Court Makes It Clear: Government Submissions To Twitter Flagging Program Do Not Violate The 1st Amendment
from the coercion-is-the-key dept
There’s been a lot of discussion of late, especially because of the various Twitter Files, regarding where the line is between governments simply flagging content for social media websites to vet against their own policies as compared to unconstitutional and impermissible suppression of speech in violation of the 1st Amendment.
As we’ve highlighted over and over again, the courts of these so-called “jawboning” cases have been pretty clear that there needs to be a coercive element to make it a 1st Amendment violation. Judge Posner’s ruling in the Backpage v. Dart case in the 7th Circuit lays it out pretty clearly back in 2015, citing back to the 2nd Circuit’s Okwedy v. Molinari case:
The difference between government expression and intimidation—the first permitted by the First Amendment, the latter forbidden by it—is well explained in Okwedy v. Molinari, 333 F.3d 339, 344 (2d Cir. 2003) (per curiam): “the fact that a public-official defendant lacks direct regulatory or decisionmaking authority over a plaintiff, or a third party that is publishing or otherwise disseminating the plaintiff’s message, is not necessarily dispositive … . What matters is the distinction between attempts to convince and attempts to coerce. A public-official defendant who threatens to employ coercive state power to stifle protected speech violates a plaintiff’s First Amendment rights, regardless of whether the threatened punishment comes in the form of the use (or, misuse) of the defendant’s direct regulatory or decision-making authority over the plaintiff, or in some less-direct form.”
A few years back, we highlighted what we thought was an interesting case regarding social media and jawboning by state officials brought by Shiva Ayyadurai. Despite Ayyadurai’s history of trying to destroy our own site, as well as some of the dubious claims that resulted in his own case, we thought he raised a potentially worthwhile 1st Amendment question regarding where the line was between “convince” and “coerce” when it came to state officials complaining to Twitter about taking down content. It wasn’t clear where things fell in that case, especially as the government official there admitted they were trying to get Shiva’s tweets taken down. For whatever reason (and there were a variety of procedural oddities in the case), Shiva dropped his case so we never got a direct ruling in that one.
However, a similar case was more recently filed in California (and we mentioned briefly), in which lawyer Rogan O’Handley, a 2020 election truther, lost his Twitter account for violating Twitter’s policies. It came out that his account was one that was flagged by the California Secretary of State’s Office as a “trusted” flagger. So O’Handley sued California’s Secretary of State, Shirley Weber, along with Twitter, and the National Association of Secretaries of State.
The lower court had dismissed the case, and now the 9th Circuit took up the appeal, which… upheld the lower court ruling and tosses out the case. In other words: state officials merely flagging content by itself is not a violation of the 1st Amendment.
As always in these kinds of disputes, the specifics matter. O’Handley made a tweet alleging election fraud in California:
Audit every California ballot
Election fraud is rampant nationwide and we all know California is one of the culprits
Do it to protect the integrity of that state’s elections
The Secretary of State’s office flagged that tweet to Twitter via its Partner Support Portal saying the following:
Hi, We wanted to flag this Twitter post: https://twitter.com/DC_Draino/status/12370 73866578096129 From user @DC_Draino. In this post user claims California of being a culprit of voter fraud, and ignores the fact that we do audit votes. This is a blatant disregard to how our voting process works and creates disinformation and distrust among the general public.
The lower court dismissed on a variety of grounds, noting that Twitter wasn’t a state actor, and that his being banned from Twitter was “not fairly traceable to the Secretary’s actions” among other things. Both were appealed.
The appeals court easily tosses the claims against Twitter noting (of course) that Twitter is not the government:
O’Handley’s claims falter at the first step. Twitter did not exercise a state-created right when it limited access to O’Handley’s posts or suspended his account. Twitter’s right to take those actions when enforcing its content-moderation policy was derived from its user agreement with O’Handley, not from any right conferred by the State. For that reason, O’Handley’s attempt to analogize the authority conferred by California Elections Code § 10.5 to the “procedural scheme” in Lugar is wholly unpersuasive. Id. at 941. Lugar involved a prejudgment attachment system, created by state law, that authorized private parties to sequester disputed property. Id. Section 10.5, by contrast, does not vest Twitter with any power and, under the terms of the user agreement to which O’Handley assented, no conferral of power by the State was necessary for Twitter to take the actions challenged here.
Nor did Twitter enforce a state-imposed rule when it limited access to O’Handley’s posts and suspended his account for “violating the Twitter Rules . . . about election integrity.” As the quoted message that Twitter sent to O’Handley makes clear, the company acted under the terms of its own rules, not under any provision of California law.
That’s pretty straightforward. Also, the 9th Circuit notes that it really doesn’t matter that most of the accounts flagged by the Secretary of State’s office were later pulled down:
That Twitter and Facebook allegedly removed 98 percent of the posts flagged by the OEC does not suggest that the companies ceded control over their content-moderation decisions to the State and thereby became the government’s private enforcers. It merely shows that these private and state actors were generally aligned in their missions to limit the spread of misleading election information. Such alignment does not transform private conduct into state action.
Correlation is not causation in legal form.
And then we start to get into the more meatier question of whether or not there was any coercion which (again) is the key to all of this (this is still part of the analysis regarding whether or not Twitter has been turned into a state actor). The Court recognizes that there is none here.
In this case, O’Handley has not satisfied the nexus test because he has not alleged facts plausibly suggesting that the OEC pressured Twitter into taking any action against him. Even if we accept O’Handley’s allegation that the OEC’s message was a specific request that Twitter remove his November 12th post, Twitter’s compliance with that request was purely optional. With no intimation that Twitter would suffer adverse consequences if it refused the request (or receive benefits if it complied), any decision that Twitter took in response was the result of its own independent judgment in enforcing its Civic Integrity Policy. As was true under the first step of the Lugar framework, the fact that Twitter complied with the vast majority of the OEC’s removal requests is immaterial. Twitter was free to agree with the OEC’s suggestions—or not. And just as Twitter could pay greater attention to what a trusted civil society group had to say, it was equally free to prioritize communications from state officials in its review process without being transformed into a state actor.
The court notes that basic information sharing between governments and private actors does not make the private actors into state actors.
The relationship between Twitter and the OEC more closely resembles the “consultation and information sharing” that we held did not rise to the level of joint action in Mathis, 75 F.3d at 504. In that case, PG&E decided to exclude one of its employees from its plant after conducting an undercover investigation in collaboration with a government narcotics task force. Id. at 501. The suspended employee then sued PG&E for violating his constitutional rights under a joint action theory. Id. We rejected his claim because, even though the task force engaged in consultation and information sharing during the investigation, the task force “wasn’t involved in the decision to exclude Mathis from the plant,” and the plaintiff “brought no evidence PG&E relied on direct or indirect support of state officials in making and carrying out its decision to exclude him.” Id. at 504.
The same is true here. The OEC reported to Twitter that it believed certain posts spread election misinformation, and Twitter then decided whether to take disciplinary action under the terms of its Civic Integrity Policy. O’Handley alleges no facts plausibly suggesting either that the OEC interjected itself into the company’s internal decisions to limit access to his tweets and suspend his account or that the State played any role in drafting Twitter’s Civic Integrity Policy. As in Mathis, this was an arm’s-length relationship, and Twitter never took its hands off the wheel.
As for the claims directly against the Secretary of State, the 9th Circuit does find that O’Handley has standing, but still rejects his claims. The key part, again, is that Twitter gets to make its own decisions and the fact that the Secretary of State’s office flagged the tweet in no way changes that:
Here, as discussed above, the complaint’s allegations do not plausibly support an inference that the OEC coerced Twitter into taking action against O’Handley. The OEC communicated with Twitter through the Partner Support Portal, which Twitter voluntarily created because it valued outside actors’ input. Twitter then decided how to respond to those actors’ recommendations independently, in conformity with the terms of its own content-moderation policy
O’Handley tried to argue (as I’ve seen others as well) that the mere fact that the information sharing was coming from the government creates implicit intimidation factors, but the court, correctly, notes that this is not how any of this works:
O’Handley argues that intimidation is implicit when an agency with regulatory authority requests that a private party take a particular action. This argument is flawed because the OEC’s mandate gives it no enforcement power over Twitter. See Cal. Elec. Code § 10.5. Regardless, the existence or absence of direct regulatory authority is “not necessarily dispositive.” Okwedy, 333 F.3d at 344. Agencies are permitted to communicate in a non-threatening manner with the entities they oversee without creating a constitutional violation. See, e.g., National Rifle Association of America v. Vullo, 49 F.4th 700, 714–19 (2d Cir. 2022).
The court also rejects the idea that this was “retaliation” for O’Handley’s speech, noting that it doesn’t match up with the standards there either:
The retaliation-based theory of liability fails as well. To state a retaliation claim, a plaintiff must show that: “(1) he engaged in constitutionally protected activity; (2) as a result, he was subjected to adverse action by the defendant that would chill a person of ordinary firmness from continuing to engage in the protected activity; and (3) there was a substantial causal relationship between the constitutionally protected activity and the adverse action.” Blair v. Bethel School District, 608 F.3d 540, 543 (9th Cir. 2010) (footnote omitted).
O’Handley’s claim falters on the second prong because he has not alleged that the OEC took any adverse action against him. “The most familiar adverse actions are exercise[s] of governmental power that are regulatory, proscriptive, or compulsory in nature and have the effect of punishing someone for his or her speech.” Id. at 544 (citation and internal quotation marks omitted). Flagging a post that potentially violates a private company’s contentmoderation policy does not fit this mold.Rather, it is a form of government speech that we have refused to construe as “adverse action” because doing so would prevent government officials from exercising their own First Amendment rights. See Mulligan v. Nichols, 835 F.3d 983, 988–89 (9th Cir. 2016). California has a strong interest in expressing its views on the integrity of its electoral process. The fact that the State chose to counteract what it saw as misinformation about the 2020 election by sharing its views directly with Twitter rather than by speaking out in public does not dilute its speech rights or transform permissible government speech into problematic adverse action. See Hammerhead Enterprises, Inc. v. Brezenoff, 707 F.2d 33, 39 (2d Cir. 1983).
There is nothing surprising or out of the ordinary in the result of this case. It matches just fine with a large number of earlier “jawboning” style cases, including ones cited above like Okwedy, Bantam Books, and Backpage. However, since many seem eager to ignore all of this precedent, and because the facts are slightly different regarding social media and trusted flagging programs, it’s nice to see a clean ruling on these points.
Once again, the thing that matters is whether or not there is coercion. There may be cases where these programs or efforts tip over into coercion: and we should be vigilant in watching out for those scenarios. But mere information sharing, absent any form of coercion, cannot be a 1st Amendment violation.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, california, coercion, content moderation, jawboning, rogan o'handley, shirley weber, state action
Companies: twitter
Comments on “Court Makes It Clear: Government Submissions To Twitter Flagging Program Do Not Violate The 1st Amendment”
Damn, that’s a Big Fucking Whammy™ for all those people who keep arguing that Twitter “censored” people on orders from the government (or a government proxy). And it came from the courts, no less!
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Re:
In 3 or 4 hours, when Masnick’s 2005 site posts my reply, we can debate it then. Suffice to say ninth circuit is a joke and many of it’s conclusions are just flabbergasting, but even then the comparison isn’t so great. It only really addresses “please sir, this person, who we definitely don’t hate for political reasons, we think they violated some TOS” but more importantly a state agency with no regulatory power is not a federal agency with a great deal of it and guns, nor a swarm of pressure groups paid hundreds of millions of dollars to well, pressure.
You never did reply to all those detailed, specific tweets when I painstakingly led you to them, btw. Kinda forum blue-balls.
Re: Re:
What is there to debate with someone who apparently believes a mere suggestion from the government is tantamount to jackbooted censorious thuggery on par with state-sanctioned book burnings? Ain’t no point in getting caught in your mudpit because we all know you’re not going to “debate” in good faith.
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Re: Re: Re:
What is there to debate with a person who sees snmoking-gun emails “Take care of Bobby fish-nose, I want it done by tomorrow” and then concludes that has NOTHING to do with Bobby getting shot that night?
Or continually conflates a library not carrying a particular book with “book burning” or a “book ban”?!?
So, right back at ya.
Re: Re: Re:2
When those emails don’t contain direct orders or any kind of coercive language (either threats of punishment or offers of rewards), I don’t see any reason to think of them as the evidence of censorship that you claim they are. Got anything else, son, or are you going to repeat more bullshit than Hyman Rosen when he’s bitching about the existence of trans people?
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Re: Re: Re:3
Neither do the mobsters. Good thing no mob boss has ever been found guilty of conspiracy murder…..
Re: Re: Re:4
Do you see how your argument pivoted from “smoking gun emails” to admitting there isn’t a smoking gun, but that’s proof it was coercive because the big bad government mob bosses are devious enough not to get caught saying it out loud?
You aren’t arguing in good faith. You’re just shifting your argument in the moment when someone points out you’re wrong because you can’t accept that you might be wrong.
Re: Re: Re:5
He moves more goalposts than drunken-ass college football fans after a big win.
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Re: Re: Re:6
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Re: Re: Re:5
I do not, no, not even a little bit, and that’s one hell of a construction.
What I am saying is that creatively choosing words so that it does not LOOK like you are not making a demand is a very old game and does not actually mean you are not making the demand. And courts recognize that, generally.
Re: Re: Re:6
Yes, because when I think of ways to coerce people into doing things without making threats, telling them “you don’t have to actually do anything” without any kind of wink-wink-nudge-nudge afterwards is right there at the top of the list~.
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Re: Re: Re:7
It can be, actually, but you keep on saying that if the words were always worded that way and they most definitely were not.
Re: Re: Re:8
And if you had proof that the government did a double-secret extra-coded mafia-style coercion, you would’ve shown it by now. But you don’t. So you can’t. Too sad, so sad, buh-bye. 👋
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Re: Re: Re:9
I did. And if you knew how to read, you’d be very upset.
And it wasn’t that secret.
Re: Re: Re:10
It must’ve been pretty fucking secret considering that you’re pretty much the only person in the comments thinking that it happened.
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Re: Re: Re:11
In this one, VERY liberal echo chamber where maybe a dozen individuals actually speak?
You sure owned me!
Re: Re: Re:12
Still waiting for an answer:
What was the punishment to Twitter for the >50% refusal rate?
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Re: Re: Re:13
I ignored you the first time on purpose because it’s a dumb strawman but I’ll quote myself as I already addressed it.
Re: Re: Re:14
okay but what was the punishment to Twitter for the >50% refusal rate tho’
Re: Re: Re:14
So, in other words, no punishment and Twitter can refuse to act on any requests that the gov’t may make.
Where is the “Nice business you got there… wink wink nudge nudge” that you like to talk about?
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Re: Re: Re:15
More that it is a useless point to bring up.
Re: Re: Re:16
“What can be asserted without evidence, can also be dismissed without evidence.”
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Re: Re: Re:17
Evidence has been presented in abundance, tho.
Also, why do you think that’s a rebuttal to the point that “no punishment and Twitter can refuse to act on any requests that the gov’t may make.” is a pointless comment?
Re: Re: Re:18
Just because you say something, does not make it evidence of anything.
The only things I’ve seen you post are links to a Twitter account that was spoon-fed cherry-picked items in order to push a very specific narrative.
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Re: Re: Re:19
Oh, I see, you just want to dismiss the evidence via ad hominem!
Well unfortunately, the evidence still exists, regardless of whether you want it to.
Re: Re: Re:20
The “evidence” doesn’t even support the narrative! Taibbi repeatedly says the files show something nefarious, presents the “receipts,” but the “receipts” don’t show what he says they show. It’s all wordplay and bullshit. It tells me Taibbi (and you) either has poor reading comprehension, or is pulling wool.
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Re: Re: Re:21
You are mostly telling me you’re illiterate.
Re: Re: Re:16
More that you only object because the facts are devastating to your case.
Re: Re: Re:12
Well, we can expand it to the rest of the internet if you’d like.
It wouldn’t help your argument, but we can.
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Re: Re: Re:13
I get that perspective is not your strong suit but no, if we expand it to “the internet” then no, I would NOT be “pretty much the only person in the comments thinking that it happened.”, not by a long shot.
Holy fuck you’re dumb.
Re: Re: Re:14
No, but you’d be part of a minority, which proves my point:
It must’ve been a hell of a secret when barely anyone outside the right-wing echo chambers thinks it happened.
Now, give me your next dumb comment.
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Re: Re: Re:15
Oh? I am? Prove it.
It does? HOW? Constitutional principals are not decided by majorities, they’re actually meant to thwart them. You have a right to free speech even if a majority think you shouldn’t, you have a right to own a gun even if a majority thinks you shouldn’t, etc.
Well THAT’s not true.
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Re: Re: Re:15
Oh, nevermind, turns out you’re just exactly wrong:
https://apnews.com/article/politics-censorship-78ca50083243a3da2ad09d9bf3545f0b
“NEW YORK and CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 16, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Nearly two-thirds of voters believe Twitter shadow-banned users and engaged in political censorship during the 2020 election, according to the December Harvard CAPS / Harris Poll, released today by Stagwell (NASDAQ: STGW). Seventy percent also want new national laws protecting users from corporate censorship. Download key results from the poll – a monthly collaboration between the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard (CAPS) and the Harris Poll and HarrisX – here.”
Re: Re: Re:16
Most people don’t even use Twitter and wouldn’t have a fucking clue about what they did or didn’t do. “Two-thirds of voters” are simply not in a position to give an informed answer to the question, but we know a lot won’t hesitate to parrot whatever conspiratorial nonsense Tucker/Hannity/Ingraham spouted last night.
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Re: Re: Re:17
Oh, cool, we can dismiss people’s opinions on the basis that they’re uninformed?
Well I guess I’m the only commenter on tech dirt who’s opinion matters, then!
Anyway, that’s not how it works. Pollsters usually weed out people who nothing about the subject at hand.
Regardless, Strawb’s claim was “you’d be part of a minority,” and that has been disproven, regardless of what you think of the opinion in question. (I didn’t ask nor care)
Re: Re: Re:18
This part sounds dubious. That would introduce bias unless the pollsters present the findings both with and without the respondents who supposedly aren’t familiar with the subject. The article you linked gives no indication that the researchers weeded out people who weren’t familiar with Twitter.
You are correct about that one claim, but the poll you referenced also doesn’t necessarily support an argument that Twitter really did what non-users think it did, and in regards to censorship a court ruling in the opposite direction about a former Twitter user who is a lawyer is evidence that Twitter and the government didn’t violate the First Amendment regardless of how the poll respondents define censorship.
See page 44 and onward of the key results for the poll questions. From what I could tell the poll didn’t define “censorship”, so it’s unclear whether voters understand that censorship with respect to attempts to remove speech requires coercion or intimidation.
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Re: Re: Re:19
I honestly don’t give a fuck, not every detail is going to be immediately presented via a short-form link. I know such is common, Harvard-Harris poll is pretty well respected, so I suspect they do, I’m sure they list their methodology somewhere, you’re free to investigate it. If you care about it, look it up, I don’t.
No, I don’t have to provide rigorous proof of every little thing I say, even off-handedly, particularly via one, sole link. This is literally just looking for things to contest. Some retard is going to pipe in with “No evidence has been offered, thus..” I don’t fucking care. It’s not central to my argument, it’s just dumb, frankly meaningless objection sent out by JMT that happens to be wrong (it will always be meaningless) because that is a thing that is checked for. If you care go and find out. Tell me what you find, I will be at least half interested.
Yes, thank you, literally all I care about here.
Oh, opinion polls are not findings of fact? Gee, go figure.
OK, so that’s a word salad. Be more clear with your grammar.
I should hope not, that would be essentially a leading question.
Should they “understand” that? Cuz that’s not what the definition is, at all.
Essentially all I’m reading from this you’re disappointed the poll isn’t biased in the ways you prefer and holy fuck do I not care about that.
Re: Re: Re:17
A source would’ve been nice, though this particular claim is probably correct.
Re: Re: Re:10
What was the punishment to Twitter for the >50% refusal rate?
Re: Re: Re:3
Matt seems like the kind of guy, who when asked to move out of the way so someone could pass, will start screaming that you are violating their personal space.
Then he will start to wonder when America got so fascist that a man can’t stand in the doorway of a public space without being harassed.
Re: Re: Re:4
Ironic, considering he supports actual totalitarians.
Sorry, actual NAZIS.
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Re: Re: Re:5
Funny, I think the same of you and Masnick. Of course, your side is doing a lot of totalitarian shit, so….
Re: Re: Re:6
…said nobody not on hallucinogens, ever.
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Re: Re: Re:4
You get that my whole concern is that all this is fascist af, right?
The CCP will ALSO kick you off social media for daring to suggest their elections are rigged. Of course, they are. Or for that suggesting welding people into apartment blocks might be a bad way to deal with a pandemic. Weibo is a “private” company. I’m sure the CCP’s requests to them are very polite.
Re: Re: Re:5
The CCP will ALSO kick you off social media for daring to suggest their elections are rigged. Of course, they are.
As opposed to the Republican party telling us our elections are rigged, despite no evidence to the contrary.
Or for that suggesting welding people into apartment blocks might be a bad way to deal with a pandemic.
Yeah, they should’ve winged it like we did. Maybe then they would’ve had more deaths than us.
Weibo is a “private” company. I’m sure the CCP’s requests to them are very polite.
Probably not. But then again, that’s probably why we beat them (massively!) in covid deaths.
USA! USA! Gotta love freedumb! Even if it’s freedumb to die for being a dumbass!
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Re: Re: Re:6
You could only possibly think that if you believed China’s numbers, which are very obviously fake. (of course they will persecute you for saying that) Are you a CCP apologist? It sure sounds like you are, actually.
Yes, which Twitter will kick off for, as in this case.
But not Stacey Abrams, who essentially said the exact same thing.
I think you’ve made my point for me.
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Re: Re: Re:6
So you’re agreeing that our elections are rigged?
That will get you tarred and feathered by the extreme left on this website.
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Re: Re: Re:7
No, actually (but yes), my point is that the argument is exactly mirrored.
Weibo will ban you for questioning Chinese elections.
Twitter will ban you for questioning US elections. (but please note that Stacey Abrams was not)
What is the difference there? Anything? You might answer “Chinese elections are fraudulent and US elections are not”. OK….if there was an actual problem with US elections, how would you know? Who would be allowed to tell you?
Oh, that’s adorable. I’m familiar with the hatred and intolerance by leftists on this site. The more they howl, the more I know I’m right.
Re: Re: Re:8
The idiots who took it so far as to get banned weren’t “questioning elections”, they were spreading misinformation and lies.
The fact that China has laws that compel companies to heavily censor whatever the government doesn’t like, as well as government employees to directly monitor and take down content.
The US does not.
Everyone who isn’t a government employee because the US isn’t a fascist state, you gigantic windbag.
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Re: Re: Re:9
According to who? The government?
Again, for maybe the third time, why wasn’t Stacey Abrams banned? She said all the same things.
I’m actually not sure what the Chinese laws say on that but I also know it doesn’t matter because they aren’t followed. Both China and Russia have free speech guarantees, in fact.
This just tells me you know nothing about elections, ballot counting, chain of custody, voter registration, verification, etc.
It isn’t? The Biden Administration tried to inject everyone against their will a year or so back. It told landlords they no longer controlled their own property, TWICE, once AFTER SCOUTUS told them they couldn’t do it.
So if it’s not fascist it’s not for lack of trying.
Re: Re: Re:10
And poll watchers. And the people providing the machines. And Republican officials whose job was to check that. And the Republican then-Attorney General Bill Barr. And election experts across the political spectrum.
Where did Stacey Abrams say that votes were altered? Or that the voting machines or vote-counting process was rigged? Or that anything that actually violated the law happened? As far as I’m aware, Stacey Abrams only said that the election was rigged solely to the extent that potential voters were prevented from voting, or that votes were removed unfairly but fully in accordance with state law.
Feel free to provide evidence to the contrary and I will revise my statement (I don’t feel that strongly about her to begin with), but as it stands, there are a lot of differences.
Oh, and in the case of Stacey Abrams, there weren’t a bunch of court cases on the issue that found that she was wrong. That’s kinda important, too.
The laws that compel censorship or that allow government employees to monitor and take down content aren’t followed? I’m pretty sure that they are followed about as much as any other totalitarian law.
Which have never been enforced. At all.
Uh, yeah. It’s quite transparent. Non-government employees can volunteer to become poll watchers to observe quite a lot of these processes. And FOIA requests can be used to learn a fair amount of everything else. Considering the privacy issues at play, it’s probably about as open as it can possibly be.
No, it didn’t. It mandated vaccines for government employees, and advised companies to do the same for their employees. That isn’t forcing everyone to get a vaccine.
But let’s say you’re right about that. That still wouldn’t be fascism. Vaccine mandates aren’t fascism. They’re also well-supported under U.S. law.
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Re: Re: Re:11
Mr. Bari Wiess of the NYpost, you’re not really entitled to waste my time anymore, so I’m just skimming, but a few things leapt out at me:
You seem to want to really want to argue particulars, presumably to cherry pick and make your side look more virtuous, and I just don’t give a fuck about your opinion on any of it. But Abrams DID claim continuously to have actually won the election and indeed never conceded. That is straight forwardly “Election Denial” open and shut. A republican would have been banned (also would have been pestered continuously to concede but that’s a separate matter)
Except when it’s not and a giant pile of ballots is “discovered”, or they block windows with cardboard, and if you point that out you’re a “conspiracy theorist” for some reason…. (which is silly, conspiracies happen all the time)
Incorrect. They tried to force anyone working at a company of 100 or more employees to get vaccinated. No idea why they stopped there, the same principal (which is made up) could allow them to make anyone working anywhere get vaccinated. It was thrown out of course, as they knew it would, and I’d say that doing so when you knew the court would reject it but essentially just trying to force it through anyway is an impeachable offense, double so for eviction moratoriums.
They are not. There is precisely ONE precedent, from 1905, I believe (without googling). Against a disease literally several hundred times as deadly as covid. And every precedent from 120 years ago should be kept forever, totally unassailable, right?
Several decades before fascism was invented, but the nazis would have fucking loved the concept. Have a special mRNA for the Jews, amiright?
Fascistic af.
Re: Re: Re:
“Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.”
― George Bernard Shaw
Re: Re: Re:2
“Never argue with stupid people. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.”
— Mark Twain
Re: Re: Re:3
Not to take away from the appropriateness of the quote, but Mark Twain probably didn’t say it. Yul Brynner or Jean Cocteau said it according to an interview by Hal Boyle. Or maybe the Bible said it first.
Re: Re: Re:3
“Beware the nature of online debates. They often contain quotes that aren’t attributed properly.”
Re: Re: Re:4
— Michael Scott
Re: Re: Re:2
Great advice, but George Bernard Shaw probably didn’t say it. Something similar to the advice was in circulation by 1872, and Cyrus Stuart Ching popularized the advice using slightly different words but attributed it to his uncle or his grandfather.
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Re: Re: Re:3
Saying “Historical figure probably didn’t say that” is super dumb. Nearly everything before the age of recording is apocryphal. Everything not written is dependent on witnesses, who are unreliable, and everything is subject to the telephone game of time. Even written text more than a couple centuries old has almost certainly been transcribed a couple times. How many original Roman texts do we have? Not a lot. Nearly all of it was rewritten once in the middle ages, at least. Did they do that accurately? Who knows.
Anyway, quotes attributed to historical figures are essentially parables….supposedly smart things a supposedly smart person said that makes a certain point we agree with.
MY favorite (hated) is the Einstein quote (which he absolutely did say, weirdly I found a site claiming he didn’t) “Insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result” This is quoted by sophomoric asshats all the time.
Real quote, by a smart guy, but he was just wrong (on several different levels) in this case. Arguably his most famous quote after MC=E^2.
I say this as a contrast because people attribute all sorts of very smart, true things to people who may or may not have said them and whether they did or not, besides being harder to verify the farther back you go (markedly harder earlier than the 20th century) really isn’t that important.
Re: Re: Re:4
Feel free to cite your source.
I can’t say I’d trust quote knowledge by someone who can’t even get E = mc2 right.
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Re: Re: Re:5
Why?
Re: Re: Re:6
Because you’re wrong again.
Re: Re:
In 3 or 4 hours, when Masnick’s 2005 site posts my reply
We’re getting near the end of the line when Meathead leads with this minor league crap.
Try harder.
Re: 'It's only a valid ruling if it agrees with us!'
You’d think so but that assumes they’d see any legal judgement that went against them as legitimate rather than dismissing it as an illegitimate ruling by a woke liberal judge since clearly personal bias is the only reason a judge would rule against them/their arguments.
Re: You believe that?
How many of the Twitter files’ reports of government emails were from the “Twitter Flagging Program”? Zero? Considering that the Twitter Flagging Program is a ‘click here to flag’ similar to what’s used on many sites, including this one, and not the inboxes of the Twitter employees; I’d say that Mike put just a little too much spin into this article.
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Willing Collaborators
The problem is not that the government is coercing private actors to violate the free speech rights of its citizens. The problem is that these private actors are willing collaborators with the silencing the government wants to achieve, and so the government outsources what would be a 1st Amendment violation if it carried out the silencing itself to these private actors who are legally allowed to do it.
The government cannot directly silence vaccine skeptics. But if it goes to Twitter and Facebook and says that they should (not must, just should) silence those skeptics on their platforms, and they do, then those skeptics have been silenced on those platforms just as surely as if the government had issued the orders itself.
In a society that has freedom of speech as a foundational value, large generic speech platforms should not censor opinions based on viewpoint, no matter how wrong they think those viewpoints are, and no matter who is asking them to do the silencing.
Re:
Why, it’s almost as if those platforms want to stay relevant and making sure they’re not full of mis- and disinformation about elections so people see those platforms as trustworthy sources of factual information is one way of staying relevant. Imagine that~.
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Re: Re:
No one should be trying to determine and label what is “misnformation”. For MANY reasons of long standing principal but also because they have proved hilariously bad at that. If you want to refute someone, refute them. It’s part of democracy. Removing things because you don’t think they’re true is not.
Oh, so they’re sources of information now? Sources, in fact, because they removed (edited) the info they disagreed with and only or predominantly left that which they disagreed with?
Interesting, re: CDA 230……..
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If Twitter wants to make that declaration, that’s on Twitter. Nobody has to (or should) believe their labeling of speech is The Unerring Word of God.
Sorry, I’m pretty sure I missed this bit of news, but could you tell me exactly when Twitter legally became a government institution that must host any and all speech?
Accounts on Twitter can be considered sources of information, yes. But to paraphrase 4chan’s long-time /b/ disclaimer: Only a fool would take anything posted there as objective fact without checking other sources first. Much like Wikipedia can be a good starting point for finding information, Twitter can be much the same—but also like Wikipedia, Twitter shouldn’t ever be considered the be-all, end-all, Word of God source for any information.
No, sources because accounts on Twitter can be used to relay information from a given user/source to many other people.
Not really. 230 protects Twitter for its moderation decisions in re: third-party speech. It can remove any speech it deems “false” or “in violation of the TOS” without risking a lawsuit over that decision. Prove it can’t.
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Re: Re: Re:2
You just said they were the source of the information, not the accounts. And if they heavy edit so that only one type of info is available on a subject, they are!
I did, Ninth circuit (ironic) 2009
They don’t just label it, they delete it. Nice strawman there.
And you seem awfully blasé about the prospect of someone blocking entire categories of opinion.
What if Twitter decided it would suffer no gay content? That all marriage was between a man and a woman and saying anything else was a violation of TOS?
By the rules you laid out, that would not only be legal, but just fine and nothing to worry about, right? RIGHT!?!
Re: Re: Re:3
🤣 lmao you ain’t even worth the bother now, go whine about mean ol’ Twitter somewhere else lmao 🤣
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Re: Re: Re:4
You’re saying that cuz you can’t address the point. Just admit that would think all the opposite things if Twitter had been censoring opinions you hold dear.
I am attempting to accept my victory with class.
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And failing miserably at all of it.
Re: Re: Re:5
At this point you’re just making shit up for the sole purpose of being a fucking asshole.
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Re: Re: Re:6
I think you missed the point, but that definitely wasn’t an argument.
Re: Re: Re:6
It’s only because he’s not legally allowed to murder us.
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Re: Re: Re:7
Wow, I am used to liberals playing victim, but that is hardcore.
Re: Re: Re:8
What’s wrong, too triggered for internet snark?
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Re: Re: Re:9
He claimed I want to murder him and the only thing holding me back is the law, and in fact my vulgarity is a proxy for murderous intent. That’s fucking amazing but there’s no real response to be made about it.
Re: Re: Re:10
Well, very few decent people would go so far as to harass people over either mistakes or differing opinions.
Brownshirts, on the other hand, do. And I have read comments about similar folk holding opinions similar to you actually saying they want to murder the author and comment section for having differing opinions.
Such things are similar to what even the local flavor of brownshirts do and want. Just because YOU hide it a little better than most doesn’t change your ideology.
After all, you already admitted that your entire goal here is to harass Mike into eitehr shutting down the site or covering topics that DON’T criticize your side. And there’s Jan 6. Which you deny was a violent thing.
Re: Re: Re:3
They are able to do that, and there are sites (many religious sites) that have just such a policy.
So tell us, Matt, do you think those sites are somehow censoring people?
This is the whole point of 230, by the way. That every site can moderate in the way they want to moderate, to create the kind of community that they, as private property owners, wish to create.
So it’s entirely legal for a site catering to evangelicals or Catholics or some other group to reject any pro-homosexual content, and they have every right to do so.
If you’re going to argue that Twitter is different because it’s a “general purpose” site, well, so what? Companies that cater to the wider public are free to make their own biases clear (think: Hobby Lobby, Chik-Fil-A and lots of others) and users are free to decide whether or not to do business with those companies.
It’s only in this weird corner of the internet, that a bunch of people who used to pretend to believe in private property rights, along with the 1st Amendment’s association rights, who have suddenly flipped it around and started pretending that Twitter must be forced to allow everyone to speak.
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Re: Re: Re:4
Of course those sites are censoring people!
Because you woke ideologues like the censorship that the large generic platforms offer you, or used to offer you, you try to redefine censorship just as you try to redefine man and woman. But regardless of your Orwellian manipulation of language, censorship remains the act of the censor, silencing opinions based on viewpoint on platforms the censor controls. The legality and constitutionality of the censorship is irrelevant. The ability for the silenced to speak elsewhere is irrelevant.
Re: Re: Re:5
Why are the rights of some people to use a platform more important than the rights of the platform itself?
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Re: Re: Re:6
They are not. The right of a platform to censor overrides the desire of users not to be censored. But in a society that holds free speech as a foundational value, large generic speech platforms should not want to censor opinions based on viewpoint, and if they do anyway, they should be criticized, shamed, or bought to get them to behave properly.
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Large platform do not moderate based on viewpoint, but rater to remove aggressive and disruptive influences. It is telling that almost all those banned from the big sites are those that aggressively shout and heckle others in an attempt to silence opposing viewpoints, and tell other how wrong their life choices are. Freedom of speech means accepting other also have freedom of speech, and when you try to shut down their speech you being banned is protecting other people freedom of speech.
Re: Re: Re:5
Translation: Waah Waah! I want to force myself on others against their wishes!
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Re: Re: Re:6
In a society that holds free speech as a foundational value, large generic speech platforms should not censor opinions based on viewpoint. They should not censor viewpoints that I favor and they should not censor viewpoints that I oppose.
Woke ideologues cannot stand to hear dissent, especially when they see that their ideas are being recognized broadly for the pernicious garbage they are, and so are desperate for the censorship that the large generic platforms used to offer them to be restored.
Re: Re: Re:5
Says someone who show every sign that by free speech they mean the freedom to force people to stay silent or agree with by aggressively repeating their viewpoint.
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Re: Re: Re:6
Free speech includes insistently repeating one’s viewpoint when opponents insistently repeat theirs. It emphatically does not mean silencing those opponents. And just because woke ideologues construe dissent as abuse, harassment, aggression, and what-have-you, that does not make it so.
Re: Re: Re:7
…said nobody not on hallucinogens, ever.
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Re: Re: Re:4
You would actually have to point me to such sites, specifically, because I would be very surprised such a thing hasn’t been sued out of existence. Are you imagining them?
I absolutely do not, in any way, believe ANYONE on the left would have a laissez faire were Twitter to ban [Progressive] anything. Gay marriage is just an obvious outrageous example.
Yes, of course. (if they exist, I would be very surprised if they did [Citation needed]) Did you somehow lose the thread and 1) convince yourself I was a religious zealot of some kind? and 2) convince yourself that my principled objections were illusory and subservient to a religion I don’t hold? Hilarious.
But lol, no, I am basically atheistic. (complicated by that I am convinced we live in a simulation) I know it would be much more convenient for you if I weren’t.
Lol, no, it isn’t, though I’m aware you often claim that, and it is dumbshit. The point of 230 is that platforms shall not be held responsible for content they did not write. That’s it. No, it isn’t designed to let you censor any which way and then simultaneously be immune to defamation suits on that content you just edited.
Fucken what? I’m arguing it’s morally reprehensible because it is. No idea what you mean by “general purpose” and since it sounds like a strawman, don’t care much. I’m arguing it’s illegal when it is at government request, which yes, you’ve made many arguments to discount and dismiss, but frankly they’re all dumbhsit so I don’t care. It clearly has happened quite a lot.
Weird grab bag of (well, 2, “lots of others” not actually being in evidence) companies that liberals hate for no reason. HobbyLobby is famous for not wanting to be party to medical procedures they find abhorrent. They won, btw. Chik-Fil-A has nothing to do with any of this at all beyond 1) Owners are known to be religious, which is why they’re closed on Sunday. 2) Owners donated to religious charities liberals don’t like (well dur). Never subject to any lawsuits that I know of, Liberals literally just hate them cuz they exist and are religious. Neither has any interaction with the internet that matters.
None of this has anything to do with the internet or moderation policy. Absolutely amazing that you would lay your own biases down like that.
So you’re just a stock standard hateful, intolerant liberal then? I mean I knew that, but weirdly sad, I would have expected you to at least to give up more of a token a fight while claiming you’re “totally nonpartisan” while on shitting on exclusively conservative causes.
Gimme your venmo, I’ll donate the money for you to get the Blue dye micro-fringe bangs you deserve. Aww fuck,
Re: Re: Re:5
“You would actually have to point me to such sites”
fanfiction.net used to have that policy. In fact quite a lot of fanfiction sites would either not take slash, or insisted it had to be rated NC-17 regardless of sexual content. The mere existence of a gay person in the story meant you had to mark it for adults only.
I would also point out that an obscure organisation called the Romance Writers of America used to refuse to allow gay relationships in the stories nominated for its premier awards, the Ritas.
None of these places were sued. On what grounds would you do so in America? They’re all privately run and owned.
Just as Mike could tomorrow ban the living crap out of you for being an tiresome little tit. You could sue, but good luck finding a lawyer, let alone a judge to go along with you. People who try this kind of nonsense are hooked into the right wing grift money pump, so they do it on other people’s money.
Re: Re: Re:6
Every now and then one has a glimpse of a better world, like the sun peeking throught the clouds on an overcast day.
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Re: Re: Re:6
[Citation needed]
So really what you’re saying is that you know of no sites that currently have such a policy.
Why? Cuz they would be sued into the ground.
The world is not what it was 20 years ago.
Nice try, though….no, it wasn’t actually. That was pathetic.
Re: Re: Re:7
On what grounds, exactly?
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It can’t be on First Amendment grounds because nobody has the right to force their speech onto private property (even if the “property” in question is a server).
It can’t be on non-discrimination grounds because a website has every right to choose whether it’ll host certain kinds of speech, which includes the right to refuse hosting queer-friendly speech.
It can’t be on personal injury grounds because no one is harmed (irreparably or otherwise) when a single website tells someone to take their speech elsewhere.
…hmm. I can’t think of a single way someone could sue a website for refusing to host a fictional story featuring queer people. Why, it’s almost as if someone is full of shit if and when they claim otherwise. Imagine that~.
Re: Re: Re:9
I’m shocked. Shocked!
Well, maybe not that shocked.
Re: Re: Re:9
If it’s the US, I can’t think of any dumb excuse. In Singapore, however…
It’s a country that denies psychological care to LGBT+ youth and has legit coerced corporations to not support any sort of LGBT+ event.
Hateful, violent shit, to be exact.
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Re: Re: Re:9
Of course they can. They did it with Cakes.
Re: Re: Re:10
No. They didn’t. The cakeshop won on 1st Amendment grounds.
https://www.oyez.org/cases/2017/16-111
So the original statement was correct. No one has the right to force their speech onto private property.
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Re: Re: Re:11
Eventually, Masnick, eventually. And now they’re suing them again, and again, in fact. Decades now, and hundreds of thousands of dollars. They won’t stop until the cake shop is dead and buried.
The only reason they still exist is because of a huge public funding and charity law effort. Any company with less press attention would be toast.
So yeah, sued into the ground.
You kinda made my point for me.
Re: Re: Re:12
And, you know, the 1A.
But, sure, keep cherrypicking whatever suits your argument.
Re: Re: Re:12
Yes. Because the 1st Amendment. Which still applies to Twitter as well as the baker. They have the right to refuse to endorse speech. That’s how the 1st Amendment works.
No doubt. This is why having strong precedents on the 1st Amendment, as well as procedural tools like Section 230 and anti-SLAPP laws are so important.
But, you’re not just moving the goalposts, you’re turning the entire field around. You claimed that the 1st Amendment did not protect a private property owner from denying speech. That’s provably false. The fact that the case confirming that you are wrong took a long time is a shame, but it doesn’t change the underlying fact. Or that your claim was wrong.
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Re: Re: Re:13
Actually, no, I was saying it effectively didn’t as they would be sued into the ground (and the CO government is helping, btw)
You’re moving goal posts, you shill
Re: Re: Re:14
I mean, look, if you want to argue that the entire judicial system is unfair, I’m not going to argue with you. That’s why I say we need tools like Section 230 and anti-SLAPP laws to help protect 1st Amendment rights by getting bad cases kicked out of court early.
But the fundamental claim you made — that the 1st Amendment does not protect a private company from disallowing speech on its property — is demonstrably false, as shown by the courts.
If you’re arguing that it doesn’t matter because the court costs are too expensive, that’s an access to law question and one where we agree. But that does not mean diddley squat regarding your fundamental false claim about the 1st Amendment.
The only one moving the goalposts here is you. You were proven 100% incorrect, so instead of continuing to make your point about 1st Amendment jurisprudence, you now whine that it costs too much. That’s a different issue.
Have you EVER fucking admitted to being wrong? You were wrong. Admit it for fucking once.
Re: Re: Re:10
Show me evidence that any level of government in the U.S. has ever forced a bakery to decorate a cake with speech that bakery didn’t want to put on that cake. I’ll wait.
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Re: Re: Re:11
Colorado did, and in fact is still trying.
Else where you claimed that didn’t happen (haven’t gotten to read your reply yet) but that was very heart of the case so I honestly have no idea why or how you would claim that.
Keep in mind btw that “speech” does not apply only to lettering, if you’re trying to puss out on some technicality.
Re: Re: Re:12
And it didn’t. The Colorado state government ruled that Masterpiece Cakeshop violated the state’s LGBT-inclusive non-discrimination ordinance by refusing to serve a gay customer. The ruling found that the cakeshop refused to sell that customer a wedding cake despite having offered that cake to straight customers for years. Under the law, the bakery wouldn’t have violated the law if it had sold the cake but refused to decorate it with ostensibly pro-gay messaging. Again: Azucar Bakery won its anti-discrimination case precisely because it sold the customer a cake but refused to put anti-gay messaging on that cake.
And I know you’re gonna as “well what about when the shoe’s on the other foot and it’s pro-gay messaging being refused by a conservative business”. Luckily, there was a case exactly like that: Hands On Originals. The ruling by the Kentucky Supreme Court wasn’t directly about the point of coerced speech (it was based on a legal technicality about standing). But every ruling between the last and the first got it right: Hands On shouldn’t be forced by law to print any message it finds objectionable on any of its products.
If the Colorado state government had tried to make Masterpiece put a pro-LGBT message on a cake, I very likely would’ve come out against that (after some initial schadenfreude, of course). If not, a strong argument that said “the government shouldn’t have the power to do that” would’ve likely changed my mind. I believe in the principle that the government shouldn’t have the right to stop horrible people from expressing unpopular speech—and I also believe it shouldn’t have the right to make horrible people express popular speech.
But Colorado didn’t make the bakery either make or decorate a cake for the gay customer who sued over the discrimination. Not then, not now, not ever. If you can produce a single shred of factual evidence to the contrary, you’d literally be the first person to do that.
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Re: Re: Re:13
Please provide a citation, because none of that is true.
MHS was happy to sell a cake, merely didn’t want to write certain words (or otherwise design a cake specifically for a gay wedding, there were a lot different requests that were made). Colorado specifically tried to compel speech.
Azucar was happy to sell a cake, merely didn’t want to write certain words. Colorado did not compel the speech. There were no other material differences.
SCOTUS even specifically cited that fact, and that CO had compelled the speech they agreed with and not the speech they didn’t.
Not sure what “other foot” you’re talking about, seems like the exact same case, Kentucky just has decided correctly.
They did, very specifically.
All evidence so far is to the contrary.
Again, your retelling of the Masterpiece case is counter-factual. I have already provided at least one document (the SCOTUS ruling) saying otherwise. You can provide citations in support of your version if you wish.
Re: Re: Re:14
Where is your citation stating that none of that is true?
Re: Re: Re:14
As you wish. Per Wikipedia’s article on Masterpiece Cakeshopv. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (which has plenty of citations, should you need to check those out), emphasis mine:
(That other case was Azucar Bakery, by the by. It won its case because it sold a cake to a customer but refused to decorate the cake with speech it found objectionable. That refusal was considered reasonable because it was based not on the customer’s identity, but on the speech itself.)
The underlying ethos of those rulings is simple: If your business is open to (and serves a basic item to) the general public, you don’t get to decide who makes up “the general public”—especially if non-discrimination law is involved. And notice that instead of complying with the law and selling wedding cakes to gay customers, Masterpiece intentionally pulled itself out of the business of selling wedding cakes. Also notice that at no point did the state of Colorado force Masterpiece to make a cake, custom or otherwise, for the gay couple that the bakery had initially discriminated against.
Except you are, once again, wronger than unholy hell. From the same Wiki article as before:
Nothing in the majority ruling mentions that the state of Colorado ever tried to compel any kind of expression of speech from Masterpiece. If you can find something in the ruling that says otherwise, feel free to quote it.
Yours is slightly correct, but you’re making claims about what the state of Colorado tried to do (or succeeded in doing) to punish Masterpiece Cakeshop for violating the law. If you can’t even cite a single factual article or court ruling that explicitly says something to the effect of “the bakery was forced to make and/or decorate a cake for the customers that sued the bakery”, your assertions are bullshit and should be treated as such.
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Re: Re: Re:15
That’s amazing. None of that actually reflects what you claimed earlier, nor really supports you now, but you’re going to claim it does? (btw, provide a link next time jackass)
Phillips was willing to provide a cake to gays. He was not willing to provide a cake specifically for a gay wedding. That’s it, that’s the whole thing.
Keep in mind “speech” does not have to be actual lettering on the cake.
So compelled speech, check.
Azucar also refused to make a cake, and colorado did not compel the speech. Apparently based on the content of the message, nothing else.
Sure, that’s easy:
Page 2
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/17pdf/16-111_j4el.pdf
Bitch, you did. It’s cute that you added “the customers that sued the bakery” there at the end, their wedding was long past, trying to weasel out? MPS was ordered to make wedding cakes for gay weddings. They claimed that wasn’t compelled speech, but SCTOUS disagreed, and it was overturned.
Fucking unbelievable you would waste my time like that.
Re: Re: Re:16
Oh, I’mma enjoy this one.
Distinction without a difference—after all, straight people don’t have same-sex weddings.
It actually kinda does in this situation. Assume for a moment that the bakery was fine with selling a wedding cake to a gay couple, but refused to put any sort of messaging—even something as anodyne as “Congratulations!”—on the cake. That likely wouldn’t have violated the law because the refusal would’ve been about the speech and not the identity of the customer. (I say “likely” because you can never know for sure.) Again, that’s why Azucar Bakery and Hands On Originals won their cases: They offered to sell customers a base item from the same “menu” of items they offer to the general public, but they weren’t willing to put on those items certain kinds of speech they deemed objectionable. Masterpiece didn’t even offer the base item, which is why it lost at every level but SCOTUS.
No, not really. If the state had compelled Masterpiece to decorate wedding cakes with pro-LGBT messaging, that would count. But all the state did was ask Masterpiece to sell the wedding cake itself. I again note that Azucar won its case because it offered to sell a cake and, after refusing to put anti-gay messaging on the cake, offered the customer what he needed to decorate the cake himself.
Baking a wedding cake for a gay couple is not, in and of itself, an endorsement of homosexuality or same-sex marriage. If baking generic-ass wedding cakes is part of a business’s offerings to the general public, and gay people are protected from discrimination by the law, the business doesn’t get to decide that gay people aren’t part of the general public.
Again, I note that Azucar did offer to sell a cake, but refused to put anti-gay messaging on the cake. The objection wasn’t to the cake or to the religion of the customer, but to the hateful speech he wanted them to put on the cake—which makes the objection far more reasonable than Masterpiece refusing to offer an undecorated wedding cake to a gay couple.
Since the court didn’t rule on the merits of the case—the ruling was less about whether the refusal violated the law and more about the state commission’s perceived hostility towards Phillips’s religious views—it’s largely irrelevant. That said, the point is fair: Even if the messaging would be attributed to the customer rather than the bakery, the bakery would still have every right to refuse that messaging.
But it’s still undercut by the fact that—by the admission of everyone involved with the case—the bakery didn’t even discuss those details because it altogether refused to sell a wedding cake to a gay couple. Had Masterpiece Cakeshop sold the cake but refused to put the messaging on it, it would be in the same boat as Azucar Bakery and Hands On Originals in re: having a reasonable refusal to put on their products speech they found objectionable.
No, I’m not. The underlying point of whining about “the gubmint’s gonna force us to bake cakes for the gays” is to imply that the government did, indeed, force Masterpiece to bake/decorate a wedding cake for the gay couple that sued the bakery. But at no point did that ever happen.
And as I noted via the quotes from Wikipedia, the bakery pulled out of making wedding cakes for the general public after the commission’s initial ruling. (So far as I know, Masterpiece still doesn’t offer that product any more.) The state didn’t force the bakery to keep selling wedding cakes; if it had, you could’ve cited evidence for that by now.
And it wasn’t. Masterpiece Cakeshop sold wedding cakes as part of its regular offerings to the general public. When a business opens its doors to the public and offers a list of items to the general public, with rare exceptions, the business is expected to offer those items equally to everyone in the general public per public accomodation and non-discrimination laws. Masterpiece fucked up by refusing to sell a basic-ass wedding cake to a gay couple in a state where “sexual orientation” is a protected class. The state asking the bakery to stop doing that isn’t “compelled speech” unless you genuinely believe every wedding cake Masterpiece sold to straight couples is an explicit and full-throated endorsement of every one of those weddings.
Assume, as a complete hypothetical, that Phillips is personally against interracial marriage. (Again: Complete hypothetical; this is not intended to imply these are his actual beliefs.) Regardless of decorations or messaging, how would his selling a wedding cake to a straight interracial couple be any more of an explicit endorsement of their wedding than would be his selling a wedding cake to a gay intraracial couple?
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Re: Re: Re:17
Incorrect and incorrect.
Colorado ultimate failed, but they absolutely DID try to do exactly that.
But only because they were being fined obscene amounts of money (well before SCOTUS took it up). Really not sure what point you think you’re making there.
It absolutely is and SCTOUS said as much. The entire case hinged on the fact that making the cake was expressive.
You keep on saying MPS was just being asked to sell gay people a cake, and that’s simply not true. They were being asked to make a custom cake for gay wedding, which was speech, and CO tried to compel that speech.
I don’t know what more to say. I don’t even think you’re arguing in bad faith, but you dramatically misunderstand the facts of the case and the text you keep quoting doesn’t even support your claims.
CO tried to compel speech, only stopped by SCOTUS. The end.
Re: Re: Re:18
[citation needed]
[citation needed]
[citation needed]
No, it isn’t.
No, it didn’t.
And at every level but SCOTUS—where the final ruling was far, far less about that point and far, far more about the commission’s perceived anti-religious bias—the courts said “no, making a cake isn’t expression”. That would be like saying you baking a generic-ass cake in your own home, absent any decorations or messaging, is creative expression. If you’re willing to believe that…
As cited on that Wiki page—and agreed upon by everyone involved in the case, including Phillips himself—the bakery never got so far as to discuss any decorations for the cake because Phillips refused to sell even an undecorated wedding cake to the gay couple.
And in regards to what the state of Colorado did: All it did was tell Phillips “in the future, if you’re gonna sell basic-ass cakes to the general public, you’re gonna sell them to gay people, too”. Phillips essentially called their bluff and stopped selling wedding cakes to the general public. The state never once ordered Phillips to sell a wedding cake with any kind of pro-LGBT decorations or messaging—or to sell a wedding cake, decorated or not, to the couple that sued the bakery. If you have any citations of fact that say otherwise, present them.
No, that’s you. I understand the facts of the case just fine. You’re the one who seems to think that baking a generic-ass cake is the same thing as painting portraits or writing books.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If this case had been about Masterpiece Cakeshop refusing to put pro-gay messaging on a cake, it would be right up there with Azucar Bakery and Hands On Originals as cases where I’d side with the businesses. But this case was about Masterpiece Cakeshop refusing to sell a product to a gay customer that the bakery had sold to straight customers for years: a generic, undecorated, basic-ass wedding cake. That act, under Colorado law, was unlawful discrimination based on sexual orientation. Every court besides SCOTUS recognized that fact and ruled as such.
Hands On Originals refused to print what amounted to pro-gay messaging on a bunch of t-shirts. That business won the anti-discrimination case brought against it—and as much as it might gall some people to think I wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) say this, I’m fine with that outcome. A few years earlier, maybe I wouldn’t have been. But my thinking on free speech—and compelled speech in particular—has evolved from when I was (objectively) younger and (arguably) dumber. The state has no right to compel Hands On Originals, Azucar Bakery, Masterpiece Cakeshop, or any other public-facing business to express (or host) speech that it finds objectionable. But I haven’t seen any evidence, other than the bullshit claim of “baking a cake is expressive in and of itself”, that the state of Colorado ever tried to compel any form of creative expression or speech from Masterpiece Cakeshop. You haven’t cited anything that would make me see your way of thinking.
If you have anything up your sleeve that could ever change the way I see this case that is both factual and isn’t based on an interpretation found in your Emotional Support Reality, now’s the time to show it off.
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Re: Re: Re:15
So, compelled speech.
Re: Re: Re:16
Nope. The state didn’t ask the bakery to actually decorate any wedding cakes it theoretically would’ve made for a gay couple. If it had, you could’ve proven that by now.
When we step into the public sphere, we make room for those who are different than us—in belief, in identity, and in many other ways. No one can or should be denied a spot in the public sphere based on who they are (or on the basis of religious belief/creed). The First Amendment protects your rights to speak freely and associate with whomever you want. But we as a society recognize that denying someone service based on inherent traits such as age or skin color/ethnicity (or non-inherent traits such as religious creed) infringes upon their right to participate in the public sphere. To that end, the law allows for an abridgement of one person’s freedoms so that other people can exercise their rights. Ergo, when a business opens itself up to the general public, it doesn’t have the right to decide who is part of “the general public”—and it doesn’t have the right to shortchange certain groups of people by not selling them items that the business would otherwise sell to everyone based only on who those people are.
If Masterpiece Cakeshop hadn’t wanted to decorate a cake with messaging that could be considered an endorsement of a same-sex wedding, that would’ve been bigoted but legally okay. But the bakery refused to sell even an undecorated cake to a gay couple—an item it would’ve been expected to sell to any straight couple regardless of custom decorations or messaging. That’s why the bakery lost at every level but SCOTUS.
You’re gonna need a better argument. Otherwording and willful misinterpretations of legal decisions don’t get you shit around here, son.
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Re: Re: Re:17
Compelling the shop to provide specific ideological training to its employees is exactly compelled speech, especially if the training includes testing where the “correct” answers are mandated regardless of the employees’ own beliefs.
Re: Re: Re:18
That depends on whether the ideology being taught is “you need to outright say that you accept and love gay people” or “you need to serve gay people so you won’t be breaking the law”. If it’s the second one, that’s not compelled speech—that’s the government telling the business a goddamn fact. If it’s the first one, yeah, that’s compelled speech.
The law in Colorado says a public-facing business must give gay people the exact same service it gives straight people. Barring anything involving the expression of speech (e.g., putting decorations on a cake), the base level of service must be equal or the business is going to get dinged for discrimination. The whole point of non-discrimination laws is to make sure historically marginalized groups aren’t treated like second-class citizens. The U.S. did that once; it didn’t turn out well for anyone but the people in power.
Re: Re: Re:19
Do you also agree that Muslim cabdrivers should be banned from picking up fares at airports if they refuse to carry passengers who have liquor bottles with them?
Do you also agree that Jews should be barred from employment if employers need to schedule shifts on Friday night or Saturday?
One of the established ideas of religious accommodation is that the government never decides which religious beliefs and practices are valid. For example, kosher certification laws in New York once required Orthodox Jewish certification. That has now changed so that even self-certification is sufficient; businesses must simply post what their certification is if they claim it.
It is beyond question that LGBT status or behavior is considered sinful by many religions and religious people. The government should not be getting involved in the precise details of what a religious person considers sinful, because that is the government literally violating the establishment clause. Cases like Masterpiece are seldom really about equal accommodation. They are about woke ideologues looking to punish people for wrongthink. The government should support freedom of religion by erring on the side of people who claim exemptions from accommodation laws on religious grounds, and then let the public weigh in by choosing whether they continue to support that business.
Re: Re: Re:20
So what? I’d bet that plenty of religious people have similar opinions about interracial marriages, an after-divorce remarriage, and even interfaith marriages. The law doesn’t give them the option to cut people involve in such marriages out of the public sphere. And considering that being queer isn’t a choice one makes in their life, the law should protect queer people in the same way.
If all a business owner does is refuse to put speech to which they object on one of their products, I don’t see a problem. But if they’re offering a base product to the general public and they refuse to sell that base product to a customer because that customer is part of a protected class, that business owner should face the consequences for their flagrant violation of the law. And that applies equally to those who are marginalized (and thus in greater need of such legal protections) and those who aren’t. If it’s illegal to not serve a gay person, it shouldn’t be legal to refuse serving a straight person. (Replace “gay” and “straight” with “Muslim” and “Christian” or “Black” and “white” if you prefer—different lyrics, same melody.)
If you can think of one good secular reason that a business owner who opens their doors to the general public should be able to decide that queer people aren’t part of the general public and avoid having it apply to literally any and every other protected class of people…well, I’d sure love to fuckin’ hear that.
And yet, Azucar Bakery won despite the customer asking for anti-queer speech. Curious. 🤔
What should the government do if a public-facing business refuses to serve Jews or Black people or old people by claiming such an exemption?
Re: Re: Re:16
…said nobody literate, ever.
Re: Re: Re:13
And it would also literally be the first time he has done so.
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Re: Re: Re:14
I have several times on this issue alone.
Re: Re: Re:15
No, you haven’t. At best, you have offered arguments that the evidence offered (by you or by Stephen) should be interpreted differently from how Stephen does.
You seem to conflate these two things a lot, really.
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Re: Re: Re:8
Discrimination, might even make some ADA claim, any excuse, really.
If such a website could exist, it would. The fact that they don’t is evidence they can’t.
After all, the Daily Stormer Exists. But the Daily Stormer isn’t a social media platform.
Re: Re: Re:7
“you know of no sites that currently have such a policy”
No, because I don’t hang out in places which do. You wanted examples, and you didn’t state that they had be after your date of birth.
“That was pathetic”
Really? You claimed no such sites could possibly exist, and I gave you examples off the top of my head (because your drivel warrants no more effort than that), and you changed the goalposts to claim they had to be recent.
You want effort? You pay for my time, child. You’re not in your sandpit now, and I’m not (thankfully) your mother.
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Re: Re: Re:8
You gave irrelevant examples that no longer apply? So?
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Re: Re: Re: CDA 230
Huh? 230 holds platforms not accountable for statements by their users. 230 doesn’t apply if the platform removes the statements, since then there is nothing for which to try to hold the platform accountable! 230 certainly doesn’t force platforms to host content.
Re: Re: Re:
You’re advocating for fraud and voter disenfranchisement here.
Fraud and voter disenfranchisement aren’t permitted speech under the 1st Amendment. And the damage done by them cannot be refuted with more speech.
Slippery weasel words. You pretend it’s just a difference of opinion rather than verifiable lies.
You’re confusing the platform with the people who run the platform. Twitter can be a source of information that is provided by users without Twitter employees being the source of that information. It’s weird this has to be explained to you.
Interesting re: people aren’t internet platforms…
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Re: Re: Re:2
How? At what other point in history has a private org deemed itself the arbiter of truth and that it will shut you up for disagreeing with it’s opinion of what is true?
What if they’re wrong? (they’re wrong a lot)
What if the “truth” is unevenly applied? No one kicked Stacey Abrams off of Twitter for alleging she actually won the GA governor race. She said that for 4 years.
Re: Re: Re:3
Then they’re wrong. You’re the only one here acting like everyone thinks Twitter is both The Decider of All Facts and The Only Platform on This God Damned Internet.
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Re: Re: Re:4
Between them and FB (which does a lot of the same things) it’s legitimately is the majority of the conversation. Certainly for US citizens debating politics and public interest matters.
I think Twitter trying to be The Decider of All Facts and then silencing dissent is Very Very Bad, actually. The 1A doesn’t apply to Twitter (on it’s own) but the principles for why it exists are exactly the same for why it’s a bad thing. Once you give someone the power to shut someone up based upon the pretext of it being “Hate speech” or “disinformation” that power WILL be abused, and it has been.
Sure, Twitter isn’t the government and they can’t shoot you. But between them and FB they can effectively shut down your ability to communicate your ideas. So it’s really bad when the government is involed (and illegal) but it’s pretty fucking bad without that, also.
Re: Re: Re:5
…is irrelevant unless you genuinely believe (or can prove!) Twitter either is that thing or sincerely wants to become that thing.
Twitter is not the be-all, end-all, all-or-nothing space for conversation on the Internet. Neither is Facebook. Same goes for Tumblr, Truth Social, 4chan, YouTube, Masto instances, or any other online communication service. If Twitter declares anything to be “false”, that declaration only really matters on Twitter.
If your whole argument is going to base itself around you believing Twitter is (or is trying to be) The Unerring Voice of God as if everyone else believes that, your argument isn’t worth taking seriously.
Re: Re: Re:5
It certainly would be if that were even remotely true. You are such a damn drama queen.
I can guarantee you that the thousands and thousands of people all around the world who have been the target of that hate speech would strongly disagree with you characterizing the moderation of hate speech as an abuse of power. And there are many more empathetic people who aren’t the target of hate speech who don’t want those people to experience that hate too. Basically only assholes who have never experienced being the target of hate speech would view its moderation as abuse. And we know what group you’re in.
If you want to communicate those ideas there are numerous other options available to you where you’ll actually be welcome.
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Re: Re: Re:6
Oh this leapt out at me:
See that’s funny, cuz there are millions and millions of people who have been severely punished, often killed by their governments for supposed “misinformation”. CCP fucking loves to get people for “misinformation”.
Not “hate speech”, mind you, that’s a US/Western obsession that goes away pretty quickly when you have real shit to worry about.
I take that back. CCP I betcha has definitely put some Uyghurs in a concentration camp for “hate speech”. “oh, no Han Chinese raped my wife at government orders! ” See? Hate Speech.
This is a little like saying George Floyd could clearly still breathe, because he could still talk. Mostly shit like “help, I can’t breathe!” But he could breathe, obviously. And then he died. Of not breathing.
Your comment was so dramatically uninformed, vapid, lacking perspective, you should legitimately feel ashamed for uttering it.
Re: Re: Re:7
So you’re comparing the horrific actions of the Chinese government to Twitter’s moderation policies, but I’m lacking perspective. Maybe try to stick to the topic.
And this from the guy who’ll pop a valve if someone gets called a Nazi.
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Re: Re: Re:8
Yes, absolutely. They’re different in degree, not in kind.
Yes. Because 1) that is an ad hominem the Left now things entitled to use at any time no actual justification. 2) It is almost exclusively used by those who support totalitarian policies. 3) It’s ironically fascistic in itself as it is used “other”, to make violence against an out-group OK, i.e. “punch nazis”. Remarkably convenient when “nazi” just means “people I disagree with”. And then “punch” becomes “line up against that wall”. You probably think I’m being hyperbolic, except this is exactly the progression that has played out the last two centuries, basically ever since the French Revolution.
Re: Re: Re:7
The thing is, I actually agree with Matthew’s underlying point here, though (as per usual) he then misses the point. We’ve long argued that the government should not outlaw hate speech, and have highlighted repeatedly how hate speech laws are regularly abused to silence speech, often of the marginalized and powerless by the powerful.
But… that’s not the issue here. Twitter is not the government. Twitter is a private company, and as such, those of us who believe in private property rights, believe that it has the right to craft its own rules for what content it allows on its own site, and what it doesn’t allow — even if we disagree with the policies or the enforcement.
Because Twitter is not the government.
And, if Twitter comes up with bad policies or enforces them badly, then people can set up competitors and compete. As has happened.
And then we let competition and the market sort it out.
The only issue is when the government demands that such speech be blocked, because then it is seeking to block such speech across the board.
And, contrary to Matt’s belief, to date, there has been little evidence of the US government doing that. There have been a few points that have toed the line, which we’ve called out (the White House has been particularly silly on this front). But the claims about the FBI or whatnot are simply not supported by the evidence.
It’s entirely possible that evidence to the contrary will show up tomorrow. But until there’s actual evidence of government intrusion to the point of coercion… Matt’s simply engaged in wishful thinking of what he (and many others) were sure was happening. The cognitive dissonance comes from the fact that the evidence fails to show his steadfast belief was true, and rather than adjust his prior like a rational, logical person, Matt is engaging in fantastical wishcasting, that lets him tell himself something that is clearly not shown in the evidence, so that he can continue to believe false information.
It’s kinda pathetic, but, you know, kinda used to it from silly people like Matt.
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Re: Re: Re:8
One way for the market to sort out a company that has problematic policies is for the public to criticize the company until it changes its policies. The solution to “New Coke” wasn’t to set up a new soda company, it was to criticize and mock Coca Cola until the company brought back the version that people wanted. Similarly, when Twitter and Facebook censor opinions based on viewpoint, sure, someone can set up a new large generic speech platform, but it’s simpler to try to repair the bad policies of the existing companies by urging, shaming, or buying them to get them to change.
When the government just asks, not compels, large generic speech platforms to silence opinions based on viewpoint, and those companies comply, likely because they also dislike those viewpoints, then those viewpoints are effectively censored because it becomes much more difficult for the holders of those viewpoints to speak where a great many people will hear them. You make the usual willful error of treating the 1st Amendment as the prime focus rather than free speech itself, and the usual willful error of not seeing that a platform exercising its own free speech rights to censor is depriving its users of the ability to speak freely by doing so.
Re: Re: Re:9
“those viewpoints are effectively censored because it becomes much more difficult for the holders of those viewpoints to speak where a great many people will hear them.”
No one has the right to speak on every platform if their views offend the hosts of those platforms.
Being heard is a problem for anyone who is not powerful or famous. But that’s not the same as being silenced. There’s always the local equivalent of Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, or standing in a park of any kind yelling about your grudges.
I’d be a lot more worried about the military or police being used by the government to clear away protesters than I would ever be about bloody Twitter – but it’s uncanny how often the people who whine about the people who complain about Twitter, are also the kind who enthusiastically support that kind of action against protestors.
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Re: Re: Re:10
Except it is. You’re just trying to tell people that they’re not being silenced so that it’s easier to silence them.
Re: Re: Re:11
No one is entitled to an audience—especially not a large audience. Only ten people giving a shit about what you have to say might suck for you, but you haven’t been “silenced” because only ten people will listen to you.
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Re: Re: Re:12
This is an active attempt by you (and others) to conflate several different issues.
Twitter is a private company and can do what it wants.
What it wants can still be evil and wrong and I am fully right to protest it. That’s completely different than a “right”.
If government is directing Twitters censorship, that WOULD be illegal — on the part of government, not Twitter.
Re: Re: Re:13
Correct. And we’re still waiting for any evidence to be provided that the government directed any such Twitter censorship. As the ruling in this case (which follows along with a long list of other cases in other circuits across the country) shows.
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Re: Re: Re:14
No, you’re really not. Not only have you been shown such, but you have made clear that there is no evidence you would find convincing.
Re: Re: Re:15
What was the punishment for Twitter for all the times it denied the gov’t requests?
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Re: Re: Re:16
Death. FBI was going SWAT ’em. Had the snipers prepped and everything.
No, that strawman argument doesn’t matter. It’s an asymmetric power dynamic, stop asking.
Re: Re: Re:17
So you got nothing, as usual. Just pulling stuff from your ass and thinking it’s a diamond when it’s just more of the same crap you spew.
Re: Re: Re:17
It matters in that if Twitter doesn’t face any repercussions from denying the government’s request, then they are not being coerced into making moderation decisions directed by the government.
If the gov’t hands over a list of accounts to review, shouldn’t the response from Twitter be something like…
Thanks for the information, we’ll look into it.
And when Twitter looks at the list they may say…
Yes this one is violating our ToS, nope, nope, nope, nope, yes again violating our ToS, nope, nope, nope…
And without any consequences for denying some of the government’s requests, there is nothing forcing Twitter to just say Fuck You and not deal with it at all.
Again, no coercion, no “Nice business there…”, no mob tactics like you seem to think are at hand.
But because Twitter is a private business, that wants to keep its user base, it will review accounts, flagged by government actors or not, and have internal discussions on whether the accounts in question should be removed.
Again, no coercion, no “Nice business there…”, no mob tactics like you seem to think are at hand.
So tell us, what force is the government using to make Twitter do the government’s bidding?
Gobbledegook. That is shit you just make up to think you have something useful to say, but essentially means absolutely nothing.
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Re: Re: Re:18
Incorrect
Re: Re: Re:19
Ok, that’s real convincing, want to try again skippy?
Re: Re: Re:19
Where is your evidence that Twitter does face repercussions? Or are you arguing that it doesn’t matter? Either way, that needs to be explained beyond “incorrect” to be in any way persuasive to anyone.
Re: Re: Re:17
I suppose if you put it that way…
Twitter has all the power. And to prove that point, they said “fuck you” to the gov’t over 60% of the time and look, nothing happened.
So yes, it may be an asymmetric power dynamic, just not the way you think. If anything, it proves that the government has ZERO power to force Twitter to make any moderation decisions and Twitter had all the power it needed to say fuck you!
Re: Re: Re:18
I think Matty just has a deep-seated fear of the government and is surprised Twitter don’t feel the same way. They obviously didn’t believe there was any coercion occurring, but he just can’t believe it.
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Re: Re: Re:19
Well I’ve read history books, so yes
to the extent that they were not more alarmed and shocked, yes.
This is directly contradicted actually.
Re: Re: Re:20
Actually, no it hasn’t been directly contradicted.
Besides, Twitter holds all the power in that it told the gov’t to fuck off multiple times and nothing happened to Twitter.
Where’s the coercion?
Re: Re: Re:20
[citation needed]
Where is your evidence that Twitter felt they were being coerced? The fact that they neither sued over it nor completely complied with it suggest they felt no such coercion.
Re: Re: Re:17
The law requires more than an asymmetric power dynamic and nothing else to turn a request or comment into a coercive demand, and only the latter is unconstitutional.
Here’s the thing: saying that what the evidence demonstrates doesn’t show anything unlawful under this or that interpretation of the law, even if they are wrong on the law, that is not dismissing the evidence as unconvincing for some claim, just saying it doesn’t support a claim that anything unlawful occurred.
You are being told exactly what evidence would be convincing. How does it show that no evidence could convince them when the only evidence you provide doesn’t fit the standards explicitly told to you? And that isn’t a strawman, exactly. You are asserting that the government did something unlawful, then being told they require evidence for the only way the alleged action could be unlawful before accepting your claim that it is unlawful. If it’s not your claim that what you allege fits these criteria, this isn’t a strawman, which requires the other claim to be weaker than the actual claim, but a steelman argument, because it makes the argument stronger than it actually is.
Re: Re: Re:16
Aaaand he’s gone again.
Re: Re: Re:13
What you want is the ability to har
ass people you disagree with, and Twitter does not want you doing that, Stopping you harassing people is not viewpoint discrimination, it is getting rid of an arsehole so that they do not drive away other users.
P.s. if you want to claim you do not harass people, I suggest you read over your comments on this site with a critical eye, because they show that is what you do.
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Re: Re: Re:14
Woke ideologues construe dissent as harassment, but that does not obligate anyone else to remain silent.
Re: Re: Re:15
There is dissent, and calmly making your point, and there is harassment by repeatedly telling people the same thing because you disagree with them, and are not prepared to accept that there is a difference of opinion that shouting at them will not resolve.
Re: Re: Re:16
And woke ideologues are just calmly making their point once? They’re not continually trying to have men who claim they’re women force their way into women’s sports, women’s locker rooms, and women’s prisons? They’re not continually trying to teach their ideology as true in public schools wherever they have managed to colonize the educational system and government?
It is not better to politely lose the culture war than to rudely win it.
Re: Re: Re:17
No, they’re not, unless you have evidence that these things are happening on a regular and widescale basis. I mean, shit, Hyman, do you even know how many actual trans high school athletes are being targeted by state laws against those athletes playing on teams that match their gender identity? Because I’m almost certain that number isn’t anywhere near what you want it to be to justify your anti-trans hatred.
No, you’re thinking of conservative Christian lawmakers who keep trying to force students to say the Pledge of Allegiance (especially the “Under God” part), force Christianity (and only Christianity) into schools, and ban as many mentions of queer people and racism at all grade levels as they can.
And if you have to hurt a few transgender people (or goad them into suicide) along the way, well, what’s the harm in that? After all, you don’t seem to think they’re people who deserve the same right to live as their authentic self like you do.
Is hurting people whose lives aren’t affecting yours in the slightest really what you want to do with your one wild and precious life?
Re: Re: Re:18
Trans people are living the very definition of an inauthentic life, since they are claiming to be a sex that they can never be. People who are living a lie may feel especially vulnerable to being called out for it, but that’s their problem, not the problem of people who speak the truth.
Woke gender ideologues will simultaneously claim that it is vital to allow trans people to force their way into single-sex spaces for which their bodies disqualify them (because the trans people are so delusional that they will kill themselves if everyone else does not affirm their beliefs) and that such things happen so rarely that there is really no need to worry about it. Meanwhile, New York says not to use “boy’s penis” in all sex-ed classes, for the hundreds of thousands of children who will be taking those classes. Meanwhile, public schools have official policies that require lying to parents about the mental illnesses of their children. So, no, we will not allow your attempts at gaslighting to succeed.
My justification for opposing woke gender ideology is that it is false, and we should never teach lies in public schools or force people to affirm lies. The number of trans people is irrelevant. Teaching creationism in public schools affects literally no people at all, for example, but I oppose that as well.
As usual, my opinions are my own, and I do not care who else shares those opinions or what other opinions those people may have. If you do not like those other opinions, I suggest you go argue with the people who have them.
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Re: Re: Re:10
No one has the right to speak on private platforms, but in a society that has freedom of speech as a foundational value, private platforms should support free speech by not censoring opinions based on viewpoint. If they do, they should be criticized, shamed, or bought to get them to behave properly.
Protesters who are breaking the law should be dealt with by those tasked with protecting society, with as much force as is necessary. People who “protest” by engaging in arson, rioting, and looting should be shot while committing those crimes if they do not stop and surrender to authorities.
Re: Re: Re:11
There’s a fundamental question you keep avoiding, Hyman: In your ideal world, if those non-violent/non-forceful approaches don’t work, what the hell else is left as a solution to make platforms act like you think they “should” other than violence or the force of law?
Protesters will almost always be breaking some sort of law. Saying that using violence against them no matter what law they’re breaking is how you end up with images of otherwise peaceful protesters being beaten by the forces of “law and order”—images like the ones captured on Bloody Sunday.
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Re: Re: Re:12
Well that’s a dumb thing to say. Peaceful assembly is protected, by law, in fact. (don’t block the roads tho, assholes)
He then went on to list serious, violent crimes.
“Rioting” is ambiguous but always means more than peaceful assembly, and violence is a suitable response to arson and looting. (not under the law of many blue states, but it should be)
Re: Re: Re:13
Protest, by its very nature, is meant to disrupt. A peaceful assembly isn’t inherently a protest, a protest isn’t inherently peaceful, and one person’s peaceful assembly can be another person’s protest. Your argument seems to be that any protest that is even mildly disruptive, no matter how peaceful it is otherwise, should be met with violence. If that’s what you truly believe, I will again point you to the events of the 7th of March 1965—and I will ask you to justify that response.
Re: Re: Re:14
This is the attitude of privileged people who’ve never had a need to protest anything in their entire lives.
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Re: Re: Re:14
Protests that break the law and aim to disrupt should be treated by the authorities with measured responses, including the use of force against the protesters, in order to minimize the disruption to non-protesters. As with large generic speech platforms, the authorities should be moderating, not censoring. If the authorities are using violence in order to suppress the protesters because of their viewpoint, that is wrong. If they are using force to protect the public from acts of law-breaking by the protesters, that is their proper job.
Re: Re: Re:15
Well, at least you’re consistent.
Re: Re: Re:11
Protesters who are breaking the law should be dealt with by those tasked with protecting society, with as much force as is necessary. People who “protest” by engaging in arson, rioting, and looting should be shot while committing those crimes if they do not stop and surrender to authorities.
Quick question for you in that case to check for consistency: How many of the Jan 6 insurrectionists should have only left the capitol in body-bags?
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Re: Re: Re:12
Any of them who refused to comply with orders to leave the building or not enter it in the first place, or who resisted arrest. I would consider “all of them” to be a reasonable answer.
Re: Re: Re:11
Case in point: Rioter, Ashli Babbitt.
Re: Re: Re:12
Yes. There should have been many more like her.
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Re: Re: Re:8
Aww, sweetums.
Yes, and if they were doing their despotic actions solely on their own my criticism would be limited to pointing out how dumb, illiberal and asinine their policies were.
But then Musk bought them specifically to end those policies and the truth turned out to be so much worse.
You most definitely did not. You wrote ridiculous, Orwellian articles licking Gadde’s pumps and claiming censorship is free speech.
Uh huh….and Big Tech will kill them off in a weekend, explicitly for not having the same bad policies. So bullshit.
Not only has there been, but you seem to see it as your personal job to gaslight, lie, and mischaracterize such evidence.
Let’s drop for a moment the idea of “proving” anything, because this is not a court of law, it’s a politics and policy discussion. And my goal is not to put people in jail (impossible, there’s no statutory penalty for breaking the constitution) but to make sure this shit doesn’t happen again.
All of those are proven facts.
And your response to allllllllllllll of that is to shrug and say “nothing to see here”, “I can see how it’s questionable in some cases but it’s fine” and “But they did always ban those people.” (apparently it doesn’t matter if they DO always ban those people, either)
Are you lying to yourself out of partisan affiliation, the rest of us consciously, or are you just really stupid?
Yeah, right back at you, for reasons listed.
Re: Re: Re:9
You repeating this lie doesn’t make it any more true, because Parler is still around.
Moreover, those “same bad policies” were simply to remove content that involved incitement to and planning of rape, torture and assassination of public officials as well as private citizens.
But I’m not surprised that you think those are bad policies, given how despicable you are.
Re: Re: Re:10
Let’s not forget abetting insurrection.
Re: Re: Re:11
Amazon didn’t specifically cite that during the lawsuit, but sure, it likely was another factor.
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Re: Re: Re:10
“It’s not murder your honor, the victim was only paralyzed”
That the target survived the attack (barely, and crippled) is not really the pertinent fact there, so I think you’re the one lying here.
Besides being a hyperbolic misrepresentation, you’re simply reiterating the excuses people use to justify their censorship.
But I think free speech is still more important and therefore censorship is wrong. So yeah, “bad policies”
Yeah, that makes you seem measured.
Re: Re: Re:11
By your own testament, you’ve just proved yourself wrong, so thank you.
It’s not hyperbolic; that’s literally what Amazon stated as evidence for Parler failing to moderate their site according to the Terms Of Use they agreed to when setting up hosting with AWS.
And your calling the desire to remove content that has to do with raping, torturing and killing public officials “excuses” just makes you look even more unhinged than usual.
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Re: Re: Re:12
It’s amusing to me how badly you are misunderstanding the the argument about attempted murder. Arguing that the murder was unsuccessful is just…not an argument. It’s meaningless.
It was a hyperbolic misrepresentation when Amazon said it to.
Btw, if someone is making an actual, credible, violent threat (you have offered no evidence that was true, and particularly not that it was any more prevalent than on say, Twitter) the proper answer is to subpoena their information and charge them with that, not silence them.
Re: Re: Re:9
We regularly criticized the policies (including the “hacked materials” policy which we called out for how it would be used to suppress journalism BEFORE the whole NY Post thing happened). We also regularly called out their bad enforcement, like the time they banned someone for quoting the Princess Bride.
I’m sorry that you live in an alternate reality.
Not true. Parler, Gab, Gettr, Truth Social and more all still exist. Don’t lie.
Yes. But all of the reports on that show that none of that was about removing content. If it was shown to be about removing content, I’d agree with you.
Yes. People leave law enforcement and go work elsewhere. You think once people leave the FBI they’re never allowed to work anywhere else?
That’s not at all what the records show. They show that the government funded organizations to research foreign influence and misinformation policies. Which… seems like a reasonable thing to do? There is no evidence beyond that. If there were, you might have a point. But there isn’t. So you’re fantasizing about it.
I haven’t seen such evidence. Can you point it out to me?
This is false and we already discussed it. A bunch of fucking morons changed the definition of shadowbanning AFTERWARDS to pretend that Twitter execs perjured themselves, but it was only because they changed the definition. Twitter was always public about its visibility filtering. The fact that the same fucking morons ignored it at the time is on them, not Twitter.
And I have seen no evidence that the government requested specific topics throttled, or that they did so in a coercive manner. So if you have a citation, fucking show it.
This was also a policy we complained about, noting that official information was often wrong. But, it’s understandable that a company might choose to follow official guidelines about health information from health agencies in the midst of a rapidly unfolding totally new pandemic. So while I disagreed with the policy and called out problems with it (especially trusting the WHO), it’s also perfectly understandable and again shows no sign of coercion.
Matt: try fucking harder. This stupid shit is getting tiresome and you’re just proving yourself to be a silly fucking moron.
Re: Re: Re:10
I’m starting to think Matt is an alternate account Mike setup to show the Elmo Twump viewpoints as easy targets to shoot down and make fun of.
I mean no one could be as willfully ignorant of realty as the Matt account is, could they?
Re: Re: Re:11
You underestimate the average Republican voter.
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Re: Re: Re:10
No credit for pointing out the more loony applications. You fully supported their suspensions for supposed “hate speech” (not misunderstood movie quotes) and “misinformation”. You supported Gadde, vociferously, and that was her whole deal. You’re changing your tune now (which is good!) but now want to lie about your past position.
This is dumb, you’re pretending that because the target was only tragically maimed that means the shooting was an attempting murder.
Also I was only talking about Parler, they were the ones promising “unmoderated” and ballooning in users because of it (which is when the shooting happened). Still alive but never the same. You yourself talk about how much Truth Social actually censors.
Nice strawman tho!
Holy fuck, I’ve ONLY seen reports that it was about removing content. What ELSE could it be about? What else does the FBI want to talk to Twitter about? (even if under pretext they’re terrorists or foreign agents? They still want you to remove the content!) The CDC? They want you to remove the anti-vax content.
This is where it becomes hard to believe you could actually believe you’re saying. What else could they talking about? “Yes. But all of the reports on that show that none of that was about removing content.” Please cite such a report, preferably several.
Congrats, you’ve elevated “shown” to a weasel word. Because about the only more “shown” we could get was minutes of the meetings with “lets censor those deplorables!” spelled out. Would probably have to be several times.
This is another case where I can’t seriously think you actually believe that. This wasn’t just a few random people, it was a coordinated resettlement. Across the country. And you guys cry when a couple execs move from the FTC to a telecom or the reverse.
Yes, you have.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394284867436547
Yes, you fucking have. This is sealioning.
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1633830108321677315
This is a bold-faced lie. Twitter does not control the definition “shadow-banning”, shadow-banning was a term coined by others and always meant what Twitter was calling “visibility filtering” internally. Bad guys doing bad things like to use euphemisms so it doesn’t seem so bad, dontcha know? But they were shadowbanning as defined by the definition everyone else uses. It’s also telling that they “defined” shadow-banning as some other obscure thing that they never did. Why? So they could lie under oath and say they didn’t do that? That’s not how that works. They committed perjury.
A hot second ago you claimed you were against misinformation policies. And what are you going to do with a “misinformation” policy but remove content? Jesus wept.
You fucking try harder, this is embarrassing. You are saying shit that you couldn’t possibly actually believe.
This is fucking sad. I waver between thinking of you as a partisan desperate to deny the truth or just a shill, but now I know.
Re: Re: Re:11
It wasn’t the “loony applications.” We highlighted the problems of the ban on DDoSecrets for posting BlueLeaks, which was under the hacked materials policy and called out that the same policy would stifle journalism. We also cheered on when Twitter admitted that the hacked materials policy was bad and changed it.
Matt, you’d be taken more seriously if you didn’t lie all the fucking time.
My position has remained entirely consistent. I supported Twitter’s RIGHT to make its own policies, just as I complained when those policies seemed dumb. I wrote about Gadde’s general position which was free speech supportive, because that was accurate. That doesn’t mean I agreed on all policy decisions, but Twitter has the right to set its own policies, and (unlike you) I understood how the company was seeking to enable more free speech by recognizing that it sometimes had to deal with bad actors who were trying to silence speech.
No, I’m not. As I wrote when Parler got booted from the app stores, I do have issues with there being only two app stores, but I did feel that the solution to that is building web apps. Parler getting booted from AWS was less of an issue because it was easy for it to find an alternative host as there are many.
As long as they can set up a web site, then they’re good. Which is what Parler discovered.
Ditto all those other sites that did not face the same problems.
Foreign interference?
Yeah, I think Adam Schiff is a jackass and that he went too far with that request. I don’t think I’ve ever said a nice word about Schiff who is an intelligence community/law enforcement lackey. But also, as a single Congressman he has no coercive power over Twitter, as is evidence FROM THAT VERY FUCKING LINK which shows Twitter repeatedly explaining why they’re ignoring his stupid demands.
Again, as this court (and many others) have shown, without coercion, there’s no violation. There was none here.
That link does not show the government demanding the removal of topics. It shows a private organization highlighting (stupidly, I agree) the kinds of information that it sees on twitter that this private organization doesn’t like. So fucking what? It’s the same thing as me saying something. It’s not the government, and there’s no sign that Twitter paid any attention to it.
Not going to go through this again, but it’s false. The definition changed years later. Twitter was explicit in which definition it was using (the original one). That others LATER chose to reinterpret the word is on them, not Twitter.
I never said I was “against misinformation policies.” I am against the government defining what is and what is not misinformation. But private organizations have every right to study misinformation. I have no problem with the study of misinformation. I have no problem with websites choosing to define it however they want. I only have an issue with the gov’t saying what is and what is not misinformation.
I remain entirely consistent on this. The fact that you can’t follow is a you issue, Matt.
Is is. Name any large company and you’ll see the same damn thing.
That’s not at all “the only thing they would have an interest” in. They used the platform to monitor all sorts of illegal behavior. The main thing the feds communicated to Twitter about was fighting CSAM. Going to tell me you’re against that now?
Yes, I agree the Schiff demand was stupid, but not coercive. I have no problem saying he’s a jackass for making the demand. But it’s not against the law.
Again Twitter was EXPLICIT in explaining what definition it was using. And the definition you’re using was a much later version.
Matt: reality calls. Stop fucking lying.
Re: Re: Re:12
I feel it’s important to add that, although this same private organization did receive funding from the federal government, that funding was for investigating foreign interference, and there is no evidence that the federal government directed that organization to do this. As such, this is absolutely not evidence of the government making demands or requests. That would require additional evidence.
Re: Re: Re:11
Yes. Excluding those who retire permanently (a minority), ex-FBI agents will need to work somewhere (they won’t work there forever, after all), and large companies are likely to hire dozens of people. (They are probably even more likely to hire former government officials/agents due to their experience with the inner workings of government.) I fail to see anything unusual here.
That’s hardly the only thing Twitter could do for federal agencies. Twitter has a plethora of information about a lot of people and their activities (both online and, when they choose to post it, offline), and that could be used to inform public policy on a variety of issues or to investigate potential legal cases the government may want to pursue. Twitter has a history of cooperating with government agencies and law enforcement regarding CSAM, for example, and could have been discussing foreign operations and misinformation campaigns as well.
Mike never said he didn’t see that evidence. He just said it wasn’t evidence of unlawful government coercion. “Bad” does not mean “coercive”, “illegal”, “unlawful”, or “unconstitutional”. You seem to love to conflate evidence with your interpretation of the evidence.
Yes, it was fine. For one, contrary to your assertions, the definition Twitter was using was the definition most commonly used at the time the hearings took place, so it wasn’t a “Bizarro-world definition”. For another, Twitter explicitly stated what definition they were using at the time, so anyone who paid attention to the whole thing would not have been confused by their use of the term. (This is common practice when using terms of art, jargon, and technical terms, especially—though not exclusively—ones that are also used colloquially or are commonly misunderstood/misused, particularly when speaking to laypeople.)
Definitions change over time. The term “meme” was adapted from its scientific definition to one referring to a certain part of internet culture in fairly recent memory. “Gay” also changed from meaning “happy, cheerful” to “homosexual (esp. men)”. “Woke” has gained new meanings multiple times just within my lifetime. “Queer” has also changed definitions (or acquired new ones) multiple times over the past few decades. There are many, many more examples just in the English language. That “shadowbanned” also changed in definition over the years is not particularly unusual. It’s incredibly common. I have no idea why you have a hard time believing it considering how rapidly several other terms have changed over the past decade or so.
I doubt that it was necessarily intentional or that the definition was changed specifically to frame Twitter like that. People just read/watched records of the hearings and incorrectly interpreted Twitter’s testimony using the current definition of “shadowban” rather than the one Twitter was using, which they specifically spelled out and was the most commonly used definition for the term at that time. This didn’t have to be intentional, and it certainly doesn’t mean that the change in definition was done for this purpose.
You really need to stop jumping to conclusions and putting words into other people’s mouths.
Under the definition for “shadowban” used at the time, nothing in Twitter’s testimony—as far as I’m aware—has been shown to be objectively untrue, nor has it been shown that Twitter knew, believed, or suspected that anything they said was untrue. Under no rational definition would that be “perjury” or “straight lying.”
No one said otherwise. The claim has consistently been that the definition Twitter used was the one that was more commonly used at the time of the hearing, and that Twitter spelled out the definition they were using, but that that definition (as used by the public) later changed. This is a strawman.
Nope; when I first heard the term, it exclusively referred to not displaying posts made by someone specific at all without letting the poster know that they couldn’t be viewed. That’s not at all what Twitter’s “visibility filtering” (read: content prioritization system) did. The term itself even hints at this: “shadow” to refer to the fact that no notification was given and “ban” to refer to the fact that it was literally about banning someone.
Again, it wasn’t obscure at the time.
Nope. It’s because that’s how they (and most other people) used the term at the time.
“Lie” would mean that Mike knows it is false. You seem to love to call any interpretation of evidence that isn’t the same as yours “lies”, as though no other position—even an incorrect one—is even remotely possible to have.
Re: Re: Re:3
Every media organization since the beginning of the media?
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Re: Re: Re:4
They’re not deciding what OTHER people can say, dumbass. Twitter is.
Re: Re: Re:5
Twitter is deciding what other people can say outside of Twitter? 🤯
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Re: Re: Re:6
Not what I claimed. Also not a requirement for it to be “censorship”, btw.
Re: Re: Re:5
No they are not dumbass. They are deciding what people can say ON TWITTER YOU FUCKING MORON!!
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Re: Re: Re:6
Yes, and?
Re: Re: Re:7
Exactly. They are free to say whatever they want wherever they want, just not on Twitter.
Unless you are saying that Twitter has somehow become the sole means of communicating online and offline… is that what you are trying to say?
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Re: Re: Re:8
But that’s a useless thing to say. The NYT never decided what other people could say elsewhere, either.
So I’m back to “Yes, and?”
Re: Re: Re:9
So, how does that make Twitter the arbiter of truth?
Re: Re: Re:9
So if the moderator at the NYT comments section thinks you’re a troll and says you can’t comment there, you can still post on your blog, on twitter, on Mastodon instances, basically everywhere that’s not the NYT comments section.
Re: Re: Re:5
How so? Media organizations absolutely choose what (and who!) can say stuff in their magazines, newspapers, and TV shows. They choose who gets a voice, and even what they can say. They also get to choose how they frame the truth.
The internet is unique in that it opened up the ability for more people to speak, but that’s unrelated to the point that you made originally, which was to (somewhat ridiculously) claim that no organization was deemed the arbiter of truth. Of course they were. Any media organization decides what it thinks is truth and presents it. Consumers of that media’s output were free to disagree and to go elsewhere.
Same with Twitter. It’s no different. Twitter has every right to determine what it thinks is truth, and to allow that speech and disallow others. And if people don’t like it, they can go elsewhere. I mean, Elon’s Twitter does that too. As it should. So does Truth Social. And Gettr and Parler.
Re: Re: Re:5
…hallucinated nobody mentally competent, ever.
In reality, the only speech twitter has always and ever had any control over, is its own.
Re: Re: Re:3
Because some of the tweets and accounts that got flagged were disseminating actual falsehoods that were disenfranchising voters with misinformation. You’re saying that someone else being able to say “nope, that’s a lie” magically negates the confusion it caused voters who may have not gotten to vote because of it.
And it’s absurd that you’re arguing for a position but you don’t actually know what the tweets/accounts were saying that you’re defending.
A private organization doesn’t need to deem itself the arbiter of truth in order to retain the 1st Amendment right to not host your speech. It could decide it doesn’t like the way you style your hair. It’s under no obligation to serve you.
But to answer your question, though it’s a red herring, plenty of private organizations have historically deemed themselves arbiters of truth- newspapers being a significant example. And newspapers aren’t obligated to post your letter to the editor.
According to you, you get to refute them with more speech. Host your own social media platform. Spin up a Mastodon instance. Deem yourself arbiter of truth on your own platform. Welcome to the nature of free speech.
That’s action, not truth. You’re conflating too different things. Did Abrams’ claims cause an insurrection attempt or disenfranchise voters? But again, that’s still within the rights of the owners of the platform to decide. Truth Social definitely utilizes the same right to ban left wing voices on its platform.
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Re: Re:
In a society that has freedom of speech as a foundational value, large generic speech platforms should not be silencing opinions based on viewpoint. A large generic speech platform should act as a disinterested host for its users, not as an arbiter of what is true and what is acceptable.
Naturally woke ideologues welcome censorship as long as it’s silencing opinions they hate, because wokeness is an enemy of freedom.
Re: Re: Re: I like swords.
Welcome to Coneria!
Re: Re: Re:
Having foundational values isn’t a suicide pact. You don’t err on the side of a value so much that it destroys you.
Fraud and voter disenfranchisement aren’t a viewpoint based opinion. And that foundational value of free speech you mentioned includes private platforms retaining their rights to free speech. If you want a forum free from influence, you have the freedom to self-publish. You don’t have to free to force your speech on others, including “large generic speech platforms.”
You’re free to purchase Twitter for several billion and make it a free speech utopia full of racism and spam and child pornography- because that’s what shows up when you don’t regulate the contents of a “speech platform.”
Define “naturally woke.”
I’m awfully sorry you got banned for using the n-word. It’s definitely the fault of “naturally woke ideologues.”
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Re: Re: Re:2
Given that woke gender ideologues believe that children should be mutilated instead of learning to live comfortably in the only bodies they will ever have, and that schools should hide the mental illnesses of children from their parents so that children will never receive that treatment to learn to live in their bodies, woke ideologues are hardly the ones to talk about society making suicide pacts.
Which is to say, people have different opinions, one person’s suicide pact is another’s shining truth, and in a society that has freedom of speech as a foundational value, large generic sketch platforms should not be silencing opinions based on viewpoint.
Re: Re: Re:3
Yes or no, Hyman: Do you believe the government should have the legal right to compel any privately owned interactive web service into hosting legally protected speech that the owners/operators of said service don’t want to host?
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Re: Re: Re:4
Of course not. Woke ideologues want to construe encouragement as force so that they can argue in favor of the censorship they want while hiding behind the legalism of the 1st Amendment. Large generic speech platforms that silence opinions based on viewpoint should be encouraged, shamed, or bought, but not forced, to get them to behave properly.
Re: Re: Re:5
Every accusation, a confession. I mean, who is it that’s claiming that the “Twitter Files” absolutely prove government-coerced censorship on Twitter when they don’t?
When bitching about them and buying them out doesn’t work, what option do you think is left?
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Re: Re: Re:6
Beats me. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned the Twitter Files.
Mockery is always good, such as when the holders of Dahl’s rights were shamed into continuing to publish unbowdlerized versions of his books. The important thing is to never let up, so that the woke ideologues can never rest either. It’s not unlike the forced-birthers, who worked for decades to bring down Roe v. Wade.
Remember, because woke ideology is false and evil, there will be ongoing examples that discredit it, and eventually some will be severe enough to finally drive it out of society, the way recovered memory therapy was destroyed by the McMartin case.
Re: Re: Re:7
I don’t believe it’s false and evil, therefore it isn’t and you’re wrong!
See how easy it is to just say random shit online that has no real meaning
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Re: Re: Re:8
It should be that easy, as long as large generic speech platforms don’t censor opinions based on viewpoint.
Re: Re: Re:9 This quote gets so much use thanks to that dogwhistle...
Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views
Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?
Con: LOL no…no not those views
Me: So…deregulation?
Con: Haha no not those views either
Me: Which views, exactly?
Con: Oh, you know the ones
(All credit to Twitter user @ndrew_lawrence.)
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Re: Re: Re:10
People can only ever be the sex of their bodies.
Gender and sex are the same thing.
Black people commit crimes in numbers disproportionately large to their share of the population.
Illegal aliens should be deported.
Arrested people with appropriate criminal records should be kept in jail.
Crazed, drug-addled, stinking, possibly dangerous bums should be removed from the streets.
Convicted murderers (and other criminals too) should be swiftly executed.
Re: Re: Re:11
Undisputed. Evidence that this is censored?.
Arguable, depending on how you define them. Evidence that this is censored?
Evidence that this is censored and, if so, that it is true?
Evidence that this is censored?
Not in dispute. Evidence that this is censored?
No one disagrees with this; the disagreement is in tone and how to accomplish this. Evidence that this is censored?
Heavily debated. Heck, I have seen this on Twitter. Evidence that this is censored?
Seriously, this is at least the third time you’ve posted this list, and each time I point all this out to you. This is getting old.
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Re: Re: Re:12
I am not responsible for relieving your boredom.
It’s posting views like this that have led Masnick to send all of my signed-in posts to moderation, so there’s that. In any case, the post to which I was responding implies that the person claiming censorship is at a loss to describe the views that might get one censored by woke ideologues. When that is posted, I will respond with this list of views to demonstrate just what it is that woke ideologues hate, and that there is no shame in posting the truth.
There is always the censored post by The Babylon Bee awarding its Man of the Year award to Dr. Rachel Levine as a fine example.
Re: Re: Re:13
The article was never censored. It was always available at the Babylon Bee’s website.
Get back to me when Twitter has 100% control of all speech online and offline, then we can have a discussion about censorship.
But Twitter telling Babylon Bee to GTFO is no more censorship than the bouncer at a dance club who has to kick out the assholes like you because you keep trying to start a fight.
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Re: Re: Re:14
Censorship is the act of the censor, silencing opinions based on viewpoint on platforms the censor controls. The ability of the silenced to speak elsewhere is irrelevant.
Re: Re: Re:13
I never said you were. You are causing me boredom that I didn’t have before by not having any good or even new arguments.
You’ve posted views not listed. These were not the views you were moderated for per se; you went beyond that. Also, we’re talking about Twitter, not Techdirt.
To which I responded by asking you to demonstrate that these views are, in fact, moderated against. I also pointed out that some of them aren’t even disputed even by “woke ideologues”, so they most certainly aren’t views “censored by woke ideologues”.
I am well aware of the context, which is why I mainly asked for evidence and pointed out where there was no dispute, rather than disputing the views themselves.
Except the list doesn’t demonstrate that. Several of them aren’t even in dispute.
Moreover, this isn’t just that they hate it but that it is also being “censored”. Otherwise, the list is irrelevant. Again, where is your evidence that this is censored?
Which doesn’t fit even one of the views you mentioned. Even if it is an example of “woke ideologues” “censoring” based on viewpoint (which I dispute), it doesn’t validate your list. The issues with that post are deadnaming, calling a transwoman a man (which isn’t simply stating that gender and sex are the same even if it is a reasonable implication), and (arguably) sexism (regarding appearance vs sex). None of those are on your list.
I’m saying come up with a better list, or prove each of the elements on the list should be there.
Re: Re: Re:14
The essence of sea-lioning is wasting the time of the opponent by constantly demanding “evidence” which will be immediately dismissed when offered.
Another example, by the way, is Slack deplatforming LibsOfTikTok.
Re: Re: Re:15
The essence of sealioning is demanding evidence and “just asking questions” in bad faith. Around here, most of us will give credible evidence a look-see to see if it says what someone claims it says. If it doesn’t, we dismiss it. If the evidence isn’t credible, we dismiss it. If the evidence is credible and it says what it’s claimed to have said, we accept it—and we’ll put it into context if necessary.
Presenting good evidence isn’t that hard. That a lot of the trolls here can’t do it is their problem.
Re: Re: Re:15
Yes. However, I didn’t dismiss the evidence outright. I pointed out that it has nothing to do with your claims. Moreover, it requires that I feign ignorance of the topic at hand, which I don’t. I don’t profess to be an expert, but I’m not a newcomer either.
Also, it requires you to demonstrate intent, which you haven’t. Otherwise, any honest request for evidence would be sealioning. (And if you think that evidence shouldn’t be requested at all, all I can say is that that isn’t how it works here.)
Additionally, sealioning doesn’t really apply when you repeat the same thing over and over again and get the same request for evidence. The repetition on my part is because of your repetition, similar to how your repetition is because of others’ repetition. If you can do it, so can I.
Finally, I said prove it or change your list to better conform to your evidence. I even gave you a couple of things you could include instead based on your example. That’s not sealioning. I am trying to help you improve your argument!
Okay, unlike the Babylon Bee story, I am genuinely unfamiliar with this one. Heck, I’m unfamiliar with Slack as a platform outside of use within businesses as a messenger app. I can’t really comment on that one without more information.
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Re: Re: Re:16
Yes, by all means, sit back in feigned helplessness on your fainting couch. It’s so terribly unfortunate that there’s no way for you to acquire “more information”. If only there were some way to see whether anyone has written anything about this.
Re: Re: Re:17
You made the claim; you have the burden of proof here. If you aren’t going to even explain which of the listed items are allegedly demonstrated by the stated example, I’m under no obligation to make your arguments for you.
That aside, my point in mentioning that was to state that I couldn’t yet comment on it because I hadn’t yet become familiar with it yet. That could change. I could Google it (though it would be nice to know which claims, specifically, you allege that they made that led to their “censorship”). You could give an overview of the subject or link to a good source for it (which is what the normal thing to do would be rather than complain that I won’t research your claim for you). I never specified either way.
I was intending on researching it at some point. I just didn’t feel like doing so at that time (especially since I later had to do something), but I could easily respond to your other points with little time or effort, so I responded to those that I could at that time while noting that I couldn’t yet address that particular example. I also wanted to give you the opportunity to modify your list or give citations first so I don’t waste my time researching something that turns out unnecessary.
So, before I google it myself, I will ask one last time: Do you want to stick with this specific list of allegedly censored topics and this specific example? And would you like to point out a specific source or specify which claims in the list you believe were censored in this example?
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Re: Re: Re:18
Here’s another one:
https://thedcline.org/2023/03/16/dc-recently-banned-discrimination-against-homeless-people-enforcing-that-brings-a-lot-of-challenges/
It’s now literally against the law in Washington D.C. to kick out crazed, stinking, drug-addled, possibly dangerous bums from your place of business. It’s now literally against the law for a landlord to check tenants for sealed eviction records.
And here is what happens when you let crazed, stinking, drug-addled, possibly dangerous bums set up camp on the streets of your city:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/19/us/phoenix-businesses-homelessness.html
And it’s the fault of idiotic liberals (pre-wokeness, but of the same philosophy):
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-southern-california-wins-historic-victory-homeless-rights-case
Re: Re: Re:19
Projection, thy name is Hyman
Re: Re: Re:19
Again, how is that censorship? Particularly on social media platforms, which is the topic of discussion. (It also has nothing to do with any of the topics on your list.)
Yeah, that’s also irrelevant.
Okay, maybe I didn’t make myself clear.
This is about your claims that certain viewpoints are being censored against on online platforms. This is not about the validity of your political beliefs. None of this is relevant to the claims at issue.
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Re: Re: Re:16
Here are a few examples. Please take the time to dismiss each one as singular or irrelevant so that you can go on believing that woke ideologues don’t try to silence and cancel and censor anyone who dares dissent against their lies. Ask for a few more examples to keep me busy, and don’t worry, you can dismiss those too.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/us/steven-pinker-harvard.html
https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/21/us/ice-judge-new-york-city/index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jul/06/maya-forstater-was-discriminated-against-over-gender-critical-beliefs-tribunal-rules
Re: Re: Re:17
I wouldn’t do that if you gave examples that actually supported your claims. Also, for the purposes of this subject, except where you are discussing moderation by a platform or something like that, I’m forgoing objecting based on failure to demonstrate a trend rather than an isolated instance.
I believe I’ve already told you this, but I don’t believe that to be the case. Woke ideologues absolutely do try to silence, cancel, and/or censor any dissent (perceived or actual). That’s not the issue here.
The problems here are mainly twofold:
Again, pick a better list of topics or better examples, and there would be no problem here.
Okay, and? That wasn’t on your list of censored topics. The closest one is about the statistic of black crime, but the issue people were having with that Tweet wasn’t the inclusion of that statistic but the proposed explanation for it. I can agree that this is woke ideologues attempting to silence dissent (based on what I can read), but it doesn’t support your list.
I can’t even say this has anything to do with woke ideology. This seems more like an issue you have with the law being enforced against someone who appears to have been attempting to extort and harass a tenant. Had the landlord just called ICE instead of repeatedly threatening to do so, there likely would not have been a problem.
It also has nothing to do with social media, which was the subject at issue. Otherwise, I would’ve just let it slide.
First, despite what the first paragraph says, reading further, it would appear that it was based on a heck of a lot more than that. She also compared transgender people to Rachel Dolezal, which is a lot worse, and there were a number of other tweets that were objected to. It seems plausible that this was about putting that tweet into the context of everything else she said, and the article simply chose to put more emphasis on that one tweet to make more people likely to read the article. Nothing about the underlying facts suggests it was the primary or sole reason for the discrimination.
Second, related to the first point, this kinda supports the thing you’re arguing against: that the beliefs being discriminated against are bigotry. Again, considering the many tweets mentioned rather than just the one, it would appear that she has transphobic beliefs. This is more or less what the other person was hinting at. Sure, if it was just the one tweet, it may not be transphobic, but it wasn’t just the one tweet.
Third, it has nothing to do with censoring on online platforms.
Really, this is the one that comes closest to supporting something on your list, but here, that tweet alone wasn’t the reason for the objection but rather it combined with everything else to infer something objectionable. By contrast, people calling those who play Hogwarts Legacy “transphobic” do so based solely on that criteria.
Are there any examples where people were discriminated against based solely on ideas on your list? Because that’s what I’m asking for in terms of examples. Doing that would greatly improve your argument.
Re: Re: Re:15
Slack made a business decision, nothing more.
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Re: Re: Re:16
Censorship is the act of the censor, silencing opinions based on viewpoint on platforms the censor controls. In addition to my usual list of things that are irrelevant as to whether an action is censorship, the motive of the censor is also irrelevant.
Re: Re: Re:17
So are dems are censoring repubs by not allowing them to speak at their conventions?
Re: Re: Re:18
A party’s political convention is obviously not a generic speech platform. It is a platform dedicated to supporting one particular point of view and gaining public support for that view. Censoring the speakers at such forums is routine. So while this is censorship, it is censorship that is expected by everyone. The complaints about censorship that usually arise at such forums come from people who are members of the party but hold opinions outside of the mainstream the convention organizers seek to present.
Re: Re: Re:9
What even is a “large generic speech platform”, as opposed to say a large non-generic speech platform? Is there a measure of generic-ness below with viewpoint censorship becomes ok?
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Re: Re: Re:10
Yes. A generic speech platform supports the discussion of all topics (but may contain subgroups which are themselves not generic).
A platform for religiously observant Jews might choose to exclude Messianic Jews and any discussion about the divinity of Jesus. A generic platform should not.
Re: Re: Re:11
What makes a “speech platform” “generic”, such that it should lose its right to moderate as it sees fit?
Re: Re: Re:12
There’s only one instance I can think of, and that’s if it’s an ISP.
The underlying infrastructure IS the “generic speech platform”, though the people who grant access or “real estate” (read: server space, domains, all that nice stuff) might want to watch who they want to associate with.
Or, there is onlly one generic speech platform, and it’s called THE INTERNET.
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Re: Re: Re:13
Generic speech platforms are places where people believe they can come to speak on any topic and with any viewpoint, usually with the encouragement of the platforms themselves, who want to be seen that way. Facebook does not advertise itself as a place where it is forbidden to be against mutilating children. Twitter does not advertise itself as a place where it is forbidden to be against quotas for Chinese and Indian students.
Re: Re: Re:14
Those platforms still have an absolute legal, moral, and ethical right to moderate themselves as they see fit. Yes or no: Do you think they should legally lose that right if they advertise themselves as “generic speech platforms”?
Re: Re: Re:14
I don’t think there exists even one platform that encourages people to speak on any topic.
And what some people believe is just plain stupid since they couldn’t be bothered to actually read the TOS on what’s acceptable. The really stupid ones double down on their entitlement while trying to walk all over other peoples rights.
Re: Re: Re:14
And Facebook isn’t advertising itself as a Republican disinfo vector, yet Zuck accepted money to BE a Republican disinfo vector.
And Twitter may not always be a good place to host political speech, they’ve bent over backwards to cater to ALL politicians.
And those fine places you’ve been kicked out of? Same thing.
I think Mike’s been too kind on you, Nazi filth. You certainly have the traits of a serial abuser.
Re: Re: Re:14
Why should it matter what the people believe? If we’re talking about taking rights away from them, it should be solely through volitional conduct or their own beliefs, not the subjective beliefs of others.
Re: Re: Re:15
Their beliefs drive their actions and reactions. If they believe they are on a large generic speech platform and then, to their surprise, they are silenced because of their viewpoint, they will have rather different feelings than, say, if they are in a public library and are chastised for speaking too loudly.
Re: Re: Re:16
More likely they will shout loudly about being censored when they are thrown out of the library for trying to stop people reading books that have content they disagree with.
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Re: Re: Re:12
Nothing. As usual, woke ideologues construe criticism as force so that they can hide behind the legalism of the 1st Amendment while censoring speech they hate.
Private platforms have the right to censor opinions based on viewpoint. When they do, they should be criticized, shamed, or bought, but not forced, to change their behavior.
Re: Re: Re:13
You keep saying that those platforms should avoid “censorship based on viewpoint” or however you want to phrase that. Your use of “should” in such a context heavily implies an obligation—a duty, even!—to act in that way. If non-violent/non-coercive means to enforce that obligation don’t work against a given “generic speech platform” (whatever the fuck that actually means), what the hell else is left besides violent/coercive means?
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Re: Re: Re:14
You really are an idiot, aren’t you?
Adults, unlike three-year-olds or woke ideologues, understand that they cannot always get their way, because there are other people who want the opposite of what they do. If large generic speech platforms fail in their moral duty to uphold free speech for their users, and cannot be convinced, shamed, or bought into changing their behavior, then society will be stuck with a harmful, antisocial institution. People can try devising alternative places to speak, or just accept that, for now, they will be silenced. They should persist in trying to get the platforms to change. As with forced-birthers, the long game is never over.
Re: Re: Re:15
No, it won’t. Plenty of conservative lawmakers will keep trying to turn their opinions and beliefs into law. (They’re the same kind of people who think “transgenderism” must be “eradicated”.) And sooner or later, they’ll have the power to do exactly that for Twitter. And the Supreme Court will let them do it. And your wish will come true, though it will come with the cost of removing the autonomy of all platforms to moderate as they please.
You want someone other than a platform’s owners to decide how that platform moderates speech. Sooner or later, that view may be enshrined into law—and you will have helped that happen. Even if you don’t agree with the means, you clearly agree with the ends.
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Re: Re: Re:16
As usual, you argue with illusory versions of me who say what you want them to say.
I do not want any private platforms to be coerced into doing anything they don’t want to do. I want those platforms, in collaboration with their users, to come to the correct conclusions about what behavior is appropriate for the society in which they’re embedded, and to act accordingly. In my opinion, this means not censoring opinions based on viewpoint, and I will advocate for that.
It is woke ideologues who do things like preventing invited federal judges from speaking at law school events. Woke ideologues want to spread their poison, and want to silence anyone who objects to them and speaks out against them. As do their enemies, of course. Freedom of speech has very few supporters who are not fair-weather friends, with the site owner himself being a good example of that.
Re: Re: Re:17
You’ve been whining about “generic speech platforms” for months because some of those platforms ban bigoted speech and define “bigoted speech” for themselves. All that tells me is this: You want those platforms to allow all speech instead of merely most speech—and you want no pushback for posting speech it would otherwise deem “bigoted”.
You talk about the society in which those platforms are embedded. Well, in USAmerican society, there’s plenty of Islamophobia and anti-Semitism to go around. Do you think Twitter has an obligation to host anti-Muslim and anti-Jew speech because that speech is widespread in “the society in which [Twitter is] embedded”?
You have no right to speak on private property if the owner doesn’t want you to speak on their property. Come down off that cross you put yourself on, use the wood to build a bridge over that river of tears you’ve been crying, and get the fuck over it.
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Re: Re: Re:18
As usual, you argue with illusory versions of me who say whatever you want them to say. Normal people would not find that very satisfying, but then again, you’re not very bright, so maybe it does it for you.
All speech platforms, including large generic ones, should moderate for spam, topicality, and decorum. Large generic speech platforms should not censor opinions based on viewpoint. As long as speech on those platforms falls within the moderation guidelines, there should be as much pushback as people opposed to certain viewpoints would like to provide, whether or not the proponents of those viewpoints mind.
Large generic speech platforms have a moral obligation, as members of a society that holds freedom of speech to be a foundational value, to distinguish between speech critical of religions or other such categories, and literal hate speech intended to foment violence or baseless hatred. It should go without saying that such distinction is very difficult. (As an old example, read James Baldwin’s essay about Jews.) But since there may be good reasons to criticize a religion or other group as a whole, screeching antisemitism or islamophobia or racism merely because you don’t like an opinion and want it silenced should not lead the platform to silence that opinion. “The cure for bad speech is more speech” is what liberals used to say before they were colonized by woke ideologues.
There is no right to speak freely on private property. But owners of large generic speech platforms should grant that ability to their users anyway, because freedom of speech is a foundational value of the society in which they are embedded.
The reason you have so much willful failure to understand this is that you’re on the side of the child mutilators, and you realize that the cultural tide is flowing against them. You are desperate to silence the people who oppose woke gender ideology, but you will not succeed.
Re: Re: Re:19
How do you measure “large”? At what point does a platform become “large” enough to trigger this obligation? What happens if/when that platform stops being “large” enough to trigger that obligation? Under such an obligation, how can a platform ban bigoted speech when bigoted speech is expressing an opinion-based viewpoint about the targets of that speech?
(If you’re gonna keep piling on the bullshit, I have every right to measure how much bullshit you’re intent on shoveling.)
Yeah, and that’s my whole point: Bigoted speech can, and often does, look like an opinion-based viewpoint. People who say “atheists are unfit to serve in public office” are expressing a viewpoint, but they’re also serving up bigotry against atheists by implying that atheists are intrinsically untrustworthy/immoral and hence unworthy of being a lawmaker. Your whole schtick has been about wanting Twitter not to engage in “viewpoint-based discrimination”. But when even you can’t draw a clear line between bigoted speech and viewpoints in a way that separates speech cleanly between those two categories, how do you expect a service like Twitter to do the same?
Twitter might have some automated tools to help moderate the service, but those tools (and the rest of the site’s moderation) is still designed and run by humanity. We’re all flawed here, son. You’re asking for perfection—for flawlessness—from people and people-designed tools that can barely hit adequacy on a regular basis.
And that’s more about what they do than who they are. For example: I don’t rip on the Catholic Church because it’s a group of Christians. I do it because the Catholic Church is a multinational criminal enterprise that has covered up child abuse for decades and done little at an institutional level to prevent future abuse from happening.
Would you prefer a platform to promote that kind of speech?
I’m all for criticizing the actions of a given group of people—again, look at how I rip on the Catholic Church—but there’s a difference between saying “the Catholic Church covers up child rape” and “every church-going Catholic is a rapist-in-waiting”. A platform worth a good god’s damn would accept the first but not the second, no matter how committed they are to being a “free speech platform”, because the second remark is blatant anti-Catholic/anti-Christian bigotry (and probably a bit of defamation to boot).
Yeah, funny thing about that: People stopped believing in that when Donald Trump was able to lie without any genuine consequence and still serve a full term as the President of the United States. “More speech” on its own isn’t going to solve the problem of people believing in “bad speech” when the people who believe that speech are so deep in their Emotional Support Realities that they think a call for eradicating “transgenderism” by an anti-queer conservative at a conservative political convention is referring to some kind of ideology and not an entire group of people.
For what reason? (he asks, knowing there’s a shitty justification coming…)
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, and this time I’m going to header-tag this shit so it might pierce your Emotional Support Reality’s AT Field and reach your fucking brain:
Free speech is not free reach. No platform owes you a bullhorn or an audience at its own expense. You have no right to say any- and everything you want on someone else’s private property. And “foundational values” are meaningless when they threaten to take away someone else’s rights—including the right to decide what speech is acceptable on their property.
I don’t know what part of that you fail to understand. Is it the “not free reach” part or the “take away someone else’s rights” part?
You haven’t shown me any evidence of a significant number of under-18 children receiving sex reassignment surgery without prior consultation, evaluation, and parental consent. Remember that transgender children are less than 1% of all children in the U.S., and the number of children who do receive any gender-reaffirming surgery is even smaller. Or are you going to keep listening to Jesse “I’m probably an accessory to numerous HIPAA violations” Singal tell bullshit stories about trans people?
Christ, it’s so painfully obvious that you don’t listen to trans people. But hey, your willingness to make that clear every time you post is appreciated.
Yes, yes, there’s a shitload of anti-trans bills and anti-trans hatred floating around, we get it. Christ, dude, I just referenced the “eradicate transgender pe—I mean, ‘transgenderism’ ” bullshit; I’m not intellectually disabled like you think I am.
If I’m desperate to silence anyone, it’s the kind of people who are one step away from calling for transgender people to be rounded up and segregated from the rest of society until the “transgender question” can be solved.
People like those who applauded Michael Knowles when he all but said that. People who are equally as fervent about their anti-trans hate as he is.
Y’know…people like you.
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Re: Re: Re:20
Large generic speech platforms are those that see themselves as open to as many users as will have them, and want to host discussions on every topic that their users care about. The obligation for large generic speech platforms to honor the foundational values of their society is a moral one, not a legal one, so no strict definition for largeness is necessary. The platform owners should introspect and realize for themselves, perhaps with help from their users, when they have become large and generic enough to warrant giving special consideration to the free speech of their users.
No matter how a site decides to moderate or censor, the line between what is acceptable and not acceptable is going to be blurry and fractal. It isn’t any easier to ban, automatically or not, anti-woke opinions than anti-viewpoint opinions, especially since people will be attempting to adversarially game the banning guidelines. Look at how “Let’s go Brandon” became a thing, for example. Deciding not to ban opinions based on viewpoint doesn’t make the moderation job easier or harder, it just sets the dividing line at a different point on the spectrum of speech.
No large generic speech platform is legally obligated to provide “free reach” to its users, in exactly the same way that no wealthy person is legally obligated to donate charity to the poor. But as part of societies that have expectations for behavior that go beyond strict legal requirements, large generic speech platforms that censor should receive the same sort of criticism from the public as do rich skinflints. You willfully fail to understand this because you want the censorship that the large generic platforms once provided for you.
Your ilk have literally made talk therapy for people who are unhappy with whom they are attracted to illegal, as long as that attraction is for people of their own sex. (Presumably woke ideologues are still, for a while longer, OK with talk therapy for minor-attracted persons.) The only people you want to listen to are the ones who believe the same things you do. Everyone else is to be silenced.
Re: Re: Re:21
That just answers what a “generic speech platform” is. It doesn’t have any objective measure of what “large” means. Again: How is “large” measured in this context, such that there is a clear and objective (enough) dividing line between “large” and “not large”?
If you’re going to claim that a “large” platform has obligations that smaller platforms don’t, you need to define how you measure “large” in this context. Otherwise you’re just being (more of) an obtuse asshole.
That’s why decisions on how a site moderates itself should be left in the hands of itself: No “one size fits all” option for content moderation will ever exist and trying to push one on a platform by way of whining about “moral obligations” and “free speech” isn’t gonna make one magically exist.
You’re dodging a question you didn’t actually answer: How is a service supposed to avoid moderating “opinion-based viewpoints” (as you say it is morally obligated to do) while also moderating bigoted speech when even you can’t draw a clear line between bigoted speech and viewpoints in a way that separates speech cleanly between those two categories?
Criticism is fine. It’s when that criticism turns into damn near demands for those platforms to host all legally protected speech—demands that are somehow never aimed at the right-wing shitpits but always aimed at platforms believed to be ostensibly left-leaning—that you drive your sorry ass into Crazytown for an extended vacation.
You seem to forget that for all its size and its space in our modern lives, Twitter is not a public utility. It is a privately owned open-to-the-public service. Using that service is a privilege, not a right. Losing your spot on that service means losing that privilege, not being denied your civil rights.
Unless you want to go on record as saying that meatspace businesses like grocery stores have the exact same moral obligation that you claim Twitter has if a grocery store allows people to put up flyers and whatnot on a community bulletin board inside the store, you’re gonna want to abandon that “moral obligation to host all speech” argument.
“Conversion ‘therapy’ ” is a barbaric practice that has been condemned by virtually every major scientific body. It is psychological torture at best, physical torture at the absolute worst. Many supporters of the practice see the suicide of a “patient” as a success story because the goal of that “therapy” is to decrease the number of gay/queer people in the world. And you’re trying to support that shit.
If an ostensibly gay person has issues with their sexuality to the point where they think they have to change who they are, they’re dealing with internalized homophobia. That deserves actual therapy to help that person work through that internalized shame and accept themselves for who they are. They don’t need to have their sense of self (if not their body) broken down and destroyed by people who are, given the odds, incredibly likely to think of that gay person’s mid-“treatment” suicide as a good thing.
The fact that you refer to pedophiles with that phrase is kind of a big tell. I’ll let everyone else decide how you’re telling on yourself, but I’ll give you a hint: It’s one of two options and neither one makes you look even remotely good.
Yeah, see, here’s the thing: If you want me to listen to rank-ass queerphobia that was already stale as fuck a decade ago, I don’t need to hear it and I’d rather you keep that shit limited to spaces inhabited by yourself and your anti-queer allies.
You claim that I only want to listen to people “who believe the same things [I] do”, but that’s limited to a small and specific subset of topics—one of which is queer issues in general. As someone who identifies as queer, I take great offense to seeing other queer people attacked only for who they are. That includes transgender people, most of whom are viciously attacked in the press (and sometimes in the streets) for who they are and for things the vast majority of trans people aren’t even trying to do. (For fuck’s sake, Hyman, how many transgender high school athletes do you think West Virginia’s law actually targeted?)
Trans people don’t want to take over the world and trans everyone’s genders and force shitheads like you to use neopronouns. They want to live as their authentic selves like every cisgender person gets to do—and they want to do that without being ostracized, demonized, or even murdered for it. People like you don’t give a fuck about any of that because you see their very existence as an attempt to indoctrinate everyone with whom trans people socialize into the ideology of “transgenderism”. And hey, wouldn’t you know it, some douchebag called for the “eradication” of “transgenderism” a few days ago! “Funny” how that works, huh~.
Yes, I want you to shut the fuck up and leave this site for good. No, that doesn’t mean I want you to lose your right to speak. No matter how reprehensible, how vile, how downright morally heinous I think your speech is, you should absolutely have the right to keep speaking it. But I wish you’d take the “hints” everyone has been shoving in your face these past few months and fuck off forever to somewhere that likes your anti-trans speech.
Nobody here wants to silence you. But they sure as fuck want you to leave. And that, you gruesome son of a bitch, is far, far, far, far, far more morally defensible than you wanting to keep “conversion ‘therapy’ ” legal or thinking trans people need to be segregated from the rest of society until the “trans question” can be “solved”. Go fuck yourself, you Rowling wannabe.
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Re: Re: Re:22
Once again, a man calling himself a woman has beaten real women in a sporting event:
https://reduxx.info/italy-trans-identified-male-takes-home-eighth-womens-running-championship/
Whether or not you will ever come to terms with it, your gaslighting is not working.
And yes, of course, stores that choose to host public bulletin boards have a moral obligation not to censor users of those boards based on viewpoint. This is more usually seen in colleges, where woke ideologues try to tear down bulletins for speaking events sponsored by conservative student groups.
As for how to moderate, the answer is, the same way it’s done now. Sites should have guidelines describing what is acceptable and what is not, and then moderators have to read the messages and decide on which side of the line they fall. There’s no magic bullet here.
Finally, the point of free speech is to allow dissent to challenge prevailing ideas. Sending dissenters off to “free speech zones” where no one can hear them (as many colleges have tried to do) vitiates that purpose. Dissent is supposed to make you uncomfortable. You pointed at the 1965 Alabama marches in a recent post; do you think that the marchers should have walked only in places where white people couldn’t see them?
Re: Re: Re:21
No, but you are being asked to not continually attack people for what they are. Note, that is not agree with or support them in their choice, but just stop continually telling them how wrong they are etc. If you can’t do that, you are actively causing other people harm.
Re: Re: Re:19
Do you not understand how all of the things you whine about being unfairly “censored” by platforms tend to be… moderating for “decorum.” Because when people like you post stuff that attacks the very identity of individuals who are at risk, or when you (as you’ve done repeatedly) post statistics completely out of context in a manner that leads to false beliefs about an entire class of people, many people think that allowing that sort of incendiary speech leads to less decorum, and could in turn lead to real world violence.
You seem unable to comprehend that this is why sits moderate. You only wish them to moderate for decorum on topics YOU support. That’s the issue.
You’re not just full of shit, you’re a hypocrite as well.
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Re: Re: Re:20
Moderation for decorum is agnostic about the viewpoint of an opinion. Your claims that opinions that “attack the identity of people at risk” or “lack context” should be silenced for decorum are simply your way of trying to dodge the cognitive dissonance of wanting to be seen as an advocate for free speech while also wanting to censor dissent against woke ideology.
One of the things that woke ideologues can never seem to grasp is that even groups that have faced horrible injustice and persecution can still hold beliefs that are completely wrong, and people should be allowed to criticize those beliefs regardless of how the believers feel about it. This is the case for woke gender ideology. No matter how badly trans people have been treated, it remains true that people can only ever be the sex of their body. Not allowing this to be said will lead those who might have been able to get treatment to learn to live comfortably in the only body they will ever have to embark on a voyage of misery and mutilation and intrusion into spaces where their bodies make them unwelcome.
Re: Re: Re:21
They’re not about the viewpoint. They’re about whether or not the content is used to harass and abuse people. As I’ve told you. You’ve already admitted that you LIKE abusing and harassing people. And therefore you ignore the fact that your statements do so, and you try to pretend that when YOU abuse and harass people it’s just “stating facts.”
The problem is you’re not. You’re stating facts in a way that is designed to increase real world risk for people who are already marginalized and at risk.
I think it’s quite reasonable for any website to say “no, we will not allow that kind of abuse and harassment.”
Hyman: do not put words in my mouth. I did not say they “should be silenced.” I said that sites get to make those decisions, and many decide that, in the interest of decorum, they will not choose to allow such abuse and harassment. That’s different than saying they should be silenced. Personally, I often think there are better approaches. But I’m explaining to you why your claims are false. They are not engaged in “viewpoint censorship.”
They just want to stop assholes and idiots from harassing and abusing others on their site.
There’s no cognitive dissonance. I understand free speech and you don’t. I understand that a private website has the right to choose not to host speech that it disagrees with, even if I allow that speech here.
I’m just explaining to you how your stance is bullshit. You claim that you think websites SHOULD moderate for decorum. I’m telling you that’s what they’re doing which you’re mad about. If you ever bothered to learn literally ANYTHING about how these trust & safety operations work, you’d learn that they’re not filled with “woke ideologues” like you falsely claim. They’re filled with every day people with a wide variety of opinions and stances… and they just want you to stop being a fucking asshole.
And yet, you can’t stop.
And that’s why sometimes they ban you. Because you refuse to learn how not to break the rules they set for you. You INSIST on being an asshole and ruining decorum. It’s not because you’re enlightened and fighting back against woke ideologues. It’s because you’re a very, very ignorant asshole who is shitting on the rug, even though they asked you kindly not to do that.
Not responding to the rest of your nonsense rant, because it’s stupid and irrelevant and wildly disconnected from reality.
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Re: Re: Re:22
Trabswomen are men. Men should not be allowed to force their way into women’s spaces. Public schools should not teach as truth that people can ever be other than the sex of their bodies.
Do you have a way of stating these things that you would not consider to be abuse and harassment? If you don’t, then you are demanding that people who want to voice dissent against woke gender ideology should never be allowed to do that.
In one sentence, you say that people should not be silenced and that is fine for websites to silence them. You claim to “understand free speech” while advocating for people to not be allowed by their platforms to speak freely.
Censorship is the act of the censor, silencing opinions based on viewpoint on platforms the censor controls. The ability of the silenced to speak elsewhere is irrelevant. The legality and constitutionality of the silencing is irrelevant. The right of the platform to silence is irrelevant. That you claim otherwise is you wanting to have it both ways – to wear the mantle of free speech while seeking to silence viewpoints you hate.
Re: Re: Re:23
Twitter giving an asshole like you the ban-hammer is not silencing you. It’s telling you to GTFO and go spew that shit somewhere else.
And I am 100% sure you’d be 100% supportive of any site that bans all accounts that are LGBTQ+.
Re: Re: Re:24
Censorship is the act of the censor, silencing opinions based on viewpoint on platforms the censor controls. The ability of the silenced to speak elsewhere is irrelevant.
The only thing you can be sure of is that you are wrong. I oppose banning any accounts except for spammers. For anyone else, only individual messages should be moderated as necessary.
Re: Re: Re:21
As has been said, no one actually disputes that. This is offensive in that implies that trans people feel otherwise even though they don’t. In other words, despite it being pointed out to you that this is a strawman multiple times, you continue to push this strawman. That is bigoted speech as you are making claims about a demographic that aren’t actually true or justified, specifically about what they believe. It is also good evidence that you are lying by continuing to push this claim even though you know (or deliberately ignore) that no one believes what you are claiming here.
I ask you once again, for your own sake: change your argument to better fit the actual claims of the people you are going after.
No, it won’t, and you have offered no evidence that it would.
Once again: Trans people are well aware that current medical technology is not able to modify their sex to completely match their gender identity. Moreover, no one says that therapy for trans people should not include making them reasonably comfortable with that, regardless of how or if they choose to transition, nor is there evidence that it doesn’t. That you believe that they think otherwise says a lot about you, and none of it particularly good.
See, you keep saying that their bodies make them unwelcome, but you still haven’t substantiated your assertion that they are actually unwelcome. I keep asking you to, but you complain about having to prove your claims. I’m sorry, but you are expected to provide evidence for your claims, as is everyone else here for theirs. If you are unable or unwilling to do so, we have no reason to accept your claim; that’s a “you” problem.
While not incorrect in general, you point to transgender people as an example, yet you never point to an example of a single belief that is actually held by transgender people that is completely wrong. At best, you point to beliefs they hold that you subjectively believe to be wrong, but more often, you point to beliefs that they don’t actually have. You also never point to any evidence of their falsehood other than your personal incredulity.
Once again: Please point to a belief actually held by trans people that is actually, objectively false. Otherwise, I advise that you drop this particular claim and instead go with something like “subjective” or “disputed”, which would be a lot easier to defend than “delusional”, “lies”, or “completely wrong”.
Re: Re: Re:22
All of Scotland was outraged that a male rapist claiming to be a woman was going to be incarcerated in a women’s prison.
Mid Vermont Christian School forfeited a game rather than play against a team with a trans player (and is being punished for it):
https://apnews.com/article/transgender-athlete-basketball-game-forfeit-vermont-cb1b11f15de6c42780cd0d0987c9f37b
So, yes, men claiming to be women are literally unwelcome in women’s spaces. Not to all people, but to plenty of them.
The belief that there is thing called gender identity that is different than the sex of one’s body is false. It is also evil, since among other things, it denigrates the position that feminism has held for scores of years, that there is no right way to be a man or a woman, and that it is wrong to demand conformance to social gender stereotypes in order to be considered a “real man” or a “real woman”. Instead, woke gender ideologues are now in the forefront of grooming children to believe that they are not the sex of their bodies, and to redefine the words “man”, “woman”, “male”, “female”, “boy”, and “girl” so that they have no meaning other than being a vacuous term with which someone can label themselves. This is why TERFs are the heroes of anti-wokeness; they are determined not to let the hard-won gains they have made be destroyed on the altar of a delusion.
Re: Re: Re:23
Newspaper hype trying to swing a decision that had to be made. Also that was an individual whose actual actions made their presence in a woman only space unwelcome, yet you use that to claims all trans women are not welcome in woman only spaces.
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Re: Re: Re:24
Naturally, woke ideologues will dismiss every example as singular or unimportant. But we are in a culture war, not a culture debate, and it is not the woke ideologues who need to be swayed by the evidence, just the general public. In fact, the obvious gaslighting practiced by woke ideologues only helps their opposition.
Re: Re: Re:25
You have just defined yourself as an intolerant person who thinks their ideology is the only correct ideology, and that makes you no better than a member of the Taliban Taliban.
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Re: Re: Re:26
What a remarkably foolish thing to say! Obviously, people who believe something believe that it’s the only correct thing, because if they didn’t, they would believe the other thing, or the other thing as well.
Living in a pluralistic society does not mean affirming that other people’s beliefs are correct. It means only allowing other people to believe as they choose, even if they’re wrong, and to live their lives according to their beliefs, as long as those practices don’t trample over the beliefs and practices of others.
Transwomen are men, but if adult men choose to comport themselves in ways that are stereotypically female, or even have themselves altered medically and surgically to superficially resemble women, that’s fine, and they should be left alone to do so. But they should not be allowed to force their way into women’s single-sex spaces, nor to have their beliefs about gender taught as true in public schools, because that is imposing their beliefs on people who do not accept them.
Re: Re: Re:27
You have not demonstrated that this tramples on the beliefs or practices of other people any more than the sit-in protests during the Civil Rights Movement.
You have not demonstrated that this is happening.
Re: Re: Re:17
Given how subjective and opinionated this is, I don’t think the word “correct” is proper here.
Re: Re: Re:10
“generic speech program” = “Reddit but they won’t ban me”
Re: Re: Re:5
What about the rights of the large generic speech platforms, do they no longer have them?
Doesn’t Truth Social have a fundamental right to censor left leaning speech that it doesn’t want to publish on its platform?
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Re: Re: Re:6
Ali private platforms have the right to censor as they wish. But having the right to do something does not make doing that thing right. In a society that holds freedom of speech as a foundational value, large generic speech platforms that censor should be encouraged, shamed, or bought not to do that, because doing that is wrong, even though it’s legal and constitutional.
Re: Re: Re:7
okay but why don’t you say the same thing about Truth Social
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Re: Re: Re:8
If Truth Social would aim to be a generic speech platform, then I would say the same thing about them. But Truth Social, Gab, Parler, Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo, and so forth all aim to be biased platforms that only welcome one-sided viewpoints. And people know it – no one goes to these platforms expecting that they can post a contrary viewpoint without being censored. That is not true, or should not be true, for the large generic speech platforms.
Re: Re: Re:9
This is hands down the most obvious Post-hoc-explanation I have heard in quite some time. Truth obviously advertises itself as impartial, they literally call themselves „ America’s “Big Tent” social media platform that encourages an open, free, and honest global conversation without discriminating on the basis of political ideology.“ How much more generic should they be???
Your entire argument obviously started from the conclusion that platforms should discriminate only against left-wing-users, and then went backwards toward some insane „generic vs specific“-divide that has never, and will never, work.
Re: Re: Re:10
That is as misleading as it would be if PornHub advertised itself as child friendly.
Re: Re: Re:10
Truth Social is routinely mocked, here and elsewhere, for very openly not living up to its claims. Which is the correct response to a generic speech platform that censors, so I fail to see your point. It’s like criticizing Fox News for not being fair and balanced. Sure, of course they’re not, but everyone knows they’re lying when they claim to be that.
Re: Re: Re:7
From government interference, you missed that part. You can of course give examples of where the Founding Fathers said what you implied they said, that freedom of speech always trump freedom of association and private property rights.
It’s funny how your version of “freedom of speech” means trampling other peoples rights.
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Re: Re: Re:8
Freedom of speech is the foundational value. It was not created by the founders, it was enshrined by the founders in the Bill of Rights, which was aimed at limiting the powers of government, but that statement of limitation is far from the entirety of free speech.
My version of free speech involves no trampling of anyone’s rights. Private platforms may censor as they wish. But the public gets to weigh in on that censorship, to encourage, shame, or buy those platforms in order to get them to voluntarily change their behavior.
Re: Re: Re:9
So you agree that the current landscape is working. Good to know.
Re: Re: Re:10 Getting what you ask for vs getting what you want
The public by and large don’t want to hang out on jackass/bigot-friendly platforms.
Online platforms craft moderation practices and rules to best cater to the majority of people.
Result: Most online platforms will be anti-jackass/bigot not because of any ideological reason but because that’s the best stance to take to encourage a thriving user base and resulting profits.
It does indeed seem like they’re getting exactly what they’re asking for already, it’s just not what they want.
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Re: Re: Re:10
Yes, in fact it is working, including the fact that Musk bought Twitter, that the rights holders of Dahl agreed to publish unbowdlerized versions of his books, and that the Stanford law school administration was forced to apologize for how they allowed a federal judge to be treated.
Attempts at censorship are being brought low by criticism rather than by force, just as they should be.
Re: Re: Re:11
…and a huge bunch the advertisers ran away because they don’t want to be associated with the kinds of speech Musk thinks should be unfettered. Like you said, system working.
Because apparently the judge’s free speech is more “equal” than the students free speech.
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Re: Re: Re:12
If you look at liberal political websites, you can see them decrying the fact that companies and contributors who shunned Republican representatives in the immediate aftermath of their refusal to certify the presidential election have largely returned. Twitter advertisers will do the same. It’s all just the usual interplay between fear and greed.
Naturally, woke ideologues always want to silence dissent, but it is never free speech to prevent speech from being heard.
Re: Re: Re:13
And yet, you’re supportive of the kind of people who go around banning books from school and public libraries. Curious. 🤔
Re: Re: Re:14
Just as you understand that large generic speech platforms have the right to censor opinions based on viewpoint, you need to understand that the government has the right to speak for itself, including setting the curriculum for public schools.
Just as public schools should not teach creationism as the truth because it is a lie, public schools should not teach woke gender ideology or critical race theory as the truth because they too are lies.
I do not support banning books from libraries, and I despise the kind of people who would do so, provided that the ban on banning is comprehensive, so that no books are banned or rejected because of the viewpoints they espouse. Time to Think needs to be on the shelf along with Gender Queer.
I do not support banning discussion of controversial or prevalent social issues in schools, only having schools pick one side of such issues and teaching that as the truth when there is no near universal consensus on the matter. Those issues should be discussed by “teaching the controversy”, that is, explaining what the various sides believe.
As always, my viewpoints are my own. I do not care about who else might share them, or if they hold other viewpoints that I do not share. If you do not like those other opinions, I suggest you go argue with the people who hold them.
Re: Re: Re:15
And yet, the people whom you support in their (and by extension, your) attempts to ruin trans people’s lives—often to the point of making them suicidal—are also the kind of people who want to ban books from libraries even if they so much as mention that trans people (or queer people in general) exist. Curious. 🤔
And yet…well, you get the point there.
One side thinks trans/queer people should be allowed to live in society and have all the same rights as everyone else. The other side wants to eradicate queer people—from society, if not from existence. For what reason should schools “teach the controversy” as if the idea that queer people deserve to be ostracized from society (if not outright murdered) is an idea worth exploring?
No, they’re not. They’re right-wing transphobe bullshit that you repeat ad naseum because all you have is the same ten obviously workshopped paragraphs of anti-queer, anti-“woke”, anti-“radical leftist” nonsense about “woke gender ideologues” and “large generic speech platforms”. If you had anything other than that, you’d have something useful—like, say, suggestions for actual solutions to the problems facing trans people that don’t amount to forcibly segregating or violently annihilating them.
All you have is hatred; all you give is despair. What sort of life do you expect trans people to have when you’ve made clear that you will go out of your way to harass and bully them even if it makes them kill themselves, to spend your life treating them like subhuman filth, to be no better than the lawmakers who are trying to legislate trans people out of existence by any means necessary?
Re: Re: Re:16
As always, my viewpoints are my own. I do not care about who else might share them, or if they hold other viewpoints that I do not share. If you do not like those other opinions, I suggest you go argue with the people who hold them.
If people require affirmation of their beliefs in order to not kill themselves, they are seriously mentally ill and require immediate treatment. If the mental illness also includes the delusion that they are not the sex of their body, or that they cannot live in a body that is not the sex they want it to be, then hopefully the treatment will address that as well, so that they choose to not have themselves mutilated.
But in any case, trans people should live the same life that religious people live. Religious people will never get my affirmation that their gods exist, because they do not, but they should not need my affirmation. I would not prevent them from holding their beliefs and practicing them (unlike woke ideologues, of course, who want to force religious people into behavior they believe is sinful, if demurring from that behavior goes counter to woke ideology), unless those practices impinge upon the practices of others. Observant Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and vegans may choose not to eat bacon cheeseburgers, but they should not be allowed to prevent the cafeteria from serving them, or even to force the cafeteria to offer food that is acceptable to them.
Re: Re: Re:17
No, they’re not. They’re viewpoints that are built on the viewpoints of others—as are everyone else’s. You can pick and choose what to accept, sure. But to act like you formed your anti-trans views out of thin air without the influence of anyone else’s anti-trans rhetoric is patently ridiculous and flagrantly dishonest.
Then that sucks for you. You’re going to get lumped in with people like Michael “I didn’t say ‘eradicate trans people’ even though that’s what ‘eradicating transgenderism’ would actually do” Knowles who espouse the same rhetoric that you do. Whether you like that association is irrelevant. They say anti-trans shit, you say anti-trans shit, and you’ve given me no reason to think you’re any different from them—especially with all the racism you’ve espoused.
I know this might come as a shock to you, but trans people don’t want you to constantly “affirm their beliefs”. They want people like you to leave them the fuck alone. Like, okay, so you don’t wanna “play along” with the “transgender hallucination” or whatever the fuck you bigoted assholes are calling it. Fine—not my circus, not my monkeys. But you’ve made it clear that you’re fine with constantly getting in trans people’s faces and harassing them because they exist in a way that pisses you off to no end. That’s what people here have a problem with, Hyman: It’s not whether you choose to “believe in transgender ideology”, it’s you outright stating that you’ll harass trans people—possibly even into suicide!—because you want to go out of your way to make them believe what you believe instead of the other way around. For every accusation about “woke gender ideologists” that you have up your sleeve, you’re confessing your own desire to enforce your ideology onto trans people—possibly through any means necessary, given your whole Knowles-esque “I don’t support violence against trans people, but I do support eradicating their ‘ideology’ ” schtick.
So…they should be free from identity-based harassment in public by bigots like you? 🤔
They don’t. But as with trans people, they also don’t need your bigoted ass constantly harassing them about their religious views. Or do you plan to visit churches and harass people there like you’ve said you would do to trans people in public?
Yeah, see, here’s the thing: When people enter the public sphere, they have to make concessions so other people can exist in the public sphere. One of those concessions is not being able to beat people upside the head (figuratively or literally) with a holy book so the person being assaulted will act as the assaulter demands they act. That’s how society works.
Whenever you hear stories about, oh, “the gubmint forced the bakery to make a cake for a bunch of f⸻ts”, it’s helpful to look at the details of the story and get the actual facts right. In the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, for example, the bakery never made a single wedding cake for a gay couple—decorated or otherwise—and when told that it must offer wedding cakes to gay customers (decorations notwithstanding) or stand in violation of Colorado’s non-discrimination laws, the bakery stopped making wedding cakes altogether. The whole point of the case wasn’t about decorations—it was that Masterpiece didn’t sell to a gay couple the same base-level product from its “menu” of products/services that it offered to straight couples for years. And as shown in the Azucar Bakery and Hands-On Originals cases, neither a customer nor the government can compel a business to express speech on its products that said business deems objectionable.
“Woke” people (whatever that means to you this week) don’t want to force bigots into no longer holding their bigoted beliefs. They don’t even want to force bigots into, say, decorating a wedding cake with ostensibly pro-gay messaging. They want bigots to follow the law or suffer the consequences for violating it—no more, no less. If you’re going to serve the general public, you don’t get to decide who makes up the general public. And if the law says you have to serve queer people and cishet people equally (custom speech notwithstanding), you can either follow the law or suffer the consequences—which is no different from the law asking you to equally serve people regardless of their race or religion.
All you have is hatred; all you give is despair. And when words no longer work, you will turn to violence. You’ve made that clear by your fervent insistence on harassing trans people—and sooner or later, you will resort to violent actions when words can no longer satsify your volatile anti-trans hatred. But you can choose a better path, Hyman. You can choose to stop being such a goddamned bigot and stop wanting to harass trans people out of public life/into an open grave. But you have to make that choice yourself.
Is causing untold pain and misery to a group of people who are already marginalized in society—all for the sake of making yourself feel good—really what you want to do with your one chance at life?
Re: Re: Re:18
As always, my viewpoints are my own. I do not care about who else might share them, or if they hold other viewpoints that I do not share. I do not care whether you “lump me in with those people”; I state my beliefs, and you can do as you like. I have formed my beliefs as most people do, using experience gathered over a lifetime to separate truth from wishful thinking. That worked for me with respect to religion, and it works for me with respect to woke ideology, especially woke gender ideology.
No matter how many times you state that trans people just want to be left alone, that lie will not transmute into the truth. Trans people, or at least their woke ideological supporters, want to force people into single-sex spaces for which their bodies disqualify them, want to have the lies of woke gender ideology taught as the truth in public schools, and demand that everyone affirm those lies. This could not be further from being left alone to live one’s life. This is blatant trampling over the beliefs and practices of normal people who do not believe that anyone can be a sex other than that of their body, and over the beliefs and practices of religious people who believe that it is sinful to abet practices of LGBT people with respect to gender, sex, and marriage.
The essence of living in a free and pluralistic society is that you do not get to do that, no matter how right you think you are and how wrong you think your opponents are. You do not get to use emotional blackmail to force your opponents to abandon their views and practices, no matter how much you claim that the people you support are “harmed” by not having their lies affirmed. If the people you support cannot stand being told that their beliefs are false, then it is up to them to stuff up their ears. In a society where freedom of speech is a foundational value, you do not have the right to silence someone because they are speaking things you don’t like where you can hear them.
As for “turning to violence”, it is you woke ideologues who support rioting, looting, and arson when you cannot get your way. The government has arrested and prosecuted hundreds of people who took part in the Capitol riot; how much have they prosecuted the people who looted and destroyed endless numbers of downtown businesses in the name of “racial justice”? It is you woke ideologues who decided that abandoning COVID restrictions to march in protest was the correct thing to do, no matter how much it might spread disease. It is you woke ideologues who have decided that arrested criminals should be freed from jail on no bail.
You fantasize about your enemies turning to violence because you fantasize hurting them should they do that, because you know that you are losing your fight to the actions of voters, no violence required. Look at the desperation of the MSNBC anchors, as they try to hurt DeSantis because they fear that a DeSantis campaign will succeed where a Trump campaign would fail.
Re: Re: Re:19
And no matter how many times you keep repeating the same empty words that you workshopped with right-wing shitbirds, the emotional reaction you’re looking for—hatred for trans people—isn’t going to happen here. You’ll never be anything more than a serial harasser of trans people and you will eventually resort to anti-trans violence because unceasing, unyielding, irrational hate is like that.
I urge you to stop giving a shit about other people’s genitals. If you can’t do that, at least shut the fuck up about it on stories that aren’t even about trans people, you obsessed dumbfuck.
Re: Re: Re:20
Someone who screeches epithets in fury at people that he cannot touch through electronic media is clearly an inch away from committing acts of violence himself. Every accusation a confession, indeed.
Re: Re: Re:19
Oh, and speaking of resorting to violence, here’s what woke ideologues do to women who are demonstrating about keeping men out of women’s prisons: https://twitter.com/ReduxxMag/status/1599852773809750017
Wokeness is poison. It will destroy society if it is not purged.
Re: Re: Re:18
Oh, and speaking of resorting to violence, here’s what woke ideologues do when they are prevented from silencing a speaker: https://www.thefire.org/news/charlie-kirk-event-uc-davis-prompts-violent-protest
Wokeness is poison. It will destroy society if it is not purged.
Re: Re: Re:13
I have suggested to you on various occasions to simply accept that trans people exist, and should be allowed to live their lives as best they cam. That is not asking you to support any ideology beyond treat all humans as human beings. You on the other hand cannot let the matter rest, and launch into attacks on trans people being allowed to live their chosen life style at any opportunity that you can grab. Indeed if you look through the comments on this site, the subject of trans women almost always comes up because you have brought the subject up. You have a very unhealthy obsession with the subject.
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Re: Re: Re:14
That is a lie. Woke gender ideologues insist on letting people force their way into single-sex spaces for which their bodies disqualify them, and having their false beliefs about gender be taught as the truth in public schools.
This is the difference between accepting that Jews exist and should be allowed to live their lives as best they can, and demanding that all restaurants be certified kosher.
Re: Re: Re:15
…said nobody mentally competent, ever.
Re: Re: Re:15
Which you have not demonstrated as asking you to support an ideology. At best, it is acquiescence, which isn’t the same thing as support, but even that is questionable.
You have not demonstrated this to be the case. You also haven’t demonstrated that their beliefs are false to begin with. At best, you have demonstrated that some of their beliefs have not yet been demonstrated to be true (though even that is questionable), which is not the same as demonstrating them to be false, and it certainly doesn’t show that their beliefs are being taught as truth in public schools. Your only attempt at proving the latter doesn’t actually have anything to do with transgender people but intersex people, and it doesn’t even affirm anything but simply remains silent on a specific issue related to that.
As such, this remains pure assertion without factual support.
No, it isn’t. At best, it’s the difference between accepting that Jews exist and should be allowed to live their lives as best they can, and demanding that you stop trying to make Jews eat kosher. No one is forcing you to eat kosher or to use the restroom of the opposite sex. Just mind your own business.
Re: Re: Re:9
Ie, you version isn’t a foundational value.
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Re: Re: Re:10
It is. My version of free speech is the correct, foundational one.
Re: Re: Re:11
Says only you.
Re: Re: Re:11
You really need some help. Talk about being delusional.
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Re: Re: Re:4
I dunno, man, does the government have the right to make that guy bake the cake? Write the words on the cake he doesn’t agree with?
Not just host someone else’s cake, mind you.
Re: Re: Re:5
Oh, you dumb bitch.
You’re clearly referring to the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, where a bakery refused to serve a queer customer equally and was hit with the consequences of violating a non-discrimination ordinance. But here’s what you clearly misunderstand about that case:
Now, if you have any other misconceptions about that case, feel free to share them so I can correct your misinformed ass and you can stop sounding like an anti-queer jackass.
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Re: Re: Re:6
Goldstar!
This will be fun:
That all sounded very rehearsed but also very wrong. Is this another echo chamber thing where you all agree on a version of events that have nothing to do with the facts? Seems like.
No, I feel quite well versed, thank you very much. I’ll take the written court opinions over your made up version.
But we have established that you’re a rank hypocrite.
When the censorship runs your way you’re quite happy to chime “but it’s a private company!”, “you can’t force them to allow that!” and “it’s OK if when they label ‘misinformation’ they’re wrong, it’s OK, you can still say it other places!”
When the censorship (not actually censorship, Phillips was refusing compelled speech, maybe “resistance” is a better term) runs against you it’s all “discrimination”, “Public accommodation”, “The government wasn’t compelling speech even though it was clearly doing that and even being selective about it!” and finally “there are definitely no other cake shops anywhere willing to make gay wedding cakes!”
So you’re just lying, or possibly have zero introspection. OK. I mean, I knew that, but it’s nice to hear you SAY it.
Re: Re: Re:3
“speech”
Re: Re: Re:3 "Woke"
Regarding people who use “woke” as a pejorative, I’ll just leave it to Jason Overstreet:
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Re: Re: Re:4
Rather like the people who still believe that “defund the police” is a good slogan to use. Whatever. By all means, you keep on using “woke” to mean “good”, I’ll keep using “woke” to mean “bad”, and we’ll see how things shake out.
Woke ideologues, who make a habit of using 1984 as a manual rather than a warning, and who would redefine “man” and “woman” into meaningless terms that justify the mutilation of children, seem remarkably dense when it comes to realizing that their own word of choice has also become redefined.
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Re: Re: Re:2
Of course they are. VERY disputable. And a hot second ago you were arguing that Twitter should in fact try to decide what is “true” but if it got it wrong that was no big deal.
You can’t actually have it both ways.
Masnick claims often that “censorship is free speech” but that isn’t actually true, at all. No, deleting others words is not “speech”, it’s the opposite of that. Twitter may be able legally to do it but doing so is NOT free speech, at all, and it’s dumb to suggest it is.
Re: Re: Re:3
Facts are not disputable. How many courts, with judges that Trump appointed himself, (ok, not really himself, it was all the Fed Soc) told him that until he brings real concrete evidence of voter fraud, there is nothing to litigate. And not a single court case provided any tangible evidence of voter fraud.
So, tell me, what facts in the whole Trump “Big Lie” are disputable when there has been a total of ZERO proof that would provide evidence of voter fraud?
Re: Re: Re:3
…is a demented lie from Matthew that’s the 100% opposite of reality in every detail.
Re: Re: Re:
Okay Hyman.
Show me the lawyer’s letter that says you can’t be transphobic anywhere.
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Re: Re: Re:2
Censorship is the act of the censor, silencing opinions based on viewpoint on platforms the censor controls. The ability of the silenced to speak elsewhere is irrelevant.
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Re: Re: Re:
^^^This, this exactly.
Re: Re: Re:2
You’re free to start a “speech platform” that acts that way, Matty. Just be ready to speedrun the moderation learning curve.
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Re: Re: Re:3
Actually I’m not free to do that. Someone tried and Big Tech killed it off over a weekend.
But I think you’re missing the point that you only like the censorship cuz it mostly cuts your way.
Re: Re: Re:4
Just don’t be as dumb as Parler was, and you’ll be fine.
And you probably use a Musk biography to jerk off to.
See, you’re not the only one who can make up complete nonsense.
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Re: Re: Re:5
But exactly, you’re not allowed to do that. Big Tech killed it off specifically BECAUSE it wasn’t moderating “enough”, whatever the fuck that is.
Re: Re: Re:6
The fact that Parler still exists pretty much negates anything you’ve said about them.
How are you so bad at this that you make up shit and lie about something that can easily be disproven in less than a second?
Re: Re: Re:6
So to reiterate: just don’t be as dumb as Parler, and you’ll be fine.
Re: Re: Re:4
How is Truth Social still running? Or Gab?
Re: Re: Re:5
For that matter, how is 4chan still going? That place turns 20 years old this October and it’s an even bigger shitpit than Truth Social and Gab combined.
Re: Re: Re:6
Badly.
After moot left, the new owner has bungled the running of the place for the most part.
Still, can’t blame the new owner for the terminal white supremacist cancer it had even under moot.
Re: Re: Re:7
They still boast ~20 million unique visitors per month. That doesn’t sound like a site doing badly, especially considering the site in question.
Re: Re: Re:8
At the end of the day, you can have a billion unique viewers a day and still not break even.
4chan was definitely not profitable under moot, but he finally managed to make the site break even before he handed it over to the new owner, who then proceeded to do a ton of shady shit like selling information in a desperate attempt to make a thin profit.
Hits mean nothing if you can’t monetize them, just ask Elon. And in 4chan’s case, very few people would want to advertise THERE even before the white supremacists moved into one of the boards.
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In a society that has freedom of speech as a foundational value, large generic speech platforms have the freedom to tell you to follow their rules or fuck off to someone else’s platform. Why is your freedom more important than theirs?
That’s a business model proposal, not a foundational value. You’re welcome you go start your own social media company based on that principle. And why shouldn’t you, it’s worked out so well for all the other that have tried it!
“Wokeness” was only ever treating people the same way you’d like to be treated and not being an asshole. Y’know, traditional Christian values. It certainly had nothing to do with or have any affect on your “freedom” until RWNJ’s twisted and distorted the term into a completely unrelated catch-all for shit they didn’t understand and hence didn’t like.
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Re: Re: Re:2
The large generic speech platforms may implement any policy they like. The public may tell them its opinion of their policy.
“Wokeness” is now a useful term for a constellation of false and evil hard-left ideologies, including gender ideology and critical race theory. I would say that the horse has left the barn, and it’s too late to lock the door.
Re: Re: Re:3
It’s only useful for those who either have no idea what they’re actually talking about and literally can’t think of any other words, or those who are cynically appealing to the first group.
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Re: Re: Re:4
Considering what woke ideologues have done to the words “man” and “woman”, it’s more than a little ironic to hear them screech about “woke” being used as a descriptor for their false and evil beliefs.
Unfortunately, the usual suspects will only be convinced when it’s them doing the actual censoring.
This means, for the rest of us, that we’ll probably be rounded up in a concentration camp and shot into a mass grave.
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"Most liberal circuit court agrees with me (about something only sorta related) therefore all my opinions are validated!"
Of course I think this is great news, because it massively increases the chances that SCOTUS will take up this issue, and I am quite sure they will not reach the same conclusions. This is not some weird YT algo case, this is a much more direct cause and effect.
“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”
As Orwellian as the California Secretary of State’s Office being a “trusted flagger” for some reason (Jesus, why?!? Who tf thought that was a good idea?), *they are not the fucken FBI”. People do not generally feel free to deny the FBI. Nor a huge swarm of NGOs meeting with them weekly and inviting them to conferences (but hired to do so by DOJ, DOD, others).
Here, right here, is an email suggesting Twitter employees didn’t feel comfortable telling government “no” anymore:
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394294850064385
I think that statement is laughably untrue on it’s face. OF COURSE a 98% success rate means they have ceded over control of their censorship to a state agency.
But this is funny for another reason, because you (and others) routinely cite a 40% rate as evidence that Twitter was not conducting gov censorship by proxy, to which my question is “At what part does it become government censorship, then?” The answer is apparently “never” because even 98% doesn’t qualify. Why bring it up, then? Why pretend the success rate is a rebuttal when according to you (and some activist judges) no rate would ever make it censorship by proxy?
Of course I believe the direct opposite: Even if Twitter NEVER listened it would still be infringement because a government agency tried to pressure (the FBI does not merely “request”) Twitter into suppressing the speech of US citizens.
Also this leapt out at me.
OK, what about all the times the FBI (and many, many, so many others) were NOT merely reporting about what they thought were TOS violations? (as if Twitter needed their help, it’s pretty funny) When they were erroneously claiming US citizens were foreign agents (not sure why foreign agents don’t get free speech, but that’s a different question) or when they were asking that actual medical experts have their “True, but (supposedly) misleading” opinions suppressed? What about then?
What about when the “request” is actual retaliation, as it was with Schiff’s office vs Paul Sperry?!?
I’m gonna give you some credit here, Masnick, cuz you’re citing an actual court case making an argument rather than going “lol, I don’t see anything here in these very incriminating documents” or talking about random gossip about Musk. But this ruling is manifest bunk and you give it far too much credence (almost fawning, really).
Like I said the good news is that SCOTUS is almost guaranteed to take it up and overturn it and then it will be a precedent nation-wide.
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JFC, do you ever stop fucking whining?
GROW THE FUCK UP OR GET SOME PROFESSIONAL HELP!!
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Unless you can prove that Schiff’s office coerced Twitter to take action on Sperry’s account, the suggestion could’ve always been ignored by Twitter.
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Re: Re:
I have actually shown you that proof, and you ignored it, so I’m inclined not to bother again. Keep in mind Schiff’s committee was also making noises about investigating Twitter around then. (not that that would be required to make it an implicit threat)
And it wasn’t ignored, Sperry was banned, with no rational suggested nor found since. But apparently success rates, even if 98%, according to Masnick and the Ninth circuit.
Re: Re: Re:
Twitter has the right to ban the dude for damn near any reason it wants. Either show me where it doesn’t, show me that the dude was banned specifically as part of a coercive order from the government (or a proxy thereof), or show yourself the goddamn door.
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Re: Re: Re:2
I think we’ve established you don’t believe that. If they banned all support of gay marriage (which was an actual political debate just like 10 years ago?) you would reverse all your positions instantly.
Now, I DO believe that…but I also think it would be very bad of them, and quite illegal for government to direct it.
I did.
Re: Re: Re:3
[citations needed]
Re: Re: Re:3
Here’s the thing… If twitter suddenly decided that, people would be angry at Twitter for their own actions. We would not be channeling that anger though the government to force them to keep it up.
How do we know? Because that was a major part of the collateral damage that happened when Tumblr instated a policy banning NSFW content in 2018… A lot of content that wasn’t NSFW got swept up in it, and a disproportionate amount of that content was LGBT related.
You wanna know what people did? They moved to Twitter!
Re: Re: Re:4
And now they’re back on Tumblr and Mastodon 😉
Re: Re: Re:4
That actually explains why my timeline got a lot less SFW after 2018 despite my activities on Twitter not really changing much…
Re: Re:
And ironically, the release of the Twitter files showed that Twitter employees did indeed ignore some of the flagged posts and didn’t just ban everyone. They demonstrated that they didn’t consider the government contact to be a form of coercion and there was no retaliation from the government for them not banning all the accounts.
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Re: Re: Re:
So fucking what? They also said that they felt they couldn’t ignore the gov requests anymore
Re: Re: Re:2
Quote, please.
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Re: Re: Re:3
Sure!
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394294850064385
Re: Re: Re:4
So you didn’t read the mail you are referring to as “evidence”?!
I’m not at all surprised by that.
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Re: Re: Re:5
I did. So you didn’t? You obviously have a meaningless objection of some kind, voice it rather than wasting my time.
Re: Re: Re:6
Sure!
https://twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1610394294850064385
Re: Re: Re:4
My word, a direct source given without any tantrums. I’m proud of you, Matthew!
Too bad it still just proves that you’re full of shit.
For one thing, he doesn’t say that it feels like they can’t/couldn’t ignore government requests anymore.
For another, even if “the window is closing” means what Matt Taibbi claims that it means, the staffer says “I think”, meaning it’s not even a certainty.
If you read the highlighted bit in context of the entire email, it just sounds like the staffer is saying that the window for gathering more evidence is closing.
As usual, a complete nothing-burger.
Re: Re: Re:4
Do you not understand what a quote is? Hint: It’s not the same thing as a citation.
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Volokh used to joke that the Supreme Court had a special section dedeicated to reversing the Ninth.
Re: Re:
If he actually said that it would be silly. There’s is very little difference in the reverse rate of the difference circuits. The 9th Circuit has more cases granted cert because it’s massive (way way way bigger than any other circuit), and its reversal rate is within the same range as… every other circuit. The most reversed circuit lately has been the 6th, which is considered very conservative. The idea that the 9th is regularly reverse or that you can ignore rulings from the 9th is, well, generally a sign of someone who is not at all serious.
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Re: Re: Re:
I tried to look up the same stat and found the same article….that’s one specific year, dumbass.
The Ninth is reversed a LOT, % wise, not just numbers.
Re: Re: Re:2
No. It’s not just for one year. Why are you always so wrong?
Re: Re: Re:
A source for your comparisons would’ve been nice. According to Ballotpedia, the Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit 80.4% of time and the Sixth Circuit 81.5% from 2007 until 2022 inclusive – no meaningful difference between just those two. On average the reversal rate was 71.4%.
I don’t know how conservative or liberal the Circuit Courts are, so I’m not gonna say anything about that yet.
Re: Re: Re:2
https://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/14/us/justices-warn-court-panel-over-long-stay-of-execution.html
Re: Re: Re:3
Not sure why you are posting an article from more than three decades ago. Are you complaining about how the Ninth Circuit is today, or how it used to be?
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Re: Re: Re:4
I’m not complaining about anything. I repeated the joke I saw on Volokh about the Supreme Court having a special section for reversing the Ninth. Then I found a NYT article that says that the Ninth got reversed a lot. I think Ballotpedia also says that SCOTUS granted cert to twelve Ninth cases in 2021 and reversed all of them.
You get a reputation, you’ll get jokes about it. Will Smith is going to be known for that slap forever even though he only did it once.
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The percentage alone doesn’t make anything censorship. The evidence behind why the figure is 98% does. 98% is a warning to look for more evidence. The court examined the evidence that Rogan O’Handley brought to the table and made a decision based on that evidence. You’ll have to wait for a circuit split and maybe a Supreme Court decision if you think that your speculation is correct.
The next thing you said (emphasis mine):
That’s fine. You still have to show us evidence of pressure – coercion or intimidation. As Mike pointed out, correlation isn’t sufficient.
Retaliation to Sperry it may be, in which case Schiff’s office would be in the wrong. And for a government retaliation case, Sperry must sue a government figure/agency instead of Twitter. Schiff’s office’s actions had nothing to so with Twitter unless the government pressured Twitter. Twitter could ban someone for any reason or for no reason as long as there were no government pressure involved.
You people are using the wrong Constitution when deciding these things. The UK secretly bought the US Constitution in 1811 and stripped out the parts they didn’t like but made doing so a federal secret that only freed citizens going by the appropriate designation via deploying the secret coding like Violet of the House Aubergine that legally allows them to learn the real true facts. Once you know these things you can’t unknow them–kind of like a precog Donald Rumsfeld–but nobody will believe you because they can’t legally know the truth!1!!!! All the worlds politicians are in on it, they get inducted into the secret society and given access to designer drugs and free money. It’s so sad seeing all these people who think they know what is going on when they need to not only take the blue bill, they also need to take the purple one, the yellow one and also, if you can get your hands on it, the chartreuse one.
And of course it’s censorship! That one genius on the net with both a blog and a podcast says so so it has to be true because nobody on the internet has ever made shit up to make a point. Who would be so insecure as to make up stuff to win an argument with a complete stranger?
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George Santos.
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Re: Re:
Very homophobic of you, Stephen.
But how about Elizabeth Warren?
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I love it when people say shit like this as if it’s a gotcha. They witnessed a homophobic person getting called out for actual homophobia and they thought it was some magical phrase they could use to attack others, but they just prove they didn’t understand how the term was actually used.
Citing a verified liar who may also happen to be gay isn’t homophobia. But abusing that attack when it’s not warranted and no homophobia is present is actually you attempting to use homophobia for your benefit.
Quid rides? Mutato nomine et de te fabula narrator.
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Re: Re: Re:2
No idea what you’re referring to, but also I didn’t care much.
It’s ironic. Cuz Stephen (and all liberals as far as I can tell) are super fucking eager to label everyone who disagrees with them as some form of bigot. Like you can’t critize the insane shit Ilhan Omar says without being called Islamaphobic, etc.
Yeah, like that. That’s literally how you guys treat it.
So yeah, I’m allowed to joke about Stephen being homophobic.
There it is. I knew you’d get there eventually.
Re: Re: Re:3
And this is exactly what I was referring to. You don’t understand how words are used so you think it’s just petty name-calling. Except the words being used have meanings and the labels being applied are actually saying something.
It’s not that everyone that a person disagrees with is a bigot. I disagree with Mike sometimes here and I’ll say so, but he’s not a bigot as far as I have ever seen. But a lot of people do disagree with people who are bigots and it’s fine to call a bigot a bigot. You’re just admitting you don’t understand what bigotry is.
As far as freedom of speech is concerned, sure. You can even be a bigot if you like. But you’re falsely accusing others of what you’re actually doing and trying to use that false accusation as a post hoc justification for your bad faith argument.
Sadly, I don’t think that you ever will get anywhere. You haven’t shown a single ounce of an ability to consider you might be wrong. You’re the embodiment of the backfire effect.
Re: Re: Re:3
Speaking for myself here, but I’m a liberal, and I rarely call people bigots. I might say that they said something that is (or at least appears to be) bigoted or that they appear (or come across as) bigoted, but even then, I’m less eager to even do that much than, say, Stephen is. I give people a lot more room to say stuff like that before calling them bigots or anything like that. I don’t think I’ve called you a bigot, for example.
Honestly, the only ones I called bigoted in recent memory here (recent as in the past couple of years) were ROGS (who seems quite proud of his ableism) and Hyman (who has also said a lot of ableist stuff as well as even more transphobic stuff, though I’ve called him ableist a lot more than I every called him transphobic simply because his language is actually more tempered on transgender issues (likely unintentionally, as he still complains about “woke censorship” of things that not even “woke ideologues” disagree with), while he has explicitly stated that people with mental disorders should be kept out of standard classrooms and/or kept in mental institutions and doesn’t understand a lot of really basic stuff about mental disorders and psychology), and those were only after a long time of letting them say quite a bit I disagreed with without ever calling them bigots. I don’t think I’ve ever called you a bigot, nor have I called a lot of other people I disagree with “bigots”, like TP. I just don’t find it all that helpful.
Then again, knowing you, you probably won’t even bother to read this, so you could probably still say that all liberals do that (as far as you can tell) without technically lying.
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A lot of people.
The usual suspects already do it naturally.
Still waiting for evidence…
Maybe you can find a little time inbetween jumping to conclusions.
What is proven here is, if you point out a violation of the rules they look and if you violated rules you get punished.
A trusted flagger is just someone who doesn’t scream at every little thing & helps the system out by speeding up the detection and review of what they think are violations.
To argue that the government can’t tell a private business when they think someone is violating the rules is like saying that anyone who works for a city should be barred from telling a grocery store staff member when they see one customer harassing another because that would ‘censor’ the harasser’s speech should they be told to stop and/or leave.
Unless it comes with a threat, whether explicit or implied it’s just them telling the business what they see and letting the business choose what to do with that information, and while government actors are limited in what they can say/do thanks to the first amendment it’s not like it’s a total ban on anything speech related.
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Welp, none of that is true, but thanks for trying.
Re: Re:
Welp, all of that is true, but thanks for trying.
See, I can do that too!!
Matty “The Cry Baby” is all bluster and no bite.
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Mike Masnik is a coward
The government carries both the carrot and the stick,
How many times did we hear congress threaten tech executives with fines / regulations, if they don’t censor more speech, in front of the us congress. Meanwhile they have tried to regulate tiktok out of business entirely.
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Hey Ben.
Can you point to specific examples of that? I have called out Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar for statements to that effect, but I never saw either of them say anything like that in any hearing. So I’d like to see an example of that, because that would be wrong.
Yup, which I think is a clear 1st Amendment violation.
But, that’s the point: if there’s actual coercion, it’s violates the 1st Amendment. Absent that — and a simple “reporting” feature is not that — there’s no coercion and no 1st amendment violation.
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To the extent that has evidently happened (like in statements made by Elizabeth Warren, Adam Schiff, and Amy Klobuchar), Techdirt has consistently criticized them for that. (Though, none of those incidents are exactly like what you describe, but I’m unaware of anything exactly like that actually happening.)
Which Techdirt has consistently criticized as unconstitutional and ill-considered.
Seriously, I’m failing to see any cowardice here.
Thanks for sharing. It is very helpful for me and also informative for all those users who will come to read.