It's interesting to see the comments from people who supported Youtube/Twitter/FB/Patreon/Visa political censorship, but are suddenly against the porn censorship by the payment same systems.
"Rules for thee, but not for me."
"Rules for thee, but not for me."
This speaks to the need for censor proof payments systems that can still accommodate KYC and AML requirements (so you’re not violating financial regs and end up closing up shop). Stablecoins perhaps? I leave that to the domain experts.
TLDR Disintermediate legacy payment systems without breaking the law.
I'm all for Twitter choosing what they will allow - if anything the more aggressive they are, the more space it creates for competition.
I'm on the other hand not for payment providers even being allowed to choose, because their position then makes them effective arbiter of what kinds of businesses are allowed to exist without democratic oversight.
For all the power the social networks have, it's nothing like that.
Maybe crypto will change that, but today threatening to withdraw payment processing is an existential threat for a lot of online businesses which gives payment networks undue power.
That said, the same people made the same arguments ("private businesses, no rules should apply") with payment providers boycotting Gab, but turn around now. Will they learn that political pressure via businesses is a bad idea because it might affect them next? Doubtful, they haven't learned it the first few times.
It's meaningless to suggest they had one.
And I'm a concrete example of someone who considers Gab a haven of extremism, but who still believes payment processors should not be allowed to boycott legal businesses.
The WSJ imagines pewdiepie to be Hitler incarnate? Advertisers pull their ads and Disney has to cut ties. Not because they think pewdiepie is a Nazi, but because there's only one "choice".
This is nothing new, it's been done before, but it hurts a different group this time, so the people who celebrated these same actions are now angry that this kind of thing is allowed to happen.
The competition is not apples to apples. Instead, you have ideological bubbles like Gab, and you have the incumbent network (Twitter) which "normies" use by default.
The problem with the default network applying ideological censorship is that it limits the average person's exposure to the marketplace of ideas. In the context of a controversial topic, this benefits the default narrative tremendously.
If we want to reduce ideological conflict, it's imperative to respect alternative viewpoints and engage them as equals. Otherwise, we risk alienating people into becoming extremists, or worse, we allow the authorities (who work closely with censors and fact checkers) to control the Overton window and propagandize us away from the truth.
Ok, demonstrate that by creating a YT competitor with 2 billion users.
Then tell us how possible it is.
Yeah, there are vastly inferior alternatives which almost nobody uses (Bitchute, Minds, cryptocurrencies), but that cuts you off from the vast audience that they've monopolized. An audience that want to read you and wants to pay you, evident by the vast number of subscribers and payments.
Network effects matter.
Twitter stats are a good example of this. Look at the stats for your individual tweets. I have an account with 45k. I can beat the organic exposure for a tweet with 1-2 USD of ads.
That's not to say the big networks have no value, and you could end up one of the lucky ones with huge exposure.
But they remain giants because people keep thinking they're much more important than they are.
They are important if you get big on them. The vast majority will never get big or even mid sized on them.
There is the often repeated "imagine your worst enemy had this power" but it doesn't seem to get through to people.
The number of users is important, and they have monopolies on the user base.
Learn about network effects.
If you're de-platformed from YouTube, Facebook, etc, you can still publish your content and share it. You have a distribution issue, you don't have an "ability to perform" issue.
If you're locked out of the banking system, your business is done. You lack transactional alternatives.
That comparison doesn't work because calling to storm the Whitehouse is calling on people to perform an illegal act which is illegal by itself. I think everyone is in agreement that platforms should remove content that is illegal.
Yes. Including child pornography that Twitter seems to find it difficult to remove off of their platform. [0] [1] [2]
[0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/6/30/india-twitter-kashm...
[1] https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-rules-twitter-can-be-su...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-20/twitter-f...
There were many, many lawsuits all of which were heard in court and ruled on.
No. Most of those lawsuits were thrown out without rulings. Generally, not enough process was given to investigate these allegations, which is why half the country supported Trump on Jan 6 until things got violent and moderates got cold feet.
> A girl pleasuring herself isn’t the same thing as encouraging people to storm the White House and overthrow democracy
Enough with the hyperbole, the FBI has already stated they found little evidence of a grand conspiracy to overthrow the govt [1], despite the fact we know that the Oathkeepers' leader is actually an FBI operative or informant [2]
[1] https://www.salon.com/2021/08/20/fbi-finds-little-evidence-j...
[2] https://www.revolver.news/2021/06/stewart-rhodes-oath-keeper...
>The officials did note that far-right groups – like the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and Three Percenters – may have collaborated in breaching the Capitol on the day of the riot.
These aren't scrubs either. Some of them are ex-military, armed civilians coordinating with other groups to breach the capitol and take hostages. This is not hyperbole, it's fact. Just because they didn't succeed doesn't mean it wasn't real.
This was not a protest or a riot, they intended to disrupt the normal order of governance.
Why would they storm the white house? Trump was there...they wanted to keep him there by intimidating politicians at the Capital to not certify the election. Stop watching Fox News / OAN / NewsMax (and CNN/etc while you're at it.) I am not delusional enough to think that Biden (or any politician) are in it for anything other than power. The difference between Trump and all the "professional" politicians is that when they lose, they don't decide to throw a temper tantrum and incite an insurrection. Storming the Capital was 100% an insurrection.
Definition of insurrection : an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government
It's time to stop identifying as republican/democrat and start being an American. The institution of gov't and it's continuity matters more than the party in power. Trump tarnished the election process and the institution of American gov't. There are plenty of problems with our gov't caused by both sides (largely caused by bribery (I mean 'lobbying')) but maybe it's time to stop with the partisan bullshit and find common ground.
Let's also not forget about Stacy Abrams and Bush. There's even the whole Kennedy election controversy.
Weirdly enough, had smartphones not became a thing, I think Facebook Games would of possibly become the next Steam. It's a shame Facebook couldnt get their Games to take off as big as it once did, they would of produced an entirely different company.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/secret-service-moved...
Its also a bit of a non-sequitur to the thread’s discussion.
Speaking of, no cops were killed by the Capitol protestors. See https://www.cbsnews.com/news/brian-sicknick-capitol-riot-die..., the medical examiner determined that he died of natural causes unrelated to his duties. Please don't spread fake news.
That’s a pretty loaded statement. It’s strange to me that someone can take a provable fact (e.g. COVID-19 is real), politicize it, and now spreading that misinformation is painted as political speech that should be protected.
Exactly the same thing how YouTube demonetises specific individuals who use the platform for a living for content that is skewed to a certain political audience.
Do they now realise that this can happen to anyone? As for payment solutions, this is the whole point of cryptocurrencies that will solve this eventually.
I hate this argument, it is so easy to say: people were against before and they are in favor now. Without proving that the people who were against are the SAME people that are in favor of it.
For example, people wanted mask at the beginning and now they don't wear them. People support Facebook censorship but are against when it is for porn. People wanted a vaccine but now they dont want to take it. People protested against motorbike sounds yesterday and they protest in favor of motorbikes today
Sorry but what tell you that they are the same people ? Without that this is just wrong