Circus circa 2020: Page 85 - The Arsenal discussion forum and community: One More in the Tolly

Circus circa 2020

goon

Trump perma banned from twitter. This is bigger news than him losing the presidency.

Claudius

Yup. Facebook still has the 2 week ban. Apple has told Parler to introduce moderation or be removed from the store. Walls are closing in.

Meanwhile Murkowski’s given her party an ultimatum. It’s either him or me. That’s the kind of stand the Republican Party needs to control this. This isn’t a Democrat-Republican issue. Half of republicans voters think the failed coup was justified. That party needs a thorough shakeup

QuincyAbeyie

Google has already removed Parler it seems.

Gazza M

run roh. this shitshow is only just starting. people that wrote his post-election behaviour off as a grift for donations and things would be tickety boo once biden took office were missing the bigger picture.

est

I find censorship deeply worrisome. It doesn't solve any problems, just puts them out of sight. The power to censor will always be abused by whoever has it.

Social media in general has turned out to be a cancer to society.

Gazza M

agreed on social media. people have lost their goddam minds trying to be seen and heard at all costs, and conferred so much status onto their social media standing. completely poisoned the well in societal thinking

Klaus

The biggest issue is that social media was never intended for companies, brands, news publications, public offices and-so-forth. The moment Facebook expanded that way everything went to shit and then Twitter perfected the mess. In a lot of countries media outlets need a person who's juridically responsible for what's being published in order for things like the freedom of the press act to apply. If similar rules had been imposed on Silicon Valley we wouldn't have a social media sphere as geared towards disinformation, lies and propaganda. People make this into a debate about free speech, but it's about accountability and legal responsibility... things that should apply to normal American media too. If it had there would be no Fox News.

Coombs

@ Gaz, It really has. It has direct, real-world consequences that many still don't seem to understand.

The other thing that this really brings up for me is how poorly so many of these people live. I'm not saying it justifies their actions, but this country does not take care of its residents at all. The thing they claim to hate is abstract, distant, and doesn't really exist. What they really hate is themselves and each other, their lives and their situation, and there isn't any rhetorical way to defeat that kind of deeply irrational thought and wanton rage that is born from the moment an experience is cleaved from it's reality and, over time, becomes a carefully constructed hypocrisy.

Going to war with these people will only cause untold amounts of pain and death. White supremacist terrorism is very well-poised to grow to an even larger, every-second-of-every-day threat in the US, depending on how things go down in the coming days. Worrying.

y va marquer

Claudius wrote:
I was reading John’s twitter earlier, Meatwad. It’s clear that this was a highly planned coup attempt. At least two of the men had those cable ties. And John has managed to identify that these aren’t regular cable ties. They are handcuff style cable ties. With their guns, mace and cable ties, it’s obvious that these men planned to take lawmakers hostage.

Some folks are treating this like a joke. Same as they did when these terrorists tried to kidnap and kill Meg Whittmer last year. The justice department should go to work on these mofos. Empty Attica and Guantanamo for them

A highly planned coup attempt?
By the thickest, dumbest, terrorists ever to grace the stage.

It's hard to take them seriously when they are populated with lunatics like Yellowstone Wolf Man or whatever it is he calls himself

The IRA they ain't.
They could be wiped out if the political will was there to do so.

Gazza M

it was semi-organised yv. not highly targeted like an IRA attack, but there was a mission statement to stop the certification of the election, even though it was constitutionally impossible. they have been talking about the January 6 'storm' for weeks, had tshirts printed about it, had IEDs planted beforehand etc. many of the mob were ex military or actual active lawmakers. it wasn't a random event that just escalated

Gazza M

Claudius

Klaus wrote:
The biggest issue is that social media was never intended for companies, brands, news publications, public offices and-so-forth. The moment Facebook expanded that way everything went to shit and then Twitter perfected the mess. In a lot of countries media outlets need a person who's juridically responsible for what's being published in order for things like the freedom of the press act to apply. If similar rules had been imposed on Silicon Valley we wouldn't have a social media sphere as geared towards disinformation, lies and propaganda. People make this into a debate about free speech, but it's about accountability and legal responsibility... things that should apply to normal American media too. If it had there would be no Fox News.

Very right.
For too long social media companies have done nothing because they have been worried about Section 230 implications. They worried that significant intervention would lead to their being legally interpreted as editors and thus media houses. Which would leave them liable for the content that was going up on their forums. Of course it is u realistic to expect a social media platform to fully regulate millions of posts daily but they have the tools to regulate the most consequential posts and authors.

They chose not to. Because it didn’t make business sense. Until these bad actors on their platforms were formening sedition. Now Twitter and Facebook can suddenly ban them because not doing so could have devastating legal consequences. The Biden government could hold them accountable for this week’s actions. Twitter’s own statement yesterday sounds like an innocence plea. You absolutely cannot expect companies to regulate themselves

RC8

I am disgusted by so many "liberals" and "left-wingers" rising to defend privatised censorship.

Trump is despicable, but this is a good reason to hold him legally accountable, not for tech millionaires to enact completely arbitrary forms of censorship (if it weren't so absurdly arbitrary it wouldn't be as scary).

If their algorithms weren't so heavily designed to encourage the spread of disinformation and polarisation then there'd be no need for censorship in the first place.

flobaba

Welcome to 2021.

Claudius

RC8 wrote:
I am disgusted by so many "liberals" and "left-wingers" rising to defend privatised censorship.

Trump is despicable, but this is a good reason to hold him legally accountable, not for tech millionaires to enact completely arbitrary forms of censorship (if it weren't so absurdly arbitrary it wouldn't be as scary).

If their algorithms weren't so heavily designed to encourage the spread of disinformation and polarisation then there'd be no need for censorship in the first place.

RC8.
There are two principles to consider in censorship. The first test is content neutrality, that being the government cannot censor content or information just because some portion of society might find it distasteful. This is why porn is allowed in America despite Christians’ objections.

Trump and his cabal fail the second test. This is one of imminent and credible harm to the society. Twitter’s statement appeared to argue on the basis of the second test for dumping Trump. Right wing nut jobs are busy planning attacks on Parler. These are absolutely reasons to restrict access of all these people.

Claudius

By the way, misinformation is not just a social media problem. It’s an inherent part of the right wing media ecosystem that has rejected traditional news platforms because they disagree with what they consider to be archaic and narrow minded positions on civil liberties, guns, and history. So they’ve created an alternative information system that deals in alternative facts.

y va marquer

Gazza M wrote:
it was semi-organised yv. not highly targeted like an IRA attack, but there was a mission statement to stop the certification of the election, even though it was constitutionally impossible. they have been talking about the January 6 'storm' for weeks, had tshirts printed about it, had IEDs planted beforehand etc. many of the mob were ex military or actual active lawmakers. it wasn't a random event that just escalated

They are more akin to a cult willing to sacrifice themselves for their leader than a secretive, highly structured organisation with a chain of command, well versed in guerrilla warfare.

In American it seems anyone can be a terrorist for a day, the government has normalized and facilitated the ownership of military grade weapons, policy makers never seem to have considered that their people could be mobilized against them, by the elected president of the USA.

On the point of Twitter, Facebook and their corrosive effect on society- I saw a documentary a few years ago on the potential impacts of AI. One of the people featured was an ex Google executive who had become so concerned about what the technology being developed would do to society he quit his million dollar job to live in splendid and defended isolation, in preparation for when the armed populace would turn on the government.
At the time I thought he was perhaps having some kind of breakdown, now I am not so sure.
There are people who argue convincingly that the AI that underpins Google, Facebook, Twitter has made society sick.
A massive real time experiment on our collective minds and consciousness.
I take the point about censorship but I would counter it with the above and say that Google and the social media giants cannot continue to have free rein in terms of how they operate if there is clear data that the way they operate is a contributory factor to the violence we see in the US.
I have a non researched theory that they were also a significant contributory factor to the spread of terrorism under the ISIS umbrella.

Claudius

You’re right, Y Va. Radical ideologies exist independent of these platforms. But their reach and prioritization of controversial content means that they are a powerful accelerant for radicalization. Facebook was used to incite offline violence against Rohingya Muslima in Myanmar. They still haven’t paid the cost for that injustice.

QuincyAbeyie

RC8 wrote:
I am disgusted by so many "liberals" and "left-wingers" rising to defend privatised censorship.

Trump is despicable, but this is a good reason to hold him legally accountable, not for tech millionaires to enact completely arbitrary forms of censorship (if it weren't so absurdly arbitrary it wouldn't be as scary).

If their algorithms weren't so heavily designed to encourage the spread of disinformation and polarisation then there'd be no need for censorship in the first place.

Not sure what you're saying, should social media have no rules? No content censored no matter how sick, illegal etc? Trump has consistently breached Twitter's rules, but has been protected by the president being a newsworthy person. Now that he's not, Twitter can't bend their rules for him anymore. He's banned just like a random person when they break the rules. Instagram bans accounts posting nudity for example, why on earth should they not ban accounts that encourage violence?

Gazza M

RC8 wrote:
I am disgusted by so many "liberals" and "left-wingers" rising to defend privatised censorship.

Trump is despicable, but this is a good reason to hold him legally accountable, not for tech millionaires to enact completely arbitrary forms of censorship (if it weren't so absurdly arbitrary it wouldn't be as scary).

If their algorithms weren't so heavily designed to encourage the spread of disinformation and polarisation then there'd be no need for censorship in the first place.

yes the left has a lot to answer for these last few days :john:

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