Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the in-your-words dept
This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is Stephen T. Stone responding to the accusation that our coverage of Elon Musk suggests some kind of vendetta:
A rich moron bought a thing he didn’t understand for a price that makes him an even bigger moron. He has since done everything possible to wreck that thing he bought in record time. That includes his decision to let a shitload of the staff running that thing he bought leave him and a relative handful of employees left to run the thing he barely understands.
And you think that isn’t going to be a huge news story for days, if not weeks?
In second place, it’s Gene Patt with a comment about Facebook’s policy that fact checkers can’t fact check politicians:
That’s not how it works
So, I’m a teacher. If I take the position of refusing to check to see if my students are cheating, and I tell my boss, “I’m simply not taking a position on whether cheating is being committed”, I’m going to get run through the ringer and held out by the MAGAs as an example of why public education is dying.
I think it’s reasonable that we hold candidates to the Presidency to the same basic standard that I expect a 15 year old to follow.
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we’ve got two more comments about Facebook’s fact checking policy. First, it’s an anonymous response:
Worth noting that Trump made at least 20 false and misleading claims in his announcement speech according to to CNN.
Fact checkers should be free to check anything a politician says or writes even if the politician and their supports are not going to like it. Truth matters and trying to stay “neutral” is not an option. It just lets bullshit, lies and falsehoods propagate.
Next, it’s another comment from Stephen T. Stone, responding to the idea that this policy means being “neutral”:
Let’s say a politician—doesn’t matter which party they belong to—tells a lie. That the statement is a lie can be easily proven by a quick Google search. Is it “neutral” for someone to say that the politician told a lie, or would that be going too far into “editorializing”? What determines whether saying “this statement is a lie” is a statement of fact or a partisan opinion? When, if ever, should a news source state that a politician’s lie is actually, provably, 100% a lie?
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is an anonymous comment on last week’s winning comments post. I was away for the week and didn’t write the post (or, mercifully, closely follow all the latest Musk happenings) and I haven’t yet caught up, so I’m still parsing the layers of this joke in response to Mike mentioning that a new Techdirt feature must be live in a week:
They are probably ghost anyhow, so they many not care.
In second place, it’s an anonymous commenter on the Facebook fact checking post, replying to a comment about Facebook “hiding” the Hunter Biden laptop stuff:
Yeah, it’s the same one.
As a matter of fact, they hid it so well that somehow you and every other nut like you knew about it.
For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with a comment from Thad about the assertion that Musk’s erratic Twitter decisions might just be in service of shareholder interests:
Just look what a great job he’s doing serving the shareholders at Tesla.
Finally, it’s hij with one more comment about Facebook ending the fact checking of politicians:
Yuge Announcement
I am officially announcing my candidacy to be President of the United States. Please let the folks at Meta know.
That’s all for this week, folks!
Comments on “Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt”
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The always-wrong Stephen T. Stone is wrong again. Twitter, Facebook, et al. are not news sources. They are generic speech platforms where people make posts about whatever they want. Twitter, Facebook, et al. do not have journalists on staff. They have no subject-matter expertise. They have no ability to vet millions of posts for accuracy. “Proven by a quick Google search” just means that the checker has come upon some other posting, perhaps accurate, perhaps not. This is not what a generic speech platform should be doing. If people want to subscribe to “fact-checking” services, they should be able to do that, but those services should be independent of the platform, and people should be able to make their own judgements about the biases of those fact-checkers.
Re:
lmao
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So you want any comment good, bad, Ugly, lie, To be freely laid out and to let any one believe what someone or GROUP has posted?
What church do you Belong to? The one that changed the story of Sodom, to a bunch of sex crazy Gay and lesbians?
Re: Re:
Yes, that is the correct approach to take in a society that holds free speech to be a foundational value.
My religious upbringing taught that the sin of Sodom was an obscene breach of hospitality, treating kindness to strangers as a crime.
Re: Re: Re:
And here we see Hyman missing the entire point of God smiting Sodom and Gomorrah:
It was never about buggery. It was about NOT PISSING OFF GOD AND NOT HARMING HIS MESSENGERS.
Denying the strangers hospitality would have resulted in the same fucking thing.
Re: Re: Re:2
Huh? Isn’t that what I said? What point do you think I missed?
Also, before the smiting Good took a deep dive into Sodom and couldn’t find even ten righteous people there to make the city worth saving, despite Abraham interceding on their behalf.
And besides that, the whole thing is just about the authors of the Bible ragging on their traditional rivals Ammon and Moab, a shaggy dog story so that they could accuse the founding members of those nations to be the product of incest between Lot and his daughters.
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… projected nobody mentally competent, ever.
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This argument appears to be “The hosts should STFU and not comment on conversations their guests are having”
That… and interesting[1] position to take.
[1] I would use other adjectives, but I’m trying to be polite
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Re: Re:
Correct, given the power imbalance between those who operate the site and those who use it
Re: Re: Re:
If I invite someone to my house there is a great ‘power imbalance’ between me as the property owner and them as a guest, that doesn’t mean I’m being unreasonable should they start insulting other guests or otherwise start behaving in a manner I object to and I tell them to either shape up or get out, that’s simply me as the homeowner exercising my rights as the owner in who and what sort of speech and behavior I’m willing to allow on my property.
Likewise if one or more of the people decide to use my property to issue statements or hold discussions I see no reason why I should be barred from stepping in should they say something I find objectionable or is flat out wrong and I want to correct to let people know ‘that’s wrong/a lie.’ If they want to have a private conversation without other people interjecting they can do that on their own property where they can set the rules.
Re: Re: Re:2
Therein lies the “problem”: To the asshole, you are being unreasonable, because you invited the asshole into your home and now you’re being a huge fascist about their free speech. Consequences shouldn’t apply to them because they just want to “tell the truth” and “speak their mind” and “just ask questions”—and you’re getting in the way of that. Shitheads like Hyman never believe they’re the problem even as the rhetoric they spew ends up radicalizing people and inspiring violence like the Colorado Springs shooting. Why should they believe it? They’re undying warriors for free speech—without consequences or responibility, of course, but still.
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Re: Re: Re:3
That’s correct. Freedom of speech implies freedom from self-imposed fear of consequences or responsibility. The purpose of free speech is so that everyone gets to state their beliefs in order that potential truths not be suppressed. (Freedom from self-imposed fear is not the same as freedom from criticism by others, of course. Such criticism is an integral part of free speech. But no one should fear speaking the truth even if it drives the evil and the mad to violence.)
Twitter and Facebook are not anyone’s home. The site owners can impose viewpoint-based censorship if they want to, but they should not, because it impedes the service of providing a place where people can have free and wide-ranging discussions.
Re: Re: Re:4
You are totally free to do that on your own dime, but you are of course expecting others to pay for it against their wishes. You are just another entitled asshole who can’t stand being told to take your shit elsewhere.
Being an asshole and a bigot has nothing to do with “free and wide-ranging discussions”. You are just another shit-stain that has zero to contribute to the sum of human knowledge except as a footnote of your negative impact.
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Re: Re: Re:5
No, I am saying that a large generic speech site should not wish to engage in viewpoint-based censorship. If they do, the should be criticized to get them to change.
No amount of your cursing at people who disagree with you will make your opinions any more true, or theirs any less.
Re: Re: Re:6
If the viewpoints are bigotry, yes, they should—because a platform as large as Twitter isn’t some small-ass Mastodon instance meant for a small community of friends, but an actual fucking business that will want to maximize its ability to do business. Huge corporations paying big amounts of money to advertise on Twitter will not want their ads next to TRASH speech—so some “viewpoint-based” moderation is going to exist. That you align more with the people spreading those kinds of viewpoints being moderated than with the people whom those viewpoints target—and yes, they are people, you hatemongering son of a bitch—is your fucking problem. Solve it your-fucking-self.
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Re: Re: Re:7
By the same token, a site might look at the fact that the Bros movie tanked, and look at Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A, and decide that QUILTBAG content should be kept away from advertisers.
A private company is free to decide to censor opinions based on viewpoint in order to try to maximize profits. It would just be better for society and more aligned with the society’s foundational values if it didn’t do that.
Mastodon isn’t any different: https://reason.com/volokh/2022/11/21/mastodons-content-moderation-growing-pains/printer/
The NY Times prints an article that finally admits that giving puberty blockers to children can cause irreversible damage (to coin a phrase), then the writers are accused of bigotry, and the slapfest plays out on a Mastodon instance. As Mastodon grows into being a generic speech set of platforms it will encounter exactly the same moderation issues as every other generic speech site.
Re: Re: Re:8
And if the platform makes that decision instead of the advertisers, I’m sure the advertisers who want to advertise to LGBTQ people will not be pleased. (Also: Instead of QUILTBAG, just use the F-word. I mean, if you’re gonna slur queer people, at least have the nuts to do it out in the open instead of hiding behind an unfunny and dehumanizing variant on the LGBTQ initialism.)
If not doing that chased queer people off that private company’s platforms, would you be whining about or celebrating the censorship of queer voices from a “large generic speech platform”? Oh, and don’t bother with an attempt to throw the “I have been silenced” fallacy back in my face. You should be able to stand your ground on your own terms without being a fucking hypocrite.
Yes or no, Hyman: Since you believe a “large generic speech platform” should host all legally protected speech (including hate speech aimed at queer people), do you similarly believe a Mastodon instance intended as a safe space for queer people should federate and interact with a Mastodon instance that lets anti-queer speech flow freely?
…and since you will inevitably answer “yes”, because that’s the kind of hateful extremist that you are: What are you going to do when that queer-friendly instance inevitably and continually ignores your whining—about how it “should” let a bigot-friendly Masto instance chase that queer-friendly instance off the Fediverse in the name of Freeze Peach? I mean, if you think a thing “should” happen, and whining like a bitch isn’t getting that thing to happen, the anger building up inside of you as you’re being ignored will inevitably lead to one of two roads: legal action or violence. And I’d love to know which road you plan on taking when you’re ready to attack, say, tech.lgbt for not listening to you.
Oh, and one more question, Hyman: When you finally and inevitably lash out against a queer person with violence (lethal or otherwise), do you plan on lying about being queer to escape a hate crime charge?
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Re: Re: Re:9
Q – queer
U – unknown / undecided
I – intersex
L – lesbian
T – transgender
B – bisexual
A – asexual
G – gay
I don’t know why you think arranging these letters into a pronounceable acronym is a slur.
I do not believe that a large generic speech site should host all legal speech, and I have said so many times. As always, you like to argue with illusory versions of me who say what you want them to say. Moderation and censorship are different things. Moderation may remove speech that is off-topic (and courts have decided that even government-run sites may perform such moderation), spam, or indecorous. Censorship targets certain opinions for removal no matter how they are expressed, based on their viewpoint.
I have no intention of ever forcing any site to host material that they don’t want to, unless they are institutions like public universities that have legal obligations under the 1st Amendment, in which case I will donate to organizations like FIRE who will do the litigation for me. I will criticize and mock sites that I believe should be hosting material that they instead choose to censor, such as Amazon not selling When Harry Became Sally.
I have no intention of ever “lashing out” physically against anyone who is not so attacking me first, not even if women who believe they’re men force their way into my locker room, since I’m not body-shy in that way.
You have these violent fantasies because you realize that you are losing the non-violent war of ideas in the public mind.
If a site is set up to support one point of view, and is meant for people who do not want to see opposing viewpoints, then the site should censor inappropriate content to satisfy its users. Sites are allowed to censor if they want to and if it suits them. I would just suggest that the site not pretend that what they are doing is not censorship.
Re: Re: Re:10
Because I’ve only ever seen right-wing shitbags like you using it seriously.
Except no, that’s the opposite of what you’ve said. You keep saying that “large generic speech platforms” (whatever the unholy satanic fuck that means) should not engage in “viewpoint censorship”. By any definition I can think of, not engaging in “viewpoint censorship” would have to involve allowing all legally protected speech—because “trans people are subhuman garbage” is a viewpoint, no matter how vile. You can’t believe “Twitter shouldn’t ban viewpoints” and “Twitter shouldn’t host bigotry” at the same time because bigotry is a viewpoint, you dumb motherfucker.
Yeah, but no. Censorship may target certain opinions, but it’s more about targeting the people who say them—and it’s about silencing them in a way where they can’t say them anywhere. Moderation would be a platform telling a racist “we don’t do that here” and kicking them off for saying the N-word. Censorship would be some asshole trying to actually outlaw the N-word and making any use of it (in any context!) at least a civil offense, if not a criminal offense.
…yet. As you keep getting told to fuck off from platforms that don’t want to host your bullshit, you’ll be radicalized into thinking you deserve a spot on those platforms. You’ll come to think you should have a legal right to use them. You might even hire a dipshit like ThorsProvoni to (badly) represent you in court as you claim the law gives you the right to a platform you don’t own.
Radicalization is like the conversion of coal into a diamond: All the process needs is pressure and time.
And you’ll be laughed out of whatever platform you’re on because you’re being a fucking communist. No platform should ever be made, by public pressure or by goverment dictate, to host any speech its owners/operators don’t want to host. That includes storefronts like Amazon and Walmart—or do you really believe the law should make Walmart sell overtly leftist literature alongside the right-wing literature it already carries?
Pressure and time, my good bitch. Pressure and time.
No, I’m thinking about anti-queer violence because, for the first time in a long goddamn time, American right-wing shitbags are embracing the kind of anti-queer violence that killed five people in Colorado Springs. One of Tucker Carlson’s recent guests said, live and on-air, that “until we end this evil agenda” of gender-affirming care, more anti-queer shootings are going to happen. That’s not just blaming the victims for their own deaths—that’s a goddamn terroristic threat: “Get the fuck back in the closet or you’re going to keep being killed until you do.” That’s where mainstream anti-queer rhetoric in the U.S. was going before Club Q; it’s where mainstream anti-queer rhetoric will continue going now.
And you don’t disavow this shit! You don’t stand up and say “hey, I don’t like trans people, but that’s a bit fucking much”! Shit, son, you’re less like “polite” transphobes and more like the father of the fucking shooter, who was more worried about whether his son was gay than about whether he was a murderer. (Another quote from that shitbag: “I praised him for violent behavior really early. I told him it works… You’ll get immediate results.”)
Those are the kind of people with whom your rhetoric associates you. So you go ahead and keep talking on and on about “gender ideologues”; sooner or later, you’re going to hit on the “groomer” shit, at which point you’re going to sound exactly like Christian hate preachers who celebrate shootings like Club Q. Pressure and time—that’s all it takes.
That’s because it isn’t. Any anti-queer bigot can go find a bigot-friendly Masto instance and post there. A queer-friendly instance choosing to not platform that speech in its timelines by use of defederation, silencing, and any other such measures hasn’t censored that bigot-friendly instance in the slightest. It’s only made sure that the bigots can’t easily shove their bullshit in the faces of people they want to attack (verbally or physically). If you really think that’s censorship, maybe consider how many queer people are going to be less open about their being queer because they don’t want to be a victim of the kind of violence that’s being threatened by right-wingers after Club Q. Then look in the mirror and ask yourself how long it’ll be before you’re making the same threats.
Pressure and time. That’s all it takes.
tick tock, motherfucker
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Re: Re: Re:11
As always, you fantasize about illusory versions of people and hold imaginary conversations with them. I would suggest that you perhaps should stop worrying about me and get some help for yourself, because it is people who hold conversations with imaginary enemies who are far more likely to decide to get a gun and start shooting at them. Pressure and time indeed.
Re: Re: Re:12
There’s nothing “illusory” about your bigotry, Hyman. On a long enough timeline, it’s going to turn into seething hatred—raw, unchained, and ultimately violent. But just so you know: Your targets won’t be passive bullet sponges any more.
…says the guy who whines about “woke gender ideologues”. Besides, I don’t believe in violence except as an absolute last resort, and even then, I believe in it only as means to defend one’s self or others. Your side—the side that celebrates anti-queer murders, the side that shoots up queer-friendly bars, the side that proclaims the eternal damnation of all queer people—is the one that keeps killing queer people to preëmptively “save” some nebulous group of people from the existence of queer people.
I can’t wait to see how you justify, rather than condemn, the next bit of major anti-queer violence. Oh, and don’t think I haven’t noticed that you still haven’t condemned the Club Q shooting without qualification. I have, and I’m not the least bit surprised that an anti-queer bastard like you has refused to do that.
I’d call you a cunt, but that would imply you have depth and warmth.
Re: Re: Re:12
[Projects facts contrary to evidence]
Re: Re: Re:12
Well, y=I guess let’s add “serial abuser” to the list, Hyman.
Because we are interacting with the real you, and not some imaginary fiction you dreamed up.
Re: Re: Re:10
With that, you once again you admit you’re deliberately lying about the existence of “censorship.”
Re: Re: Re:10
No, you believe a platform should allow you to attack your chosen targets, even if that drives users away from the platform. Also despite all you claims otherwise, yout posts on this site show that you will continue your attacks until those target groups are driven to extinction.
Re: Re: Re:8
… said no moral, rational human being, ever.
Re: Re: Re:6
” criticized to get them to change.”
With violence if nescairy is the part you keep leaving off bro.
Re: Re: Re:4
… said nobody who supoorts, or even understands free speech, ever.
Re: Re: Re:4 Twitter and Facebook are not anyone’s home
They may not be anyone’s home, but neither are they the public square. As private companies they can and should run the place as they see fit. Someone else is always free to come in and (try to) do it better. In a way, I guess the chief twit is doing just that. And we can all see how that’s working out.
Re: Re: Re:5
As private companies they can and should run the place as they see fit.
Those two words are really key in the discussion as the first one covers why they have the right to decide who and what they allow on their property while the second covers why* they act as they do.
Basically any company’s first and foremost concern is going to be ‘what makes us the most money?’, and when it comes to social media sites they will moderate accordingly in order to draw in and keep the largest audience and therefore the most profitable advertisers for that audience.
When platforms tell bigots or other toxic users to shape up or get out while it might be influenced by their preference to not associate with those types of people the primary concern is almost certainly because the majority of people don’t want to associate with those types of people, and will leave or never sign up if that’s the cost of using a given platform(there’s a reason the ‘alternative’ social media platforms have such abysmal user counts).
If being an asshole was something the majority of society supported then moderation would reflect that, that it doesn’t is all the explanation you need for why sites moderate as they do and it has nothing to do with ‘persecution of conservatives/conservative ideas’.
Re: Re: Re:4
Ironic that YOU, HYMAN, have been kicked out of CONSERVATIVE SHITSITES, for reasons.
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Re: Re: Re:5
It’s not ironic at all. I’m contrarian by nature, and when I’m confronted with echo chambers, I like to dispute their views. If I were still able to comment on Rod Dreher’s site, I would be telling him that gods don’t exist and that drag queen story hours are unlikely to being about the downfall of civilization. Here, I say that gender ideology is false and that liberals overlook the sins of their favored victim groups. I basically say the same things everywhere, and because everywhere hates free speech when it doesn’t affirm their biases, I get kicked off everywhere.
Re: Re: Re:6
No, you’re contrarian by choice. No one is born being a contrarian, and being a contrarian isn’t in anyone’s genetics. Trust me: I like arguing on the Internet as much as you (if not more), and it’s not fucking genetics.
Sounds like you’ll be defending the Club Q shooter, then, given how that place was an “echo chamber” for queer people and their “views”.
Nice to know that your shitting all over trans people is just a schtick instead of, I don’t know, an actual fucking belief that trans people are subhuman garbage and need to be taken out of public life (or existence, whichever is more convenient for you). I mean, if you were actually transphobic, you might be a fucking threat to the safety of trans people—y’know, like the people who genuinely believe trans people are a threat to humanity and say the kind of shit that radicalizes people like the Club Q shooter into anti-trans/anti-queer violence.
No. No, you do not.
Re: Re: Re:7
He’s admitting he spews his hate everywhere.
Re: Re: Re:6
And welcome nowhere, but that’s your problem for being am annoying troll.
Re: Re: Re:7
One can be contrarian and polite, but when you start saying that sort of shit…
Re: Re: Re:8
Being polite does not mean you are not a troll, while being contrarian, and bringing up the same bigotry time after time is definitely trollish behavior.
Re: Re: Re:6
“I get kicked off everywhere.”
Principal Skinner gif
Am I the asshole?
No it’s definitely the kids who are wrong.
Re: Re: Re:4
“The purpose of free speech is so that everyone gets to state their beliefs in order that potential truths not be suppressed”
Indeed. But, other rights exist, such as private property rights and the right to free association. If I don’t wish to host you on my property, your free speech does not override my right to tell you to GTFO. Your right to speak does not mean anyone else has to listen, or even be in the same room with you if they don’t wish to be.
“Twitter and Facebook are not anyone’s home”
No, but they are privately owned property, and they have the right to kick you out if you’re making things difficult for other customers or staff.
“it impedes the service of providing a place where people can have free and wide-ranging discussions”
Twitter and Facebook provide user data to advertisers as their product. You being a raging asshole driving away other users loses them money. If you want a feee platform for the honest debate of ideas, try picking one where you’re not the product being sold.
Not that most of the people kicked off were trying to do anything of the sort. Nobody was being kicked off for simply participating in honest discourse.
Re: Re: Re:4
No, it doesn’t. Every action has a consequence; every right has a responsibility. The responsibility of free speech lies in using your speech to avoid causing harm to others as best you can: If you speak transphobia into being and you help bring someone else to hate trans/queer people enough that…oh, let’s say they shoot up a queer nightclub, you will carry at least some small amount of responsibility for that person’s actions.
The decisions you make and the actions that follow are a reflection of who you are. You cannot hide from yourself.
And that applies to the state and to anyone who tries to use the power of either the state (e.g., lawsuits) or violence (or threats thereof) to censor someone. That doesn’t apply to being kicked off someone else’s private property for saying shit they don’t want you saying on their property. You have a right to speak your mind; you don’t have a right to force yourself onto someone else’s property, make the property owner give you a bullhorn, and make other people listen to your bullshit. That applies in both cyber- and meatspace. Unless you’ve got a citation of law or binding legal precedent that says otherwise, “the principles of free speech” have never given you, and will not ever give you, the right to “free reach”.
“Well, unless they’re trans, in which case their ‘truth’ is woke gender ideology, which is a pure evil that must be defeated by any means necessary.” — you, probably
They’re still private property unless you can produce evidence to the contrary. That means they can choose what speech is or isn’t allowed on their property regardless of what you think they “should” do (or what the law “should” force them to do).
If marginalized people get chased off the service because the site owners chose to ban only illegal speech, how does that not “impede[] the service of providing a place where people can have free and wide-ranging discussions”—or do you not care about that because “fuck them trans freaks” or whatever the hell you believe?
Like I said earlier: Every action has a consequence; every right has a responsibility. Twitter has a right to ban whatever speech it wants. The responsibility inherent in that right is figuring out the consequences of that decision and how it will affect the overall tenor of the platform. If Twitter were to undo a ban on transphobic speech, that would likely change the tenor of the platform for both transphobes and trans people, such that the “discussions” you claim would happen turn into Internet dogpiles on trans people that ultimately chase them off the platform. I’m sure you have no problem with that outcome (because one less trans person in public life is a “win” for you hatemongering dickheads), but Twitter might not want to be seen as a haven for bigots. (I mean, even 4chan decided that GamerGate was too much for its notoriously lax moderation.)
“Free speech” isn’t only a principle of “no one should be censored”—it’s a principle of “everyone should have a right to participate”, and people won’t feel free to participate if they’re harassed and bullied into silence. You can’t give bigots an open license to spew their bullshit and make the targets of that bigotry feel safe enough to speak their mind. If you can think of a way to do so that doesn’t involve marginalized people having to see bigoted bullshit in their timelines before they can filter it out, feel free to share it. Otherwise:
Go the fuck away, Hyman.
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Re: Re: Re:5
No, you don’t get to redefine free speech so that it serves your purposes. Neither do you get to put words in my mouth and claim that I seek to force sites to host speech against their will. When speech is free, everyone has the ability to participate, but they cannot silence other people whose opinions they find unpleasant. Large generic speech platforms don’t have to support free speech, but they should.
The false notion of responsibility is used to promulgate lies for “people’s own good”, such as the idea that atheism should be suppressed because religious belief makes for a better society. The universe does not care what people believe about it, and people who believe lies will inevitably exit windows thinking they can fly.
Re: Re: Re:6
Neither do you, shitbag.
You keep saying sites “shouldn’t” ban certain kinds of speech. If and when they refuse to listen to your bullshit, your eventual final course of action will be to find a way to force your position onto them—whether through government action or through violence. After all, you said that you’re “contrarian by nature”; losing an argument isn’t in your fucking genetics, according to your own goddamn words.
And yet, you say nothing about the harassment and threats that make queer people live in a perpetual state of fear for their lives—a fear that became all too real in Colorado Springs this past weekend. You’re literally more concerned with the people doing the harassing and the threatening being unable to express bigotry to trans people on a social media service because said service would prefer to not host bigotry.
For what reason must any “large generic speech platform” (whatever the fuck that means) need to support all legally protected speech by giving it a platform? For what reason must such a platform host bigotry and hatred and all that garbage? And for what reason does that idea only ever apply to sites like Twitter and Facebook, but never to sites like Parler and Truth Social?
No, it isn’t. We are all responsible for our speech—good and bad, right and wrong, whatever. That means when we say something, we have to accept the consequences of that speech. For you, that means accepting the idea that your anti-trans rhetoric plays a role—no matter how significant or miniscule—in radicalizing trans- and queerphobes. For me, that means accepting the idea that I’m a dumbass who can’t easily give up arguing with an anti-queer piece of shit like you.
…or shoot up queer nightclubs, for all you give a shit about that.
Re: Re: Re:6
You’re the only one doing that here.
Re: Re: Re:6 Why does my dog bark everytime you talk?
“claim that I seek to force sites to host speech against their will”
But my dude that exactly what you argue for. You just leave or the “or else” at the end of pitch.
Re: Re: Re:6 Dont let the windowsill hit you on the way out
“and people who believe lies will inevitably exit windows thinking they can fly.”
So why haven’t you jumped yet bro?
Re: Re: Re:6
I live in a society that does exactly that, Hyman.
Minus the suppression of atheism. Singapore suppresses actual free speech, which is partly funded and encouraged by the white supremacists that have thoroughly poisoned the country with their hypocritical, cowardly ideology.
Re: Re: Re:4
There is absolutely zero positive value to society from lie-based beliefs such as yours.
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Re: Re: Re:2
As always, you and others here phrase this as a question of force – “why I should be barred” – rather than as a matter of choice, because if force is involved, you can hide behind the legalism of the 1st Amendment to say that platforms, in fact, cannot be barred from doing as they wish.
A generic speech platform should not be censoring opinions based on viewpoint, and they should not cherry-pick certain opinions or people for “fact checking”. They should moderate for spam and decorum, but otherwise let users say whatever they like, and let other users do the arguing and correcting if they so choose.
Re: Re: Re:3
A generic speech platform should not be censoring opinions based on viewpoint
Oh do drop the pathetic dogwhistle already and just come out and say that people should be free to be as toxic and bigoted as they want to be and face no consequences for it, everyone knows that that’s what ‘censoring opinions based upon viewpoint’ means at this point.
If you’re going to be an asshole at least be an honest one.
Re: Re: Re:3
“A generic speech platform should not be censoring opinions based on viewpoint”
In your subjective, clearly biased opinion. They have every right to do so, and you can’t force them to host speech they don’t like without denying many of the same free speech rights you claim to believe in.
Re: Re: Re:3
Admins of a platform meant for “generic speech” (whatever the fuck that’s supposed to mean) can still choose to moderate speech based on what those admins don’t want to host on their platform. If that means such a platform bans transphobic speech…well, tough shit for you and your TERF/anti-queer allies (who I’m sure are preparing a defense for the Colorado Springs shooter right now). You can’t make them change their minds by whining like a bitch—and you sure as shit can’t force them to host speech without either pulling an Elon (good luck with that) or somehow convincing the government to nationalize that platform.
If your speech isn’t welcome on a given platform, you should take the fucking hint and leave. Not that you’re able to do that, Hyman, but you should.
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Re: Re: Re:4
As a reader of TechDirt, you are surely aware of the Streisand Effect. Large generic speech platforms may indeed choose to engage in viewpoint-based censorship, but how effective is it? Did Trump become less visible after Twitter banned him? Did the Babylon Bee’s satirical take on Dr. Rachel Levine get less publicity after being banned, or more?
You liberal ideologues naturally want to conflate the statement that a belief is false with the statement that such believers should be subject to violence, because you want to silence those who disbelieve. People can only ever be the sex of their bodies. People who believe otherwise should nevertheless be left alone to live their lives as they choose, as long as they don’t try to force others to affirm their beliefs or force their way into single-sex spaces for which their bodies disqualify them.
Re: Re: Re:5
I don’t give a fuck if you think trans women aren’t women. Believe that all you want; that’s your fucking anti-queer hang-up, and you’re welcome to it. But when you say the kind of anti-queer shit that lawmakers and pundits are saying, and when that ultimately leads to anti-queer violence, you’re as guilty of stochastic terrorism as those lawmakers and pundits because you’re helping ot propagate their lies about queer people. Anti-queer violence is the consequence of intense and extreme anti-queer propaganda—and your right-wing allies give fewer fucks than you about that violence.
To wit: This kind of talk is going to eventually radicalize someone into fighting back against “woke gender ideologues” with actual goddamn violence because they think a trans person saying “these are my pronouns” is an attempt to “force” that someone into “affirming” that trans person’s identity.
Again, not that you care. A queer nightclub got shot up this past weekend and I bet you can’t even be fucked to express any condolences for the victims without turning it into a treatise against “safe spaces” and “woke gender ideology” because that’s the kind of anti-queer shitbag you are, Hyman.
Fuck off forever, you disingenuous asshole.
Re: Re: Re:5 Let's put my money where Busted Hymans mouth is
“Large generic speech platforms”
I’m going to start donating $5 to a gay charity every time you say that badly overwrought and totally meaningless phrase. I encourage everyone else to join me. Other phrase that will incur a charity charge are woke and ideologue. Please feel free to add more. If nothing else we can either expand the neo nazis vocabulary or make him do a bit of good for the world he hates.
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Re: Re: Re:6
Large generic speech platforms are targeted by woke ideologues because they are large and generic; that’s where woke ideologues think they will get the most bang for their censorship buck.
May I suggest Log Cabin Republicans?
Re: Re: Re:7
what the fuck does this even mean
Re: Re: Re:8
Large – the site many users, from hundreds of thousands to billions
Generic – the site as a whole supports discussions on any topics of interest to its users
Speech – the interaction of users with the site consists of users posting written or video content in which they say things
Platforms – the site provides means for formatting, storing, searching, and connecting content posted by users
Re: Re: Re:9
“Large” is wholly arbitrary, though. Someone might think millions of users constitutes “large”; someone else might think even a couple thousand users is “large”. What criteria are you using to judge a platform as “large”, and how is that the objectively correct criteria to use in that regard?
A Mongolian basketweaving forum might have a small off-topic subforum for people to talk about whatever. How would the existence of that subforum affect the classification of the entire forum in re: being “generic”?
This is why your bullshit phrase is meaningless, Hyman: You won’t ever be able to put together a coherent and objectively correct definition. Shit, there are Masto instances that purposely limit themselves to a few hundred users because their admins think anything above that is “too big”. Would their definition of “large” be more or less objective than yours, and what would make it so?
Re: Re: Re:9
By your own definitions, there are exactly zero “large generic speech platforms” that actually currently exist in the real world.
Re: Re: Re:10
There is one.
It’s the ENTIRE INTERNET. The SERIES OF TUBES that allows Techdirt to exist. And Twitter. And Facebook. And a zillion other websites.
Including the walled-off shitshow that is the Chinese and Russian sections. And the Japanese and Korean sections. And the heavily-monitored Indian ones, and so on.
And I don’t think there’s anyone who can manage even the infrastructure alone, let alone moderate the entire Internet…
Re: Re: Re:8
‘Platforms that a majority of people want to use, as opposed to the cesspits the assholes are stuck with because they keep being shown the door.’
Re: Re: Re:7
… claimed nobody not hallucinating, ever.
Re: Re: Re:
Only if it’s the fucking state.
Re:
Tell me you know nothing about Facebook’s fact-checking process without telling me you know nothing about Facebook’s fact-checking process.
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Re: Re:
https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2022/an-open-letter-to-youtubes-ceo-from-the-worlds-fact-checkers/
Sorry, but this sounds like the usual left-leaning set of complaints. When the supposed fact checkers are asking the platforms to censor content to match their version of the truth, we have moved beyond the simple notion of fact checking.
https://www.facebook.com/formedia/blog/third-party-fact-checking-how-it-works
Not exactly a ringing endorsement: “63% of people thinking [false information labels] were applied fairly”
Re: Re: Re:
Therefore, you admit it’s legitimate fact-checking.
Re:
First off, THE SERIES OF TUBES is the BIG GENERIC SPEECH PLATFORM. Twitter et al is the internet equivalent of Goldman Sachs et al opening up their lobbies for the lunchtime crowd.
Secondly, fact-checking is protected opinion. Usually biased towards facts. And usually, done by professional journalists. People are biased, yes, but no, your weaponized, genocidal ignorance is not equal to their expertise.
Thirdly, people do. By using the services those fact-checkers are on.
Re: Inpoent and a coward
Opinions so popular you can’t even post under a fake name.
“This is not what a generic speech platform should be doing.”
Tell us, specifically, what speech you have had taken down.
Crickets
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Re:
Facebook repeatedly gave me timeouts for posts that disputed liberal gender ideology, liberal race ideology, et al. I decided that I did not want to be nudged into writing things that would be acceptable to them, and so I deleted my account.
This is exactly the sort of viewpoint-based censorship that most commenters here want to have in place, which is why they were so upset by Musk’s takeover of Twitter, and so pleased at his apparent flailing around.
Re: Re:
Facebook repeatedly gave me timeouts for posts that disputed liberal gender ideology, liberal race ideology, et al.
That’s a funny way of saying ‘I was being an anti-trans and/or sexist and racist bigot’ but by all means feel free to be more specific if you feel that’s an unfair characterization. What, specifically were you sent to time-out for?
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Re: Re: Re:
Things similar to what I say here. People are only ever the sex of their bodies. Rioters, looters, and arsonists who do not stop committing their crimes when asked and refuse to surrender should be met with lethal force. Crazed, drug-addled, stinking, possibly dangerous bums should be swept from city streets and subways into remote shelters where they will not bother normal people. Broken-windows policing and stop-and-frisk should be reinstated. Arrested people with criminal records should be kept in jail. Illegal aliens should be deported. All students should be given the same standardized tests.
Essentially, prioritize normal people over the dregs of society and the weird outliers.
Re: Re: Re:2
Ah, I see I was grossly underestimating your penchant for dehumanizing people and groups, thanks for confirming that facebook was right to keep sending you to time out for being a jackass I guess.
Re: Re: Re:2
Get fucked, Hyman.
Re: Re: Re:2
So, yes, you’re being given timeouts for being a hateful piece of shit. Thanks for confirming.
Re: Re: Re:2
Thank God the DSMV is more reputable than you, Hyman.
Let’s add “People who have been asked to leave” as well.
You don’t want to understand why these pople do what they do? Good. This lets the rest of us consider the use of lethal force to filth like you.
Oh, and steal money from the organizations who WANT to help them, like, I dunno, THE VETERAN’S ASSOCIATION?
Oh, right, Hyman. You also hate the troops as well.
Ah yes, support for the thin blue line as well.
You first. After all, white people are the illegal aliens…
You know, being anonymous has made you more honest, Hyman. Shame you’re an actual NeoNazi and need to leave or otherwise be removed with force.
You and your ilk are an active, very present and very violent thereat to America and the FBI clearly doesn’t want to deal with your lot. Not only that, YOUR shitty ideology has been spread to the rest of the world, via modern steeplejacking (and not ste stealing of church steeples, which would be hilarious).
So yeah, three guesses why you’re treated the way you are. Not like you care, anyway, becauyse you actually believe in that anti-human garbage.
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Re: Re: Re:3
None of these opinions are any different than ones I’ve stated before under my own name. And it would be odd for me to be stating opinions if I didn’t believe them.
There is no opinion, left, right, about race, about gender, about religion, about comic books, that can’t find some mind to lodge in and drive it to violence. That’s too bad, but in no way requires people to withhold their opinions.
Given the nature of many commenters here and the invective often directed against me, some TechDirt participant might be driven to commit violence, but I certainly do not want to use that possibility as a means of demanding that they stop saying nasty things. Free speech is often unpleasant to those who disagree with it.
Re: Re: Re:4
Every time you say something transphobic, another murderer loads another bullet meant for another queer person into another gun. The Colorado Springs shooter wasn’t some goddamn “lone wolf” who came to his conclusions about queer people all on his own. His actions were most likely the end result of anti-queer propaganda spread by anti-queer bigots—you know, people like you.
Re: Re: Re:4 At least chorizo has some balls
“I’ve stated before under my own name.”
You won’t even post under a pseudonym.
You are a liar and a coward bro.
Re: Re: Re:4
I’m happy being mildly uncomfortable when it comes to free speech.
Because everyone disagrees on issues and that’s fine as long as people try to understand why.
You simply don’t care enough, Hyman. And you clearly are no friend of free speech, or even property rights.
And what I said about you being an active, violent threat to America? Straight from the FBI. Soon you’ll be saying antiSemitic bullshit, assuming you haven’t said such things IRL already.
And you WILL eventually murder minorities. It’s only a matter of time.
Arguing with you is pointless. You are a pollutant.
Re: Re: Re:2 Why do all neo-nazis have no chin?
“Essentially, prioritize normal people over the dregs of society and the weird outliers.”
The best part about that statement is, you have not even for one second, stopped and considered that you might be the second category and not the first. Despite being told by dozens if not hundreds of people that you are precisely that.
Re: Re: Re:
Bingo. I know a few people who get timeouts on a semi-regular basis, to the point where a couple of them even wear it as a badge of pride.
One guy’s often arguing about how unfair it is, how he did. nothing wrong, etc., but when you drill down into what he’s getting locked out for, it’s invariably a “joke” or meme that hits on racism and homophobia quick explicitly. He’s even been kicked out of local groups for this stuff but claims he was unfairly treated (in reality it’s usually for grotesquely transphobic images, in groups related to a town which has a very well attended number of Pride events during the year).
Re: Re: Re:2
And, like a certain asshole who keeps popping up to spew verbal, legal and antiSemetic diahorrea, I am very, very sure Hyman was also harassing the site owners of the very fine sites he was “commenting” on as well.
Re: Re:
Your rhetoric helps radicalize people like the Colorado Springs shooter. Fuck off forever and roast in the hottest, dryest, deepest part of the center of Hell.
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Re: Re: Re:
https://time.com/4501670/bombings-of-america-burrough/
In the 70s and 80s, radical leftists committed hundreds of bombings across the United States. No leftist should have used those bombings as a reason not to state their opinions, and no number of attacks on gay and drag bars are a reason for anyone to suppress their beliefs about the truth or morality of being gay or trans. No number attacks on churches, synagogues, or mosques is a reason for anyone to suppress their opinions about religion.
Re: Re: Re:2
Hyman.
You are an actual NeoNazi.
Fuck off.
Re: Re: Re:2
And as usual Hyman, you are to fucking stupid to grasp what is being said. You can point to any violent act perpetrated by radicalized people and that will never detract from the fact that some types of speech can actually radicalize people. You are a case in point, your fanaticism regarding “woke gender ideologies” as you put it, is evident. You’re just one step from becoming radicalized.
Re: Re: Re:3
Safer to assume he’s an active threat to America.
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Re: Re: Re:3
As long as the speech does not call for imminent illegal action, it is fine to speak it, even if it will radicalize people who hear it. That’s what it means to have freedom of speech as a foundational value.
Re: Re: Re:4
Yes, yes, you think right-wing dickbags should have every right to say “trans people need to be stopped” over and over and over without also taking any responsibility for the inevitable murder of trans people that will happen when someone takes those six words seriously enough to see violence as the only answer to, as you would most certainly put it, “the transgender question”.
You would’ve made one hell of a Nazi. Maybe you wouldn’t have murdered anyone yourself, but you damn sure would’ve helped the trains to the death camps run on time.
Re: Re: Re:4
You forgot to mention that speech can have consequences like people doesn’t want to associate with you in any way or that the speech radicalizes someone to such a degree they’ll try to kill you because of your incessant attacks on their identity.
Re: Re: Re:2
It should, however, give you pause to consider whether your rhetoric is actively radicalizing people into believing queer people are such a threat to society that killing them is the only “solution” to the “problem” of “woke gender ideology”.
I mean, if you had both a heart and the capacity for self-awareness, that is.
Re: Re: Re:2
Wow Hyman, you are really angry inside. What happened to you? Your answer to difficult problems with people you don’t understand is to put them in camps or kill them. If you honestly believe what you are spouting, do us all a favor and end yourself before you try to end a bunch of others that you hate first. Whatever happened to you, I hope you find a way to get over it.
Re: Re: Re:2 AS others have previously said Fuck off
And here we go with the whataboutsong and dance.
Re: Re: Re:
You know, I could have sworn that the deepest part of Hell was frozen and reserved for traitors (or maybe that’s just Dante’s viewpoint and I’m echoing it. I could be wrong either way).
Re: Re: Re:2
Hyman is a traitor to humanity. After all, he believes the extermination of an entire group of people—of other human beings who are exactly as human as you or I—will be of a net benefit to humanity. Rather than help other people, he seeks to hurt them, consequences be damned.
This is why he hasn’t expressed an ounce of remorse or regret about how rhetoric like his leads to shootings like Colorado Springs or the Pulse nightclub. He doesn’t care whether queer people live or die—only that they leave public life so he can be comfortable.
Hyman Rosen is a traitor to humanity, and for that, he deserves an eternity of torment—in this life or the next.
Re: Re: Re:3
I knew that from all the words he spews in support of fascist ideologies.
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Re: Re: Re:3
It is hilarious watching the ideologues twist and spin now that the lawyers for the Colorado Springs shooter have declared that their client is non-binary and uses they/them and Mx. NPR was reporting this morning that the shooter was being indicated, and very carefully phrased the story so that they never had to use a pronoun for the shooter, also reporting that the shooter has changed names a while ago, but never mentioning the non-binary part.
Now, of course, there is no such thing as being non-binary, and the shooter is only ever going to be the sex of their body, and the shooter also had prior encounters with law enforcement, but that doesn’t fit the gender ideologue narrative that it’s disbelief in their ideology that causes violence. Never mind that in the same span of time we’ve had the Virginia and Idaho murders of college students and just last night the Virginia Walmart mass murder.
Gender ideology is false. Judaism is false. Christianity is false. Islam is false. Evil and mad murderers of believers do not make the beliefs of the dead any more true, sad as those deaths may be.
Re: Re: Re:4
Okay, and…so what? I’m sure plenty of non-trans queer people have their own hangups about trans people—hell, that’s the whole point of the disingenuous, implicitly anti-queer, and explicitly anti-trans “Drop the T” campaign. The shooter being non-binary (assuming that’s not some trick to garner sympathy or evade being called anti-queer) doesn’t—and shouldn’t!—matter one goddamn bit if they went into the club with the intent of committing anti-queer violence.
From what I’ve read, they had issues with bullying under their birth name, though the real reason for the name change was never given. Maybe it had to do with them being non-binary, but that’s ultimately irrelevant now.
That you don’t believe in people being non-binary—which, I’ll remind you, is a gender identity and not a biological sex—doesn’t mean people who identify as non-binary don’t exist. It’s actually hilarious to watch you try and make “woke gender ideologues” “twist and spin” over the non-binary identity of the shooter, then turn around and explicitly deny the existence of the thing you’re trying to use against them.
…which all happened to end with no charges filed and no arrests made. Huh. D’ya think that has something to do with the shooter’s grandfather being a(n anti-queer) politician?
And those are horrible tragedies, and they should be treated as such. But so far as I know, those shootings didn’t target a specific demographic of people in a place meant to be a safe space for said demographic. (And don’t think I haven’t noticed that you haven’t said shit about the Club Q shooting being a tragedy, you bastard.)
Given how your anti-trans rhetoric is a soft-and-cuddly version of the same kind of anti-trans rhetoric you’ll hear from Tucker Carlson and his guests—the kind of rhetoric that will lead to more anti-queer violence—you don’t get to express sympathy for the people shot and killed in Club Q until you denounce your bullshit. Until and unless you do, you’re just a hypocrite, a liar, and a bigot. You don’t care if trans people die as the result of hate-fueled violence; you only care that they die, and you don’t feel the least bit bad about it.
And if’n you don’t like me saying as much, please do me a favor: Die mad about it.
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Re: Re: Re:5
“Don’t like” isn’t exactly my reaction to you. You are wrong in everything you say, so you need correction. But you don’t dislike a baby with poopy diapers, you just have to clean them up, because they are helpless to keep themselves clean.
Among the ways you are wrong is that you think you can tell me what I may say about anything. Delusional people are allowed to gather to do their delusional things, and have the right to be free of violence regardless of how wrong their beliefs are. I have sympathy for people who are harmed by evildoers and madmen when they are not hurting anyone else. The only people who deserve to be shot while carrying out their activities are rioters, looters, and arsonists.
Re: Re: Re:6
No, what I need is a bullet in the head—well, according to your anti-queer allies, anyway.
I don’t see you sticking up for trans people. I don’t see you referring to the murders of five people, at least one of them trans, inside a queer-friendly bar as a tragedy or a hate crime. You may think what you’ve said so far is compassionate and reasonable, but there’s a lying in your silence.
God, you’re such a fucking asshole.
And yet, here you fucking are, being intrusive upon a space for those “delusional” people you claim should be free to do whatever they want in peace.
And yet, you still call trans people “delusional” and act like their existence is so fucking burdensome on everyone else all while trying to feign sympathy for people we all know you think are subhuman filth. You give more of a shit about trying to “gotcha” queer people with the shooter’s alleged non-binary identity than about the five lives ended by that shooter and the pain and suffering and misery those deaths have caused to their families, friends, and communities—because if you didn’t, you wouldn’t have tried to pull that shit.
Hey, everybody: Look at the fucking bigot who also thinks property destruction is a motherfucking death penalty offense now!
You’re such a fucking asshole.
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Re: Re: Re:7
And that final cry from the heart demonstrates why no one trusts liberals and Democrats on issues of crime and public safety. The immediate instinct of the liberal is to defend scum of the Earth criminals instead of the people they victimize. It’s only when they see the horror with which people react that they try to backpedal and that’s when mealy-mouthed messages like “we said defund but we didn’t really mean defund” are trotted out to s public that knows full well that defund was exactly what was meant.
Re: Re: Re:8
No, my instinct is to think someone should receive the proper punishment for breaking a given law—and that destruction of property with no physical harm done to any other person is not an offense worthy of an on-site extrajudicial death penalty.
All this “tough on crime” shit just makes you look like a violent bastard. And like I’ve said about you elsewhere, son: Your bigotry will eventually turn violent. This makes me think it’ll happen sooner rather than later.
tick tock motherfucker
Re: Re: Re:6
[Projects facts not in evidence]
Re: Re: Re:4
…Oh wow.
You are a legit NeoNazi for saying that Judaism is false.
That’s very, very close to proper antiSemitism, you know. Not illegal under 1A, which you never have supported, but to think you actually hate the Jews…
Re: Re:
Ah, have you written any papers or done any studies covering these topics? If not then you’re just a bigoted asshole.
It’s not viewpoint discrimination to throw the assholes, the bigots and the racists out of your house.
All you assholes thought Musk was some kind of savior, all you got was a billionaire with an overinflated ego burning money in the most stupid way possible so while killing a company through management-by-flailing.
People pointed out repeatedly that Musk doesn’t know jack shit about social media, Musk takes over and proceeds to fuck up, people point out that they were right and people tend to be pleased when they are right and in this case it was evident from the beginning where it would lead – because who the fuck buys a company without doing due diligence?
I’m just waiting for phase 2 now, where Musk and assholes like you will start blaming Twitters imminent demise on the “woke”, the liberals, the democrats or whatever other boogeyman of the day you have to excuse your assholery.
Re: Re: Re: The party of personal responsibility is never personally responsible
I’m just waiting for phase 2 now, where Musk and assholes like you will start blaming Twitters imminent demise on the “woke”, the liberals, the democrats or whatever other boogeyman of the day you have to excuse your assholery.
I’m not on Twitter but I have read a few comments and scrolled down to check the replies and if my admittedly very limited experience is any indicator that’s already happening, with people praising Musk for canning so many people because he’s ‘getting rid of the leftists/libs’ and claiming that the platform is going to hell because the infernal liberals are/are trying to ‘sabotage’ it.
Re: Re: Re:2
Customers and users are not responsible to keep a company going. If the owners of Twitter cannot run it in a way that keeps its users and revenue streams intact, then the company will fail. If liberals (or conservatives) want to take actions that hurt the company because they do not like its direction, that’s fine too. People are allowed to take action to harm companies they don’t like. Twitter does not have a right to its users and advertisers. It must work to keep them.
Re: Re: Re:3
And right now, the person doing that the most to Twitter is the guy who owns Twitter. He’s the one who—among other things—allows hatemongers to run rampant without any consequences. That would make any company uncomfortable with having its ads show up next to bigoted speech halt their ad campaigns. The bigots have their “freedom”, but they’re helping kill Twitter that much faster by being openly bigoted thanks to the implicit sanction of Elon Musk.
Victory has its price.
Re: Re: Re:
It’s doubtful Hyman Rosen is even capable of reading one.
Re: Re: Re:2
It’s even more doubtful if Hyman WANTS to read.
He clearly returns to here despite everything we’ve done short of banning his ass.
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Re: Re: Re:
Ah, the classic “Courtier’s Reply” – unless you have read all the treatises on tailoring, you are not qualified to say that the emperor is naked.
People can only ever be the sex of their bodies. No matter how much you wish it were otherwise, no matter how much you hate and curse at the people who point this out, no matter how much you try to silence them, that inconvenient little piece of physical reality is never going to change, barring Star Trek levels of technological progress.
That Musk is so far proving inept at leading Twitter doesn’t change the fact that you people wanted him to fail because he threatened to do away with the censorship you love. It’s also too soon to predict his ultimate failure.
Re: Re: Re:2
” It’s also too soon to predict his ultimate failure.”
This is gonna age like milk in a sauna
Re: Re: Re:2
And you seem to be just fucking fine with asshole TERFs and queerphobes using a newfound lack of consequences for their posting of bigotry and hatred to chase queer people off Twitter faster than they could before Musk took charge. But given how we’re talking about the censorship of queer people by way of harassment and threats, I’m sure you don’t actually consider that “censorship”—much like you probably don’t consider the anti-queer violence to be the end result of all that bigotry and hatred.
Five people were killed in a place where people could be openly queer, and now that place will never again be considered a safe place for queer people. A not-zero number of queer people who didn’t feel safe to be queer anywhere but Club Q will most likely silence themselves to avoid becoming another target of anti-queer violence. You want to complain about censorship? Start with that form of censorship, you queer-bashing bastard.
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Re: Re: Re:3
I continue to admire the cleverness of picking a single adjective to conflate a factual description of whom one is attracted to with a delusional belief in what one is. Queer or LGB+T, using such words does not change the distinction between “I am attracted to women” and “I am a woman”.
The shooter has declared themselves non-binary by the way, so you need to upgrade your narrative. (It will be that opponents of gender ideology bullied them into madness, of course.)
Re: Re: Re:4
Sexual orientation is not gender identity. But “queer” is considered by a significant number of LGBTQ people to be a catch-all for any identity outside of cisgender and heterosexual. Example: I’m a cisgender male who would register at about 2 on the Kinsey scale (maybe a little below that), and I use both “bisexual” and “queer” interchangably. If’n you don’t like my use of “queer”, you can go fuck yourself.
(Also: Don’t think I didn’t catch that plus sign you put in “LGBT”. You can stop that now; you’re not going to convince me to “drop the T”, no matter how subtle your attempts. Trans rights are human rights, and I know there are plenty of chicks with dicks, guys with pussies, and transphobes with no teeth.)
Not…really? I went through this in another comment, but their being non-binary—assuming it’s not just a ploy to get out of being charged with a hate crime—doesn’t change anything if their intent was to murder queer people out of hate.
Even if this is true, so what? That would seem more like a motive to kill the anti-queer bullies than to kill queer people. But hey, five queer people are dead, so it’s not like you’re complaining.
No, really: You’re not.
Because to you, the only good queer is a dead queer. After all, one less “woke gender ideologue” in the world, right?
Re: Re: Re:2
What censorship, as there are other platforms where you can say things that get got people banned from twitter. Further you are claiming free speech, but what you mean is freedom to attack various minorities.
Free speech does not mean you have the right to speak in every venue for speech, indeed such a right would hand all conversation over to those who shout loudest, and those are almost all ideologues like you, and that is damaging to society because it silences reasonable voices. Go find somewhere where you will be welcome to have your say, or are you so contrarian that you will alienate people in any forum that speak in?
Re: Re: Re:3
Hyman doesn’t care about marginalized voices being silenced by bigotry and hatred. Hell, I bet he was ecstatic over the Club Q shooting because, at a bare minimum, the shooting made sure there would be one less “echo chamber” for “woke gender ideologues” in the world.
Re: Re: Re:4
How long would most people remain in a forum when the worst people are shouting at them all the time? It would be many more people that just the marginalized silenced if Hyman and his like has their way on the Internet.
Re: Re: Re:5
BNot a lot.
Hyman would have reported them all to the secret police and we all would be DEAD.
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Re: Re: Re:3
Censorship is the act of the censor, silencing speech based on opinion on the platforms where the censor has control. It is irrelevant whether the speaker can speak anywhere else.
Free speech is the ability to offer opinions freely, without being silenced by those who disagree. That includes the ability to attack other people’s beliefs as false, regardless of whether they are “minorities” or not.
You are correct that there is no right to free speech except in venues controlled by the government. I claim no such right. But large generic speech platforms should offer such a right to their users, because such platforms are the new public square where everyone gathers to speak, and in a society where free speech is a foundational value, those platforms should not be censoring opinions based on viewpoint even though they’re allowed to do so.
Re: Re: Re:4
No, it isn’t. Censorship is about silencing a voice, about making sure a given person can’t speak their mind anywhere. To claim that said voice being able to post on, say, Truth Social after being banned from Twitter is a great example of the “I have been silenced” fallacy.
If you’re told to GTFO of a community, you haven’t been censored. You’ve been shown the door and told to leave everyone else in peace. Your motherfucking hang-up is in being so stubborn about your own self-righteous hatred of queer people that you think you deserve, BY LAW OF MAN OR GOD, a spot in a community that wants you gone.
Being kicked off Twitter doesn’t stop you from spreading anti-trans filth. It only stops you from forcing it down the throats of people who use Twitter. I mean, has Jack Dorsey ever legally stopped you from posting your hateful bullshit outside of Twitter?
When you attack trans people—sorry, “woke gender ideologues”—for being trans, you’re not attacking their “beliefs”. You’re attacking their identity, their sense of self, their basic goddamn humanity. That doesn’t make you some holy truth-teller or all-knowing cosmic entity—it makes you a bigoted asshole whose rhetoric absolutely contributes to the kind of anti-queer violence that we saw in Colorado Springs and will inevitably see again in the near future.
But you have consistently implied that you deserve such a right…
…by saying inane bullshit like that.
Yes or no: Should a Mastodon instance dedicated to being a safe space for queer people be forced to federate and interact with an instance that lets anti-queer bigotry run rampant, such that users in the queer-friendly instance can be bombarded by anti-queer speech from the bigot-friendly instance?
Which viewpoints are those? Be incredibly motherfucking specific and don’t use any goddamned euphemisms like “woke gender ideology”. SAY IT ALL OUT LOUD, YOU MURDEROUS FUCK.
Re: Re: Re:5
People are only ever the sex of their bodies. No one can be changed from a man to a woman or vice versa. Some people desperately wush it were otherwise, or have the delusion that it is otherwise, and seek to have themselves altered through dress, makeup, medicine, and surgery, but none of that can work. Such people, provided they are of age or have permission of their guardians, should be permitted to do this and live their lives as they think they ought, but they should not be allowed to force their way into single-sex spaces for which their bodies disqualify then, they should not be allowed to force other people to affirm their delusions, and they should not be allowed to force public institutions to teach their false beliefs as truth.
Re: Re: Re:6
What’s hilarious about you saying this, Hyman, is that you’re on the side of the people who think trans people shouldn’t have those rights even as adults. You’re on the side of people who think the suicide rate for trans people should be higher. You’re on the side of people who believe, with all their hearts, that trans people shouldn’t be allowed to exist in public…or allowed to exist at all.
You can say “oh the poor deluded fools should be able to live their lives as freaks, but they shouldn’t get to force their bullshit on everyone else”. But in the end, it’s you who’s trying to force your bullshit on trans people. And when it eventually expands to all queer people—and it will, whether you like it or not—you will eventually be forced to choose who you sympathize with the most: the oppressors or the oppressed.
Don’t be surprised if, in choosing the oppressed, the leopards eat your face. After all, you’re only a useful idiot to the kinds of people who cheer on (or are willing to commit) the mass murder of queer people.
Re: Re: Re:5
Mastodon instances dedicated to providing “safe spaces” (that is, places for people not to see contrary opinions) should of course censor content. Those sites do not value free speech more than catering to the prejudice of their users, after all. Large generic speech platforms should value free speech, though, and not engage in viewpoint-based censorship.
Re: Re: Re:6
“Large generic speech platforms should value free speech, though, and not engage in viewpoint-based censorship.”
…and watch as the majority of users and advertisers depart while they’re placating the trolls and hate speech.
Sorry dude, this argument is still a non-starter. Everybody has a viewpoint – and that include the groups that actually pay the bills. If the choice is between the white supremacist and the advertiser who wants to attract minority dollars, your guy is going to lose. If you don’t like it, there’s places you can go where such speech is allowed. Just don’t be surprised that most people don’t go there.
Re: Re: Re:6
Yes, because trans people should absolutely have to see bigoted assholes trying to harass said trans people off the Internet, back into the closet, and possibly into an open grave~. That’s absolutely how the Internet should work~.
…miss me with this misunderstanding of “safe spaces”, you hateful hypocrite. You don’t seem to think Truth Social should have to host socialist propaganda, but you think a queer-friendly Mastodon instance should be chided for refusing to let anti-queer speech into its timelines? Fuck all the way off.
Here’s the funny thing about your cries for “free speech” and implying that a service that doesn’t allow everything short of CSAM to be posted is a shitty service: It’s all about control.
Obviously, it’s about who should get to control what speech is allowed on a given service. But it’s also about whose speech should be free—and on a service like the one you envision, that means “right-wing bullies, spammers, and otherwise awful people”. That’s because on a service like the one you want, those are the kinds of people who will stay around while everyone else goes to find a service that isn’t letting the “Worst People” Problem run rampant.
Your 4chan-esque approach would chase off the marginalized and the oppressed—as well as people who aren’t those things but don’t want to deal with all the bullshit. They may not ever come back to social media if that service was their primary social media service. That means losing voices and perspectives that, no matter how much you hate trans people, are equally as deserving of being heard as the kinds of voices that think the Club Q massacre was a good thing. (And don’t think I haven’t noticed that you still refuse to unequivocally denounce that shooting and the people who think it was a good thing.)
Two things.
Re: Re: Re:7
Minor correction:
Re: Re: Re:7
Large sites have many users, hundreds of thousands up to billions.
Generic sites allow users to discuss any topics that interest them, often by allowing subgroup formation on specific topics.
Large generic speech sites should permit Holocaust denial.
I do not believe that large generic speech sites should allow any legal speech. They should moderate based on form – off-topic, spam, lack of decorum – but not on the viewpoint of opinions.
Re: Re: Re:8
I’ve been over this before with you, but…
Some people might think a “large site” has at least a few hundred users. How is your definition any more objectively, unquestionably, Word-Of-God correct than theirs?
A forum otherwise dedicated to a single interest (e.g., Mongolian basketweaving) has a subforum for off-topic posting. How does that one subforum affect the broader forum’s status as a “generic speech site”, and for what reason should (or shouldn’t) that subforum affect the forum’s status?
…of course you do. And I’ll note that you say nothing about whether such sites should permit the harassment of Jewish people by Holocaust deniers. But that’s ultimately a non-starter—I’m pretty sure everyone here knows whose side you’re more willing to defend in that fight.
Except you do. After all, you just said those sites should allow Holocaust denialism. If a site has an obligation to host such speech, it must have an obligation to host all other offensive-yet-legal speech no matter what. You can’t say some kind of speech is bad…
…and expect your argument about what the platforms you’re whining about are obligated to do—should do, as you put it—to have any credibility left. Under your logic, blocking any off-topic, spammy, and decorum-less speech is still blocking a viewpoint. And if that kind of speech happens to contain Holocaust denialism…well, that puts you and your argument in a pretty little corner with nowhere to run, doesn’t it.
Re: Re: Re:9
I’ve said this before, but you really are an idiot, aren’t you?
There doesn’t need to be a precise definition of large or generic. It’s in how a site styles itself and how its users perceive it. Twitter and Facebook are large, generic speech platforms. They are where people gather to discuss every possible topic.
Smaller sites are more likely to be limited in the topics they want to cover, or they may, as you suggest, want to allow only one side of an issue to be supported. Any site is allowed to censor its content, but large generic speech platforms shouldn’t. Small, limited sites shouldn’t either, really, but it’s less burdensome if they do because they’re attracting a small audience who generally wants that censorship and aren’t interested in hearing opposing viewpoints.
What you want to fail to understand, because it suits your desire to have opinions you hate censored, is that freedom of speech does not require all noise to be permitted. Just as scientific journals require papers to pass peer review to make sure that the forms of proper science have been fulfilled, but should not censor papers based on their conclusions, so too can discussion sites limit the form of expression but should not censor opinions based on their viewpoints.
Holocaust denialism is the same as gender ideology or vaccine denial – false beliefs based on no evidence or cherry-picked isolated data. But just because beliefs may be false does not mean that they should be prevented from being stated. In a stew of beliefs that may be false, there may also be beliefs that are true. Silencing does not help elicit the truth. Only unbiased examination does.
Re: Re: Re:10
You’re still arguing with me, so what does that say about you?
If you’re going to say what a certain kind of site “should” be doing in re: “free speech”, you should have a strong, strict, and understandable definition of what kind of site you’re talking about. Otherwise you could be referring to any site larger than three people/dedicated to more than a single hyper-specific subject of discussion that happened to kick you out because they didn’t want to deal with your anti-trans eliminationist rhetoric shitting up the place.
For what reason must “large generic speech platforms” (again: whatever the hell that fucking means) have an obligation to host, say, people who use a Nazi-inspired reference to genocide as part of their username/display name?
You saying that makes you seem like you’d be fine with the idea of a law that says “any service of any size must host all legally protected speech or else”. After all, you’re saying that no site should “censor” speech, and “should” always implies an obligation to do the thing that comes after it.
Except it does. Spam is legally protected speech under the First Amendment; if a service is obligated to host all legally protected speech, it must also host spam. The same goes for racial slurs, anti-queer propaganda, and any other horrendous-yet-legal speech you can think of. You cannot be in favor of both unfettered free speech on a service like Twitter and Twitter having the right to get rid of certain kinds of speech because it annoys you (or anyone else).
Therein lies a big problem: Even if a “discussion site” limits the form of expression of, say, anti-queer viewpoints—such that outright calling for their deaths is forbidden—people like you can always skirt around the rules by finding “polite” ways to advocate for anti-queer positions. If a site doesn’t want to host that shit, that should absolutely be their right regardless of how politely you advocate for the eradication of trans people from public life (or existence).
Your viewpoints are so insanely unpopular (outside of certain bubbles) that not even the usual troll brigade on this site is willing to stick up for you—and they’re the kind of people who stick up for violent cops, copyright maximalists, and Shiva motherfuckin’ Ayyadurai. Rather than reflect on this fact, you keep coming back to say that sites like this—or Twitter, or Facebook, or even pro-queer Mastodon instances—should (read: must be obligated to) host all legally protected speech. By saying that, you’re implying that your highly unpopular speech should be forced upon any site that you want to use, regardless of how that site feels about hosting your speech.
Sooner or later, your advocacy will turn to using the law as a means of forcing your speech onto a website. Pressure and time—that’s all it takes for an extremist like you.
tick tock, motherfucker
…that you would put Holocaust denialism in the same basket as trans people wanting to live as they are without facing harassment (or worse) from people like you is so far beyond the pale that I can’t even make a joke about how awful of a person you are. Oh, and FYI: Queer people were killed as part of the Holocaust because—as you seem to believe in the here and now—they were seen at the time as “undesirables” who were worthy of systematic execution to protect society (and “the Master Race”).
And when trans people are silenced by a barrage of anti-queer speech, such that they abandon their social media accounts or withdraw from public life or even kill themselves, whose “truth” is left to be spoken? Because it seems to me that you have no issue with trans people dying—either by their own hand or by someone else’s—since a lack of pushback from trans people (and their allies) allows your anti-trans advocacy to grow bolder and more extreme.
Still telling that you haven’t unequivocally condemned the Club Q shooting and showed even the slightest of sympathy for its victims, by the by. Are you afraid that you’ll become a “gender ideologist” if you speak even in neutral terms about trans people?
Re: Re: Re:11
Why you? That’s simple. Most of the stupid responses I get here are curses, ot calling me a Nazi, or [thinks that a Wikipedia response means something here]. You, on the other hand, while including in some of that too, consistently provide long-form errors, and when you do that, it’s worth correcting, every single time.
To elaborate slightly on what I said before, screaming infants can be left alone so that they learn to self-soothe, but infants with dirty diapers needed to be cleaned up.
As always, you want arguments against censorship to be taken as force against censorship so that you can hide behind the 1st Amendment to day that force cannot be used. As always, you want free speech to be defined only as adherence to the 1st Amendment so that you can hide behind it to claim that free speech implies no moderation.
It is sad that an insane self-proclaimed “non-binary” person choose to murder people who were doing nothing but having a good time. All murder is sad. However, beliefs of murdered people are not validated by their murders, so the trans person who was murdered was nevertheless only ever the sex of their body.
People who choose not to speak on a forum where contrary ideas may be presented are being silenced only by themselves.
Re: Re: Re:12
If I’m an idiot, and you keep interacting with me regardless of motive, doesn’t that make you the bigger idiot?
…I rest my case.
Except that’s exactly what “free speech defenders” like you and your right-wing brethren ultimately mean when they defend the idea of “free speech”: No moderation, no “censorship”, just the consequence-free unfettered right to say anything that isn’t expressly forbidden by law or binding legal precedent. You yourself said that bigotry shouldn’t be banned from a “large generic” platform like Twitter; that position can’t be anything but a call for Twitter to host the most heinous speech on the grounds that said speech is legally protected.
You seem to keep forgetting that bigotry is a viewpoint. All your whining about how Twitter shouldn’t ban “viewpoints” is an implicit defense of every kind of bigotry-expressing speech—including the “impolite” versions of such speech. You can’t believe “Twitter should host all speech” and “Twitter should ban people who say the N-word” at the same time.
Even the fucking cops didn’t misgender the victims. You’re worse than the fucking cops, Hyman. How are you this much of a bastard, that you can’t even say “I hate that this thing happened” without turning it into a diatribe on trans people daring to exist in a way you hate?
You say this like trans people on social media aren’t harassed, doxxed, and threatened by anti-queer users on a regular basis. On a long enough timeline, anyone would get sick enough of that to shut up and leave. But hey, you’re damn close to saying “the victims of the Club Q shooting are responsible for their own deaths because they were trans”, so I’m not surprised that you’d blame the harassed for choosing to avoid harassment instead of blaming the harassers for doing the harassment in the first place.
And no, you can’t say “well they should be kicked off social media” in this situation. You can’t believe that and “social media should host all legal speech and allow all viewpoints” at the same time because the speech of harassers is still legally protected speech and their viewpoints must therefore be seen as equally worthy of hosting.
You don’t get to have it both ways, Hyman. You’re either for moderation or you’re against it—and given how you keep talking about how social media services should allow all speech and host all viewpoints, the position you’ve chosen is quite goddamn clear. The only path left for you is the one where you push for the law to accomplish what all your whining never will.
tick tock, motherfucker
Re: Re: Re:13
Trump is an idiot. That does not make it idiotic to contradict his false claims whenever he makes them. In the same way, your errors should not stand as the last word on subjects of gender ideology or freedom of speech.
It’s amusing that you think you can tell me what I should or should not say. Twitter should ban people who use the “n-word” as invective, but not people who use it in discussion. It is liberal race ideologues like you who try to silence and cancel law professors, for example, who use the “n-word” in hypothetical cases presented to students, despite the fact that there are myriad real cases in which the word is used.
Bigotry is a viewpoint. Invective isn’t. So Twitter should allow people to say that Jews, gays, and Catholics are all bound for Hell because they do not accept the correct forms of Christianity, but they should ban people for using slurs directed against those groups.
Censorship and moderation are not the same. Moderation deals with form and censorship deals with viewpoint. You want the liberal censorship that the platforms provide, so you pretend that avoiding censorship will also prevent moderation.
Murder victims are never to blame for their own murders. The fault lies solely with the murderers, who should be swiftly executed after their convictions. You want to pretend that criticism of people’s beliefs is the same as calling for violence against those people, because you want to silence the criticism.
Re: Re: Re:14
It’s a racial slur. If Twitter doesn’t want to host that word in any context, it shouldn’t have to host it in any context—regardless of how eager you and your right-wing allies might be to use it.
Outside of incredibly specific contexts such as the one you’re describing, I can’t think of any reason the word needs to ever be said by anyone other than Black people. And in the contexts where it is proper to use the word in full, it’s still a matter of reading the room to decide whether using the word in full is a good idea.
Invective is part and parcel of bigotry. The N-word, when used in the context of a racial slur, is absolutely an expression of bigotry—of the viewpoint that Black people are “lesser” than other people. You can’t separate the invective from the viewpoint; either the N-word must be allowed under “viewpoint-neutral” moderation policies or you’re a hypocrite about your own bullshit.
You’re right about that…
…but stunningly wrong on that point.
Moderation deals with viewpoint as much as it deals with form. If you want proof, go ask the admins of a queer-friendly Mastodon instance if they’ll let you post “polite” anti-trans propaganda. My guess is they’d tell you to go fuck yourself—in those exact terms, if not worse—before they get your speech off their instance’s timelines.
Moderation is a platform/service owner or operator saying “we don’t do that here”. Censorship is someone saying “you won’t do that anywhere” alongside threats or actions meant to suppress speech. When someone tells you to fuck off from their part of the Internet, they’re not trying to shut you up for good. You’re still free to go talk all the shit about trans people somewhere else. Being denied the right to use any platform that you don’t own—from “large generic” platforms like Twitter to small platforms like Mastodon instances—is nowhere near being an act of censorship. Claiming otherwise makes you look like someone who thinks they have the imagined right of “free reach”…which, if’n you need reminding, is a right that nobody has.
You’ve been arguing that Twitter, Facebook, and its ilk shouldn’t moderate any legally protected speech. Pretending otherwise is killing the microscopic iota of credibility you have left.
What you want, what you’ll always want, and what you’ve always wanted is simple: You want the right to shove your anti-trans invective—your viewpoints about how you believe trans people should live their lives to assuage your discomfort—down other people’s throats without any way for a platform to stop you. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have run back to anonymous posting when Mike all but told you that he’d hold your bullshit back.
Your entire argument on this matter is about the obligation you believe a platform like Twitter has in re: hosting all legally protected speech. You’ve been told that whining about “censorship” isn’t going to work. You’re going to find out that your whining won’t work. When you do finally figure out that your bitch-ass whining will never bring about the change you want, you’ll only have one road to go down. Sooner or later, you will advocate for the law to force sites like Twitter into hosting all legally protected speech. Such is the fate of a free speech extremist like yourself.
tick tock motherfucker
Re: Re: Re:15
As always, you argue with illusory versions of me who say what you want them to say.
No private sites should be obligated to do anything they don’t want to do. Large generic speech platforms should, however, take it upon themselves to support the freedom of speech of their users, and allow all viewpoints to appear, while moderating content for topic, spam, and decorum. Since a court has decided in at least one case that even a government-run site may moderate to avoid off-topic discussions, the notion that I think that a site should host all legal content is a simple gaslighting ploy on your part to get the liberal censorship that you so desperately want, because you understand that your ideas lose in fair discussions when people become aware of what it is you claim.
My notions about how trans people should live their lives impose no obligation on any trans person to do as I say. The only obligation I do want is that trans people not get to impose their beliefs on people who don’t share them, just as I don’t get to impose my beliefs on them.
Censorship is the act of the censor, silencing opinions based on viewpoint on the platforms the censor controls. It is irrelevant whether those who are silenced can go somewhere else to speak. Because you want to hide the truth that the censorship you want is literal censorship, you gaslight that being able to speak elsewhere somehow sanitizes the censorship into something else. But it does not.
Re: Re: Re:16
And yet…
…you argue otherwise…
…and against your own point. You can’t reasonably believe that a “large generic speech platform” (whatever the flying blue ratfuck that is) should—read: be obligated to—“support the freedom of speech” and “allow all viewpoints to appear” while also having the right to moderate content for any reason.
As you keep pointing out, “generic” means there is no widely agreed-upon topic for the platform; since you believe a platform should support all viewpoints regardless of topic, moderating for topic goes right out the door. Spam is legally protected speech; moderating for that goes against the idea that a platform should “support the freedom of speech”. And decorum is a way of saying “speech that goes too far for my tastes”, which is another violation of the idea that a platform should allow all legally protected speech—an idea for which you have advocated.
You can’t be in favor of putting an obligation to host all legal speech on the metaphorical shoulders of a platform like Twitter and still advocate for Twitter to have the right of moderation. The two positions cancel each other out; you must be in favor of one or the other if you want to stop looking like a hypocrite and a fool.
You keep saying that “liberal censorship” shit, but I’m not the one who keeps advocating for unfettered free speech on platforms like Twitter so I can talk mad shit about trans people to their faces. That’s on you, shitbird.
I’m not in favor of censorship. Everyone should, and must, have the absolute right to speak their mind—no matter how heinous the speech, no matter how odious the viewpoint. What I’m in favor of is the right of a platform of any size or form—be it a tiny queer-friendly Mastodon instance, a right-wing shitpit like Gab, or a social media behemoth like Twitter—to moderate third-party speech in whatever manner they wish. If Twitter doesn’t want to host transphobic speech, it shouldn’t have to host it. (Granted, Twitter seems more than willing to do that these days, given its owner’s newfound appreciation for the kinds of right-wing chuds who spew that bile.)
The difference between you and I, Hyman, is that I don’t believe in forcing speech onto platforms under the guise of “protecting free speech”. Your whining about Twitter and Facebook and “liberal censorship” is proof enough that you do—after all, if you didn’t think the kind of speech you want to see more of on those sites should be forced onto those sites one way or another, you wouldn’t keep whining about those sites moderating that speech. You don’t see me bitching about Truth Social kicking out leftists and moderating leftist speech; why can’t you shut the fuck up about Twitter not letting you talk shit about trans people to their faces?
And yet, you seem to have a severe issue with trans people not living their lives in a way that makes you comfortable with their existence (or lack thereof).
Awww, is learning someone’s pronouns too hard for poor widdle Hyman? Here, lemme get you a bottle of milk, since you wanna be a big fuckin’ baby.
Except that isn’t censorship. That’s a moderator/administrator/platform owner telling someone that their shit isn’t welcome on that property and showing them the door.
Except it is. The shitposter can still go literally anywhere else on the Internet and keep shitposting. To refer to that as censorship despite no one infringing on a person’s right to speak freely is a shitty attempt to gaslight me into believing something that I don’t and won’t ever believe. If you think you’re ever going to convince me that social media moderation is an infringement of someone’s free speech rights, I got news for you, son: You’re not that clever and I’m not that stupid.
I think a Neo-Nazi should have the absolute right to speak all the Neo-Nazi shit they want. Let them talk of genocides and fascist takeovers of governments all the live-long day, so long as they’re not saying anything outright illegal. The same goes for TERFs and their (your) dreams of a world free of “gender ideologists”—if y’all wanna openly fantasize about the trans suicide rate going up or cheer on the Club Q shooter, go right the fuck ahead.
But by the same token, people who own and operate interactive web services of any kind should be under no obligation to host such speech. And losing the privilege of posting your speech on a third-party service—someone else’s property—is absolutely not an infringement on your right to speak freely. We can have discussions about how far up in the Internet infrastructure that principle applies, sure. (Those kinds of discussions have happened here before.) But at the lowest level of that chain—the platforms themselves—being booted off property you don’t own for saying shit the property owners don’t want to host doesn’t silence you forever. Start a NeoCities page, go join Gab, spin up a Masto instance—all of these are reasonable and viable alternatives to posting the kind of speech that Twitter doesn’t want to host.
Using a platform like Twitter is a privilege, not a right—and no law or binding legal precedent has ever said otherwise. To believe that losing said privilege is the same thing as losing your right to speak altogether shows an astounding level of arrogant entitlement. And when you believe that sort of shit, believing that the government should step in to restore your “rights” is only a matter of time.
tick tock motherfucker
Re: Re: Re:17
Censorship is the act of the censor, silencing opinions based on viewpoint on the platforms the censor controls. The ability of the silenced people to speak elsewhere is irrelevant. When Communist governments silenced opposition and the opponents responded with samizdats, they were no less censored just because they found another way to speak. You both love liberal censorship and hate that everyone knows that it’s censorship, and do you try to sanitize the censorship into something else to try to mute your continue distance and to gaslight the public.
Moderation and censorship are different. Moderation deals with form and censorship deals with content. Private platforms may both moderate and censor as they see fit, but large generic speech platforms who see fit to censor and not just moderate should be criticized to get them to stop censoring but not to stop moderating.
People do not have a right to speak freely on private platforms. But censorship by that platform abridges the exercise of free speech by the silenced people. It’s not even a subtle distinction, but it suits the liberal censors to blur that because they love the liberal censorship the large generic speech platforms are, or were, providing.
Re: Re: Re:18
Herein lies the problem with your comparison: Twitter isn’t a fucking government. If you get kicked off Twitter, you lose a privilege, not a right. Your ability to speak freely cannot, has not, and will never be infringed by losing the privilege of speaking on someone else’s property. It’d be like saying you’ve lost the right of free speech if you get kicked out of a friend’s home over a disagreement about literally anything: That idea doesn’t make any goddamn sense.
A government trying to silence people is absolutely censorship because said government is likely to use all the power it has—legal and physical—as a means of silencing people. Twitter kicking you off for talking shit about trans people is not a remotely comparable act because Twitter doesn’t have any kind of power to use as a means of stopping you from going to Facebook, Gab, Truth Social, Parler, 4chan, 8kun, a Mastodon instance, a Discord server, a Telegram group, a Signal chat with a friends, or literally any other platform that allows third-party speech and saying your bigoted bullshit there.
Copy! Pasta! Tiiiiiiiiiime!
Moderation is a platform/service owner or operator saying “we don’t do that here”. Personal discretion is an individual telling themselves “I won’t do that here”. Editorial discretion is an editor saying “we won’t print that here”, either to themselves or to a writer. Censorship is someone saying “you won’t do that anywhere” alongside threats or actions meant to suppress speech.
Try and guess which one applies to Twitter kicking you off the platform! (Hint: It ain’t censorship because Twitter literally can’t stop you from saying your bullshit elsewhere.)
Again: They are, just not in the way you say they are.
I have news for you, dumbass: Twitter is a privately owned platform. (It was before Elon took over, too.) The person(s) in charge of Twitter had, have, and will continue to have every legal, moral, and ethical right to decide what speech—yes, including “viewpoints”—is acceptable to post on that platform. If’n you don’t like their rules, go somewhere else. Being denied a spot on Twitter is the same as not using Twitter at all: You’re losing out on a privilege, not a right.
Before he was unbanned from Twitter, Donald Trump could’ve called a press conference literally any time he wanted. Hell, the stupid daughterfucker set up his own social media service and made it look like Twitter so he could throw his little bitchfits there. Once more, with feeling: Having a spot on a privately owned social media service that you don’t own is a privilege, not a right. Losing that privilege doesn’t deny you any of your rights.
Now, do you have anything new to say, or are you going to keep regurgitating the same five sentences/talking points about moderation and censorship over and over and over as if that makes your argument better instead of weaker? (Also, if you’re going to do that, you might want to workshop those sentences with your right-wing allies. Shit’s boring as fuck, son.)
Re: Re: Re:19
I’m going to keep repeating the same thing, because you make the same error.
Free speech is a right when the government wants to take it away, but free speech is also a foundational value of our society such that it should not be taken away from people even by entities that are permitted to do so.
Censorship is the act of the censor, silencing people where the censor has power to do so. The censor may have more or less power depending on who it is, but the act of censorship remains the act of censorship, even when the silenced people have a different place to speak.
You want to dispute that because you want the censorship of opinions you hate, and you know that normal people don’t like censorship. So you seek to call it something else, or you hide behind the 1st Amendment, or you claim that more speech is better than free speech. But you are fooling no one.
Re: Re: Re:20
That doesn’t change the fact that using Twitter is a privilege and losing that privilege doesn’t violate your right to speak freely. You’re not owed a platform or an audience at someone else’s expense.
Again: Losing the privilege to use Twitter doesn’t take away your right to speak freely. How do you not fucking understand that? I mean, Twitter can’t even stop you from posting here.
You can’t really call getting booted off Twitter “censorship” if “the silenced” have a different place to speak. You’re trotting out the “I have been silenced” fallacy over and over and over, and it’s not going to get you anywhere in this argument. You can’t be “silenced” if you have a hundred different ways to spread your message once you lose one that you were privileged to have in the first place. Again: Donald Trump was banned from Twitter for nearly two years, and Twitter couldn’t stop him from giving interviews to the press or starting up his own social media company. If you can’t overcome the example of a former President of the United States having the media at his fingertips despite losing the privilege of posting on Twitter, you have no argument worth a good god’s damn upon which you can rest your hat.
Again: I think Neo-Nazis, TERFs, and other malignant cancers like you should be able to speak y’all’s minds without restraint. But if you’re gonna try to force your speech onto platforms that don’t want to host it, I’m gonna be saying “fuck you, go make your own platform”. I don’t care if Twitter operates as a right-wing shitpit or a staunch advocate for Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism—the choice of what speech it bans should always be up to the person(s) running that service. Their house, their rules. If they don’t want you and your right-wing brethren spouting off racial slurs and posting anti-queer propaganda, they have the absolute right to tell you “nope, go fuck yourself, get the fuck out”. To say otherwise is to demand a platform on property you don’t own, an audience to which you’re not entitled, and a free pass on the consequences of your hateful speech.
I’m gonna put this in the strongest possible emphasis so maybe you’ll comprehend what I’m saying this time: Using a social media platform you don’t own is a privilege. Losing your spot on that platform doesn’t rob you of the right to speak freely. Your whining about free speech won’t make the people who run a platform that booted you for being a transphobic dick change their minds. And “free speech” is not short for “consequence-free speech”.
No argument you have put forth has made me reconsider any of those points. You wanna change my mind? Start by trying to do exactly that. But if you’re only going to regurgitate the same five or six paragraphs with slightly different phrasing after the first sentence, don’t bother replying again—those arguments won’t work because I’ve seen them (and debunked them) too many times for them to work. Give me something new or give me a break, but give me something other than the same tired crap you’ve been posting over and over again as if that makes your argument stronger. (ProTip: It doesn’t.)
Re: Re: Re:21
No matter how bold you make your italics, censorship is the act of the censor. When the controllers of a platform silence opinions on that platform based on the viewpoint of those opinions, they are committing censorship on that platform, regardless of whether the censored people can go and speak elsewhere.
It is obvious that you are wrong, because by your notion, the very same acts of silencing might or might not be censorship depending on whether the acts are being done on the last available platform. When Amazon refuses to sell When Harry Became Sally, it is censoring Ryan T. Anderson even though Barnes & Noble sells the book. The reason you willfully refuse to see that is because you like the liberal censorship the platforms are providing for you, but you don’t want it called censorship because you know that people understand that censorship is bad.
None of this has anything to do with a right to speak on private platforms. It’s simply that even private platforms are a part of the culture and society in which they’re embedded, and they should adhere to the foundational values of that culture, even if they are not legally obligated to do so. Companies aren’t required to have DIE initiatives either, after all, but that doesn’t stop woke capitalist companies from instituting those abusive programs when they erroneously feel it’s the right thing to do.
Re: Re: Re:22
You clearly have no new arguments and I’m tired of countering all your tired-ass bullshit. Get something new or get lost, you fascist fuck. 🥱
Re: Re: Re:23
I don’t need new arguments since my old ones are correct. And I am not going anywhere.
Re: Re: Re:24
…oh, you dumb bitch…
They’re only correct if I buy into your disingenuous framing of “censorship”. That’s the big problem with your arguments: You frame “censorship” in a way that equates the loss of a privilege with the loss of a right.
Censorship is not about being told that your speech is unacceptable in a place you don’t own/control and you need to either leave or stop saying unacceptable bullshit. Censorship is not about being made to leave someone else’s property when you won’t stop saying unacceptable bullshit. That is the loss of a privilege.
Censorship is about the government telling you that your speech is unacceptable in any place. Censorship is about people with power—governmental or otherwise—doing whatever they can to ensure that your speech doesn’t reach anyone’s ears/eyes. That is the loss of a civil right.
In your framing of censorship, a government entity banning a book from being sold in the U.S. is the same thing as a pro-queer Mastodon instance banning someone for promoting anti-queer views. You can insist that I’m wrong, but every time you refer to moderation as “viewpoint censorship” or whatever, that’s the framing you insist upon using. I’m not going to buy into that framing and you haven’t shown me why I should.
My framing of censorship comes from a place of people losing their right to speak by either government action, threats of such action (e.g., lawsuits), and threats of violence (or the carrying out thereof). Amazon choosing not to carry a transphobic book is not censorship; the government telling Amazon not to carry it would be. Twitter choosing not to platform Nazis, TERFs, and other such shitheads wouldn’t be censorship; the government telling Twitter not to platform those shitheads would be. The loss of a privilege is not the same thing as the loss of a civil right; other than vague allusions to the imagined right of “free reach”, you haven’t shown how the two are the same in any way but you feeling they’re the same.
Until and unless you can do that in a way that isn’t reliant on a disingenuous framing of censorship, you’re not going to convince me you’re right about anything. I’m happy to change my mind about the ideas I have on censorship—but you need to give me better ideas than the ones I already have. You’re not even close to doing that and I doubt you’ll ever pull it off.
But hey, feel free to keep trying. At least it’s keeping you distracted from talking about trans people as if they deserve to die for being trans. (Yes or no: Do you, an admitted transphobe, feel more sympathy for the Club Q shooter than you do for his victims?)
Re: Re: Re:25
The thing I feel about the Club Q shooter is that if they are convicted, they should be swiftly executed, and if the state refuses to do that, they should be imprisoned (in a facility that matches the sex of their body) for the rest of their life.
I don’t care that you don’t want censorship to be called censorship when the censorship suits your beliefs. When a platform prevents someone from speaking based on the viewpoint of the speech, that’s censorship. When a platform prevents someone from speaking based on topic or decorum, that’s moderation. You don’t want to understand that difference, but that’s not my problem.
I was actually just thinking about another analogy for what makes you so wrong, when you and the site owner say that allowing free speech will chase people away, and that therefore sites should censor to prevent that loss of business. The difference between censorship and moderation is the difference between homeowners associations saying “keep out the n*****s and the k***s” and saying “keep your lawn trimmed and your house painted”. Arguably both prop up property values, but we recognize the first as immoral and the second as not (no matter how terrible and annoying HAs are).
Oh, and while I want no one dead, I can laugh at Sam Brinton a bunch: https://nypost.com/2022/11/28/non-binary-biden-nuclear-official-charged-with-stealing-womans-luggage-at-airport/
I do recognize that it’s not fair to laugh at a weird person just because they also happen to be a thief, but as a weird person with such a high-profile position, they should feel some measure of responsibility to have their culture seen with approval, by carrying out their role ably. You don’t see Dr. Rachel Levine stealing luggage.
Re: Re: Re:26
You condemn him, and yet you still can’t resist taking a potshot at trans people like the ones he killed even while you’re condeming him. Bra-fucking-vo, you hateful son of a bitch: You found a new low.
You do, or you wouldn’t keep coming back to get verbally spanked by this dumb asshole.
No, it’s moderation. One platform telling one person to fuck off for saying this that platform doesn’t want to host isn’t censorship. I mean, did Elon Musk prevent Kanye West from speaking his mind anywhere else by suspending Kanye’s Twitter account? (The answer is “no”.)
You are once again framing censorship not as the suppression of the right to free speech, but suppression of the “right” to free reach. No one is owed a spot on Twitter. Framing Twitter’s rules against hate speech as “censorship”—which is ultimately what you’re doing—is disingenuous bullshit.
Herein lies the problem with this framing: By saying that a platform can only moderate speech by moderating an entire topic, you’re heavily implying that the only way Twitter can ban anti-trans hate speech is to ban all talk of transgender issues as a whole. Your idea would create far more “censorship” by preventing trans people (and their allies) from talking about transgender issues on Twitter in even the most positive of ways. For someone who thinks “large generic speech platforms” (whatever the gay rat honeymoon fuck that means) should be hosting all legally protected speech, your position would have Twitter hosting less speech to uphold a twisted framing of “moderation”.
I told you, Hyman: You need to give me better ideas about censorship if you want to change my mind. So far, this bullshit ain’t it…
…and neither, for that matter, is that. That analogy doesn’t even make any sense.
Yes, yes, you want to utterly humiliate trans and non-binary people out of society and back into the closet (or an open grave) because they don’t exist in a way that makes you comfortable. We get it. Go join your exterminationist allies; they’re already pushing to have trans medical care outlawed, even when it’s for adults.
That you think this has anything to do with a non-binary person’s “culture” is weird. If they were a cisgender man, would you be proclaiming their theft to be a problem with “man culture”? All you are is a hateful son of a bitch who wants to take every excuse possible to laugh at the misfortunes of trans and non-binary people even when it has nothing to do with their being trans/non-binary.
At this point, Hyman, you can openly admit that you want non-cisgender people dead—not that you want to kill them, only that you want them dead. I’d believe that far more than I’ll ever believe this “I don’t want them dead, I just think they’re all fucking worthless and shouldn’t live in polite society” tapdance you keep doing around the issue. Your TERF allies aren’t trying to cover their bullshit like that any more. I can’t fathom why you’re still clinging to such a transparent glamour.
And honestly, I don’t care to know. Respond or don’t; I no longer give a shit. 👋
Re: Re: Re:27
I don’t want queer people dead and I don’t think they’re worthless. Trans and non-binary people are simply wrong about what sex they are or can ever be, in exactly the same way that religious people are wrong about the existence of their gods. And just like religious people must not be allowed to force their views on non-believers, trans and non-binary people must not be allowed to force their views on people who understand that gender ideology is false. You want that force to be applied, and so you accuse people who don’t believe in gender ideology of more heinous beliefs so that you can silence them. Aside from not letting people force their views on others, people should be left alone to live their lives as they see fit.
Re: Re: Re:6
The thing is they do, and try to encourage it by blocking people like you who do not recognize the free speech rights of others, and shout down and harass those you disagree with. You may do it politely, as you put it, but your insistence on putting you viewpoint forward at every opportunity is harassment, and why you get banned from platforms.
Re: Re: Re:4
… said nobody with the cognitive capacity to comprehend how free speech works, ever.
Re: Re: Re:4
Why do whine so much about us challenging your false beliefs with the plain truth, Hyman? Not surprised you’re a hypocrite on top of a mentally ill bigot and moron.
Re: Re: Re:5
That’s an insult to actual mentally ill people.
Hyman is a NEONAAZI, pure and simple. It is not a mental illness, it is a disgusting ideology.
Re: Re: Re:2 Not even Jhonboi, bluballs, shiva, chorizo, or any of the other clowns managed that bro
Imagine managing to get the entirety of Techdirt, and most of the rest of social media, by all accounts to hate your guts, and then thinking “No! They are definitely the one with the problem.”
Congratulations I here by award you with the OutOfTheBlue Memorial award for being the most delusional cunt to ever darken the door of this fine establishment. You can pick up said award by playing in traffic.
Re: Re:
You have had the very tiniest taste of what some races, genders, and orientations have experienced for ages.
At least you were able to opt out.
Re: Re: Re:
Discrimination against someone for factors beyond their control like race, gender or sexual orientation, discrimination against someone for factors which are completely within their control like what they say and what they do… I mean the two are practically the same thing really.
Re: Re: Re:2
Right? This, exactly.
Re: Re:
Oh, it’s you again, Hyman.
Please, get the fuck out.
Re: Re:
Discourse, more like continual attacks on anybody who belongs to your targeted groups, or disagrees with you, as proven by you continued, compulsive, behavior on this blog, where every time free speech comes up, you use it to attack those groups.
Re: Re: Re:
And even within the groups who share HIS opinion.
I highly doubt he was there to engage in discourse, and was likely harrassing people even in those conservative groups.
@Gene Pratt: it is how it works
Aren’t teachers in states like Kansas required not to take a position on students who cheat on complex matters by stating that they prefer the primitive tribal irrationalizations in the Bible to scientific knowledge? And isn’t it the MAGA crowd in particular that fancies replacing facts and proof with hunches?