Censorship for thee but not for me.
You said something is "demonstrably false" that is actually happening and is documented in the subject of this whole thread.
Claim: Let's be honest, the only people screaming for censorship are firmly on the left
Contradiction: Trump, as I've shown in other comments, has also been calling for censorship for several news organizations.
The only way you believe this claim is not demonstrably false, is if you believe Trump is firmly left, which is ridiculous, but if he is, then I guess you got me.
This whole thing is a problem of the left (and I speak as a man of the left, thoroughly disgusted with the affair), and that is what I read from the "screaming" statement, and your counter as a denial of a very clear and shameful phenomenon.
The right wing tended to be more political ("Obama is a muslim communist who wants your guns") while left wing fake news tended to lean more towards new age, non-evidence-based "wellness" ("this juice cleanse will prevent cancer").
Trump, in what was quite frankly the smartest political move he's ever made, turned it on it's head and basically started using it to discredit actual stories that painted him in a bad light (inauguration numbers, etc).
Am I insane for seeing the dissonance here?
In this case, who is saying "we should stop the public from seeing that?" Not Biden. His campaign folks said "it's not true." I'm unaware of any calls from Biden to censor anything. Ever.
Please do correct me if I'm wrong.
I know it's been an insane 4 years, but, for Trump, this isn't true. He said, in his first year, he wanted to stated to take NBC off the air[1]. It's a message that he's been saying since before he took office. Understandably, taking a billion dollar corporation off the air is a lot more difficult than wiping an anonymous poster online, but to imply that "Fake News" is entirely just criticism is just complete ignorance of what the man has been saying for years.
>I'm not taking the side of Trump or anyone at all by saying that criticism is different than censorship, that's just a fact. Your argument is not in good faith if bringing that up to you is considered an implicit support for Trump, or anyone really.
If someone says the only people screaming for censorship are firmly on the left, how am I supposed to argue that point without focusing on Trump?
I'm not bringing this up because I want you to vote Biden or not vote for Trump, but to dispel this notion that "censorship" is exclusively some far left/right tool of oppression. My personal view is that these platform should do whatever they want, just like how HN mods run Hn the way they feel, and no private platform is "obliged" to give you a platform no matter how large they are. Regardless the _government_ should be limited in power to tell private companies in what they should and should not publish. To this day, there has been no _US government_ pressure to "censor" legal political posts - it's been entirely private actors who have taken censorship action. However to suggest that one side is 100% free speech and the other side are coming to take your "free speech" is misrepresenting what both sides.
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
Huh?
You state that criticism is different than censorship. I agree.
However, I don't get the connection here. Calling something "fake news" or calling it "disinformation" are both criticisms. In fact, those terms are pretty much synonymous.
Which is irrelevant to the issue.
Twitter and Facebook are limiting distribution of this particular piece. Which is certainly akin to censorship. However, It's Twitter and Facebook taking these actions, not "most people."
Based on the details I've read (and thanks to this post, I've read quite a few), this story doesn't really pass the smell test, and may well be "disinformation."
Will you now accuse me of advocating censorship?
What if I'd said it was "fake news" instead? Am I advocating censorship now?
Calling for censorship would be something like "Don't let anyone see that!" Or "These monsters need to be silenced!"
There's a difference.
Unfortunately, we're all wrapped so tightly because, you guessed it, Twitter and Facebook (and others) use exactly those sorts of tricks to rile us up, to boost engagement and make more advertising dollars.
Which leaves us fighting each other over which synonym is worse.
In truth, most people are kind, decent human beings who just want to have a decent life. Sure, we disagree about a few of the details concerning how to have a decent life, but we agree about many more details.
The interactions of a bunch of really small groups who want to influence us for their benefit (whether that be for political power, profit or both) are laughing all the way to the bank as we tear each other apart.
Let's not let them do that any more, as we're only hurting ourselves.
Also as a comedic medium, it's an art form nobody else is doing. He isnt even indecent compared to just full of themselves types. He's just rants on hypothetical nonsense.
He's literally the Jim Cramer of conservative voices. Everybody who listens to him listens with the foresight that there can both be positive and negative repercussions depending on how much of what they say you'll believe.
EDIT: https://www.npr.org/2020/05/27/863011399/trump-threatens-to-...
This year the president has sued to stop publication of two books because they embarrassed him, one from John Bolton and another from Mary Trump.
This year police in cities across the country have opened fire on journalists.
These are legal and physical attacks, on journalists and publishers, coming from government officials. Social media moderation policies are interesting and important. But if you see censorship and attacks on free speech only coming from one side, you should probably diversify your media diet.
People have just gotten so used to conservative calls for censorship that they escape all notice.
Center-left/left parties use reality to galvanize their base voters into action. Their voters are people who aren't pleased with what's happening in their countries and want to change it for the better. There's no need for center-left parties to lie that their electoral opponents eat babies when their electoral opponents actually put children in cages.
In contrast, right wing parties overcome the inherent unpopularity of their revealed policy platforms (running on platforms of cutting taxes on the very rich while making life harder for the average person is not popular) by using disinformation to make a stated platform based on fabricated wedge issues. Hence, the imaginary convoys of South American migrants that were about to storm the US-Mexico border in 2018.
As such, restricting disinformation will have a partisan impact. Within the US, there is no Democratic equivalent to Qanon, so anti-disinformation measures that impact the likes of Qanon will have no impact on the Democratic party whatsoever. This, however, isn't a bad thing.
Functioning societies can have zero tolerance for 'alternative facts.' Disagree over goals and interpretations, but facts must be accepted by all. Democracy requires an informed electorate and there can be no functioning democracy when one side is free to invent its own version of reality.
Debating facts is pointless. People debate opinions, interpretations, implications. You cannot declare an implication from a fact as itself a fact. Nor can you claim people disagreeing with an implication are lying about facts.
As an aside - right wing platforms as you put it generally include a variety of popular proposals with the lower and middle class. These include immigration protectionism, lowering consumption taxes like gas taxes, taking a conservative stance on societally expensive government policies, and lowering unemployment rate through encouraging business growth. You may not agree with these policies, but to claim they are disinformation and thus not worthy of consideration is blatant biased censorship.
Center-left/left parties use reality to galvanize their base voters into action. Their voters are people who aren't pleased with what's happening in their countries and want to change it for the better. There's no need for center-left parties to lie that their electoral opponents eat babies when their electoral opponents actually put children in cages.
In contrast, right wing parties overcome the inherent unpopularity of their revealed policy platforms (running on platforms of cutting taxes on the very rich while making life harder for the average person is not popular) by using disinformation to make a stated platform based on fabricated wedge issues. Hence, the imaginary convoys of South American migrants that were about to storm the US-Mexico border in 2018.
As such, restricting disinformation will have a partisan impact. Within the US, there is no Democratic equivalent to Qanon, so anti-disinformation measures that impact the likes of Qanon will have no impact on the Democratic party whatsoever.
Functioning societies must have zero tolerance for 'alternative facts.' Disagree over goals and interpretations, but facts must be accepted by all. Democracy requires an informed electorate and there can be no functioning democracy when one side is free to invent its own version of reality.
You might be able to spot it when there is a constant parade of anonymous sources that never seem to provide any actual proof for bombshell claims meant to hurt Trump etc.
Or maybe various newspapers and cable outlets will run hundreds of stories and thousands upon thousands of hours of ill-sourced coverage into the opposite allegations against Trump, that he would be colluding with some foreign actor, say, i don't know, Russia?
Maybe prominent Democrat house members might make claims again and again to the media that they had seen first hand evidence of collusion with Russia. Maybe the jig would be up when, under oath they would be asked the same questions and they were suddenly not so sure, nor could they produce any evidence.
It would be tricky, for sure.
Source: Video on c-span https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4865556/user-clip-trump-this-...
This and the Charlottesville "fine people hoax" that Biden himself keeps repeating is fake news that just won't die, nor does Twitter seem too keen on helping kill it off either.
PRES. TRUMP: THEY HAVE SPENT THE LAST THREE YEARS, AND I CAN EVEN GO FURTHER THAN THAT THREE YEARS SINCE THE ELECTION BUT WE GO BEFORE THE ELECTION, WORKING TO ERASE YOUR BALLOTS AND OVERTHROW OUR DEMOCRACY. BUT WITH YOUR HELP WE HAVE EXPOSE THE FAR-LEFT'S CORRUPTION AND DEFEATED THEIR SINISTER SCHEMES. LET'S SEE WHAT HAPPENS IN THE COMING MONTHS. LET'S WATCH. LET'S JSUT -- JUST WATCH. VERY DISHONEST PEOPLE. NOW THE DEMOCRATS ARE POLITICIZING THE CORONAVIRUS. CORONAVIRUS. THEY ARE POLITICIZING IT. WE DID ONE OF THE GREAT JOBS -- HOW'S PRESIDENT TRUMP DOING? THEY GO, NOT GOOD. THEY DO NOT HAVE ANY CLUE. THEY CANNOT EVEN COUNT THE VOTES IN IOWA. NO, THEY CAN'T. THEY CAN'T COUNT THEIR VOTES. ONE OF MY PEOPLE CAME UP TO ME AND SAID, MR. PRESIDENT, THEY TRIED TO BEAT YOU ON RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIAN. THAT DID NOT WORK OUT TOO WELL. THEY COULD NOT DO IT. THEY TRIED THE IMPEACHMENT HOAX. THAT WAS ON A PERFECT CONVERSATION. THEY TRIED ANYTHING. THEY TRIED IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN. THEY LOST. IT IS ALL TURNING. THINK OF IT. AND THIS IS THEIR NEW HOAX. WE DID SOMETHING THAT HAS BEEN PRETTY AMAZING. WE HAVE 15 PEOPLE IN THIS MASSIVE COUNTRY AND BECAUSE OF THE FACT THAT WE WENT EARLY, WE COULD'VE HAD A LOT MORE THAN THAT. WE'RE DOING GREAT. OUR COUNTRY IS DOING SO GREAT. WE ARE SO UNIFIED. WE ARE SO UNIFIED. THE REPUBLICAN PARTY HAS NEVER EVER BEEN UNIFIED LIKE IT IS NOW. THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A MOVEMENT IN THE HISTORY OF OUR COUNTRY LIKE WE HAVE NOW. NEVER BEEN
I'm struck by how this is almost a perfect example of the rorschach test that is Trump.
You could easily read this as saying that [COVID] is a hoax.
You could just as easily read this as saying that [the democrats saying he is doing a bad job with COVID] is a hoax.