Hyman Rosen 's Techdirt Comments

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  • On the post: The US Government Has Not Justified A TikTok Ban

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 26 Mar, 2023 @ 06:17am

    I don't know if I'm of the left or not, but I would go to the death mat for TikTok because it is a violation of free speech and the 1st Amendment for the government to ban a speech platform. As usual, freedom had no friends. There are only self-interested partisans who will try to silence anything for their own convenience.

  • On the post: Antisemitism On Twitter Has More Than Doubled Since Elon Musk Took Over

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 24 Mar, 2023 @ 10:07am

    The evil of the Capitol riot was not in the rioters themselves, who were just a mob who should have been shot the moment they began trespassing and would not obey orders to leave. The evil was in the Republican representatives who would not vote to certify the election mere hours after. No matter how much I go on about woke ideology here, always remember that woke ideology is more stupid than evil, while Republicans are literally evil. I would sooner vote for a transwoman weightlifter in drag giving a show to kindergarteners about the medals he's won as a woman than for even the best Republican.

  • On the post: Judge Says White House Can’t Get Out Of Lawsuit Over Pressuring Social Media To Moderate

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 24 Mar, 2023 @ 09:56am

    Right. When there's a motion to dismiss, the court treats the other side's allegations as if they are true, and will dismiss the case only if, given that, they still could not win based on the law.

  • On the post: Judge Says White House Can’t Get Out Of Lawsuit Over Pressuring Social Media To Moderate

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 23 Mar, 2023 @ 11:52pm

    Note that this is just a denial of a motion to dismiss. That means that the case gets to be tried on its merits, and all of the section 230 and 1st Amendment issues will be adjudicated there. Not only is the sky not falling, it's not even cracked.

  • On the post: Antisemitism On Twitter Has More Than Doubled Since Elon Musk Took Over

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 23 Mar, 2023 @ 05:40pm

    BLM Riot Destruction in Minnesota

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_arson_damage_during_the_George_Floyd_protests_in_Minneapolis%E2%80%93Saint_Paul Pictures and all.

  • On the post: Antisemitism On Twitter Has More Than Doubled Since Elon Musk Took Over

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 23 Mar, 2023 @ 08:52am

    This is a very common antisemitic trope, trying to defang a word that means hatred of Jews by playing with the meaning of "semite". No one has ever done this with good intentions.

  • On the post: Antisemitism On Twitter Has More Than Doubled Since Elon Musk Took Over

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 23 Mar, 2023 @ 08:45am

    And I'm saying that this notion that more free speech on all sides of an issue will result in the things you say is wishful thinking in your part. This is what you would like to have happen when platforms allow views you hate. Perhaps Twitter is evidence for your point, perhaps it is just temporary risk aversion during a period of turmoil. We'll see. Oh, and apparently I'm behind the times; Newsmax is back on DirecTV.

  • On the post: Antisemitism On Twitter Has More Than Doubled Since Elon Musk Took Over

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2023 @ 09:21pm

    That's how they grow bacterial cultures in Georgia.

  • On the post: Reminder: Section 230 Protects You When You Forward An Email

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2023 @ 09:09pm

    On a platform where communication is in writing, no one can be heckled or intimidated into silence unless they choose to be. Just as an example, none of the screeching directed at me here has had any effect. Not even the half-hearted attempts to silence by annoyance using the moderation queue and flagging have had any effects, except to get me to post as nit signed in.

  • On the post: Reminder: Section 230 Protects You When You Forward An Email

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2023 @ 03:55pm

    The firmness of your belief in an ideology does not make it true, and telling you that the ideology is false does not make it "x-phobic", a term designed to dismiss dissent as hatred. It is not antisemitism to declare that the religious beliefs of Jews are false - that there are no gods, that the world was not created, that there was no enslavement or exodus from Egypt, and so on. (And the same for all other religions, of course.) Some Jews may feel personally attacked by such claims, but that doesn't make them any less true, and does not make hatred the basis of those claims. The same goes for gender ideology. Transwomen are men. To quote an ad truck that was driving around NYC the other day, "Woman is not an idea". People who support gender ideology may feel personally attacked by those who point out the physical impossibility of their claims, and think that those people hate them for their disorder, but that just isn't so. What we hate is the attempt to force us to affirm lies and to trample over our own beliefs and practices in the name of those lies.

  • On the post: Reminder: Section 230 Protects You When You Forward An Email

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2023 @ 12:36pm

    I post as signed-out because Masnick sends all of my signed-in posts to moderation, making the resulting conversation feel like communicating with someone on Mars, or worse. Given that it's not effective at stopping me or anyone else from posting as AC, and given that everyone responds to these posts anyway, the only reason for this moderation is for Masnick to harass people he doesn't like, just like the flagging system lets commenters harass people they don't like. But that does not incline me to post less, or to change my views or how I speak about them.

  • On the post: Net Neutrality’s Dead: Time To Focus On The Real Issue: Telecom Monopolization

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2023 @ 12:17pm

    What Competition?

    Rural communities have trouble attracting even one service provider, let alone multiple ones who will complete for business. The same thing happens with rural hospitals. Everything is too widespread and sparse for infrastructure to be profitable. So you get government subsidized or government mandated service, and the companies do as little as they can get away with.

  • On the post: Net Neutrality’s Dead: Time To Focus On The Real Issue: Telecom Monopolization

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2023 @ 08:25am

    What does that even mean? Politics is how different groups with different ideas engage and negotiate with each other in the process of defining government policy. It always seems to me that people who talk about getting politics out of policy just mean getting their own way without opposition. But opposition exists, and you don't get to have what you want just because you want it.

  • On the post: Reminder: Section 230 Protects You When You Forward An Email

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2023 @ 08:12am

    I don't think of myself as being the same as the others with whom you included me, but of course I would say that. There's a certain sense in your post that you and your like-thinkers want to sit around and pat yourselves on the back for being so wise and perspicacious, and people like me just get in the way of that. I think that the TechDirt owners and community are fundamentally wrong about some things, and are wrong in that way on an ongoing basis, and that, while I have no hope of actually changing your minds, I can at least demonstrate that these views are not universal. I think that TechDirt and its community also construe dissent as hatred so as not to have to engage meaningfully with that dissent, and instead just silence it. (Saying "go elsewhere to speak" does not address the issue of silencing dissent here.)

  • On the post: Reminder: Section 230 Protects You When You Forward An Email

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2023 @ 07:39am

    Both moderation and censorship are the free speech of the people doing the silencing. The free speech rights of one party can be used to suppress the free speech of another. Moderation silences speech based on form, while censorship silences speech based on viewpoint.

  • On the post: Appeals Court Says Nope To Florida Governor’s ‘Stop Woke’ Law, Denies Request To Lift Injunction Against It

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2023 @ 07:25am

    Defining Wokeness

    Freddie deBoer has an essay doing that. My own definition is a constellation of false and evil left-wing policies that deny reality, including gender ideology and critical race theory. His is more nuanced.

  • On the post: Antisemitism On Twitter Has More Than Doubled Since Elon Musk Took Over

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2023 @ 07:15am

    Embedded in your premise is your wish that things turn out that way. But we have existence proofs to the contrary. Fox News is the highest-rated cable news show. Newsmax was dropped by DirectTV because of failed negotiations over carriage fees, not because of content. Rush Limbaugh was hugely successful. That you would like sites to fail when they host speech you don't like doesn't mean that they will, no matter how you fantasize about it.

  • On the post: Antisemitism On Twitter Has More Than Doubled Since Elon Musk Took Over

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2023 @ 07:00am

    The advantage held by private speech platforms is that they do not have to adhere to the 1st Amendment. They can decide to ban literal hate speech (however they define it) while still allowing opinions of all viewpoints to be expressed. And they can be in discussion with their users to decide which speech crosses the line.

  • On the post: Net Neutrality’s Dead: Time To Focus On The Real Issue: Telecom Monopolization

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 Mar, 2023 @ 06:54am

    popular among consumers, like the restoration of net neutrality, or the restoration of media consolidation limits
    Seriously? These things are completely inside baseball. The number of "consumers" who have even the vaguest notion of these things is probably a small fraction of a percent. You make the mistake of thinking that what matters to you matters to other people. Consumers care about end products, not about the process by which they are created and delivered. It's activists who care, and try to make other people care, usually without much success.

  • On the post: Court Makes It Clear: Government Submissions To Twitter Flagging Program Do Not Violate The 1st Amendment

    Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 Mar, 2023 @ 01:53am

    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

    The letter against him ... points to his 2015 tweet ... which suggested that the high number of police shootings of Black people may not have been caused by racial bias of individual police officers, but rather by the larger structural and economic realities that result in the police having disproportionately high numbers of encounters with Black residents.
    https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/21/us/ice-judge-new-york-city/index.html
    A New York judge earlier this month recommended a landlord pay $17,000 in fines for threatening to call immigration authorities on an undocumented tenant.
    https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/jul/06/maya-forstater-was-discriminated-against-over-gender-critical-beliefs-tribunal-rules
    A researcher who lost her job at a thinktank after tweeting that transgender women could not change their biological sex has won her claim that she was unfairly discriminated against because of her gender-critical beliefs.

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