If Only Jim Jordan Hadn’t Cried Wolf So Often, We Could Tell If His Claims About The White House Pressuring Amazon Were Serious
from the could-be-a-big-story,-but-probably-isn't dept
Over the last few days there have been a few stories making the rounds on right wing media sites, claiming that Rep. Jim Jordan had exposed the White House pressuring Amazon to remove books related to COVID disinformation. This is based on a thread Jordan posted to ExTwitter.
If it’s true that the White House did coerce Amazon to remove books, that would be a clear First Amendment violation and a real problem. The White House should not be in the business of telling anyone what speech they can and cannot host. Ever.
Unfortunately, Rep. Jim Jordan has cried wolf so many times on misleading to outright false claims of the White House demanding censorship that it’s tough to take him seriously (which might also why no one outside of the Fox News/NY Post bubble has picked up on this story). Jordan has a track record of taking a complete nothingburger and misrepresenting it into “OMG CeNSorSHiP.”
And, because Jordan only released a few selected screenshots, and not the full details of the docs, it’s (again) difficult to know what actually happened here, and whether or not the White House actually overstepped its bounds. From what’s disclosed I think it’s possible that it did go too far, but what Jordan released doesn’t actually show that, and you would think if he’d actually found the smoking gun, he’d put it front and center. Instead, what he put front and center… is something that doesn’t say what Jordan claims it says.
To be clear, what books Amazon sells is none of the White House’s business, and the First Amendment forbids them from trying to coerce the company on this. There’s literally a famous Supreme Court case detailing why the government can’t pressure book sellers to remove books.
But, again, (and this is what the Supreme Court will be considering shortly in the Murthy case) the White House is still allowed to try to persuade private companies to change their policies. It just can’t coerce or threaten them into doing so. What’s unclear here (in part because Jordan is only releasing snippets, and not the full record) is which side of the line things fell on here.
What does seem clear is that Andy Slavitt, who at the time was the “Senior Pandemic Advisor” to the White House, wanted to talk to someone at Amazon about books promoting COVID misinformation:
If it’s just talking, that’s fine. If it’s pushing them to remove the content that’s a problem. And there’s at least some indication that people inside Amazon felt it might be the latter. This is the email that Jordan has been waving around the most:
Though, note that this is a “pre-brief” discussion, meaning Amazon folks trying to figure out what the White House might be asking. If it were after the meeting, that would obviously be even more concerning. But it’s not. It’s Amazon employees internally expressing concern that the White House might be trying to pressure them (which would be a problem) and telling other employees that they need to find out directly if that’s the case.
Jordan presents some of the screenshots out of order to make the narrative flow better (which again, raises questions about what’s really here). For example, he highlights Amazon declining to make certain changes that would get picked up by Fox News as being “too visible,” but (1) this email is from a week before talking to the White House so isn’t about pressure from them, and (2) doesn’t even appear to be about removing books, but about “customer behavior associations” and (3) the concern was in response to a wholly separate incident when Amazon chose to remove a book for violating its hate speech policies.
That suggests that the discussion was more about book recommendations rather than removing books (even as Jordan implies otherwise).
Also reading the actual screenshots that Jordan released, it looks like the White House was questioning if some of the books violated Amazon’s publicly stated policies on false or misleading information. That is, rather than demanding the books be removed, the White House was asking if they violated existing policy (which is very different than asking them to take them down). And, internally, Amazon was pointing out that the White House appeared to be misreading Amazon’s policy, which was actually about false or misleading metadata about the books, not about the content of the books (not that Jordan acknowledges this important nuance, because that would wreck his narrative):
Later on, Jordan claims that Amazon made decisions because they were “feeling pressure from the White House.” Though, again, reading the underlying document shows that they were much, much more concerned with bad press from Buzzfeed, and the “pressure from the White House” line is both partially redacted and a little unclear as to what exactly it refers to.
And, later on, when Amazon did change its policy, it was in response to a coming negative Buzzfeed article, not… the White House.
So, in the end… this again doesn’t seem to be the smoking gun the Fox News-o-sphere is running with.
I still think the White House probably shouldn’t be talking to Amazon about what books it offers anyway, but it’s difficult to see this being particularly damning, especially given the details. Combined with Jordan’s history of crying wolf on things like this, and his selective and misleading quoting here, this is just another non-story.
And, of course, that also means that even if Jordan ever did turn up a serious First Amendment issue, he’s already trained anyone serious not to pay attention to him. But, when looked at in context, this looks like the White House was asking Amazon if certain books violated existing policies, and Amazon telling them “no, you’ve misread our policies.” And then, later, following Buzzfeed reporters working on an article highlighting the promotion of nonsense peddling medical misinfo, they adjusted their policy not to remove books, but maybe not recommend them as highly. And, again, that appeared to be in response to bad press, and not the White House.
But, I guess, when you’re Jim Jordan and you’ve built up a huge profile making these exaggerated claims, you have to take what little breadcrumbs you’ve found and pretend they’re something much bigger.
Filed Under: 1st amendment, andy slavitt, jim jordan, journalism, persuasion
Companies: amazon
Comments on “If Only Jim Jordan Hadn’t Cried Wolf So Often, We Could Tell If His Claims About The White House Pressuring Amazon Were Serious”
'Trust me', said the liar
Ah yes, because nothing says ‘this is a legitimate claim/story based upon actual evidence’ like cherry-picking quotes out of moderately-redacted emails, only providing select screenshots rather than the source material and presenting ‘evidence’ in the wrong chronological order.
The icing on the cake however has got to be that even the emails he presented shoot his argument in the back by demonstrating that Amazon seemed to be far more concerned about negative articles Buzzfeed might put forth than whatever ‘threats’ the government was supposedly slinging around.
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“‘this is a legitimate claim/story based upon actual evidence’ like cherry-picking quotes out of moderately-redacted emails, only providing select screenshots rather than the source material and presenting ‘evidence’ in the wrong chronological order.”
Like Jimmy Kimmel segment called ‘Unnecessary Censorship’ where a little omission results in a huge incorrect assumption.
I wonder when Jordan will post the actual evidence.
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Can’t post what does not exist.
Re: 'Tis a rare case when someone hides evidence that would help them
Given what little he already posted undercut his claims to a fatal level I strongly suspect that he isn’t keeping the source and rest of the ‘evidence’ secret because he’s concerned that it would help his case to post it…
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Lies.
Democratic party operatives in media like the site owner don’t give the benefit of the doubt to Republican politicians ever.
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This might hit harder if you could point to a time when they actually deserved the benefit of the doubt and didn’t get it.
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“According to democrats, republicans lie more”
Cool story bro.
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How many Republicans in congress have lied about Jan 6 and the 2020 election?
All, of them, multiple times.
They can’t even tell the truth on anything anymore
Re: Re: Re:2
The biggest lie Republicans tell is “we want to govern” because Republicans don’t want to govern—they want to rule. This is why they largely refuse to compromise on anything with Democrats at every level of government (which is arguably the primary reason Congress is so deadlocked these days). This is why they support moves like Ron DeSantis’s attempts to rewrite American history so enslaved people actually benefitted from slavery. This is why they elected, and will vote once more to elect, Donald Trump as president: He was the closest thing to an American dictator as we’ve ever seen, and now he outright promises to be a dictator if he wins back the White House.
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Re: Re: Re:3
Hey man, that’s fair, we complain about it a lot actually. Of course “governing” to me would involve tearing down a great deal of government and filibustering a lot of stuff.
1) It takes two to deadlock. 2) There’s nothing wrong with government doing less. It SHOULD do way less.
No no, you just mean accurately teaching history. (also the line you’re hilairous taking out of context was written by a noted black scholar, but whatever). The 1619 project isn’t real, man.
“First day only”. Gawd you’re humorousless fuucks.
Truth is that both Obama and Biden did far more dictatorial actions, from trying to legislate by executive fiat to just straight up ignoring precedent and SCOTUS. Oh, and yeah, using the DOJ as a political weapon, let’s not forget that. You just liked the dictatorship. And you call everyone who disagrees with yo a N@zi, it’s great.
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Yes, yes, we know that Republicans want a government small enough to let business owners exploit the working class in ways that further widen the chasm of income inequality, yet large enough to force anyone capable of becoming pregnant (regardless of age or the circumstances of conception) into giving birth. You don’t have to tell me twice.
Anyone who has watched enough Law & Order can tell that it only takes one to deadlock. In Congress, Democrats have always been more willing to compromise with Republicans than vice versa—and that vice versa has been far more pronounced since the Obama days. Look at the recent immigration bill situation: Senate Democrats caved and sponsored a bill that was most decidedly right-wing just so something could get passed to address the border issue, and House Republicans are still ready to vote it down because Donald Trump told them to vote it down.
I would agree, but I’m not sure I’d agree with you on the specifics of what it should be doing less.
No, I don’t.
Yes, it is.
Three things.
Even if that’s true (and I don’t grant that it is), the primary reason they would’ve needed to do that is the refusal of Congressional Republicans to compromise with Congressional Democrats and actually pass new legislation.
I don’t like any dictatorship. And if I thought Obama had been, or Biden is, acting like a dictator, I would say so. I’m not enamored with the idea of a president needing to bypass Congress with executive orders, but I’m not seeing anything from him that rises to the level of him trying to declare his executive orders (and himself) as above the need for governmental review or the rule of law itself.
I don’t call everyone who disagrees with me a Nazi. I’ve disagreed with Mike and several of the regular Techdirt commentators before, and I’ve never called them Nazis because we disagreed. Also: You can say “Nazi” here, this isn’t TikTok.
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Re: Re: Re:5
Well, actual historians have said it’s made up ahistorical bullshit, so I think you just disqualified yourself from further commentary.
Yeah, he is.
So? So fffing what?!? THEY ARE ALLOWED TO DO THAT. That is part of the legislative process. Compromise, make them a deal they can accept, or don’t, and nothing happens. That is not sufficient reason to void the constitution.
You don’t get to say “I really want it” throw a tantrum, and just do what you want even if it’s illegal. That’s exactly what you accuse Trump of doing. Except he didn’t, not nearly as either Obama or Biden. “I have a pen and a phone” Which by normal order gets you nothing.
Yeah, you do.
They don’t “need” to, they absolutely cannot. It was illegal.
So yeah, you think dictatorship is just great when it means getting your way.
Hey man, you’re not the worst about it, but you throw it around a LOT. Maybe you’re more in favor of the various forms of “bigot”.
Re: Re: Re:6
I’m sure you can cite those “actual historians”. I will be surprised if any of them are any more credible than the ones that claim Susan B Anthony was an early “Pro-Life” anti-abortion activist.
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Re: Re: Re:7
You are announcing in advance that I send you you will ignore.
but sure, anyway:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248
and
https://www.aier.org/article/fact-checking-the-1619-project-and-its-critics/
Re: Re: Re:7
Unlike Matthew, who will pick biased assholes, I’ll just tell you to search Reddit’s AskHistorians Subreddit.
Last I checked, they did manage to adequately criticize the 1619 Project while acknowledging what it did right.
Shame Matthew is a lying i surrectionist shitbag, because even when he’s right, he’s still trying to force us all to die.
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Re: Re: Re:8
“Biased assholes”
Proceeds to cite reddit
Lol, omg, lol.
Re: Re: Re:9
Oh, I’m aware.
I’m linkikng to actual, credible historians, well-known in their field, who just happen to use Reddit as a platform to popularize accurate, fact-checked history and the crazy people who do this thankless task.
Facts and the academic consensus don’t care for your feelings or that you legit want to murder the lot of them. Since your side seems to want to cripple the humanities for actual war.
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Re: Re: Re:10
No, you’re not, or you wouldn’t be doing it through reddit.
I did, though.
Re: Re: Re:6
Which historians would those be, how much of The 1619 Project have they said is “made up ahistorical bullshit”, and how many of those historians have links to right-wing organizations?
Then he’s a bad comedian, because only the people who want a dictator in the White House are laughing at his “joke”. Everyone else is horrified that a candidate for the highest public service office in the country would claim, even as a joke, that he plans to act as if he has the divine right of a king.
Then whine to Congress about its intransigence—and its willingness to give/concede so much power to the executive branch regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.
He literally tried to overturn the results of a free and fair election because he really wanted a second term in the White House. That’s documented fact.
And yet, I don’t see you complaining about the executive orders that Trump handed down because he couldn’t get Congress to sign off on some of his bullshit.
No, I don’t. I’m well aware that in any dictatorship, the chances of becoming an enemy of the state will always go up as other, more obvious enemies are eliminated. And being marked as an enemy of the state can always hinge on something as simple as, say, speaking the “wrong way”. Even if a dictator acted in a way that gave me what I wanted, I’d still be against that dictator for the simple fact that I believe even people that I dislike deserve the same civil rights and protections that we all share right now. To wit: You don’t deserve to die at the hands of a dictator and his armies, for any reason or none at all, any more than I do.
And I use it in the context of bigots and violent fascists. Note that I disagree with Jim Jordan to the point where I think he’s a fucking moron, but I haven’t actually called him a Nazi. I don’t even refer to the GOP as a Nazi party—even if it is, under the leadership of Donald Trump, approaching something Nazi-esque in its ideology.
You’re not wrong—after all, bigotry alone doesn’t necessarily make someone a fascist. It just makes them a hateful dumbass.
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Re: Re: Re:7
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/03/06/1619-project-new-york-times-mistake-122248
and
https://www.aier.org/article/fact-checking-the-1619-project-and-its-critics/
YOU WANT A DICTATOR IN THE WHITE HOUSE
You really are god’s perfect hypocrite. Congress is allowed to be “intransigent”, you moron. Literally all you mean is that you’re not getting your way. That’s FINE. From the viewpoint of some (like me), that’s often good, even. Our constitutional system has a separation of powers, deadlock is often the result. The INTENDED result.
You do not get to do unconstitutional shit just because you are not getting your way. THAT IS BEING A DICTATOR. Quite literally, you are dictating a result.
You are EVERYTHING you accuse your opponents of being, you stupid shitte.
It’s kinda fffing hilarious, but Donald Trump (who I don’t particularly care for) is in fact more libertine and respects other’s liberty more than you do.
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Wrong, it takes two to reach a compromise, but only one to deadlock by refusing to reach an agreement.
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But it only takes one to abdicate or supinely surrender.
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The facts don’t care about your feelings, snowflake.
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“According to republicans, drag queens kiddy fiddle more than preachers do.”
Cool story, bro.
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Re: Re: Re:2
Not sure about “preachers” but catholic priests definitely have a bad record.
But yeah man, that’s not a high bar. Keep on seeing these stories about trans teachers, school administrators, etc, and then BAAM! Kiddie porn gets found.
So yeah, maybe.
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When people like you find something they do not like, they find porn where none exists..
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So you can’t provide an instance of that happening. Cool.
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What have they done to earn that benefit beyond “winning an election”?
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Ummm…. In case you didn’t notice, in this very story, Techdirt is quite scrupulously giving Jordan as much benefit of the doubt as they can, given that they’re using just the “evidence” that Jim Jordan himself supplied.
To give him credit, Matthew M Bennett brought this issue up (here … I can’t manage a link direct to the post). And amusingly, a number of points in the post above were the same ones I gave Matty in reply.
The solution might be for ChatGPT to write a poem or short story about why Jim Jordan is the coolest politician ever, but that he also must avoid censorship whenever possible
I always trust those who don’t release all the information so you can examine it yourself. Yep, definitely trust worthy behavior.
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… especially since Republicans already have an established record of formally presenting deceptively edited documents as being simple, straight-forward screenshots of actual communications.
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Oh? [Citation needed]
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Congressional record.
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Re: Re: Re:2
[Citation needed]
You have so far said nothing
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Democratic politicians lie every time they accuse former President Trump of leading an insurrection. Democratic party operatives in media like the site owner assist them.
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How quickly people like you forget what many Republicans said publicly the days after Jan 6. For example, Mitch McConnell:
Or Lindsey Graham:
Or Chip Roy:
Tell us, what do you call a violent attack on the democratic process in an effort to stop the peaceful transfer of power to a duly elected President?
You talk about lies, but all I see is someone who lies to themselves to justify a belief divorced from factual reality.
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SOP for the United States in Central and South American countries.
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ie, the CIA playbook.
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The kicker here is that republicans are much more concerned with decorum and “norms” than democrats are, which is why those guys were mad at Trump.
Democrats riot basically every time they lose the presidential election. You often occupy capitals and congress people’s offices. You often lie and claim to have won elections you did not. You routinely make threats of violence.
Why is OK every time leftists do it, (and you guys do it a lot) but if right-wingers do it, a frankly much more mild version of it, it’s the coming of the 4th reich?
If democrats didn’t have double standards they wouldn’t have any standard at all.
Remember when you guys said “emoluments” all day long cuz Trump owned businesses overseas but the Bidens have taken $25M+ from actual enemies of the US, they were co-mingling funds, there’s email saying “10% for the big guy” and you guys want to be like “But when did Xi hand the check to Joe? No no, Hunter doesn’t count”. It’s all just so fffing hilarious.
Gonna tell you a secret: I don’t actually like TRUMP very much. But I want him to win because you deserve him.
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Ummm, no, none of that is true. (Ie. completely delusional).
I’m not even American, and that’s still obvious. In fact, it’s obvious to the entire democratic world — which is why Trumps biggest foreign supporters all around the globe are all nakedly authoritarian dictators.
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Donald Trump is going to be elected President next year, and there’s nothing you butt-hurt liberal progtards can do about it 😀
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*later this year, obviously.
Re: Re: Re:3
It’s funny that you don’t realize something as simple that when your country’s opponents on the world stage are rooting for one particular presidential candidate you should really examine why that is.
Hint: They want the narcissist idiot in power, the one they can lead around on a leash with some basic ego-stroking. Oh, the idiot may bark once or twice and be a bit unpredictable at times but it wont largely matter in the end while he fucks up the US.
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Every accusation, a confession.
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Show me the riots that happened when Donald Trump, George W. Bush, George H.W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan (second term only) won their elections. Go ahead, show me the archival footage and the news reports and the photos that depict people rioting in the street, burning down buildings, and openly threatening violence against government officials only and specifically after (and because) a Democrat lost a presidential election. Please note that peaceful protests do not count as riots.
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Re: Re: Re:2
This was literally the first search result, not gonna spend a lot of time on this:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/11/11/anti-trump-protesters-pepper-sprayed-demonstrations-erupt-across-us/93633154/
Granted, it was a lot more peaceful than BLM riots! But you guys called those “fiery, but mostly peaceful” too.
Oh, you just mean any leftist riot, then?
Cuz 1-6-21 was pretty fffing peaceful, actually.
What strikes me about you, Stephen, is that you really like being lied to.
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Don’t be silly.
Peaceful protests most certainly do count as riots, if the protesters are progressives protesting any “conservative” action.
Also by definition , if violence is committed by “conservative” or “Republican” rioters, it wasn’t actually violent — unless of course, the violence was really a contrived, “false flag” psy-op, clumsily staged by Democrat-aligned “crisis actors”…
Don’t you know anything ??? Wake Up, Sheeple!!!!
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Remember when you guys said “emoluments” all day long cuz Trump owned businesses overseas
Yeah. Remember when you limp dicks did fuck-all about it?
That’s why not making a big deal out of something like that now is making you people crazy. Deal with it, asshole. Or better yet, ask republicans in Congress to do something about it.
Or even better still, ask Trunt to tell them to do something about it, since it’s so important.
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…hallucinated nobody mentally competent, ever.
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Inconveniently for your fact-adverse claims, even Republican-appointed judges, when in the course of their duties are called upon to render a formal verdict on the matter, agree that Trump was leading an insurrection.
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Did Jim Jordan include factual information that congress and the judicial branch all expempted themselves and their staff from Donald Trump’s Presidential Immunity Manhattan Project Injections that most people in this country were forced to receive just in order to participate in society because everyone in congress and the judicial branch know that there is no such thing as covid-19 and that the Manhattan Project Injections were so dangerous that the m-RNA shots had to be stored at the unheard of temps of negative 50 and negative 70 degrees? Nobody needs any m-RNA shot for their body to produce an immune respose. People are in almost all cases fulky autonomous biological systems that do not require regular “medical” intervention, and all traditional vaccines are based on circular logic. It is not possible to prevent oneself from contracting a virus, bacteria, or cancer by injecting oneself with such viruses, bacterias, or cancers and will increase the liklihood that individuals will contract them, not decrease it. Herd immunity survival does not apply to individual members of a herd, but to the herd as a whole, so even if seventy percent of the herd were to die from a disease, for example the Bubonic Plague, the thirty percent that survives is survival of the herd.
George HW Bush did the politically unpopular thing by increasing capital gains taxes. If perot hadn’t run, GHWB would have won the 1992 election. George W Bush cut taxes and they were paid for with the faked 9/11 plane attacks, false flag wars, & increased surveillance of Americans. Trump cut taxes and paid for them with the fake covid-19 virus scam, stock market manipulation seeking wind fall profits off of all of it, and increased surveillance of all Americans.
JFK had the largest tax cut and paid for it with America’s silver reserves. All dimes, quarters, half dollars, and silver dollars went from being solid silver to silver plated in 1964. Reagan’s tax cuts were paid for in large part by eliminating popular write offs including interest payments on cars, credit cards, and other loans that are no longer deductible, and it also resulted in the national debt doubling, high inflation, a recession, the S&L scandal, the Junk Bond Market colkapse, the Crash of 1987, and the creation of the Plunge Protection Team.
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Mr Jordan, is that you?
I don’t get the nom-de-plume — what is it intended to convey?
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No. And neither do you.
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Personally I think Jordan is a lot more reputable than you, but the thing is that’s completely unimportant. You know these emails are not fabricated, and they’re right there in black and white, you can read them yourself, so Jordan’s characterization of the emails (which btw seems 100% accurate) doesn’t matter. You can just read them.
Yesterday you told me were going to show me my lack of “critical thinking” and today you trash talk Jordan for about 1000 words cuz the facts themselves are damning. Yeah man, you sure showed me. (◔_◔)
The events the emails described:
Now what we don’t have is someone making a threat in an email, which wtf is dumb enough to do that? That’s what the meeting was for.
And as in the Bantum case, coercion can be assumed. The case went into it in great detail about it actually.
No, you’re lying here. They met with the white house and immediately implemented the shadowban on 3/9, after already talking with them about that for a week. The email mentioning Buzzfeed is dated 3/12 and they had already implemented the ban apparently directly because of the White House. Good FUD attempt, I guess? Not really.
True!
False. It’s damning regardless, it would just be really clear cut if they made some form of threat. Which will almost certainly have to be discovered in testimony.
It’s worth mentioning that this is almost exactly like what they did with SM, which has already been ruled by courts to be unconstitutional, no direct threats required. That’s been appealed, but there’s basically zero chance SCOTUS will disagree, what the argument is about is what the remedy will be. This situation is arguably worse because it involves the “traditional” censorship in form of books, but the basic fact pattern is the same. The courts have already ruled against you.
Again, this is an active lie. They had already changed their policy 3 days before mentioning Buzzfeed.
Considering you’re actively attempting to mislead on the timeline, I think Jordan is doing much better than you are. But when the facts aren’t on your side, smear, amiright?
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[Asserts facts contrary to extensive evidence]
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The emails do not show a date for the white house meeting. Where are you getting the date from?
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2024/feb/5/biden-administration-pressured-amazon-censure-book/
White House meetings are (supposed to be) kept on a public record, I’ve seen the same thing listed other places, I do not believe that that date is in dispute. They just would have had to look it up.
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Let’s assume the meeting took place on that day. What evidence can you present that proves the change in policy was a direct result of that meeting? The timing of the change is circumstantial and therefore not enough to stand on its own as proof of your claims.
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Every Republican knows, correlation is causation (but only when it’s convenient to a GQP narrative).
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Re: Re: Re:2
No, no it’s not “circumstantial”, it’s in fact highly damning.
You would actually have to get really inventive to find some other reason they enacted the shadowban THAT day, after pushing back for a week.
By all means investigate and get testimony, but to claim that “circumstantial” is nuts.
I also think it’s hilarious you’re whining about “proof” and it’s the very first document dump, kinda shows you know the goose is cooked. This is gonna be a few months.
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Correlation is not causation. Yes, the timing is coincidental, and one shouldn’t trust in coincidences—but without proof that the meeting is what drove Amazon to change its policies, it remains coincidental. That’s why I refer to the timing as circumstantial: On its own, it doesn’t prove your claim that the government coerced Amazon into changing its policies.
Management could’ve been considering the change well before that day and made the change on that day without any direct prompting from the government. You haven’t offered proof to the contrary.
And this dump doesn’t show what you (or Jim Jordan) claim it shows. At best, it confirms the timeline you describe, but it doesn’t actually prove that the government coerced Amazon into changing its policies or “shadowbanning” specific books. If and when the proverbial smoking gun is found, I’ll be more than ready to admit that the evidence proves the claims. But I don’t see a smoking gun here, which means your claims that the smoking gun is in those documents ring hollow.
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Re: Re: Re:4
To be clear, this is the smoking gun stage. We’re moving on to dusting the grip for fingerprints, checking the footage on the cameras, etc.
Yeah it does. If it were a murder investigation, this would be MORE than enough probable cause to get a warrant. Now it’s not, and Congress can just subpoena basically whatever they want anyway. Which they are gonna do. And Masnick will probably whine about it the whole time as if it’s illegitimate, which it never was, but this removes all doubt that there’s just cause to haul people under oath. This is damning as hell. The likelihood of an innocent explanation is very small.
And to be clear, just asking would be bad, and we have proof that they asked.
Re: Re: Re:5
Now it’s not, and Congress can just subpoena basically whatever they want anyway. Which they are gonna do.
Based on their track record so far, that ain’t the sick burn you think it is.
Re: Re: Re:5
Ummm… except that’s not smoke, that’s just dry ice generated fog.
Re: Re: Re:4
They’ll wait forever for the “truth” they knowwill be in the eternally-next document dump. Even from a forum troll character they canonize.
Re: Re: Re:
So nothing yet again.
No facts present. Just what the article claims, not proves.
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Re: Re: Re:2
dafuq? You can look up the whitehouse logs yourself I guess.
Re: Re: Re:3
Or you could. Instead you are claiming that the date of the email is
Re:
Since that’s your modus operandi, you’d be the expert on that.
Re:
He’s not, but go on.
I did. Jordan’s characterization of the emails is inaccurate at best, an outright lie at worst.
The emails may set that timeline (and even that’s a questionable assertion), but they don’t prove that the “shadowbans” occured as a direct result of the meeting with government officials. That’s the problem with the claims both you and Jordan are trying to make: The evidence being presented doesn’t prove those claims. It doesn’t necessarily disprove the claims either, but it sure as hell doesn’t prove them.
Until and unless the Amazon employees in those emails admit that the government directly ordered Amazon to stop selling/promoting those books, coercion can’t be assumed. The supposed timing of the “shadowbans” is, at least with the evidence we have now, circumstantial—which isn’t enough evidence around which an entire legal case could be built.
Prove it with evidence instead of conjecture.
For what reason couldn’t those Amazon employees go on the record in an interview with the press and say “the government coerced us”? I mean, I can’t imagine Amazon execs being hesitant to let employees speak out against government coercion.
…by the Fifth Circuit, which is overturned more than perhaps any other appellate circuit in the United States.
And Jim Jordan, like you, is actively attempting to mislead on the evidence he’s presented—none of which prove that any act of government coercion against Amazon took place. You have a lot of conjecture and assumptions, but you don’t have hard evidence. I read the emails—both before this article was posted and in this article itself—and I don’t see anything more directly damning than Amazon being worried about bad PR from a Buzzfeed article. Give me something more substantive than conjecture and I’ll gladly consider it. Until then: The evidence doesn’t say or imply what you want so hard to believe it does, and insulting me won’t change that.
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Re: Re:
lol
It’s not.
It was after emailing with Slavitt for a week and then the same day they met at the white house. We can settle on “very highly suggestive” if you like. I certainly think further investigation is required. Good thing Jordan is going to be doing that…..
I did, actually. That MM is lying, I mean. Cuz while it only seems nearly guaranteed that this was at the WH urging, it definitely wasn’t because of Buzzfeed, as that was days before. And unless MM is just not paying attention to the dates (yeah, how about that “critical thinking?”) he’s clearly trying to use this email that mentions Buzzfeed to suggest basically the opposite of what’s significant about it. What’s significant about it is that it states the shadowban was implemented 3 days earlier same day they met at the WH. It’s a little bit of slight of hand that works if you’re not looking closely.
If Masnick apologizes about not looking at dates (and claiming “critical thinking” skills), I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and apologize for calling him a liar. But it completely flips the story.
Incorrect, actually. Seriously, read up on that Bantum Books V Sullivan case before you speak further. Even Masnick knows this.
What world do you live in? No, they will have to be subpoenaed, first for a closed door deposition.
Like anything else, it depends on what date range you slice, but according to Ballotpedia, 2007-present it was 9th, 6th, 8th, 5ht, in that order. (no idea why that range was picked)
….you would if you were smarter. For starters, the Buzfeed thing is just a red herring for those who don’t read too carefully, or possibly want to actively mislead like Masnick.
This is the classic smoking gun. Now you go and gather ballistics, shell casings, figer prints, and other forensics, as well as testimony. But to pretend there’s nothing there is just actively lying.
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Re: Re:
lol
It’s not.
It was after emailing with Slavitt for a week and then the same day they met at the white house. We can settle on “very highly suggestive” if you like. I certainly think further investigation is required. Good thing Jordan is going to be doing that…..
I did, actually. That MM is lying, I mean. Cuz while it only seems nearly guaranteed that this was at the WH urging, it definitely wasn’t because of Buzzfeed, as that was days before. And unless MM is just not paying attention to the dates (yeah, how about that “critical thinking?”) he’s clearly trying to use this email that mentions Buzzfeed to suggest basically the opposite of what’s significant about it. What’s significant about it is that it states the shadowban was implemented 3 days earlier same day they met at the WH. It’s a little bit of slight of hand that works if you’re not looking closely.
If Masnick apologizes about not looking at dates (and claiming “critical thinking” skills), I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and apologize for calling him a liar. But it completely flips the story.
Incorrect, actually. Seriously, read up on that Bantum Books V Sullivan case before you speak further. Even Masnick knows this.
What world do you live in? No, they will have to be subpoenaed, first for a closed door deposition.
Like anything else, it depends on what date range you slice, but according to Ballotpedia, 2007-present it was 9th, 6th, 8th, 5ht, in that order. (no idea why that range was picked)
….you would if you were smarter. For starters, the Buzfeed thing is just a red herring for those who don’t read too carefully, or possibly want to actively mislead like Masnick.
This is the classic smoking gun. Now you go and gather ballistics, shell casings, fingerprints, and other forensics, and testimony.
And you and Masnick just want to make it go away. Well, too bad.
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Re: Re:
apparently I have to post this in two sections to get it past Masnick’s filters. This ffing site is from 2005.
lol
It’s not.
It was after emailing with Slavitt for a week and then the same day they met at the white house. We can settle on “very highly suggestive” if you like. I certainly think further investigation is required. Good thing Jordan is going to be doing that…..
I did, actually. That MM is lying, I mean. Cuz while it only seems nearly guaranteed that this was at the WH urging, it definitely wasn’t because of Buzzfeed, as that was days before. And unless MM is just not paying attention to the dates (yeah, how about that “critical thinking?”) he’s clearly trying to use this email that mentions Buzzfeed to suggest basically the opposite of what’s significant about it. What’s significant about it is that it states the shadowban was implemented 3 days earlier same day they met at the WH. It’s a little bit of slight of hand that works if you’re not looking closely.
If Masnick apologizes about not looking at dates (and claiming “critical thinking” skills), I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and apologize for calling him a liar. But it completely flips the story.
Re: Re: Re:
Good job. You got punked by the spam filter… again.
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Re: Re: Re:2
The spam filter sucks and that’s my fault?
Re: Re: Re:3
No, your inability to navigate around it is what makes you suck.
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Re: Re: Re:4
Pretty sure Techdirt is just stuck in 2005 and sucks. But thanks! Your opinion has been noted, and discarded.
Re: Re: Re:5
Pretty sure Techdirt is just stuck in 2005 and sucks.
And yet here you are, despite it sucking so bad.
Either it doesn’t suck, or you’re a lying shitbag.
Which would you prefer to be called, asshole?
Your opinion has been noted, and discarded.
That’s why you’re still baffled by how a spam filter works, dumbass.
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Re: Re:
Incorrect, actually. Seriously, read up on that Bantum Books V Sullivan case before you speak further. Even Masnick knows this.
What world do you live in? No, they will have to be subpoenaed, first for a closed door deposition.
Like anything else, it depends on what date range you slice, but according to Ballotpedia, 2007-present it was 9th, 6th, 8th, 5ht, in that order. (no idea why that range was picked)
….you would if you were smarter. For starters, the Buzfeed thing is just a red herring for those who don’t read too carefully, or possibly want to actively mislead like Masnick.
This is the classic smoking gun. Now you go and gather ballistics, shell casings, fingerprints, and other forensics.
So what you’re saying is, if only Jim Jordan hadn’t blown all his credibility on other nonsense, he would still have some credibility left to blow on this.
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"Hate Speech"
Amazon still does not sell When Harry Became Sally. The most enormous generic bookstore refusing to sell a book because of its viewpoint ought to be a damning indictment, and it was.
Re:
As a privately owned commercial enterprise, Amazon has the right to decide what books it will sell through its service. Your disagreement with its choices is irrelevant.
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Re: Re:
As a large generic bookstore, they have the moral obligation to carry books that their customers want to buy. Refusing to do that is a violation of the fundamental value of free speech. Their right to behave badly does not mean that they should behave badly. And as the documents show, that bad behavior did not go unnoticed, making disagreement with their policy far from irrelevant.
Re: Re: Re:
…hallucinated nobody mentally or morally competent, ever.
Re: Re: Re:
You want to qualify all businesses as “generic” every time they do something you don’t like so you can shoehorn in your mentally ill views how they have a “moral obligation” do what you want.
That you haven’t been institutionalized yet is mindboggling.
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Re: Re: Re:2
I qualify businesses as generic when they’re generic. Amazon is a generic bookstore because it sells every kind of book. X, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram are generic speech platforms because their users talk about every topic.
Re: Re: Re:3
Your desire to regulate speech and commerce based on a “generic” classification is noted for the record.
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Re: Re: Re:4
As always, you want to construe suasion as force so that you can hide behind the legalism of the 1st Amendment.
Re: Re: Re:5
If you want to enforce the “moral obligation” that you believe “generic” businesses must operate under, you can only (legally) do that through laws and regulations.
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Re: Re: Re:6
As usual, you argue with illusory versions of me who say whatever you want then to say so that you can win arguments with yourself.
I don’t want to enforce anything.
Re: Re: Re:7
I don’t want to enforce anything.
You never had the authority to do so anyway. That should have been evident by all of the polite ways you’ve been told to ‘go fuck yourself and take your moral obligation bullshit with you.’
Re: Re: Re:7
You have talked about “proper behavior” and “moral obligations”. You have said that you would harass trans people in public. You have said that you would endlessly harass the owners of social media platforms that don’t live up to your ideas of how they “should” moderate those platforms. All of that talk makes you sound like someone who really wants to enforce their beliefs as law—one way or another.
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Re: Re: Re:8
As usual, you hallucinate versions of myself who say whatever you want them to say so that you can win arguments with yourself.
Everything I say about getting people and companies to behave properly involves criticizing them when they don’t. It never involves force, legal or otherwise, except for using force to prevent others from using force, such as preventing people from forcing their way into single-sex spaces for which their bodies disqualify them or preventing wokie antisemites from trespassing.
Re: Re: Re:9
such as preventing people from forcing their way into single-sex spaces for which their bodies disqualify them or preventing wokie antisemites from trespassing.
You’re a glorified bathroom monitor. Congratulations on such an accomplishment. You know what I call someone who meticulously watches who goes in and out of bathrooms?
Creep, pedo, and groomer come to mind.
I’d ask which camp you align yourself with, but based on your writing style and previous comments, I think it’s pretty self-explanatory.
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Re: Re: Re:10
Criminals don’t like security guards? Quelle surprise.
Re: Re: Re:11
Criminals don’t like security guards? Quelle surprise.
Justify it however you need to you creep. It’ll be funny as fuck to see you get a beatdown when you try to check ID on someone’s daughter.
Re: Re: Re:3
Factual reality proves you wrong because Amazon doesn’t sell every kind of book and social media companies doesn’t allow users to talk about every topic.
But since you are mentally ill you can’t grok that.
Re: Re: Re:4
Hey, don’t slander mentally ill people by comparing them to maga degenerates obsessed with children’s genitalia
Re: Re: Re:
Who is the sole arbiter of morality that decides what obligations Amazon must follow, and what gives them both the authority to make that decision and the power to enforce it?
Seriously, every time you talk about “moral obligations”, you leave out the fact that your idea of a “moral obligation” is a personal opinion and not a binding objective law of either Man or Nature. I want you to tell me who gets to decide what obligations people have in re: morality, because it isn’t you, it isn’t me, and it sure as hell isn’t any living being on this planet.
Much like how you can’t have freedom of religion without being free to choose what religion you’ll follow and which ones you won’t, you can’t have free speech without being free to refuse spreading speech with which you disagree. To say otherwise is to support the idea that someone must speak or distribute speech with which they don’t want to associate. No one should be compelled to do that—including you.
Much like your “moral obligation” idea, the idea of morality in general will always be subjective. You claim that Amazon behaved “badly”, but someone else can claim that Amazon’s actions were morally righteous. What would make your value judgment more correct than theirs—or vice versa?
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Re: Re: Re:2
As always, you want to construe suasion as force so that you can hide behind the legalism of the 1st Amendment.
The person who decides what is morally obligatory is me. I decide, then I criticize those who act differently. Other people do exactly the same thing. When those views of morality contradict each other in roughly equal numbers, we hold a culture war.
People can exercise their free speech in execrable ways. White supremacists get to say “they will not replace us”, and I get to call them repugnant repugnant for saying so, but I resist attempts to forcibly silence them. Amazon has the right to censor the books it offers for sale, and I will say that they are moral villains and cowards for doing that. And I will cheerfully fight culture wars against you, because you are always a wrong wokie.
Hey, is “wookie” also too close to a racial slur? There were people who thought that the Jawas were antisemitic representations of Jews.
Re: Re: Re:3
What gives you the right to decide that for others, then enforce your decision upon them through harassment and possibly even violence?
For the record: Everything I said to Bratty Matt about “wokie” being one step removed from a well-known racial slur and how anyone using “wokie” in any serious way is likely willing to use the aformentioned racial slur if and when they’re among an approving audience, applies to you as well.
Two things:
Well, it’s a theory, but not one to which I would ascribe any real credit or significance. As opposed to numerous other sci-fi/fantasy franchises and settings, Star Wars doesn’t really have much in the way of racial stereotyping in re: its alien species.
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Re: Re: Re:4
The Constitution and the moral values that form its foundation give me the right to decide what what is moral for others. But as usual, you hallucinate things I never said so that you can win arguments with yourself. Everyone else also gets to decide what is moral for others, and no one gets to enforce their morality. They just get to criticize people they think are behaving badly.
Wokie wokie wokie.
Whitey’s on the moon.
Re: Re: Re:5
“The Constitution and the moral values that form its foundation give me the right to decide what what is moral for others.”
Get off my lawn!
Re: Re: Re:5
No, it gives you the right to think you know what is moral for others. It doesn’t give you the right to enforce your ideas on others by saying “I decided, therefore fuck you, behave as I think you should”.
What people get to decide is what they view as immoral. Their view of immoral behavior doesn’t give them the right to enforce that view on people.
Except you, who has openly said that you will endlessly harass people into “behaving properly” according to the “moral obligations” you believe they must follow (to appease you).
Also: You can just say the racial slur if you’re going to do a whole song-and-dance routine around it. I promise that I won’t think any less of you if you do it—because I already think so poorly of you that I already believe you want to say the racial slur anyway.
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Re: Re: Re:6
Freedom of speech includes the freedom to criticize people who are behaving badly for as long as they’re behaving badly (and even afterwards, such as the criticism of Henry Kissinger that never stopped) and regardless of whether the targets like the criticism or wish it would stop. Naturally wokies want to censor criticism of themselves.
I don’t know why you think I want to use racial slurs. Racial slurs imply that there is something intrinsically wrong with an entire group of people because of their race, which is a silly concept. There may be something wrong with a group that has developed an overall aberrant culture, but that won’t apply to every individual within it.
Re: Re: Re:7
You are correct: freedom of speech allows us to criticize Trump, the Republican party, and Jim Jordan for their deeply anti-American views and actions, repeatedly and ad nauseum, despite their desperate attempts to stop them.
Freedom of speech allows those that Trump tried to silence via NDA publish their books that were deeply critical of his actions.
Freedom of speech allows Buzzfeed to run a report critical of Amazon’s promotion of maliciously misleading books masquerading as medical manuals, and Freedom of Speech allows Amazon to decide to stop promoting that.
Freedom of speech even allows Government to talk about stuff and to ask questions about corporate policies regarding the content they promote, so long as Government doesn’t try to coerce it.
If only you actually supported Freedom of speech.
I hope you find Jesus, Matthew. You would do well to learn that level of compassion.
Re: Re: Re:8
Bratty Matty doesn’t want anything to do with Jesus since Jesus is woke as fuck.
Re: Re: Re:9
And that’s exactly the type of person who needs Jesus the most.
Re: Re: Re:10
The one with the whip, I hope.
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Re: Re: Re:8
Freedom of speech does not let the administration tell Amazon what books to censor, and that appears to be exactly what happened here.
Re: Re: Re:9
May the good Lord open your eyes, your mind, and fill your heart with compassion and love for your fellow human and a desire to grow.
May you find solace and succor from the anger and pain, and may you find refuge in the Truth.
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Re: Re: Re:8
I’m not Matthew. If you would like not be confused about who is saying what, you can try to convince the site owner not to send my signed-in comments to moderation.
You are correct about your free speech views, except that the problem with government and companies is not the government trying to censor the companies, but with cooperative companies helping the government censor the public.
Gods do not exist, and have never existed. Neither has any form of the supernatural or “woo”, such as ghosts, ESP, cryptozoological life forms, or extraterrestrial visitors. Your faith in Jesus is misplaced, and it is one of the frustrating features of atheism that believers in an afterlife will never see that they were wrong.
Re: Re: Re:9
…hallucinated nobody mentally competent, ever.
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Re: Re:
Notice, by the way, that Amazon carries books by David Icke which, aside from being absolutely looney-tunes, are also explicitly antisemitic, fitting right in with the antisemitism of Alice Walker.
Saying that men can never be women is forbidden. Saying that the world is controlled by Jews and lizard people is fine. Wokies are poison. Wokies are death.
Re: Re: Re:
By the same token, Amazon carries books by Tucker Carlson, Bill O’Reilly, and other right-wing media figures who are known to be bigots in one form or another. You’re acting like Amazon only carries “liberal books”, but it carries books from across the political spectrum and books known to offend even liberals based on their content or the beliefs of their authors (e.g., books by H.P. Lovecraft). To say or imply otherwise is to lie.
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Re: Re: Re:2
I honestly have no idea what Amazon is thinking. They carry Irreversible Damage, so it’s not as if they have banned all books arguing against woke gender ideology. On the other hand, have they banned any left-wing books at all?
BTW, has the T crowd reclaimed “tranny hooker”? I see Amazon also carries an e-book called Tranny Traitor Hooker Spy.
Re: Re: Re:3
It wouldn’t matter if they had. Amazon has the legal right to decide what books it will and won’t sell through its marketplace regardless of the political leanings of the book or its author(s). No amount of whining about “wokeness” or “moral obligations” or “behaving properly” will ever change that fact. If you don’t like the way Amazon curates its marketplace, go find another bookseller and buy your books through them.
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Re: Re: Re:4
Barnes & Noble does sell When Harry Became Sally, so, found.
Amazon’s legal right to not sell whatever they don’t want is not in dispute. As usual, you hide behind legalisms to avoid coming to grips with the fact that Amazon is behaving immorally by censoring what it will sell based on viewpoint. Because they are doing so, they should be urged, shamed, convinced, boycotted, or bought to get them to change their behavior.
Amazon says that they will not sell books that “frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness”. This is a problem, because the TQ identities are in fact mental illnesses, so Amazon will not sell books that proclaim truth about reality. In a free society, a generic bookseller has the moral obligation not to impose its views and values on its customers, much the same as a wedding-cake baker.
Re: Re: Re:5
The stupidity in this statement is astounding. What you are arguing for is that the laws and rules we as a society has created doesn’t matter one but and should be superseded by personal morals. And then the question becomes, whose morals should reign supreme?
If a company find some items immoral in some way, the morally right thing for them is not to sell those items. And that is something else you don’t understand, morals are subjective but somehow you think your “morals” is better than what other people believe.
The simple truth is that you want to decide for everyone else what is right or wrong, and if history shows us one thing is that people who think like that and who possess a smidgen of power will enforce their morals on others by almost any means including the genocide of groups of people they think are morally wrong.
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Re: Re: Re:6
Given that we see the wokies cheering the rape, murder, and kidnapping of Jews, you are correct about ultimate outcomes, but not in the way you think you are.
Legal and moral are not the same thing. Part of living in a free society is that people may behave legally but not morally. Another part is that those people may be criticized for their behavior.
If I didn’t think my morals were better than others, I would change them. People are free not to behave the way I think they should, and I am free to tell them they’re wrong.
Re: Re: Re:7
And yet, you demand that businesses concede to a “moral obligation” to “behave properly”—i.e., to act as if your morality is the law. Example: You demand that Amazon sell a transphobic book and say that its refusal to sell that book is “censorship” even though you’ve proven that the book can be found through other outlets. And you’ve made clear that you will endlessly harass Amazon until it “behaves properly” and upholds a “moral obligation” you spun out of thin air. You can say “legal and moral are not the same thing”, but your entire schtick about “generic speech platforms” and such hinges on how you view your morality as an objective fact that should be the law. Your own posting history betrays your attempts to not sound like a fascist.
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Re: Re: Re:8
Censorship is the act of the censor, silencing speech based on viewpoint on platforms the censor controls. The ability of the silenced to speak elsewhere is irrelevant.
As usual, you hallucinate illusory versions of me who say what you want them to say so that you can win arguments with yourself. As usual, you want to construe suasion as force for that you can hide behind the legalism of the 1st Amendment.
As a member of a free society, I can demand that companies accept their moral obligations and behave properly. As members of a free society, companies are free to refuse my demands. As a member of a free society, I can criticize them for their refusal, and I can continue that criticism for as long as I like and as harshly as I like.
Naturally, as a wokie, you want to censor criticism against the false beliefs you wish were true.
Re: Re: Re:9
Haven’t you been committed yet?
Re: Re: Re:9
You got anything other than stale-ass copypasta that not even a volcano could reheat properly and the latent desire to harass people into compliance with your ideas of how they should behave?
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Re: Re: Re:10
You are consistently writing in the same ways. I didn’t need to change how I tell you that.
Given that wokies want men to be able to force their way into women’s single-sex spaces and have changed the law to make that happen in places where they have captured local government, you claiming that I want to harass people into compliance with my views is ironically idiotic.
Re: Re: Re:11
“Wrong”, not “writing”, although that works too.
Re: Re: Re:11
And yet, here you are, harassing Techdirt’s commenters and writers until they believe and act as you think they should.
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Re: Re: Re:12
I will continue to criticize and correct TechDirt’s commenters and writers whenever they are wrong on a matter I care about.
Re: Re: Re:13
You can’t “continue” something you’ve never started, moron.
Re: Re: Re:11
No amount of gaslighting isn’t gonna change the fact that you were banned from those Republican sites because of the same behavior you exhibit here.
Your anti-intellectual Nazi bullshit was not tolerated there, and it’s not tolerated here, and will never be tolerated anywhere.
Re: Re: Re:12
Given that the only consequence of your intolerance is having my posts flagged or long ongoing threads where I correct your errors, your intolerance is, and always will be, singularly ineffective.
Re: Re: Re:9 Private company
Amazon I a private company and can censor its content legally in any way they wish to.
You have the right to boycott them for their choices of content access. Or content censorship.
Re: Re: Re:5
In an actual free society, a private company can offer any goods or services they want as long as no harm befalls protected demographic groups and no illegality occurs.
In other words, Amazon can sell whatever books it wants, and while you’re free to try to bully them into doing something else, they’re free to completely ignore your verbal and literary diarrhea.
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Re: Re: Re:6
Exactly correct. Maybe you can teach Stone, since he completely fails to understand this?
Re: Re: Re:7
Morbid curiosity compels me to ask ..
What exactly is Stone not understanding about the comment to which you replied?
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Re: Re: Re:8
He claims to think that “bullying” – that is, criticizing – a company for its behavior is the same as forcing it to behave differently.
He claims to think that I want to legally force companies to behave the way I want them to in contradiction to their constitutional rights to behave as they wish.
Re: Re: Re:9
Tell that to those Republican sites you were banned from, Hyman.
Re: Re: Re:9
Interesting .. what are your thoughts on what has become known as ‘boycotting’ a business? Is this criticizing on steroids or just not associating with those you disagree?
Does your answer depend upon what the business is doing that others object to?
Re: Re: Re:10
Boycotting is, and always has been, a legitimate way of criticizing a business and getting it to change, irrespective of the viewpoint being criticized. As long as the boycott is voluntary, of course. Coercive boycotts, where people are violently prevented from patronizing the affected businesses, should be stopped by law enforcement and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
State law in this realm is not yet settled, I believe, when it is the government that wants to boycott a business. For example, some states refuse to do business with entities that support Muslim terrorism and antisemitism, and there has been pushback against this on 1st Amendment grounds from those entities that want to receive state contracts despite having those despicable views.
Re: Re: Re:5
“a generic bookseller has the moral obligation not to impose its views and values on its customers, much the same as a wedding-cake baker.”
Wait a sec … the book seller is custom writing books per customers requests?
I do not see the similarities you claim.
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Re: Re: Re:6
A large generic bookstore should not refuse to sell books that disagree with the owner’s viewpoint. A wedding-cake baker should not refuse to prepare cakes for weddings the baker believes should not be taking place.
People go to service industries to receive services. If the owners want to lecture on morality, they should do it on their own time, not as part of their business. But note that should. If they want to apply their morals to their behavior with customers, they are allowed to. They can be criticized for it, but not forced to stop.
Re: Re: Re:7
They are not the same and therefore any comparisons between the two are of little use.
The cake maker makes cakes to order, the book seller sells books written by others not necessarily to order.
The book seller is not writing books. I doubt you understand the difference.
Re: Re: Re:7
Should a bookstore lose its business license because it decided to exercise its First Amendment rights of association and free speech by refusing to sell a certain book?
Not all businesses offer all the same services and products. A small bookstore doesn’t have the ability to stock as many books as a Barnes & Noble, after all. If one store doesn’t have what you want, you can always find another one that does.
Except your whole deal is that you’ve literally said you won’t stop criticizing them—harassing them, really—until they stop behaving in a way you don’t like. I don’t see how that couldn’t be anything but forcing them to stop under threat of endless unyielding harassment.
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Re: Re: Re:8
As always, you want to construe criticism as force so that you can say that force cannot be legally used.
It is fine to criticize people whether they like it or not. If people change their behavior in response to relentless criticism, that’s good – that’s what the criticism is supposed to accomplish.
Re: Re: Re:9
When does criticism cross over to harassment?
Is there a fine line or is it a huge gray area?
Does this gray area increase/decrease with subject matter?
Does this criticism/harassment ever become disturbing the peace? Is this dependent upon who you are in our system of class?
Re: Re: Re:10
Well, just consider his behavior on this site and what he has said about his behavior towards people or companies that doesn’t adhere to his personal morals, then compare that to the definition of harassment:
Seems to me he passed any kind of threshold a very very long time ago.
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Re: Re: Re:10
Most people think it crosses over once it’s directed at them. Too bad.
There are laws regarding time, place, and manner, which can make speech and criticism become illegal harassment. For example, there’s the wokie crowd cheering the murder, rape, and kidnapping of Jews while trespassing in various places.
Re: Re: Re:11
Fuckhead.
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Techdirt staff,
Can you pleaee tell me why some of my comments are either being deleted or flagged? Many of my comments have been hacked by someone or a malicious bot and have been filled with typos by the hacker or malicious bot,
Re:
The TechDirt staff will get right on that.
Re:
Shit, bratty mattys not the only one who got punked by the spam filter.
Re:
Two things:
1) It’s not the staff, your comments are being flagged/hidden by users due to being filled with incoherent rambling.
2) Blaming typos on ‘hacking’ is certainly a new one, so thanks for the laugh.
Re: Re:
There’s also “blame WordPress” when 1 and 2 do not apply.
IIRC, WordPress can get real bloated once you pile on the plugins, and s8nce this is a custom build of WP, I’m assuming it’s also got weird, funky bugs as well…
Re: Re: Re:
If no one else has these kind of problems, it is in all likelihood a PEBKAC-situation.
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Re: Re:
No no, it’s that most of you are hateful shits, actually
Re: Re: Re:
No no, it’s that most of you are hateful shits, actually
Act like an asshole, and you get treated like one.
Cry harder, fuck your feelings, he lost, get over it, and all those other fun phrases you people created.
Re:
You are the malicious bot.
Re:
“Many of my comments have been hacked by someone or a malicious bot and have been filled with typos ”
and then your browser mysteriously closed followed by the laptop rebooting?
Looks like a nothingburger to me
Frankly, I don’t see anything wrong with a government agency tasked with people’s health asking a company “don’t these treatises violate your policies?”. That’s good use of resources. The problem would be if they were asking “don’t those treatises violate our policies?”.
The former is being attentive where this may promote public health. The latter is trying to impose rules and indeed is related to censorship.
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Re:
Thankfully the courts almost universally disagree.
Jim Jordan would certainly be wrestling with his conscience if he possessed such a thing.
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Start with the facts
The White House has no business discussing anything with these companies or any company about policies. That’s the end of the whole discussion.
If the president has an issue he asks Congress to address it.
Re:
The White House isn’t separate from the government, it’s an integral part of the government.
Why?
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Re: Re:
Because it is impossible to separate the statement of a person from the position of a person.
Any statement from the president comes off as looking like the president, the office, making the statement. Any statement from a Congress member, governor, etc.
Any communication comes off looking like an “or else”.
Even if or else is never stated. Because the office is the apparent speaker.
Re: Re: Re:
So, you’re saying the White House, and any government entity in general, is not allowed to communicate anything to interested parties, whatsoever, save for emergency broadcasts and the like?
That sounds like a recipe for disaster, especially when it comes to health matters, and, oh, cybersecurity nonsense.
That’s certainly… an opinion.
Re: Re: Re:2
Especially matters of grave public concern—like, say, a pandemic involving a devastating respiratory disease that also fucks with people’s immune systems.
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Re: Re: Re:2
If they are not violating the law, the government has no business suggesting what they do or do not sell. What they do or do not post. What they do or do not allow.
Especially matters of content.
Re: Re: Re:3
Which hasn’t happened yet.
All we’re seeing for now is the White House (and related government bodies) informing Amazon that some of their items MIGHT be violating their terms and conditions.
Which is no different from the FBI INFORMING STAKEHOLDERS ABOUT RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE/DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGNS AND OTHER RELATED CYBERTHREATS TO THEIR FUCKING PLATFORMS. Or the CDC FLAGGING DISINFO POSTS.
And Amazon apparently pulled those books as a response to a BUZZFEED ARTICLE. Unless you have actual evidence that Biden or any of his administration paid money to Buzzfeed for a hatchet job, this is all the evidence we have, and no, the spineless, limpdicked vulture known as Joe Biden is fully incapable of doing anything beyond pretending to care or even competent/petty enough to do something like that.
Seriously, the only thing you’re saying is that the government should not be allowed to do anything, despite all the fucking case law, checks and balances that barely work on a good day, because the government MIGHT go full 1984.
News fucking flash, coward. YOU VOTED A DICTATOR INTO THE WHITE HOUSE IN 2016 AND CONTINUE TO DEFEND HIM. And all those things you accuse Biden of? The Twitter bullshit was under TRUMP’S ADMIN.
But hey, maybe a return to the 1970s might be a wake-up call for you. If you didn’t know, that was when Soviet saboteurs actually infiltrated the US and managed to do a fair bit of armed robbery and terrorist bombings. Replace the Soviet-trained saboteurs with Chinese-, Russian- and Saudi-backed ones and well…
After all, if the government isn’t allowed to say or do anything despite all the case law AND checks and balances, maybe a Wagner Group cell, a Confucius Institute acting to disrupt American peace and the Saudis looking to terrorize the NYT might be something you want in the future.
Re: Re: Re:2
The government is free to proffer its own views on whatever it wants. What it should not do, and what it should not be allowed to do, is to ask for opposing views to be silenced.
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That’s an inaccurate understanding of the restrictions the Constitution place on government. I’ll assume by “these companies” you’re meaning to discuss the realm of content moderation; i.e. what the contents of the books the distributor is hosting contain, etc. etc. and what their policies on said content should be, since policies that don’t deal with speech and expression are an extremely different scenario.
The First Amendment is what applies to that realm (and this nothingburger of a “discovery” by Jimmy-boi), and the First Amendment says:
In regards to this situation in particular, the relevant section is “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…” – and potentially also “or the right of the people peaceably to assemble.”
Very few words, with broad-ranging effect. Notably it says nothing about the White House, but after decades of judicial review of multiple aspects of governmental behavior and how it intersects with the first amendment, the basic rule is that coercion and material enticement doesn’t fly, from any government officer, but persuasion can.
When it comes speech (aka expression, association, etc.), if all government does is say “we’d like X to happen, and here are the reasons we think it’s a good idea,” there is no problem from a First Amendment standpoint. This is purely the expression of information and opinion; the audience is entirely free to agree, disagree, ignore, and express their own opinions and provide their own information.
In this context, if all government said was “we found these books and we were wondering if they violated your policies” – no issue. Even if government said “We’d like it if these were not promoted, because we think they can cause these types of harms to your customers, but it remains your choice,” then there’s still no problem.
But if government follows up on “we’d like X to happen” with “and we’ll penalize if it doesn’t” (and even potentially “and we’ll reward if it does”) then we have censorship attempts. And yes, if government communicates badly (and sometimes they do that intentionally), then the simple discussion can wind up implying governmental coercion if people disagree with them, which also runs afoul of the First Amendment. So government communications do well to always qualify “we’d like X to happen” with “we won’t do anything if you don’t, and it remains your choice.”
But government can still talk (unless the Supreme Court decides otherwise, further calling into question the judicial integrity of its members and further cementing the general populace’s assessment of the body as a whole having abandoned its role in government in favor of partisan politics).
If government can’t talk about policy within the bounds describe above, then government can’t share or discuss concerns raised by constituents (aka the governed themselves), or share the results of research along with recommendations of what to do with the results. That type of restriction could itself have a chilling effect on general expression by the public: when it works well, the representative’s pulpit can be a megaphone for the general public, so that small voices will actually be heard by entities that would otherwise ignore it. I’m not in favor of handing that broad a weapon to the corporations.
So… nah. Government in general does have business discussing policy with these companies, provided it sticks to the allowable grounds.
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Re: Re:
The problem is not so much with the government coercing censorship from private companies. The problem is companies entering into willing complicity with the government to censor speech which both the government and the companies want silenced. When censorship is outsourced to private entities, everything may be legal, but it’s morally indefensible in a country that has free speech as a foundational value.
That is the essential TechDirt problem. The site owner claims to support free speech, but he supports it only in the context of forcible government censorship. When the censorship is outsourced to willing private entities, he cheers it when the silenced speech is of viewpoints he hates.
Re: Re: Re:
Fuck off Hyman.