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Comment by headhasthoughts | Hacker News Reader

Libel isn't legal in the US.

> In since-deleted tweets, the account specifically accused Chasten Buttigieg and The Trevor Project organization of grooming.[40][32][94]

And outright misinformation isn't really an "ideological difference."

> The account has been criticized for spreading hoaxes, including the litter boxes in schools hoax about bathrooms accommodations for students that identified as cats, and a false claim that students in a second-grade class in Austin, Texas were being taught about furries.[12][95][94]

Outright lies are destructive to "public square"-style communication, and Twitter definitely can't be seen, legally, facilitating libel.

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> > In since-deleted tweets, the account specifically accused Chasten Buttigieg and The Trevor Project organization of grooming.[40][32][94]

Leftists accuse conservatives of far worse things than that without ever getting censored. Leftists can event threaten other peoples' lives without getting censored: https://www.dailywire.com/news/7-twitter-accounts-that-have-...

Is it worse to be called a groomer or a Nazi? I guess, if you're twitter, it's worse to call a leftist a groomer than it is to call a conservative a Nazi. @NYCAntifa clearly gets away with the latter!

Libs of tik tok spread the misinformation, but they didn't create it. They cited someone else. If you don't think it's ok to cite someone else, later find out they lied, and then retract your statement, well, you probably have two standards, one for yourself and one for people you disagree with.

> Outright lies are destructive to "public square"-style communication, and Twitter definitely can't be seen, legally, facilitating libel.

It's amazing how many lies come from the left and never see any twitter censorship: https://www.dailywire.com/news/numerous-leftists-on-twitter-...

>Is it worse to be called a groomer or a Nazi? I guess, if you're twitter, it's worse to call a leftist a groomer than it is to call a conservative a Nazi.

"Groomer" is a noun that describes someone's actions. "Nazi" is a noun that describes someone's political beliefs. It is absolutely worse to be called a "groomer" because that is a direct claim of immoral and often illegal behavior. "You are doing something bad" is a more serious accusation than "you believe something bad".

If your belief system allows you to support genocide, does that make you better than someone who is doing something bad now that doesn't support genocide? No, I don't think your moral compass is any less subjective than mine, here. People act on and are motivated by their beliefs, and, if you're a Nazi, you're going to do things that move the world in a particular direction.

And, here is an article talking about how the Trevor project "does" groom people: https://personandidentity.com/mother-of-trans-child-poses-as...

And another on the same story: https://pitt.substack.com/p/the-trevor-project-undercover-mo...

Are those going to get censored if I post them on twitter?

>If your belief system allows you to support genocide, does that make you better than someone who is doing something bad now that doesn't support genocide?

Many people who use the term "groomers" as loosely as LibsOfTikTok already think of this "grooming" as equivalent to a genocide. That is my point. "Groomers" implies that the bad is already happening while "Nazi" implies the bad is a belief with undefined actions. It is the difference between being call a murderer and a psychopath. One says you already did something bad. The other says you might be capable of something bad.

False accusations of being a Nazi have on occasion led to successful libel claims, so I’m not sure it a whole lot less serious than a false accusation of child abuse (if that’s what groomer is supposed to mean).

To groom is to "prepare or train (someone) for a particular purpose or activity."

It also has a more specific definition: "the act of deliberately establishing an emotional connection with a child to prepare the child for child abuse".

Today, I think people are using the word to mean a hybrid of the above two definitions, namely, to train or indoctrinate a child into sexual deviancy, even if the person doing the grooming does not take part in it directly.

I think some uses today are also just synonyms for indoctrination, which fits only within the more general definition of grooming.

>False accusations of being a Nazi have on occasion led to successful libel claims

False accusations of child abuse have on occasion led to jail time for the false accuser.

> Is it worse to be called a groomer or a Nazi? I guess, if you're twitter, it's worse to call a leftist a groomer than it is to call a conservative a Nazi. @NYCAntifa clearly gets away with the latter!

I can see why you are being downvoted, but I've been observing this trend lately too. Its popular on some social media sites to call half of the country nazis or at least nazi sympathizers.

Neither side has clean hands, but this vilification is extremely harmful.

>Libel isn't legal in the US.

In order for something to be libel, you have to know it is false and intend for people to believe it is true. The litter box story for example was spread by a trolling organization with the intention of fooling people like LoTT and Tucker. It's not libel because they fell for it — it's stupid, but it's not libel. Likewise, the criticism of the The Trevor Project likely reflects a sincerely held belief that the known activities of TTP constitute "grooming", and not a measurable claim that TTP staff are actively engaging in activities conventionally understood as pedophilia. Also not libel.

This is not true.

Defamation (libel and slander) in the US is distinct depending on how well known the victim is. For a famous victim, yes you must essentially know the statement was false.

But if the victim is not a public individual, you need only act with negligence (e.g. violate the reasonable person standard). The litter box story, for example, doesn't involve famous people, it's like random local school districts, and no reasonable person would believe it to be true. The Trevor project likely does constitute a public organization, so the standard is higher, but only requires actual malice, which means "reckless disregard" for the truth of the statements. It's probably not met, because it is a high standard, but it doesn't actually require that they know themselves to be lying.

libsoftiktok literally just puts an eye on content other people choose to make public to begin with

That’s laughably false - take a peek at some of their tweets, shedloads of transphobic hate sprinkled with a bit of targeted harassment:

https://github.com/salcoast/deleted-tweets-archive/blob/main...

Well okay, a paraphrase-transcription aswell.

I do agree that the content that particular user finds and shows to me is very disturbing, especially given that it is often teachers taking care of very impressionable people(children) in a position of authority.

Are we looking at the same page? The majority of these are just a person frothing mad about a grand conspiracy of teachers who will stop at nothing until they have "trans"-ed all kids. They're completely unhinged

is that why the teachers are crying due to the actual parents getting a glimpse into the school?

I can't make head nor tail of what you're saying. Can you try again, please?

This is not an accurate representation of what LibsofTiktok is and what content they post.

There are specifics about what false claims. All they do is repost TikTok’s insanity.

In some ways, LibsofTiktok has done world a whole lot of good, by exposing and immunizing against extreme left ideologies that even the most devout progressives reject.

We need more of this that exposed extremes of either ideology. Because clearly the media has totally failed to do this.

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