It's chilling how quickly the tech industry has coalesced around oppressive and biased social media censorship policies. A scant few years ago, the tech industry was a beacon of free expression.
These things are fine for the town square, since people have free speech, but nobody should be handing them a megaphone that reaches 7 billion people.
Free speech does not mean you are entitled to have your speech broadcast to a global audience.
If social networks were largely just content crafted by the people I follow, it would then be more representative towards a digital representation of the in-person social structures that would or do exist.
They make much less money that way though. Your average user would probably also use it less.
But those same folks will happily excuse the whole BLM/Antifa rioting during 2020 where billions of dollars in property damage was caused and dozens of people died.
All of these topics you've mentioned are and always have been far away from trending ('amplified', 'normalized') pages. You can't go anywhere on these sites and see these topics without searching for them, and when you do the hashtags are either immediately taken over by the rest of the users on the site or taken off of trending deliberately by administrators, often both. Can you provide one example of these topics consistently being 'amplified' or 'normalized' by one of the major tech platforms? I'm talking public content, not private groups. Posts that are 'amplified', not just present. You can find posts from anyone about anything online, so I don't really see what separates these private facebook groups from something like a mailing list. It doesn't seem "normalized" at all.
Facebook exercises editorial control (moderation) of what user-provided content is published on its site. Therefore if something is there, it’s because their moderation system allowed it to be there. I don’t use Facebook myself so I can’t provide a first-hand example, but it’s increasingly being reported that this content spreads virally through these platforms’ recommendation rabbit-holes and through promotion by end users.
All that said, if we can make our way past the obvious consequences of limiting speech we might get to a more interesting place. In particular I’m more interested in how social media moderation might change our opinions and laws about speech itself. Does everyone’s speech deserve to be treated the same way by the algorithms that decide what gets traction and what doesn’t? Should the algorithms or platforms themselves be restricted in their “speech” in some way? How do we square our desire to allow corporations to develop algorithms to increase commerce when those same algorithms also necessarily foment rage and violence?
I don’t think it’s worth arguing whether free speech is worth protecting (it is, despite the evils you also have to protect) but I do think it’s worth considering how we think about what constitutes speech when commerce, social media platforms, and algorithms come into play.
It wasn't. Not since the 00s and at that point social media was small enough that rooting for the underdog was rooting for themselves.
I suppose not, seeing as one is a fantasy and the other clearly had the police paying attention to their plans. Besides, neither has attempted a coup to overturn an election so it's not really the same is it?
With men like these deliberately egging on rioters, it's no wonder a protest turned violent.
> Activists in Utah have spent months condemning Sullivan, who has at turns identified himself as a racial justice protester and leftist documentarian, and they have warned others to be leery of his motives and any events he sponsored.
> He held rallies featuring Black organizers. But attendees said one demonstration also featured members of the Proud Boys, an all-male extremist group with ties to white nationalism. The Proud Boys who attended, organizers said, told the crowd they wished to make peace with Black activists.
> Later in the summer, Sullivan helped organize a pro-gun-rights rally and marched with self-styled militia members at the Utah Capitol, KSL-TV reported, further infuriating Black activists.
> Sullivan’s reputation as an agitator and bad actor has followed him into other protest circles. In encrypted chats among left-leaning activists, organizers routinely flag posts by Sullivan to new members, saying, “Don’t trust that guy” and, pointing to his past ties with the Proud Boys, “He’s a double agent.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/16/sullivan-vi...
"Our mob can be incited to kill a cop by a single probably-not-really-antifa infiltrator tagging along" is a hell of a way to argue they're not dangerous.
https://www.air.tv/watch?v=wZAuX4HmTK6WCuGoqPLB4w
"We fought against white militia. [expletive]. We are going to rip Trump out of office. We are going to rip that [expletive]. "
The left may have abandoned this guy now after his arrest and are busy deflecting all association, but he was most definitely an "anti-trump" activist.
It takes just a couple of people to incite a riot honestly and this guy is an expert who was egging people on while standing safe.
Nah, long before that. From November, for example: https://twitter.com/RebellionBaby/status/1331902008765206528
> It takes just a couple of people to incite a riot honestly and this guy is an expert who was egging people on while standing safe.
Who mentioned Trump?
This is the problem. You asked if people really don't believe that antifa is real. Obviously it is real in some sense since we are talking about something called antifa, but we have no idea if you are thinking of the bogeyman organization that doesn't exist, and I am thinking of a philosophy of counterprotest.
When people talk about 'getting rid of antifa' there's a reason that so many people on the left laugh. It's because there is a false conception on the right that it is some sort of unified organization like the ACLU or NRA where you can literally be a card carrying member. People on the left understand that there is no such thing, it is just an ill-defined idea.
Trump had to shelter in the bunker, but he was just a coward, and the people were just demanding justice.
> Then came darkness, and with it, another night of mayhem. In the park, protesters faced the familiar pop, pop, pop of pepper bullets and stinging clouds of tear gas meant to push back hundreds of them as they tried, again and again, to break through the police barricades set up around President Trump’s home.
> Later, American flags and parked cars and buildings were lit ablaze — including St. John’s Church, a historic landmark opened in 1816 and attended by every president since James Madison. Firefighters quickly extinguished the basement fire, which police said was intentionally set.
Protesters then, as on Jan 6th, tried to entice officers to take their side;
> A black officer, according to witnesses, briefly took a knee in solidarity with the protesters, who cheered.
> Not long after, another officer made an announcement on a megaphone: “Attention: We will continue to move back unless you break the police line.”
> And again, cheering from the protesters, many of whom appeared to want the officers to join them rather than fight with them.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/31/fires-light-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/us/politics/washington-dc...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/dc-braces-for-third-day...
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that if white supremacists performed those same actions, it would be described as a violent terroristic insurrection.
What exactly is so sacrosanct about elections that disputing them is an insurrection, but not storming Senate chambers to stop a Supreme Court confirmation, trying to storm the WH, or literally declaring an autonomous zone not subject to the US government?
It’s hard for me to understand how this is not simply nit picking some insubstantial detail and using it to put the things we like on one side and the things we don’t like on another. Never mind that the election nor the integrity thereof were ever remotely threatened by these riots.
In fact these were really violent, dangerous protests and god knows what would have happened if they had breached the fences. Likely a lot of dead protestors and a major regime legitimacy crisis.
The night prior, more than 60 Secret Service personnel were injured from thrown bricks, rocks, bottles and fireworks, officials said.
"Secret Service personnel were also directly physically assaulted as they were kicked, punched, and exposed to bodily fluids," the Secret Service said. "A total of 11 injured employees were transported to a local hospital and treated for non-life threatening injuries."[1]
It's impossible to play the counterfactual, but I have to believe months of extremely violent political protests being tacitly allowed/encouraged sent a signal to many in the country that violent political protests are ok or even good, or at least what the other side has coming to them.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/08/politics/white-house-fence-bl...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/may/31/fires-light-...
[2] https://abcnews.go.com/US/george-floyd-protest-updates-joe-b...
The whole point of the military doing anything short of all out war is to scare an "enemy" into compliance through threat of violence. So it's not classified as terrorism for the same reason as lethal action by police is not murder. The blessing of the state changes its definition.
If you actively object the biggest military in the world, there is no safe place on this planet. A country that effectively uses black op sites to do torture on suspects that would be illegal back home, a country that actively uses a prison to indefinitely detain (and torture) suspects without any legal process (and so on and on... really, there are whole books about this), has absolutely 0 issues with bombing some enemy general. It can be even in the centre of Brusel for all they care, if the benefits outweigh the cons. If they kill 50 kids along, all they do is try to minimize media damage. Do you see many americans shedding tears over this? From outside its pretty hard to spot any, and anybody who cares knows how things are.
Let's not pretend wars are something nice, fair and some gentlemanly approach is applied. Almost anything that works will be used.
Note the statistics here [0] - of course the numbers are very fuzzy but at the worst case scenario it's 1:2.5 civilians: military targets. So for every 2.5 military targets, 1 civilian. That fits the bill for extreme and indiscriminate.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drone_strikes_in_Pakistan
Also, one needs to indicate the difference between e.g. a hospital building acting as nothing but a hospital, and one that has been evacuated of patients and used as a militant staging post.
I doesn't matter what they do, commit war-crimes, liberate people from democracy(to free the people) and install dictators, fund terrorists, lie to the international community about wars, kill people in embassies, it doesn't matter. It is you who are at fault, for not being able to understand their deeper moral motives.
Everything that the enemy does, that is either illegal or it's just lies and propaganda to improve their image. They can do nothing right.
Now, With this context you can understand very clearly how to think and feel about who the terrorists are and who the bad guys are.
Too long, didn't listen: If you rob with a little ship, you're a "pirate", but if you steal with a big fleet, thou art "emperor".
The popular view of it, especially on the Right? A fiction deliberately constructed by right-wing media (notably Fox News) and the Trump Administration.
> Wasn’t it fully supported by BLM
BLM isn’t a single, unified organization, so “fully supported by BLM” isn’t a meaningful phrase. The protests which spawned what was briefly called (by unknown persons) CHAZ before being renamed the Capitol Hill Organized Protest specifically to emphatically repudiate the implication of seditious intent were organized in part by activists identifying with the BLM movement.
> and a literal sedition zone against the democratically elected government?
Nope. Fairly good discussion here: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/06/15/dont-liste...
"If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire [...] to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States"
Using violent attacks and arson to force a federal courthouse to close down would seem to fit that definition.
While it's true that the reason the mob attacked the Capitol was arguably worse, both antifa and the Trump mob attacked federal buildings and tried to harm those guarding them.
Also, regarding your source: our media has sadly divided into two, so no resource you list will convince anyone.
Either they already read the resource, and so already agree with you, or they don't read it and know better than to trust it, since it's a partisan source.
We would all do better to stop encouraging open partisanship among the media, and reward non-partisan perspectives. NB: this doesn't have to mean non-opinionated perspectives, although those should be clearly labeled as editorials (now, editorials have blended with news).
> The zone was a self-organized space, without official leadership. Protesters united behind three main demands:
> 1. cut Seattle's $409 million police budget by 50 percent,
> 2. shift funding to community programs and services in historically black communities, and
> 3. ensure that protesters would not be charged with crimes.
Is that what you meant?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Zone
If we get a more transparent and verifiable election system in light of (or perhaps in spite of) the assault on capitol hill, then is it somehow justified? I certainly don't think so.
I don't think anyone should be screaming to melt down the government or set up their own, but let's be clear there is a difference in both degree and kind from BLM to the Capitol Insurrection: BLM protestors were driven by actual instances of racism--dozens, if not hundreds of people killed by police--and fundamentally wanted accountability for that blatant police misconduct, and Capitol Insurrectionists were driven by nothing more than lies and wanted to assassinate the legislative branch and install a dictator. We both know that "more transparency" and a "more verifiable" election system isn't going to make the crazies go away. They rejected election results outright because there must have been fraud.
If there are other accounts doing this, I'd like to know who they are (irrespective of which politics they're for or against). It's impossible for us to look at the history of every account posting like this, but this is a serious problem and it's getting worse, so we're raising the bar.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
A scant few years ago, they lacked a direct communications channel by which they could radicalize the average American.
What you typed bears little resemblance to anything I claimed.
Yes, I lumped hostile foreign countries in with other sorts of hostile actors. However, I did not claim that they were the only kinds of hostile actors. Nor did I even claim that they were the worst.
Summarizing my views as "the Russians cause everything" is... just wow.