you have a horde of trolls on one side while your jittery "friends" jump ship instead of pushing back. In my experience, it's a popularity contest. If you're not popular, you're stuffed. To be a target is to be alone -- unless you're in a "protected group" and can get some nice, well-meaning social justice warrior types on side to fight your corner. Good luck with that. There are certain words I'm still afraid to type in case the trolls come flooding back into my online spaces, insisting I continue to debate their stupid, pointless, oft-debunked drama points.
On the political front, I see the firehose effect drowning out the voices of those who care for the truth, for protecting the vulnerable, and for standing up for the environment. How the hell do you debate that without a keyboard army of your own?
Currently major platforms are kicking out the bigots and the hateful...
Good. Relegating them to echo chambers does a great deal to blunt the force of the firehose. This makes counter-speech more effective since it is no longer being drowned out. In my case, had the admins of the various sites where I posted just followed their own TOS the situation would never have broken down the way it did.
The main issue with being TOO welcoming at private platforms blocking out what is considered hateful is twofold - first, that private platform is a corporation, not our friend. Google, Facebook and Blizzard still sold themselves to China for profit even if they ALSO ban racists from their forums.
Yes they did. It's costly to do what is right but it's ultimately worth it. I'm massively disappointed in Google and Facebook.
And secondly, unfortunately all too many politicians conflate the public and private space, and those politicians all have their own little list of what they'd like not to be said in public.
Yes they do. Thankfully, the First Amendment means they can't actually stop people saying things they don't like.
Debating like we do here whenever a private platform blocks or stumbles is healthy. It's when the scrutiny stops that things go to shit in a hurry.
I can actually debate here. Decent, reasonable people like yourself and the other regulars give me food for thought. As I work to defend my positions, I find I often have to justify them, and this has to be plausible. You make me think, and that is good. However, the rest of the online world is not as civilised as TD. We should definitely scrutinise speech that may cause harm down the line, but I think you can do that without normalising it.
On the post: Cloudflare Removes Warrant Canary: Thoughtful Post Says It Can No Longer Say It Hasn't Removed A Site Due To Political Pressure
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: The Hayes Code and the MPAA
Eh, I was talking about Disney execs. When I'm fantasizing about things that are highly unlikely to happen, I take a lot of licence.
I suppose I should have been more specific about violence; the idea that hitting people is funny or people being hurt is funny is the problem. Shouldn't we be promoting empathy? That part about pseudorealistically depicted impressions can be applied to anyone for anything. The results of people actually believing this means they don't realise concussion can kill. Wasn't Houdini killed as a result of a gut punch bursting his already-inflamed appendix? It's the same with guns: sanitizing the impacts of bullets hitting human flesh by not showing the bloody mess that would result leads people to think that guns aren't that bad. Start showing more realistic scenes and that idea of a gun being your harmless little friend until you need it to be otherwise melts away. Remember Reservoir Dogs? We watched a man die in agony from a messy gunshot to the belly because it really does take about that long (and hurt that much) to die from such an injury.
As for the NRA, they're awful. I don't care in the least bit if they get offended about anything. Stuff 'em.
On the post: NIST Study Of 189 Facial Recognition Algorithms Finds Minorities Are Misidentified Almost 100 Times More Often Than White Men
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Fb tag recommended
All new technology has teething troubles. While Facial Recognition has some advantages, it can only assist, not be the final arbiter. That said, I wouldn't rule it out altogether.
I think the trouble we're having with it not is not about low contrasts, it's about false positives and over-reliance. The Shiny New Thing is not necessarily magically right all the time. People who use it would do well to remember it.
On the post: Cloudflare Removes Warrant Canary: Thoughtful Post Says It Can No Longer Say It Hasn't Removed A Site Due To Political Pressure
Re:
Agreed. If you're using any social media platform to send a message, etc., have several accounts on different ones and a website of your own. I have a blog and use Twitter to post links to my posts. The rest of the time I'm interacting with others or retweeting other people's posts.
Generally speaking, if you're not out to cause trouble or pick on any particular individual or group, you shouldn't have any trouble with expressing your views. If, however, you want to be a jerk to other people, you only have yourself to blame if they pull the plug. There is no "both sides" to the Nazi (or other hate group) story; they want to encourage hate. Stuff 'em.
On the post: Cloudflare Removes Warrant Canary: Thoughtful Post Says It Can No Longer Say It Hasn't Removed A Site Due To Political Pressure
Re: Re: Re: The Hayes Code and the MPAA
I'd do it just to hear the squeals!
On the post: NIST Study Of 189 Facial Recognition Algorithms Finds Minorities Are Misidentified Almost 100 Times More Often Than White Men
Re: Re: Re: Fb tag recommended
Assume you're right, AC. Why not build in a way to compensate for those immutable facts?
On the post: Alabama Lawmakers Think The Time Is Right To Make Assaulting A Cop A 'Hate Crime'
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While this is true in principle, in practice it was ever thus. We need to find a way to protect the vulnerable without creating privileged classes.
On the post: Cloudflare Removes Warrant Canary: Thoughtful Post Says It Can No Longer Say It Hasn't Removed A Site Due To Political Pressure
Re: Re: The Hayes Code and the MPAA
*Indeed, as In Dublin's Eamonn McCann pointed out, if you stick something into someone for their pleasure, that's bad (per Hollywood), but if you do so to inflict pain and/or death, that's okay (per Hollywood). That's ridiculous! I agree with him there.
On the post: Cloudflare Removes Warrant Canary: Thoughtful Post Says It Can No Longer Say It Hasn't Removed A Site Due To Political Pressure
Re: Re: Re: Re:
The reaction you got is not surprising at all, it's an established fact that a majority of right-wing media/forums tend to punish people who tells the truth which doesn't adhere to the current narrative.
And that's a shame. If you can't critique your own position (I'm forever having to do so with my own as new information comes in), it's like you're in a cult, or something. It's creepy. That's the issue I have with any True Believer type.
Some right-wingers and conservatives will use the above statement to say that lefties/liberals do the same to right-wingers/conservatives who speak up.
The socialist Dan Kervick has been retweeting outright blood libel against the Uighur people (they've supposedly been teaching kids to steal, Fagin-style) because his True Believer Actual left-wing good buddies think China is Da Bomb, or something -- despite the fact that it's actually more fascist than left wing these days, having fallen in love with Western capitalism. But... four legs good, or something. Amirite? So Danny toes the Actual Far Left line without comment. Honestly, for all the guff I've heard from the right about the so-called Radical Left, they don't seem to know about this.
The problem with that is that when someone say things that are verifiabl[y] not true or taken entirely out of context and that person refuses to acknowledge that it's not very surprising they are punished in one way or another by people who actually look for the truth.
Unless they're in some kind of echo chamber that's basically a mirror image of the right wing ones. They do exist, but on the actual Far Left, not the imaginary far left, which the rest of the world would consider the middle ground. As I said Dan Kervick's feed is a classic example of this and I call the lies out where I see them. True Believer types aren't interested in the truth, they just want to push their narrative.
On the post: Cloudflare Removes Warrant Canary: Thoughtful Post Says It Can No Longer Say It Hasn't Removed A Site Due To Political Pressure
Re: The Hayes Code and the MPAA
Ohai, Uriel. Hope you're enjoying the holidays.
The Hayes Code and the MPAA mostly did a horrible job rating movies (and the ESRB fell into the same paradigm regarding video games) in which explicit violence crept its way into the more family-friendly ratings where explicit nudity and sexuality got locked into tighter restraints.
Indeed, as In Dublin's Eamonn McCann pointed out, if you stick something into someone for their pleasure, that's bad, but if you do so to inflict pain and/or death, that's okay. I agree with him there.
Part of the problem came from an unwillingness of large theaters and companies to lock NC-17 and AO products, assuming they were only of prurient interest, which meant that anything that wasn't porn was forced to negotiate back into the R-rated / M-rated category, and as such our ratings boards could exercise extremely tight control over minor aspects (such as women being portrayed as enjoying sex. The effrontery!)
The idea was to enforce patriarchal gender stereotypes, methinks. That being the case, violence meted out by manly men to protect cowering women, who would then reward them with affection, etc., was acceptable because it presented an idealised image of masculinity and feminity. I think those people would freak out over Sarah Connor or Ellen Ripley because they drove a tank over such notions.
Yes, we sometimes got good movies while those codes were in place. Spain got good movies while General Franco was still in office. But what was lost was all the good movies that were suppressed or turned into less-good movies based on the mores of the guardians. As such it ended up shaping culture into the misogynist and violent grotesquerie that we have today.
Sorry, I can only see parts of that, i.e. the part where the socially sanctioned violence of a man enables him to "get" the girl, or the part where cartoonish violence gets a pass whereas sexual activity is given a higher rating. I think there's more to the creation of the the misogynist and violent grotesquerie that we have today than movies censored by the vicar so married couples were shown to have separate beds or one foot on the floor, etc.
...One that, mind you, allows kids to see human mutilation, so long as they bleed pixels rather than blood.
Were it up to me, all violence would be 12+. Kids should never get the impression that violence or killing is okay.
On the post: NIST Study Of 189 Facial Recognition Algorithms Finds Minorities Are Misidentified Almost 100 Times More Often Than White Men
Re: Fb tag recommended
Of course you realise why this is, don't you? The system is programmed to see white people as the default for what humans look like. That's why this happens. Sort that out, and the rest of the issues should be easier to resolve.
On the post: Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
Re:
Erm... yeah... you're assuming there's no jungle between people and tigers and a large supply of rocks to chuck at them, AC. Otherwise, you've got a major victim-blaming thing going on there.
On the post: Cloudflare Removes Warrant Canary: Thoughtful Post Says It Can No Longer Say It Hasn't Removed A Site Due To Political Pressure
Re:
The mad racism is a massive turnoff.
On the post: Cloudflare Removes Warrant Canary: Thoughtful Post Says It Can No Longer Say It Hasn't Removed A Site Due To Political Pressure
Re: Re:
The whole facts-alternative universe many conservatives and republicans live in today can be traced back to William F. Buckley Jr's book God and Man at Yale, where he reasoned that "trying to reach the truth by constructing arguments out of facts - the premise of the Enlightenment; was a worse superstition than the Dark Age traditions the Enlightenment tried to root out" and "that consensus flew in the face of God’s laws" which led to his conclusion that "it was imperative to stop arguing based on facts, and simply promote a 'Conservative' view of the world by whatever means necessary", ie tell lies that fit the narrative.
It's no wonder many conservatives can't really connect with people who actually believe in doing due diligence when being presented with "facts".
You've just explained why @RadioFreeTom blocked me for standing up for Greta Thunberg when his mad gang was slagging her off. You've also explained why David French complained about noted liar Kevin D. Williamson (who likes to pretend the UK's NHS is a monopoly and there are no alternatives thereto, and who wants to restrict healthcare to the wealthy, who deserve it because they can afford it) being sacked from the National Review and why the National Review wouldn't correct Williamson's article despite the many times I pointed out the errors therein. As I've said many times I identify as conservative but the aversion many of them show to reality or facts that contradict their worldview is very off-putting.
For all their avowed insistence that they're all about God and the Bible, I find it profoundly disturbing that at no point do any of them have a big mad moral panic over lying and mendacity in general. Nope, nothing to see here, move along. Sigh!
On the post: Cloudflare Removes Warrant Canary: Thoughtful Post Says It Can No Longer Say It Hasn't Removed A Site Due To Political Pressure
Re: Re:
Good point.
On the post: Cloudflare Removes Warrant Canary: Thoughtful Post Says It Can No Longer Say It Hasn't Removed A Site Due To Political Pressure
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Hell, no. Never. It's a crime to promote it, after all.
On the post: Cloudflare Removes Warrant Canary: Thoughtful Post Says It Can No Longer Say It Hasn't Removed A Site Due To Political Pressure
Re:
Gentlemen, there's also the fact that the proliferation of hate speech tends to have a chilling effect on the speech of target groups. Pushing back against a firehose of misinformation when all you have is a water pistol is exhausting. Unless we have a plan for actively pushing back against the victimisation of target groups, perhaps we should welcome the slow-down of the torrents of hate.
On the post: Cloudflare Removes Warrant Canary: Thoughtful Post Says It Can No Longer Say It Hasn't Removed A Site Due To Political Pressure
Re: Re:
Actually, no. You're calling it wrong, guys. What we'll actually have is government-approved content, all of which is deemed appropriate for the plebs and carefully crafted to keep them in line.
There will always be some kind of subversion and people playing fast and loose with the rules. Remember the Hays Code and how it affected film-making, etc.? People found ways around that and we still had great movies, etc. Now the brakes are off and anything goes, so understandably the Moral Majority types are swinging the pendulum back the other way.
As I have predicted, the Naughties (yes, I've deliberately spelled it that way) will give way to a more sedate couple of decades as we dial back on the rampant... everything (possibly in the name of morality/ the children, etc.) the world will swing right (it's a little early for this but it's happening now) until there's a sudden big shift and we'll find the straitjacket loosen, then pop. And around and around the loop will go. I think the internet is speeding this process up.
Things are going to get a lot more interesting, that's for sure.
On the post: Cloudflare Removes Warrant Canary: Thoughtful Post Says It Can No Longer Say It Hasn't Removed A Site Due To Political Pressure
Re: Re: That feeling of ambivalence
[Sad but True]
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