Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 6 Dec 2021 @ 5:29am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Go ahead and show me the Twitter communique where they trumpet, as loudly as their “trust and safety” guidelines, the power of their TOS."
It's literally tossed right in your face in easily read, large-letter font even a third grader could read in a hurry, as soon as you try to create an account.
It's better described and more easily read than your constitutional rights, the laws you live by daily, or the rights by which the IRS comes to take your money each year. If you aren't literate enough to match grade school standards then that's hardly twitter's fault.
"TOS ain’t that. That is hiding."
Hiding. By being clearer and more upfront about what you agree to than god damn traffic signals.
No, I think by now everyone around here has realized exactly where you're coming from. That being the point where even if Twitter sent a personal herald to your house to read their ToS out loud in stentorian tones you'd just move the goalposts a few steps and invent another reason as to why Twitter hasn't fulfilled the "obligation" you somehow feel they own.
So no, your argument died the very second you tried to tell us Twitter aren't being quite clear about the reservations they retain regarding their services - and by extrapolation when you imply even the dumbest of morons should expect different rules than the blindingly obvious to apply on privately owned property.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 6 Dec 2021 @ 5:16am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"It's clear that you hadn't actually read the TOS before your post above, and that also means you have based your arguments on ignorance."
Or on bad faith. I'm inclined to believe the latter given how many alt-right talking points "LittleCupcakes" keeps bringing to the table and double down on.
Sure, transparency might be nice - we'd finally know exactly why self-styled "conservatives" keep telling people there's a bias against them. But just as with the bartender tossing nazis out of their bar there is no natural expectation of justification.
If you show an asshole out the door of your house no one has the right to call upon you to justify why that person just got thrown out. That's the most fundamental idea around private property. You literally can not be a liberal and contend otherwise.
Which is why "Koby v2.0"'s assertion of "...no reason for the average TOS-skipper to know that Twitter has that power." only proves they aren't clear on the basic concept of private property or the "freedom of association" bit of 1A.
"If people have no reason to know that Twitter can run their service as they see fit it just tells me that they are lazy and ignorant and their complaints are borne from that."
Hanlon's razor breaks on this one, Rocky. You could line up the hundred worst village idiots from the most inbred cesspits of the globe and ask them whether they think a property owner has the right to toss assholes out of their property...and not one of them would be moron enough to honestly answer in the negative.
When someone does bring that argument you know that argument is brought in bad faith.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 6 Dec 2021 @ 5:03am
Re: Re: Re:
"Wow, got some Twitter defenders up in here! Wasn’t expecting that. It’s odd that a corporation misleads the public, and yet is defended merely by saying “akshually, it’s a TOS thing“."
I guess when you're lying through your teeth and making false assertions as the whole basis of your argument doubling down on being the victim of "teh ebil twitter defenders" when they point out your bullshit just makes sense, eh? I doubt half of those "defenders" have twitter accounts - people with principles don't need to hold vested interests in the principles they choose to defend. Something which ought to be second nature to you given that you've claimed adherence to all those liberal principles in times past.
Now, before you can even sign on to Twitter you need to click your way through a recognition of their Terms of Service - in which it is unambiguously stated outright that Twitter reserves the right to deny service, lock your account, moderate your comments, in whole or in part, for no other reason than Twitter's own judgment.
That service is provided as-is. Not unconditionally, not with rights or privileges handed to users.
Same, essentially, as entering a bar or mall. You can be evicted at any time, for any reasons. The bartender needs not provide a reason. That's how private property has always worked.
And the only people to ever cast aspersion on that have always been either the genuine dictionary-definition communists who don't believe property exists and lately, the US alt-right shills who feel entitled to everyone elses property, apparently. And everyone who actually believes in free speech, democracy and liberal principle is by their nature already unable to join the commies and the alt-right shills in that endeavor.
"Of course, its suppression of disfavored speech is awful regardless of policy obfuscations..."
Uh-huh. Because tossing out the assholes who won't stop shouting the N-word or who keep implying half of the rest of the user base are godless pagans for believing in freedom of choice, is a deplorable choice. The incessant whine of the unpleasant asshole evicted from the bar for being an unpleasant asshole.
"Note that while there may be excellent reasons to disfavor certain speech, doing so is a bad thing for a platform that is built on the speech of its users."
The vast majority of the world which prefers not to have to spend time in the company of Nazis, Klansmen, Conspiracy wingnuts, Flat Earthers, ISIS recruiters, Anti-vax fanatics, Grifters, Con men and Trolls begs to differ with you on that score.
Facebook and Twitter seem to be occupying a position where they don't lack users. The verdict of the world is already in; No one wants to go where assholes are welcome. Twitter tossing out assholes seems to be a winning move. Not a bad one.
Alternatives exist, of course. The cesspool which is 4chan, for instance. Parler and Gab, visited only by the most adherents of Trump and Nathan Bedford Forrest. Both of which have in common that they serve as excellent demonstrations that any platform which allows such "disfavored speech" as outright lies intended to endanger people or justify viewing a demographic as lesser beings will lose the vast majority of its audience.
Because, again, no one wants to spend time with assholes.
Twitter could do what you call for. Stop tossing assholes and removing posts trying to con people into eating They'd become as unpopular as Gab within of a month and be replaced within the next. Because no one wants to enter a post to provide casual commentary and then have to scroll through 30 pages of spambots and trolls.
That's really the issue with the thinly veiled alt-right rhetoric in general. Even if they get everything they ask for the only result remains that in any free country the service which provides an asshole-free environment will become the winner. At which point the alt-right will whine a little more and once again try to make the state carve out a safe space for them - on other people's property. Their tactic of gradually moving the narrative from attempted shaming and faked martyrdom into calls for legislative action may have worked well in the past when mass communications weren't really a thing and they could rely on a gang of thugs to silence the dissenters in the rallies.
But it doesn't work online. Social media lives on catering to the majority...and the majority of people just aren't keen to let liars, grifters and bigots into their lives at any level. Thus social media will always keep the assholes outside. Because handing your competitor 90% of the market just isn't smart.
>"The Energy Footprint: How Oil, Natural Gas, and Wind Energy Affect Land for Biodiversity and the Flow of Ecosystem Services"
BioScience, Volume 65, Issue 3, March 2015.
"Wind turbines cause functional habitat loss for migratory soaring birds"
Journal of Animal Ecology, 14 February 2019.
Finally some anecdotal indicators out of Germany and Sweden where it's been noted that the turbine noise drives away birds and mammals as effectively as a major influx of predators.
The problem is that in urban areas man-created hazards and pets are far more harmful to the bird population but wind farms are quite often located in places where they deny a lot of territory to existing avians and mammals.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 3 Dec 2021 @ 7:09am
Re: The Steele Dossier is 100% discredited
"Can't believe I ever liked this site."
Oh, hey, Baghdad Bob. What is it now? Twelfth time in a row you felt compelled to shit out a few ad homs and false assertions at Mike and bombastically make your old claim of being a long-time recently disillusioned reader once again?
I'll remind you in case you've forgotten - your usual continuation after that assertion is a claim that you're quitting and never coming back. Normally you do that at least once every two years after all.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 3 Dec 2021 @ 7:05am
Re: Re: Re: What is so surprising?
"There it is in plain English black on white text. If your that stupid to choose, choose, full liberty over safety, you deserve it. That doesn’t change my view of the choice it should be. "
And when that choice puts other people into harm's way?
George Washington wasn't shy about ordering his army to be vaccinated, because if you've chosen as a job being part of the civil servant then that job bears a responsibility. Fine. Make the choice not to vaccinate yourself, but;
Expect to be invited to quit that job demanding that you are vaccinated, because your choice does not entitle you to endanger other people.
Expect not to be welcomed in service chains who make a habit of not endangering their patrons.
The problem, you see, isn't whether vaccinating yourself is a choice or not. It is.
But it is a choice which has consequences. And that last part is what the anti-vaxxers keep screaming about.
That John & Jane Q Doe don't want to risk dragging Covid home to grandpa - or their niece - who can't be vaccinated or the vaccine won't take properly because they're on immunosuppressants.
That the public as a whole shouldn't expect police officers to provide them a case of covid along with a speeding ticket or routine pullover or frisking.
Aside from those who can't be vaccinated there's a pool of people who actually have a good reason not to trust yet another "cure" coming from a bunch of white people - with the Tuskegee experiment in fresh memory it's no wonder a lot of poc's refuse to trust a government project involving injections. Even those, however, need to realize that if they don't take their shot they'll have to restrict their interactions to those who are likeminded. Ironically putting the alt-right in the same boat as many of their victims.
By all means let the moron choose to not vaccinate. It's their choice. And that choice should mean they aren't allowed to endanger the rest.
We don't allow people to piss in the water mains. People who insist they are entitled to get carted off to jail. Same as people who drive while drunk. Hell, the cops will remove you from the street if you haven't washed in weeks or are otherwise being a public nuisance. And no one argues about any of this. But the guy who refuses a vaccination feels entitled to keep their job as a hairdresser, police officer or customer representative? Hell, no.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 3 Dec 2021 @ 6:38am
Re:
"It would be much more defensible for their tech oligarchs to simply state that Twitter may remove whatever it content it wishes for any reason, or no reason, as is its right."
You mean as in when everyone signing up to their brand new Twitter account are informed of exactly that?
"Twitter should at least have the gumption to state what is obviously true and simultaneously vigorously assert their right to do it. "
I refer to Twitter's Terms of Service, section 4;
...the Services may change from time to time, at our discretion. We may stop (permanently or temporarily) providing the Services or any features within the Services to you or to users generally. We also retain the right to create limits on use and storage at our sole discretion at any time. We may also remove or refuse to distribute any Content on the Services, limit distribution or visibility of any Content on the service, suspend or terminate users, and reclaim usernames without liability to you.
This is just an idea, you understand, but perhaps people would start to treat you better here if your assertions and assumptions about easily verifiable facts weren't so often outright wrong.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 3 Dec 2021 @ 6:20am
Re: Re:
Ah, yes, those lists of email addresses he claims were the key to his grand scheme of the next big thing since sliced bread in entrepreneurism? And which he claimed "evil pirates" leaked and put in a torrent file on TPB?
I still recall it. The first time I recall old Baghdad Bob, in his "Bobmail" guise dropping two insane assertions on top of one another and trying to argue those as the main reason he wasn't raking in gagging bagfuls of money.
Due to, as I recall, his idea that a speculative invoicing scheme akin to that of Prenda would have seen him a wealthy man.
Honestly, it really is rare that you see someone screaming so loudly in apparent righteous ire because their plans to commit grand fraud were foiled...and then pushing the blame on "pirates" for exposing their list of presumptive victims up to public scrutiny.
We didn't assume he was the antropomorphic personification of Dunning-Kruger for nothing, is all I'm saying...😂
Of course although he still whines about pirates every chance he gets these days he seems more invested in proving he's an equal opportunity asshole and fsckwit by taking the most unsympathetic, ultra-authoritarian and bigoted stance he can when it comes to seeing black people shot by cops and the like.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 3 Dec 2021 @ 3:10am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Although, if they are too successful the party will make sure that they aren't any longer."
Correct. Which, bizarrely, seems to be more actively keeping the chinese market from monopolization than every antitrust law in the US manages to do to the US market.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 3 Dec 2021 @ 2:13am
Re:
"Should the policymaking process of social media platforms more closely resemble the policymaking process of governments?"
That depends. If you want to live in China or old Soviet Russia then yes. Otherwise you might want to retain that fundamental principle of free speech, and leave what speech is allowed or not on private property up to the owner of said property.
"Should principles of the criminal justice system (things like due process and the right to appeal) apply to social media moderation?"
Again, that depends on the owner of the private platform in question. Some might apply such a system. Most won't.
"For me, I would lean towards "yes" to both..."
And full stop while we go over what you just irrevocably committed yourself to; namely the abolition of the concept that individuals should retain rights of speech and association within the confines of their own private property.
"...but as usual, the problem is scale."
Well, no. China manages this process just fine by making sure that a given percentage of the population has gainful work in spying on the communications and statements of the rest of the population. Neither The Great Firewall or the censorship apparatus comes free.
The only issue is that a social media platforms with slender margins won't have the ability to hire enough censors and auditors to conveniently carry out such mediation, let alone more high-priced paralegals to carry out appeals processes.
Nor does the state of course. Shutting a thousand people out of a million out of your property is just much easier than allowing those thousand people to mediate - which will cost you a thousand times more effort than simply clicking a few buttons and run an algorithm.
"If you have an issue with a platform's policy, you're stuck whining about it or leaving the platform entirely."
And that's the way every private service works. Don't like the rules of your local bar? Whine about it powerlessly or leave. Don't like the rules of the local mall? Whine powerlessly or leave. Don't like the way the car dealer, green grocer, butcher or delikatessen does business, as stated upfront on their rules? Whine powerlessly or leave.
And that's the way it SHOULD BE in a free society.
The first half of your comment is just plain Koby. False equivalence, false premise and false assumption shat out in a reasoned tone of voice. Just consider this a notice of Strike One on the "alt-right troll" test. A few more of those and we'll just have to start referring to you as Koby v2.0.
"Platforms have started to highlight how they work with experts and activist groups to shape their policies, but I would like to see them bring regular users into the mix as well."
And several platforms may or may not be doing that, depending on which rules and routines they want set up around the guest rights they extend for their property.
I am, however, very curious as to how you'd deswcribe a "regular user" given that an "expert" and an "activist" won't be able to cater to their needs and desires. Are your "regular" users unable to match the expectations of civil rights activists?
To me that sounds as if what you call a "regular" user would be better described as "minority user unable to match societal expectations of conduct".
"There seems to be widespread support for more transparency and a better appeals process..."
If that's the case then eventually major platforms will try to cater to the desires of their product...the people using that platform on a daily basis.
I would certainly personally find it quite beneficial if Facebook and Twitter would start publishing the reasons as to why given posts or users were banned - if nothing else i'm curious to see what the "anti-conservative" bias the alt-right keeps screaming about actually refers to. But my opinion - or that of anyone else, really - doesn't matter. The owner of the platform makes the rules applicable for that platform. The market then decides whether those rules are acceptable for the platform to become and remain popular.
To even start asking the question you keep posing means you aren't quite on board with the fundamental principles of property ownership, freedom of speech, and freedom of choice.
I would advise reading up on those concepts - because you could replace the word private platform with Bar, private home, or, more disturbing, people's bodies and see just how badly a violation of these core principles infringe on basic human rights.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 3 Dec 2021 @ 1:41am
Re: Every accusation a confession
"Having Koby of all people accusing someone of hating free speech is like an arsonist..."
I'm with the AC in that reply comparing it to the rapist who thinks the girl saying "No!" should be outlawed.
Because Koby's combined rhetoric, no matter the "rational" tone, is that of someone who thinks a person's right to their own property or body infringes on the entitlements of those coveting said body or property.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 3 Dec 2021 @ 1:36am
Re: Re: Re: Officially They're A Publisher
"But now when you engage in moderation, it's editorialization."
Every court to make a ruling on this has been very clear that no, it's not, Koby.
The only mark you keep leaving on this forums is the by now very heavily demonstrated fact that those who are opposed to 230 can't make a single argument against it without first lying through their teeth.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 3 Dec 2021 @ 1:25am
Re: How much do you get though?
"Anecdotally most of my American friends have higher bandwidth speeds than most of my Canadian friends."
One interesting data point here would be whether the broadband promised is the same as the one delivered.
Example; I'm on a 100/10 MBit connection...and every month if I can deliver a snapshot of a speedtest where the real-time connection dips below 50 MBit at any point three times then I don't have to pay the broadband fee that month. The ISP's in sweden like to provide a speeds guarantee.
Meanwhile what I keep reading from the US is about cases where the "100 MBit" linkage turns out to be effectively 10 Mbit most of the time or where latency and jitter make the link largely unusable for anything but browsing.
Because the US is almost unique in that there is no consumer law preventing an ISP from overselling their bandwidth fifty times over - which goes a long way towards explaining why the telcos there focus so hard on not being forced to suffer net neutrality or common carrier regulations which would block them from shaping traffic priorities to preferred customers.
So about Canada before we can judge the effective speed of their network we'd need to know whether the canadian ISP's are overselling bandwidth at the same proportion as their US peers or whether they are forced to offer slower broadband because they're not allowed to promise what they can't deliver.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 3 Dec 2021 @ 1:17am
Re: I'm honestly surprised...
"Does anybody know why Switzerland's Internet service is so expensive? And comparing Norway to Sweden and Finland seems to rule out geography as an excuse for exorbitantly high broadband prices)"
As Rocky has it, the terrain doesn't help. Norways coastline looks like a fractal with the fjords in places almost cutting the country in half. It could accurately be described as a string of peninsulas connected to a rather thin spine. So the cabling has to zig-zag across some rather impressive distances. Same holds true to some respect for Switzerland although there it's mountains voiding the ability to run cables in straight lines.
Meanwhile Sweden is basically long and relatively flat stretches of hilly plains and forests. Pick a compass heading from the southern tip of the country and start rolling out the cable trunk and you'll not hit a serious terrain snag for about 500 km (750-800 miles).
After considering the expenses in material and labor cost then comes state subsidies, common carrier lend-lease agreements and all the other regulations which incentivize or don't incentivize joint ventures in building core infrastructure...it all affects the end price as it determines how much competition there will be about broadband access.
Suffice to say the unregulated markets of the US have turned the place into a third world where infrastructure is concerned in general and it's getting worse all the time.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 3 Dec 2021 @ 1:07am
Re: culprits
"And more importantly, what would be a credible solution to counter those causative culprits ?"
Removing money from politics.
Seriously, as long as the winning candidate will be the best funded the result will always be politicians who see themselves as employed by the biggest wallet rather than the voting citizenry.
There are other things as well - like voting primarily for a party rather than an individual thus largely removing the personality cult and the gab-gifted grifters from the selection process, and of course ranked-choice voting to make sure you have a shot at stepping away from a mere two-party system.
But money must be removed from politics first, or everything else just becomes more icing on what is fundamentally a turd.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 2 Dec 2021 @ 5:22am
Re: Re: No surprise
And consign the US to the cruel yoke of the Kenyan Muslim and Killary. Don't forget the part where the Bad Black Man and That Woman Fleeing The Kitchen must be central to the plot.
It only makes for a good and easily sold narrative if every bigot finds something in it they really want to believe.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 2 Dec 2021 @ 5:18am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Though if you ask me, they prefer the foreign offerings than the local alternative unless they were forced to."
You'd be wrong, alas. China does apply market rules, meaning their versions of anything in their markets come from a plentitude of choices.
People keep getting this wrong - China likes to call itself "communist" when the reality is their markets are as capitalist as the US. More so I'd say, given the way US markets have become pseudo-monopolies these last few decades.
It's just that the chinese government tends to heavily discourage foreign corporations from their markets.
Do the numbers - you think a market economy nation with 1,4 billion is more or less likely to produce good offers than a market of 350 million where the room at the top is already taken? And of course that's heavily incentivized by a system of government which takes as core principle that making sure some 90% of the citizenry is happy, well fed, well educated and prosperous is the highest priority to achieve stability. While using the last 10% as dissident bogeymen, deviants and terrorists to frighten the majority with.
China keep wanting to uphold themselves as that special snowflake nation which succeeded in being communist where everyone else failed but the truth is that they did so by being extremely capitalistic. It's all window dressing covering for the fact that they never moved beyond an ultra-autocratic imperial hegemony governed by a sprawling bureaucracy whose members not rarely tend to be the primary owners of any successful corporation. And vice versa if a chinese businessman is successful they'll find themselves holding a political responsibility as well.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 2 Dec 2021 @ 2:16am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"On the flip side, true disbelievers do not seem to understand or acknowledge that markets always exist, no matter how hard one tries to suppress them."
That's a false equivalence. I truly disbelieve libertarianism precisely because it's as reality-divorced a theory as flat earth cosmology or, yes, communism.
Communism and libertarianism both operate from flawed assumptions. Communism out of the premise that people are as perfect as the components of some digital device, giving and taking resources each according to their needs.
And Libertarianism out of the premise that giving all the power to the most greedy and ambitious won't instantly result in monopolies doing their best to take away the citizen's ability to choose or present better options.
The US libertarians are in my eyes as blinded as the old soviet communists.
Scary Devil Monastery (profile), 2 Dec 2021 @ 2:01am
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"But, at least in the U.S. in recent history, it seems that most, but not all, market failures have their roots in government intervention."
...and not hard to see why. The US went with Reaganism in the 80's as a result of which ten years later every government agency was utterly and inescapably beholden to the PAC funding their campaign.
"I think a free market market system should be the default, that is, it should (almost) always be tried first."
I would hold that this concept - leaving the barn door open and only closing it after the horses bolted - is what landed the US in the mess it's currently in. The normal state of affairs now is that every US politician is bought and paid for. Hence it is no longer plausible to implement tighter controls without any such attempt becoming an anti-competitive tool for the biggest monopoly or a pork barrel which in practice tosses no end of taxpayer money at the biggest contributors.
Government exists to regulate and arbitrate to accommodate the need for a level playing field and rules protecting the citizenry. If you begin with taking that role away from them in that "looser" control paradigm...then you'll never get to establish any such control because the mechanisms have been corrupted from the beginning.
"Let's start by giving all the power to the greediest crooks around" just never ends well. And the failure to recognize this very basic fact is what makes libertarianism as dead to me as flat earth cosmology.
Leading us directly to the solution involving torches and pitchforks.
Your argument, although it sounds nice, has the practical ramifications of accepting a car with dysfunctional brakes and a gas pedal with "too fast" as that one setting. Once the issues logical to arise manifest the car is no longer in a state fit to fix. Or you, for that matter.
Meanwhile the car with overactive brakes and a reluctant gas pedal might not take you anywhere but you now have the leeway to adjust it because the first thing you noticed wasn't the car careening off the road on the first or second sharp curve.
On the post: Twitter's New 'Private Information' Policy Takes Impossible Content Moderation Challenges To New, Ridiculous Levels
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
[Edit]
Sorry, Rocky, that was meant for Koby v2.0 above, not you.
On the post: Twitter's New 'Private Information' Policy Takes Impossible Content Moderation Challenges To New, Ridiculous Levels
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Go ahead and show me the Twitter communique where they trumpet, as loudly as their “trust and safety” guidelines, the power of their TOS."
It's literally tossed right in your face in easily read, large-letter font even a third grader could read in a hurry, as soon as you try to create an account.
It's better described and more easily read than your constitutional rights, the laws you live by daily, or the rights by which the IRS comes to take your money each year. If you aren't literate enough to match grade school standards then that's hardly twitter's fault.
"TOS ain’t that. That is hiding."
Hiding. By being clearer and more upfront about what you agree to than god damn traffic signals.
No, I think by now everyone around here has realized exactly where you're coming from. That being the point where even if Twitter sent a personal herald to your house to read their ToS out loud in stentorian tones you'd just move the goalposts a few steps and invent another reason as to why Twitter hasn't fulfilled the "obligation" you somehow feel they own.
So no, your argument died the very second you tried to tell us Twitter aren't being quite clear about the reservations they retain regarding their services - and by extrapolation when you imply even the dumbest of morons should expect different rules than the blindingly obvious to apply on privately owned property.
On the post: Twitter's New 'Private Information' Policy Takes Impossible Content Moderation Challenges To New, Ridiculous Levels
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"It's clear that you hadn't actually read the TOS before your post above, and that also means you have based your arguments on ignorance."
Or on bad faith. I'm inclined to believe the latter given how many alt-right talking points "LittleCupcakes" keeps bringing to the table and double down on.
Sure, transparency might be nice - we'd finally know exactly why self-styled "conservatives" keep telling people there's a bias against them. But just as with the bartender tossing nazis out of their bar there is no natural expectation of justification.
If you show an asshole out the door of your house no one has the right to call upon you to justify why that person just got thrown out. That's the most fundamental idea around private property. You literally can not be a liberal and contend otherwise.
Which is why "Koby v2.0"'s assertion of "...no reason for the average TOS-skipper to know that Twitter has that power." only proves they aren't clear on the basic concept of private property or the "freedom of association" bit of 1A.
"If people have no reason to know that Twitter can run their service as they see fit it just tells me that they are lazy and ignorant and their complaints are borne from that."
Hanlon's razor breaks on this one, Rocky. You could line up the hundred worst village idiots from the most inbred cesspits of the globe and ask them whether they think a property owner has the right to toss assholes out of their property...and not one of them would be moron enough to honestly answer in the negative.
When someone does bring that argument you know that argument is brought in bad faith.
On the post: Twitter's New 'Private Information' Policy Takes Impossible Content Moderation Challenges To New, Ridiculous Levels
Re: Re: Re:
"Wow, got some Twitter defenders up in here! Wasn’t expecting that. It’s odd that a corporation misleads the public, and yet is defended merely by saying “akshually, it’s a TOS thing“."
I guess when you're lying through your teeth and making false assertions as the whole basis of your argument doubling down on being the victim of "teh ebil twitter defenders" when they point out your bullshit just makes sense, eh? I doubt half of those "defenders" have twitter accounts - people with principles don't need to hold vested interests in the principles they choose to defend. Something which ought to be second nature to you given that you've claimed adherence to all those liberal principles in times past.
Now, before you can even sign on to Twitter you need to click your way through a recognition of their Terms of Service - in which it is unambiguously stated outright that Twitter reserves the right to deny service, lock your account, moderate your comments, in whole or in part, for no other reason than Twitter's own judgment.
That service is provided as-is. Not unconditionally, not with rights or privileges handed to users.
Same, essentially, as entering a bar or mall. You can be evicted at any time, for any reasons. The bartender needs not provide a reason. That's how private property has always worked.
And the only people to ever cast aspersion on that have always been either the genuine dictionary-definition communists who don't believe property exists and lately, the US alt-right shills who feel entitled to everyone elses property, apparently. And everyone who actually believes in free speech, democracy and liberal principle is by their nature already unable to join the commies and the alt-right shills in that endeavor.
"Of course, its suppression of disfavored speech is awful regardless of policy obfuscations..."
Uh-huh. Because tossing out the assholes who won't stop shouting the N-word or who keep implying half of the rest of the user base are godless pagans for believing in freedom of choice, is a deplorable choice. The incessant whine of the unpleasant asshole evicted from the bar for being an unpleasant asshole.
"Note that while there may be excellent reasons to disfavor certain speech, doing so is a bad thing for a platform that is built on the speech of its users."
The vast majority of the world which prefers not to have to spend time in the company of Nazis, Klansmen, Conspiracy wingnuts, Flat Earthers, ISIS recruiters, Anti-vax fanatics, Grifters, Con men and Trolls begs to differ with you on that score.
Facebook and Twitter seem to be occupying a position where they don't lack users. The verdict of the world is already in; No one wants to go where assholes are welcome. Twitter tossing out assholes seems to be a winning move. Not a bad one.
Alternatives exist, of course. The cesspool which is 4chan, for instance. Parler and Gab, visited only by the most adherents of Trump and Nathan Bedford Forrest. Both of which have in common that they serve as excellent demonstrations that any platform which allows such "disfavored speech" as outright lies intended to endanger people or justify viewing a demographic as lesser beings will lose the vast majority of its audience.
Because, again, no one wants to spend time with assholes.
Twitter could do what you call for. Stop tossing assholes and removing posts trying to con people into eating They'd become as unpopular as Gab within of a month and be replaced within the next. Because no one wants to enter a post to provide casual commentary and then have to scroll through 30 pages of spambots and trolls.
That's really the issue with the thinly veiled alt-right rhetoric in general. Even if they get everything they ask for the only result remains that in any free country the service which provides an asshole-free environment will become the winner. At which point the alt-right will whine a little more and once again try to make the state carve out a safe space for them - on other people's property. Their tactic of gradually moving the narrative from attempted shaming and faked martyrdom into calls for legislative action may have worked well in the past when mass communications weren't really a thing and they could rely on a gang of thugs to silence the dissenters in the rallies.
But it doesn't work online. Social media lives on catering to the majority...and the majority of people just aren't keen to let liars, grifters and bigots into their lives at any level. Thus social media will always keep the assholes outside. Because handing your competitor 90% of the market just isn't smart.
On the post: Texas Gas Companies Hit Texas Consumers With 'Whoops You Froze To Death' Surcharge
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Reference for that?"
>"The Energy Footprint: How Oil, Natural Gas, and Wind Energy Affect Land for Biodiversity and the Flow of Ecosystem Services"
Finally some anecdotal indicators out of Germany and Sweden where it's been noted that the turbine noise drives away birds and mammals as effectively as a major influx of predators.
The problem is that in urban areas man-created hazards and pets are far more harmful to the bird population but wind farms are quite often located in places where they deny a lot of territory to existing avians and mammals.
On the post: Donald Trump Says He's Going To Sue The Pulitzer Committee If They Don't Take Away The NY Times And WaPo Pulitzers
Re: The Steele Dossier is 100% discredited
"Can't believe I ever liked this site."
Oh, hey, Baghdad Bob. What is it now? Twelfth time in a row you felt compelled to shit out a few ad homs and false assertions at Mike and bombastically make your old claim of being a long-time recently disillusioned reader once again?
I'll remind you in case you've forgotten - your usual continuation after that assertion is a claim that you're quitting and never coming back. Normally you do that at least once every two years after all.
On the post: Donald Trump Says He's Going To Sue The Pulitzer Committee If They Don't Take Away The NY Times And WaPo Pulitzers
Re: Re: Re: What is so surprising?
"There it is in plain English black on white text. If your that stupid to choose, choose, full liberty over safety, you deserve it. That doesn’t change my view of the choice it should be. "
And when that choice puts other people into harm's way?
George Washington wasn't shy about ordering his army to be vaccinated, because if you've chosen as a job being part of the civil servant then that job bears a responsibility. Fine. Make the choice not to vaccinate yourself, but;
Expect to be invited to quit that job demanding that you are vaccinated, because your choice does not entitle you to endanger other people.
Expect not to be welcomed in service chains who make a habit of not endangering their patrons.
The problem, you see, isn't whether vaccinating yourself is a choice or not. It is.
But it is a choice which has consequences. And that last part is what the anti-vaxxers keep screaming about.
That John & Jane Q Doe don't want to risk dragging Covid home to grandpa - or their niece - who can't be vaccinated or the vaccine won't take properly because they're on immunosuppressants.
That the public as a whole shouldn't expect police officers to provide them a case of covid along with a speeding ticket or routine pullover or frisking.
Aside from those who can't be vaccinated there's a pool of people who actually have a good reason not to trust yet another "cure" coming from a bunch of white people - with the Tuskegee experiment in fresh memory it's no wonder a lot of poc's refuse to trust a government project involving injections. Even those, however, need to realize that if they don't take their shot they'll have to restrict their interactions to those who are likeminded. Ironically putting the alt-right in the same boat as many of their victims.
By all means let the moron choose to not vaccinate. It's their choice. And that choice should mean they aren't allowed to endanger the rest.
We don't allow people to piss in the water mains. People who insist they are entitled to get carted off to jail. Same as people who drive while drunk. Hell, the cops will remove you from the street if you haven't washed in weeks or are otherwise being a public nuisance. And no one argues about any of this. But the guy who refuses a vaccination feels entitled to keep their job as a hairdresser, police officer or customer representative? Hell, no.
On the post: Twitter's New 'Private Information' Policy Takes Impossible Content Moderation Challenges To New, Ridiculous Levels
Re:
"It would be much more defensible for their tech oligarchs to simply state that Twitter may remove whatever it content it wishes for any reason, or no reason, as is its right."
You mean as in when everyone signing up to their brand new Twitter account are informed of exactly that?
"Twitter should at least have the gumption to state what is obviously true and simultaneously vigorously assert their right to do it. "
I refer to Twitter's Terms of Service, section 4;
This is just an idea, you understand, but perhaps people would start to treat you better here if your assertions and assumptions about easily verifiable facts weren't so often outright wrong.
On the post: Even As Grifters Insist Otherwise, Courts Know That Social Media Are Not State Actors Because Of Section 230
Re: Re:
Ah, yes, those lists of email addresses he claims were the key to his grand scheme of the next big thing since sliced bread in entrepreneurism? And which he claimed "evil pirates" leaked and put in a torrent file on TPB?
I still recall it. The first time I recall old Baghdad Bob, in his "Bobmail" guise dropping two insane assertions on top of one another and trying to argue those as the main reason he wasn't raking in gagging bagfuls of money.
Due to, as I recall, his idea that a speculative invoicing scheme akin to that of Prenda would have seen him a wealthy man.
Honestly, it really is rare that you see someone screaming so loudly in apparent righteous ire because their plans to commit grand fraud were foiled...and then pushing the blame on "pirates" for exposing their list of presumptive victims up to public scrutiny.
We didn't assume he was the antropomorphic personification of Dunning-Kruger for nothing, is all I'm saying...😂
Of course although he still whines about pirates every chance he gets these days he seems more invested in proving he's an equal opportunity asshole and fsckwit by taking the most unsympathetic, ultra-authoritarian and bigoted stance he can when it comes to seeing black people shot by cops and the like.
On the post: Disney Yanks China-Mocking Simpsons Episode From Its Hong Kong Streaming Service
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Although, if they are too successful the party will make sure that they aren't any longer."
Correct. Which, bizarrely, seems to be more actively keeping the chinese market from monopolization than every antitrust law in the US manages to do to the US market.
On the post: Texas Court Gets It Right: Dumps Texas's Social Media Moderation Law As Clearly Unconstitutional
Re:
"Should the policymaking process of social media platforms more closely resemble the policymaking process of governments?"
That depends. If you want to live in China or old Soviet Russia then yes. Otherwise you might want to retain that fundamental principle of free speech, and leave what speech is allowed or not on private property up to the owner of said property.
"Should principles of the criminal justice system (things like due process and the right to appeal) apply to social media moderation?"
Again, that depends on the owner of the private platform in question. Some might apply such a system. Most won't.
"For me, I would lean towards "yes" to both..."
And full stop while we go over what you just irrevocably committed yourself to; namely the abolition of the concept that individuals should retain rights of speech and association within the confines of their own private property.
"...but as usual, the problem is scale."
Well, no. China manages this process just fine by making sure that a given percentage of the population has gainful work in spying on the communications and statements of the rest of the population. Neither The Great Firewall or the censorship apparatus comes free.
The only issue is that a social media platforms with slender margins won't have the ability to hire enough censors and auditors to conveniently carry out such mediation, let alone more high-priced paralegals to carry out appeals processes.
Nor does the state of course. Shutting a thousand people out of a million out of your property is just much easier than allowing those thousand people to mediate - which will cost you a thousand times more effort than simply clicking a few buttons and run an algorithm.
"If you have an issue with a platform's policy, you're stuck whining about it or leaving the platform entirely."
And that's the way every private service works. Don't like the rules of your local bar? Whine about it powerlessly or leave. Don't like the rules of the local mall? Whine powerlessly or leave. Don't like the way the car dealer, green grocer, butcher or delikatessen does business, as stated upfront on their rules? Whine powerlessly or leave.
And that's the way it SHOULD BE in a free society.
The first half of your comment is just plain Koby. False equivalence, false premise and false assumption shat out in a reasoned tone of voice. Just consider this a notice of Strike One on the "alt-right troll" test. A few more of those and we'll just have to start referring to you as Koby v2.0.
"Platforms have started to highlight how they work with experts and activist groups to shape their policies, but I would like to see them bring regular users into the mix as well."
And several platforms may or may not be doing that, depending on which rules and routines they want set up around the guest rights they extend for their property.
I am, however, very curious as to how you'd deswcribe a "regular user" given that an "expert" and an "activist" won't be able to cater to their needs and desires. Are your "regular" users unable to match the expectations of civil rights activists?
To me that sounds as if what you call a "regular" user would be better described as "minority user unable to match societal expectations of conduct".
"There seems to be widespread support for more transparency and a better appeals process..."
If that's the case then eventually major platforms will try to cater to the desires of their product...the people using that platform on a daily basis.
I would certainly personally find it quite beneficial if Facebook and Twitter would start publishing the reasons as to why given posts or users were banned - if nothing else i'm curious to see what the "anti-conservative" bias the alt-right keeps screaming about actually refers to. But my opinion - or that of anyone else, really - doesn't matter. The owner of the platform makes the rules applicable for that platform. The market then decides whether those rules are acceptable for the platform to become and remain popular.
To even start asking the question you keep posing means you aren't quite on board with the fundamental principles of property ownership, freedom of speech, and freedom of choice.
I would advise reading up on those concepts - because you could replace the word private platform with Bar, private home, or, more disturbing, people's bodies and see just how badly a violation of these core principles infringe on basic human rights.
On the post: Texas Court Gets It Right: Dumps Texas's Social Media Moderation Law As Clearly Unconstitutional
Re: Every accusation a confession
"Having Koby of all people accusing someone of hating free speech is like an arsonist..."
I'm with the AC in that reply comparing it to the rapist who thinks the girl saying "No!" should be outlawed.
Because Koby's combined rhetoric, no matter the "rational" tone, is that of someone who thinks a person's right to their own property or body infringes on the entitlements of those coveting said body or property.
On the post: Texas Court Gets It Right: Dumps Texas's Social Media Moderation Law As Clearly Unconstitutional
Re: Re: Re: Officially They're A Publisher
"But now when you engage in moderation, it's editorialization."
Every court to make a ruling on this has been very clear that no, it's not, Koby.
The only mark you keep leaving on this forums is the by now very heavily demonstrated fact that those who are opposed to 230 can't make a single argument against it without first lying through their teeth.
On the post: Report: U.S. Has 9th Most Expensive Broadband On The Planet
Re: How much do you get though?
"Anecdotally most of my American friends have higher bandwidth speeds than most of my Canadian friends."
One interesting data point here would be whether the broadband promised is the same as the one delivered.
Example; I'm on a 100/10 MBit connection...and every month if I can deliver a snapshot of a speedtest where the real-time connection dips below 50 MBit at any point three times then I don't have to pay the broadband fee that month. The ISP's in sweden like to provide a speeds guarantee.
Meanwhile what I keep reading from the US is about cases where the "100 MBit" linkage turns out to be effectively 10 Mbit most of the time or where latency and jitter make the link largely unusable for anything but browsing.
Because the US is almost unique in that there is no consumer law preventing an ISP from overselling their bandwidth fifty times over - which goes a long way towards explaining why the telcos there focus so hard on not being forced to suffer net neutrality or common carrier regulations which would block them from shaping traffic priorities to preferred customers.
So about Canada before we can judge the effective speed of their network we'd need to know whether the canadian ISP's are overselling bandwidth at the same proportion as their US peers or whether they are forced to offer slower broadband because they're not allowed to promise what they can't deliver.
On the post: Report: U.S. Has 9th Most Expensive Broadband On The Planet
Re: I'm honestly surprised...
"Does anybody know why Switzerland's Internet service is so expensive? And comparing Norway to Sweden and Finland seems to rule out geography as an excuse for exorbitantly high broadband prices)"
As Rocky has it, the terrain doesn't help. Norways coastline looks like a fractal with the fjords in places almost cutting the country in half. It could accurately be described as a string of peninsulas connected to a rather thin spine. So the cabling has to zig-zag across some rather impressive distances. Same holds true to some respect for Switzerland although there it's mountains voiding the ability to run cables in straight lines.
Meanwhile Sweden is basically long and relatively flat stretches of hilly plains and forests. Pick a compass heading from the southern tip of the country and start rolling out the cable trunk and you'll not hit a serious terrain snag for about 500 km (750-800 miles).
After considering the expenses in material and labor cost then comes state subsidies, common carrier lend-lease agreements and all the other regulations which incentivize or don't incentivize joint ventures in building core infrastructure...it all affects the end price as it determines how much competition there will be about broadband access.
Suffice to say the unregulated markets of the US have turned the place into a third world where infrastructure is concerned in general and it's getting worse all the time.
On the post: Report: U.S. Has 9th Most Expensive Broadband On The Planet
Re: culprits
"And more importantly, what would be a credible solution to counter those causative culprits ?"
Removing money from politics.
Seriously, as long as the winning candidate will be the best funded the result will always be politicians who see themselves as employed by the biggest wallet rather than the voting citizenry.
There are other things as well - like voting primarily for a party rather than an individual thus largely removing the personality cult and the gab-gifted grifters from the selection process, and of course ranked-choice voting to make sure you have a shot at stepping away from a mere two-party system.
But money must be removed from politics first, or everything else just becomes more icing on what is fundamentally a turd.
On the post: The Bad Apples Control The Bunch: USA Today Report Details Law Enforcements Punishment Of Good Cops
Re: Re: No surprise
And consign the US to the cruel yoke of the Kenyan Muslim and Killary. Don't forget the part where the Bad Black Man and That Woman Fleeing The Kitchen must be central to the plot.
It only makes for a good and easily sold narrative if every bigot finds something in it they really want to believe.
On the post: Disney Yanks China-Mocking Simpsons Episode From Its Hong Kong Streaming Service
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"Though if you ask me, they prefer the foreign offerings than the local alternative unless they were forced to."
You'd be wrong, alas. China does apply market rules, meaning their versions of anything in their markets come from a plentitude of choices.
People keep getting this wrong - China likes to call itself "communist" when the reality is their markets are as capitalist as the US. More so I'd say, given the way US markets have become pseudo-monopolies these last few decades.
It's just that the chinese government tends to heavily discourage foreign corporations from their markets.
Do the numbers - you think a market economy nation with 1,4 billion is more or less likely to produce good offers than a market of 350 million where the room at the top is already taken? And of course that's heavily incentivized by a system of government which takes as core principle that making sure some 90% of the citizenry is happy, well fed, well educated and prosperous is the highest priority to achieve stability. While using the last 10% as dissident bogeymen, deviants and terrorists to frighten the majority with.
China keep wanting to uphold themselves as that special snowflake nation which succeeded in being communist where everyone else failed but the truth is that they did so by being extremely capitalistic. It's all window dressing covering for the fact that they never moved beyond an ultra-autocratic imperial hegemony governed by a sprawling bureaucracy whose members not rarely tend to be the primary owners of any successful corporation. And vice versa if a chinese businessman is successful they'll find themselves holding a political responsibility as well.
On the post: The Bad Apples Control The Bunch: USA Today Report Details Law Enforcements Punishment Of Good Cops
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
"On the flip side, true disbelievers do not seem to understand or acknowledge that markets always exist, no matter how hard one tries to suppress them."
That's a false equivalence. I truly disbelieve libertarianism precisely because it's as reality-divorced a theory as flat earth cosmology or, yes, communism.
Communism and libertarianism both operate from flawed assumptions. Communism out of the premise that people are as perfect as the components of some digital device, giving and taking resources each according to their needs.
And Libertarianism out of the premise that giving all the power to the most greedy and ambitious won't instantly result in monopolies doing their best to take away the citizen's ability to choose or present better options.
The US libertarians are in my eyes as blinded as the old soviet communists.
On the post: The Bad Apples Control The Bunch: USA Today Report Details Law Enforcements Punishment Of Good Cops
Re: Re: Re: Re:
"But, at least in the U.S. in recent history, it seems that most, but not all, market failures have their roots in government intervention."
...and not hard to see why. The US went with Reaganism in the 80's as a result of which ten years later every government agency was utterly and inescapably beholden to the PAC funding their campaign.
"I think a free market market system should be the default, that is, it should (almost) always be tried first."
I would hold that this concept - leaving the barn door open and only closing it after the horses bolted - is what landed the US in the mess it's currently in. The normal state of affairs now is that every US politician is bought and paid for. Hence it is no longer plausible to implement tighter controls without any such attempt becoming an anti-competitive tool for the biggest monopoly or a pork barrel which in practice tosses no end of taxpayer money at the biggest contributors.
Government exists to regulate and arbitrate to accommodate the need for a level playing field and rules protecting the citizenry. If you begin with taking that role away from them in that "looser" control paradigm...then you'll never get to establish any such control because the mechanisms have been corrupted from the beginning.
"Let's start by giving all the power to the greediest crooks around" just never ends well. And the failure to recognize this very basic fact is what makes libertarianism as dead to me as flat earth cosmology.
Leading us directly to the solution involving torches and pitchforks.
Your argument, although it sounds nice, has the practical ramifications of accepting a car with dysfunctional brakes and a gas pedal with "too fast" as that one setting. Once the issues logical to arise manifest the car is no longer in a state fit to fix. Or you, for that matter.
Meanwhile the car with overactive brakes and a reluctant gas pedal might not take you anywhere but you now have the leeway to adjust it because the first thing you noticed wasn't the car careening off the road on the first or second sharp curve.
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