True, but the dems DID dispute the election results (in exactly the same process that had just gotten started in the house this time around)
Incorrect. There were no court cases, no claiming of election or voter fraud, no attempt to overturn the electoral college vote, no attempt to have the legislatures appoint electors in contradiction to the results, nothing. There was also an immediate concession from Hillary. There were two faithless electors, but that was it.
AND they spent the next 4 years completely disputing Trump's legitimacy as president
Nope. He was legitimately the President. What was questioned (for less than four years) was whether he was complicit with Russia’s attempts to interfere with the election. While this would be a possibly impeachable offense, it doesn’t mean the election, and therefore Trump’s presidency, would also be illegitimate.
and started calls for impeachment literally within minutes of his win.
No, they didn’t. They did within a few months, but so did some Republicans.
Literally, the same day (well, maybe "next day" as it was early morning by then). Hilary herself could hardly keep her mouth shut about it, constantly appearing on media to proclaim Trump "didn't really win" and she was robbed, etc.
That part in quotes was not actually anything she ever said, nor she actually use the word “robbed”. She also stayed out of the spotlight for quite a while. Also, it’s worth noting she conceded the same day the election was called, well before her first post-election media appearance.
The media did a full Lugenpresse against Trump, proclaiming he was not a legitimate president and vilifying any and all conservatives, if they were Trump backers or not, as de facto racist, nazi, white supremacist facists.
Once again, that’s not what they said. They only vilified the ones who had power but failed to stand up to Trump at all as being accepting of racism and white supremacy, and they never said Trump was not a legitimate President.
“They weren’t protesters – don’t dare call them protesters,” Biden said in remarks from Wilmington, Delaware, on Thursday. “They were a riotous mob. Insurrectionists. Domestic terrorists. It’s that basic. It’s that simple.”
That’s exactly it. He was talking about the riotous mob who invaded the Capitol. You just proved my point. Those “protesters” were also condemned by a majority of the right, by the way, often with similar language. Therefore, he did not call the right domestic terrorists; he restricted those words to refer specifically to the people who invaded the Capitol, which is exactly what I said, and not what you said.
Biden is a lying, plagiarizing, intellectual insecure and dishonest person
He dropped out of the 1987 race because he disgraced himself with his dishonesty and got caught..
"ignore human rights to put it down, or it will consume us."
[citation needed]
who's first act, is to cry for unity as he calls the right "Domestic Terrorists"
He did call for unity, but he did not call the right “domestic terrorists”. He called the people who invaded the Capitol with the intent to overthrow a fair and democratic election with force “domestic terrorists”. Unless you think that those people comprise all right wing voters, your statement is false.
I guess we need to agree on what a "good faith effort" is and how evenly the standards are applied which is the center of the problem.
I’m not sure that “good faith efforts” need to be evenly applied, but the one making the claim should be showing evidence on how evenly the standards are applied.
I heard an interview with the CEO of Parler and he offered to use AWS A.I. tech and AWS said that was not good enough. So if that is true, it does not matter how well they were doing in moderation it seems like the decision was already made to give them the boot.
The AWS A.I. tech Parler suggested using was facial recognition software. It is completely and utterly useless for moderation efforts, so of course AWS said that wasn’t good enough.
The rules need to be applied evenly across all posts/tweets/parlez or whatever they call them. When it is not, we get issues like this.
Again, show the evidence that they are not applied evenly, then we’ll talk.
Actually, here’s an thought. If there was as much competition among right-wing media as among left-wing media, would we have better fact-checking and less of a spread of right-wing conspiracy theories for conservatives?
First, let me bring up something you say in another comment:
In the realm of justice, existing law and T&C won't matter. What matters is whether the alleged victim deserves a better treatment, and if so, we propose better laws.
I bring this up so you understand that I’m working from my understanding of your definition of justice, which is not tethered to what the law currently says. In other words, something can be unjust even if it is legal, and something can be just even if it is against the law.
With that in mind, let’s address this comment.
If, for the sake of argument, bigots is a protected class, I hope you would agree with me that banning bigots by platforms is injustice, despite platforms can write whatever T&C or contracts they like.
Going back to definitions again briefly, what is or isn’t a “protected class” is defined by law, while what is or isn’t “injustice” is not. Now, I don’t think that there is any reason being a bigot should be a protected class, and there are plenty of reasons against it (practicality for one), so I would not agree that platforms banning bigots would be unjust even if it violated the law because “bigots” is legally defined as a protected class.
A protected class should not be based on 1) something that is based on what a person says or does rather than an intrinsic property of a person or 2) something so open to interpretation as being a bigot. That would violate my sense of justice, and it’d just overcomplicate things since we’d have to balance two protected classes (the bigot and whatever the bigot is prejudiced against) in just about every case involving a protected class.
Now, if I did think that being a bigot should be a protected class, then I’d agree. That’s just not going to happen and defeats the purpose of a protected class to begin with. We can’t have it be the case where one person can’t discriminate against people for their discriminatory words or behavior.
But of course bigots is not a protected class, but the argument stays.
As I pointed out above, I disagree. The reason we have protected classes is to prevent discrimination based on intrinsic properties. It makes no sense to prevent discrimination based on the target’s discrimination based on intrinsic properties as that would defeat the object.
I am merely saying allowing a possible future where monopolistic private entities are norm (because we failed to deter them) and our only last resort to justice for people is the laws having to write down every protected class.
I mean, that’s how it works, and that’s what we do. What is or isn’t a protected class is defined by the law in a country or state, and the laws that prohibit discrimination based on protected classes must list all of the classes protected under that particular law. If the law doesn’t protect a certain class, that class is not a protected class in that country/state. It is also the case that what is or isn’t a protected class can vary between jurisdictions and laws within a jurisdiction, though they generally include, at a minimum, race, sex, religious belief, religious practice (within reason), and disabilities (within reason). Age is also commonly a protected class.
We can disagree on what should or shouldn’t be a protected class, but the way the law works is that a class of persons isn’t protected unless the law says it is. It’s not really a “last resort”; it’s Law 101. (And, in fact, there are a number of debates going around about introducing homosexuality and/or being transgender as protected classes, which they aren’t under a number of state laws, though in some cases it’s been determined that homosexuality and/or being transgender are covered by certain laws that prohibit discrimination based on sex; however, that varies wildly from law to law and case to case.)
So, you see, it already is the case that “the laws hav[e] to write down every protected class” even without getting into “a possible future where monopolistic private entities are norm (because we failed to deter them)”. No need to get into a dystopian future.
I’m afraid I don’t really see the problem. I also don’t really see how that’s even relevant to the discussion or what your point is. Are you suggesting that political affiliation should be a protected class? I would firmly disagree with that, but that is at least a plausible argument to make, and I’m willing to have that discussion. I can say that it is not a protected class under any anti-discrimination law that I’m aware of.
I hope you agree with me that I lost my right of movement if I am jailed,
I do believe that is a point we can all agree on, yes.
but I guess you disagree I lost my right of movement if I am barred by a court to leave the city I live in.
And that’s where you’re wrong. Like, completely. No one disagrees with that.
Here are the issues:
In your hypothetical, the court is the one barring you from leaving. In other words, the government is interfering with your right of movement.
The situation here is that some platforms and a cloud infrastructure provider are refusing to deal with certain persons. This is nowhere near as restrictive as being unable to leave a city. Being barred from Facebook or Twitter has 0 effect on your ability to visit or post on literally any platform not run by Facebook or Twitter, and AWS refusing to host your platform’s services has 0 effect on your ability to get someone else to provide the same service or your ability to make your own. It’s more like a particular venue refusing to allow you on their premises or a delivery company refusing to deliver your packages any more. In other words, the scope of your hypothetical and the scope of what’s actually happening are completely different.
I would say there are lots of alternatives that nobody here wants to discuss. There are unlimited ways to write laws. Laws can ask you to trade off one right for another; e.g. 230(c)(2)(A) asks you to exercise good faith if you want to be immune. There are countless ways we can make platforms voluntarily trade some of rights to achieve something else. (I know any plan I write down will be outright wrong, so I won't) Some plans will be unconstitutional, but I bet King George also said succession is unconstitutional.
Okay, there’s a lot to unpack here, but the biggest issue is: really? You’re going to propose a revolution as a viable alternative? Of course we’re not willing to discuss plans that are unconstitutional or involve getting rid of the Constitution! For one thing, a revolution based solely on not being able to post on your favorite platform is not going to end well, and if a plan is unconstitutional, it will not actually do anything because it will be struck down in court. So if only from a pragmatic perspective, let’s stick to what’s at least somewhere in the realm of plausibility, okay?
Facebook is not the internet, and it is Facebook’s place to decide what kind of speech can remain on their platform. Also, the airwaves are actually more heavily regulated (and thus less free) than the internet.
I wanted to say I have the right to keep my (already-acquired) audience. In the physical world, I can keep speaking in any public forum every week, and no one is supposed to stop me from doing that, unless I broke the law or disturbed others' rights.
Or if the audience members did something to get themselves kicked out. And the issue is that a public forum is owned by the government, while there is no real online forum run by the government.
Okay, this is a bit of a tangent, but yeah, you should probably get on that as soon as reasonably possible. If they contain sensitive information, you shouldn’t risk it getting out.
I had to do the same thing a while back, and yes, it’s definitely not nearly as bad as dismantling a dead hard drive, an experience I thankfully only had to do once so far. Still, if only someone invented a shredder for CDs.
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You don't get to claim protections, then alter the election.
Free speech and liability don’t work that way.
The left is just as adamant about removing 230 because they know it can be used against them.
They want to do so for completely different reasons. The right is opposed to moderation protections, while the left is opposed to them not being liable for third-party content. Basically, the right wants platforms to moderate less, while the left wants them to moderate more.
Neither side wants to relinquish control to the corporations, and for good reason.
There is no relinquishing of control here because neither side had that control to begin with.
How about this: should you be allowed to deny service to Nazis who are behaving themselves in your bar?
Yes, though I should note that you didn’t really define “behaving”, which could change some people’s answers. It could include not disruptive but saying white-supremacist things.
Let's get creative: should you be allowed to deny them access to your services as a medical provider?
Generally, no; healthcare is or should be a fundamental human right, moreso than speech. That said, I’m unsure if that should be a legal issue. But since I’m in favor of the government being at least partly responsible for covering healthcare costs moreso than any other human need, I have plenty of reason for having this as the exception.
How about kicking them out at the grocery store and bank?
Generally, yes. The grocery store thing is somewhat arguable, but I still lean towards “yes”.
At some point, this society starts to sound an awful lot like the Amish but without a real doctrine for forgiveness and tolerance of sinners.
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As Stephen said, that’s an argument about antitrust law that is entirely separate from discussing the extent of constitutional protections, §230, the rights of edge providers or higher infrastructure providers, corporate personhood, or the whole thing with Twitter, Facebook, Parler, Apple, and Google Play. Once you argue that your problem is the mere existence of large platforms at all, your issue is not with what platform holders can do with their platforms but how big they can be allowed to get.
All I’ll say on that front is that, absent good evidence of anticompetitive behavior, I don’t see any practical way to limit the size of a platform or what good it would actually do in practice. It sounds nice in theory, but I don’t think it’s actually practical.
I have no real interest in discussing the antitrust issues in this thread, though. I’m more interested in the rights side of things. Antitrust law is too much of a headache for me.
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None of that proves or even suggests that Facebook, Twitter, AWS, etc. are not private corporations rather than part of the government. Private companies get government contracts all the time, and governments seize information from private companies all the time. That has nothing to do with anything.
Also, AWS doesn’t “work for the CIA”; it provides the CIA with a product/service the same way Verizon provides a product/service to its customers. AWS “works for the CIA” no more than it “worked for” Parler.
And herding money offshore and evading taxes, while something I don’t support, do not transform a private entity into a government agency. Same goes for lobbying and violating the GDPR.
You’re saying a lot of things that have no effect on the claim, “Facebook, Twitter, AWS, etc. are all private companies.” Even if I agree that those are things that should be corrected, they are completely irrelevant to this discussion.
In fact, your entire comment had no relevance or even a reference to the comment your replying to or any previous comment in this thread. It’s a complete non sequitur.
I never said that. I said that profit motives, like political agendas, should not define what speech is allowed in a democracy.
Twitter, Facebook, and AWS have no control over what speech is allowed in a democracy; only what speech is allowed on their platforms or servers.
Depends. If I were the webmaster of the site I might. If I was the administrator of a hosting provider, I would say the actions / speech of others are not representative of my beliefs / opinions and therefore not my problem.
And other people are free to believe otherwise and choose not to use you as a host because of it. It is possible that that might put you out of business. This is how the free market works.
Let's use a more proper analogy. Remember, we have a third party here. It's not the site itself that's wanting to censor speech:
Users ----> House Guests.
Site -----> Home Owner.
Infrastructure providers -----> City / County Officials.
Your complaint is that the Infrastructure providers should be allowed to police the speech of a Site's Users and deplatform the Site if the Site fails to comply.
Actually, I don’t think it makes sense to leap straight to government officials. Maybe “landlords” would be better, but I think the analogy is sort of falling apart at this point.
This is the equivalent using your analogy: City / County Officials should be allowed to police the speech of a Home Owner's House Guests and size the house from the Home Owner using eminent domain if Home Owner fails to comply.
Not at all. You’re confusing cloud hosting with the DNS provider. Not all infrastructure providers are equivalent. You can run a site without cloud-hosting at all. It’s more like a business being run from an office within a skyscraper where the owners of the skyscraper have certain rules about what businesses can be in their building and then enforcing those rules when they’re broken or they have some profit reason to kick the businessman out.
Or let’s put it this way: AWS wanted Parler to have some rules for dealing with an emergency and a way to enforce those rules in return for using their service that Parler could get elsewhere or make their own but decided not to. Parler failed to enforce its own rules. Eventually, AWS decided enough was enough and revoked that benefit.
Yes. I would. I would also fight for the right of others who wish to hear me to be able to do so.
So if you say something in a bar that causes the bar owners to kick you out for whatever reason, and one person inside the bar says, “I want to hear more,” even though no one else wants to, you still have a problem with the bar owners kicking you out? You can still say the same things and, with some resources, you can even find the person/people who want to hear you so that they can hear what you have to say. Again, you’re not entitled to a platform.
It makes sense to do so if the nouns replaced are equivalent in some way. For example, replacing “man” with “woman”, “homosexual” with “heterosexual”, “homosexual” with “black”, “Hispanic” with “black”, “Asian” with “black”, “white” with “black”, “black” with “white”, “Muslim” with “Christian”, “transgender” with “homosexual”, etc. The idea is to essentially equate discriminatory beliefs and practices with each other or make someone realize that they have a double standard.
The problem here is that the replaced nouns are in no way equivalent with their replacements: “users” with “African-Americans”, “Twitter” with “Washington”, “on the platform” with “in the nation”, and “userbase” with “citizenry”. These are not equivalent in any way, and possibly the worst offender in that regard is “users” with “African-Americans”. Being a “user” of Twitter is not a protected class, is much broader than “African-American”, is not an unchangeable or intrinsic property, is a choice, and gives no indication of a hidden motive. There are a number of other problems with this swap alone that invalidate the entire argument, and each of the other swaps are quite problematic on their own.
On the post: A Few More Thoughts On The Total Deplatforming Of Parler & Infrastructure Content Moderation
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We’re talking about US law.
On the post: Fox News Needs To Accept Some Of The Blame For The Insurrection; But That Doesn't Mean We Toss Out The 1st Amendment
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Incorrect. There were no court cases, no claiming of election or voter fraud, no attempt to overturn the electoral college vote, no attempt to have the legislatures appoint electors in contradiction to the results, nothing. There was also an immediate concession from Hillary. There were two faithless electors, but that was it.
Nope. He was legitimately the President. What was questioned (for less than four years) was whether he was complicit with Russia’s attempts to interfere with the election. While this would be a possibly impeachable offense, it doesn’t mean the election, and therefore Trump’s presidency, would also be illegitimate.
No, they didn’t. They did within a few months, but so did some Republicans.
That part in quotes was not actually anything she ever said, nor she actually use the word “robbed”. She also stayed out of the spotlight for quite a while. Also, it’s worth noting she conceded the same day the election was called, well before her first post-election media appearance.
Once again, that’s not what they said. They only vilified the ones who had power but failed to stand up to Trump at all as being accepting of racism and white supremacy, and they never said Trump was not a legitimate President.
On the post: Fox News Needs To Accept Some Of The Blame For The Insurrection; But That Doesn't Mean We Toss Out The 1st Amendment
Re: Re: Re: Re: Crying foul in 2016
That’s exactly it. He was talking about the riotous mob who invaded the Capitol. You just proved my point. Those “protesters” were also condemned by a majority of the right, by the way, often with similar language. Therefore, he did not call the right domestic terrorists; he restricted those words to refer specifically to the people who invaded the Capitol, which is exactly what I said, and not what you said.
On the post: Fox News Needs To Accept Some Of The Blame For The Insurrection; But That Doesn't Mean We Toss Out The 1st Amendment
Re: Re: Crying foul in 2016
[citation needed]
He did call for unity, but he did not call the right “domestic terrorists”. He called the people who invaded the Capitol with the intent to overthrow a fair and democratic election with force “domestic terrorists”. Unless you think that those people comprise all right wing voters, your statement is false.
On the post: Parler Attempting to Come Back Online, Still Insisting The Site's Motivation Is 'Privacy' Despite Leaking Details On All Its Users
Re: Re: “making a good faith effort”
I’m not sure that “good faith efforts” need to be evenly applied, but the one making the claim should be showing evidence on how evenly the standards are applied.
The AWS A.I. tech Parler suggested using was facial recognition software. It is completely and utterly useless for moderation efforts, so of course AWS said that wasn’t good enough.
Again, show the evidence that they are not applied evenly, then we’ll talk.
On the post: Fox News Needs To Accept Some Of The Blame For The Insurrection; But That Doesn't Mean We Toss Out The 1st Amendment
Actually, here’s an thought. If there was as much competition among right-wing media as among left-wing media, would we have better fact-checking and less of a spread of right-wing conspiracy theories for conservatives?
On the post: A Few More Thoughts On The Total Deplatforming Of Parler & Infrastructure Content Moderation
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First, let me bring up something you say in another comment:
I bring this up so you understand that I’m working from my understanding of your definition of justice, which is not tethered to what the law currently says. In other words, something can be unjust even if it is legal, and something can be just even if it is against the law.
With that in mind, let’s address this comment.
Going back to definitions again briefly, what is or isn’t a “protected class” is defined by law, while what is or isn’t “injustice” is not. Now, I don’t think that there is any reason being a bigot should be a protected class, and there are plenty of reasons against it (practicality for one), so I would not agree that platforms banning bigots would be unjust even if it violated the law because “bigots” is legally defined as a protected class.
A protected class should not be based on 1) something that is based on what a person says or does rather than an intrinsic property of a person or 2) something so open to interpretation as being a bigot. That would violate my sense of justice, and it’d just overcomplicate things since we’d have to balance two protected classes (the bigot and whatever the bigot is prejudiced against) in just about every case involving a protected class.
Now, if I did think that being a bigot should be a protected class, then I’d agree. That’s just not going to happen and defeats the purpose of a protected class to begin with. We can’t have it be the case where one person can’t discriminate against people for their discriminatory words or behavior.
As I pointed out above, I disagree. The reason we have protected classes is to prevent discrimination based on intrinsic properties. It makes no sense to prevent discrimination based on the target’s discrimination based on intrinsic properties as that would defeat the object.
I mean, that’s how it works, and that’s what we do. What is or isn’t a protected class is defined by the law in a country or state, and the laws that prohibit discrimination based on protected classes must list all of the classes protected under that particular law. If the law doesn’t protect a certain class, that class is not a protected class in that country/state. It is also the case that what is or isn’t a protected class can vary between jurisdictions and laws within a jurisdiction, though they generally include, at a minimum, race, sex, religious belief, religious practice (within reason), and disabilities (within reason). Age is also commonly a protected class.
We can disagree on what should or shouldn’t be a protected class, but the way the law works is that a class of persons isn’t protected unless the law says it is. It’s not really a “last resort”; it’s Law 101. (And, in fact, there are a number of debates going around about introducing homosexuality and/or being transgender as protected classes, which they aren’t under a number of state laws, though in some cases it’s been determined that homosexuality and/or being transgender are covered by certain laws that prohibit discrimination based on sex; however, that varies wildly from law to law and case to case.)
So, you see, it already is the case that “the laws hav[e] to write down every protected class” even without getting into “a possible future where monopolistic private entities are norm (because we failed to deter them)”. No need to get into a dystopian future.
I’m afraid I don’t really see the problem. I also don’t really see how that’s even relevant to the discussion or what your point is. Are you suggesting that political affiliation should be a protected class? I would firmly disagree with that, but that is at least a plausible argument to make, and I’m willing to have that discussion. I can say that it is not a protected class under any anti-discrimination law that I’m aware of.
On the post: A Few More Thoughts On The Total Deplatforming Of Parler & Infrastructure Content Moderation
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I do believe that is a point we can all agree on, yes.
And that’s where you’re wrong. Like, completely. No one disagrees with that.
Here are the issues:
In your hypothetical, the court is the one barring you from leaving. In other words, the government is interfering with your right of movement.
Okay, there’s a lot to unpack here, but the biggest issue is: really? You’re going to propose a revolution as a viable alternative? Of course we’re not willing to discuss plans that are unconstitutional or involve getting rid of the Constitution! For one thing, a revolution based solely on not being able to post on your favorite platform is not going to end well, and if a plan is unconstitutional, it will not actually do anything because it will be struck down in court. So if only from a pragmatic perspective, let’s stick to what’s at least somewhere in the realm of plausibility, okay?
On the post: A Few More Thoughts On The Total Deplatforming Of Parler & Infrastructure Content Moderation
Re: Parlor
Facebook is not the internet, and it is Facebook’s place to decide what kind of speech can remain on their platform. Also, the airwaves are actually more heavily regulated (and thus less free) than the internet.
On the post: A Few More Thoughts On The Total Deplatforming Of Parler & Infrastructure Content Moderation
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Or if the audience members did something to get themselves kicked out. And the issue is that a public forum is owned by the government, while there is no real online forum run by the government.
On the post: A Few More Thoughts On The Total Deplatforming Of Parler & Infrastructure Content Moderation
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That’s not what “theory” means in that context.
On the post: Former FCC Boss Tom Wheeler Continues To Misunderstand And Misrepresent Section 230 And The Challenges Of Content Moderation
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Okay, this is a bit of a tangent, but yeah, you should probably get on that as soon as reasonably possible. If they contain sensitive information, you shouldn’t risk it getting out.
I had to do the same thing a while back, and yes, it’s definitely not nearly as bad as dismantling a dead hard drive, an experience I thankfully only had to do once so far. Still, if only someone invented a shredder for CDs.
On the post: A Few More Thoughts On The Total Deplatforming Of Parler & Infrastructure Content Moderation
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: More moderate than I was exp
Also, this comment has nothing to do with anything I said in this comment. Not that I had any interest in discussing antitrust issues to begin with.
On the post: A Few More Thoughts On The Total Deplatforming Of Parler & Infrastructure Content Moderation
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: More moderate than I was exp
Free speech and liability don’t work that way.
They want to do so for completely different reasons. The right is opposed to moderation protections, while the left is opposed to them not being liable for third-party content. Basically, the right wants platforms to moderate less, while the left wants them to moderate more.
There is no relinquishing of control here because neither side had that control to begin with.
On the post: A Few More Thoughts On The Total Deplatforming Of Parler & Infrastructure Content Moderation
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Yes, though I should note that you didn’t really define “behaving”, which could change some people’s answers. It could include not disruptive but saying white-supremacist things.
Generally, no; healthcare is or should be a fundamental human right, moreso than speech. That said, I’m unsure if that should be a legal issue. But since I’m in favor of the government being at least partly responsible for covering healthcare costs moreso than any other human need, I have plenty of reason for having this as the exception.
Generally, yes. The grocery store thing is somewhat arguable, but I still lean towards “yes”.
I—what? How? What do you even mean?
On the post: A Few More Thoughts On The Total Deplatforming Of Parler & Infrastructure Content Moderation
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: More moderate than I was expecting.
As Stephen said, that’s an argument about antitrust law that is entirely separate from discussing the extent of constitutional protections, §230, the rights of edge providers or higher infrastructure providers, corporate personhood, or the whole thing with Twitter, Facebook, Parler, Apple, and Google Play. Once you argue that your problem is the mere existence of large platforms at all, your issue is not with what platform holders can do with their platforms but how big they can be allowed to get.
All I’ll say on that front is that, absent good evidence of anticompetitive behavior, I don’t see any practical way to limit the size of a platform or what good it would actually do in practice. It sounds nice in theory, but I don’t think it’s actually practical.
I have no real interest in discussing the antitrust issues in this thread, though. I’m more interested in the rights side of things. Antitrust law is too much of a headache for me.
On the post: A Few More Thoughts On The Total Deplatforming Of Parler & Infrastructure Content Moderation
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: More moderate than I was expecting.
None of that proves or even suggests that Facebook, Twitter, AWS, etc. are not private corporations rather than part of the government. Private companies get government contracts all the time, and governments seize information from private companies all the time. That has nothing to do with anything.
Also, AWS doesn’t “work for the CIA”; it provides the CIA with a product/service the same way Verizon provides a product/service to its customers. AWS “works for the CIA” no more than it “worked for” Parler.
And herding money offshore and evading taxes, while something I don’t support, do not transform a private entity into a government agency. Same goes for lobbying and violating the GDPR.
You’re saying a lot of things that have no effect on the claim, “Facebook, Twitter, AWS, etc. are all private companies.” Even if I agree that those are things that should be corrected, they are completely irrelevant to this discussion.
In fact, your entire comment had no relevance or even a reference to the comment your replying to or any previous comment in this thread. It’s a complete non sequitur.
On the post: A Few More Thoughts On The Total Deplatforming Of Parler & Infrastructure Content Moderation
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Twitter, Facebook, and AWS have no control over what speech is allowed in a democracy; only what speech is allowed on their platforms or servers.
And other people are free to believe otherwise and choose not to use you as a host because of it. It is possible that that might put you out of business. This is how the free market works.
Actually, I don’t think it makes sense to leap straight to government officials. Maybe “landlords” would be better, but I think the analogy is sort of falling apart at this point.
Not at all. You’re confusing cloud hosting with the DNS provider. Not all infrastructure providers are equivalent. You can run a site without cloud-hosting at all. It’s more like a business being run from an office within a skyscraper where the owners of the skyscraper have certain rules about what businesses can be in their building and then enforcing those rules when they’re broken or they have some profit reason to kick the businessman out.
Or let’s put it this way: AWS wanted Parler to have some rules for dealing with an emergency and a way to enforce those rules in return for using their service that Parler could get elsewhere or make their own but decided not to. Parler failed to enforce its own rules. Eventually, AWS decided enough was enough and revoked that benefit.
So if you say something in a bar that causes the bar owners to kick you out for whatever reason, and one person inside the bar says, “I want to hear more,” even though no one else wants to, you still have a problem with the bar owners kicking you out? You can still say the same things and, with some resources, you can even find the person/people who want to hear you so that they can hear what you have to say. Again, you’re not entitled to a platform.
On the post: A Few More Thoughts On The Total Deplatforming Of Parler & Infrastructure Content Moderation
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It makes sense to do so if the nouns replaced are equivalent in some way. For example, replacing “man” with “woman”, “homosexual” with “heterosexual”, “homosexual” with “black”, “Hispanic” with “black”, “Asian” with “black”, “white” with “black”, “black” with “white”, “Muslim” with “Christian”, “transgender” with “homosexual”, etc. The idea is to essentially equate discriminatory beliefs and practices with each other or make someone realize that they have a double standard.
The problem here is that the replaced nouns are in no way equivalent with their replacements: “users” with “African-Americans”, “Twitter” with “Washington”, “on the platform” with “in the nation”, and “userbase” with “citizenry”. These are not equivalent in any way, and possibly the worst offender in that regard is “users” with “African-Americans”. Being a “user” of Twitter is not a protected class, is much broader than “African-American”, is not an unchangeable or intrinsic property, is a choice, and gives no indication of a hidden motive. There are a number of other problems with this swap alone that invalidate the entire argument, and each of the other swaps are quite problematic on their own.
On the post: As Predicted: Parler Is Banning Users It Doesn't Like
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We’ve seen the same thing happen with conservative incitement of violence. What’s your point?
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