AHappyCamper

No.

No, you are so totally wrong. When I want to book an appointment with my doctor, I use an app hosted on Amazon. When I am in lockdown and I want to ask a friend to bring me food, I use WhatApp. When I need to request a tax refund, I use the Tax Dept app that is hosted on Google Cloud. These are not companies anymore - they are critical civil infrastructure. If you don't believe me, just try not using any of them for a month. Imagine if the water company shuts off all service to your house and there is no alternative. They are a private company - should they have no responsibility to give you water or sewage. Such a narrow view...

This is a terrible idea. It says that "you don't need to break the law to be punished". This give the big tech companies quasi judicial powers where the grounds for punishments are arbitrary and subjective. Only the courts should be able to decide this type of thing, and I hope Parler sues Apple, Google, and especially Amazon for billions of dollars.

What if tomorrow they decide to ban and de-platform an app with 5 million users because they didn't like the color scheme the app was using (or their rising stock price...)? It opens the dangerous door to anti-competitive behavior. Today it's Parler, and tomorrow it will be you. This is a double edged sword that will cut everyone besides the big tech companies. We must not allow this action to go unchallenged.

There is a LOT of fluff in this poorly written article. 70% of it is saying, "It's horrible. It's so dangerous. They're covering it up", without damn well just stating the facts. So tedious to read through.... uuurrgghh...

Will I get censored for upvoting this story? ;)

I'll wait until I see no adverse effects in 6-12 months, and I'll be damned if I let someone inject it into me before that!!

This is a gross violation of the right to free speech. Youtube is no longer just a private company. They're more of a public square where masses of people from all over the world communicate ideas. Now Youtube is stating that many of those ideas are not allowed. This is a fascist action by nature. Big Tech needs to be regulated if they are going to be so blatantly political and partisan.

Didn't Google pull a move like this on Project Dragonfly - publicly state that they were dropping the project after outrage, and then quietly continue developing it in secret? I am extremely skeptical that Microsoft will simply shelve the user-specific monitoring feature. In fact, I outright don't believe them.

Yes, but too long and not understandable enough.

Really amazing. I'm so impressed by what you've built!

I found the article confusing, but the infographic at the end made everything worth it. Probably one of the best I've ever seen, and I take my hat off to the author!

> "even though there is no evidence for these allegations of systemic anti-conservative bias"

This is simply not true. Twitter blackballed the Hunter Biden laptop story and locked you out of your account if you DARED to tweet a link to it, saying that it violated their code of not publishing hacked material. It was not hacked. But they happily allowed news outlets to publish Donald Trump's hacked alleged tax returns (we never received a source, so quite dubious).

> "if Google (or third-party of your choice) locks your account for some reason, you will be locked out of all the services where you signed into using Google."

But if the account I'd use to sign in is my Gmail account, and they had locked that account, wouldn't I be locked out anyway?

Please explain it to me if I'm wrong (cause that happens often).

Quite simply it's worrying. Social media has become our voice. It's how we communicate to others on nearly every subject. If that medium is heavily biased, our democracy, our freedom, and our very way of life is threatened. Either they stay impartial or they must be regulated.

As is usually the case, the cover-up ends up being a worse scandal than the scandal. When will they learn? Spoiler: they won't...

Business wise, I'm sure it's a good idea for them.

Unfortunately I don't completely trust Facebook to be impartial the news they report.

They could very easily skew a narrative on a particular issue by placing news articles they agree with at the top, and not displaying articles that they don't agree with.

That said, it's their business and they can do with it what they want, and it's still our decision if we want to use that feature.

My grandparent's families were mostly wiped out. We lost over 300 on my Dad's side, and there's no number for how many we lost on my Mom's side - everyone was killed. I grew up listening to my Grandmother screaming when she had panic attacks and night terrors, and the stories we heard were horrific. I'm so so glad that Facebook has done this. Maybe it hurts freedom of speech, and maybe it's overreach - I don't know - those are large and complex subjects. From the subjective point of view, it just makes me happy that they are putting a stop to it.

It's very upsetting to hear this. I've been planning a YouTube channel that discusses layman's philosophy - specifically How to be a A Happy Camper ;) and it's depressing to know that in 2020, the basic support system won't be there.

But it's a good start, no? And the theory has been proven as sound. I'm guessing/hoping they'll target the higher ranges soon.

Oh, I just open the link in incognito mode and I can read the full article...

Mazal Tov! =)

My uncle has a similar saying: "The most important consideration in any situation is the alternative". He's a very smart man and an excellent engineer.

I understand that China is extremely powerful both militarily and economically, but it just makes me so sad that such atrocities against humanity are occurring at the hands of a superpower, deep into the 21st century.

Forgive my naiveté, but aren't we supposed to be past this type of thing as a species already? Wasn't that the whole point of the 20th century - to show us all the things we shouldn't be doing?

Is it just me or does the timing of this story seem a little fishy considering the EARN IT act that US Senators are trying to push through?

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/campaigns/oppose-earn-it-a...

No. If everything is subjective, then we must err on the side of being permissive, not restrictive, because if we choose restrictive, then everything is a threat of violence and illegal, and what you just said above is against the law and you need to go to jail for it (it isn't, and you don't - I'm just trying to illustrate a point).

Here's why you're wrong about your approach: if everything is subjective and the answer to everything is repression, then the law is no longer valid, and the only possible outcome is civil war.

If you do not want bloody, horrific, monstrous civil war with giant swarths of the population who don't agree with you, then you should err on the side of being permissive of questionable speech.

As you've seen from the mass riots recently in the USA, a massive violent response is only a single sensationalist news story away.

We need to support and encourage free speech.

I think there is a much more objective definition of "threats of violence or obvious incitement to violence" than there is for hate speech.

Some people could interpret a sentence like: "I don't like the taste of curry" to be hate speech, since it targets the ethnic food of a difference race. (For the record, I love curry...)

So yes, banning "hate speech" that does not threaten violence is a slippery slope, because it is simply too open to interpretation.

One of the values I believe in the most is the right to free speech.

Free speech is a powerful thing, which means it can be used for good and for bad. Sometimes what appears to us today as bad can actually turn out to be good in the future.

The general rule of free speech is that it does not permit threats of violence or obvious incitement to violence.

Hate speech, on the other hand, is MUCH more subjective. What may appear to me to be a well-reasoned argument may to you appear to be hate speech.

With these complex issues in mind, I'd say that unless the groups that Reddit banned were advocating or threatening violence, banning them was counter-productive and hurtful to having an open and free discourse on the internet.

Of course, there is the go-to argument that Reddit is a private company, and as such they can do whatever they like, but because they provide a public service that is used by billions of people, they have an obligation to uphold the values and laws of our society - most notably the first amendment - which protects free speech.

They're relevant details because they directly affect the health and safety of the ambulance staff, and protocol dictates that they call in on anything that could be hazardous to them. Not to mention that those details could affect the treatment of the patient.

See? This is the problem. The filtering is more important to some people than actually doing the job correctly.

This is why speech must be free, because I don't want a paramedic who's treating me to be debating exactly how to define me to dispatch. I just want them to save my life.

Wait, are you saying that we shouldn't be trying to save slaves and stop slavery? That's like saying we should close down hospitals and stop all surgeries because death will continue with or without our efforts...

I don't understand your first sentence. Please re-iterate.

I don't understand. Why does it matter if it's a specific communication protocol? If you have to filter your language when you're in a life and death situation with a potentially dangerous person who has used needles lying around, you've used up precious processing power that could otherwise be used to keep yourself safe and the sick person alive.

For the record - I checked with them - and they told me they were asked to take a test to check if they harbored "unknown biases". They were then sent to diversity and inclusion training, and came out totally confused about what to do and say, but they were assured that the hospital and the ambulance services were monitoring comms and wouldn't look favorably on "potentially offensive" terms.

Trying to describe a homeless man sleeping on rotten cardboard boxes who is covered in urine and feces with needles strewn around everywhere, who is both asking for help and attacking them is VERY HARD to do without using a term that someone could potentially find offensive.