khawkins

It doesn't have to be a system where the government can pick and choose who they want to ban/keep, but rather a system where businesses must go through a legal government process to ban someone themselves. That platforms need to be held to the same freedom of speech standards the US government is held to.

Supposedly there are a lot of "really smart people" who are behind this censorship push. Certainly they have researchers at these companies who have studied human behavior and know the outcome? Certainly they know that suppressing people has an equal and opposite effect, fomenting further extremism and resistance?

So we're left with 3 potential realities: 1) the tech oligarchs are recklessly ignorant about what they're doing, 2) they're recklessly emotional about the situation and don't care about the fallout, or 3) their decisions are calculated and the push-back from the extremists is desired. All 3 are worrisome.

While we're at it, let's remove internet access from everyone with mental disorders. Clearly they can't handle the responsibilities of internet access. /s

You're the one who said these people are the same group, the onus is on you to provide evidence of your claim. But it should be self-evident that tech giants maintain a near oligopoly of social media discourse and people aren't going to "foam at the mouth" to support their own ideological destruction.

Well they know corporations are going to be a colossal pain in their ass if they pass something, but that the citizens won't do anything. Might make the local news, but nothing more. If only there was a little enthusiasm in this arena, substantial progress could be made. But there are far too many flashy "causes" out there that eat up the public interest. As a people, we really deserve what we're getting here.

A policy prescription requires weighing of values, which a scientist should avoid at all costs. It's quite literally the point of science, to understand how the world works without injecting your personal biases about how the world should work.

Since when do people only vote for people they completely agree with and not the "better of two evils"? If the choices are the party that actively wants to censor you and the party that doesn't want to pass legislation to protect you from censorship, the choice is obvious.

Section 230(b):

It is the policy of the United States- (1) to promote the continued development of the Internet and other interactive computer services and other interactive media; (2) to preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet and other interactive computer services, unfettered by Federal or State regulation; (3) to encourage the development of technologies which maximize user control over what information is received by individuals, families, and schools who use the Internet and other interactive computer services; ...

Up until now, a Laissez-faire regulatory approach seemed to achieve these goals, but it's hardly fair to call what exists at this point a "vibrant and competitive free market" which "maximizes user control over what information is receives by individuals". Especially if a cartel of tech platforms can completely stamp out individuals' ability to listen to the speech of people they want access to. Regulation is needed now.

You're conflating different groups of people because you don't understand the nuances of the different groups at play. These are not the same groups in the slightest.

This is only a utilitarian ethical argument. If people approach from a deontological perspective, the measurements may not matter.

Suggesting a policy prescription in the title of a scientific study puts the legitimacy of the study in complete question. The researchers must approach the question as one which can be falsifiable, else it's not science.

I don't think this is ever going to work in practice because there is a significant incentives misalignment. The people moving to other platforms are doing so because the tech giants are trying to stamp out free speech. Someone who uses the platform for anything other than political speech has little reason to jump platforms to something that has significantly fewer people and an underdeveloped interface. You're guaranteed to create echo chambers of only the speech you sought to expunge.

More importantly, we should all revisit the world politic of exactly 10 years ago, where the biggest story was the Arab Spring--anti-government protests in the middle east. At the time, social media was heralded as a major factor in spurring the protests, despite tens of thousands eventually dying in the conflict. Governments were condemned for blocking access to the sites and many free-speech advocates attempted to develop work-arounds. Social media enabled the self-determination of the people in the middle east, something we should all care about.

Regardless of how people feel about the capitol riots, the war on free speech from silicon valley should scare the shit out of all of us. They are setting the precedent now for curbing any revolution in the future. The idea that "healthy communities" are the target really depends on who's doing the diagnosis.

I don't trust that your definition of an "actual nazi" isn't significantly colored by your own prejudices. That we could actually agree on who are the extremists in society who are equally damaging.

Louis Rossman owns a repair shop in NYC and has been touring the nation lobbying for Right to Repair. He's rarely sees success though because the lobbyists for places like Apple have deep pockets and there isn't a lot of public outrage.

The article is wrong to give any credit to Apple for being on the side of Right to Repair, as Louis explains in numerous videos.

https://youtu.be/zFA3szW9nWk

Banning things left and right is inciting more violence than the content itself. They're making a lot of people desperate who were already extremely distrustful of authority. They don't need Steve Bannon to tell them that tech companies are trying to silence their movement, all they need is Hacker News.

I guess the chickens really did come home to roost.

Because the definition of Nazi is applied so liberally that Winston Churchill himself would receive the label from those who use it in today's discourse.

Probably a little of the other countries, followed predominantly by China, and that the common denominator was unrestricted free trade with poorer countries. As the other countries liberalized and conditions for workers improved they became less valuable places to offshore production to. Mexico and especially China remain countries of cheap labor due to political conditions and thus the high deficits.

Across the US political spectrum free trade has been embraced by economists and politicians alike, all with the idea that capitalism will force liberalism in places like China. And yet, here we are 50 years later and the CCP is as strong as ever. Instead of a growing middle class resulting in better working conditions, it resulted in an insulated and complacent privileged class who either can't or won't demand better working conditions for the less privileged, for fear that they or their families will become state enemies. China's currency manipulation and curbing of worker's rights ensures industrial equivalents in the US are incapable of competing.

So many economists have rationalized the benefits of free trade as being that the country who can make things most efficiently and with the best quality will succeed, but they ignore what goes into "efficiency". But worker safety protections (especially from litigation risk), higher wages, and better time off are all significant sources of inefficiency, from a production standpoint.

The market devotee acknowledges that the market solution to worker protections is unionization and job-shopping, but it's nearly guaranteed to put enough pressure on corporations to offshore as soon as possible. Unions help wages for those jobs which stay, but guarantee there aren't that many left. Free trade with places like China and Mexico is stacking the deck against American labor.

Conservatives have long used unions as a scapegoat for this problem, but it doesn't explain why it's more often the case that a corporation offshores operations instead of moving operations to a state without government mandated unions. There is some truth to their argument, but I don't think they understand that basic safety protections, natural market forces, and potential litigation all contribute to a significantly more costly American worker than one abroad, even if they aren't in a union.

I think that one of the central reasons this has been happening is that the American ruling class has been insulated in their ivory towers and Ivy League schools for too long. They're genuinely more concerned with "saving the world" than creating a cohesive, prosperous society. It explains why so many lives and money is used to intervene in countries on the other side of the planet, why immigration from 3rd world countries is heavily promoted despite fierce resistance from the lower class, and why they have all but abandoned the idea of low-skilled labor becoming more valuable.

I'm not totally against, in general, artists and celebrities publicly sharing political opinions, but I am saying that those places which are supposed to be shared, places of common unity, shouldn't become places of polarization. Kanye West is welcome to have political opinions and go on podcasts and share them, but it would be inappropriate to bring them to something like the Grammys or a late-night talkshow. Colin Kaepernick is welcome to go to a BLM rally, but when he creates a spectacle of it on the field, he's wholly inconsiderate of those who don't agree with that sort of cop-hating message. People criticized him a lot for it, but is anything better for it?

These things aren't changing minds, they're just dividing people. People who agree with the messages feel good about it, and people who disagree turn away. Right-leaning people, who would otherwise hold Kaepernick in high regard as representing their city, now see him as an enemy, and he holds them in the same regard. This sort of thing is happening everywhere now, and it is what it is, but no one should be surprised when the country becomes increasingly polarized and uninterested in any sort of unity.

It's always fair to be upset when people use a powerful platform to spread ill-considered ideas, slander, and/or divisive rhetoric. Everyone agrees with this. If celebrities are significantly more likely to do this because they live sheltered lives and don't spend significant amounts of time considering what they call for, then they're more likely to use their platform irresponsibly.

But the more prevalent issue is that using their platform politically results more in tribalism than the genuine changing of minds.

Your deconstruction of "political spaces" is deflecting from the concept which is intuitively understood by us all. Politics in this context means discourse about contentious government policy. Political spaces are places where these politics are typically discussed: think tanks, halls of congress, public debates, forums, close family, etc.

That you assume I'm privileged because I want a more peaceful society suggests you will constantly seek to divide and set social groups against each other for the sake of some personal satisfaction.

The fact that you pose this question admits the political nature of these cultural conflicts. There are multiple avenues of resolution, some which involve government, some don't. We're all welcome to have differing opinions on how to deal with them, even if we can come to agreement on common values.

Are we supposed to pretend it's the only thing that determines our governs our day to day lives?

Past 40 years.

Clearly there is a palpable difference between the sociopolitical climate of today and the sociopolitical climate 20 years ago. There were other times in history where it was similar to this, but not in most of our lifetimes.

Those are even worse. Why can't we let political discourse stay in political spaces? That used to be the norm and everyone was far less stressed out and amicable for it. Now every space has become a battleground for sociopolitical discourse and we're drawing lines everywhere.

What a horrible world this sort of thinking wants to build. Nearly everything in civilization balances safety with freedom. She wants to hold a grudge against large swaths of the population because she believes them not deserving of the freedom to make decisions about their own behavior.

Do we want to live in a society where

...every person driving a vehicle shares the blame for creating an environment where pedestrians get hit and killed?

...every person who refuses to wear a mask around people shares the blame for people dying from the flu?

...every person who engages in casual sex shares the blame for spreading deadly STIs like HIV?

...every person who might contribute to the depression of a child shares the blame for suicide?

COVID is a natural disaster, just like an earthquake or a hurricane. Lashing out at your political opponents helps no one, and no, it's not Trump's fault or his supporters' fault your family member died.

But we've been living with the reality that the flu does this every year, and yet now it's personal?

First of all, we're not even talking about the censoring of terrorists, dictators, and extremist groups, which Twitter actually has allowed to persist on the platform in the past (e.g. Nicolas Maduro and ISIL). The current censorship at hand is a mainstream news outlet being blocked from releasing a damaging political story less than 2 weeks before the election. This is banana republic-type corruption.

Secondly, Twitter primarily serves content to those people who want it. It's what their algorithms are trained to do. The argument that the New York Post's article is disturbing and thus should be removed is easily used to justify any amount of authoritarian social manipulation. After all, everyone's actions eventually affect me, so I should be able to control all aspects of how they think, right?