ardy42

> And that statement is emblematic of the problem. I'm immediately lumped into "right wing" by people like you because I challenged the narrative you believe. I'm not a right winger, and that "counter-factual" isn't right wing either. It's real.

You may not be right wing, but you're repeating several right-wing memetic shibboleths around COVID and other things, so don't be surprised at the confusion.

Also, you're trying to re-litigate stuff that got settled months ago without actually adding anything new to the discussion, which is tiring.

> I did think about having correct dates and authors, but then I got lazy and in fact got more focussed on getting all the amendments in place. Now that the core work is done, I'll add corrected dates (perhaps real date + 100 years), authors and committers in one of the later commits. Thanks for reminding!

How would you even do authorship? These amendments are basically institutional works, with sometimes convoluted histories (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-seventh_Amendment_to_th...).

> The supposed hypocrisy is that Amazon, a company, has a different view on mail-in voting than Jeff Bezos, a person.

Jeff Bezos is the CEO of Amazon and controls the majority of its voting shares, so they're entangled enough that the actions of one can show the hypocrisy of the other.

> There's no story here, just like there's no story that many companies donate to Republicans despite having liberal founders/CEOs. Elon Musk famously donates to both parties, although one assumes he personally has a preference for one (or neither) of them.

You might as well just say that since the Civil War is so well known and understood, there's no point teaching about it in school. Not everyone actually knows the things you think are so basic to warrant no mention, and there is value in reporting the specific instances that back up a generalization.

> They don’t have the infrastructure that a state brings to bear to oversee a fair election, nor are there laws to protect the integrity of mail-in ballots for a corporate election. It’s just disingenuous to compare the two.

That's completely wrong. Corporations definitely have the infrastructure to conduct a mail elections. They literally do it all the time for shareholders, to do things like elect the board of directors: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/proxy-vote.asp. As far as I can tell, there's even an industry of 3rd party companies that have sprung up to provide the logistics for them.

> I mean this is state-state business and communication, not Jack and Joe Nobody.

It is not state-state business and communication. That kind of thing is not done on Twitter. At all.

The closest is propagandistic back and forth needling, but that's not diplomacy, it's PR/propaganda: the real audience for that is the public, not the other state's government.

Even when two states lack official diplomatic relations, they don't resort to Twitter. There are other mechanisms for that (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protecting_power and agreements brokered through other 3rd party diplomats like http://www.parstimes.com/history/algiers_accords.pdf).

> And diplomatic channels including back channels are the gold standard for diplomatic and undiplomatic communications. Let’s not ruin a good thing by replacing them with Twitter.

To even confuse Twitter with a diplomatic channel is a bit mind-boggling. It's a PR/propaganda channel and sometimes a way to distribute informational notices to the public. That's it.

Edit: Yep, we agree. I was just amplifying the point a bit :)

> Obviously it's not acceptable to make threats to heads of state or ex-heads of state, but still I think that's a State Department, Secret Service and other governmental entities that should handle this decision, not Twitter.

> Twitter should not be making these calls that have international relations implications.

Wouldn't it be blatant First Amendment violation (from multiple angles) to have the government making such decisions? You're proposing literal government censorship.

I think I made this point before: person or group should feel pressured to disseminate some foreign state's propaganda unless some government bureaucrat gives them the OK not to.

> I mention regulations in general and not particular one, because the context that you are talking about is placed within bigger context of everything around changing. And once law is put in place is almost never removed.

But you can't connect abstract "regulations" to any kind of bigger context for a cost/benefit analysis. You can for a particular regulation or a particular set of regulations, though.

I believed stuff like "regulations are only added never removed" and "government always grows, never shrinks," but that's empirically false. I read all about how the ICC's regulatory regime was awful in Free to Choose by Milton Friedman, but it turns out by that time it had already been abolished: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Commerce_Commission....

I don't think it's a bad thing to periodically revisit regulations and revise/abolish them if they're no longer needed or can be improved. However, I think it a lot of cases, regulation is actually a set of solutions to problems, and repealing the regulation will just unsolve those problems.

> Re forum, collecting emails seem to count as personal data, maybe the amount of work wouldn't be high, but researching what do I really need to do, how to register personal data database etc. was high, there were not much info available at the time. AFAIR changes were pretty brutal to me since I was miraculously running on some very deprecated phpBB with a few manual patches which kept bots away.

IIRC, I think they do, but from my employer's GDPR training, all you'd have to do is not use the emails you collected for a purpose other than what you obtained consent for. E.g. if you collected them for account maintenance notifications, you can't turn around and build a marketing list from them without getting additional consent from the user.

> Creating a youtube clone is much simpler than creating a youtube clone that doesn't brake any existing laws and regulations. Every additional regulation is making it harder.

Though, that's an exceedingly narrow perspective, judging things exclusively on the effect on startup costs and ignoring everything else. An increase in startup costs often is an acceptable price to pay in order to achieve other goals. For instance, environmental regulations definitely make it more expensive and difficult to spin up many kinds of industrial plants (e.g. plant builders need to buy pollution control equipment and use more expensive processes that create less pollution), but it means less unhealthy air and rivers that can support life and don't catch on fire [1]. All the competition in the world won't achieve that.

I think it's pretty useless to talk about "regulations" generically. It's really only helpful to talk about the costs and benefits of particular regulations, since that's the only context where you can figure out if the regulation is a net good or not.

[1] https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Cuyahoga_River_Fire

> Case in point, I've run a forum for coders for 15 years with thousand of users. When the GDPR came out, I did not have time to make sure I follow it, the cost was too high, I shut it down. And of course the law was to protect users privacy from big evil companies. Guess who had money and resources to make sure they follow it.

While that may have been a negative to you personally, the alternative is to allow those big companies to violate users' privacy in ways the law forbids, which is worse. Also, I'm a little skeptical that the GDPR would actually placed much if any burden on site such as yours.

> ...but I believe most regulations against big tech only establish their domination. These companies can likely invest more resources in legal analysis than the goverment, so they will use most of it to their advantage.

If that were true, or true to the degree suggested here, I don't think these companies would fight regulation as hard as they do. Rather, they'd embrace them and encourage more.

IMHO, this kind of thinking is an interesting bit of free market propaganda, to the effect of convincing people that they're helpless in the face of domination by some corporation or other, and their only option is to wait patiently for some market-driven "creative destruction" to occur in the (perhaps far) future.

> But Parler _didn't even try_ any of these less drastic measures. They could have properly moderated, or if that's not possible because they were growing so fast they could have limited posts from new users, or added moderation bots, or could have blanket-banned the most problematic subgroups. They didn't do these things.

IIRC, Parler billed itself as an unmoderated "free speech" space [1]. IIRC, what little moderation it had was done by unpaid volunteer moderators, which in this case is akin to letting the inmates run the asylum.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/08/technology/parler-apple-g...: "Over the past several months, Parler has become one of the fastest-growing apps in the United States. Millions of President Trump’s supporters have flocked to it as Facebook and Twitter increasingly cracked down on posts that spread misinformation and incited violence, including muzzling Mr. Trump by removing his accounts this past week. By Saturday morning, Apple listed Parler as the No. 1 free app for its iPhones."

> Well the fact that the riots were organized on Facebook for the month leading up to it certainly looks inconsistent.

That's misleading. While there was definitely unacceptable activity that slipped through Facebook's moderation, they were making attempts to stop it.

IIRC, a lot of the organization activity on Facebook acted as a funnel to places like Parler. E.g. a protest event on Facebook, calculated to comply with its policies, which linked to Parler or Gab where more illicit planning could take place.

> Now that's motivated reasoning. You are choosing to dehumanize those who disagree with you, because that's more comfortable than acknowledging that they might have a legitimate grievance somewhere beneath all the ruckus around the election results.

What now? I pretty explicitly humanized them, and even shifted the blame a way from them. Personally, I think a lot of them are being shamelessly used and exploited.

> It's logical to conclude that there will be blowback from a coordinated campaign to shut down the largest platform favored by "the other side".

Not really. The largest platform favored by "the other side" (which I'm assuming is conservatives/Republicans) was and is Facebook.

Parler was only favored by a much smaller, radicalized subset of conservatives, mainly those who wanted to spread false claims of election fraud (because, IIRC, it only got popular in response to Twitter putting warning labels on such claims, which offended this radicalize subset). I'm totally fine with any blowback from such people, since their cause of championing lies needs to be utterly defeated, for the good of the country.

>> IIRC, it's a pretty core journalistic principle that subjects don't get to make decisions about how their story is presented.

> Maybe journalists think that, but lots of people (including Scott and me) don't. I believe people have a right to privacy.

They have think that, because otherwise they'd be in the PR industry, not journalism.

People do have some rights to privacy, but that doesn't extend to having a right to retroactively "take back" information they've released or editorial control over true things others may want to write about you.

> While some people get upset about it, "Democrat" is useful to differentiate the two verbally. Obviously capitalization isn't possible.

Not really. "Democrat Party" is literally just a shibboleth used by opposing partisans who are upset that "democratic" is an adjective with positive associations. Everything else is just a post-hoc rationalization.

> I really, genuinely, truly don't understand why people insist on understanding this only in the context of partisan censorship.

It's motivated reasoning. It's how you can get to the conclusion that Amazon cutting ties with Parler is unacceptable.

I don't necessarily think all people who follow this line came up with it spontaneously. I'm sure there's a lot of propaganda to this effect swirling in conservative media, pushed and promoted by bad faith actors for various short term partisan ends. I'm pretty sure that's why the specious comparisons between BLM and the capitol attack became so widespread.

> b) that was what the NYT was thinking about why it's ok for them to dox him

It's not really doxing if you posted your own personal info publicly. At least once, in 2017 when he was less careful, Alexander publicly outed himself under his real name as the author of his blog. IIRC, it's a pretty core journalistic principle that subjects don't get to make decisions about how their story is presented.

> IMO part of his service to the community is helping define those boundaries for the less... socially aware members of the community (ie, the things you Do Not Discuss).

Are you talking about stuff like this? https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/10/20/the-anti-reactionary-f...

> For the uninitiated, what sort of content is Slate Star Codex known for?

IIRC, it's a blog that's very influential in the "rationalist" community, which I think spun out of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LessWrong. So very long-winded posts on miscellaneous topics.

> I am saying the deservedly poor reputation of the NYPost is irrelevant in this case because the reported facts are easy to independently verify. The reputation of a newspaper counts when their reputation is what we must rely on, which is not the case here.

That's where we disagree. You're saying the the only job of a paper is to report true facts (or at least try its best). I'm saying its job is to report true facts and true impressions. True facts can be used to create false impressions, and the impression created often matters the most, especially when you know your readers aren't going to read your story like a careful lawyer.

> Well let's look back at some recent history of interference by america. They interfered in the middle east so they could take out the Taliban they trained and armed during the 80's

You know there's a lot more context there, right? Also, if you start a fire for one reason (e.g. to cook a meal), it's not like you have to stand by that fire to the bitter end, and cannot put it out if it starts to burn down your house.

> Let's go back a little further to the gulf war where a complete and total fabrication led america to interfere in the middle east.

> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nayirah_testimony

Was the Iraqi invasion and annexation of Kuwait also fabricated? Because that set things before well before that testimony. Have you looked at the dates?

From your link:

> The Nayirah testimony was a false testimony given before the United States Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990...

Other parts of the article indicate similar allegations were circulating in September 1990.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_War:

> The US administration had at first been indecisive with an "undertone ... of resignation to the invasion and even adaptation to it as a fait accompli" until the UK's prime minister Margaret Thatcher played a powerful role, reminding the President that appeasement in the 1930s had led to war, that Saddam would have the whole Gulf at his mercy along with 65 percent of the world's oil supply, and famously urging President Bush "not to go wobbly".[30]

> Once persuaded, US officials insisted on a total Iraqi pullout from Kuwait, without any linkage to other Middle Eastern problems, accepting the British view that any concessions would strengthen Iraqi influence in the region for years to come.[82]

The citations for those last two paragraphs indicate that happen in August 1990.

> If america really cared about about dealing with morally bankrupt countries and governments, why do they ally themselves with Saudi Arabia and other countries well known for human rights abuses? Why do they arm and train terrorist groups?

Because, unfortunately, the world is not so simple and neat. It's complex and ugly. Why did the US ally with the Soviets to defeat the Nazis, when the Soviet system was probably only slightly less evil than the Nazi one? Do you think the US should instead have allied with the Nazis against the Soviets, or maybe just sat the whole thing out and let the Nazis keep Western Europe?

> What matters is whether their reporting is factual or not. In this case, there seems to be little doubt that the reporting is factual; the reported lawsuit does exist and does make the reported claims.

That matters, but it isn't the only thing that matters. Again: the fact that the NY Post themselves didn't outright lie in this story does little to refute the idea that they're a disreputable paper. The way they choose facts to report and how they arrange them can be the real source of disrepute.

> Suppose the NYPost has an axe to grind and went looking for a lawsuit that makes twitter look bad... so what?

Because that would be more like propaganda than journalism.

> That wouldn't mean they're lying, it would only mean they have a different idea of what constitutes news worthiness than you. That wouldn't make it disinformation.

Lying is only one of the many ways you can mislead someone. My point was that lying is inferior way to deceive than assembling true facts in a deceptive way. So the fact that the NY Post themselves didn't outright lie in this story does little to refute the idea that they're a disreputable paper.

> Do you think the NYPost fabricated the existence of the lawsuit? As far as I can tell, the lawsuit really does exist.

Straight up fabrication is not the only way to disinform, and it's in fact it's a pretty shitty way to do it, since it means your disinformation collapses at the slightest scrutiny. To make fabrication effective, the fabrication needs to be laundered to give it credibility (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tR_6dibpDfo), which takes time and effort.

A more effective way to disinform is to pluck out a true story that's not representative and amplify or twist it. That will seem more credible to those who give it just a little scrutiny, even if it's just as wrong as a fabrication in some ways.

In this case, if the NY Post has a bone to pick with Twitter, it could troll through lawsuits against it until it found one that made scandalous claims, then report those as hard facts.

> 10 unionized employees out of thousands isn't enough critical mass to count as a union for the things that matter. The power is in numbers.

That may be so, but laying off those 10 could be a strategy to kill the union in the crib by keeping the number from ever getting to the thousands. Employees faced with future unionization votes may vote against the union because they're afraid management will find a way to lay them all off if they vote for it, before they're strong enough to resist.

> The article doesn't link to the Tucows Downloads Archive, for whatever reason it only links to the archive.org homepage.

> Here's the direct link: https://archive.org/details/tucows

> It also appears that the archive wasn't manually reviewed; some items are just screenshots, and others are unrelated to software at all.

I'm really glad they went through the trouble of even doing that. They didn't have to.

A lot of it's probably only good for nostalgia, before it's totally forgotten without much loss; but as someone who recently spent a bunch of time trying to track down 90s FTP site mirrors chasing a vague memory of a game, I appreciate it.

> Yes america believing it has the right to interfere anywhere in the world and police other countries to put in governments sympathetic to US interests is a problem. At least to everyone outside the US anyway.

I'm not so sure about "everyone." Also, this principle of noninterference you seem to advocate is morally bankrupt, at least when taken to the extreme you seem to take it. Some very shitty, powerful people find noninterference in their affairs to be a very useful concept, and I deny they have any right to that. That's not to say interference is always justified or always done for good reasons, but it's definitely a valid option on the table.

> My problem is that this is a decision for the state department, not a blogging platform to make.

I disagree with that strongly. If it was the State Department's decision, I'd have to host the CCP's propaganda in my yard until State Department told me to take it down.

Twitter isn't interfering with government-to-government diplomacy, so there's no diplomatic issue here.

> Someone needs to watch Abby Martin's series on the U.S. empire's lies about Venezuela.

This Abby Martin?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abby_Martin:

> She hosted Breaking the Set on the Russian network RT America from 2012 to 2015. In 2015, Martin launched the investigative documentary and interview series The Empire Files, originally hosted by Telesur....

> In 2008, Martin was part of the 9/11 Truth movement,[9][10][11][12][13] starting her own 9/11 Truther group in San Diego.[14][15] In a 2008 video of a 9/11 truth movement demonstration, she said: "I’ve researched it for three years and every single thing that I uncover solidifies my belief that it was an inside job and that our government was complicit in what happened."[16]

My understanding is Telesur is basically a Venezuelan-run RT clone. It's considered extremely unreliable by Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...:

> Telesur was deprecated in the 2019 RfC, which showed consensus that the TV channel is a Bolivarian propaganda outlet. Many editors state that Telesur publishes false information.

Is that a problem? I'm not so blinkered that I'd object to toppling a regime like Maduro's, and the main issue with this effort seems to be incompetence and proceeding with insufficient resources.

BTW, Wikipedia considers MintPress News to be unreliable because it "publishes false or fabricated information":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Per...