Breitbart news site blocked by ad exchange
bbc.com
bbc.com
It all goes back to people being people. For us humans it's too easy to break the rules because we think we know what's best, etc. As the saying goes, history too easily repeats itself. Castro's passing is perhaps ironic in the timing.
I'm beginning to understand why early enlightenment thinkers formed secret societies to discuss their ideas. Because if the normies found out what they actually believed, then they'd probably be outcast from their societies, or worse. Maybe there needs to be a secret handshake or something.
Personally, I don't hold anyone's personal beliefs (political or not) against them...BUT how they arrived at those beliefs and maintain them in the face of challenges to them does provide evidence for how they think, which has some relevance in predicting how they will think in other situations.
Take the very contentious issue of abortion. Whether you are for or against legal abortion, it doesn't matter to me because there are thoughtful, well-reasoned arguments that can be made for both sides. Absent any other evidence, I would assume your position on abortion is based on such arguments.
The more extreme political beliefs, right or left, that are inconsistent with the expert opinion of the vast majority of industry and academic experts in economics, science, history, ethics, foreign affairs, and military tactics would raise a big warning flag for me, because I have not been able to find anyone able to explain a way to hold those beliefs that does not require accepting vast conspiracy theories that are way too big to be even remotely feasible.
Beliefs that involve conspiracy theories are not necessarily signs of poor reasoning ability. Many things that were conspiracy theories have turned out to be true--but they were always conspiracies that were limited in scope.
The conspiracy theories that raise a red flag about the reasoning ability of those who believe them are the ones that require the conspiracy to involve so many people over such a big area that it would be impossible to keep it secret, or that require the conspirators to have such vast control over so many aspects of government and business that they could easily make anyone who tried to expose them disappear.
Take bike paths for example. There are people who oppose the construction of bike paths. I've seen at least two reasons for objecting to bike paths.
One objection I've seen raised was from people who thought that the street markings for the bike paths were ugly. They did not want ugly streets in their neighborhoods.
If someone objects to bike paths and this is their reason, all I can infer from that is that their notion of what is ugly doesn't match mine. I find a street with a bike line no more or no less ugly than one without a bike lane.
Another objection I've seen is that the purpose of bike paths is to make cities easier for people to get around in, in order to encourage more migration from rural areas to the cities, so that when the UN sends troops to take our guns away and enslave us under "Agenda 21", we'll be nicely packed in cities. A tightly packed population is easier to surround and disarm than a spread out rural population.
If someone objects to bike paths, and delaying our enslavement by the UN is their reason, I'm going to infer that they are an idiot.
Thus most ad networks have general policies against hate speech and the like.
Same reason you can't monetize videos about war on youtube. It's not a conspiracy by google to stop people from making videos about war (which you are still free to do), advertisers just don't want their valuable brands becoming mentally associated with horrifying footage of human slaughter.
At some point you have to choose whose free speech you value more. Reddit has made some small attempts to stop the harassment, which in turn has made Reddit somewhat more diverse. Because misogyny has become a little less prevalent, I'm seeing more women on the site.
Free speech, as far as internet forums go, is not a black and white issue.
The intent was to say that there is more to this than "platforms for diverse opinions ... censoring those they disagree with".
Regardless of their agreement, if they just censor those that are false they will appear to have a liberal bias. This is reportedly what scared Facebook away from dealing with fake, mostly right-wing, propaganda on their platform.
Hacker News itself is heavily moderated: spaces for expression are a commons, and people who abuse those spaces make them less useful for others, until they have infected the entire space making it only amenable to their sort of expression.
There's no such abstract ideal of free speech that transcends its legal definition. Speech is not neutral. If speech were neutral, it would not be so important. Since speech has effects, like harassing speech forcing people off platforms for expression, everyone has a shared interest in the expressive platforms they use. If an ideal of free speech precluded the moderation of conflicts arising from speech, what does it actually mean? That the most aggressive, vicious speakers get to monopolize the spaces they force others out of?
Re: Tolerance
OK, so let's spell it out explicitly. The term "alt-right" was created by Richard Spencer, who is often described as a white supremacist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_B._Spencer
> Spencer advocates for a white homeland for a "dispossessed white race" and calls for "peaceful ethnic cleansing" to halt the "deconstruction" of European culture.[16][22][23]
You are the one who brought up Trump voters at the first mention of alt-right white nationalists, which is ironic since you insist that the former has nothing to do with the latter.
2. Likewise, I disagree, even vehemently with a lot of more mainstream opinions here.
3. Neither me nor those I disagree with in good faith are idiots.
4. If one hangs out with white supremacists and spouts their ideology """ironically""" or whatever, I think one is an idiot. Yea, that's true.
Well surely that's a great idea that will discourage the accusations of bias.
To wit: the free speech clause of the first amendment is designed to forbid the government from passing laws that abridge free speech. It's human nature and literally unenforcable for that to mean that people must be tolerable of all forms of speech, and that companies must provide equal footing to all forms of speech. Even if this ad network was "biased", it's a function of the downpressure on crazy speech that people be allowed to not associate themselves with speech that's unrepresentative of their views
Show me you can tell the difference between real and fake ads first. Then I'll trust you to tell me the difference between real and fake news.
I would be more interested in these networks dropping clickbait and known fake news websites (maybe they do, I just haven't seen the equivalent news story on that).
If you mean AppNexus specifically took an investment from News Corp, then sure.
If you think Breitbart is a news organisation, then you have either never read any of their articles or are kidding yourself. It is a propaganda organisation. It doesn't report news, it serves opinions. Here is an extract from a recent article[0] about Justin Trudeau mourning the death of Fidel Castro.
"Castro’s Cuban regime was notorious for imprisoning dissenters, including homosexuals, journalists, and political opponents, and nearly brought nuclear war to the United States, one of Canada’s closest allies."
The problem with that statement is that it is written like either of those things were against the US ideology. US has still not completely accepted homosexuality and it brought nuclear war upon itself by taking its weapons to Russia's neighbourhood.
Here's another absolute rubbish article[1] about why there should be a cap on the number of women who are allowed to take up STEM majors.
Breitbart's whole history is like this. In 2009, Andrew Breitbart heavily pushed the ACORN Video Scandal[2] which later turned out to be a series of heavily edited and misleading videos which lead to the closure of ACORN, an NGO which helped people from low to middle income groups.
Another one was the "Friends of Hamas" story that turned out to be a case of complete and utter bullshit but Breitbart couldn't own up to it.[3]
Breitbart has never been a media organisation and I for one am extremely happy to see it being boycotted like this. The headlines I have outlined are not even the more horrific ones they post. Go have a look yourself if you want.
They purposefully spread misinformation and decline to accept their fault when proven wrong while always being on their toes to point out the slip ups in the more liberal media coverage of events. In my part of the world, we call it hypocrisy.
[0] http://www.breitbart.com/london/2016/11/26/canadian-pm-trude...
[1] http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/06/15/heres-why...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACORN_2009_undercover_videos_c...
[3] http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/friends-of-hamas-and...
And to quote Adorno:
It is by no means clear precisely how the fetishization of technology
establishes itself within the individual psychology of particular people,
or where the threshold lies between a rational relationship to technology
and the overvaluation that finally leads to the point where one who cleverly
devises a train system that brings the victims to Auschwitz as quickly and
smoothly as possible forgets about what happens to them there.
humans only chance against hopelessness & despair
fixing global warming
improving democracy
Is technology ideologically neutral? If so, it can equally be employed for negative ends (in the sense of a utility monster, say). If not, technophiles have no defense for their proclivities, and then ideas can be argued to be subject to regulatory control, among other things. And if it is a matter of how it's used, then it's just as easy not to use it all and obtain the same result simpler.
transportation, space travel
Because the universe will not be complete without a McDonalds in Jovian orbit. I doubt this is about saving the human race so much as about saving a certain culture and its associated ideologies.
in america unfortunately we must overstate our voice due to the non-representation of congress, the electoral college and hence the supreme court
The problem with "expert rule" is that it is inherently anti-democratic. Why should I get "your" input if "I'm" the expert? Stalinism, is the perfect example here: Stalin is the expert, he has the answers, anything that conflicts with that must be removed. And it circles round to the very problems that are behind those situations that result in scenarios such as this article describes:
the danger is that its gradual disappearance will create the need for
some new (racist or expert-rule) form of hierarchy, directly founded in
individual qualities, and thus canceling even the “formal” bourgeois equality
and freedom. In short, insofar as the determining factor of social power be
in/exclusion from the privilege set (of access to knowledge, control, etc.),
we can expect an increase in various forms of exclusion, up to downright racism.The accusations of racism, etc, are just a cover for what they've wanted to do for a while. It doesn't matter that there's no evidence of such racism.
I can't help but think that this just points to the fact that they must not have much confidence in their ideas that they feel they must muzzle others.
Edit: yep - bots are definitely out in force
Arguably it's a sign of a free society, free association and all that. What would a society where people and firms weren't free to boycott and disassociate from firms they didn't like be like?
A totalitarian world view is one in which someone no longer feels obliged to just offer their services or goods in free exchange, but to also insist that those they do business with also subscribe to their way of thinking.
These things are rarely related.
This is false shaming and participating in a false narrative.
This is exactly how totalitarianism takes hold.
A wedding cake baker chosing not to make a cake for a gay couple gets crucified and held legally liable -- yet the same exact behavior when an ad network chooses to do business with a company holding ideas with which they disagree -- that's allowed?
I personally think businesses should be allowed to discriminate for any reason -- the marketplace can answer that discrimination by not supporting those businesses.
I'll admit, your solution sounds nice, but how do you account for regions where the market supports discriminatory businesses and ostracizes marginal groups?
Or, read another way: I'm off to squeltch your speech, ABUGABOOGABOOGABOOG IM THE TOTALITARIAN MONSTER
It's so illogical to do that I bet you didn't know these facts. You are totally uninformed on the topic, but still feel confident enough to comment on it. All you do is echoing a (false) media narration. So OP was right. You are kind of a bot. A human one.
Does it surprise you that most companies won't advertise on Stormfront or 4chan /pol/?
There is a different dynamic here. In this comparison, Breitbart is the bakery. The ad exchange is the one with the messages that they want Breitbart to display on their cake, and they (used to) pay Breitbart to do so. It isn't illegal for a same-sex couple to refuse to buy a cake from a random bakery.
Even so, your comment implies that people who think the ad exchange should be allowed to refuse to sell Breitbart's advertising space have to explain why they think bakeries shouldn't be allowed to refuse to make same-sex marriage cakes, but there's no reason why people have to either agree or disagree with both.
And they are not muzzling, they are ceasing to support. Since money is speech in the US, why would you infringe on their free speech rights?
To pick apart just one of their so called examples.
We celebrate free speech in our country.
Some people got together to do just that (the Draw Mohamed Cartoon contest), and were attacked by 2 armed Muslims who disagreed with the free speech.
Somehow, this makes Breitbart racist?
Give me a break.
It's what makes engaging with your type so fruitless. Still, suspect you'll reap the whirlwind of all this in "your country" shortly. Shame we all have to go with you for the ride.