Hyman Rosen 's Techdirt Comments

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  • Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 31 May, 2022 @ 07:49am

    Too many links?

    I've had two comments disappeared from here. I had multiple links in them (because people here love to sealion "citation needed"). Is that a thing here? I was pointing out that woke ideologues like book censorship just fine when they're the ones doing it, and I had links to the ABA shuttle apologizing for sending out Abigail Shruer's book, Amazing refusing to sell Ryan Anderson's book, and some independent bookstores stopping the same of Harry Potter books.

  • Very, Very Little Of ‘Content Moderation’ Has Anything To Do With Politics

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 26 May, 2022 @ 06:31pm

    Umm, yes it does. Twitter is free to decide what its policies are. Everyone is free to offer their suggestions to Twitter as to what its policies should be. Everyone with wherewithal is free to buy Twitter and run it as they choose. Understand that everything Twitter is doing for woke gender ideology Florida can do against woke gender ideology.

  • Very, Very Little Of ‘Content Moderation’ Has Anything To Do With Politics

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 26 May, 2022 @ 08:27am

    This is the same false and repeatedly struck-down argument that public universities who try to impose "free-speech zones" make.

  • Very, Very Little Of ‘Content Moderation’ Has Anything To Do With Politics

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 26 May, 2022 @ 08:24am

    One way to look at it is, if this action were taken by the government, would it violate the 1st Amendment? If so, then it's censorship and a violation of the free speech rights of the person being censored, even if the action is legal for whomever is doing it, and even if that action is part of the free speech rights of whomever is doing it. These notions that "it's not censorship if I'm allowed to do it" and "it's not censorship if all I'm doing is impeding speech here" are self-serving twaddle that the woke tell themselves as long as the censorship regime is going their way.

  • Very, Very Little Of ‘Content Moderation’ Has Anything To Do With Politics

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 26 May, 2022 @ 08:18am

    How many flagged posts here are actually abusive, trolling, or spam? It is abundantly clear that the woke ideologues of the Techdirt commentariat do whatever they can to silence posts they disagree with. If they could do more than flag, they would, but fortunately, for now the site doesn't allow that.

  • Very, Very Little Of ‘Content Moderation’ Has Anything To Do With Politics

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 26 May, 2022 @ 08:10am

    [growls in monster-like tones] Do what, get me to leave? Why would I do that? Sailing the boat of truth in the sea of error is so much fun!

  • Very, Very Little Of ‘Content Moderation’ Has Anything To Do With Politics

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 26 May, 2022 @ 08:07am

    Why do you think that being allowed to control your property prevents such control from being against the principles of freedom of speech? Freedom of speech is (duh) about the freedom to speak. If you deny someone the ability to speak, you are taking away their freedom of speech, even if you are allowed to do that, and even if they can speak elsewhere.

  • If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 24 May, 2022 @ 09:12am

    There are always people who assert that their own beliefs are so unassailably correct that no dissent needs to be tolerated. The Inquisition burned its heretics and the Communists put opponents in lunatic asylums. Transwomen are men. You can redefine the words any way you like, but you don't get to force anyone else to adopt your definitions. You can try to hound dissenters into silence, but you don't have the numbers to succeed. And places like Florida and Texas are going to return the favor, to the detriment of everyone.

  • If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 24 May, 2022 @ 07:12am

    It is not sidetracking. A major argument of TERFs is that woke gender ideologues are having men who claim to be women usurp the positions of real women. Naturally, woke gender ideologues would like to forbid such arguments from being spoken, but those arguments are very much to the point. Magic the Gathering has very few women game designers, and claiming that some of its designing men are women does not change that.

  • If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 24 May, 2022 @ 07:07am

    The trans people who are murdered are Black prostitutes. That is, they are criminal or criminal-adjacent young Black men, and they are murdered by other young Black men the way normal criminal and criminal-adjacent young Black men are murdered by other young Black men.

  • If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 24 May, 2022 @ 05:51am

    To elaborate, I was responding to the false characterization of "what we want", or at least what I want. Since I am describing what I want, I do get to also define hate speech the way I want. Dr. Rachel Levine and Lia Thomas are men. To refuse to allow such "misgendering" to be stated is to refuse to allow woke gender ideology to be contradicted. This is why I said that the supposed things I want are actually what woke ideologues want - the ability to define what speech is out of bounds and the refusal to allow criticism or contradiction. And, as usual and no matter how many times the woke ideologues here will not hear it, I am not seeking to impose anything on any platform. I, and others with more influence, are seeking, through criticism, to get the platforms to understand that viewpoint-based censorship is against the principles of free speech and that they should do better. When those people who took the "go elsewhere" advice seriously and went elsewhere, woke ideologues pursued them and tried to shut them down at their new location. Even without that, censorship on a platform is still censorship. Woke ideologues claim otherwise when the censorship is in a direction they like. But when Florida public schools adopt a curriculum that does not let woke ideologue teachers speak in the way they would like, woke ideologues squeal in dismay, instead of saying that those teachers can go teach elsewhere. Finally, the reason I simply said that the last claim was false is that I do not seek the right not to be criticized back. What else should I have said to that?

  • If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 23 May, 2022 @ 06:56am

    Sure. The woke ideologues here like to use constricted definitions so that they can "win" dictionary arguments. When normal people think of a public square, they imagine a place where people can freely gather to speak about any topic. The large platforms like Twitter act like a public square, so when they decide to impose viewpoint-based censorship, naturally people get annoyed. To the woke ideologues here, people should never have thought of the platforms as a public square because they're not government-owned, and therefore the people should stop complaining. (Of course, when the government of Florida exercises its right to set the public school curriculum, the woke squeal in outrage.)

  • If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 23 May, 2022 @ 06:40am

    No one "deserves" a right. Twitter has the right to moderate as it wishes. Twitter should not use viewpoint-based censorship because that is antithetical to the free speech of its users, and Twitter should prefer free speech to censorship. Criticizing Twitter is a way to try to convince it that its current principles are wrong and that it should do better. They have the choice to listen or not, and they might be bought by someone who will have different principles. It's not that Twitter is too big to be allowed to moderate. It's that Twitter, and Facebook and similar platforms, are set up as generic speech platforms where people come with an expectation that they can discuss anything they like. The platforms are allowed to violate those expectations, but they shouldn't. Nine of this is about coercing the platforms to change (except for the Texas law, which is unconstitutionally awful), only about encouraging them to change.

  • If You Think Free Speech Is Defined By Your Ability To Be An Asshole Without Consequence, You Don’t Understand Free Speech (But You Remain An Asshole)

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 23 May, 2022 @ 05:32am

    The vast majority of transwoman of color who are murdered in the U.S.A. are prostitutes. That is, they are young Black men involved in criminal or criminal-adjacent activity and they are murdered in the same way other such Black men are murdered, by other similarly situated young Black men. It is, of course, a taboo of woke race ideology to talk about the murder of Black people by other Black people. Black lives matter only when they are taken by white people.

  • Boiling Elon Musk – Jumping Out Of The Pot Of Platform Law?

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 16 May, 2022 @ 12:05pm

    Yes, but only in the sense that I want to create an ideal master human race. There's nothing wrong with a eugenics that seeks to do away with disabilities and other genetic flaws. Eugenics does not have to be aberrant and racist.

  • Boiling Elon Musk – Jumping Out Of The Pot Of Platform Law?

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 16 May, 2022 @ 11:51am

    Threshold effect. People often stay as things get steadily worse until there's a straw that breaks the camel's back. Like that old story about the farmer training his donkey to go without food.

  • Boiling Elon Musk – Jumping Out Of The Pot Of Platform Law?

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 15 May, 2022 @ 11:10am

    It is not clear that a website dedicated to people speaking with each other should be in the business of deciding what is true, even were they capable of doing so.

  • Boiling Elon Musk – Jumping Out Of The Pot Of Platform Law?

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 15 May, 2022 @ 11:03am

    Since the question is whether the terms of service are correct, it is no answer at all to say that Trump was banned for violating them.

  • Boiling Elon Musk – Jumping Out Of The Pot Of Platform Law?

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 15 May, 2022 @ 11:01am

    Advocating for forced abortions is a legitimate point of view. China did it for many years to control population. Some people, myself included, believe that it's immoral to deliberately create a disabled child by allowing a fetus with known developmental issues to come to term. I do not advocate for forced abortions in that case, believing that such a regime would cause more problems than it solves, but it would not be unreasonable for people to believe otherwise.

  • Boiling Elon Musk – Jumping Out Of The Pot Of Platform Law?

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 15 May, 2022 @ 10:57am

    That depends on what Twitter wants to be known for, and what people think Twitter is for. If Twitter wants to be a site for woke ideologues to talk to each other, they should say so. If people believe that Twitter is a place for all people to speak with each other but it's not, people will naturally complain. Woke ideologues telling people to go elsewhere does not address that problem of Twitter.

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