Facebook's role in Capitol protest larger than previously thought
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
I agree that it's become a flame war, and IMO part of the issue is that at times people promote (up/down) vote based on agreement, and at other times people vote based on promoting a good conversation.
I really want to see two voting mechanisms, an I agree woot, and another button that indicates is a well constructed argument that I think deserves conversation and views because it will promote healthy conversation. I'm not convinced people would use these appropriately, maybe they sit behind a "vote" count or you only get 5 votes a day or something, IDK.
We've gamified agreement on these platforms, and I see things swing based on who shows up. I've seen my votes swing wildly based on what I'm interpreting as someone of a particular ideology come through.
Either way we need to gamify conversation and not agreement, I don't know how to do that, but I think HN would be a great place to experiment with that idea.
However, I was pretty young and my memory may be wrong. Has the discourse always been this way, or has it changed significantly in the past 10 years? If it changed, when did this start? After 9/11? After Trump?
The current discourse is crazy to me. We have to remember that free speech is literally the FIRST amendment. Our founding fathers thought that basically nothing was more important than this. So we should err on the side of caution. It's east to restrict freedom and almost impossible to win it back. Although if you want to go a little bit further, they also would have had, as individuals, a higher tolerance for violence in the event that people wanted to "petition the government for a redress of grievances."
Anyway, just curious to hear other people's opinions on when the importance of free speech started to diminish in our collective mind.
I assume most internet geeks think technological restrictions are mostly futile (the internet routes around censorship), BTW.
It's just a losing game that ends up affecting innocent people (like DRM in games) but theres just no way to win
Here's the first amendment:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
"Congress shall not abridge the freedom of speech."
It doesn't say "freedom of speech is a mechanism that leads to truth", it doesn't say "freedom of speech means you have to let someone come into your house and speak at you", it doesn't say "freedom of speech means, if you build a social media platform, you have to let fascists use it to spread disinformation with a rapidity and accuracy of targeting that founding fathers could never possibly have conceived of". It just says "Congress shall not abridge the freedom of speech."
In the age of social media, we have seen the truly perverse impacts that viral spread of lies can have, like in Myanmar where months of anti-Rohingya propaganda on Facebook lead to the genocide of the Rohingya [0]. Another perverse impact is the fostering of echo chambers where participants could freely share conspiracy theories and convince themselves of truly crazy things, like that Hillary Clinton ran a cabal of pedophiles that worked out of the basement of Comet Pizza, or that tens of thousands of election workers across many states executed a perfect rigging of the US election. In the past, people susceptible to fringe beliefs would struggle to find likeminded people and would have been too embarrassed to freely exercise speech, but per Facebook's own research: "64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools” and that most of the activity came from the platform’s “Groups You Should Join” and “Discover” algorithms. [1][2]. Free speech was unleashed in a way never possible before.
Last Wednesday, the elected Representatives and Senators of my country were in the process of certifying the results of my country's election, but they were violently interrupted by people who believe a set of lies that they've heard and read hundreds of times. Since this insurrection attempt, we've found a lot of footage indicating these people were looking to kill the Vice President and the Speaker of the House, the #2 and #3 people in the Presidential line of succession.
I don't know why people think the 1st amendment means private companies, who aren't Congress at all, should have to make the fruits of their labor accessible to terrorists, or why that's a good thing. But a lot of people here seem to consider that to be an article of faith. I truly have no idea why.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/myanmar-facebo...
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-it-encourages-di...
[2] https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-platforms-must-pay-for-t...
But they're taught in school that there is a general "freedom of speech" which doesn't really exist. This sentiment is echoed in mass American media to adults.
There's very little "public" speech in a legal sense. The most populated speech structures are privately owned. Censorship is built into those structures. America, as a whole, does not have "free speech" except for property owners. Unless you're on public property, behaving lawfully, such as in court, or "speaking truth" next to the post office, etc. etc. you don't have free speech.
So, when people hold a good portion of their discourse through private structures, those structures seem public. The host companies seem like governments through terms of services. They see the first amendment as applying there by default.
Clearly it’s only open to those who fit the bartender’s definition of acceptable conduct.
HST: Sensible people would opine that if the bartender doesn’t have want non bartender approved behaviour, he should clearly paste the instructions and definition of what’s acceptable and what’s not. Also: not serve alcohol or substances that encourage unruly behaviour.
In the current scenario, anything pro-trump is not acceptable. Done. We have established that. Case closed.
Conclusion: Big Tech is against free speech.
We need a baseline understanding of the rules of the game. Why are they acting coy about it? Why not state it and move on?
Only if you define pro-trump speech as solely hateful language against other groups or calls to violence. That's all that's been banned. You can go tweet "I really like Trump's policy positions" all you want and you won't get banned. But when you start spewing hate speech or calling people to violence then don't be surprised you've been kicked out of the bar. I can't believe this nuance is missed on this forum.
That’s because everything you said falls under ‘free speech’.
Incitement requires proof. Free speech isn’t illegal.
That’s why pro lifers outside abortion clinics can call visitors to the clinic, ‘baby-killers who deserve to die’ and ACLU will protect their right to free speech.
They can only be charged if they ACT.
What we are seeing is cognitive dissonance because only a few months ago during peak covid, the same platforms ALLOWED incitement and continued to condone violence as said incitement lead to buildings being burned, properties destroyed and lives lost. And no legal action was taken.
Is there a way to report these types of posts? Or better yet, to have HN remove all this incessant political commentary.
Perhaps I'll take the time to finally work on that custom Chrome extension project I've been meaning to tackle..
Free speech just means the government isn't going to prosecute you for saying something. That's it. Free speech doesn't mean Random House must publish your manifesto to all things awful. It also doesn't mean a private company is obligated to publish your derogatory tweet. Or for a company to host your website chock full of hateful language.
The US passed the Alien and Sedition Acts centuries ago.
These debates are age-old.
Also, the First Amendment is less important than all the Articles of the Constitution, including the ones about the Electoral college. So by your theory (which is invalid because order of Amendment has nothing to do with relative importance, and you are a horrible person if you think free speech is more important than banning race-based slavery) peotectingt the Electoral College is more important than Free Speech
The summer riots were freely advertised on all social media apps and WaPo. How is that not incitement of violence.
What’s happening is an unprecedented attack on free speech in disguise of silencing “insurrection”.
The police already have the power to deal with things like that, the vast majority of it was people protesting.
The aim of propaganda is to elicit an emotional reaction. WaPo and other media did a great job at inciting violent reaction, riots that lasted for months, fed primarily by the media and amplified by facebook and Twitter.
Forgive me for believing that law enforcement protecting family businesses is 1000x more important than law enforcement protecting politicians.
EDIT: love the downvotes from people who believe torching family businesses, often immigrant ones, is cool! I'm telling you guys keep downvoting. You really look like the good guys.
Holding police accountable is something we should all get behind. Whatever it is you think the "other side" supports sounds like something you picked up from Breitbart. Get real man.
When they started destroying local businesses, I didn't support them. I posted once on my next door to please let's all remain peaceful and stop the destruction of local small businesses, and was met with immediate condemnations of being racist. I got so many hate messages, despite being brown myself, that I eventually left next door, out of fear of doxxing.
When BLM then went and tagged Pelosi and McConnell's homes, I cheered them on. I don't mind seeing people harass politicians. I just don't want them destroying private citizen's stuff, or killing them when they defend it.
And I don't read Breitbart. I read Mother Jones and the New Yorker, and sometimes I read Breitbart when left wing people get outraged by their articles.
Asking for an end to qualified immunity isn't indicting all police officers.
I find the ACAB movement unhelpful, to be clear.
In the US (pop 330M), law enforcement kills about 1000 people per year (about 34 people per 10M pop per year). [0]
In Honduras (pop 9.1M), law enforcement kills about 40 people per 10M pop per year [1]
In the Dominican Republic (pop 10.7M), law enforcement kills about 130 people per 10M pop per year [1]
In Brazil (pop 210M), law enforcement kills about 275 people per 10M pop per year [1]
In Jamaica (pop 2.9M), law enforcement kills about 470 people per 10M pop per year [1]
In Nicaragua (pop 6.2M), law enforcement kills about 530 people per 10M pop per year [1]
In El Salvador (pop 6.4M), law enforcement kills about 950 people per 10M pop per year [1]
In Venezuela (pop 29M), law enforcement kills about 1830 people per 10M pop per year [1]
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_killings_by_law_enforc...
No
That being said, somehow the Newark Police Department(in Newark, New Jersey's biggest city, and about 50 homicides per year) went all of 2020 without any of any officers firing a single shot (outside of training and firearm qualification contexts, I assume) [0].
[0] https://bronx.news12.com/newark-police-no-officer-fired-a-si...
Wikipedia's does not.[1]
Also from the info you provided, it seems like US police are only 20% less violent than Honduran police. This is despite Honduras having the 5th highest murder rate in the world - which presumably means Honduran police deal with violent criminals far more often than American police.[2] That's pretty wild!
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
Maybe WaPo wasn't (although I doubt it). Other media certainly were: https://twitter.com/slate/status/1268415955937513473?lang=en
Or will we keep justifying direct justifications of violence, while ignoring the calls to peace spoken and written by Trump.
Honestly, I'm done at this point. I hope people like you keep saying what you're saying. You'll just convince more people, just like y'all have convinced me.
EDIT: more justifications of violence:
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178...
Here's vice interviewing a man who just shot a trump supporter and killed him. They did this after he had done so, but before he was turned over to police. Harboring a criminal is illegal: https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7g8vb/man-linked-to-killing...
EDIT: and just like I thought, from the downvotes, people actually agree with the direct calls to violence issued by these mainstream outlets that led to over 30 deaths this summr]er, and $2billion in damages, mainly to small businesses all over america. The lack of moral convictions on this forum is pathetic.
Did he explicitly say “Go riot!”, or “Go forth and <enumeration of elements of some crime>.” Probably not.
Did he say things which had the intent and effect of inciting riot and insurrection? I think the answer is pretty clearly yes.
I don’t think you can, but, so what?
> This is a ridiculous standard.
It’s basically (stated informally, sure) the legal standard.
First, what Trump actually told the protestors on the 6th was to go peacefully. His plain language has been analyzed by qualified legal scholars and they conclude it does not meet the very high threshold of “fighting words”. [1]
Second, as we can clearly see, the attacks on the capital were planned well in advance of Trump’s speech and therefore could not have been incited by that speech in the first place.
Third, the violent protesters had already started breaching the capital while Trump was still speaking a mile away.
So I think there are important facts on the ground that do not support the allegation that Trump’s speech on the 6th incited a spontaneous mob.
I think you could argue that denial of the election result and false claims of election fraud — over many weeks and by many people including Trump — led in part to certain people to plan for violence on the 6th.
The people that planned and executed the violence should be charged with crimes and face a jury of their peers.
My understanding is that the laws against inciteful speech require the speech to result in imminent lawless action. If I listen to a podcast on Monday and decide to violently protest next week, the podcast would not be illegal speech.
[1] - https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/01/11/democr...
1. Language doesn't have to be illegal for it to break Twitter's TOS.
2. Language requires context. When Michael Corleone says "I don't want anything to happen to him while my mother's alive" everyone listening to those words understand exactly what they mean - that his brother's a few weeks away from ending up with a bullet in his head.
The context in this case has been weeks of crying from the rooftops about how the deep state is stealing the election from you, and that your boys should go to Capitol and do something about it. Meanwhile, your lawyer is shouting about how it's time for 'Trial by combat.'
In the context of a court of law, if we’re speaking about the actual limits of free speech in America, I think Trump’s speech does not meet the threshold.
So I’m not trying to make a political point, but I think there’s an interesting legal discussion to really understand that just because violence happens after a speech, or in this case concomitant to a speech, there’s still a very high bar - very direct language that has to be used for that person to be guilty of incitement in a court of law.
I completely agree it’s totally up to Twitter to decide to ban Trump from their platform. They likely don’t even have to give you a specific reason under their ToS. I wasn’t speaking about the Twitter ban in this case.
Lastly, I’d agree completely that context matters. Interestingly, the context of Giuliani’s “trial by combat” statement was discussing some hypothetical investigation that was supposed to happen over the next 10 days that they were going to “stake their reputation” on;
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1346847382768676864?s=20
Again, this is a kind of statement that politicians make all the time, and is not illegal.
None of the major tests of whether speech is protected apply to the decontextualized plain language of the utterance in isolation, and the “fighting words” test is particularly non-germane here in any case, since it is a test that specifically relates to provocation of an audience hostile to one’s ideas, so you'd have to be either grossly incompetent or intensely dishonest to measure something suggested to be incitement of a friendly crowd to violence against a common enemy against it.
> Second, as we can clearly see, the attacks on the capital were planned well in advance of Trump’s speech and therefore could not have been incited by that speech in the first place.
That's...not how incitement works. It is not the case that once a a breach of the peace has been planned, encouragement immediately proximate to the planned breach to steal the nerves of either those who were in on the plan, or to fire up other susceptible persons in the area to join in, is no longer incitement. That's nonsense.
The only relevance that the prior planning has to incitement is that, if Trump knew about that planning, assessment of intent and reasonably forseeable effect of his words would have to be made in light of that knowledge.
> Third, the violent protesters had already started breaching the capital while Trump was still speaking a mile away.
Again, that's not how incitement works. The fact that a riot or other ongoing breach of the peace has begun doesn't make further immediate encouragement not incitement.
As with the last point, this is only relevant at all to the extent that, if Trump knew of it, assessment of his intent and the reasonably forseeable consequences of his action must be made with that knowledge in mind.
> The people that planned and executed the violence should be charged with crimes and face a jury of their peers.
Sure. That's not exclusive of accountability for incitement, whether by Trump or others.
> So I think there are important facts on the ground that do not support the allegation that Trump’s speech on the 6th incited a spontaneous mob.
No one made the allegation that Trump incited a spontaneous mob.
> Saying things that foreseeably move some audience members to act illegally isn’t enough,” notes Eugene Volokh, a First Amendment specialist at UCLA Law School. “Speaking recklessly isn’t enough. The Court was well aware that speech supporting many movements — left, right, or otherwise — that merely moves the majority to political action may also lead a minority of the movement to rioting or worse. It deliberately created a speech-protective test that was very hard to satisfy.” [1]
If someone is already causing a pre-planned disturbance a mile away while you are speaking, it’s impossible to argue that the words were an incitement to imminent lawless action in that case. I’m not sure how you get around the fact that an imminent cause-effect relationship is a necessary component of this form of unprotected speech.
If the question is whether a political speech falls into the unprotected category of incitement to imminent lawless action, it’s highly probative to that specific charge if the lawless action was pre-planned and already occurring when you spoke.
An additional necessary element for incitement is intent. You would have to prove that Trump intended for his supporters to try to actually carry out a riot on that day, despite his calls for them to be peaceful, and how much he stood to lose (did lose) if (when) they were not.
To throw another question into the mix, if someone makes a rousing speech which rallies up a crowd, and then after the crowd takes a mile long walk they encounter an existing volatile situation like an ongoing riot, I’d be pretty surprised if the earlier speech can suddenly become illegal unprotected speech based on some true incitement to violence which happens later.
I certainly have never heard of any such case of speech that “got the ball rolling” but didn’t actually directly instruct a person or crowd to commit a specific illegal act.
[1] - https://reason.com/volokh/2021/01/07/incitement-ordinary-spe...
Its not if people hearing your words join in the disturbance. (There’s other ways it could, as well.) Again, the fact that a disturbance is under way does not make it impossible for someone to commit incitement with regard to that disturbance. Repeating the same false claim doesn’t make it any less false.
https://www.nbcnews.com/video/trump-encourages-those-at-his-...
They went straight from his rally to Capitol hill. Ultimately his MO is edging very close to unacceptable and saying the right things to the right people to please his ego.
IMO he should've been banned from Twitter on the spot after he retweeted a video of a gut shouting white power at a bunch of black people
Do you really need the quotes?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/06/technology/myanmar-facebo...
FB is probably praying that the Inauguration goes off without a hitch, or that's the deathnell for the light content moderation regime of FB.
Instagram, interestingly, it a lot more heavy handed (still not great though). Joan Cornella[0], who makes surrealist(?) comic strips, has posted on his IG story about his posts being removed for “violence” or whatever.
What they care about is the opportunity shift more content from the control of large competitors, to content that is centered and dependent on their devices.
I'll give you a for instance, have you ever wondered why they are so hesitant to allow other providers to link in to their messaging games tech? They're slowly moving into these more social networking type areas, and very few consumers are even noticing. For consumers they just think, "Hey! look what my iphone does now!"
If you think Apple needs the money FB generates for them more than they want the money they can generate for themselves, you're fooling yourself.
In short, with Apple, it's not about social good, it's about money. They don't care about your cause, nor your enemy's. They care about gaining greater control over more and more revenue streams. If they can use social good to justify that revenue grab, all the better. Anti trust law is what keeps Apple in line, not their FB partnership.
If FB was shut down tomorrow, people would still go to their Apple stores the day after. That's just reality.
Not to mention its use for SSO.
No? Some Android phones ship with it pre-installed, but that's it.
Bernie was similar but didn’t have the appeal to the dumb and old.
Twitter is all in public. I don't need a twitter account to be able to read posts from any twitter account. [1][2]
Facebook is private. Given I have no account I can't see any posts on facebook at all. Facebook can target the mentally unstable with incendiary, racist, sexist, violent and awful content /in/ /secret/. Whether by ads or through groups or similar. You have no idea what privately broadcasted communication is happening there at all. You probably have no idea of the nature of something as simple as political advertisements targeting those of a different political persuasion. None at all. It's dark to all of us.
These are two quite different ways of broadcasting. You may wish to regulate communication on both or one but not the other or neither. Unless it's neither you favour it seems unlikely that the same regulation and enforcement is appropriate for each of these things.
[1] Locked accounts on twitter don't appear to be a significantly used thing. Will obviously update that opinion in the light of better information, eg if it turns out that violent groups coordinate and recruit using locked twitter accounts. I don't believe much like that to be happening at the moment.
[2] Without anything more than a browser you can read for example, Glenn Greenwald's latest twitter post at time of writing. https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1349514741358669824 Then agree, disagree, decide if he's a russian spy or a principled journalist focused on social justice, brilliant or a moron, or just right or wrong on just this one thing or you may decline to form a view. It's not secret. It's not communication happening behind your back that you don't know exists. (This particular post is also obviously not incitement to violence).
Although, Palin came along in 2008. Twitter got popular in 2007 and Facebook opened to the public in 2006, the iPhone was introduced in 2007 and with it the always-connected world. I guess social media did accelerate the destruction of civilization..
Here Biden talks about revoking Section 230 because it shields FB from liability for the stuff that it helps spread: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/01/17/opinion/joe-b...
> [Zuckerberg] knows better. And you know, from my perspective, I’ve been in the view that not only should we be worrying about the concentration of power, we should be worried about the lack of privacy and them being exempt, which you’re not exempt. [The Times] can’t write something you know to be false and be exempt from being sued. But he can. The idea that it’s a tech company is that Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms.
More discussion about the difference between the Democrat and Republican objections to 230 - but that they both have some - is here https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/how-joe-... among other places.
Let's say, people in cities are more willing to use EV car. People in small city / rural area are less motivated because of weaker infrastructure. This is unfair to ask the people in small city to make this change if they are not provided enough help :-/
I am afraid people in two sides are getting more divided and more extreme. Don't forget based on the vote count, it is still a 50:50 but not 90:10 fight.
Edit for clarity: How did the president give marching orders?
https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/kq9rcu/trump_face...
Okay, he lied a lot (A LOT!), and ultimately turned up the temperature in the room, but at no time did he say "go invade the capitol". In fact in the last speech right before the event he mentioned that "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard." The key word being peacefully. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad he's been voted out. But let's tell the truth.
Frankly if they had, I'd agree with you wholeheartedly. I've watched a ton of Fox over the last few years, and what the Republicans and also very explicitly Donald Trump are saying, is genuinely terrifying.
I wish the Democrats would speak out about how 0.7% of America is in prison right now - the world's leading jailer per capita, how the long-term recidivism rate is over 80%, about civil asset forfeiture turning small-town cops into literal highway robbers to fund their departments, about how private prison contracts have minimum occupancy clauses, about how socioeconomic dysfunction leads minorities to interact with police 7X as much as white folks. How police shoot 10X as many people per capita in America as in Canada. They didn't say a thing early on. If anything, some of this anger towards the police came from Democrats not saying what they need to early on. Not doing what they need to early on.
From that perspective, I do believe Democrats share some of the blame.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-and-his-allies-set-the-st...
Apple and Google, with control over 99% of the app industry, ganged up and eliminated the Parler app. When a tiny number of companies collude to destroy the competition, it is known as a "trust", children. And colluding to destroy a company is known as "racketeering".
The Biden Administration is hiring several people from these companies: Jessica Hertz of Facebook and Emily Horne of Twitter.
It is highly unlikely he will turn around now and push the Justice Dept. to go after these companies. He's glad they banned Trump; it benefited him. Now he has to pay them back, if he knows what's good for him.
The fact that Silicon Valley overwhelmingly supports the Democratic Party - at North Korean Levels of popular support (search twitter on the fec.gov [1]) - and the Democratic Party is now responsible for regulating Silicon Valley makes it chilling when the demands for censorship by the Democratic Party are followed.
The Democrats have the power now and they will use it to suppress any opinion they disagree with.
[1] https://www.fec.gov/introduction-campaign-finance/how-to-res...
Republicans have a duty to their nation to provide a counter balance of power and they cannot use dogmatism as an excuse for staying put.
They knew who Trump was all along [1], but they stuck by him nevertheless. There are bound to be consequences for that kind of poor judgment.
1: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/lindsey-graham-nominate-tr...
Basically all of the resulting right-wing media empires that were built still exist!
I'm unsympathetic to the "we need a right-wing social network where our death threats don't have to get moderated" argument, so let's see if a few more attempts that are in more good faith get blocked by Apple before I care too much there...
The problem with how far these big chunks of their voter base have gone into extremism is that it really undermines their complaints about being treated unfairly. If I'd predicted even a year ago that people would get shot storming the capital over unsubstantiated claims of fraud that Trump himself had stirred for the better part of a year I'd have been mocked even by "moderate" Republicans as having "trump derangment syndrome" and told I was being unfair to Trump by assuming he would act so badly... and yet here we are. At some point we have to start dealing with Trump, and his base, for who they actually are now, not just in idealistic terms of "Repubs and Dems are the same, just on opposite sides."
The people in power today in the Federal government are the Republicans, with the exception of the House of Representatives.
It may be that the people in power will make it harder in the future for the opposition party to win, but at a grassroots level there is still substantial traction for a moderate/conservative party.
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and sticking to the rules when posting here, we'd be grateful.
In practice that means everyone else - voters who don’t vote republicans - are getting screwed out of fair representation.
And the trend is only accelerating because each incremental increase in power is leveraged to entrench minority rule. For example:
- Conservative supreme court suspended the Voting Rights Act, freeing states to deploy previously illegal voter suppression tactics against Black voters.
- Senate majority leveraged to pack federal courts with partisan judges, making it harder to challenge voter suppression in court.
- State legislature majorities leveraged to deploy extreme gerrymandering, further entrenching unrepresentative seats in the US house of representatives.
- State legislature majorities leveraged to weaken voter protection laws, and lower the requirements for transparency in campaign financing. This in turn entrenches an electoral advantage in both state and federal elections (which are run by states).
- Leverage state executive power to further weaken voter suppression. A recent example of this is the 2018 gubernatorial election in Georgia, where the Republican secretary of state was also a candidate, and purged record numbers of voters from the rolls in majority democrat districts; warned the public about a “suspected hacking attempt by the democratic party” on the official government website; oversaw record numbers of voters turned away in democratic districts; etc.
In summary, the data shows that Republicans are simply not popular enough to justify their current hold of power. They owe their victories to a systematic strategy of minority rule, which is inherently anti-democratic.
I'm exhausted of these conspiracy theories of "the other side doesn't like me", and offering absolutely zero proof/evidence of their claims. "Somebody did something I don't agree with, so there must be a hidden agenda." The problem is that anyone that believes in these conspiracies will absolutely not listen to counter-evidence. To them, it is all just part of the cover up. I'm not saying give up trying to counter them, but it is absolutely tiring.
Edit: Hit submit too soon
The latter doesn't seem to be a problem and also looks to be the case here.
Quite the hyperbole without any evidence. Where is the evidence that they have demanded for censorship? Or have done so in the past where a democrat has censored a social media website? Absolutely none.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/4/21549859/twitter-suspend-...
Have they called out for censorship of things that were critical of them? No? Did they have a committee to investigate that?
Did they meet for dinners with Facebook executives? Oh wait, the Republicans were the one that did that.
Not that that helps the original poster's point. The Democrats have been mad at FB and Twitter for much longer than the Republicans have!
Fox News has been moving left & was the first network to call Arizona for Biden very early as a suppression tactic. Conservatives are moving to Newsmax, OAN, & independent journalist outfits.
This is nonsensical. How is a call after after voting has ended a "suppression tactic"?
The talking point you're probably looking for is "polls were skewed intentionally as a suppression tactic" but even that's not so compelling given 2012's miss in most of the late polling in favor of Romney.
The call was before voting had ended. Does it make sense to you now?
> The talking point you're probably looking for is "polls were skewed intentionally as a suppression tactic"
Given widespread distrust of pollsters, I'm not sure effective polls are at suppression. Biased polling are effective at propping up certain media narratives.
No, it wasn’t. AZ polls closed at 7pm local time, Fox’s call was ~11:20pm EDT, which is 20 minutes after any polling locations in the Navajo Nation (which uses daylight time) closed, and 80 minutes after those in the rest of the state closed.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-10-18/facebo...
And former FAANG execs filling the Biden transition team, e.g. Zaid Zaid, Christopher Upperman, Rachel Lieber, Deon Scott:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/30/biden-transition-fa...
1. Franklin Graham 2. Dan Bongino 3. Fox News 4. Ben Shapiro 5. Dan Bongino 6. Ben Shapiro 7. Dan Bongino 8. TWICE 9. The New York Times 10. Ben Shapiro
Source: https://twitter.com/facebookstop10/status/134939331795225395...
If FB was overwhelmingly left leaning, why are almost all of its most popular posts from right wing outlets?
You’re extrapolating a lot here. Silicon Valley employees support Democrats, therefore any censorship Silicon Valley firms do is at the orders of the Democratic Party? Show the evidence of that.
Ignoring what the (largely powerless) ground level employees of the tech giants do, the chief execs of these companies lobby both Democrats and Republicans. No matter who is in power, money talks. I suspect that’s why even though there’s a huge amount of evidence that folks like Ben Shapiro have violated FB rules for gaming the feed there has been no action taken. FB has spent the last four years courting Republicans, now they’ll court Democrats.
That’s the real problem but it’s certainly easier to pretend it’s a party-specific problem that would solved if only the other people were in charge.
Silicon Valley overwhelmingly supports Democratic politicians. But Silicon Valley is also one of the most welcoming ears for the kinds of reforms that would upend the current party system, to wit proportional representation and non-plurality voting. That's a pretty big asterisk: nobody in North Korea can get away with promoting reforms that would destroy the party system!
It's also worth noting that the reason that Silicon Valley appears to, by their silence, always support the status quo, is because the tech companies know you hate them. Having the motto "Don't be evil" implies an understood risk of being evil. FANGMOAT knows that if they support any dramatic reform, there is a severe risk of a backlash effect that reduces support for that reform.
As such, the idea that tech companies serve as a power projection mechanism for the Democratic Party is in my opinion a coincidence of temporarily aligned motives and not a true ideological alliance. Tech company employees support the Democrats for a variety of reasons, but, in particular, many become pro-immigrant by meeting a few of them and most understand that climate science is not a conspiracy.
Then of course there are the actual harmful effects of social media on human beings as distinguished from supposed communist infiltration. That generates plenty of resentment as well.
Then there's the fact that in many cases tech companies make products that are ultimately used by employers to track and control their employees ("business intelligence") and which serve as opaque arbiters of things like paychecks, time clocks and tax forms. This isn't Google, of course, but tech companies serve as a mascot for the digital revolution at large, hence the mythology surrounding Bill Gates. Many if not most of the annoyances of computerization get blamed on the tech industry, fairly or not.