Hyman Rosen 's Techdirt Comments

Latest Comments (1141)

• On the post: No, The FBI Is NOT ‘Paying Twitter To Censor’

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 21 Dec, 2022 @ 03:43am

  That's pretty much his thing. I've yet to decide whether he does it deliberately or he's just stupid. The next thing he'll do is make up stuff you didn't say and then argue with that. The thing to do with him is to never give up. Every time he says something wrong, correct him. It's fun! Woke gender ideology is similar to recovered memory therapy. First, it's a lie. Gender and sex are the same. People can never be other than the sex of their body. The sex of a body can never be changed. Second, in support of that lie, woke gender ideologues are willing to cause harm to innocent people, using psychology to exacerbate their problems instead of easing them.

• On the post: I Speak Fluent ‘New Social Media CEO Who’s In Over Their Head’; Let Me Translate The Last Few Days Of Twitter Policy

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 Dec, 2022 @ 08:53am

  The woke ideologues I was talking about are Masnick and the TechDirt commentariat, who were happy with viewpoint-based censorship when the large generic speech sites were censoring in the direction they approved, and who are now unhappy that the censorship regime has changed at Twitter. People who advocate and approve censorship when it is of viewpoints they hate certainly have it coming when the worm turns and it is then things they believe that become censored. That doesn't make the new censorship any better than the old, but one takes one's schadenfreude where one can.

• On the post: I Speak Fluent ‘New Social Media CEO Who’s In Over Their Head’; Let Me Translate The Last Few Days Of Twitter Policy

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 Dec, 2022 @ 08:45am

  Every private platform has the right to ban whomever they please and to moderate as they please. I do not hate conservative sites or liberal sites for doing so, including doing so to me. However, I believe that since free speech is a foundational value of American society, speech platforms, especially large generic ones, ought to support that freedom and refrain from censoring opinions based on viewpoint. But it's up to them to behave properly, not up to me to force them to do so. I tend to argue against the prevailing but wrong viewpoints where I comment, so being banned does not surprise me, even though I believe that it says more about the site owners than it does about me. Here, I argue against woke ideology. On Dreher's site, I argued against the existence of gods and the supernatural.

• On the post: I Speak Fluent ‘New Social Media CEO Who’s In Over Their Head’; Let Me Translate The Last Few Days Of Twitter Policy

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 Dec, 2022 @ 02:24am

  Post-flaggers talking about shouting down voices is the pot calling the kettle black. Which is what I would expect from you.

• On the post: I Speak Fluent ‘New Social Media CEO Who’s In Over Their Head’; Let Me Translate The Last Few Days Of Twitter Policy

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 20 Dec, 2022 @ 02:20am

  Freedom of speech is a foundational value of American society. Thus large generic speech platforms should err on the side of allowing more viewpoints rather than fewer. What one person might believe is settled beyond reasonable doing can be totally disbelieved by someone else. Without firm free speech policies in place, moderation inevitably tilts to censorship as the biases of the moderators infect the process.

• On the post: Actual Free Speech Matters, Elon Musk’s Understanding Of It Puts Free Speech At Risk

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 19 Dec, 2022 @ 06:48pm

  Since I'm talking about people being marginalized by their own behavior, it's not about Christians being marginalized by not having cuos printed for them, it's Christians marginalizing themselves by complaining about those cups. Or trying to shut down drag shows. Or complaining about demonic forces (see Rod Dreher). Or snake handling and speaking in tongues. Or more extremely, Mennonite and Amish communities or Jewish Hasidic communities who separate themselves so extremely from the rest of society.

• On the post: Actual Free Speech Matters, Elon Musk’s Understanding Of It Puts Free Speech At Risk

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 19 Dec, 2022 @ 06:41pm

  As usual, you hold conversations with illusory versions of me who say what you want them to say.

• On the post: Actual Free Speech Matters, Elon Musk’s Understanding Of It Puts Free Speech At Risk

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 18 Dec, 2022 @ 09:38pm

  Sure. Christians too. You can be so deeply into doing your own thing that it makes you seem crazy to everyone else. Or you can do your own thing while still being "normie". That's how same-sex marriage became so accepted that even a bunch of Republicans just voted to affirm it. Or take trans people. The Babylon Bee notwithstanding, Dr. Rachel Levine is probably as normie as a transwoman can be, while Sam Brinton is a marginalized clown. People can't choose certain aspects of what they are, or they can choose to be something that is not mainstream because it's part of their family identity, but then they can choose to behave like other people as much as they can, or not.

• On the post: Actual Free Speech Matters, Elon Musk’s Understanding Of It Puts Free Speech At Risk

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 18 Dec, 2022 @ 09:18pm

  It is woke ideologues who started calling stinking bums "the homeless" precisely in order to conflate the stinking bums with the people who have lost their homes because of poverty. It's their usual technique of using Orwellian control of language to gaslight. Stinking bums and the homeless poor are different classes of people. We've got all sorts of programs - food stamps, section 8, welfare - to help the poor and housing-challenged. None of those programs can help stinking, deranged, drug-addled, drunk, possibly dangerous bums who impose the wreckage of themselves on normal people. Those stinking bums need to be swept away to places where they can be helped, but kept out of the way.

• On the post: Actual Free Speech Matters, Elon Musk’s Understanding Of It Puts Free Speech At Risk

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 18 Dec, 2022 @ 08:52pm

  Gods don't exist. Citizens United was correctly decided. GMOs are safe. Build more nuclear power plants. Abortion on demand and without apology. Rioters, looters, and arsonists should be stopped, with deadly force if necessary. Arrested people with recent criminal records should be kept in jail. Et al.

• On the post: Actual Free Speech Matters, Elon Musk’s Understanding Of It Puts Free Speech At Risk

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 18 Dec, 2022 @ 06:34pm

  I do not act as if any platform must carry my speech. Large generic speech platforms should respect the foundational values of the society in which they are embedded and choose not to deprive their users of the ability to speak freely on their sites, even when they are legally permitted to do so. But it is their choice, not the choice of their users. Similarly, large generic bookstores like Amazon should not choose to refuse to sell books because of the viewpoints expressed in those books. They're allowed to, but they shouldn't. And in all cases where large generic platforms choose to act in this antisocial way, they should be criticized to get them to change their behavior.

• On the post: Actual Free Speech Matters, Elon Musk’s Understanding Of It Puts Free Speech At Risk

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 18 Dec, 2022 @ 06:07pm

  The platforms are large and generic because they support speech on every possible topic. The other questions are asinine; people read and participate in whatever they're interested in. The platform being generic is what allows users to find and speak on whatever topics interest them. If every user were reading the exact same material, that's what would make the platforms be not generic.

• On the post: Elon Tries (Badly) To Defend The Banning Of Journalists As Twitter Starts Blocking Links & Mentions Of Mastodon

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 17 Dec, 2022 @ 11:18pm

  The solution is basically what you see on Facebook - small topic-oriented groups with moderators who keep the discussion on track, and people who opt in to those groups. The wider platform should allow any viewpoints but moderate for form, while the individual groups should document their specific policies so that people can decide whether to participate. The wider platform is basically good for one-way communication, from the commenter to anyone who cares to follow, while the small groups are better for discussion. Even with the best of intentions, no one can reasonably hold a conversation with enormous numbers of participants anyway. Note that even for small groups, moderation is hard. People will insist on floutng the rules, getting into fights, and posting off-topic, and the moderators have to put in yeoman efforts to herd the cats.

• On the post: Elon Tries (Badly) To Defend The Banning Of Journalists As Twitter Starts Blocking Links & Mentions Of Mastodon

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 17 Dec, 2022 @ 10:57pm

  The real problem of safe spaces are the people who want to extend that "safety" over people who don't believe the ideas favored in those spaces. A safe space is fine only as long as everyone in that space has volunteered to be there.

• On the post: Elon Tries (Badly) To Defend The Banning Of Journalists As Twitter Starts Blocking Links & Mentions Of Mastodon

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 17 Dec, 2022 @ 10:48pm

  When large generic speech platforms censor opinions based on viewpoint, they are depriving their users of freedom of speech on the platform. That's true regardless of who owns the platform, and it's true regardless of which viewpoints are being censored. The only reason I would have for not immediately complaining about Musk censoring is that Twitter seems to be in utter chaos, making it tempting to attribute the shenanigans to stupidity rather than malice. Note that when it comes to censorship by woke ideologues, it is wrong to think of them as mustache-twirling villains. They truly believe that they are providing safety and otherwise doing good when they silence opinions they hate. They're wrong and need to be stopped, but they're not evil, just misguided. As we know, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

• On the post: Elon Tries (Badly) To Defend The Banning Of Journalists As Twitter Starts Blocking Links & Mentions Of Mastodon

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 17 Dec, 2022 @ 10:33pm

  About ten years ago, Taibbi did a hatchet job on the wealthy family of one of my son's classmates because they had the temerity to throw her a destination bat mitzvah in Vail. I've disliked him ever since.

• On the post: Thursday Night Purge: Elon Musk’s Twitter Bans Tons Of High Profile Journalists

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 17 Dec, 2022 @ 04:43pm

  I hardly ever use Twitter, so I was never banned from it. I was given several timeouts by Facebook, so I deleted my account rather than allow myself to be convinced to self-censor in order to remain. Oh, thanks to Andrew Sullivan for pointing to this substack against woke gender ideology: https://thedistance.substack.com/

• On the post: Thursday Night Purge: Elon Musk’s Twitter Bans Tons Of High Profile Journalists

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 16 Dec, 2022 @ 01:58am

  Time Travel

  (2) maybe the old Twitter wasn’t really evilly censoring their ideological viewpoints after all…

  Why should Musk's mishandling of Twitter affect people's opinions about what Twitter was doing before he bought it?

• On the post: Actual Free Speech Matters, Elon Musk’s Understanding Of It Puts Free Speech At Risk

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 16 Dec, 2022 @ 01:19am

  You don't ask the bookstore to stop carrying books when you know the bookstore won't listen to you. I assume you are, however, one of the post-flaggers here who act to obscure opinions with which they disagree? And yes, of course I define censorship as being based on categories or types of silencing, because that's what it is. You define censorship away with the excuse that speakers can speak elsewhere because you enjoy the censorship that the large generic speech platforms are providing for you. But even the government may legally silence speech as long as the silencing has a plausible purpose and is viewpoint-neutral, such as limiting speaking time at public meetings or forbidding graffiti on public property. You deliberately want to conflate moderation and censorship so that you can threaten people who don't want censorship by telling them that all moderation must then be removed. But you are either a knave or a fool, because that is not true.

• On the post: Actual Free Speech Matters, Elon Musk’s Understanding Of It Puts Free Speech At Risk

  

  Hyman Rosen ( profile ), 14 Dec, 2022 @ 08:29pm

  Large - many users, from hundreds of thousands to billions Generic - users can discuss any topic they wish Speech - user postings are texts or videos in which they (duh) speak ideas Platforms - the site stores, organizes, and supports search and lookup of user posts

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