[HN Gopher] When radio was king, many outlets chose to stop broa...
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When radio was king, many outlets chose to stop broadcasting Father
Coughlin
Author : samizdis
Score : 162 points
Date : 2021-01-19 16:59 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theconversation.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theconversation.com)
| rektide wrote:
| I'd like to see a democratic/noospheric voice enter the picture,
| some day. I'm not sure it will be great, but giving the people a
| way to aggregate their voice, to say for themselves what they
| find objectionable & undeserving seems due. In a town square, one
| can just shout over jack-asses. But they keep being invited onto
| television/media! Stirs up more controversy, keep ratings high.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Radio was a natural monopoly, but thanks to federation, social
| media need not be. (Note federation means one app, multiple echo
| chambers, should be easy.)
| mcguire wrote:
| How would that improve matters, exactly?
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Fox & Facebook have a profit motive for engagement at all
| costs, but federated social media would hopefully resist
| commercialization as various orgs ran servers / moderation
| for different purposes, you know, like the www.
|
| Even if they were running adds like the old forums and what
| not, it would be more to reach costs and promote a media
| empire.
|
| Yes, this all sounds like a rather wishful deescalation of
| the attention economy, but if nothing else, remember the hoi
| polloi didn't radicalize themselves in a vacuum, much as we
| see that narrative being pushed. I much prefer the above to
| some state capitalism regulated Facebook dystopia.
| gxs wrote:
| Often we confuse there being precedent for an event with the
| precedent being actually right.
|
| I understand both perspectives here: what's "morally" right and
| what is strictly by the book right.
|
| Personally, I lean towards the latter. As the famous quote says
| (paraphrased), I may not agree with what you say, but I'll always
| defend your right to say it.
|
| At the very least it should go through due process, not be at the
| whim of some private organization.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| You're welcome to say it. Others should not be forced to
| listen, repeat, or amplify what you say.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Fine - let's run with this.
|
| We set up a system where certain ideas are not tolerated.
| There is a preferential system for use of mass communication
| platforms. Only officially sanctioned speakers or patterns of
| thought are allowed to be broadcast to the mass.
|
| A step further: Who decides what is acceptable? And on what
| grounds shall we suspend the speech of others? What stops
| this from becoming suppression of political speech?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| That's an irrational extrapolation, from saying that nobody
| should be _obliged_ to amplify points of view they find
| disagreeable to suggesting that they are officially
| _forbidden_ from doing so. It really misrepresents the
| argument made by the grandparent post.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| I think I could have been more clear.
|
| Let's get to particulars:
|
| Imagine a future where large corps like Facebook, Amazon,
| et al. wield de facto censorship power for domestic
| social media. Are we OK with this? If the answer is Yes,
| that's fine, let's do that, but we should talk about it
| clearly, ditch the partisan left/right dichotomy, (big
| corps dgaf about ideology) and weigh the pros and cons
| for our nation, culture, and society.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I believe you've described something akin to the existing
| infrastructure for issuing radio broadcast licenses via the
| FCC.
|
| https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/obscene-indecent-and-
| pr...
|
| There is likely some guidance to be had on this topic from
| studying the way the FCC has navigated the Scylla and
| Charybdis of authorizing broadcast licenses vs. trampling
| the First Amendment rights of American citizens.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| This is a little like saying that we shouldn't have speed
| limits, because who decides what speed is safe for driving?
|
| We all decide, collectively. That is how society works: a
| group of people making tradeoffs. Individual sacrifices for
| the benefit of the group.
|
| Obviously, no tradeoff will make every single person happy.
| But that doesn't mean we should throw our hands up and let
| people do 90 in a school zone.
| gxs wrote:
| The difference is our constitution doesn't explicitly say
| to remove speed limits.
|
| If it did, we'd have to go through proper process to get
| the constitution amended.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Sure, a constitution is just a formalization of those
| tradeoffs. But the US Constitution has nothing to do with
| this article or the parallel current events.
| gxs wrote:
| Maybe we're approaching this from different angles/aren't
| on the same page.
|
| I was looking at this through the lense of free
| speech/censorship.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Sorry, let me elaborate. You said that the difference
| between my speed limit example and (presumably) the
| article/current events is that the latter is addressed by
| the Constitution. I disagree with that assertion -- the
| Constitution specifically forbids abridgement of free
| speech by the _government_ , not by private entities.
|
| You can take the position that private entities should
| uphold the "spirit" of the First Amendment even though
| they're not compelled to. But that's a moral argument,
| not a legal one.
| gxs wrote:
| Gotcha, that's why I added the bit about going through
| due process vs a private entity (especially an entity
| that runs an entire platform) deciding your speech is
| banned with no oversight.
|
| This issue gets complicated, as stated cureently in your
| post, is of course correct.
|
| I guess the conversation I want to have is a completely
| separate one: these companies have reached a massive
| scale, a scale that you could argue is of government
| proportions, and hence maybe should in some instances be
| handled as such.
|
| Should Google or Apple get to decide who has free speech,
| at their scale?
|
| I agree with you 100% - this is as of today a moral
| argument. My follow up question is, should it be?
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| I'll add that most of my objection here is to the comment
| to which I originally replied. I really dislike the
| "there's no objectively correct line, so we shouldn't
| draw a line at all" point of view.
|
| As to your follow up question -- I think the root of the
| issue is not "is it right for a company to make speech
| decisions" but "is it right for a company to wield so
| much power over public discourse?" IMO it should remain a
| moral issue, and we should simply aggressively break up
| entities that attain "public square" status.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| This is exactly the conversation I hoped would be sparked
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| _Microft wrote:
| That's why I don't like ,,retweets are not endorsements".
| Spreading a message is endorsement, one way or another. They
| have the choice to retweet or not and when they choose to
| spread the message, they become co-responsible for its
| consequences.
| gxs wrote:
| But the key word is _forced_ isn 't it?
|
| Do we really have to police what people are allowed to
| endorse?
| strangattractor wrote:
| There is a difference between letting someone speak freely
| and handing them a megaphone. The Constitution does not give
| individuals the freedom to incite violence. It is designed to
| prevent it. Russia is putting Parler back online - at least
| they believe in free speech.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Russia believes in free speech when that speech incites
| social unrest _in the US_. When it incites social unrest in
| Russia? Not so much.
| ratsmack wrote:
| > Russian-based firm DDoS-Guard said in a statement to
| The Hill it started servicing Parler on Sunday night. The
| firm said Parler is not using DDoS-Guard as a hosting
| site, but did not detail what services it is providing
| the platform.
|
| I don't know if your statement is true, and since this
| thread is about "truth", maybe this needs further
| investigation.
| La1n wrote:
| >Russia is putting Parler back online - at least they
| believe in free speech.
|
| This is not a given conclusion, they could just be
| interested in speech that negatively affects a geopolitical
| rival.
| klmadfejno wrote:
| Perhaps there's a middleground between allowing someone to say
| something privately and providing them a platform to broadcast
| that message to the world though
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Good point. But it begs the next question: where _exactly_ is
| the line between the two?
| gedy wrote:
| The answer seems to be from nearly everyone: "It's obvious,
| whatever my side agrees is acceptable of course." (Which
| does not help of course.)
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| When you use someone else's capital. The issue was that
| Coughlin was using other broadcasters infra to disseminate
| his message. If he had his own tower then it wouldn't have
| been a problem.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| I'd argue the abstractions, at best, are getting in the
| way; at worst they're being intentionally manipulated to
| suit.
|
| Infrastructural requirements are cooperative requirements
| at their core--they're not detachable from the people that
| use, operate, and maintain them. Infrastructure that
| delivers such a mass of information isn't automatic, it's a
| concerted effort of many people.
|
| If the people you are relying on to amplify your message do
| not want to cooperate with you, should they be forced to?
|
| How it appears to me is that we've reached a point, a rare
| point, in which the majority of the people involved in
| those works have decided against cooperating with
| delivering the messaging of some people because they don't
| want to be a party to it. Not out of fear of reprisal, but
| out of disagreement with the stated goals of it.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| This is an interesting point, and you're an excellent
| writer.
|
| So you believe it's acceptable for large corporations to
| read your messages and insert themselves in private
| conversation?
| safog wrote:
| The big problem here is that writing a regulation that decides
| what's okay / not okay on a platform (either by the platform
| itself or by a govt) is basically impossible.
|
| Any sort of you-shalt-not-serve-this-content type of rulebook
| won't stand up to real world use and you need a team of lawyers
| to exercise judgement on if content is allowed or not allowed on
| a platform.
|
| A couple of examples to de-politicize this:
|
| - FB says gore / violence is not allowed. There was a Facebook
| post on how one of Mexico's most violet cartel members was killed
| that circulated on FB [1], received a lot of attention, and
| popped up in people's feeds leading to cries to take down the
| post (won't someone think of the kids!). They did take it down
| and then the Boston marathon bombing happened. Similar pictures
| of blood / gore circulated but this time FB was forced to keep
| the pictures up in "public interest".
|
| - Nudity is not allowed on the platform. As part of their nudity
| filtering, they kicked off a group on breastfeeding from FB which
| again lead to protest and FB allowing it and modifying their
| policy to specifically make an exception for breastfeeding. YT
| and Amazon suffer from this as well (though we haven't had a big
| PR bust up yet). Amazon algorithms for instance recommend "adult"
| fiction (with provocative cover art) along with children's books.
| Beyond just playing whack-a-mole with these products, and some
| half assed attempts to detect nudity in book covers, I don't
| think a lot of progress has been made.
|
| So yeah, I think Zuck will be more than happy to say, please tell
| us what to allow on the platform and we'll follow it to the
| letter and deflect the blame to the regulators.
|
| It's not even clear that there's a solution here beyond let the
| platforms exercise their best judgement and sort of muddle along.
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/2014/4/1/5569878/the-dark-side-
| of-t...
| [deleted]
| paulmd wrote:
| Well, ultimately the law is interpreted by humans, concepts
| like "good-faith effort" and "bona fide" exist despite those
| not being something you can exactly define in a law. But judges
| know it when they see it and it's not actually a problem in
| practice.
|
| This is ultimately one of those things where computer
| scientists (specifically) freak out because the real world
| isn't zeroes and ones like they're used to, it's all shades of
| grey, but if you act in good taste it's probably not going to
| be a problem. Ban the cartel murderporn, show the aftermath of
| the bombing (or not, at your discretion), ban the nudists, but
| allow breastfeeding (or not, at your discretion), all of that
| sounds fine to me and we don't need to code an exact line into
| law.
|
| This is really a common thread in HN threads discussing
| anything touching on laws or regulation, because computer
| touchers just can't wrap their head around the idea that the
| law isn't absolutely precisely defined in a state machine and
| the judge and jury are going to apply human reasoning. But
| that's how the legal system works.
|
| I'm going to note that there is of course a degree of self-
| servingness in insisting that there be an exact line drawn.
| It's a way for Facebook to punt on actually having to moderate
| their platform and push that responsibility onto the courts,
| because they don't want to pay humans to deal with what is
| ultimately a human problem that needs to be solved in human
| ways. The nature of the world is that there are grey areas and
| some stuff in the grey area is fine and some stuff shouldn't be
| there, and it will take human intervention to decide which is
| which.
|
| If you don't want to pay to do that, and you want to be 100% on
| the green side of the line, then you will have to default to
| very aggressive censorship that will probably annoy users, but
| that's the price of being on a free platform that doesn't want
| to pay for adequate moderation.
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| >... you need a team of lawyers to exercise judgement on if
| content is allowed or not allowed on a platform.
|
| No you don't. The platform is private property, they can decide
| whether or not they want such content, no lawyers needed. When
| someone gets banned or flagged on HN, does anyone mention
| lawyers getting involved? Of course not.
| monadic3 wrote:
| Why are people consuming news on facebook at all? The idea is
| ridiculous for exactly the scenario you spelled out. A space
| that caters to news and to baby photos is not a space that
| makes any sense to me.
| ramoz wrote:
| I address this in another top comment as well. Just additional
| perspective.
|
| You can't predict the future, so you have to find the one
| thing(s) to protect in all cases. And like you say, it can not
| be subjective. In Gov't Tech Acquisitions regulation the single
| objective is to protect and enable small and disadvantage
| businesses.
|
| Perhaps it could be the same with platforms that propagate
| info, but there is risk in creating a competitive environment
| without some form of formal trust system. It does seem
| ambitious / hard to think about.
| walrus01 wrote:
| > Amazon algorithms for instance recommend "adult" fiction
| (with provocative cover art)
|
| amazon publishes way more than that, NSFW, google "chuck
| tingle". The famous author of "space raptor butt invasion", and
| who can forget the literary masterpiece "pounded in the butt by
| my own butt"
|
| https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=chuck+tin...
| recursive wrote:
| WTF is even real life. There are hundreds of them.
| https://www.amazon.com/Chuck-Tingle/e/B00SF2MTYK
|
| One of my favorite titles is "Creamed In The Butt By My
| Handsome Living Corn"
| mcphage wrote:
| > and who can forget the literary masterpiece "pounded in the
| butt by my own butt"
|
| Don't forget the meta-level 'Pounded in the Butt by My Book
| "Pounded in the Butt by My Own Butt"'
| walrus01 wrote:
| I'm waiting for "Pounded in the Butt by the Sexy Seattle
| Amazon Product Recommendation Algorithm"
| nitrogen wrote:
| _It 's not even clear that there's a solution here beyond let
| the platforms exercise their best judgement and sort of muddle
| along._
|
| Ensuring a diversity of platforms with no one/two/three
| platforms controlling the vast majority of interaction would
| probably help.
| root_axis wrote:
| People are free to use whatever platforms they want, you
| can't force the masses to use alternative platforms. Besides,
| the landscape is already very diverse, but the most popular
| platforms will always get the most media attention, it's not
| like using FB precludes the use of any other platform, most
| people who are active on social media are active on multiple
| sites. This just isn't a problem.
| boogies wrote:
| > People are free to use whatever platforms they want
|
| 8.1 million people wanted to use Parler. Obviously to _me_
| they can get a GNU-powered phone and Parler could get
| ported and they'd be free to use it. >999%0 of _them_
| probably have no idea those exist. >99%0 of them probably
| don't even know what "jailbreak" means or that it's legal,
| and ~900%0 probably don't know how to do it or that they
| have the ability to learn it.
| cbozeman wrote:
| I have a Parler account.
|
| I've known about PinePhone, Librem 5, and other variants
| since their inceptions.
|
| I've jailbroken myriad devices for years.
|
| I don't know where this idea you have that there aren't
| technical people - extremely technical people - across
| the political spectrum comes from, but you should
| probably disabuse yourself of that notion immediately.
|
| What people want is 1) fair treatment regardless of
| political affiliation or belief and 2) ease of idea
| transmission.
|
| There's nothing stopping people from spinning up a VM
| across the thousands of cloud service providers and
| creating their own little corner of the web, but that
| doesn't give you nearly the engagement of YouTube,
| Twitter, Facebook, etc. In fact, I'm willing to bet even
| the most trafficked personal websites don't get one-tenth
| of their associated YouTube / Snapchat / TikTok accounts.
|
| How many people go to TaylorSwift.com versus her YouTube
| channel? Her TikTok channel? Her Twitter page?
| root_axis wrote:
| > _How many people go to TaylorSwift.com versus her
| YouTube channel? Her TikTok channel? Her Twitter page?_
|
| Is this something we should care about though? I
| understand why individuals care about engagement, but why
| should society care that Taylor Swift gets more views on
| TikTok vs her personal website? If you think we should
| care about it, what about all the people that get
| essentially zero engagement despite having access to
| those platforms and having something worthwhile to share?
| root_axis wrote:
| Parler is fine, they are in the process of switching to
| new hosting and already have the site running for top
| posters. Check the website. Beyond that, the vast
| majority of Parler users continue to use Facebook and
| Twitter they just follow the rules, same as you have to
| on Parler.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > So yeah, I think Zuck will be more than happy to say, please
| tell us what to allow on the platform and we'll follow it to
| the letter and deflect the blame to the regulators.
|
| He would never do that. He needs regular users to stay on the
| platform. The censorship isn't to appease government
| regulators, it's to keep from alienating regular people who
| don't want to be exposed to it. Deflecting blame to the
| regulators wouldn't stop users from leaving and heading to a
| platform that did more effective damage control.
| safog wrote:
| He's been saying that pretty consistently for several years
| though.. too lazy to dig up the links.
|
| Regular users might be somewhat impacted (if their bill gates
| is tracking us through vaccines post gets removed for
| example) but most people I'd say just want to post their
| breakfast / travel photos on Facebook than deal with QAnon
| conspiracies.
| joshuaheard wrote:
| The answer to dangerous lies is the truth, not censorship. We
| have a marketplace of ideas where bad ideas die and good ideas
| spread. Unfortunately, I see a trend towards restricting free
| speech, which will only harm the country in the long term.
| thejellypen wrote:
| bad ideas may eventually die by they may also cause harm before
| dying out.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > We have a marketplace of ideas where bad ideas die and good
| ideas spread
|
| That is the ideal. The actual marketplace seems to operate in
| the opposite fashion.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > We have a marketplace of ideas where bad ideas die and good
| ideas spread.
|
| If that were true, neither QAnon nor "Stop the Steal" would
| have gone anywhere. Instead, they spread like wildfire to the
| point where their adherents literally attacked the democratic
| process.
|
| The marketplace of ideas only works that way when its
| participants are rational actors with good judgement, and it's
| becoming increasingly clear that is not actually the case.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| > The marketplace of ideas only works that way when its
| participants are rational actors with good judgement
|
| You're leaving out the implicit assumption you're making,
| that the "authorities" in charge of the marketplace _are_
| rational actors. You better hope to hell, that they are.
|
| Because when some marketplace participants fail, they fail
| gracefully. When centralized authorities fail, they fail
| spectacularly and disastrously. I can virtually guarantee you
| that Qanon will be a footnote in ten years time. In contrast
| how would you like to live in Iran, China, Turkey, or any
| other regime where lunatics have taken over in the name of
| "protecting the people from dangerous ideas"?
|
| All those people clamoring for authorities to clamp down on
| irrational Trumpist extremists, have forgotten that Trump and
| his cronies were just recently in charge of all three
| branches of the government as well as a supermajority of
| state governments.
|
| This is how the political cycle always goes. All anybody sees
| is a sensible, incoming administration with likeminded views.
| And I actually agree. Biden's a decent man, and I honestly
| can't see him abusing even very broad powers. But what
| happens after? But there's no putting this genie back in the
| bottle. Do you trust President Donald Trump Jr. or President
| Tucker Carlson or President Josh Hawley with that power?
|
| This isn't even hypothetical. Most people here are too young
| to remember the post-9/11 hysteria. But I can virtually
| guarantee you that had the current crop of anti-speech
| activists managed to put their would-be "anti-extremist" laws
| in place, that opposition to the War on Terror would have
| been de facto illegal.
|
| Dealing with some stupid conspiracy theories and LARPer
| shamans, who have as much chance of overthrowing the American
| government as my toddler, are a small price to pay for fault-
| tolerance in liberal democracy.
| mcguire wrote:
| I don't see that assumption anywhere in the parent comment.
| Nor any call for authorities of some unknown nature to
| clamp down.
|
| Just the point that the "marketplace of ideas" doesn't
| function very well when those in it are not acting in good
| faith. Qanon may be a footnote in ten years. The Tea Party
| _is_ a footnote from the last decade. The Klan has gone
| down to footnote several times and been revived each time.
| (Although the current incarnation has gotten rid of the
| name and the outfits. Yay, progress!) I remember the 9 /11
| hysteria, and I remember checking on my Moslem friends
| about the free speech they were receiving. Anyway, and yet,
| here we are.
|
| Blind faith in the marketplace of ideas doesn't work any
| better than blind faith in the invisible hand of economics.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| The standard you're applying is that if anyone, anywhere
| holds mistaken beliefs that the marketplace of ideas has
| failed. It's all well and good to imagine what it looks
| like next to a utopia of angels, but in that case we
| wouldn't have to worry about any system, would we?
|
| The question is whether the marketplace of ideas works
| better than other actual systems or cultures found in the
| real-world. Here's what I do know, the marketplace of
| ideas was conceived 300 years ago in the Enlightenment.
| Since then, the amount of human liberty, tolerance,
| peace, and prosperity has exploded. The societies that
| adopted the principles of the Enlightenment first
| experienced the earliest and largest gains along these
| dimensions. The societies today that most adhere to
| Enlightenment principles and the marketplace of ideas are
| by far the freest and most prosperous. Over any
| reasonable span of time, tolerance, freedom and peace
| continue to monotonically improve. Especially for the
| most marginalized groups. Particularly in the most
| liberal societies.
|
| In what universe could anyone possibly lock at this track
| record of success and not conclude that the Enlightenment
| and its principle of the marketplace of ideas has been a
| resounding success. Arguably the most resounding success
| in all of human history. Honestly, what possible system,
| real or imagined, do you believe could have produced
| better results?
| triceratops wrote:
| These "marketplace of ideas" zealots don't operate on
| evidence. No exceptions or qualifications to the sanctity of
| free speech exist. Free speech is a faith, and no such
| heresies are allowed.
|
| I love free speech. I think it's one of the most important
| things in society. But the whole "kill lies with more speech"
| meme needs to die because there's simply no evidence for it.
|
| We should have free speech for its own sake, and recognize
| and mitigate its harmful effects as much as possible. If we
| don't, society will turn against free speech entirely and
| everyone will be much worse off.
| zug_zug wrote:
| Yes, and we can simplify even more -- we have a case from 80
| years ago where the greatest atrocity in history was
| committed by a population that got duped by an anti-semitic
| demagogue.
|
| To all those bandying about "free speech" without ever
| tackling any of the nuances of reality, I'd love to hear --
| if push came to shove, would you have argued platforms should
| be giving megaphones to even Hitler? If not, you acknowledge
| there's a line, so let's define it.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| The Weimer Republic had extensive hate speech laws on the
| books, which they even used to prosecute the Nazis in
| several cases. Not only were those laws ineffective, but
| the Nazis coopted them to silence opposition.
|
| In contrast the US and the UK, with their free speech
| absolutism (British hate speech laws weren't put into place
| until recently), were one of the few major democracies
| without fascist parties winning any major elections.
| zug_zug wrote:
| This doesn't really pass the smell test. I know very
| little about Hitler, but the small amount I do know is
| Hitler was found guilty of treason and put in jail for 5
| years, during which he wrote Mein Kampf [1]. It seems
| pretty obvious to me if he had been put to death (the
| ultimate form of censorship) the holocaust wouldn't have
| happened.
|
| You also dodge the central question - Do you believe
| Hitler had a protected right to free speech worth
| defending?
|
| I may or may not read your response because I don't
| believe you're arguing in good faith though.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_Hall_Putsch
| pashamur wrote:
| There is a good section on this in the book How
| Democracies Die where they go into detail as to why
| fascists could not come to power in America before Donald
| Trump. Basically their argument was that the party
| structures performed gatekeeping functions and that
| populists could not even get nominated to a party ticket
| (even with massive popular support, comparable to that of
| Donald Trump - they give the example of Henry Ford).
|
| Those gatekeeping functions were lessened after the
| violent Democratic national convention of '68 (where
| there was a clash between pro-war and anti-war factions)
| and primaries became a thing that actually mattered (in
| 68 Humphrey was selected by backroom insiders who did not
| participate in a single primary in that cycle, leading to
| public outcry). However, the gatekeeping effects
| persisted because of the control the parties still had
| over advertising channels and the media; that control
| fell apart post-2000, which setup the conditions that
| enabled a populist like Donald Trump to actually be
| elected to the presidency.
|
| So it's not free speech that kept fascists out of power
| in the U.S., it's institutional gatekeeping (in the 30's
| and 40's).
| npongratz wrote:
| Are those institutional gatekeepers the so-called
| "elites" that the populist demagogues constantly complain
| about? (To be clear, I'm not being argumentative and I
| think the premise of party gatekeeping helping to prevent
| extremists from seizing power is probably accurate)
| dcolkitt wrote:
| > Those gatekeeping functions were lessened after the
| violent Democratic national convention of '68
|
| This point does not pass the smell test. Since 1968 the
| United States has become a vastly more tolerant, liberal,
| open and free society than prior to that point. You'd
| have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to say that the US
| is more prone to fascism than it was 50 years ago.
| paulmd wrote:
| Free speech absolutism was no defense against fascism -
| the Nazi Party was prominent in both the US and UK, to
| use your examples, during the 1930s. It just never quite
| tipped into power, but you can see from the rise of
| Trumpism that that didn't hold true this time.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/20/695941
| 323...
|
| https://time.com/4516276/cable-street-battle-london-east-
| end...
|
| (the giant murals of George Washington and the talk about
| "job-stealing refugees" is particularly apropos given the
| current atmosphere of the Trumpist faction)
|
| It is obviously correct that once social norms have
| reached the breaking point that hate speech laws can
| become a cudgel used to further hate speech. The goal is
| to keep it from reaching that point.
|
| It is in fact probably correct to say that in _either_
| approach once the social norms have reached the breaking
| point, that _either_ positive or negative freedoms can be
| weaponized. Freedom of speech can be used to rally a
| lynch mob, and hate speech laws can be used to oppress a
| minority, once you have reached the point where a hateful
| party has widespread social acceptance and control of a
| sufficient number of the political levers of power.
|
| In general though it is also not correct to say that the
| US has _complete_ free-speech absolutism. Actually
| planning to lynch someone, for example, is not protected
| free speech. The argument for further restrictions is
| that those lines may not be correctly drawn by our
| forefathers - why should actually planning to lynch Tom
| Brown be illegal, but the KKK rallying to lynch
| _somebody_ be legal and protected, as long as they don 't
| name a specific name in advance? Why should arguing that
| _people should be lynched in general_ without the
| specific intention to do so _today_ be protected? There
| are many places we could concievably draw the line
| without really impacting anyone 's actual freedoms to do
| anything other than incite hatred and ultimately inciting
| violence and death.
| thursday0987 wrote:
| the marketplace of ideas actually only works when people take
| the time to look past the branding of something, or the
| headline, and actually get into the meat and potatoes of the
| idea itself.
|
| to use your example, both QAnon and "Stop the Steal" had
| enough evidence that they were able to convince large swaths
| of people.
|
| dismissing the people who see that evidence as not "rational
| actors with good judgement" just conflates the problem.
|
| if anything, you assuming that 80+ million people (including
| several state governments) are incapable of looking at
| evidece and making up their own minds just because you came
| to a different conclusion is more of a problem than QAnon and
| "Stop the Steal" themselves.
| genericuser314 wrote:
| "We have a marketplace of ideas where bad ideas die and good
| ideas spread."
|
| Perhaps it should work that way, but in a US context, I think
| this is demonstrably false. Many people participating in the
| marketplace of ideas hold diametrically opposing ideas and
| posit contradictory facts. There is no winnowing of falsehood
| from truth.
| tomku wrote:
| The thing that makes ideas spread is not good/bad or truth/lie,
| it's whether people find them useful or comforting to believe.
| The truth has no chance in the "marketplace of ideas" against
| comforting lies that reinforce people's feelings of superiority
| and infallibility.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Your fundamental assumption is that bad ideas die. I'm not sure
| that is supported by the evidence.
|
| The converse of that is "If the idea persists, it's good". I'm
| having a hard time seeing the evidence for that as well.
| username90 wrote:
| Bad ideas die but it takes decades.
| paulmd wrote:
| They also tend to be resurrected once outside the immediate
| lifespan of people who lived through them. For example,
| "trickle-down economics" was once called "horse and sparrow
| theory" back when the idea was popular in the 1800s.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics
|
| (where did "trickle down" come from anyway? Well, if you
| feed the horse enough oats, there will be some left for the
| sparrows. That's what's "trickling down".)
| mcguire wrote:
| Maybe something akin to Gresham's law?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| _We have a marketplace of ideas where bad ideas die and good
| ideas spread._
|
| Doubt. This was certainly the _intention_ but it 's very plain
| that the market of public discourse doesn't work nearly as well
| as scientific peer review, which is itself somewhat flawed.
|
| It's an old truism that 'a lie can get halfway round the world
| before the truth has got its shoes on.' It has also been
| rigorously documented:
| https://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146 For that
| matter, phrases like 'the big lie' reflect a wide social
| awareness that lying has historically been an effective
| political strategy.
|
| Besides the fact that the marketplace of ideas demonstrably
| doesn't privilege truth in the short term, why would you expect
| it to? A marketplace is easily dominated by whoever can invest
| heavily in promotional tools. Furthermore, many people in the
| market demand entertainment or validation rather than truth, so
| there's abundant money to be made out of selling pleasant-
| sounding bullshit.
| yifanl wrote:
| In a world where we cannot censor an idea, then there is _no_
| difference between a good and a bad idea, the very act of
| making a value judgment if an idea is good or bad is inherently
| an act of censorship.
|
| Given that, there's clearly an amount of acceptable censorship
| that is higher than 0.
| aaomidi wrote:
| > where bad ideas die and good ideas spread.
|
| Why do we assume this is true? Billions of people get scammed
| in the world yearly. Yes. Billions.
|
| Mass hysteria[1] is a thing, and sure in the long term an idea
| __may__ die out (again, there's no real evidence of this). The
| damage done until it does die out can lead to a rise in cult of
| personality like how Hitler came into power and became so
| popular in Germany.
|
| There isn't some natural filter of hate and __bad__ ideas in
| humans. People are sheep and will put their weight behind
| anyone who resonates with them. Not necessarily "good" ideas.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mass_hysteria_cases
| dang wrote:
| Url changed from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/time-
| private-us-media..., which points to this.
| tqi wrote:
| The most frustrating thing about the whole debate around
| censorship/deplatforming that no one seems to want to acknowledge
| that there is probably no good answer, only acceptable
| compromises. Everyone wants to paint those who came to a
| different conclusion as stupid or acting in bad faith, as if the
| answer is as clear as the sky is blue. No wonder this discussion
| never goes anywhere...
| medicineman wrote:
| The best part about this article is the pearl clutching downvote
| brigade in the comments here.
| duxup wrote:
| It's a tough call with private ownership of platforms and their
| rights and everything else.
|
| I'm perpetually wondering how much you tolerate the free speech
| of a group whose purpose or side effects would inevitably
| restrict the rights of others.
| rmason wrote:
| Being born in Detroit I heard about father Coughlin my entire
| life. Almost all of it was negative.
|
| Did you know that after losing his radio show the post office
| refused to let him distribute his newspaper, Social Justice?
|
| Despite many catholic parishes having closed Father Coughlin's
| church is still active.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Shrine_of_the_Little_...
| shadowgovt wrote:
| The Wikipedia summary of the story with the post office is
| absolutely fascinating.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin#Cancellation_...
|
| It appears that FDR's attorney general put pressure on the post
| office to revoke Coughlin's 2nd-class mailing privileges. In
| the end, the privileges weren't revoked, but (due in part to
| FDR putting pressure on the Catholic church itself), the
| bishopry commanded Coughlin to restrict his activities to local
| ministry.
| rmason wrote:
| Father Coughlin was a strong supporter of FDR dating back to
| when he was Governor of New York. It is only when he broke
| with FDR in 1936 that he started having problems.
| burnthrow wrote:
| Okay, now do McCarthyism!
| medicineman wrote:
| Let's just go back and see how many of your previous posts are
| problematic!
| partiallypro wrote:
| I know people will try to draw a parallel between this and
| banning Parler, Trump, etc from social media but they are quite
| different. A radio station operates more like a newspaper and
| vets everything that is broadcast on its channel and has to grant
| access to do so, that isn't true of social media. This would be
| more akin to CNN/MSNBC/etc refusing to air Trump rallies.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Radio stations regularly have live interviews with listeners,
| and my local NPR station ends those segments with "the views
| expressed in this segment may not reflect those of the station,
| underwriters, or management".
| daveslash wrote:
| This is off topic, but I can't get over how professional those
| protest signs look, especially given that this was before high
| availability of at-home publishing software, on-demand printing
| services and the like.
| allannienhuis wrote:
| There were some interesting technologies before computer aided
| design in sign shops. When I was a kid one of my first jobs was
| silk-screening custom-made signs (like in those photos) and
| stickers. Much of it was done with light (UV?)-sensitive film
| techniques. A master was created carefully letter by letter
| from a bunch of letter 'stickers'
| [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letraset], then the light-
| sensitive film was applied to the silk screen, and the master
| laid on to it and a lamp shone on it for a few minutes. The
| parts NOT exposed to the light (behind the letters) were
| capable of being washed away with a solvent of some sort (water
| in some cases if I remember correctly), leaving a very high
| resolution stencil that would be used to print onto whatever
| material desired, with a number of different types of inks.
| Pulling a squeegee and stacking hundreds of placards for drying
| was my summer job for several years. :)
|
| For the really custom stuff, our commercial artists were
| amazingly talented with both brush and penknife. Some of those
| guys could paint lettering by hand that was incredibly
| consistent and amazingly fast.
| spoonjim wrote:
| Overall hand skill used to be much higher in the US, out of
| necessity: making clothes, repairing houses, auto maintenance,
| painting and decorating, etc.
| wil421 wrote:
| Some of the signs are the exact same. I doubt they created
| these at home. Printing companies were around back then.
| [deleted]
| ramoz wrote:
| They do the opposite as well.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_Lib...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft#:....
| olivermarks wrote:
| Some context ...Coughlin was initially a powerful asset and
| supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, but then became a
| political opponent, accusing him of being too friendly to
| bankers. In 1934, he and others established a political
| organization called the National Union for Social Justice,
| supported by many German and Scandinavian immigrant Americans.
| membership was in the millions behind an agenda of monetary
| reform, nationalization of major industries and railroads,
| protection of labor rights and like the national socialists in
| Germany very anti communist.
|
| The 30's were an extraordinary time - Hitler was Time magazine
| man of the year in 1938 - and there was strong resistance to the
| USA entering an 'old country' war at the end of the decade. A
| rough equivalent to 'occupy wall street' in the mid 30's was
| obviously very anti banker and this was a large part of
| Coughlin's Catholic German appeal. (Many Irish catholics were
| heavily involved as well as Italian Americans who had Mussolini
| supposedly making the trains run on time while pushing back on
| some bankers).
|
| The William Kovarik (Professor of Communication, Radford
| University) article was originally titled
|
| _' That time private US media companies stepped in to silence
| the falsehoods and incitements of a major public figure ... in
| 1938'_ in 'the Conversation' - the Smithsonian chose to re
| headline it.
|
| 1938 was a major turning point in US politics and as is the case
| today there was a major clamp down on free speech. This arguably
| subsequently partially resulted in the US entering WWII...
|
| https://theconversation.com/that-time-private-us-media-compa...
| mcguire wrote:
| Note also the "cocktail putsch"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot)---one of the few
| times you get to say "Smedley" with a straight face.
| cafard wrote:
| Actually, I believe that the USMC always has a bulldog mascot
| named Smedley.
| kevinventullo wrote:
| Could you expand on your last sentence? My understanding was
| that the US entered WWII as a direct result of the attack on
| Pearl Harbor.
| ausbah wrote:
| deplatforming bad actors works
| paulmd wrote:
| In some circumstances, and for a while. For example Parler has
| found a new host in Russia, probably with a big helping hand
| from Russian intelligence.
|
| And sure that host could be deplatformed over it too, but if
| that continues to escalate then the ultimate endpoint is a
| balkanized internet where we don't tolerate traffic from ISPs
| that provide peer exchange to ISPs that provide data services
| to datacenters that provide services to hosting services that
| provide services to Parler. Effectively if Russia is willing to
| continue to escalate then the only practical solution to "de-
| platform" Parler would be to cut off Russia from the rest of
| the internet entirely.
| kazinator wrote:
| I don't buy the pattern of this argumentation which is basically:
|
| "We did something like X a century ago, so X is not chilling new
| trend; X is quite okay."
|
| It doesn't take much imagination to substitute various behaviors
| for X.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| You seem to be creating the pattern yourself. I see:
|
| "We did something like X a century ago, history repeats, full
| stop."
|
| Where did "X is quite okay" come from?
| kazinator wrote:
| The tone of the article conveys agreement with the
| intervention.
|
| For instance, the closing remark "in both cases, private
| business had to step in when the consequences became evident"
| could be rendered neutrally as "in both cases, private
| businesses stepped in when the consequences became evident."
|
| "Had to step in" has the effect of defending the actions, by
| insinuating that they had no alternative.
| upofadown wrote:
| Father Coughlin was engaging in hate speech which is illegal in
| most countries (the US is an exception)[1].
|
| Advocating sedition seems like a fundamentally different thing
| with a lot more political implications. Normally such a thing
| would result in the censure of individuals, not entire classes of
| individuals.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country
| citizenpaul wrote:
| Hate speech is not a thing. It is a falsity that dumb people
| accept as a form of censorship when they don't like something.
| There are simply things you don't want to hear and things you
| do. Threats right? Nope.
| guyzero wrote:
| You may not like hate speech laws, but they're explicitly
| coded in to plenty of legal systems, like Canada.
|
| https://lop.parl.ca/sites/PublicWebsite/default/en_CA/Resear.
| ..
| thelastwave wrote:
| Surprised you're not being heavily downvoted already. (I
| don't agree with that, just surprised.)
|
| I do however think extreme hate speech is a real thing, it's
| just misapplied to the point where anything anyone disagrees
| with is labeled hate speech.
|
| Because at the end of the day, all negativity is based on
| hate, right? If you can't say something nice, don't say
| anything at all (which is a nice convenient bromide for
| eliminating real critical thought.)
| krastanov wrote:
| It is true that "hate speech laws" are limits on free speech.
| It is perfectly reasonable to consider any limitation on free
| speech to be unethical, but pretending that "hate speech" is
| not well defined is willful ignorance. No country has
| absolute protection of absolute free speech.
| thelastwave wrote:
| This seems to blur the lines between "hate speech is a
| thing" and "hate speech should be banned." They are
| fundamentally different questions, and conflating them
| invites the normative fallacy.
| newacct583 wrote:
| The case in point was a single speaker being suppressed, not a
| "class", though. I don't understand why people keep trying to
| argue as if conservatives as a whole are being "suppressed".
| Most of them are still on Twitter (or here, or reddit, or...).
|
| Parler was specific community with a specific set of inadequate
| moderation policies and became a center of thought for a
| violent community that ended up engaged in political violence.
| And that site, and _only_ that site, thus became a target for
| broad suppression by other actors in the market.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The best answer I can come up with for this problem is much
| stricter enforcement of antitrust laws. Private organizations
| should not be compelled to carry content they find objectionable,
| but they should also not be allowed to dominate the channel.
| ramoz wrote:
| Agree.
|
| Government acquisitions regulation for tech itself is also a
| good example.(for COTs products, contracting dev/integration,
| consulting, research, etc). Gov't acquisition law has become so
| complex, yet has one single constraint in mind with every
| update:
|
| Protect and enable small and disadvantaged businesses.
|
| It's not perfect, in many new ways inefficient, but seems to do
| its job.
|
| But what is the constraint we need when it comes to propagating
| information? It's not as objectively clear as the acquisition
| case.
| monadic3 wrote:
| How do you solve the problem that misinformation is profitable?
| maxerickson wrote:
| Is the internet a channel or is Facebook a channel? Both?
|
| Why?
| analog31 wrote:
| Facebook is a channel. Here's my rationale. They have a
| dominant position in personal data gathering and targeted
| advertising, with algorithms that couple the creator and
| recipient of content. It's a made for purpose propaganda
| service.
|
| If you host your own web server with a particular message
| that you want to express, it will be lost in a sea of
| servers, and never reach your intended audience.
|
| If you host it through Facebook, the Facebook algorithms and
| targeting will help you direct it towards your intended
| audience, or help your audience find your content.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Would they be allowed to rank the content then?
|
| What if they rank some content as not being worth showing
| to anyone?
| analog31 wrote:
| Actually, despite saying they're a channel, I don't think
| access to a targeted advertising channel is a right.
| Taking it to an absurd level, is it something that the
| government should provide? I'd prefer to see it
| abolished.
| maxerickson wrote:
| I tend to think that private platforms should mostly
| operate how they want. Ads, whatever. They shouldn't be
| allowed to use acquisitions to eliminate competition
| (like Facebook buying Instagram).
|
| If there is gonna be access guarantees, I think they come
| at the network and routing level. Comcast shouldn't be
| choosing who their customers can reach, and neither
| should Level 3 (or whoever it is now).
| mikepurvis wrote:
| I agree in principle, but it's worth also examining the effect
| this has on how people end up in media echo chambers-- when the
| media is a monopoly like the BBC and people expect to hear
| Jeremy Paxman grill you, you're going to go face the music,
| because not doing so will be even worse for you than going and
| faceplanting (a similar thing could be said historically about
| Peter Mansbridge on CBC in Canada).
|
| In the US, though, there's no such impetus. Interviewers and
| even whole outfits can get cut off from access for the
| slightest thing, so then you have the phenomenon of politicians
| only ever being interviewed in increasingly safe environments,
| with friendly hosts who suck up to them, following prearranged
| lines of questioning, etc. Any apparent instances of toughness
| are basically theatre, with both sides in on the act.
|
| Anyway, I don't have an answer here. Choice in media is
| absolutely a net good, and competition is critical to a healthy
| overall dialogue. But I feel that some of the more subtle costs
| of this approach are not always considered in discussions about
| it.
| paulmd wrote:
| > people expect to hear Jeremy Paxman grill you, you're going
| to go face the music, because not doing so will be even worse
| for you than going and faceplanting
|
| the lesson of Republicanism/Trumpism in the last decade is
| that this is very much not true. If parties are sufficiently
| polarized, you can just not go and nothing will happen,
| people will even defend your decision for not participating
| in a "biased" interview.
|
| No actual bias need occur of course. And on the flip side
| refusing to participate in the actual hyper-partisan media
| will be perceived as justification for the former action.
| "Both sides do it!" and so on.
| starik36 wrote:
| > should not be compelled to carry content they find
| objectionable, but they should also not be allowed to dominate
| the channel
|
| How do you do that though? The network effect almost always
| chooses a single winner in the social media market. YouTube is
| a perfect example. The content creators go where the market is.
| How do you make sure YouTube doesn't dominate the channel?
|
| My (imperfect) solution is that once you get to the channel
| domination point, you should be treated as a utility - e.g. you
| can't kick people off your service unless they've broken the
| law.
| Grimm1 wrote:
| Your solution means no real competition or innovation could
| take place in that space then. I know it was just a quick
| take but there's a lot of consequences to that route imo.
| There's also nothing saying that everyone always goes to one
| social platform. Facebook for instance bought all of their
| recent potential competitors so it's more of a self
| fulfilling prophecy right now and one that really needs to be
| handled by anti trust imo.
| starik36 wrote:
| All I said was that YouTube should be treated as a utility
| - - e.g. you can't kick people off your service unless
| they've broken the law. That is the extent of its treatment
| as a utility. It doesn't prevent anyone from competing
| against them.
| Animats wrote:
| There are solutions through antitrust law. One is that
| dominant carriers can't own content. AT&T should have to sell
| off Warner.
|
| Another is to make local carriers common carriers, so they
| just provide transport independent of content. Telcos are
| still common carriers for analog telephony, but managed to
| escape it for Internet services.
| starik36 wrote:
| But none of these solutions applies to today's social
| media. YouTube doesn't carry any significant own content.
| nefitty wrote:
| I assume incumbents might end up in the position where their
| smaller competitors have to deal with less regulation. For
| example, if MySpace had been treated differently than
| Facebook, it might have brought MySpace down much more
| quickly, but at the same time kept a lid on Facebook's
| influence.
| mcguire wrote:
| Your imperfect solution is what we have, minus any
| moderation. That doesn't sound pleasant.
|
| I might be tempted to go along, though, if your utility is
| transparent to the legal process---you can sue people for
| fraud, for example.
| farias0 wrote:
| The implication of what you're saying is that fighting for
| net neutrality isn't enough, we need to ensure ample platform
| to everyone. But is it true? Isn't free speech more about not
| suffering legal persecution?
| hypersoar wrote:
| I'm all for that, but I think more radical action is needed in
| the case of social networks. Should social networking sites
| funded by advertising be allowed to exist? The business model
| rewards maximizing "user engagement". However much Facebook
| might be removing provocative material now (which I am in favor
| of), the fundamental incentives of their business will push
| them back to where they were, letting outrage-driven content
| spread. It's unreasonable to expect a corporation to do
| otherwise without intervention.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| Not an external remedy, but one thing I wish Facebook would
| do is offer the equivalent of rel="nofollow" for engagements.
| I know there's a separate workflow for "show me less like
| this" or "mute this user for 30 days" but that feels more
| like me creating my own little banlist. Instead, I want a box
| I can tick which means "I'm posting here to fact-check this
| or attempt to correct the record; please don't treat this as
| an engagement for the purposes of recommending this
| link/story/comment to others, or for finding more things like
| it for me to look at."
|
| I know it's still counter to their business because
| ultimately outrage -> engagements -> ad impressions. But I
| can't help thinking it might be a start.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| I think this is the _only_ answer. I see a lot of people up in
| arms when it comes to speech they care about (e.g. Twitter
| removing QAnon) yet utterly silent when it comes to speech they
| don 't (e.g. Tumblr removing NSFW). The "slippery slope" is
| only a problem when it hits close to home. This makes me think
| that if the shoe were on the other foot, team "free speech"
| would be more than happy to play censor.
|
| The only way to prevent that is to keep entities from gaining
| so much power in the first place.
| [deleted]
| tengbretson wrote:
| I don't think the founders ever could have imagined the
| possibility of high-capacity, fully automatic broadcasting of
| speech when they wrote the first amendment.
| fareesh wrote:
| If the owner of a restaurant criticizes the local Mayor on
| television, and then the health inspector and fire safety
| inspector show up the next day and start measuring the distances
| between doors and windows down to the micrometer - this is all
| technically and legally correct. Everyone is acting with the
| authority that they have the right to. If violations are found,
| the penalties would also be 100% legal and correct.
|
| Now if we choose to be fools and ignore what has actually
| happened here, we have the right to do that too. Most of the
| conversations about freedom, censorship, misinformation, private
| corporations, rights, authority, etc. seem to be neglecting the
| tremendous scope for abuse.
|
| The mere accusation of being an infidel is enough to taint the
| perception of the person in question. Someone was banned from the
| radio for alleged misinformation. What's the vetting process? For
| most it's to check their political leanings, laugh, and not
| pursue the matter further. This is a dangerous standard to set.
| lordnacho wrote:
| It could never be written into the constitution, but it's still
| there as an essential element of making decisions together.
|
| The concept you're looking for is "good faith". And faith is
| what it is, you can't have evidence for what went on in the
| inspector's mind.
|
| Good faith is basically the goodwill be give each other that
| we're deciding things according to what we say we're deciding
| things by. If you're judging a figureskating contest, you are
| supposed to do it based on the desire to promote good technique
| and artistry. If you do it based on who you think looks good,
| nobody will ever know, they can only suspect it after you've
| given full marks to a few good looking people with bad
| technique.
|
| Once that is undermined in a society, we end up with a mess,
| because just about every decision can be questioned as a
| political move, which is what is happening in the US.
|
| Take that appointment of Merrick Garland. How many people now
| think that it was a good faith decision to not hold a hearing
| for him? Is it believable that people opposed the hearing for
| non-partisan reasons? I think it's hard.
| thelastwave wrote:
| I don't think anyone seriously questions whether the non-
| approval of Merrick Garland was done in good faith or not.
| Rather, the phraseology used is whether it was
| constitutional. McConnell didn't use a pretext, he flat out
| acknowledged what he was doing, and that it was
| constitutionally his prerogative.
| kennywinker wrote:
| But much of government and society runs on precedent and
| tradition. What mcconnel did was constitutional, but the
| reasons he gave were not authentic, or he would not have
| approved Amy Coney Barrett for the same reasons he gave for
| not approving Merrick Garland. Those reasons matter. I.e.
| if a cop lets you off with a warning because "you were only
| going 10 over the speed limit", and then gives someone else
| a ticket for going 9 over the limit, yes both people broke
| the law, but that is likely corrupt behavior to punish or
| excuse one of those speeders, or to meet a secret quota
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| If I understand correctly, the precedent actually is to
| go ahead with a Supreme Court nomination if the President
| and Senate majority are of the same party, and not if
| they are of different parties. Barrett and Garland are
| both following precedent.
| thelastwave wrote:
| You understand correctly, and therefore must be
| downvoted, since we are incapable of actually responding
| to you.
| [deleted]
| motohagiography wrote:
| This "good faith" issue is written into many contracts, and a
| lot of rules just collapse without a basis in shared
| principle. What I see is a kind of moral legalism, where
| people essentially litigate their positions to greater and
| greater powers as a means to wield their dominion, and this
| is the very essence of faithlessness.
|
| Whether it is a constitutional appeal to freedom of speech,
| or political "ratfucking," by people who hide behind societal
| penalties for any violence, the spirit of mendacity and
| sadistic antagonism is the same. That good faith principle is
| the only thing that enables societies to be governed with
| consent instead of just ruled over as interchangeable
| subjects.
|
| When we dispense with principles and their honourable spirit,
| we dispense with the only meaningful thing separating people
| from animals.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Coughlin saw things differently. He blamed Jews for their own
| persecution and claimed in the sermon that the Nazis had
| actually been lenient. Only a few synagogues were burned, he
| lied, adding: "German citizen Jews were not molested officially
| in the conduct of their business." And communists, not Jews,
| were the real targets of the Nazi mobs, according to Coughlin.
|
| Can you clarify, do you suspect this information is not
| accurate? Or you think it's not sufficient to judge the effect
| of Coughlin's broadcast and the matter needs to be "pursued
| further"? (How, what sort of pursuit, what would we be looking
| to find?) Or something else?
|
| Coughlin wasn't secretive about what he believed, and he was
| banned from certain stations for exactly what he said on the
| radio, I think? I'm confused what sort of additional vetting
| you are suggesting should have happened, by whom. I could
| respect better an argument that it's worrisome when large
| corporations can ban people for their political views... but
| you are arguing that Coughlin's political views were
| _misunderstood_? Really? How so?
|
| Or wait, from the first paragraph, that Coughlin wasn't
| _really_ banned for what he said on the radio, but for...
| critisizing the local government? With what sort of critisism?
| You realize it wasn 't actually the government that banned him,
| it was a choice of individual broadcasters not to broadcast
| him?
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| Parent commenter's comment intentionally avoids mentioning
| the comments that lead to the ban. Pretty much all of the
| people who scream "slippery slope" and cry for Parler will
| follow a similar pattern. So instead, the argument trends
| towards concern-trolling about "vetting" and such.
| Simulacra wrote:
| An accusation today can ruin a person, more so than ever
| before.
| rictic wrote:
| > more so than ever before
|
| This is ahistorical. In many societies throughout history, an
| accusation of heresy was a mortal threat, or worse.
| Alupis wrote:
| However, unlike today with social media, mass
| communication, and the internet, one could pick up and move
| to another city and essentially "start fresh" with their
| reputation.
|
| Today, there is no hiding - forever - even if you've atoned
| your mistakes.
| davidgay wrote:
| > one could pick up and move to another city and
| essentially "start fresh" with their reputation
|
| From the wikipedia article on exile: "In Roman law,
| exsilium denoted both voluntary exile and banishment as a
| capital punishment alternative to death."
|
| When something is an _alternative_ to death, I think it
| 's fair to say that it was not a trivial event. "Just"
| moving somewhere wasn't easy, historically.
| Alupis wrote:
| Easy has nothing to do with it. It was possible to move
| cities/towns/state/country, start fresh and have people
| judge you by your current actions and things you say...
| not something you said 10 years ago late one night on
| twitter after a few beers.
| rfrey wrote:
| Unless you were dead, which was a distinct possibility
| throughout most of history for one accused of heresy
| (political or religious).
| mcphage wrote:
| > An accusation today can ruin a person, more so than ever
| before
|
| It probably can, but unfortunately the people usually held up
| as examples of this generally haven't actually been ruined. I
| mean, what are some actual examples of people who have been
| ruined by accusation?
| Alupis wrote:
| George Zimmerman, for instance. The guy still receives
| death threats and worse, even though he was found not
| guilty by a jury of his peers.
|
| Social Media continues to perpetuate falsehoods about the
| case, trial and outcome. There is no safe place for
| Zimmerman in America today... and regardless of what you
| think of him as an individual, that's a problem.
| mcphage wrote:
| I'm not sure if he's the best example. He wasn't ruined
| by accusation--whether or not he killed Trayvon Martin
| was never in question. The question was if it was
| justified.
| mcguire wrote:
| I wouldn't necessarily call it "alleged misinformation".
|
| " _In the wake of [blaming "Jews for their own persecution and
| [claiming...] that the Nazis had actually been lenient. Only a
| few synagogues were burned, he lied, adding: "German citizen
| Jews were not molested officially in the conduct of their
| business."], a New York radio station decided to break with
| Coughlin. "Your broadcast last Sunday was calculated to incite
| religious and racial strife in America," said a letter from
| WMCA radio. "When this was called to your attention in advance
| of your broadcast, you agreed to delete those
| misrepresentations which undeniably had this effect. You did
| not do so."_"
|
| Coughlin broke an agreement not to "incite religious and racial
| strife". Emphasis on "broke an agreement".
| betterunix2 wrote:
| The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is misinformation -- not
| "allegedly," it is a straight up lie that was intended to stir
| up antisemitic hatred. The man in question used his print
| publication to propagate that pamphlet. That same man spent
| years using his radio program to promote the falsehood that the
| Russian Revolution was sponsored by "Jewish bankers" and the
| conspiracy theory that "Jews" were behind Bolshevism. In
| response to Kristalnacht he said that the persecution of Jews
| by the Nazis "followed" the persecution of Christians by the
| Bolsheviks, as if Kristalnacht was a response to what happened
| in the USSR. When he was challenged on his antisemitism he
| declared that he wanted the "Good Jews" on his side and that he
| was only taking a stand against the persecution of people
| generally (never mind his comments on Kristalnacht and support
| for the Nazi Party and the Bund).
|
| So no, this is not an example of out of control censorship or a
| witch hunt or even a "mere accusation" ruining someone's life,
| nor was it simply that he was an opponent of Roosevelt (who,
| like every US president, had many political opponents). This is
| an example of someone who was fomenting religious and ethnic
| divisions by spreading the propaganda of one of America's
| adversaries -- while also being indirectly funded by that
| adversary.
| MikeUt wrote:
| > the conspiracy theory that "Jews" were behind Bolshevism
|
| 10 of the 15 leaders of the Russian-supported socialist
| revolution in Germany were Jewish: https://en.wikipedia.org/w
| iki/German_Revolution_of_1918%E2%8...
|
| It would be interesting to compare that to the percentage of
| the German population that was Jewish at the time.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > What's the vetting process?
|
| You either don't care and make damn sure that the communication
| channel has a lot of competition over the public mindshare, or
| you make it completely formal with democratically created rules
| with last appeals in the government judiciary.
|
| Both of those are fine. Not perfect, but fine. None is
| dangerous. The first option is the default, for obvious
| reasons.
|
| I don't know how it was at the time, but our current situation
| with social media is neither of those options, and not fine at
| all. Anyway, any comparison or decision based only on the
| ruleset is misleading.
| Nacdor wrote:
| > The mere accusation of being an infidel is enough to taint
| the perception of the person in question.
|
| Not that we need more reminders of this fact, but here's
| another recent one that everyone should read: Alex Morse
| committed the mortal sin of trying to unseat an incumbent
| Democrat in Massachusetts. The Democratic party used false
| accusations of inappropriate sexual behavior to successfully
| smear him and destroy his campaign. Even after their
| "investigation" turned up nothing they still continued to
| attack him: https://theintercept.com/2021/01/18/alex-morse-
| umass-amherst...
| content_sesh wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Father Caughlin was
| not a plucky underdog speaking truth to power when he
| downplayed Kristallnacht and blamed the Jews for their own
| persecution. The "alledged misinformation" was in fact, genuine
| misinformation. And the vetting process was immediate global
| condemnation.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Perhaps you should be more specific instead of resorting to
| vague insinuations, which can lead to all sorts of
| misunderstandings.
| compsciphd wrote:
| not 100%. There's a jewish law concept of an eruv. without
| getting into the nitty gritty of it, many places that have
| them, make use of existing utility poles (with permission of
| the utility companies that own them). Many municipalities have
| laws that are really unenforced that things can't be posted to
| them. Sometimes when building an eruv, they will post a strip
| to the pole (again, don't have to get into the details as to
| why, unimportant for this discussion). Cities that want to make
| life difficult for the people building the eruv try to enforce
| the law against them.
|
| the city general loses in court
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017%E2%80%9318_Bergen_County_...
|
| just because the law defines something, we are also equal in
| the eyes of the law and if a law is not equally enforced and is
| viewed as being used by the government as a bludgeon against
| the practice of protected rights, then the government has a
| difficult case to defend.
| maxharris wrote:
| I find it troubling that this article omits the fact that
| Coughlin's newspaper was a weekly named "Social Justice", and
| that Coughlin was the leader and founder of the National Union
| for Social Justice.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Justice_(periodical)
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Union_for_Social_Just...
|
| The overlap in names between Coughlin's authoritarian-right
| movement and today's increasingly authoritarian-left version may
| at first seem like a mere coincidence, but my view is that this
| is reflective of a deep epistemological commonality between these
| views. Despite the surface-level political differences, which
| amounts to disagreement on who to scapegoat and _which_ group
| should wield increasingly authoritarian power over others, they
| are not very different.
|
| From where does this commonality stem? German philosophers that
| created the intellectual conditions within German society that
| made both the Weimar Republic and its collapse into Hitler's Nazi
| Germany inevitable:
| https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/530716/the-cause-of...
| 99_00 wrote:
| Interesting history, and the subtext seems to be that this is
| precedence for deleting Trump from social media. But the
| connection isn't presented, it is assumed. And in my opinion,
| doesn't exist.
|
| >As a media historian, I find more than a little similarity
| between the stand those stations took back then and the way
| Twitter, YouTube and Facebook have silenced false claims of
| election fraud and incitements to violence in the aftermath of
| the siege on the U.S. Capitol - noticeably by silencing the
| claims of Donald Trump and his supporters.
|
| If you're going to link accusations of election fraud with Nazism
| you need more than "more than a little similarity".
|
| And bundling up accusations of election fraud with incitements to
| violence is very sloppy. Someone can believe fraud happened
| without advocating violence.
|
| If we don't allow that seperation, then anyone who is critical
| about anything to do with the election is inciting violence. Of
| course, when this standard is applied it won't be done evenly.
| Instead it will be targeted to certain groups. At that point it
| becomes political persicution.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Clearly, we've gotta change. Something needs to be done. But I
| think we should very carefully weigh our options, lest we become
| that which we seek to destroy.
| rhino369 wrote:
| And if anyone thinks the answer is clear, many of the same
| people saying we need to blacklist anyone claiming election
| fraud were saying Trump was trying to steal the election in
| October.
|
| If we can be ban false claims of election fraud, we can ban
| true claims too.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > We can be ban false claims of election fraud, we can bad
| true claims too.
|
| I think the terms "shun" and "ostracize" fit the current
| situation better than "ban."
| rhino369 wrote:
| Whatever you call it, nobody would want lawyers to be fired
| or huffpo being de-platformed for saying Trump stole the
| election had Trump narrowly won instead of narrowly lost.
|
| The only difference is that the people in charge of big
| tech agree with you instead of the republicans. That won't
| always be the case.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > nobody would want lawyers to be fired
|
| The thing about the present circumstances is that they
| are so far outside of norms that such sanctions are
| exactly what is being put on the table by the judiciary.
| Because there are, in fact, limits to the doubt the
| judicial system is willing to grant litigants... Limits
| that lawyers have a professional duty to understand.
|
| https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/cgi-
| bin/show_public_doc?2020cv3...
|
| "Courts are not instruments through which parties engage
| in such gamesmanship or symbolic political gestures. As a
| result, at the conclusion of this litigation, the Court
| will determine whether to issue an order to show cause
| why this matter should not be referred to its Committee
| on Grievances for potential discipline of Plaintiffs'
| counsel."
|
| It is extremely correct, I think, to ask what long-term
| effects account banning and legal sanctions will have on
| norms and standards in the future, but one must note that
| norms and standards are currently extremely compromised.
| This circumstance is highly unusual.
| dageshi wrote:
| They didn't really deplatform until it went beyond speech
| and into targetted political violence and murder.
| npsimons wrote:
| > They didn't really deplatform until it went beyond
| speech and into targetted political violence and murder.
|
| This right here. _Far_ too many fucking apologists are
| neatly eliding the insurrection against our lawfully
| elected government that was incited by a seditious
| terrorist leader, and the literal _years_ of lies that
| lead to that incident. Those arguing this is unjust
| censorship are arguing in bad faith and should be
| ignored.
|
| He was given all the free speech he could handle, right
| up until he broke very clear laws against incitement. The
| only problem I see here is that platforms like Facebook
| and Twitter are monopolies and are not accountable to the
| people whose lives they affect (we the people). Either
| restrict their power (eg, break them up), or regulate
| them as common carriers.
|
| That being said, it's dirt cheap and easy to rent a
| website and post whatever you please, right up until you
| incite again.
| 8fGTBjZxBcHq wrote:
| When people say shit like this you just know immediately
| where they stand and who they consider their peers to be.
|
| Leftist activists and sex workers specifically (but among
| others) have been getting banned from twitter, fb,
| reddit, other "big tech" platforms for years now. But I
| don't remember a mass crying out against it by the free
| speech fundamentalists.
| rhino369 wrote:
| It sounds like you are proving my point. You don't want
| leftist activists banned for challenging the status quo.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| - It could happen to you! - It already has? -
| That just proves my point!
|
| Ignoring other people's experiences when issuing grim
| warnings is not a great style of argument, because it
| treats all hypothetical situations as equivalent and
| interchangeable.
| wnevets wrote:
| Watching so many self proclaimed libertarians and free market
| cures all folks twist themselves into pretzels advocating the
| government should force companies to allow Parler, Trump and
| others use their services has been very entertaining. Too bad gay
| couples wanting to buy a wedding cake didn't receive that same
| kind of support from these folks.
| krupan wrote:
| I think if you paid better attention you'd notice the
| libertarians are not asking for the government to intervene.
| You can voice opposition to something without advocating for
| the government to regulate the thing. That is in fact a core
| tenet of libertarianism: persuasion instead of government
| coercion.
| wnevets wrote:
| I think if you paid better attention you'd noticed I used the
| _self proclaimed_ qualifier for a reason. I have no
| interesting in playing the true scotsman game.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It's kinda disingenuous of them to ignore the fact that Trump
| made a big thing out of repealing section 230 and has not
| only talked many times about regulating social media but
| formally petitioned the FCC to do so: https://www.ntia.gov/fi
| les/ntia/publications/ntia_petition_f...
| discohippy wrote:
| Yes we already know that everyone on this forum is pro
| censorship. Can we all just move on? Im so sick of all this
| political news when all we really care about are apple gadgets
| and javascript frameworks.
| medicineman wrote:
| Wait, I can do a dang: "Afraid I'm not following you here."
| woodgrainz wrote:
| The Paradox of Tolerance states that if a society is tolerant
| without limit, its ability to be tolerant is eventually seized or
| destroyed by the intolerant.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
| whoopdedo wrote:
| I would also propose there is a Dunning-Kruger Corollary of
| Tolerance, which is that the more intolerant a person is the
| more likely they are to perceive themselves as tolerant, and
| perceive people who disagree with them as intolerant.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Ah that's a good point. The only think that need not be
| tolerated is intolerance itself. Sadly, tolerance easily can
| stem from the lack of backbone than from the abundance of it.
| gadders wrote:
| Yes, sadly that seems to be what has happened at Google,
| Facebook, Twitter etc.
| [deleted]
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