It’s great to see not only this ruling but balanced reporting on it from NYT. I’m optimistic that the turn towards accepting tyranny is finally ending.
The opinion NYT is reporting on is clear that the censorship in question went beyond Covid: "Their content touched on a host of divisive topics like the COVID-19 lab-leak theory, pandemic lockdowns, vaccine side-effects, election fraud, and the Hunter Biden laptop story" ... "Individual Plaintiffs seek to express views—and have been censored for their views—on topics well beyond COVID-19, including allegations of election fraud and the Hunter Biden laptop story."
Yet the NYT only mentions covid and the discourse on HN-- which at the moment is substantially making excuses for the administration on the basis of "but covid!"-- is worse off for it.
https://twitter.com/JamesSurowiecki/status/17005123233188249...
> The Fifth Circuit Court has now held that it's unconstitutional for the federal govt to influence platforms' moderation decisions, while also holding it's constitutional for Texas to compel platforms to leave up content they want to take down. Impossible to square that circle.
The fact that the NYT article only touches on one point has turned the HN thread into a debate over if tweets about masking, vaccine cardiac side effects, or whatever were right or wrong.
But that's immaterial to the law here and it's important because there is clear polarization between posters on the underlying facts. But we don't have to agree on the substance of the censored speech to recognize that the state's use of coercion to suppress views it disagreed with is plainly unlawful. The 1A doesn't only apply when we agree with the speech being protected -- in fact it's most important when we don't: Speech almost everyone agrees with is going to get communicated no matter what the government does to censor it, it's unpopular views that are the most in need of 1A protection.
So I think NYT does us a disservice by falsely portraying this as being about 'covid misinformation', as it invites everyone to substitute a discussion about the states power to censor here with yet another debate on covid -- a debate itself which has been tainted by politics and censorship.
Objectively it is different.
Additionally you are going to have a hard time justifying that the federal government shouldn't do anything about disinformation. We cannot allow foreign adversaries to include our politics by saying "but the first amendment".
So while we cannot be too broad with our actions and any action should be carefully monitored for violation it isn't fundamental that the government cannot say "please don't give a platform to disinformation".
Generally speaking most of the things involved weren't deleted but deplatformed. Most commonly by not recommending them or adding a warning to them.
Deletion did occur but my understanding was it wasn't a significant portion of the actions taken by platforms.
Don't agree at all. Especially when the very same public health "experts" proved themselves entirely incompetent fools who don't understand their own data.
What these "experts" did was absolutely insane. It blows my mind so many people went along with it with nary a hint of intellectual curiosity and still to this day defend it.
But calling it overall insane and pretending everyone was ignorant at the time only makes sense if you are ignoring everything that wasn't eventually confirmed true.
Me I tried to figure out what mitigations were needed and decided it wasn't knowable so did them all until the picture became clearer.
[1] CDC thought the next big pandemic was going to be influenza. And then got hit with something different. But then executed as if it was. Bonus for about 50 years they didn't fund any research on how influenza and other respiratory viruses spread either.
No, "we" don't agree in the slightest. In fact, in my view, a "crisis" is exactly when government boundaries are most important and need to be strictly enforced, not relaxed, in order to prevent significant abuse.
You can argue what boundaries should be relaxed and how far to relax them but "hold the government to a tighter standard ahead of time during a crisis" is the opposite of helpful.
We normally hold the government to a strict limit due to there being no time limit.
I never said anything about "going slower," I disagreed with your assertion that "we all agree" that government should be allowed to "overstep bounds" in a crisis. I am unsure why you think speed of action implies violating boundaries. Speed up your crisis response all you want, but do so within established boundaries.
> You can argue what boundaries should be relaxed and how far to relax them
I can argue whatever I want. And my argument is that no boundaries whatsoever should be "relaxed" for any reason. Ever.
> We normally hold the government to a strict limit due to there being no time limit.
No, we hold the government to strict limits because we have seen throughout history what governments that are not held to strict limits do to people during times of "crisis" and "emergency."
Exactly what is going on is what you want, you don't need to add "they shouldn't have done anything in the first place" as if they very act of trying to prevent misinformation that was actively leading to the spread of a contagious virus was fundamentally flawed.
An unsubstantiated and highly arguable claim.
> that was actively leading to the spread of a contagious virus
Again, so you claim.
And, yes, it was "fundamentally flawed" either way because it involved government exercising powers it has no right to exercise.
There is nuance in the laptop story. There were things said that were objectively disinformation so if those things were targeted it could make sense.
Now the White House ideally would have kept and arms length to put forward a "not protecting my own" attitude but there is a wide gap between ideally and illegal coercion.
People who said wrong thing may have committed crimes or subjected themselves to liability for doing so-- freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences. But the government doesn't get to go shutting down speech it deems wrong if it did the first amendment would have no force, because inevitably whatever is censored is viewed as "wrong" in some respect by whomever is doing the censoring.
They were deplatformed. You don't have a first amendment right to use platforms as you like and those platforms have the same first amendment right you do to decide what is brought forward as emphasized by that platform.
Should the government be allowed to influence that and in what way is an interesting question but it is less the end users rights and more the platforms rights in question here.
Getting removed from the algorithm isn't censorship.
It's uncontroversial that the government cannot lawfully force private parties to do what it cannot lawfully do itself. The controversy here is mostly over if the governments actions were sufficiently coercive here for this to apply.
which is a penalty for "lying" and prevents them from saying "wrong" things.
in that time What's "wrong" and what's a "lie" could change within a few weeks (do masks help? in march 2020 people were called lunatics for believing so, in October 2020 people were called lunatics for not believing so. or consider the absurd psyop about the accidental lab leak hypothesis)
The NYTimes ran one such article about a week ago on China. The “fact checking” done by orgs like VoxUkraine amounts to similar alignment tests as well. You would think the results showing widespread wrongthink by your own population would be an indication of disagreement rather than a disinformation campaign working on a citizenry already justifiably motivated against Russia: https://voxukraine.org/en/the-ability-of-ukrainians-to-disti...
> Research Results
> Overall, the majority of respondents, both in Ukraine and abroad, agreed with pro-Ukrainian messages and disagreed with pro-Russian ones. This indicates a general tendency of the population to distinguish Russian propaganda narratives. However, when analyzing each narrative separately, the following concerning signals were noticeable:
> 43% of respondents in Ukraine and 36% abroad disagreed with the statement “Nazi and/or neo-Nazi ideology is not widespread in Ukraine”;
> 29% of respondents in Ukraine and 35% abroad disagreed with the statement “The Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine in 2013-2014 was NOT a coup”;
> 26% of respondents in Ukraine and 29% abroad agreed with the statement “Russia is fighting against the West/NATO in Ukraine”;
> 25% of respondents in Ukraine and 29% abroad agreed with the statement “The West is using Ukraine for its own purposes in the war against Russia”;
> 32% of respondents abroad agreed with the statement “Russian speakers are oppressed in Ukraine”.
This is all to say that I think your optimism is misplaced.
You are phrasing this as "being on Russia's side means you believe the propaganda" as if that somehow turns it into not a disinformation campaign.
How can something be disinformation in that mindset? You eliminated the category completely.
You phrase as if it is a marginal thing showing their bias is showing at the top, but then go to list the most egregious examples of disinformation as evidence... I mean at least your last three aren't explicitly false, so not all disinformation.
Disinformation is about false statements.
Neo-Nazi ideology being in Ukraine hasn't been meaningfully backed up by Russia nor is their any international precedent for such a thing being a justification for invasion. Remember the Nazis invaded first.
Revolution of Dignity was a coup by definition. If Hong Kong declared it was independent of China it would be a coup. It doesn't matter your feelings on the treaty saying it would be X years before control was taken or anything of that nature. Unilaterally leaving a parent entity is the meaning of coup.
Proxy wars are weird so your next two questions are odd. There is ambiguity in the question. Is the West using Ukraine to reduce Russia's power acting as a sort of proxy war? Certainly but since Ukraine is objectively the defender here that doesn't seem problematic, the alternative would be to let be invaded which while bad for the West is also bad for Ukraine.
I don't have any data on suppression based on language but also don't think mistreatment justifies invasion. We have economic pain points to push instead.
> A coup d'état, or simply a coup, is an illegal and overt attempt by the military or other government elites to unseat the incumbent leader by force. A self-coup is when a leader, having come to power through legal means, tries to stay in power through illegal means.
The proper turn when an existing power structure attempts to detach itself from its superiors is secession
Secession would have been before China took direct control. At this point any "secession" wouldn't come from the government.
> How can something be disinformation in that mindset? You eliminated the category completely.
Not at all. VoxUkraine state accurately, though as a minor point I would dispute the terminology somewhat, that there is "pro-Ukraine" and "pro-Russia" propaganda. The truth or falsehood of individual pieces of each side's propaganda is a separate matter. As an extension, it's also the case that one side's propaganda may use lies to promote statements that are nonetheless true! If you insist on the "disinformation" label, then I think we often must go into Rumsfeld-ian territory and talk of "true disinformation" and "false disinformation".
So my original point was, statements may be true/false regardless of whether they are part of an evil/enemy/exaggerating propaganda campaign (likewise, statements may be false/true regardless of whether they are part of a propaganda campaign from an ally). I openly acknowledge the propaganda campaigns. I just consider VoxUkraine to be engaging in their own propaganda campaign, and making some false statements. Russia's propaganda campaign makes laughably false statements regularly (their "denazification" justification being one of them).
On the key topic you raise of justification for the war, I want to note that that was not part of the quoted text from VoxUkraine, so I made no argument about justification. I think there was no moral justification for Russia's invasion of Ukraine, certainly none of the ones they presented. Unfortunately, I don't think that lets NATO, etc., off the hook, as you are morally responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions, even if a predictable consequence is an immoral act from another party, but that is a more complicated matter.
And these questions came from VoxUkraine's polling. If you have quibbles with the phraseology, they're not with me.
I could write more to respond to your specific points, but because they seemed to mostly revolve around justification of the invasion and polling phraseology, I'll hold back for now, given my comments above. I also spent a few minutes editing this response for clarity and completeness, but am finished now.
Is there a "moral" act here? What should they do?
Certainly providing arms will result in loss of life but that is twisted logic IMHO.
You pointed to the phrasing as problematic so I handled why responses would be mixed. You implied that the fact different responses came in was indictive of it being a political thing.
Nothing you have said has been consistent or clarifying simply muddying the waters by misdirecting.
Not kill peace deals?
https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/09/03/west-peace-propos...
In particular Russia had to leave Ukraine completely. Russia was not willing to put that on the table so peace talks sputtered out.
Note that this doesn't mean the West prevented peace talks. There would have been a lack of fighting for a month or two while the peace talks were going on, sure, but they wouldn't have gone anywhere.
Ukraine said from the moment the invasion slowed down at all they were only going to be willing to accept Russia leaving completely with no land left in their hands.
Russia in turn has always said they want a land bridge to the ocean at minimum.
Until one of those changed peace talks were futile.
You claimed I was defining disinformation out of existence, and I countered that it exists as part of almost all propaganda campaigns, and is such a loaded/partisan term that it is not useful, IMO. My original point was "enemy propaganda" != "disinformation" and "agreement with one element of enemy propaganda" != "victim of a disinformation campaign". I think the polling responses were mixed largely because of genuine disagreement amongst Ukrainians, who are not a political monolith.
NATO did that when Russia demanded that NATO not offer Ukraine and Georgia Membership Action Plans in 2008, complying with the Russian request. Russia responded almost immediately by invading Georgia, this is also a factor in why Ukraine, even after deposing Yanukovych, did not renew its bid to join NATO until after the Russo-Ukrainian War started with the Russian invasion in 2015. To quote a famous American statesman: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool my twice... can’t get fooled again.”
> (remember that NATO membership means eventual bases in Ukraine, and questionable status for Russia's lease on Sevastopol)
No, it doesn't mean foreign bases in Ukraine (not all NATO members have foreign bases), and Russia's invasion on 2014, largely carried out from and in violation of the agreements governing the bases it had in Ukraine, pretty much guaranteed that their use of those facilities was gone if and when Ukraine regains control of Crimea.
That is not my understanding of the historical record, and I don't think it's the understanding of the US, French, or German leaders at the time either. The 2008 agenda report states "NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO", emphasis mine.
> No, it doesn't mean foreign bases in Ukraine
This is fair, and I thought about clarifying the point myself. The reason I left it as is, is that regardless of whether there would be a literal NATO/US base in Ukraine, there would be a highly effective level of military command and equipment synchronization, such that NATO ally troop/materiel movement into Ukraine would be vastly more fast and simple to accomplish. It would certainly vastly expand the risk profile of that section of Russia's border. Of course, since 2014 Ukraine became a NATO-lite member and most of this synchronization began anyway.
Both countries were hoping for a formal onramp to membership via a MAP at that summit, Russia demanded that they not be given MAPs, saying that doing so would be a provoication and destabilizing, NATO acceded to the Russian demands and papered over the denial of a concrete onramp with the no-process, no-timeline language you quote, and Russia immediately invaded Georgia.
Yes, Russia’s demands 8 years into its subsequent war on Ukraine were somewhat greater (including permanently ruling out all further NATO expansion—not just for Ukraine—and withdrawing all alliance troops from Eastern flank members of the alliance), but the 2008 experience weighed heavily against consideration of acquiescence, even in part, to Russia’s demands of this kind.
I think it didn't matter what happened at the NATO conference Russia was looking for an excuse to invade and they were going to find one regardless of what was said.
The reason Russia invaded soon after was because NATO blinked when Russia dared them to, if NATO had given Georgia and Ukraine a MAP I think the situation would be very different today.
A good offense is a good defense, but you leave yourself more open to losses when your opponent is able to effectively fight back. In this case, NATO was perfectly happy to accept those losses because they would be Ukrainian. The world is far worse off as a result.
Edit: I'm going to stop responding to this thread now, as it really is a huge tangent from the original "disinformation" topic. At this point, nobody is arguing about Ukraine/Russia/NATO in order to dispute my points about the use of "disinformation" by VoxUkraine, we're just arguing about Ukraine/Russia/NATO.
To clear this up. Russia tried to join by bypassing the typical application process, was told pretty much, no you join like everyone else and then decided they didn't want to join anymore.
> has an offensive first-strike nuclear doctrine, the US pulled out of the ABM and the INF, installed missile defense systems in former Warsaw Pact countries that are clearly part of a strategy to mitigate Russia's capabilities (when Russia has no aggressive first-strike doctrine and only has a defense of Russian territory first-strike doctrine).
Russia also has multiple different agreements / treaties / etc where they promised to respect the sovereignty of Ukraine.
Great good they did.
Russia not having a first use policy would be great if I trusted them to not make up an excuse to nuke someone if they think it would benefit them.
Like how they just chuck out international agreements / etc when it benefits them.
> Almost all of which happened when Russia was a relative "friend" to NATO when it was doing worse things in Chechnya as part of "GWOT" than it is currently doing in Ukraine, and what it is doing in Ukraine is appalling enough.
NATO is currently helping Ukraine defend itself from a country which is trying to subjugate it.
> A good offense is a good defense, but you leave yourself more open to losses when your opponent is able to effectively fight back. In this case, NATO was perfectly happy to accept those losses because they would be Ukrainian. The world is far worse off as a result.
Im confused by this statement.
Russia is the one on the offence and Russia is the one who invaded, Ukraine is the one invading itself.
With the help of NATO.
I think the world is far better of with Russia losing the current war in Ukraine.
False. Russia was on a track toward membership, with some additional special treatment, but then Putin demanded immediate membership without readiness criteria ahead of any other former Warsaw Pact countries, NATO balked at that demand, and Russia abandoned its pursuit of membership and became antagonistic to the expansion process it had previously been part of.
> I'm going to stop responding to this thread now, as it really is a huge tangent from the original "disinformation" topic.
Disinformation was never the topic (though you keep repeating Russian disinformation), this whole discussion about Ukraine/Russia/NATO history was in response to your separate claims in the same post as the disinformation ones about justification of the war.
Saying if NATO just ignored Ukraine then Russia wouldn't have invaded us ridiculous. The entire reason Russia pushed to exclude Ukraine was to allow invasion. Otherwise they would have asked for a treaty guaranteeing Ukraine wouldn't be used as a forward base instead.
Disinformation was used because in the internet age propaganda isn't direct. When a Russian controlled newspaper posts propaganda it is obvious. When a Russian controlled social media post goes viral is it propaganda in the same way?
The West hasn't tended to use as much disinformation (I won't claim they don't use it at all) mostly due to not controlling their own news sources to the same degree.
Note how OP doesn't include anything about journalism. Journalists are considered an independent group in the US and so anything too nakedly false tends to result in everyone downplaying.
You can still pull off lies, we did have quite a few pointless wars after all, but it requires more focus and effort. They didn't outright lie about the situation just bent the truth about non public information.
But I would consider the "weapons" in Iraq to be just as much disinformation if it came out during the internet era just as much as it was propaganda before.
BTW "people believe it" isn't proof of anything. A non trivial percentage of people believe the earth is flat after all.