CENSORSHIP AND SECURITY PARADOXES

author=Shinan

author=bulmabriefs144
Shinan, the fact that four or more companies made a coordinated (same day, guys) remove on a single user speaks volumes. No, I don't believe government took this down. Hope I didn't say that. I believe something far worse. Antitrust sorta thing worse. Business alliances, unelected commercial government, worse.

OR the companies that have done a "will they won't they" for forever suddenly changed their mind when the biggest assholes of them all, Apple, did it. They all went "we can't be worse than Apple, that'd be terrible."

Or. I guess. Twitter didn't and they are getting a lot of shit for it I guess :)

All on the same day, though? You don't find that odd? Precisely why these conspiracy theorists gain traction. It's kinda the Strawman has a point deal. They're getting businesses to pressure them (probably, rival news companies, since following the money usually is the case). Guess what though? Censorship is not a healthy business model. It means those potential customers won't use the net. Twitter has some brains enough to not fall for this.

Facebook just let their own politics talk them out of the first rule of marketing.
"You are not your customer." Also phrased as "Focus on your audience." Same difference. You leave your crap at the door, and try to you get the customers, even the ones that "advocate hate." A smaller webforum like this, can do what they want, honestly. A multi-million company? It cannot afford a scandal that drives customers away. Especially one that publicly makes them look way biased.

For the record, I don't like conservative censorship much either. So, following crap with Youtube and Facebook, I migrated/fled to Bit Chute. Bit Chute does indeed allow edgy politics. What it doesn't have? Much music (no DMCA deal? All I know is it's kinda lacking), crossdresser videos (actual zero of them, searched "crossdressing" got some guy legit ranting about how traps suck, 1 video), and I don't get any cute lesbians kissing (they just have political crap about TERFs). I want my cute lesbians! I want a video stream that has both.

Because there is nothing else to discuss. This isn't a censorship issue. You keep raising the specter of government suppression, but this is not a matter of free speech. It is speech suppression strictly by private companies, which is well within their rights to specify that certain topics will not be tolerated. I think every single one of us holding a job can vouch that political and religious discussion is forbidden in our lunchrooms (even though we often talk about them anyway). The same is true for hate speech and discriminatory remarks.

Last I checked, companies are required to abide by laws and business practices. A company that acts against its own monetary interest (such ppl have followers, meaning ads, meaning money I assume), showing clear political bias isn't any better than any other bias.

In other words... Either it is alright to not wanna bake a gay cake, or no, Facebook doesn't get to ban people who are insanely popular because of "hate crimes" (Zuck actually said in court that he couldn't define hate crimes, meaning it really does boil down to his political disagreement with them). One or the other, sorry.

This is a censorship issue.

author=StormCrow
For context:

I am a classical liberal democrat living in the United States. I have a policy of not discussing politics in open/online forums during these extremely divisive times. But this hit on something I feel strongly about: censorship. I care about this issue not just on principle, but because I have had my words and more importantly my work suppressed in the past because my beliefs differed from the opinions of those in positions of power. It is a terrible feeling.

I am a believer in (near) absolute freedom of speech with one or two very specific exceptions (i.e. unironic Holocaust denial: fuck that shit). And I am vehemently opposed to censorship: not just government censorship, but censorship by media gatekeepers in positions of power: YouTube, Amazon, etcetera. Fuck censors and fuck censorship.

So, maybe you don't do conservative news or maybe you don't care cuz you're liberal and stuff. That's fine, people should be entitled to their political opinions. Anyway, around August 6 or so, Facebook, Youtube, Spotify, and others outright banned certain conservative news (InfoWars) personalities because reasons.

Facetiously, you say "because reasons". Earnestly, I ask you: what are those reasons? Is one of them that Alex Jones is batshit bugnut fucking crazy?

However, to paraphrase Voltaire: I wholly disapprove of Alex Jones' insane ravings, but I will defend to the death his right to rave insanely. Well, maybe not TO THE DEATH in the case of Alex Jones but...you get my basic point.

That said, I find the still-relatively-recent arrest and conviction by a Scottish court of a comedian for telling a distasteful joke far more worrisome than Alex Jones being denied a platform...okay, being denied like ALL the platforms.

But... if this goofball gets banned, how long before other people get banned for having opinions?

Frankly, I think this is a completely valid concern even if phrased inelegantly. There is a definite devaluation of free speech that is an ongoing trend in the Western world and we should ALL be concerned. Even if the speech is speech we disagree with, disturbing precedents are being set.

There is no such thing as real news. Not Infowars, not CNN, not WSJ, not that history book, not nothing. Historiography is the study of how history is written. We studied two perspectives of the same event. We studied History of the Peloponnesian War, which went fine until they consulted the oracle (and after that he omits the eventual downfall of his area).

Just to be clear: there is such a thing as facts. There is such a thing as truth. The erosion of facts and the degradation of truth are emblematic of the Orwellian horror of the times we live in. But TRUTH must exist. FACTS must be treated differently from opinions. And if someone ever used this kind of argument to defend a statement like "how can we be sure the Holocaust REALLY happened" I would punch them in their fucking face.

StormCrow, I think you and me are on the same wavelength. And no, not to death (not that close to him). But yea, I'd want to defend his right to speak somewhere, even if that somewhere is only his own news site. He wants to advertise male enhancement supplements on his own channel, nobody ought to take him down. If he wants to do so on the Twitter channels, provided he does a proper job of it, they should not ban him for being unpopular or crazy. These are not bannable offenses. In fact...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8NNHmV3QPw

I'm not sure if I agree that there are indisputable facts. I'm a ontological skeptic and an epistemological skeptic, I don't believe there is a real world, and I don't believe it's possible to know things for certain. I believe in faith, not facts, so most of what I believe is 80% certain. Maybe? What I do know is that things that verifiably involved the lives of others probably happened. And that's as certain as I'll get. But if someone wants to deny the Holocaust. I'll hear him out, then do research to see if the reason he is denying it was because he in fact was related to any SS members. Or just laugh at him.

Usually, if you outright suppress alt views, it says two things to me (1) you can't argue well, and/or (2) the truth, if it were to get out would discredit you. I'm reminded of the film Conspiracy Theory with Mel Gibson, where his paper spins nonsense after nonsense, but one article somewhere happened to be right (broken clock adage).

Ummm so the reasons, I will have to look them up... Facebook banned him for conspiracy theories about Sandy Hook. Youtube for "violating community standards." And apparently, for continuing to post using another account while his main was banned (that does sound like him, though). It also sounds like a progressive group known as Sleeping Giants kinda pressured them about not doing enough to censor stuff. So yea, it was a straight up censor ban, since Variety, a trusted news source (scoffs) confirms it.

hate speech isn't protected speech.

Hate speech isn't protected. Hate speech is "burn the witches", "short people ain't got no reason to live", "they took our jobs".

See, the problem here, however, is that a bunch of people tossing the word "hate" around, does not automatically make it so.

When people claim that something is a hate group or a racist group, they can give an auto-ban okay to members of said group. But banning people without opportunity to know legitimate reason for ban is by definition a false charge. Censorship.

You need something less vague than "was a member of a hate group." Like, actually spewing hate on the forum or streaming website. There is a difference between wanting a sovereign government (grey area, still okay though) and wanting a Nazi-style mass murder of a racial or religious group.

When asked to clarify, it has to be something like "Oh yeah, he said all Mexicans deserve to die" rather than "we should defend our borders by building a wall." To the best of my knowledge, I have never heard any of these people say the first one.