Hyman Rosen 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (1141)

• On the post: Amazon’s Dying Smile Donation Program… Was Really All About Amazon Keeping Referral Fees To Google Down

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 24 Jan, 2023 @ 11:05pm

  People who work for charitable organizations also get paid. There's nothing wrong with a process that simultaneously feeds money to good causes and makes money for the company doing that, if they're not lying about the amount of money being contributed.

• On the post: Twitter’s ‘Fixed’ Blue Verification Program Still Horribly Broken, As The Taliban Gets Verified

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2023 @ 08:07pm

  They should avoid teaching that idea because it's false. That does not prevent teaching accurate history, though, just tendentious history. Woke ideologues want to teach lies, and when they are prevented from doing that, they lie further and claim that it is the truth that cannot be taught.

• On the post: Court Laughs Off OAN Conspiracy Network’s Claim It Was ‘Censored’ By DirecTV

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2023 @ 04:22pm

  You are advocating that private businesses should not exercise their own rights. Why? Why are you against those rights?

  I am not against the rights. I believe that in a society that holds freedom of speech to be a foundational value, it is bad to censor people based on the viewpoint of their opinions, and therefore private businesses should choose not to do that, even though they have the right. It's the same way that, even though men can never be women and Black people commit a disproportionately high share of crime, and I have the right to say that, you believe I should not exercise that right. People here routinely flag posts they don't like, or posts by people they don't like, even though those posts are not abusive, trolling, or spam by a "reasonable person" criterion, as the flag button says it is meant to be used. They do that, and you support them doing that, as a way to harass those writers into going away or remaining silent, despite your much vaunted claims of being a supporter of free speech. That is because you only support free speech for ideas that you like, or for ideas that are so obviously wrong that stating them can only make them less popular (like Nazis marching in Skokie back in the day, especially since Jews don't count https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jews_Don%27t_Count ). When the free speech contains viewpoints that you hate but are popular, such as the Florida anti-wokeness agenda, that's when you seek legalistic ways to have those views silenced, such as Twitter and Facebook once gave you. I stick around because arguing with people who are dead set in their opinions and also desperately wrong about them is fun. That being so, I'm glad your site is continuing to do well, so I can continue my little hobby.

• On the post: Court Laughs Off OAN Conspiracy Network’s Claim It Was ‘Censored’ By DirecTV

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2023 @ 01:29pm

  Apparently woke ideologues are so far gone that they believe that the only way to get people to behave properly is to stamp on their face with a boot heel until they comply (and it's OK as long as it's their boot heel, because they are good and just and know what's right for everyone). You seem literally unable to comprehend that people can choose to behave properly or not, and that people can be encouraged or shamed into behaving properly without the application of force, when they have the right to behave improperly. My "vision" of free speech is that people should be allowed to argue their opinions without being silenced by platform owners who disagree with their viewpoints. The vision is simple and straightforward, but, people being people, its implementation is not. Every platform must moderate to be useful, because there will always be people who spam, post off-topic, or violate decorum in ways that make the forum so noisy that intended discussions cannot take place. The difference between moderation and censorship is that moderation controls the form of speech while censorship controls its content. That's easy enough to understand, if not to implement, but woke ideologues cannot accept that, because to them, dissent from their viewpoints must be silenced; they construe dissent as harm to their favored victim groups. That's also why you keep insisting that moderation and censorship are the same thing. That way you can continue claiming that censorship is necessary by attempting to frighten the rubes into thinking that not censoring will lead to avalanches of spam. How a platform chooses to moderate is up to the owners of that platform. You like cursing because it is the only way you have of responding to truths that you find unpleasant. That's fine. Your platform, your rules. You pretend to support freedom of speech but allow flagging to be used to harass people whose viewpoints are correct but hateful to you. Your platform, your rules. Between you, and Cushing, and Bode, TechDirt had become a parody of itself. It isn't even necessary to read the posts to know what the article will say. If it's you, it's another resentful complaint about Musk. If it's Cushing, it's another resentful complaint about law enforcement. If it's Bode, it's another resentful complaint about telecom companies. Basically, the articles have no value except as a place from which to make comments criticizing their errors and viewpoints.

• On the post: Twitter’s ‘Fixed’ Blue Verification Program Still Horribly Broken, As The Taliban Gets Verified

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2023 @ 09:56am

  "Ron"

• On the post: Twitter’s ‘Fixed’ Blue Verification Program Still Horribly Broken, As The Taliban Gets Verified

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2023 @ 09:56am

  Rob DeSantis explicitly campaigned against woke ideology and won Florida 60-40. It's hardly an unpopular point of view. Whether it achieves majorities everywhere remains to be seen.

• On the post: Court Laughs Off OAN Conspiracy Network’s Claim It Was ‘Censored’ By DirecTV

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 23 Jan, 2023 @ 09:45am

  Telling people to shut up is not the same as forcibly silencing them. And yes, I already know that woke ideologues want to silence their opponents everywhere they can. Fortunately, that is hardly working. LibsOfTikTok now has a very active feed on Twitter. The rioting and arson in Atlanta is similarly on view. All you are doing is repeating that private platforms have the right to silence anyone, a fact that I never dispute. What you woke ideologues willfully fail to understand is that in a society that has freedom of speech as a foundational value, private platforms should, as a matter of morality, choose not to silence people, and if they do, they should be criticized and shamed into stopping.

• On the post: Court Laughs Off OAN Conspiracy Network’s Claim It Was ‘Censored’ By DirecTV

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 Jan, 2023 @ 11:19pm

  What you are saying is that if the government allows public parks or public school auditoriums to host speech programs, the government should be allowed to force each such program to offer a counterpoint to its presentation because "the public owns the facility". No, that's not how the 1st Amendment works. The government cannot, or at least should not be able to, compel speech from private parties just because it's providing the venue. But you do provide evidence for my point that it is woke ideologues who support the FD.

• On the post: Court Laughs Off OAN Conspiracy Network’s Claim It Was ‘Censored’ By DirecTV

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 Jan, 2023 @ 11:08pm

  The government of Florida is not committing censorship when it exercises its legal and constitutional right to set the curriculum of its public schools and universities and to curate the works offered by its public libraries, because it is controlling only its own speech, including that of its employees while they are on the job, not of anyone else who wants to speak freely. If the people of Florida want their government to use a different policy, they have the right to petition their government for change, and to vote their elected officials out of office. If employees of the CDC and FDA wanted to speak against vaccines as part of their job, it would not be censorship for the agencies to prevent them from doing so. The government gets to speak for itself as it wishes, and its employees have no 1st Amendment right to speak differently as representatives of the government, only as private citizens.

• On the post: Court Laughs Off OAN Conspiracy Network’s Claim It Was ‘Censored’ By DirecTV

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 Jan, 2023 @ 10:47pm

  As always, because you liked the censorship that the large generic speech platforms were providing for you, you continue to insist that I am speaking about forcing platforms not to deprive their users of free speech. But of course I have never suggested such a thing. Private platforms, including the large generic ones, have the right to censor their users and deprive them of free speech. But because free speech is a foundational value of the US, those platforms should not do that, and if they do, they should be encouraged to stop, by marshaling popular opinion against them, or by having someone who supports free speech buy them out. To repeat, as many times as necessary, free speech is the ability to speak freely on a platform without the owners of the platform silencing opinions based on their viewpoint. The ability to speak freely, not the right to speak freely. The right exists when compelled by law or constitution, but even when the right does not exist, the ability does, and when the platform deprives users of the ability, they are violating the principles of free speech. Free speech is not defined by the 1st Amendment. The 1st Amendment is a subset and an example of free speech, not its entirety.

• On the post: Court Laughs Off OAN Conspiracy Network’s Claim It Was ‘Censored’ By DirecTV

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 Jan, 2023 @ 03:42pm

  Yes, it is. Private platforms get to use their own freedom of speech to deprive other people of theirs on that platform, but that is exactly what they are doing - depriving those people of the ability to speak freely on that platform. And I am not suggesting that people be free from the consequences of their speech, except in contexts where such freedom is expected, such as in academic discourse, only that people not be prevented from speaking. Woke ideologues have no trouble calling out the harms caused by lies from their opponents - climate change skepticism, vaccine denial, forced birth. But they will not see that their own lies are just as pernicious, including the much vaunted claim that it is necessary to tell men and women that they can become other than the sex of their bodies so that they do not kill themselves. It is the same as telling people who believe they're birds that they can exit safely through windows.

• On the post: Court Laughs Off OAN Conspiracy Network’s Claim It Was ‘Censored’ By DirecTV

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 Jan, 2023 @ 09:38am

  Already posted. Simply find each flagged comment and supply the simple single click needed to show it, and you'll see it. Remember, flagging is not suppression or censorship, so you should have no trouble.

• On the post: Court Laughs Off OAN Conspiracy Network’s Claim It Was ‘Censored’ By DirecTV

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 22 Jan, 2023 @ 09:34am

  Because you woke ideologues liked the censorship the large generic speech platforms were providing for you, you continue to couch freedom of speech in terms of rights and force. But freedom of speech is not solely about rights and force, nor about the government and the 1st Amendment. Freedom of speech is the ability to speak on a platform without having that speech silenced by the owners of the platform based on the viewpoints of the opinions. When it is the government doing the silencing or compelling the speech, force and rights and the 1st Amendment may indeed be involved. When it is a private platform doing so, then its own free speech means that it may choose to censor others. If it does so, it is still censorship, and still deprives the speakers of their own free speech. Not their right to free speech, which they don't have on a private platform, but their ability to exercise it on that platform. Since depriving people of free speech runs counter to a foundational value of our society, private platforms who choose to censor should be encouraged, but not forced, to stop doing that.

• On the post: Court Laughs Off OAN Conspiracy Network’s Claim It Was ‘Censored’ By DirecTV

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 21 Jan, 2023 @ 03:30pm

  Freedom of speech is the ability to speak freely without having opinions silenced based on their viewpoint. The US government may not deprive its citizens of free speech. Private entities may deprive people of free speech on platforms they control. But the fact that such censorship is legal is irrelevant to whether deprivation of free speech is occurring. Whataboutism of idiocy perpetuated by conservatives does not render woke ideology any less false, evil, or stupid. Woke ideology centers on forcing people to affirm lies, about gender, about race, about crime, about ability, and has very real and damaging effects. Naturally woke ideologues would like to lie and say "it's just words", while also trying to use Orwellian control of language to use those words to propagate their lies.

• On the post: Twitter’s ‘Fixed’ Blue Verification Program Still Horribly Broken, As The Taliban Gets Verified

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 21 Jan, 2023 @ 03:14pm

  Well, of course woke ideologues are being petty. They cannot stand when popular opinion goes against them, and will do whatever they can to censor and silence and cancel their opponents. TD let's them flag, so they flag. If they could do worse, they would. They hate Musk because he did away with the viewpoint-based censorship they adored and readmitted the wrong-thinkers to Twitter.

• On the post: Privacy Advocates Continue To Warn That Modern Toys Are A Privacy Mess

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 Jan, 2023 @ 05:03am

  The political left constantly uses unfounded fear of what might happen to prevent or delay projects. "Environmental impact statements", fake endangered species, "wetlands", fear mongering over GMOs, over nuclear power, over pipelines, "AI alignment", on and on.

• On the post: Court Laughs Off OAN Conspiracy Network’s Claim It Was ‘Censored’ By DirecTV

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 Jan, 2023 @ 04:55am

  No problem with the OAN result. I was just pointing out that, in contradistinction, it was generally the political left who supported the Fairness Doctrine's government-completed speech.

• On the post: Court Laughs Off OAN Conspiracy Network’s Claim It Was ‘Censored’ By DirecTV

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 Jan, 2023 @ 04:48am

  Killing the woke is silly policy, even disregarding the fact that killing people for wrongthink is immoral. It's far better to let the woke be hoist on their own petard. Woke ideology is so stupid, self-contradictory, and wrong that the most effective way to destroy it is to tell people exactly what the woke believe. Hence the popularity of things like LibsOfTikTok and its ability to drive the woke to apoplexy.

• On the post: Court Laughs Off OAN Conspiracy Network’s Claim It Was ‘Censored’ By DirecTV

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 Jan, 2023 @ 04:43am

  The government forcing speech, which is what the Fairness Doctrine was, should never have been permitted, the fig leaf of "the public owns the airwaves" notwithstanding. I am certainly not demanding the ability to force anyone to associate with anyone else. Woke ideologues deliberately conflate moral suasion with use of force so that they can correctly state that such force is not permitted, while sidestepping the moral question altogether.

• On the post: Court Laughs Off OAN Conspiracy Network’s Claim It Was ‘Censored’ By DirecTV

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 Jan, 2023 @ 04:35am

  No, those cases are not different. Censorship is the act of the censor, silencing speech based on viewpoint on platforms the censor controls. If Twitter silences speech that way, it is committing censorship. If the courts silence speech that way, they are committing censorship. The ability for people silenced on one platform to speak on another is irrelevant. You woke ideologues would like to have it differently because you enjoyed the censorship that the large generic speech platforms were providing for you. But you screech loudly anyway when the Florida government, acting just as much within its rights as Twitter did, removes woke gender ideology and critical race theory from its public school curriculum.

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