151–160 of 381 posts
I was joking before and said that it is inevitable that Facebook, Google and Twitter will eventually sell SaaS (Silencing as a Service). But maybe it wasn't a joke after all... It is simply too tempting to not do it. They have information which the Stasis and KGBs of the past would kill for. One thing Romanian government should be careful with is not listening to protesters. That is at least one country where they ha…
> Occupy and anti-Trump protestors should study and learn how that works. You see to have effective peaceful protests, there has to be a credible threat of extreme and overwhelming violence that will follow unless the government listens. Government should be afraid of the people. This is why the Civil Rights movement was successful (To a point). On the one hand, you had MLK preaching peace, and on the other hand, you…
You don't have to be killing anyone, there are many ways to stop the machine, but peaceful protest alone has never changed anything.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> this shows how utterly unprepared facebook is for its role as a de facto news business. A bunch of engineers thinking they are smarter than they actually are unwillingly facilitate the election of Trump. All of our "respectable" news sources fell into clickbait journalism. You can thank the NYT and NPR for doing their part to elect Trump. Reporting on the latest Trump scandal during the campaign drove far more clic…
When Bernie had his largest rally yet (larger by far than anything Hillary had by then), NPR spent 8 minutes of the Newshour talking about something Trump said, and the reactions people had on Twitter. They chose not to cover Bernie and while I could only speculate why, I agree with you that they helped elevate Trump’s candidacy.
Facebook has failed at news, but traditional journalism is still in the dog house and is not the default credible alternative. I'll admit they don't do the whole "fake news" thing which is nice, but even without outright lying the bias in what the choose to cover and what public figures they ally with is disappointing. They can grandstand all they want about "editorial independence" and "separation of church and state" but for the most part their bills get paid the same way facebook's bills do.
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I don't want violence, and getting things done by voting is obviously much better, but for protests to work I think there has to be a threat of impending violence. A bit like how the nuclear deterrence works but on a smaller scale. I think the idea that the government should be afraid of its people is not a strange idea in his country. Now let's think when is the last time that happened? I am thinking during the Viet…
I am sorry, but you are misunderstanding or deliberately distorting history. I admired a number of things about Malcom X and his movement, but he was always a marginal figure across the whole society. MLK "won" because he and his allies got the federal government, the establishment media and many liberal Republicans (the convention then) in Congress on his side. Bannon and his ilk want nothing more than for violent l…
Quite possibly, I only remember stuff I read a while back and don't know the details.
> he was always a marginal figure across the whole society
I don't disagree that he wasn't marginal, he was. But he wasn't unknown. He advocated violence for self defense. Read "The Ballot or the Bullet" speech
http://www.edchange.org/multicultural/speeches/malcolm_x_bal...
He doesn't say that people should go and commit indiscriminate violence but there is warning that violence might happen if violence against blacks continues. He mentions someone throwing a Molotov cocktail and how unheard of it was for black people to do that. The implication is, this stuff will start spreading fast and quick if the current course continues. There is also an interesting parallel made how the US Army was defeated by guerrilla fighters in Asia, that was a very pertinent remark and appeals to what was on many people's minds at that time.
I think those who were in power certainly knew and were aware of Black Nationalism, Black Panthers, them buying and training to use firearms.
> MLK "won" because he and his allies got the federal government, the establishment media and many liberal Republicans (the convention then) in Congress on his side.
I posit that it happened because there was threat of something like Malcom X was saying happening. I am probably wrong as am only am amateur, you seem to know a bit more about it. So I'd like to hear more on this if you have time or patience.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Get in government, dedicate yourself to public service. Notwithstanding the conclusion, the argument is a bit naïve. It's not like we have third party candidates winning left and right. There are established players who crush outside competition, regardless of the quality of the candidates. And there's no guarantee that even if you have any influence, you'll see the benefit in your lifetime. The idea that every pro…
> The idea that every problem can be solved peacefully isn't a bad one, but it's just something you have to accept in faith, not something you can ground in truth. No claim about the future can be grounded in "truth", but I can give a very strong factual basis to peaceful change: Centuries of history, in all the democracies in the world. No other means, including violent revolution, has achieved more positive change…
Isn't there just as much (if not more) history for e.g. autocracies? Couldn't you make the same argument for autocracies a few centuries ago? How is the mere existence of democratic history convincing of anything?
> No other means, including violent revolution, has achieved more positive change for humanity.
Wasn't it violent revolution that led to many of these democracies in the first place?
And how in the world am I supposed to argue with abstract claims like that? If you'll claim no other means has achieved better, I'll just claim that, actually, other means have achieved better. I'm sure you're convinced now, right?
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The people in power have to fear losing elections. The system was specifically designed so the masses can force change without violence. Supporting terrorism to override that system is awful, regardless of how you feel about capitalism.
>The system was specifically designed so the masses can force change without violence. It was also specifically stated by the system architects that their safeguards would inevitably become null. With that being said, I do not advocate such violent measures. The strategies of Dr. King seem to me to be more effective than violence when dealing with an enemy which has a monopoly on violence.
All the social gains made by social democracies, the nordics, Canada, FDR, etc. were made under the backdrop of a real threat of bloody communist revolution.
I'm a Romanian and I can confirm that posts and accounts have been blocked, probably because of being reported by the other side. On the other hand, folks, this is a little reminder that censorship is a doubly edged knife ;-) So next time you call for censoring "fake news", think again, because it's not you who will benefit from it. A couple of years back I was enthusiastic about the rise of social media for informin…
I think the cost borne by propagandists from censorship is higher than those organizing protests like those Romania appears to be facing. Censoring modern propaganda greatly limits the damage it can cause, while protestors have more traditional ways of organizing their protests. I am not a fan of censorship but it appears some fraction of credulous humanity requires it to maintain at least a tenuous grasp of reality.
Millions of Americans weren't instantly converted from open-border advocates to wanting to build a Wall and limit immigration, thus supporting Trump, because of a few Facebook ads.
Propaganda doesn't work in a vacuum. You already need an actual issue to be its catalyst. And censoring anyone who speaks of it, even if it is in an exaggerated way, is probably better in the long run than letting it fester until it really blows up with much more force.
I would same thing for this new idea of hate speech that some people prefer to ban.
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I think he accidently replied to you rather than post to article. See his other CO.ments in context. 5 years...3comments...2 today. My two cents
Oh, Ok. that makes sense. Thanks for pointing out. edit: On the other hand, he just commented and apparently that wasn't the case :)
my mother in law escaped from Romania under communism and has quite an incredible story. I also had a great opportunity to visit and drive those most of the northern (mostly Hungarian) areas this past spring and thoroughly enjoyed the area, the only time I was able to communicate with a local was in Toroczko (far outside of 'city' areas -- might be butchering spelling) where I heard some sad observations about the state of affairs. absolutely loved my time there though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the cost borne by propagandists from censorship is higher than those organizing protests like those Romania appears to be facing. Censoring modern propaganda greatly limits the damage it can cause, while protestors have more traditional ways of organizing their protests. I am not a fan of censorship but it appears some fraction of credulous humanity requires it to maintain at least a tenuous grasp of reality.
A couple of good replies have already been written, but I'll add another, using the new gold-standard often used to advocate censorship: The Russians pushing out disinformation to help Trump win the US election. Millions of Americans weren't instantly converted from open-border advocates to wanting to build a Wall and limit immigration, thus supporting Trump, because of a few Facebook ads. Propaganda doesn't work in…
I'm guessing that this was mangled in an edit and some essential word was left out. Or are you saying censorship is the opposite of "letting it fester", and that if we can prevent issues from being spoken about we can prevent them from ever exploding?
I chose to believe that this is a side-effect of facebook trying to combat fake news with some lame algorithms and an understaffed department of reviewers, not facebook actively trying to please the Romanian authorities. But even so, this shows how utterly unprepared facebook is for its role as a de facto news business. A bunch of engineers thinking they are smarter than they actually are unwillingly facilitate the e…