Censorship

TroglocratsRdumb

Diamond Member
Aug 11, 2017
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Big Tech is censoring their users free speech.
The debate is Big Tech is privately owned therefore they have the right to censor speech.
However because Big Tech donates overwhelmingly to the Corrupt Democrats, they have a huge conflict of interest in suppressing GOP Freedom of speech.
In effect they are campaigning for the Democrats.
The purpose of Freedom of Speech is to protect political speech.

Big Tech Employees Donate Overwhelmingly to 2020 Democrats (newsweek.com)
Supreme Court (washingtonexaminer.com)
 
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Essplain to the class how "Big Tech" --- whatever the fucko that means --- is singlehandedly preventing any entity from speaking.

This oughta be good.
 
The catch lies in the speech. As I've pointed out on numerous occasions, there are limits to free speech.

These companies all have terms of service agreements. It's pretty simple. You violate them, you get sanctioned. If you do not like their rules, you are free to go elsewhere.
The 1st Amendment is NOT a license to say whatever you want with no ramifications.
 
In the days of yore, that is before 2010, newspapers and other print publications were where most of us got our news. Newspapers were not obligated to publish every letter to the editor or every Op-Ed that were sent to them. Social Media likewise are not obligated to allow everyone with an opinion on their site if they violate their TOS.

Having said that I am not a fan of Social Media. They are too powerful and we need to come to terms with this new paradigm.

In a perfect world if we knew how to control our impulses and propensities for deceit, we would not need to address these issues. Trump, among many others, have brought to light the power of social media in disseminating false information.

Social media is attempting to deal with all this misleading and fraudulent information floating around. I don’t know if there will ever be an adequate answer to these issues.
 
Big Tech is censoring their users free speech.
The debate is Big Tech is privately owned therefore they have the right to censor speech.
However because Big Tech donates overwhelmingly to the Corrupt Democrats, they have a huge conflict of interest in suppressing GOP Freedom of speech.
In effect they are campaigning for the Democrats.
The purpose of Freedom of Speech is to protect political speech.

Big Tech Employees Donate Overwhelmingly to 2020 Democrats (newsweek.com)
Supreme Court (washingtonexaminer.com)
The top 1%, which is essentially Big Tech, is crushing free speech in favor of the democrats

But just know that the democrats are busy trying to obtain their wealth to redistribute it to the common folk.

LMAO!!!
 
Big Tech is censoring their users free speech.
The debate is Big Tech is privately owned therefore they have the right to censor speech.
However because Big Tech donates overwhelmingly to the Corrupt Democrats, they have a huge conflict of interest in suppressing GOP Freedom of speech.
In effect they are campaigning for the Democrats.
The purpose of Freedom of Speech is to protect political speech.

Big Tech Employees Donate Overwhelmingly to 2020 Democrats (newsweek.com)
Supreme Court (washingtonexaminer.com)
A. They aren't.

B. Even if they were it's their house, so they make the rules.

So C. Get over it.
 
Those who defend Twitter are fascists and hypocrites by nature. They only want their own lock-step orthodoxy to preval and would be the first to complain if the shoe were on the other foot.

You need to keep in mind that these people do not operate according to principles, merely tribe. They don't value free speech unless it is THEIR free speech involved and they will do all they can to reduce the rights of others.
 
Big Tech is censoring their users free speech.
The debate is Big Tech is privately owned therefore they have the right to censor speech.
However because Big Tech donates overwhelmingly to the Corrupt Democrats, they have a huge conflict of interest in suppressing GOP Freedom of speech.
In effect they are campaigning for the Democrats.
The purpose of Freedom of Speech is to protect political speech.

Big Tech Employees Donate Overwhelmingly to 2020 Democrats (newsweek.com)
Supreme Court (washingtonexaminer.com)
Hmmm..the purpose of free speech is well..free speech. One may air any opinion at all..in the public square..and he/she is protected..legally. The crowd can be fickle...and tear the speaker's heads off..but they'd be breaking the law, right?

Big oil gives to R's...as does the NRA......huge piles of money have been declared free and protected speech via Citizens United. This is the result--the parties don't even really control the message anymore. The PAC's do.

When you use a private platform...it is their rules. Their take is that they suppress liars..and for some odd reason....that impacts those on the right who use these platforms a lot more.

Perhaps you'd like to examine that?
 
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Big Tech is censoring their users free speech.
The debate is Big Tech is privately owned therefore they have the right to censor speech.
However because Big Tech donates overwhelmingly to the Corrupt Democrats, they have a huge conflict of interest in suppressing GOP Freedom of speech.
In effect they are campaigning for the Democrats.
The purpose of Freedom of Speech is to protect political speech.

Big Tech Employees Donate Overwhelmingly to 2020 Democrats (newsweek.com)
Supreme Court (washingtonexaminer.com)
Perjury against the People, there ought to be a Law!
 
Big Tech is censoring their users free speech.
The debate is Big Tech is privately owned therefore they have the right to censor speech.
However because Big Tech donates overwhelmingly to the Corrupt Democrats, they have a huge conflict of interest in suppressing GOP Freedom of speech.
In effect they are campaigning for the Democrats.
The purpose of Freedom of Speech is to protect political speech.

Big Tech Employees Donate Overwhelmingly to 2020 Democrats (newsweek.com)
Supreme Court (washingtonexaminer.com)
A. They aren't.

B. Even if they were it's their house, so they make the rules.

So C. Get over it.
Well... Platform or Publisher?
 
In the days of yore, that is before 2010, newspapers and other print publications were where most of us got our news. Newspapers were not obligated to publish every letter to the editor or every Op-Ed that were sent to them. Social Media likewise are not obligated to allow everyone with an opinion on their site if they violate their TOS.

Having said that I am not a fan of Social Media. They are too powerful and we need to come to terms with this new paradigm.

In a perfect world if we knew how to control our impulses and propensities for deceit, we would not need to address these issues. Trump, among many others, have brought to light the power of social media in disseminating false information.

Social media is attempting to deal with all this misleading and fraudulent information floating around. I don’t know if there will ever be an adequate answer to these issues.
I think the problem lies in the overwhelmingly left leaning traditional and broadcast media that purports to be objective but are not. Their demographic footprint is much larger than right wing sources like talk radio and right wing outlets. This tends to slant overall news coverage to the left and most people think they are getting objective news. Social media follows suit because they too accept the MSM to be objective.
 
When you use a private platform...it is their rules. Their take is that they suppress liars..and for some odd reason....that impacts those on the right who use these platforms a lot more.

Perhaps you'd like to examine that?

It hardly needs examination: obviously the Big 2 social media are suppressing rightwing speech, duh. Everyone knows that. There is always political suppression of speech when a new communication medium opens up: the Catholic Church suppressed Protestant book-printing in the 15th-16th centuries, and there were two centuries of religious war because of the new communications. Whatever side is stronger suppresses free speech of the other side. Now it's the left suppressing the right.

You are implying that it's a question of one side having Truth, but Truth is in the eye of the beholder. That is the whole POINT of free speech.

I feel a little sorry for Zuckerberg. It's clear many wars and civil wars were started and maintained by Facebook and Twitter --- the whole many-countries Arab Spring wars were waged via those platforms. People badly want to use these platforms to fight here. I know Zuckerberg never meant this to happen! But he invented, basically, another Gutenberg Press, and the last one led to two centuries of war, so it was inevitable.

I don't know what he's going to do, but I am sure he shouldn't get into censorship. Some model like the telephone or book publishers is needed. Let them all speak. The problem is, when people have free speech videos, they organize wars and they live-stream their mass murders and rapes and serial killings. That really is a problem.
 
It hardly needs examination: obviously the Big 2 social media are suppressing rightwing speech, duh. Everyone knows that. There is always political suppression of speech when a new communication medium opens up: the Catholic Church suppressed Protestant book-printing in the 15th-16th centuries, and there were two centuries of religious war because of the new communications. Whatever side is stronger suppresses free speech of the other side. Now it's the left suppressing the right.

You are implying that it's a question of one side having Truth, but Truth is in the eye of the beholder. That is the whole POINT of free speech.

I feel a little sorry for Zuckerberg. It's clear many wars and civil wars were started and maintained by Facebook and Twitter --- the whole many-countries Arab Spring wars were waged via those platforms. People badly want to use these platforms to fight here. I know Zuckerberg never meant this to happen! But he invented, basically, another Gutenberg Press, and the last one led to two centuries of war, so it was inevitable.

I don't know what he's going to do, but I am sure he shouldn't get into censorship. Some model like the telephone or book publishers is needed. Let them all speak. The problem is, when people have free speech videos, they organize wars and they live-stream their mass murders and rapes and serial killings. That really is a problem.
The sad reality of ignorance and laziness has crept into news and social media. These platforms have people that are surrounded by like-minded leftists and all they see are people that agree with them. Therefore they think they are 'objective' and 'know best.' Couple that with the power and arrogance they exhibit, and we get what we have now, a recipe for media tyranny.
 
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The sad reality of ignorance and laziness has crept into news and social media. These platforms have people that are surrounded by like-minded leftists and all they see are people that agree with them. Therefore they think they are 'objective' and 'know best.' Couple that with the power and arrogance they exhibit, and we get what we have now, a recipe for media tyranny.

The right does have some alternatives --- we are moving to Reddit, 4chan, and Parler. This itself must scare Facebook, which wanted to own ALL Americans. But wow, is that ever not working.
 
Big Tech is censoring their users free speech.
The debate is Big Tech is privately owned therefore they have the right to censor speech.
However because Big Tech donates overwhelmingly to the Corrupt Democrats, they have a huge conflict of interest in suppressing GOP Freedom of speech.
In effect they are campaigning for the Democrats.
The purpose of Freedom of Speech is to protect political speech.

It strikes me as ironic that what, in modern times, constitutes “the press” has become the primary perpetrator of the very abuses against which the men who wrote the First Amendment intended to protect it and us. Freedom of the Press was meant to protect the free flow of news and information, and government was then seen as threat to this flow, and the need was to restrain government from imposing control over what news and information could be published and disseminated.

But modern social media has become the medium over which most news and information now flows, and the major players in this industry—Facebook, Twitter, etc.—are not only suppressing the flow of news and information, but actively punishing users who report on news that they do not like.

One recent poll—I do not know how much credibility to give it—suggests that many voters who voted for Biden would have voted otherwise, if they had known about certain stories that the mainstream news media and social media networks have been suppressing. If it could be proven that by suppressing these stories, the media changed the outcome of the election, this could be seen as yet more evidence of outright of cheating, and another reason to invalidate the results of the election, if it comes to that. This could be huge, both in scope and in credibility, compared to the now solidly-disproven conspiracy theories about Russian having allegedly affected our 2016 election.

What to do about it? I'll be damned if I know. I do not see how any government intervention in order to stop the obstruction of information via the mainstream social media can reasonably be reconciles with the letter of the First Amendment, or with the general principles behind it; but surely it cannot be consistent with the intent behind the First Amendment, for a handful of corporate entities to impose so much control over what we are allowed to express, and allowed to read. If there is a rational solution to this problem, that is consistent with the principles on which our Constitution as a whole, and our First Amendment in particular, are based, it will take much wiser men than myself to devise that solution.
 
Liberals love to poo-poo the incredible power that the Social Media giants wield. They aren't just some private entities making dog collars or candy bars. Their business is information and they control the flow of it. They shutdown Conservative accounts in the blink of an eye, but they allow the Chinese to spread obvious lies that their virus originated in the US and was delivered to Wuhan via frozen food products.
 
What to do about it? I'll be damned if I know. I do not see how any government intervention in order to stop the obstruction of information via the mainstream social media can reasonably be reconciles with the letter of the First Amendment, or with the general principles behind it; but surely it cannot be consistent with the intent behind the First Amendment, for a handful of corporate entities to impose so much control over what we are allowed to express, and allowed to read. If there is a rational solution to this problem, that is consistent with the principles on which our Constitution as a whole, and our First Amendment in particular, are based, it will take much wiser men than myself to devise that solution.

Yes! That's the problem, what to do about it? When I think about Twitter and Facebook starting shooting wars all over the world (that is, they are organized and led on their platforms, as is terrorism) and obviously terrified that Americans will use their platforms to start a civil war or rebellion here, I don't know what they are going to do. This degree of interpersonal easy communication is unprecedented in human history ---- WHO sent Zuckerberg to Harvard? I'm not sure that turned out well.......

He will lose his business model with this new censorship. People are fleeing to Parler and other platforms. Failure isn't exactly the solution, maybe --- well, maybe it is. Start over, if someone has an idea how to stop the live-streaming of violent crime and mass murder, the organization of flash mobs and riots, and yet not censor? Ho, boy, *I* don't know how to fix this serious problem. Everyone can now talk to everyone: and what they so often say is, "We want to kill you all!!"
 
When you use a private platform...it is their rules. Their take is that they suppress liars..and for some odd reason....that impacts those on the right who use these platforms a lot more.

Perhaps you'd like to examine that?

It hardly needs examination: obviously the Big 2 social media are suppressing rightwing speech, duh. Everyone knows that. There is always political suppression of speech when a new communication medium opens up: the Catholic Church suppressed Protestant book-printing in the 15th-16th centuries, and there were two centuries of religious war because of the new communications. Whatever side is stronger suppresses free speech of the other side. Now it's the left suppressing the right.

You are implying that it's a question of one side having Truth, but Truth is in the eye of the beholder. That is the whole POINT of free speech.

I feel a little sorry for Zuckerberg. It's clear many wars and civil wars were started and maintained by Facebook and Twitter --- the whole many-countries Arab Spring wars were waged via those platforms. People badly want to use these platforms to fight here. I know Zuckerberg never meant this to happen! But he invented, basically, another Gutenberg Press, and the last one led to two centuries of war, so it was inevitable.

I don't know what he's going to do, but I am sure he shouldn't get into censorship. Some model like the telephone or book publishers is needed. Let them all speak. The problem is, when people have free speech videos, they organize wars and they live-stream their mass murders and rapes and serial killings. That really is a problem.
Arguments based on 'everyone knows.." are seldom correct.

I don't think that the Right is being suppressed///as much as it cavils at losing the patina of legitimacy that the big platforms confer. Yeah..the far right is being marginalized--given their propensity for lying and deliberate misinformation--I have a hard time seeing this as a problem. After all, they'll always have Rush, right?

In the end..it is the consumer who decides just how much time he/she is going to devote separating the wheat from the chaff. It appears to me that many spend the time that might be used to find the truth....with cruising about, looking for things to bolster opinions already held..with conflicting information either spun into something palatable or ignored altogether. Those on the fringes--whether right or left..are the ones particularly guilty of this..IMO.

This recent election is a great case in point. We have a President whose relationship with the truth is sketchy, at best. We have people that say that because he is the President..he is entitled to have his every utterance treated as gold. How do we handle the obvious lies?

Our country is in the middle of a demographic change of some magnitude....Social media reflects this. The drive to 'alternate facts' is part of this as well.

Twitter, Facebook, YouTube are attempting to be fair and responsible..however...that knife cuts the Alt/Right deeper...because they are liars with a detestable agenda.
 

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