Once again: everyone is entitled to "demand" anything they want.
Suppose you support the position that it should be legal for women to get an abortion procedure done at a hospital (I'm just throwing this out here as an example, my apologies if you do not). No amount of demands, requests, or petitions to your employer would make it okay for your boss to fire you on the basis that you support legal abortion. No power structure would make it okay.
Again, the cancel culture goes beyond speech. It seeks to punish anyone who does not agree with the mob. You would not be accepting of the demands if the consequences were aimed at you. Demanding certain actions for mere disagreement is not acceptable if civil society is to remain intact.
How, exactly? Just what do you consider to be acceptable consequences for abhorrent views?
Just because you feel that a viewpoint is "abhorrent" does not entitle anyone to demand consequences. Otherwise, anything to which you are opposed will get labelled as abhorrent in order to shut down opposition. This is the mechanism by which neo fascism weaponizes emotion.
The general solution for speech with which you disagree is to leave it up, and speak out against it. Try to convince the person with whom you disagree, but if that's not possible, then convince others. Once upon a time, we as a country here in the United States had a concept of tolerance, which means that even if you disagree with someone, then you still leave them alone. You don't have to agree with them, but there is no punishment for disagreement.
You are very close to considering thought crime laws when you want "consequences".
But part of the problem with the letter was that it was written in terms that could be used to both condemn overreaction by "mob" voices on Twitter and be used by certain people to say "stop criticizing my bad ideas so vociferously."
No, cancel culture is beyond criticism. Criticism is insufficient for the neo fascist cancel mob. They demand punishment. They want people fired from their jobs. They want kids kicked out of school. They want opponent's accounts on social media banned. They want a movie unavailable from stores.
Criticism is okay, but that's not what this about anymore.
I suggest that everyone was more content with the moderation levels of things available on the internet prior to social media, therefore we ought to outlaw social media. Eliminate the digital poison.
arranged to "forgive" $15 million in debt owed by about 9,000 people, at a cost to him (well, his show, anyway) of $60,000... which indicates how much of that medical debt the industry believes it can recover.
There are multiple stages to the debt collection industry. Often times debt begins with employees of the original company working in-house to contact customers and arrange payment. Then, it begins being outsourced to collection companies, many of which specialize in collection for different time periods, perhaps 45 days past due, or 180 days.
After some time has passed, debts get sold to debt purchasers. These purchasers may then perhaps do more collections operations, sometimes by yet more outsourced collection companies, or perhaps by lawyers who will attempt to initiate legal action to recover the funds.
For accounts that are still outstanding, they may be sold yet again, probably for pennies on the dollar. In your example, 0.4 cents. But what I'm getting at is that your example is for 3+ year old accounts, after all the other payers have been located, and those remaining are uncontactable/uncollectable. This example skipped over all of the first steps of the account lifecycles. If you don't do that, then you find that the accounts are MUCH more recoverable than 0.004%. You could never acquire a 30 day old account portfolio for that low price.
Re: Re: Restrictions on government, not the corporations
Notice that the ruling eliminates restrictions on government debt collection.
The rulings puts back into place a restriction on government debt collection. Congress exempted the government from some of its own rules back in 2015. Now the exemption is gone.
You're absolutely right about this. It was a wierd ruling in that the company that was attempting to challenge the law won the case, and yet didn't receive a favorable remedy. The SCOTUS instead delivered a solution that neither party was asking for, and solved a restriction on speech by imposing greater limits on speech.
The real court cases, I think, involve TCPA autodialer restrictions. The industry may get another crack at it in the near future due to circuit court splits regarding other cases, which could potentially nullify the outcome of this one.
most annoying robocallers aren't scammers, but legitimate companies and debt collectors, many of which call customers (that they know can't pay)
Most debt collectors work on a commission basis. If borrowers don't pay, then the collectors go out of business. Very few people take out credit with no intention of paying it back. But unfortunately, sometimes bad things happen to good people, such as job loss, family emergencies, or health problems that prevent them from paying as they wanted. Several of those people get back onto their feet, and become able to pay again. And those people do want to have good credit, and they do want to pay back what they owe. And so many of them do. There wouldn't be an industry if they didn't.
People boycotting her books/her publisher is not fascism (if anything, it’s that “free market” all the capitalists always talk about)
It is not a boycott. Disagreers are demanding that no additional books be published. They are demanding that existing books become unavailable, and that editors quit working for her on future ones. It is a modern day book burning. Mere boycott would be insufficient. Disagreers demand unavailability.
Very similar to the capitalist vs. crony capitalist argument. Crony capitalism isn't a free market at all.
Fascism is commonly held to be a right wing extreme position, or perhaps something born out of rascism. It is not.
Fascism is the concept that noone is allowed to disagree with the fascist. If someone does disagree with the fascist, then the fascist demands PUNISHMENT. This is the core concept of the idea that makes it terrifying. Fascism looks not to convince others; it seeks to destroy those with an opposing message.
If the disagreer is a kid in school, then the fascist wants the kid kicked out of school and publicly humiliated.
If the disagreer is an ordinary working adult, then the fascist wants the that person fired from their job, and ruined financially.
If the person is rich and cannot be fired, perhaps because the person is the owner of a business, then the fascist wants the business boycotted, and the person ruined financially and thrown in jail.
Fascism, if left unchecked, will devolve into mob rule, guaranteed. This type of behavior used to be rare in the United States, but it is becoming more and more common. It ought never happen at all. The Mccarthyism that we denounced back decades ago is now returning, only on a larger scale. The book 1984 is becoming a reality, with people becoming un-personed. Political disagreement ought NEVER result in punishment. To support cancel culture is to support the destruction of the basic foundation of our society: that we may disagree, but we will tolerate one-another, regardless. The signatories of the publication can see the path on which the outrage mob is headed.
It created a big fuss within (and outside) the company, and as with any situation in which a social media website says it's taking a hands-off approach, it eventually proves to be totally unworkable. It seems to have taken all of a month for Facebook to recognize this as well.
Why not leave the discussion to those doing the commenting? Why not leave it to the media to report on what is right or wrong with the situation? Answer: credibility. Most of the commenters and media personalities nowadays have gotten so many things wrong in the past that they have great difficulty influencing the discussion.
So now the busybodies inside the corporation insist on risking their credibility to influence the discussion. If the home team is losing, should the fans rush the field? No, the fans should stay off the field, as should the social media corporate insiders. Never trust a corporation to be the arbiter of truth.
It was reported by Forbes, and a number of other news outlets, that the parents of the toddlers from the video were planning on filing a lawsuit against Trump and Carpe Donktum for copyright infringement. But Trump, of course, can afford lawyers, and also Carpe Donktum had retained an attorney as well in anticiption.
I hope they do file, because it could end up establishing precedent that altering a video, especially for political purposes, is commentary protected by Fair Use. Political memes could gain permanent protection, and without legislation. And I think that we can all agree that we're better off without and congressional wheeling and dealing.
Who exactly do you think is handing out the bans on Parler again? Because I'm pretty sure it's not users.
The bans are for rules violations, not for disagreeing with the politics behind it.
In which case there never has been, nor ever will be such a platform, because it would be rendered useless in a matter of days.
That's been the prediction from many left wingers, but now we're going to actually try the experiment. Again, I'm not making any predictions. But we've now reached 1 week since the Ted Cruz floodgate, and it's still okay.
whether that be to make use of a site's system to flag/hide content that they feel violates the rules
Ordinarily, I don't trust biased corporations to make fair judgements. This is why there are calls for reform, and for alternative platforms. Just because the corporation can do it, doesn't mean it isn't an abuse of their corporate power.
On Twitter though, the corporation decides, not the people. On an actual free speech platform, only the people will decide. Also, the people can't hide your comment, or flag anyone's speech with special remarks. Everyone is equal in that regard.
I don’t see the Parler admins calling out Trump supporters for using VPNs. Do you?
I don't see Trump supporters coordinating account signups, creating a profile that impersonates, posting profanity or pornography, getting banned, and then trying to use a VPN to create a new account. If they do, then I'm sure there will be a callout.
shouldn’t you be on board with the idea that Parler can’t/shouldn’t delete political speech with which its admins disagree?
I am totally on board, and it looks like that's what Parler is going to attempt. I can't say whether it will succeed, but I certainly like the concept. If anyone does get their political speech deleted, I bet there will be a screenshot and a discussion of it. Although it's very early in its existence, I'm encouraged that it hasn't happened yet, even in the face of the trolling activity.
are using VPNs to make multiple sign-ups on Parler and have plans to do something about it.
No doubt that's what they were planning. And that's not a political stand.
I’d wager that any positive discussion of anti-fascism on Parler will not be met with reasoned discourse — by the users or the admins
Similar to how conservatives have been able to demonstrate their posts for which they were unfairly censored, I expect left wingers to react in a similar manner the moment it occurs. I'll be waiting if it does.
But literally in this post, we pointed out that Parler is saying people who are against fascism are not welcome. That's a political stand.
The message about Antifa doesn't say that they're not welcome. It simply says that their chat server was open and that he was able to see what they were plotting. That's not a political stand.
Good for you. It's important to recognize -- just as we said -- that any website that hosts 3rd party content will eventually have to come up with some plan to enforce some level of content moderation. You claimed you wouldn't do that.
Fortunately, it sounds like the plan is to do what I've been suggesting all along: remove profanity, pornography, and threats of violence, while staying neutral on the political arguments.
I'm detecting a lot of animosity towards such a platform. Wierd!
I know, it's very consistent. We discovered that the Parler bans were for a specific reason: Parler's published rules disallow impersonation accounts and the individuals involved all went to Parler and setup impersonation accounts.
These reddit forums were banned because reddit disagreed with the community. Otherwise they would have simply banned however many individuals broke the rules. Collective punishment is wrong.
On the post: What That Harper's Letter About Cancel Culture Could Have Said
Re: Re: Re: Re:
Suppose you support the position that it should be legal for women to get an abortion procedure done at a hospital (I'm just throwing this out here as an example, my apologies if you do not). No amount of demands, requests, or petitions to your employer would make it okay for your boss to fire you on the basis that you support legal abortion. No power structure would make it okay.
Again, the cancel culture goes beyond speech. It seeks to punish anyone who does not agree with the mob. You would not be accepting of the demands if the consequences were aimed at you. Demanding certain actions for mere disagreement is not acceptable if civil society is to remain intact.
On the post: What That Harper's Letter About Cancel Culture Could Have Said
Re: Re:
Just because you feel that a viewpoint is "abhorrent" does not entitle anyone to demand consequences. Otherwise, anything to which you are opposed will get labelled as abhorrent in order to shut down opposition. This is the mechanism by which neo fascism weaponizes emotion.
The general solution for speech with which you disagree is to leave it up, and speak out against it. Try to convince the person with whom you disagree, but if that's not possible, then convince others. Once upon a time, we as a country here in the United States had a concept of tolerance, which means that even if you disagree with someone, then you still leave them alone. You don't have to agree with them, but there is no punishment for disagreement.
You are very close to considering thought crime laws when you want "consequences".
On the post: What That Harper's Letter About Cancel Culture Could Have Said
No, cancel culture is beyond criticism. Criticism is insufficient for the neo fascist cancel mob. They demand punishment. They want people fired from their jobs. They want kids kicked out of school. They want opponent's accounts on social media banned. They want a movie unavailable from stores.
Criticism is okay, but that's not what this about anymore.
On the post: Americans Disagree On What Content Should Be Moderated, But They All Agree Social Media Companies Suck At Moderation
Happier Times
I suggest that everyone was more content with the moderation levels of things available on the internet prior to social media, therefore we ought to outlaw social media. Eliminate the digital poison.
On the post: Supreme Court Makes Debt Collection Robocalling Illegal (Again)
Re: Re:
There are multiple stages to the debt collection industry. Often times debt begins with employees of the original company working in-house to contact customers and arrange payment. Then, it begins being outsourced to collection companies, many of which specialize in collection for different time periods, perhaps 45 days past due, or 180 days.
After some time has passed, debts get sold to debt purchasers. These purchasers may then perhaps do more collections operations, sometimes by yet more outsourced collection companies, or perhaps by lawyers who will attempt to initiate legal action to recover the funds.
For accounts that are still outstanding, they may be sold yet again, probably for pennies on the dollar. In your example, 0.4 cents. But what I'm getting at is that your example is for 3+ year old accounts, after all the other payers have been located, and those remaining are uncontactable/uncollectable. This example skipped over all of the first steps of the account lifecycles. If you don't do that, then you find that the accounts are MUCH more recoverable than 0.004%. You could never acquire a 30 day old account portfolio for that low price.
On the post: Supreme Court Makes Debt Collection Robocalling Illegal (Again)
Re: Re: Restrictions on government, not the corporations
The rulings puts back into place a restriction on government debt collection. Congress exempted the government from some of its own rules back in 2015. Now the exemption is gone.
On the post: Supreme Court Makes Debt Collection Robocalling Illegal (Again)
Re: 'That... wasn't what we were aiming for.'
You're absolutely right about this. It was a wierd ruling in that the company that was attempting to challenge the law won the case, and yet didn't receive a favorable remedy. The SCOTUS instead delivered a solution that neither party was asking for, and solved a restriction on speech by imposing greater limits on speech.
The real court cases, I think, involve TCPA autodialer restrictions. The industry may get another crack at it in the near future due to circuit court splits regarding other cases, which could potentially nullify the outcome of this one.
On the post: Supreme Court Makes Debt Collection Robocalling Illegal (Again)
Most debt collectors work on a commission basis. If borrowers don't pay, then the collectors go out of business. Very few people take out credit with no intention of paying it back. But unfortunately, sometimes bad things happen to good people, such as job loss, family emergencies, or health problems that prevent them from paying as they wanted. Several of those people get back onto their feet, and become able to pay again. And those people do want to have good credit, and they do want to pay back what they owe. And so many of them do. There wouldn't be an industry if they didn't.
On the post: Harper's Gives Prestigious Platform To Famous Writers So They Can Whine About Being Silenced
Re:
It is not a boycott. Disagreers are demanding that no additional books be published. They are demanding that existing books become unavailable, and that editors quit working for her on future ones. It is a modern day book burning. Mere boycott would be insufficient. Disagreers demand unavailability.
Very similar to the capitalist vs. crony capitalist argument. Crony capitalism isn't a free market at all.
On the post: Harper's Gives Prestigious Platform To Famous Writers So They Can Whine About Being Silenced
Where It's Headed
Fascism is commonly held to be a right wing extreme position, or perhaps something born out of rascism. It is not.
Fascism is the concept that noone is allowed to disagree with the fascist. If someone does disagree with the fascist, then the fascist demands PUNISHMENT. This is the core concept of the idea that makes it terrifying. Fascism looks not to convince others; it seeks to destroy those with an opposing message.
If the disagreer is a kid in school, then the fascist wants the kid kicked out of school and publicly humiliated.
If the disagreer is an ordinary working adult, then the fascist wants the that person fired from their job, and ruined financially.
If the person is rich and cannot be fired, perhaps because the person is the owner of a business, then the fascist wants the business boycotted, and the person ruined financially and thrown in jail.
Fascism, if left unchecked, will devolve into mob rule, guaranteed. This type of behavior used to be rare in the United States, but it is becoming more and more common. It ought never happen at all. The Mccarthyism that we denounced back decades ago is now returning, only on a larger scale. The book 1984 is becoming a reality, with people becoming un-personed. Political disagreement ought NEVER result in punishment. To support cancel culture is to support the destruction of the basic foundation of our society: that we may disagree, but we will tolerate one-another, regardless. The signatories of the publication can see the path on which the outrage mob is headed.
On the post: Facebook Follows Twitter In Recognizing A 'More Speech' Approach Is Best For Newsworthy Liars
Very Workable
Why not leave the discussion to those doing the commenting? Why not leave it to the media to report on what is right or wrong with the situation? Answer: credibility. Most of the commenters and media personalities nowadays have gotten so many things wrong in the past that they have great difficulty influencing the discussion.
So now the busybodies inside the corporation insist on risking their credibility to influence the discussion. If the home team is losing, should the fans rush the field? No, the fans should stay off the field, as should the social media corporate insiders. Never trust a corporation to be the arbiter of truth.
On the post: Rather Than Attacking Section 230, Why Aren't Trump Supporters Angry About The DMCA That's Actually Causing Issues?
Non Legislative
It was reported by Forbes, and a number of other news outlets, that the parents of the toddlers from the video were planning on filing a lawsuit against Trump and Carpe Donktum for copyright infringement. But Trump, of course, can afford lawyers, and also Carpe Donktum had retained an attorney as well in anticiption.
I hope they do file, because it could end up establishing precedent that altering a video, especially for political purposes, is commentary protected by Fair Use. Political memes could gain permanent protection, and without legislation. And I think that we can all agree that we're better off without and congressional wheeling and dealing.
On the post: Parler Speedruns The Content Moderation Learning Curve; Goes From 'We Allow Everything' To 'We're The Good Censors' In Days
Re: Re: Re: Isn't That Why They Left Twitter
The bans are for rules violations, not for disagreeing with the politics behind it.
That's been the prediction from many left wingers, but now we're going to actually try the experiment. Again, I'm not making any predictions. But we've now reached 1 week since the Ted Cruz floodgate, and it's still okay.
Ordinarily, I don't trust biased corporations to make fair judgements. This is why there are calls for reform, and for alternative platforms. Just because the corporation can do it, doesn't mean it isn't an abuse of their corporate power.
On the post: Parler Speedruns The Content Moderation Learning Curve; Goes From 'We Allow Everything' To 'We're The Good Censors' In Days
Re: Isn't That Why They Left Twitter
On Twitter though, the corporation decides, not the people. On an actual free speech platform, only the people will decide. Also, the people can't hide your comment, or flag anyone's speech with special remarks. Everyone is equal in that regard.
On the post: Parler Speedruns The Content Moderation Learning Curve; Goes From 'We Allow Everything' To 'We're The Good Censors' In Days
Re:
I don't see Trump supporters coordinating account signups, creating a profile that impersonates, posting profanity or pornography, getting banned, and then trying to use a VPN to create a new account. If they do, then I'm sure there will be a callout.
I am totally on board, and it looks like that's what Parler is going to attempt. I can't say whether it will succeed, but I certainly like the concept. If anyone does get their political speech deleted, I bet there will be a screenshot and a discussion of it. Although it's very early in its existence, I'm encouraged that it hasn't happened yet, even in the face of the trolling activity.
On the post: Parler Speedruns The Content Moderation Learning Curve; Goes From 'We Allow Everything' To 'We're The Good Censors' In Days
Re:
No doubt that's what they were planning. And that's not a political stand.
Similar to how conservatives have been able to demonstrate their posts for which they were unfairly censored, I expect left wingers to react in a similar manner the moment it occurs. I'll be waiting if it does.
On the post: Parler Speedruns The Content Moderation Learning Curve; Goes From 'We Allow Everything' To 'We're The Good Censors' In Days
Re: Re:
The message about Antifa doesn't say that they're not welcome. It simply says that their chat server was open and that he was able to see what they were plotting. That's not a political stand.
On the post: Parler Speedruns The Content Moderation Learning Curve; Goes From 'We Allow Everything' To 'We're The Good Censors' In Days
Fortunately, it sounds like the plan is to do what I've been suggesting all along: remove profanity, pornography, and threats of violence, while staying neutral on the political arguments.
I'm detecting a lot of animosity towards such a platform. Wierd!
On the post: Twitch And Reddit Ramp Up Their Enforcement Against 'Hateful' Content
Re: Re: Not A Fan
I know, it's very consistent. We discovered that the Parler bans were for a specific reason: Parler's published rules disallow impersonation accounts and the individuals involved all went to Parler and setup impersonation accounts.
These reddit forums were banned because reddit disagreed with the community. Otherwise they would have simply banned however many individuals broke the rules. Collective punishment is wrong.
On the post: Twitch And Reddit Ramp Up Their Enforcement Against 'Hateful' Content
Not A Fan
Collective punishment is a very ugly, dangerous, and dark path to pursue. Often times, once it starts, it is very difficult to stop.
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