[1] https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1347939939120533506 [2] https://twitter.com/donk_enby/status/1346565749977051136
Tolerance is a peace treaty: https://extranewsfeed.com/tolerance-is-not-a-moral-precept-1...
Pretty much.
What I find troubling is that despite containing the same cesspool of vile content, Twitter never got booted from Google and Apple App stores, and AWS.
You are troubling if you really find that
And I don't even have a twitter account.
Without a Twitter account you claim that Twitter has the same vile content?
Also this was the very reason Donald Trump's account was finally banned, despite YEARS of that rhetoric.
https://twitter.com/MonkeyWrenchATX/status/13162253889059266...
https://twitter.com/MonkeyWrenchATX/status/13089834842880450...
https://twitter.com/Windstalker361/status/129150221759012044...
https://twitter.com/ScothSenpai/status/1311436929351790592
I agree Parler is/was shit and yay for its death, but there IS a non-trivial amount of extremist stuff on Twitter as well and IMO letting this stuff persist just creates further division.
The second two are pro gun ownership - which would be perceived as appeals to violence in most of the world, but in the US is a perfectly common political position.
So this fails to support your false equivalence re: Parler and Twitter.
There's actually plenty of extremist hate filled bile on twitter, but these are terrible examples. Search "#killallmen" for some readily accessible examples.
Still, kind of absurd to suggest it represents the mainstay of content on the platform.
Yeah, you can twist the last 2 into a political position. But given the context, they seem to me to be appeals to violence.
I mean look at just a few tweets down on the same pro gun user:
https://twitter.com/Windstalker361/status/131033080427967283...
How is this not inciting violence? What else could "seizing the means of production" possibly mean in a tweet that literally shows off his/her set of assault weapons?
Or literally talking about killing pigs?
https://twitter.com/Windstalker361/status/130913405350173491...
I absolutely don't disagree that there are racial problems that we need to solve, or that the police need reforming. All I'm saying is that by not acknowledging that maybe this needs dealing with too, we are still going to have backlash by the other side.
https://twitter.com/davetroy/status/1327271037847867395?s=20
Why is this report worthy?
> reminder that there are no good cops and no bad protesters
Why is this report worthy?
> Every liberal and lefty needs to arm themselves like yesterday
Why is this report worthy?
The difference being that on Parler the 'cesspool' as you call it is all there is, or at least it is the main attraction.
On Twitter it is easy enough to find, but an average user mostly does have to go looking for it, or at least be following someone who goes looking for it. Twitter also does make efforts to drain the cesspool, although it can certainly be debated whether those efforts are sufficient or even being made in good faith.
Maybe if everyone disagrees with something you say, it's not the rest of the world's fault?
Are you Principal Skinner going "Am I so out of touch? No, it is the children who are wrong."
Sounds good but what happens when a loud group bases their beliefs on alternative facts (and select only alternative facts that specifically support their belief)?
What is the basis for this belief?
It hasn't been just the downvoting, but as the crowd is thinned, increasingly more bots inflate votes, and those who remain are more deeply steeped in their bias perhaps it will be mainly downvotes from here on out.
And no, this isn't a troll; it's one of those reverse-name subreddits.
Just don't hypocritically declare that other people can't also do the same. That's the point here. The hypocrisy.
So no, going flair-only is explicitly to silence those of differing opinions.
Don't get me wrong, they are well within their rights to do so, it is _their_ subreddit, after all. However, if they're going to dance around and act like a bastion of free speech, maybe it's time for some introspection.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Conservative/wiki/index/flair_rules...
That's what the OP was referring to. If everyone is going to call out Parler for being a propaganda channel, then apply the same standards to Democratic Underground, r/politics, r/antifa, etc.
But sure call it propaganda if you wish. Perhaps it is. Many anarchists such as my self are well aware of the propaganda we proactively distribute on a daily basis.
What the ancestor is complaining about is that when the right wing does propaganda, it is not called propaganda, it is called free speech.
However I think you are wrong in assuming HN has remained non-political. There is a lot of politics going on in most threads. While blatant partisan shoutouts are usually not voted to the top and remain at low impact. Participants regularly engage in heavy political discourse. This includes responsibility to security breaches, workers rights (especially those of tech workers; e.g. should remote working be encourage; is flexible vacation policy good actually), taxation policy (especially those around start-ups), housing policy, transportation policy, justification of international sanctions and their effects, etc.
And now we have a most recent grievance of a group getting removed from all platforms, creating their own platform, only for it to be removed from existence by mobile devices and web infrastructure dropping it.
I love this incredibly sanitized version of what goes on in /r/conservative.
To the credit of the moderators of r/conservative, they don't really claim that, though some of their users try to. They're very open about their intentions. They absolutely do not welcome non-tribe members.
They also took in an massive influx of new users after the_donald was banned which permanently changed its discourse.
And as the biggest right-leaning political subreddit, r/conservative also took in an influx of people posting death threats and insults due to its visibility. Examples are occasionally screenshotted by the moderators, and I'm not surprised they moved to 'flaired users only' to keep up with moderation.
Smaller government, free-speech conservatives on Reddit tend to hang out in more libertarian subreddits.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/ajg8ng/rlib...
Slashdot is the only major site that was unmoderated in this sense - during the 10+ years I read it the only post ever removed was one with links to Scientology materials that they'd been threatened with litigation over. They replaced it with an explanation of why they'd removed the comment followed by a bunch of links to anti-Scientology sites :)
It had a lot of crap posted there but mostly coped with it, simpler times I think. Their system allowing you to choose the vote threshold for visible posts helped a lot with that.
Probably the biggest thing keeping it in check is that they still a fully editor driven website. No article shows up that hasn't been seen by someone at Slashdot HQ, so it's nearly impossible for trolls to flood the zone with hate speech, and even if they try it's easy to filter out by just changing your post threshold. Also, the community is so small these days that nobody would even bother.
It keeps people from simultaneously expressing their opinion and downvoting other opposing opinions.
I was active on kuro5hin around the same time and that had a story queue where anyone could submit stories and other users could approve, disapprove and suggest changes; when a story hit a positive or negative threshold of approves - disapproves it was posted or deleted, and if didn't hit either within a week it was also removed. Again the thresholds were higher to get a story posted and to get it rejected, and only users with enough positive karma could see the queue at all. That worked pretty well.
In the early 2000s I was active on the "hidden" sids such as trolltalk where people would troll Slashdot and share it with others. At one point one poster ran a dictionary attack on the first 10k accounts using some very simple password guesses and captured several hundred or so - and then built a system that had them log into Slashdot regularly in such a way that they were most likely to receive moderation points, which were given to users who browsed regularly but not frequently. He then wrote an interface that wrapped Slashdot and allowed anyone using it to be able to moderate any comment there as if you had mod points, but actually by using moderation points from one of the pool of accounts.
If you ever saw posts with (Score 30: Troll) on them, that would be why...
What you should realize, and this is a general fact, is that when any group is withering under constant barrage and assault by what is really objectively an evil agenda of oppression (freedom of expression is in fact a human right under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights), regardless of what you believe or say, they do not have the luxury of high moral consistency while facing free-speech eradication by an evil regime hell bent on controlling all aspects of humanity.
And kid yourself not, what the tech companies are doing to suppress free speech is not only purely and objectively evil, it is a threat to the US Constitution, which is the lynchpin and capstone for freedom and liberties all over the world too. If the American Constitution/values of free speech falter as they seem to be, I pity all the poor souls around the world who have lived under an umbrella of the US Constitution who will suffer immensely more and in deafening silence of globe dominating regime censorship.
There will be no people to take up the cause, e.g., of the Uighurs if the US regime wants to make nice with the Chinese regime for whatever reason. There will be no reporting of atrocities or even knowledge of the lies that justified the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq and the killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis defending their hime against an evil invasion. There will be what the party wants … ney, demands you believe. Please see the book 1984 for reference. Many say they have read it, I seriously wonder if that is true.
They see anybody who doesn't toe the Trump line as a brigader from r/politics. Everything is a conspiracy. But there are a number of very moderate conservatives that (for whatever reason) continue to call r/conservative their home, and they respond positively when something sane gets posted. I've had a couple great conversations over there with those folks. I just avoid the endless meme threads and other trashy pointless tribal gunk.
But let's also not forget that the government clearly does engage in rather evil conspiracies … Iraq WMD, anyone? And there are hundreds more proven conspiracies.
What we are ally seeing here is the onset of a dissolution and dissolving of our social and national cohesion. It was a clear and provable risk from immigration and diversity as shown for decades in research after research from evidence all over the globe and history, but her we are. Social cohesion has been replaced by not only disintegration, but also by a destruction of the methods and ideals that unified the USA before. All that I have read and studied on the topic over years, essentially condemns the USA to breaking up absent of increasing levels of control and repression and imposition of a fake kind of unification around hollow ideals and values not shared among the actual people and cultures that now inhabit the the territory of the former USA (a bit of foreshadowing there).
I would love to hear theories on how you keep what are essentially distinct colonies of foreign nationals (by ethnicity) across the country in a cohesive jurisdiction like the USA, especially when you have an increasingly and justifiably angered native population that is noticing that the promise of utopia through immigration was a con job to disenfranchise them of what all people of the world would perceive as their birth right, the right to keep what those before us created for those after them. I just don't see it happening without extreme repression, which of course will see escalating reaction that will either end in victory or vanquish, for one side or another.
You appear to think of it as some kind of opposing sports team. I know the following will incense a lot of people here, but reality though is that the basic dualism is those how have and built something wanting to keep that; while those who did not build or have, want to acquire and take what they did not contribute to, build, or have. A thief is a person that wants what he did not create, deserve, or earn; yet wants to benefit from (or he would not steal it).
Essentially a person with such a mindset is a "liberal" with other people's things, opposed to a conservative that wants to keep what he earned as well as you keep what you legitimately earned. It's really just age old conflict captured in Aesop's fable of the Ants and the Grasshopper. That model manifests itself in the real world through things like the "communists" who want to take over what they don't understand and did not build and yet think they can operate, let alone even maintain; the people that object to huge student loans they willingly agreed to and want to benefit from, while not wanting to pay the cost; or immigrants to anywhere who want to receive what is essentially a part of the wealth and what others of a country built, not only zero cost, but to immense benefit and profit at the cost of the local population.
Those conservatives absolutely rely on other peoples stuff just as much as liberals.
It isn’t nearly as cut and dry as a couple small paragraphs in a forum may make it out to be.
What are some other human rights?
Going to /r/conservative is like a red cross visit of a communist labor camp and all the inmates have brand new clothes with creases in them. A facade of what the regime thinks a conservative subreddit should look like. Do you actually think that people can espouse "conservative", let alone even non-regime conformant beliefs anywhere on Reddit? The thousands of reddit accounts piled up in the digital mass graves would suggest not.
If the Republican Party isn't conservative you are going to have a tough time finding representation in government. Although I guess by global standards the Democrats are pretty conservative, maybe try there?
Nowadays, liberal isn't "how you act" or "what your values are", is an identity. People identify as liberal: kind, right and "definitely not nazis". If you disagree with them, then you must be evil, right?
I've given up trying to explore contentious issues online. It's impossible to take a different view on a hot topic without getting blocked and reported. You don't even have to take a polar opposite view or get snarky. Sometimes you only have to ask a valid question (now known as a dog-whistle). It doesn't matter if you've got science or logic to back it up.
Someone said it on HN yesterday - the old words are failing us. I no longer recognise this thing that they call "liberal" today. I see it as "woke" - a cult, with dogma, heresies and grand inquisitors.
Which is not surprising, given how the term free speech is getting twisted these days. It seems the term is now used more often to whine about others who don't want to disseminate a faction's lies (without comment!) than to actually argue for the free exchange of ideas in good faith.
People shouldn't be fooled and take this notion of 'free-speech' that is being advocated by these platforms at face value. They're not about genuine free exchange, they're funded by and organised by very well networked organisations who use them to further extremist political causes.
Whereas the Kochs want to be in charge of government, the Mercers want to eliminate government.
Similar, generic libertarian: means handing over all power to the biggest corporation. Big corporations exercise so much power already that it is only where they disagree that any civil governance is even possible.
Principle is that a power vacuum is always immediately filled by the strongest party.
Can you please explain how they use that to "ensure ideological conformity in their posts"?
New accounts are more likely to get shadow banned, especially if they post many comments with links or post inflammatory remarks.
Edit: assuming there’s a federal law about it. Not sure how civil litigation is handled. Not a lawyer, etc.
What do ideological conformity tools look like to you?
Am I missing something? What are you referring to exactly? The mod tools screenshot doesn't support that assertion.
For clarity I don't support changing 230.
Lawyers usually aren't going to go too hard after Parler end users, most of them don't have much money. Amazon however is a different story.
It both:
a. pays popular users
b. Puts warnings on political issues, like statements that Biden's crime bill contributed to mass incarceration [0]
[0] https://twitter.com/ben_awareness/status/1339293381625864195
Presumably this was all in an effort to say something along the lines of - "because of the unique situation Parler is in, these actions were permissible." No?
they are doing bulk scrapping of Parler and they do many other sites like Reddit too, and particularly stuff that is being taken down for archival purposes
also there is nothing - and I mean nothing, but particularly threats of violence - in Parler you don't see in Twitter in more abundance, only it's more typically leftists on Twitter and rightists on Parler
How do you do that? I've noticed lately that HN commentary (at least in threads like this) has trended increasingly pro-censorship[1] lately, and it's pretty disheartening to read.
Would rather do something like what you say, but I'm not quite sure what you mean.
[1]: Which is a bit ironic, thinking about it.
The US has always had limits on free speech.
> Freedom of speech and expression, therefore, may not be recognized as being absolute, and common limitations or boundaries to freedom of speech relate to libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, fighting words, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, food labeling, non-disclosure agreements, the right to privacy, dignity, the right to be forgotten, public security, and perjury. Justifications for such include the harm principle, proposed by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, which suggests that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
Incitement, sedition, public security and harm to others seem to be relevant to this discussion.
But not to my comment, and not just because I'm not from the USA.
I'm not speaking in favor of parler if that's what you assumed (for some reason). Specially if it is, like the top comment said, just a propaganda machine trying to enforce a single viewpoint. That's antithesis to free speech.
Where you see “pro-censorship”, many see speech that historically has never been protected in the US like calls to violence, or speech that insights others to violence.
Companies gave Trump et. al. the benefit of the doubt on the “inciting violence” part, until the violence actually materialized and the FBI warned of groups organizing online to coordinate future violent attacks.
I didn't use the word "bizarrely" and I'm not talking about condemnation of unprotected speech (and again, not just because I'm not from the USA). I've seen people arguing that the concept of free speech itself is "outdated" and that societies that hold it are "doomed to collapse", and that's just an example.
> [Trump]
Again, I wasn't talking about parler nor about Trump. I would appreciate it if you stopped trying to imply that I'm talking about stuff I'm not, or steering the conversation toward subjects I've never even alluded to.
Sorry, I meant "ironic".
> I've seen people arguing that the concept of free speech itself is "outdated" and that societies that hold it are "doomed to collapse", and that's just an example.
Maybe downvoted far down the thread, but the majority of the upvoted "censorship" discussions have been directly related to Big Tech's deplatforming of Trump & Parler in response to the capital attacks, and how the existing limits on US free speech apply to these decisions.
No, and no. Please don't tell me what I have or have not seen myself.
> [Trump and parler again]
Okay, this is the third time so I won't try again to tell you I have no interest in talking about that. I'll just say that the first time I noticed generally well received[1] comments in favor of censorship was almost two years ago, in a thread that had nothing to do with Trump (and I'm not sure if parler even existed by then). According to what I've noticed, it has been growing in prominence since.
[1]: Which is to say, they weren't downvoted nor pushed downthread and even though they had several replies disputing them; they had just as many agreeing.
Can you link to these posts?
I've been following the threads, but haven't seen people arguing that the concept of free speech itself is "outdated" and that societies that hold it are "doomed to collapse".
The only "censorship" I've seen people supporting is against speech that has never been protected by the 1st amendment, which isn't being "pro-censorship" or "censorship" at all, it's just the same laws we've had here in the US for centuries.
Again, happy to take a look at what you're seeing on HN if you can link to a few threads.
By the way, you're completely free to defend these gigantic corporations deplatforming whoever they want; I wasn't talking about that in my original comment. That implication was already present in my first reply, but maybe my saying it outright will convince you that I don't mean anything bad with my comments.
Because you said: "I've noticed lately that HN commentary (at least in threads like this) has trended increasingly pro-censorship[1] lately", "[1]: Which is a bit ironic, thinking about it."
I haven't had that experience and don't understand the irony. Just trying to understand where you're coming from and thought links might help.
I think I misunderstood "lately" to mean the censorship / violent speech debate about the resulting Big Tech deplatformings, which is why I keep bringing those up. In the US, taking down violent, insightful speech is not considered censorship, which is why I was confused about who you're referring to that is "pro-censorship", but again maybe I crossed some wires there.
I care about free speech a lot and if there's a growing trend that speech that's always been protected by the 1st amendment is being targeted, it's a line we all need to be very sensitive to and vigilant in defending.
And here's an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25715809
(It bears noticing how the post whose thread that comment belongs to is certainly not about the banning of Trump or parler).
The US has long done a “controlled burn” in banning violent speech, but we do need to be vigilant that it doesn’t turn into a wild fire.
I don’t understand why they removed the tweet instead of labeling it if they really want to be in the fact checking business.
There’s no feasible zero-censorship scenario (see “yelling fire in a crowded theater”, etc.) so pretty much everyone is “pro-censorship” to some degree. But pretty much no one wants preapproval of every utterance either, so everyone is also “anti-censorship”.
If you see someone talking about “damping positive disinformation feedback loops” or something like that, rather than “censorship”, that’s one signal there’s a substantive discussion taking place.
(Zero censorship is kind of like absolute anarchy: an interesting thought experiment that may be useful to inform a practical debate.)
I've seen people arguing that the concept of free speech is "outdated" and that societies that hold it are "doomed to collapse", just as an example of what I meant in my first comment.
> so pretty much everyone is “pro-censorship” to some degree
Please, don't. You're arguing against an extreme of my comment instead of what I actually meant[1] (which, of course, you're free to do, but I would also be just as free to dismiss it as a bad faith argument), but also you're extending something you might believe onto others. You're of course free to be "pro-censorship", but you don't know what everyone else thinks, and certainly not what I think.
> The use of the term “censorship” is itself a negative signal, as it preempts useful discussion by imposing a false dichotomy.
I completely disagree with this. The example I gave is absolutely an argument in favor of censorship.
> If you see someone talking about “damping positive disinformation feedback loops” or something like that, rather than “censorship”, that’s one signal there’s a substantive discussion taking place.
Excusing it by saying "dampening positive disinformation feedback loops" is excusing censorship. You might refuse to call it such, but I don't have a reason not to.
[1]: For starters, I'm aware that there's unprotected speech for a reason, and I never called condemnation of such speech "censorship".
I didn’t present any position at all other than saying that neither extreme is realistic — which I think you actually agree with. But you’re trying to argue with me anyway.
I was just trying to answer your question on how to recognize a more nuanced and productive discussion: look for people arguing about specific behaviors; avoid people arguing over the definition of the word “censorship”.
Not really, no, what makes it difficult for me to continue this conversation is that I had no interest in having this conversation in the first place. My first comment was just asking the other person how he dealt with these threads, as I wasn't sure what he meant exactly or if he had a trick or something.
I certainly didn't want to start arguing the merits of free speech again (I already said I found it disheartening to read).
> I didn’t present any position at all other than saying that neither extreme is realistic
And since I never spoke in favor of any extreme, I argued with you because your point about "everyone being pro-censorship" wasn't apropos... Something you seem to know too.
> look for people arguing about specific behaviors; avoid people arguing over the definition of the word “censorship”.
I've seen the same people arguing both in favor of the same "specific behavior" you mentioned and against free speech[1]. And no, those discussions were anything but productive or nuanced. With that in mind, I have no interest in looking for that.
[1]: Not that differentiating between that and censorship wasn't already a distinction without a difference (as I already implied in my previous comment), but I must say that those discussions did make it evident that they were ultimately arguing for the same thing.
I guess the point I was trying to make is whether or not Parler is moderated to me seems irrelevant to the permissibility of this action.
Almost anyone would agree that a platform which allows any speech at all is a 'free speech platform' even if they don't agree with allowing certain kinds of speech.
Most people would agree a platform that allows any speech outside of socially accepted exceptions (e.g. threats of violence, slander) is a 'free speech platform'.
But for people who are largely not allowed to share their views (rightly or wrongly) a platform which is heavily moderated for ideological conformity can also be a 'free speech platform' if they agree with the ideology, because they are free to speak all the speech they want to speak and are prevented from doing on other platforms. It's pretty clear that Parler falls into this category.
https://about.fb.com/news/2019/10/mark-zuckerberg-stands-for...
There appears to be quite a difference between what Instagram does and what Parler does. The two do not appear to be comparable.
I haven't seen evidence that Parler's payments are specifically tied to promoting certain political agendas versus just being an influential poster.
> You have not demonstrated that this is extensive
Well, I've demonstrated it as convincingly as the user above who linked to a twitter post of someone just saying they have "robust moderation."
I was just pointing out that your statements, if true, still don't support your conclusion as they don't provide an apt comparison to the claims about Parler.
I think I've made pretty explicit claims about political moderation by Instagram. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of racism/sexism/etc. so I find it hard to mind, but as I've shown, they also moderate contested political claims, like stuff about Biden's crime bill, Hunter Biden, etc.
Those are political issues, and I've provided evidence of them enforcing that viewpoint. The original comment provided no actual evidence of Parler enforcing a single viewpoint, but we all know what Parler is so it doesn't take (me at least) much convincing.
I've explained both why my comparisons are not logically flawed (no evidence that Parler pays for a "certain political agenda") and have stronger epistemic backing than the claims being made about Parler.
You're asking me to prove the much harder claim that IG has never taken moderation action against political beliefs on the other side of the political spectrum.
Of course, that is
a. an extremely hard claim to prove on an internet forum like this, because I'd have to have an index of all of IGs enforcement actions to prove that none of them met this criteria you've set up.
b. not even close to proven in the case of Parler by the original poster
1. point out how the claims made about Parler are false.
2. point out that this is done by other large social media websites and thus Parler should not be singled out.
Keep in mind that by "this" in 2 I mean specifically that there are large social media sites that are designed specifically to enforce a certain political viewpoint. As I see it neither of these were done by you.
I think though that we will not agree on these points and I accept that. Thank you for the engagement. I will read and consider any response you have and leave the discussion at that.
I'll try to break down my claim more simply. Saying something like "I don't really care about any political issues, but abortion is fundamentally wrong" is a political viewpoint. If IG took moderation action against people who were saying pro-abortion things, we would call that enforcing a certain political viewpoint.
Similarly, a statement like "all claims are fine except for those that tie Biden's crime bill to mass incarceration" is, again, a political viewpoint. It perhaps doesn't map cleanly onto left or right or pro-Trump vs. anti-Trump, but the set of claims that IG picks to dispute is political because the issues around Biden's crime bill (for instance) were political.
I'm neutral on whether Parler should be "singled out", my point was merely that the two conditions set up by OP are not sufficient to single out Parler, compared to the actions taken by other social media networks.
Likewise, thanks for engaging.
https://twitter.com/johnfpfaff/status/1128369019164200960?la...
> $9.7 billion in funding for prisons, [including] incentive grants to ... qualifying states that enforced mandatory sentencing of 85% of a person's sentence conviction,
> [eliminating federal grants for] lower-income prison inmates to receive college educations during their term of imprisonment,
and funding for 100,000 more police officers.
a. how federal action modeled action for states, including substantial incentive schemes for incarceration (indeed that is how almost every Federal bill works)
b. how the rate of incarceration given the crime being committed increased post-crime bill.
I think it is a discussion to be had, not something to be a priori fact-checked as "False."
I assume that point was an extension of OP's comment of: "that they use to ensure ideological conformity in their posts."
For those interested, here is a link to the USA Today article from the screenshot evaluating whether "the crime bill brought mass incarceration to Black Americans": https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/07/03/fac...
> Stephen Ross Johnson, of Knoxville, Tennessee, a board member of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and past president of the Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, told USA TODAY that it is "over simplistic" to say the 1994 crime bill led to mass incarceration.
> Asked if the bill caused or largely contributed to it, Johnson says: “The bottom line answer to that is no. Was it a link in the chain? Yes. Is it the beginning of the chain? No.”
> Johnson argues that the roots of mass incarceration can be found in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with legislation that created, among other things, the RICO statute, which broadened the scope of federal law as the war on drugs began to take shape.
I'd say I agree with the points in the article over the non-contextual, anonyomous, blanket statement that the crime bill brought ("caused") mass incarceration of Black Americans.
Perhaps it is not an appropriately nuanced claim - I would be curious if there is equal enforcement of the "contextual" clarity of claims made in all political memes though. My guess is no, and it is also a quite common view among academics that the crime bill is a large link in the story behind mass incarceration.
I haven't, for instance, seen fact-checking of memes about Russia "stealing" the election or Donald Trump being a servant of Putin, despite those claims being potentially "non-contextual."
You may agree with the points. But does that make it beyond the pale of discussion and must be "fact-checked" away?
e: Rather than downvotes, I would be curious what others' thoughts are here.
Have you heard of the Mueller Report? There's been extensive fact-checking on this, and Trump obstructed the investigation.
I have, of course. My claim is just that Russia "stealing" the election might be non-"contextual" if what's been shown is that Russia ran extensive misinformation campaigns, since the election was still ultimately decided by people voting, no evidence of extensive fraud, etc. , etc.
Of course, perhaps it is still a "steal" simply because of the effect of that interference/influence campaign. And similarly, perhaps the 1994 crime bill had an influence on future downstream state actions around incarceration. There's a discussion to be had about the topic. Neither "fact-check"-ing seems non-ideological to me.
Source?
The general tendency these days, fed by narratives from interested parties like the media, is to mash all right leaners (pretty much any one supporting the conservative ideas and opposing the Democrats) as clueless, racist, redneck, neo-Nazis (a bit of hyperbole here, but you see what I mean). Once you think that way (that "they're all nub jobs"), pretty much anything from leaking their user info to shutting them down to throwing them in jail would seem OK. Please, please don't fall into the trap and accept the "all right is nuts" narrative and decide for yourself.
There are traditonal conservatives: god, guns, limited government. Mitch McConnell, David French, Mitt Romney, Charlotte Lawson. I fundamentally have different values from these people, but their perspectives are useful, enlightening, and reading their viewpoints causes me to better defend my own, or even occasionally change. They are staunch defenders of individual rights and traditional liberty.
There are libertarians on the right. Rand Paul, Spike Cohen, Justin Amash. These people I share a surprising number of values with, but fundamentally disagree with on the conclusion. Due to an inherent argumentativeness, it's hard to get a good faith debate, but I acknowledge their opinions that the government uses its power poorly, that both political parties are primarily concerned with remaining in power, and so on.
And then there's the group who wear t-shirts with "Camp Auschwitz 2021", "6 million wasn't enough". Signs that say "Q Sent Me". Hats with "Make America Great Again". These people are absolutely racist neo-nazis. These people are pretending to believe that Italians stole the election. There's no true belief here, no fundamentally held tenant other than "my side is better". This is not a small group - a YouGov poll puts it at 18% of Republicans. And this is Parler's user base, self-selected. The reasonable ones are still on Twitter.
Their response was that none of these were “true conservatives”. Their proof was an article by the Cato Institute (brainchild of the Koch brothers, ironically) saying Bush was not a conservative. Well, duh, that’s my point. A wide variety of conservatives with distinct ideologies have not been banned.
None of these people have been banned. Why? Well they aren’t creating mobs who storm the Capitol chanting that they want to lynch Mike Pence.
Claiming Twitter is banning conservatives is flat out wrong. Twitter is banning terrorists who assaulted our Capitol.
And a social media company paying the users that create the most content? Dastardly!
References:
- https://medium.com/swlh/youtube-algorithm-rigged-breadtube-e...
- https://theindustryobserver.thebrag.com/spotify-joe-rogan/
EDIT:
Wow: So many down-votes in less than a minute, without any comment.
interesting opinion from Glenn Greenwald:
"Do you know how many of the people arrested in connection with the Capitol invasion were active users of Parler?
Zero.
The planning was largely done on Facebook. This is all a bullshit pretext for silencing competitors on ideological grounds: just the start."
I don't agree with everything that he does or says. However I'm sure he would be the last one to take the side of Parler or any other similar project.
The people who planned the Jan 6 coup attempt used Parler. So the only way this happens is if they spend months planning the assault but then don't show up for it and a completely different set of people just happen to follow the plan by accident. This includes stuff like preparing and bringing molotov cocktails, pipe bombs, handcuffs, and flying across the country to participate.
https://www.npr.org/sections/congress-electoral-college-tall...
https://www.propublica.org/article/capitol-rioters-planned-f...