Facebook is not a platform to have a voice. It’s a platform that harvests thoughts and publicizes the ones FB most agrees with while censoring those it does not.
This is a slippery slope and, quite frankly, it’s the people that lose.
This is a slippery slope and, quite frankly, it’s the people that lose.
Why not use more "every day" examples?
* I can't say I earned $0 last year --> tax fraud
* I can't say "fuck you" to a judge --> contempt of court
* I can't say my software will make you pretty --> advertising fraud
* I can't say you robbed me yesterday --> libel
I know this is a very European attitude, and always gets Americans worked up, but to me as a Dutch / French person, it seems obvious that free speech is not absolute. Just like the right to bear arms does not mean that I can own any type of military weapon.
> it seems obvious that free speech is not absolute
We agree on this, but disagree on where to draw the line. Limiting free speech is an endorsement of the government limiting what I am legally permitted to see, read, and hear. I am unwilling to let the government make that determination on my behalf.
> Just like the right to bear arms does not mean that I can own any type of military weapon.
Private citizens (presumably including the founding fathers) actually used to own canons before the creation of a permanent, federal army!
As an American, I know that even in the US, free speech is not absolute, nor has it ever been.
And all the things you mention are, in context, crimes here in the US as well.
One of the big differences in the US (not sure about France/The Netherlands), but in the UK it's much easier to prove libel/defamation than it is here.
I actually could say you robbed me yesterday, but if I didn't file a police report alleging that, it would be difficult for you to successfully sue me over it. Because you would have to prove that I knowingly did so and not only intended to cause injury, I actually did cause injury.
However, if I filed a false police report, I could be prosecuted for that -- and if you suffered some injury because I did (arrest/imprisonment, loss of job, etc.), you could likely win a libel/defamation lawsuit.
If there are people who tell you otherwise, they're either ignorant/uninformed or just lying.
https://www.popehat.com/2012/09/19/three-generations-of-a-ha...
How is this different from saying "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" is not a quote you should use if you are opposed to the government granting special benefits and privileges to blacks in preference to whites, because that was an idea that Martin Luther King supported?
Can an idea have any value independently of the cause someone once used it to support?
I'm thinking, but all I can see is an apparently sincere effort to make the argument that Hitler Ate Sugar ( https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HitlerAteSugar ).
So tell me: what does that mean?
Edit: Furthermore, would suspensions and bans ALSO apply to anarchists and revolutionaries? We know the answer is 'no'. It's clear to me Facebook wanted to drop Trump for a long time and did not do so for fear of repercussions. Now that there will be a new administration it is safe for them to do it.
And so if I walk into a bank and demand money, but I don't get any, it's not a bank robbery?
That's an interesting legal angle.
What happened was a failure of adequate planning and execution by the police to control an unruly crowd.
I think the partisanship is what's really driving people like this. The Trump/Russia stuff was investigated, why not investigate election fraud too?
- The Trump/Russia situation resulted in the senate agreeing that Russia did collude with members of the Trump campaign in support of Trump. [1]
- Investigations into the voter fraud and election tampering allegations in favor of Biden have resulted in 61 failed lawsuits in state courts on the basis of "no evidence." [2]
- The supreme court has rejected every lawsuit brought to it on the basis of "no evidence." [3]
While the Russia investigation lead to the arrest of nearly every 2016 Trump campaign manager, the allegations of voter fraud across 10 states has led to nothing that could overturn the election.
[1] https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
[2] https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/elections/20...
[3] https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/121120zr_p86...
That’s not actually true. While some may have been dismissed based on insufficiency of presented or proffered evidence to support the legal claim, most were either voluntarily dismissed or dismissed for legal threshold issues (failure to state a claim, lack of standing, unreasonable delay in filing [laches]) which come before considering evidence.
What do you think they've been doing in the courts for the past month?
Trumps own Justice department wouldn't even pursue it.
If you look at the spikes in vote counts on some of these graphs, its more than enough to warrant a hearing .
Now the people have lost faith in the courts.
The complete lack of evidence and lack of anything but witness testimony was the first stage - as soon as any witness was interviewed it became immediately clear that there was in fact, no evidence at all.
Repeating this "things were dismissed out of hand" meme is true only in the sense that if a man came into court and said he was king of america he would also be given very little space to waste the courts time.
Since this is probably going to get flagged, like my previous post. This is what was entered into the record, during the objections yesterday in the joint session of congress. I stayed up watching it. So I'm not making this up.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pennsylvania-205000-votes/
“a few counties have not completed uploading their vote histories,”
And the other explanation is a hypothetical explanation of over or under votes. No proof that this was actually the case here.
How is the statement from the Pennsylvania Department of State admitting that Rep. Ryan's claim is correct?
The problem is that there's an implicit assumption in Rep. Ryan's claim that the SURE numbers are complete and represent the actual number of voters who actually voted. If a few counties have not completed uploading their vote histories, then that implicit assumption is invalidated, thereby invalidating the rest of the claim.
> And the other explanation is a hypothetical explanation of over or under votes. No proof that this was actually the case here.
The burden of proof is on Rep. Ryan to show that the over- and under-voting in 2020 is nefarious/fraudulent/malicious. Merely saying that over- and under-voting exists is not sufficient to show something is wrong; one also needs to show that such a thing does not happen in "clean" elections. Pennsylvania is merely pointing out the gap in the analysis here.
Edit: Added missing word
Why wouldn't you expect the count of votes entered into a system to be off before everything is entered into the system? Of course it's off.
Hell, why not just launch this claim on Nov 10 and say that the count is off by millions of votes? It's a braindead argument.
Although I have a feeling you'd rather wave your hand and say "Aah, Snopes, what do they know, and it's not concrete enough!".
The problem with the "1000's of people with sworn affidavits of violations" is, it seems their understanding what a violation is, are based on misinterpreting (deliberately or not) and wishful thinking. I've seen the videos of people commenting "Look at this security camera footage, they're taking boxes, and those boxes have fake ballots!", without even showing how he came to those conclusions. I could just as easily show a footage of a man walking into a building and claim it's a building where voting machines are stored and he's a hacker with a USB stick that will hack all the machines. I hope all the affidavits were looked at carefully before being dismissed, but it seems like the courts would have work until the sun burns out if it wants to look at every theory.
Just not true. In fact, there were nearly 7 million votes cast. The total number of registered voters in 2020 was just over 9 million[0].
[0] https://apnews.com/article/fact-checking-afs:Content:9887147...
Not sure why the number of affidavits is so important, and how many of these affidavits were from that form people were filling out a form on a website?
If you look at the spikes in vote counts on some of these graphs, its more than enough to warrant a hearing.
Assuming that "spikes" in a graph are proof of anything wrong at all, if the answer is "That's where a bunch of votes were added to the count." then what is the followup from there that necessitates a hearing of any kind?
If would be more like dismissing UFO evidence from 1000 sworn affidavits from people that work at the Pentagon.
I'd imagine more than 1000 of them believe the earth is flat and/or was created 10,000 years ago.
And don't take my word for it either. Look at the court documents yourself, then make up your own mind.
https://electioncases.osu.edu/2021/01/summary-of-post-electi...
I'm sure that many folks on both sides believed what they were told. However, one group was told something approximating the truth and the other were told bald-faced lies.
[0] https://electioncases.osu.edu/2021/01/summary-of-post-electi...
Trump directed a mob yesterday to storm our Capitol and it sounds like you're being sarcastic about him threatening our democracy. What does he need to do? Burn it down and hang the Vice President for not exceeding his ceremonial powers like his mob chanted?
The claims of the election should be dismissed by rational people, which is exactly what happened in legislatures and courts across the country led by people of every political position except those that want to tear down our democracy for a demagogue and lie to their constituents about reality.
If that's the position you support, then you have quite a lot of work ahead of you.
The worst Trump did here was say that people should march on Capitol Hill and "cheer on" congresspeople.
I guess people are assuming this was coded language to incite violence, but I'm not buying it
In case anyone was confused about the above (I was), I web searched 'Dirlewanger' and came up with this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oskar_Dirlewanger
Is this considered Doxxing?
My apologies. It was an (apparently ham-fisted) attempt at humor.
Also, I wasn't referring to your comment when I said that, I was referring to mine.
My apologies for any confusion on that point.
Edit: Clarified my intentions WRT my previous comment.
Is it someone's right to use a platform to push an agenda that leads to impacting other people's rights?
Don't get me wrong, in my opinion Trump is a traitor to the USA and democratic societies as a whole, and did incite a portion of his followers to overthrow the elected government and parliament in an attempt to nullify the democratic election results and install himself as an tyrannic leader (and only backed down and told people to "go home" when he saw this would not succeed in an attempt to cover his ass"), and he should be impeached and convicted and removed from office and receive a jail sentence.
But I shouldn't have the power to be judge, jury and executioner all by myself and put people in jail or even regulate their freedom of speech, and neither should facebook or Zuckerberg or twitter, or Trump for that matter. There is a rule of law and democratically legitimized institutions to enforce it, protected by a system of checks and balances, and it's the place of these institutions to make such decisions in accordance with the law.
This time a lot of people will think the ban hit the right person in Trump. But next time it might be somebody less clearly (to us) deserving of such a ban (like a "traitor" Snowden or a "commie" Sanders). What, for example, if social media had been around in the Jim Crow era and the "rulers" of social media had decided that the civil rights movement was to be silenced? Or that "traditional marriage" is an institution that needs protection from "gay marriage"?
I don't like so few entities making such calls.
At the same time I recognize the issue of how to handle people's freedoms on a platform... when those freedoms advocate for violence or actions that restrict other people's real world freedoms
Seriously?
I don't know what you mean by that.
Change this to
> publicizes the ones expected to make FB the most money
and I agree with you. Either way, they should not be an arbiter of public discourse.
They can be, but they should lose their platform status and be treated as a publisher, ie. take full responsibility for content on their pages. You can't have both.
I'm sorry. Would you expand on that? I don't understand what you're advocating. Perhaps this[0] might help you to formulate your response?
[0] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
You should be able to choose a status, either "platform" or "published", and in the case of the first, you'd have to leave everything not directly illegal (with rules in place, how to contest the legality in court if the post was removed and the author think it's legal speech - sort of like with DMCA claims), or you're a publisher, where you can decide what content you want and which you don't want, and then take responsibility for the content you've let stay on your site.
Currently we have social networks like facebook deciding that one type of -ism is worse than the other tipe of -ism, and letting one stay while removing the other [0]. If you expand this to politics, you can get greater consequences than just a few people being recist (but since it's against whites and men, it's "ok" in the eyes of facebook).
So yes, sites like facebook and twitter (which generally have a monopoly) should be regulated more, and having to choose their status.
[0] https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2020/12/03/facebook-ranks...
It's a section of a law. Specifically, Section 230[0] of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.
>You should be able to choose a status, either "platform" or "published", and in the case of the first, you'd have to leave everything not directly illegal (with rules in place, how to contest the legality in court if the post was removed and the author think it's legal speech - sort of like with DMCA claims), or you're a publisher, where you can decide what content you want and which you don't want, and then take responsibility for the content you've let stay on your site.
That's an interesting idea. But it's somewhat problematic for several reasons:
47 U.S. Code § 230 (the section of the law in question) applies to all persons/entities in the United States, and to all third-party communications hosted within the United States. How, exactly, would you implement such a rule?
If I decide to set up a github repo, who and how do I inform that I intend to be a "platform" or a "publisher"?
If I'm a member of a mailing list, quote someone else's words and send it to that mailing list, how do I "register" as a platform or a publisher? This isn't an idle question either. This was an actual case[1] that hinged on one particular email to a particular mailing list.
I host several services via my home Internet connection. If I choose (which I have done in the past) to host a Diaspora[2] pod and invite a few friends and family to join, and maybe even federate with other Diaspora pods, how and to whom do I register as a "publisher" or "platform"?
If I "register" as a platform and I have an argument with my sister in-law, and she says some really vulgar/unkind things on my pod. If I remove those comments, am I now in breach of my "registration" as a platform?
>So yes, sites like facebook and twitter (which generally have a monopoly) should be regulated more, and having to choose their status.
I don't dispute your claim that Facebook/Twitter exert a great deal of influence.
However, Section 230 is not what you seem to think it is. It isn't about censorship, nor is it about freedom of speech.
It is a very specific section of a law that says (paraphrasing):
"I can't sue you for what someone else says." Full stop.
That's it. It's not limited to social networking sites. It's not limited to large corporations. It's not limited to websites (both commercial and non-commercial). It applies everywhere there is third-party content. On a Github repo (think bug reports/feature requests), email mailing lists, IRC channels and any other place where more than one person can share bits.
I'm going to say it again to make sure that it's clear why I say that. Section 230 (c)(1)(this is a direct quote now) says:
"No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."
I will now translate that into non-legalese:
"You cannot be sued because of something I (or anyone else) say."
That doesn't mean that you can't be sued for stuff that you say.
Let's say that we take your suggestion and remove Section 230 protections from "publishers" (whatever that is defined to mean). That won't stop people from posting obnoxious/unpleasant/hateful things.
Rather, it will mostly just stop people from maintaining/setting up other sites (like HN) where people can share their thoughts. If HN can be sued for stuff that you or I say (upvote/downvote/flag moderation like we have here would almost certainly force HN to be a "publisher" under your definition), I suspect they would shut down this site almost immediately.
If that were the case, the only folks that could afford to take on that kind of liability would be deep-pocketed companies like, you guessed it, Facebook and Twitter.
So, doing what you suggest would actually make things worse and not better.
There may well be some form of regulation that is required to rein in the influence of large social networking platforms, and you won't get any argument about that from me. In fact, I find such sites to be so offensive that I refuse to use them.
But Section 230 isn't the proper place to implement regulation to reduce their influence/market power.
I hope that this helps you to understand why modifying/repealing Section 230 won't solve the very real issues you're talking about.
And so, I must regretfully inform you that you are wrong about Section 230[3].
[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrett_v._Rosenthal
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network)
[3] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
Edit: Fixed links and link references. Fixed grammatical/usage error.
FB et al. do not care, as long as they make money and gain important friends.
Another example, Spike Lee tried to dox Zimmerman on Twitter, but ended up posting the address of some entirely unrelated couple who received death threats. Again, nothing happened.
If I come to your house and rant about my favorite subject you shouldn't be able to silence me?
Should Trump (or anyone else) have the right to sully FB in defiance of its management wishes?
FB doesn't have a special responsibility, it's a for-profit business that has an obligation to it's shareholders.not society.
See, free speech works!
The gaping flaw in the "social norms" argument is that slavery, women as second class citizens, religious intolerance, etc. used to be a social norms as well, so in those eras one has to suspect the parent poster would be arguing in favor of those as well. It is basically a conservative viewpoint saying that what society believes to be moral at the present time will always be moral, so hearing it parroted by people claiming to be aligned with the left is just mind-bending.
For the record I am a (old-school) liberal.
Though the timing aligning with a new set of committee heads in the Senate is more than suspect. Zuck knows how easy it is for the government to break them up and he's trying to make amends for his original sin of not stopping Trump in 2016.
The argument that "this speech is too dangerous" can be made by anyone about just about anything. This isn't fire in a theater. It's political speech and disagreement. If you accept the outcome here, you or your children will one day regret it when their voices are the ones that are muffled.
Conversely, Mr Trump is now a free agent looking for a nest elsewhere. There is probably lots of closed door planning happening: "What do we do if he decides to use our platform for 2024?"
I would hope that if a left-leaning politician did the same that the same precedent would be applied.
Do you have those words? I never saw them because they were censored apparently.
Edit: lol HN, actually asking, chill out. Apparently asking for sources is just unacceptable. Here it is in text because I think they truth is important that n it’s entirety:
""I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time. There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they could take it away from all of us — from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election. But we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated — that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel, but go home and go home in peace."""
Does that mean in the future demonstrations and protests that could potentially end up in violence like that be suppressed by Facebook and Twitter? Or can we expect partisanship and see them bless other protests that turn to violence?
Note: I do not condone occupying public buildings like this. That’s unacceptable. But I think that should be applied evenly to all protests and wherever property is destroyed.
Did Twitter et al get all twisted in a bunch about it?
Invading the capitol building to stop the electoral count and intimidate congress into overturning the election results is not symbolic.
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/408169-police-arrest-128...
You're comparing that with a mob of people who violently clashed with the police outside the Capitol, then stormed inside, broke windows, climbed the walls, sat inside offices with their feet up on desks, walked away with "souvenirs", and planted IEDs. The result of that? 13 arrests.
Can you please explain why your comparison is not disingenuous?
"Demonstrators wore shirts that said "Believe Women" and "Be A Hero" in support of Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez, who have each accused Kavanaugh of separate incidents of sexual assault. Kavanaugh has strongly denied the allegations."
How many offices did they trash? How many people died? How many injured? How many had pipes, clubs or guns? How many had molotov cocktails?
That'd be zero on all counts.
At worst, the Kavanaugh protestors committed trespass and pleaded to swing voters; whereas yesterday's mob broke property, assaulted police, looted, and had the intent to overturn the democratic process. While flying confederate and Trump flags and tearing down American flags.
This is genuinely new example of the hypocrisy of the left. I wonder how the apologists will contend with this.
There are pictures of literal Nazis — like, literal literal — holding up nameplates broken off walls [1]. They broke into offices, left threatening messages [2], made it out safely and proudly showed off stolen items [3].
[1] https://twitter.com/beschlossdc/status/1346971421134741505
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-supporters-leave-threa...
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/ks29bj/the_man_shown_...
Five people are dead.
Dozens are injured, several severely.
A number of those taken into custody were found with molotov cocktails, police-style plastic restraints, pipes, clubs and firearms.
What do you think they were going to do with those molotov cocktails? Drink them?
Or the restraints?
Don't minimize what happened or compare it to other bad acts.
I don't know of any public official (except President Trump) who encouraged or condoned violence of any kind.
Facts matter.