Please describe how a private company deciding not to host another company's website after terms of service were violated is censorship again? How is that not simple capitalism?
TOS's are so vague that anything can be used by the company against you, but the same doesn't work in the reverse.
Yes, you are correct. Parler's TOS [parler.com] is so vague they can kick you off for any reason. They have no obligation to allow you access to their service.
Any invitation made by Parler to you to use the Services or submit content to the Services, or the fact that Parler may receive a benefit from your use of the Services or provision of content to the Services, will not obligate Parler to maintain any content or maintain your access to the Services. Parler will have no liability to you for removing any content, for terminating your access to the Services, or for modifying or terminating the Services.
Oh, so you want government to step in and force private entities to stop their censorship. If a customer at a restaurant threatens a member of the staff, you want to make it illegal for the restaurant owner to throw the customer out.
You're the one who said the only thing to counter speech is more speech. So it's very clear you think private companies should not be allowed to control what their property gets used for. Otherwise, why complain?
Saying "people should not do X" is not the same as saying "government should prevent X", however popular the idea seems that government should be a helicopter parent to everyone, making sure that no feelings are hurt and the children make no mistakes.
Apparently, acting like a troll is a core part of being an evil atheist.
No I think what he means is that he wants the government to step in if say a cake shop refused to bake a cake for a gay couple and would want the government to force them to make it under threat of being bankrupted and sent to jail.
They only refused to make a wedding cake. They did state they would make any other kind of cake. The ruling was about not forcing someone to participate in an event that was against their religious values. It was not about being able to refuse service to someone for being gay. But it sounds so much better to call the bakers gay hating bigots than to actually discuss the very narrow objection covered by the case/ruling. The gay couple should have just moved on and found another baker that was happy to t
Sadly, you partly make a good argument, and then you resort to rhetoric such that you won't convince anybody. I absolutely agree with you that, if I were this couple, I would *not* want that baker making my cake. But what works at a small scale does not work at a large scale. The issue at hand wasn't really about cakes. What about life-saving stomach ulcer medication? Should a pharmacist have a right to deny that to a patient because it is against his/her religious beliefs? If I had a stomach ulcer, I
Oh, so you want government to step in and force private entities to stop their censorship.
Actually, no, I'd just like people to stop being bullies. There are two situations people are drawing an equivalency for:
1. A small bakery refuses to make a cake for a gay couple. The gay couple sue the bakery.
2. Parler is trying to be a free speech "open square" kind of platform. AWS and others are dropping them as customers.
In both of these situations it is a company (or several) deciding not to do business with another entity. Okay, fine. But there's an important distinction people are missing...
>Oh, so you want government to step in and force private entities to stop their censorship.
I would like the US government to not provide a specific and direct legal protection for this censorship through section 230. Removing that would level the playing field - at present it is far from level, to stay the least. The US government, through section 230, is directly enabling this censorship of speech.
We need to take this beyond merely "censorship bad".
Sometimes censorship is good, e.g. when protecting the victims of crime or state secrets. Sometimes censorship is bad. Is this good or bad?
There is certainly a powerful argument that making it harder to attack democracy is a good thing. I'm not really seeing many arguments as to why it's a bad thing, just "censorship bad".
We need to take this beyond merely "censorship bad".
We have 200 years of case law and analysis moving beyond merely "censorship bad." I'll forgive you for not knowing since you are not American. A good place to start reading is the Federalist Papers, if you are actually interested in improving your intellect.
It's still censorship, it's not government censorship.
Please send me the password to your account ASAP, so that I can use it to express my opinion. After all, your failure to express my opinion is censorship of my opinion.
Thanks, Guy who you're unjustly preventing from using "phantomfive."
Please send me the password to your account ASAP, so that I can use it to express my opinion. After all, your failure to express my opinion is censorship of my opinion.
I think this comment is close to winning the "dumbest analogy of all time" award.
It's so dumb I can't even believe it's real. Do people really think this explains the actual situation at all?
None, the legal definition is the only one which matters since you're using a legal word. Just because you can't say what you want in my house doesn't mean you're being censored. You're free to stand outside and say what you want. Now if I prevent you from speaking outside as well then you can have your little cry.
I agree with that censorship is a perfectly cromulent way of describing what is happening. It's just not governmental censorship. But, if the message is promoting or planning a coup, insurrection, kidnapping or murder, it is appropriate that they are censored, as it is criminal.
Presumably they had a business relationship which has operated for as long as it has under the same modus operendi, and now all of a sudden one party decides to terminate its service, maximally impacting the livelihoods of all those involved with marketing parler, and there is supposedly "no harm, no foul?" How long has this been going on, and why couldn't the site been given 90 days to decide whether they could or would or how they might satisfy the provider? Amazon should probably
Well, just ask Google for a definition of censorship.
the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.
AWS are suppressing something that they find politically unacceptable (although they're using the excuse of a threat to security).
In what way is Amazon suppressing or prohibiting what Parler does? All Parker has to do is find another host site. That’s like saying I’m suppressing you if I do not allow you to host a speech on my front lawn. Find someone else's lawn.
Right, so, if a bunch of near monopolies collude to censor free speech, it's actually not censorship. In a similar vein, if a government hires mobsters to shoot and beat people up, it's not actually state violence.
Right, so, if a bunch of near monopolies collude to censor free speech, it's actually not censorship. In a similar vein, if a government hires mobsters to shoot and beat people up, it's not actually state violence.
If the government hires them to, it is actually state violence. If the mobsters do it on their own, it's not. This really isn't complicated.
I find it entertaining that the same side that accuses Trump of inciting something on the basis that "some people might have interpreted it like that, and he must have known that some will do so it's the same as a direct order" also pretends that everything in an incestuous relationship between the state and private business need to be explicitly spelled out.
Forcing a private company to host content they don't wish to host would in fact be a far far bigger threat to free speech.
Your free to say what you want and the government can't put you in jail for it.
You aren't free to force others to support your speech with their resources, property or attention.
True free speech has consequences, if you say things people don't like they have the freedom to speak back, ignore or even throw you off their property.
Please describe how a private company deciding not to host another company's website after terms of service were violated is censorship again?
Because it's a dead certainty that sometime in the next four years Joe Biden - or some other Democrat - is going to say something that Twitter finds objectionable, such as defending the Sci-Hub site or criticizing China's treatment of the Uighurs. You can bet that when (not if) this happens, you will not be seeing "capitalism" be defended.
Because it's a dead certainty that sometime in the next four years Joe Biden - or some other Democrat - is going to say something that Twitter finds objectionable, such as defending the Sci-Hub site or criticizing China's treatment of the Uighurs. You can bet that when (not if) this happens, you will not be seeing "capitalism" be defended.
First, you need some better examples. Neither defending SciHub nor criticizing China violate Twitter's terms of service, unlike people inciting riots and/or insurrection.
Second, I'll defend Twitter's right to set and enforce its own terms of service when they take something down that the left likes. But I'm not a member of the red tribe or the blue tribe.
First, you need some better examples. Neither defending SciHub nor criticizing China violate Twitter's terms of service, unlike people inciting riots and/or insurrection.
I chose these examples not just because they are very recent but because in both cases Twitter banned the accounts involved.
I don't care about Donald Trump. Ten days from now, he will be a fading purple bruise on the nation's consciousness. But Twitter's ability to crimp off public debate continues.
Which means the US government has removed the other companies right to sue the hosting company (win or lose..) over this.
So, the US government has protected the hosting company from any legal recourse, hence it is a 1st amendment violation by the Us government by providing section 230..
On behalf of your children I need to encourage you to send them to a real school with competent teachers that understand basic concepts like "censorship is not just a Government function".
You really are an ugly, ignorant, lying, dumb troll, aren't you?
No. The troll would be the AC that pretended I was talking about the 25th Amendment or impeachment, when I was explicitly referring to the thing that the US military said would be a coup and provided references.
I'm so sorry that your favourite corrupt politician was prevented from executing a coup on the US because the military refused to let her. You must be gutted.
I mean, shit, it's in the fucking NY Times. This isn't the most biased newspaper in America but it's been solidly anti-Trump for literally year
Don't be ridiculous. A small, unarmed rowdy crowd breaking into the Capitol, getting shot at and taking selfies is not what a coup looks like. The ones screaming it was one should fucking know better, considering the countless coups they've sponsored abroad during their long tenures in government - one would expect they had some idea of what their work looks like.
Otherwise you could state that an armed ANTIFA mob storming through a gated community to go scream at a mayor's house was also a coup attempt,
No. The accusation that a predominantly pro-gun and gun owning group of the populace attempted a coup where they came in unarmed, took selfies in the capitol, got shot at by police, didn't fire back and ultimately dispersed were attempting a coup doesn't pass the laugh test.
No. The accusation that a predominantly pro-gun and gun owning group of the populace attempted a coup where they came in unarmed...
Let's see.
They knew that the government had ordered the security guards to be unarmed to minimize the risk of unexpected shootings, so they did not need to be heavily armed.
There were at least five arrests on weapons charges, so at least some of them were armed.
One person who was arrested was later found to have a truck full of Molotov cocktails made with homemade napalm, and reportedly planted a bomb at the Capitol building.
A number of people involved publicly declared their intent to "arrest" congresspeo
FWIW, only about half of Republicans own any firearm, and a lot of those would be shotguns or hunting rifles that wouldn't be very practical in a coup attempt. And most are smart enough not to risk the almost guaranteed felony charges if they got caught carrying firearms into Washington D.C. (punishable by up to 5 years in jail and up to a $5,000 fine). The ones who came armed, then, presumably did so with malicious intent, and with full knowledge that there was a good chance that they wouldn't make it out
FWIW, only about half of Republicans own any firearm, and a lot of those would be shotguns or hunting rifles that wouldn't be very practical in a coup attempt. And most are smart enough not to risk the almost guaranteed felony charges if they got caught carrying firearms into Washington D.C. (punishable by up to 5 years in jail and up to a $5,000 fine). The ones who came armed, then, presumably did so with malicious intent, and with full knowledge that there was a good chance that they wouldn't make it out alive. Whether you want to call that a coup attempt or domestic terrorism is your call, but it definitely crossed a line of lethality and criminal intent that should never be crossed.
So wait, the same people that were not worried about making it out alive were also terrified by the terribly high chance of being randomly caught (which would only happen if there were internal border checks, which afaik isn't the case), enough to prevent them from bringing guns that would actually have them do something effective while inside?
No. Read it again. The people who didn't bring guns did not do so because they weren't trying to stir up anything, and didn't want to bring guns just for the heck of it, because they knew they could potentially do ten years in jail. This explains why there were not many guns. Most of the people weren't trying to start an insurrection. The people who did bring guns, however, were intending to cause trouble, and therefore didn't care about the punishment.
So what, exactly, is the threshold for something being a coup attempt in your universe? Lots of firearms?
No, but I'd expect the means of capturing and holding a place and people
Tactical zip ties.
which does imply being armed
Some were.
and some degree of organization which there absolutely wasn't.
That we know about.
In this case, it sounds much more likely that there wasn't an organized attempt at anything and as you said, a bunch of people got a stupid idea, acted on the impulse and a bunch of others got swept up in the moment. And yeah, I'd call it what it is, a violent riot.
The people who did bring guns, however, were intending to cause trouble, and therefore didn't care about the punishment.
And yet, not a single shot was fired, even when they were shot at, and in the end, they disbanded as instructed by Trump and Pence once things calmed down. It feels a lot more like a lot of people swept by the action and adrenaline (and maybe a particularly stupid bellwether or two) than anything planned or organized. Once more, it's not what coups look like, it's what it looks like
The people who did bring guns, however, were intending to cause trouble, and therefore didn't care about the punishment.
And yet, not a single shot was fired, even when they were shot at, and in the end, they disbanded as instructed by Trump and Pence once things calmed down. It feels a lot more like a lot of people swept by the action and adrenaline (and maybe a particularly stupid bellwether or two) than anything planned or organized. Once more, it's not what coups look like, it's what it looks like when a protest turns into a riot.
They weren't able to find any of their stated targets (the congresspeople and the vice president) because they had already been evacuated to/through the tunnels. There would have been little point in taking a stand to hold an empty building.
An unorganized violent riot doesn't usually involve building significant numbers of incendiary devices ahead of time. At the very least, there was a plan to cause terror.
I don't believe those devices belonged to anyone from the crowd. They weren't found on any specific person
So let me get this straight. You think the police planned ahead and built bombs so that they could plant them in a vehicle to discredit a group of protesters who the police initially didn't even bother to resist? That seems almost as far-fetched to me as the notion of
So let me get this straight. You think the police planned ahead and built bombs so that they could plant them in a vehicle to discredit a group of protesters who the police initially didn't even bother to resist? ,
What do you mean, plan ahead? Even if they were built right there and then, making a pipebomb doesn't require rocket science nor hours and hours of time, especially when being actually effective isn't a concern.
That seems almost as far-fetched to me as the notion of widespread election fr
That seems almost as far-fetched to me as the notion of widespread election fraud that just happened to affect only the presidential race and none of the congressional races.
An unlikely amount of ballots with only Biden on them and no congress votes was indeed one of the many, many fishy things in the election, and also one only occuring in swing states.
Why do you think that sounds fishy? This literally occurs to varying degrees in every single election, and occurs more in battleground states in every single election, and more in elections where the president is highly popular or unpopular. Lots of people only vote in races that they care about, and a lot more people cared about the POTUS this time than who was running for Congress.
For example, folks on the right were freaking out about 98,000 ballots in Pennsylvania with only the presidential ticket fil
For example, folks on the right were freaking out about 98,000 ballots in Pennsylvania with only the presidential ticket filled in. This is up from 64,000 four years ago, but even just adjusting for the increased total number of ballots cast, you would expect at least 72k this year. And given how much more contentious the presidential ticket was than the congressional ticket (there were no senators up for election, and literally every single House district elected the incumbent, most by double-digit margin
For example, folks on the right were freaking out about 98,000 ballots in Pennsylvania with only the presidential ticket filled in. This is up from 64,000 four years ago, but even just adjusting for the increased total number of ballots cast, you would expect at least 72k this year. And given how much more contentious the presidential ticket was than the congressional ticket (there were no senators up for election, and literally every single House district elected the incumbent, most by double-digit margins), is it really any surprise that the percentage of people who voted only for the top of the ballot would increase a bit? IMO, it would have been surprising if that *didn't* happen.
The problem is that the rate of these happening was about six times that expected - normally, about 3% mail-in ballots come president-only, there was 18% of these in at least one case.
So what? We've never, at least in the history of having statistics on that sort of thing, had a president that was even on the same order of magnitude of divisiveness as our current president.
BTW, the 2016 election had statistical anomalies that also never happened before, many of which made this election look downright normal by comparison. Sometimes, things you don't expect just happen, and that's not prima facie evidence that something is wrong. At best, it means that somebody needs to recheck the fig
Sometimes, things you don't expect just happen, and that's not prima facie evidence that something is wrong. At best, it means that somebody needs to recheck the figures and figure out what happened, which they did.
Precisely. All of these need to be carefully and beyond doubt explained. Which hasn't happened.
That was actually a typographical error that got almost immediately corrected. Somebody added an extra zero when typing in data. [usatoday.com]
I couldn't find any reports of that sort of thing happening, but bear in mind that votes are typically reported in large chunks when all the votes for a polling place have been counted, and many polling places are highly skewed towards one party or the other. A vote dump from a major city can create a huge leap to the left pretty easily, as can the vote count from absentee ballots (at least in a year where so many Democrats registered to vote by mail instead of in person because of a pandemic).
It was a coup attempt by the President, using his angry crowd as a weapon. Many of the participants didn't know they were part of his plan, but a flood of morons is his favorite weapon. because it gives him plausible deniability.
Anyone is free to start their own social media platform and pay for it. Amazon chose not to do business with a customer. Much like how a bakery can refuse to make a cake for a gay wedding.
Dealing with Amazon never ends well. I make a point not to do business with them, even if it costs me some amount of money. It's been almost 10 years now, about the same time I quit Facebook. Anyone who feels they need Amazon should suck it up. They don't have a monopoly on anything they provide.
but I'll address a common error: Slippery slope is a fallacy you clearly do not understand if you are committing the fallacy itself while falsely attributing it to another! You can't assume the end of a syllogism without the middle steps; skipping the chain of logic IS the fallacy! In my experience, the average American often does fallacy WHILE stating it but this is/. and used to be above average.
This is like a joke formula: Contradict what you are saying while doing it at
> do you really want to make censorship the precedent here?
They have the right to speak. They do not have the right to have audience. Bans are business decisions by companies that do not want to be associated with that type of activities.
Fighting words and incitements to riot, to say nothing of plots to overthrow the government, have always been liable to crackdown by (among others) the government (1st amendment doesn't apply). This isn't creating a censorship precedent, this is affirming "no your idea is not novel/is not no longer illegal just because you do something on a computer that used to be done over the phone when the law was written"
Spreading hate doesn't end well either, haven't you seen brainwashed people storming the Parliament? I'll say it clearly: America was this close to becoming a *REAL* dictatorship, and if such a thing ever happens, Americans will truly lose all freedoms, freedom of speech foremost.
Giving the Democrats control of Congress and the Presidency is actually really close to *REAL* dictatorship. The only hope we have is enough Democrats in the Senate block court packing. If they don't, then expect real central control to come steamrolling upon us. Actual government sanctioned censorship rubber stamped by a packed court. Cancel culture at a Federal level. Actual punishment for thinking "wrong". Huge growth in government regulations intended to control every aspect of private industry (w
Giving the Democrats control of Congress and the Presidency is actually really close to *REAL* dictatorship.
The sovereign People has voted, and you think that subverting its choice is the real dictatorship? Your comment shows the nature of populism: what populists claim is to speak on behalf of the people, what they actually want is for that people to be subjugated by an autocrat of their liking.
Giving the Democrats control of Congress and the Presidency is actually really close to *REAL* dictatorship.
Wow, you have never witnessed a totalitarian country from within I guess, based on your totally ignorant statement, have you? That the president, the senate and the congress are ruled by the same party is nothing new to US politics, please open your history books or at least consult Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divided_government_in_the_United_States).
The US never decended into dictatorship then did it?
Four years of calling Trump a "dictator", yet he never did anything to prevent others from speaking.
No, because vilifying them and lying about them isn't attempts to prevent their information to
Given that we used to hang fascist publishers [wikipedia.org], I think Parler ought to be glad that the government is staying out of it and all they're losing is their contract with Amazon.
slippery slope (Score:0, Troll)
Re:slippery slope (Score:5, Insightful)
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TOS's are so vague that anything can be used by the company against you, but the same doesn't work in the reverse.
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TOS's are so vague that anything can be used by the company against you, but the same doesn't work in the reverse.
Yes, you are correct. Parler's TOS [parler.com] is so vague they can kick you off for any reason. They have no obligation to allow you access to their service.
Any invitation made by Parler to you to use the Services or submit
content to the Services, or the fact that Parler may receive a benefit from your use of the Services or provision of content to the Services, will not obligate Parler to maintain any content or maintain your access to the Services. Parler will have no liability to you for removing any content, for terminating your access to the Services, or for modifying or terminating the Services.
Re:slippery slope (Score:5, Insightful)
Please describe how a private company deciding not to host another company's website after terms of service were violated is censorship again?
It's still censorship, it's not government censorship.
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Oh, so you want government to step in and force private entities to stop their censorship.
Did I say that? I did not.
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I think censorship is bad, and I criticize AWS for doing it, but that's my freedom of speech.
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You should work on your reading comprehension, it sucks.
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Saying "people should not do X" is not the same as saying "government should prevent X", however popular the idea seems that government should be a helicopter parent to everyone, making sure that no feelings are hurt and the children make no mistakes.
Apparently, acting like a troll is a core part of being an evil atheist.
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They only refused to make a wedding cake. They did state they would make any other kind of cake. The ruling was about not forcing someone to participate in an event that was against their religious values. It was not about being able to refuse service to someone for being gay. But it sounds so much better to call the bakers gay hating bigots than to actually discuss the very narrow objection covered by the case/ruling. The gay couple should have just moved on and found another baker that was happy to t
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Liberals believe everyone should acquiesce all freedom to big government
You discredit anything you say with such ridiculously stupid mouth farts.
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Oh, so you want government to step in and force private entities to stop their censorship.
Actually, no, I'd just like people to stop being bullies. There are two situations people are drawing an equivalency for:
1. A small bakery refuses to make a cake for a gay couple. The gay couple sue the bakery.
2. Parler is trying to be a free speech "open square" kind of platform. AWS and others are dropping them as customers.
In both of these situations it is a company (or several) deciding not to do business with another entity. Okay, fine. But there's an important distinction people are missing...
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>Oh, so you want government to step in and force private entities to stop their censorship.
I would like the US government to not provide a specific and direct legal protection for this censorship through section 230.
Removing that would level the playing field - at present it is far from level, to stay the least.
The US government, through section 230, is directly enabling this censorship of speech.
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Please describe how a private company deciding not to host another company's website after terms of service were violated is censorship again?
It's still censorship, it's not government censorship.
Moderation is censorship, deal with it.
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We need to take this beyond merely "censorship bad".
Sometimes censorship is good, e.g. when protecting the victims of crime or state secrets. Sometimes censorship is bad. Is this good or bad?
There is certainly a powerful argument that making it harder to attack democracy is a good thing. I'm not really seeing many arguments as to why it's a bad thing, just "censorship bad".
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We need to take this beyond merely "censorship bad".
We have 200 years of case law and analysis moving beyond merely "censorship bad." I'll forgive you for not knowing since you are not American. A good place to start reading is the Federalist Papers, if you are actually interested in improving your intellect.
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Please send me the password to your account ASAP, so that I can use it to express my opinion. After all, your failure to express my opinion is censorship of my opinion.
Thanks,
Guy who you're unjustly preventing from using "phantomfive."
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Please send me the password to your account ASAP, so that I can use it to express my opinion. After all, your failure to express my opinion is censorship of my opinion.
I think this comment is close to winning the "dumbest analogy of all time" award.
It's so dumb I can't even believe it's real. Do people really think this explains the actual situation at all?
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I'm going to censor you from using my account.
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Re: slippery slope (Score:2)
No, censorship includes using group power to silence people : http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/... [wiktionary.org]
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It's still censorship, it's not government censorship.
Not letting someone speak on your platform is not censorship. Censorship is preventing someone from speaking in general.
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Which dictionary's definition of censorship are you going with there?
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None, the legal definition is the only one which matters since you're using a legal word. Just because you can't say what you want in my house doesn't mean you're being censored. You're free to stand outside and say what you want. Now if I prevent you from speaking outside as well then you can have your little cry.
Words have meanings. Use them correctly.
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Incitement to violence has always been illegal in the US. Even with the 1st Amendment.
Re: slippery slope (Score:2)
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AWS doesn't have to host the Teamsters web site if they don't want to. I don't see your point.
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I agree.
Now do it with a cake.
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I agree.
Now do it with a cake.
Insurrectionists aren't a protected class.
government is saying who to censor, that's why (Score:2)
Think tanks like the Atlantic Council, primarily funded by the USG, is telling tech companies whom to censor:
https://about.fb.com/news/2018... [fb.com]
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Well, just ask Google for a definition of censorship.
the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.
AWS are suppressing something that they find politically unacceptable (although they're using the excuse of a threat to security).
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Your name is sadly apt.
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Right, so, if a bunch of near monopolies collude to censor free speech, it's actually not censorship. In a similar vein, if a government hires mobsters to shoot and beat people up, it's not actually state violence.
If the government hires them to, it is actually state violence. If the mobsters do it on their own, it's not. This really isn't complicated.
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Forcing a private company to host content they don't wish to host would in fact be a far far bigger threat to free speech.
Your free to say what you want and the government can't put you in jail for it.
You aren't free to force others to support your speech with their resources, property or attention.
True free speech has consequences, if you say things people don't like they have the freedom to speak back, ignore or even throw you off their property.
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Please describe how a private company deciding not to host another company's website after terms of service were violated is censorship again?
Because it's a dead certainty that sometime in the next four years Joe Biden - or some other Democrat - is going to say something that Twitter finds objectionable, such as defending the Sci-Hub site or criticizing China's treatment of the Uighurs. You can bet that when (not if) this happens, you will not be seeing "capitalism" be defended.
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Because it's a dead certainty that sometime in the next four years Joe Biden - or some other Democrat - is going to say something that Twitter finds objectionable, such as defending the Sci-Hub site or criticizing China's treatment of the Uighurs. You can bet that when (not if) this happens, you will not be seeing "capitalism" be defended.
First, you need some better examples. Neither defending SciHub nor criticizing China violate Twitter's terms of service, unlike people inciting riots and/or insurrection.
Second, I'll defend Twitter's right to set and enforce its own terms of service when they take something down that the left likes. But I'm not a member of the red tribe or the blue tribe.
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First, you need some better examples. Neither defending SciHub nor criticizing China violate Twitter's terms of service, unlike people inciting riots and/or insurrection.
I chose these examples not just because they are very recent but because in both cases Twitter banned the accounts involved.
I don't care about Donald Trump. Ten days from now, he will be a fading purple bruise on the nation's consciousness. But Twitter's ability to crimp off public debate continues.
because of section 230.. (Score:2)
Which means the US government has removed the other companies right to sue the hosting company (win or lose..) over this.
So, the US government has protected the hosting company from any legal recourse, hence it is a 1st amendment violation by the Us government by providing section 230..
Simple, really.
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On behalf of your children I need to encourage you to send them to a real school with competent teachers that understand basic concepts like "censorship is not just a Government function".
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Parler wants a gay wedding cake and Amazon won't bake it. Amazon has 1st amendment free speech rights.
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Parler wants to bake a cake for a gay wedding and Amazon won't let Parler use its kitchen.
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Parler isn't a protected class. This is purely a speech issue.
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You really are an ugly, ignorant, lying, dumb troll, aren't you?
No. The troll would be the AC that pretended I was talking about the 25th Amendment or impeachment, when I was explicitly referring to the thing that the US military said would be a coup and provided references.
I'm so sorry that your favourite corrupt politician was prevented from executing a coup on the US because the military refused to let her. You must be gutted.
I mean, shit, it's in the fucking NY Times. This isn't the most biased newspaper in America but it's been solidly anti-Trump for literally year
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The ones screaming it was one should fucking know better, considering the countless coups they've sponsored abroad during their long tenures in government - one would expect they had some idea of what their work looks like.
Otherwise you could state that an armed ANTIFA mob storming through a gated community to go scream at a mayor's house was also a coup attempt,
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No. The accusation that a predominantly pro-gun and gun owning group of the populace attempted a coup where they came in unarmed ...
Let's see.
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FWIW, only about half of Republicans own any firearm, and a lot of those would be shotguns or hunting rifles that wouldn't be very practical in a coup attempt. And most are smart enough not to risk the almost guaranteed felony charges if they got caught carrying firearms into Washington D.C. (punishable by up to 5 years in jail and up to a $5,000 fine). The ones who came armed, then, presumably did so with malicious intent, and with full knowledge that there was a good chance that they wouldn't make it out alive. Whether you want to call that a coup attempt or domestic terrorism is your call, but it definitely crossed a line of lethality and criminal intent that should never be crossed. So wait, the same people that were not worried about making it out alive were also terrified by the terribly high chance of being randomly caught (which would only happen if there were internal border checks, which afaik isn't the case), enough to prevent them from bringing guns that would actually have them do something effective while inside?
No. Read it again. The people who didn't bring guns did not do so because they weren't trying to stir up anything, and didn't want to bring guns just for the heck of it, because they knew they could potentially do ten years in jail. This explains why there were not many guns. Most of the people weren't trying to start an insurrection. The people who did bring guns, however, were intending to cause trouble, and therefore didn't care about the punishment.
So what, exactly, is the threshold for something being a coup attempt in your universe? Lots of firearms? No, but I'd expect the means of capturing and holding a place and people
Tactical zip ties.
which does imply being armed
Some were.
and some degree of organization which there absolutely wasn't.
That we know about.
In this case, it sounds much more likely that there wasn't an organized attempt at anything and as you said, a bunch of people got a stupid idea, acted on the impulse and a bunch of others got swept up in the moment. And yeah, I'd call it what it is, a violent riot.
An
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And yet, not a single shot was fired, even when they were shot at, and in the end, they disbanded as instructed by Trump and Pence once things calmed down. It feels a lot more like a lot of people swept by the action and adrenaline (and maybe a particularly stupid bellwether or two) than anything planned or organized. Once more, it's not what coups look like, it's what it looks like
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The people who did bring guns, however, were intending to cause trouble, and therefore didn't care about the punishment. And yet, not a single shot was fired, even when they were shot at, and in the end, they disbanded as instructed by Trump and Pence once things calmed down. It feels a lot more like a lot of people swept by the action and adrenaline (and maybe a particularly stupid bellwether or two) than anything planned or organized. Once more, it's not what coups look like, it's what it looks like when a protest turns into a riot.
They weren't able to find any of their stated targets (the congresspeople and the vice president) because they had already been evacuated to/through the tunnels. There would have been little point in taking a stand to hold an empty building.
An unorganized violent riot doesn't usually involve building significant numbers of incendiary devices ahead of time. At the very least, there was a plan to cause terror. I don't believe those devices belonged to anyone from the crowd. They weren't found on any specific person
So let me get this straight. You think the police planned ahead and built bombs so that they could plant them in a vehicle to discredit a group of protesters who the police initially didn't even bother to resist? That seems almost as far-fetched to me as the notion of
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What do you mean, plan ahead? Even if they were built right there and then, making a pipebomb doesn't require rocket science nor hours and hours of time, especially when being actually effective isn't a concern.
That seems almost as far-fetched to me as the notion of widespread election fr
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That seems almost as far-fetched to me as the notion of widespread election fraud that just happened to affect only the presidential race and none of the congressional races. An unlikely amount of ballots with only Biden on them and no congress votes was indeed one of the many, many fishy things in the election, and also one only occuring in swing states.
Why do you think that sounds fishy? This literally occurs to varying degrees in every single election, and occurs more in battleground states in every single election, and more in elections where the president is highly popular or unpopular. Lots of people only vote in races that they care about, and a lot more people cared about the POTUS this time than who was running for Congress.
For example, folks on the right were freaking out about 98,000 ballots in Pennsylvania with only the presidential ticket fil
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For example, folks on the right were freaking out about 98,000 ballots in Pennsylvania with only the presidential ticket filled in. This is up from 64,000 four years ago, but even just adjusting for the increased total number of ballots cast, you would expect at least 72k this year. And given how much more contentious the presidential ticket was than the congressional ticket (there were no senators up for election, and literally every single House district elected the incumbent, most by double-digit margins), is it really any surprise that the percentage of people who voted only for the top of the ballot would increase a bit? IMO, it would have been surprising if that *didn't* happen. The problem is that the rate of these happening was about six times that expected - normally, about 3% mail-in ballots come president-only, there was 18% of these in at least one case.
So what? We've never, at least in the history of having statistics on that sort of thing, had a president that was even on the same order of magnitude of divisiveness as our current president.
BTW, the 2016 election had statistical anomalies that also never happened before, many of which made this election look downright normal by comparison. Sometimes, things you don't expect just happen, and that's not prima facie evidence that something is wrong. At best, it means that somebody needs to recheck the fig
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Precisely. All of these need to be carefully and beyond doubt explained. Which hasn't happened. That was actually a typographical error that got almost immediately corrected. Somebody added an extra zero when typing in data. [usatoday.com]
Did the same typographical error happen in the
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I couldn't find any reports of that sort of thing happening, but bear in mind that votes are typically reported in large chunks when all the votes for a polling place have been counted, and many polling places are highly skewed towards one party or the other. A vote dump from a major city can create a huge leap to the left pretty easily, as can the vote count from absentee ballots (at least in a year where so many Democrats registered to vote by mail instead of in person because of a pandemic).
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It was a bunch of idiots doing something reckless and stupid. Calling it a 'coup attempt' is just a bunch of hyperbole and not all that helpful.
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It was a coup attempt by the President, using his angry crowd as a weapon. Many of the participants didn't know they were part of his plan, but a flood of morons is his favorite weapon. because it gives him plausible deniability.
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Anyone is free to start their own social media platform and pay for it. Amazon chose not to do business with a customer. Much like how a bakery can refuse to make a cake for a gay wedding.
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Stupid analogy. Amazon is not required to allow anyone to use their ovens.
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Dealing with Amazon never ends well. I make a point not to do business with them, even if it costs me some amount of money. It's been almost 10 years now, about the same time I quit Facebook. Anyone who feels they need Amazon should suck it up. They don't have a monopoly on anything they provide.
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Man /. has been getting stupid...
but I'll address a common error: Slippery slope is a fallacy you clearly do not understand if you are committing the fallacy itself while falsely attributing it to another! /. and used to be above average.
You can't assume the end of a syllogism without the middle steps; skipping the chain of logic IS the fallacy!
In my experience, the average American often does fallacy WHILE stating it but this is
This is like a joke formula: Contradict what you are saying while doing it at
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> do you really want to make censorship the precedent here?
They have the right to speak. They do not have the right to have audience. Bans are business decisions by companies that do not want to be associated with that type of activities.
It's already precedent (Score:2)
Fighting words and incitements to riot, to say nothing of plots to overthrow the government, have always been liable to crackdown by (among others) the government (1st amendment doesn't apply). This isn't creating a censorship precedent, this is affirming "no your idea is not novel/is not no longer illegal just because you do something on a computer that used to be done over the phone when the law was written"
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So it is no ok when Parler bans anyone that doesn't agree with the groupthink?
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Giving the Democrats control of Congress and the Presidency is actually really close to *REAL* dictatorship. The only hope we have is enough Democrats in the Senate block court packing. If they don't, then expect real central control to come steamrolling upon us. Actual government sanctioned censorship rubber stamped by a packed court. Cancel culture at a Federal level. Actual punishment for thinking "wrong". Huge growth in government regulations intended to control every aspect of private industry (w
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Giving the Democrats control of Congress and the Presidency is actually really close to *REAL* dictatorship.
The sovereign People has voted, and you think that subverting its choice is the real dictatorship? Your comment shows the nature of populism: what populists claim is to speak on behalf of the people, what they actually want is for that people to be subjugated by an autocrat of their liking.
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Giving the Democrats control of Congress and the Presidency is actually really close to *REAL* dictatorship.
Wow, you have never witnessed a totalitarian country from within I guess, based on your totally ignorant statement, have you? That the president, the senate and the congress are ruled by the same party is nothing new to US politics, please open your history books or at least consult Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divided_government_in_the_United_States).
The US never decended into dictatorship then did it?
Four years of calling Trump a "dictator", yet he never did anything to prevent others from speaking.
No, because vilifying them and lying about them isn't attempts to prevent their information to
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Given that we used to hang fascist publishers [wikipedia.org], I think Parler ought to be glad that the government is staying out of it and all they're losing is their contract with Amazon.