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Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

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Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#301

Post by tudorconstantin »

hkon wrote: post #121
tudorconstantin wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt. I know a few high profile people with their accounts/pages suspended after they called for people to come protesting yesterday.

Do you think it's a manual process or an automated one? Who is giving the orders, scary to think about.

The reporting is done manually. I imagine the orders going like this: the national party's president announces all the county's presidents to start doing a reporting campaign. We have 40 counties in Romania. All the county level party presidents call the city presidents and asks them to start the campaign. Assuming each county has about 3-5 bigger cities in them, each city needing to provide 1-3 reporting people, that easily makes 300-700 people who report posts in a coordinated way.

One guy from the center sends the profiles to report through channels like mailing lists or chat groups and the reporters mail back the screenshots with the report (so it can be verified by the president that his subordinates are actually following his orders).

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#302

Post by simonh »

tomcooks wrote: post #292
simonh wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without Capitalism we wouldn’t have anything like Facebook or Twitter. These services don’t control ‘the’ flow of information, they are entirely additive to what we had before. Arguing that we have worse options for communication now is bizarre. So what is the non capitalist alternative? State controlled social media services? Really? That would be a better option in Romania right now? Facebook is far from perfect, I…

> So what is the non capitalist alternative? State controlled social media services? Come on. More like decentralized, optionally self hosted istances of open source social networks. Given the amount of politics meddling that Facebook,Twitter Google and Amazon do especially out of the US, i would consider THEM the actual state-controlled service.

Ok, fair enough. Systems like that do exist, but practically nobody uses them. We need an alternative that actually addresses people's need in a way they access. But even in the system you describe, what is to stop biased operators from infiltrating the system and biasing the distribution of messages to filter out opposing views, or generating fake content? How does a system like that maintain integrity? Until you have a reliable functional, usable system it's just pie in the sky.

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#303

Post by simonh »

LoonyBalloony wrote: post #283
simonh wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without Capitalism we wouldn’t have anything like Facebook or Twitter. These services don’t control ‘the’ flow of information, they are entirely additive to what we had before. Arguing that we have worse options for communication now is bizarre. So what is the non capitalist alternative? State controlled social media services? Really? That would be a better option in Romania right now? Facebook is far from perfect, I…

> So what is the non capitalist alternative? From my understanding, 100% worker owned and operated co-ops that give the average worker more democratic control in the work place.

What's stopping those from starting up and doing the job right now? Sounds great. Where are they? Is there some aspect of the current system that's rigged against them somehow? I know a few of these do exist, usually founded on what was essentially a gift of the starting capital to the collective, but that doesn't seem like a scalable model.

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#304

Post by simonh »

andrepd wrote: post #295
dawnbreez wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would go one further and suggest simply hosting your own site.

Yes. Does anybody remember the ancient times there were these things called personal Web pages , and blogs , instead of everything being Facebook page/feed?

Exactly my point. These things all still exist and are easier to get started with than ever. Nobody is holding a gun to anyone's had and forcing them to use Facebook, or Twitter and honestly if it wasn't for this article about suppressing information about protests in Romania of Facebook I wouldn't even know there were protests in Romania. So something seems to be working out. If all this stuff had been posted on people's individual personally hosted blogs I would never know.

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#305

Post by simonh »

mcmurtry wrote: post #296
nickpp wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an example? In most dictatorships I know state was deeply involved in the economy, thus making it socialist. Capitalism requires free markets. Freedom, the opposite of dictatorship.

You'd be hard pressed to find a historian, economist or political scientist who would call any of the 20th century's right-wing dictatorships 'socialist', regardless as to the extent of state intervention into the economy. Also, free movement of capital and 'Freedom' are not at all the same thing, and don't always exist in the same places at the same time. Capitalism can totally exist where there isn't a democracy. C…

Sure, but to the extent that those economies are capitalist, they are also more free because freedom of ownership and freedom to benefit from the fruits of one's labour are real freedoms.

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#306

Post by nickpp »

andrepd wrote: post #297
nickpp wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an example? In most dictatorships I know state was deeply involved in the economy, thus making it socialist. Capitalism requires free markets. Freedom, the opposite of dictatorship.

> state was deeply involved in the economy, thus making it socialist. >Capitalism requires freedom, the opposite of dictatorship. You clearly have some amount of misunderstanding or an active bias/axe to grind. Suffice to say, that's not what any of those terms mean.

Socialism - “a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole“

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#307

Post by nickpp »

mcmurtry wrote: post #296
nickpp wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an example? In most dictatorships I know state was deeply involved in the economy, thus making it socialist. Capitalism requires free markets. Freedom, the opposite of dictatorship.

You'd be hard pressed to find a historian, economist or political scientist who would call any of the 20th century's right-wing dictatorships 'socialist', regardless as to the extent of state intervention into the economy. Also, free movement of capital and 'Freedom' are not at all the same thing, and don't always exist in the same places at the same time. Capitalism can totally exist where there isn't a democracy. C…

You mean like “National Socialist German Workers' Party”?!

I always found it funny they call it far right.

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#308

Post by Can_Not »

simonh wrote: post #300
salvar wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So what is the non capitalist alternative? State controlled social media services? Really? That would be a better option in Romania right now? Right here you ask for an alternative, then suggest it is one particular alternative, then argue against that as if it's the only answer. Do you think that's an honest way of debating?

Still no actual suggestion of an alternative.

What about both non-capitalist and non-state controlled?

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#309

Post by simonh »

zaarn wrote: post #294
nickpp wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an example? In most dictatorships I know state was deeply involved in the economy, thus making it socialist. Capitalism requires free markets. Freedom, the opposite of dictatorship.

State-controlled markets are not automatically socialist, they can for example be communist in nature too. Capitalism doesn't require a free market. As evidenced by American ISP's, all you need is capital and the will to have more of it plus the cooperation of the government. Freedom is not involved in Capitalism nor is it an evident feature of it.

By Capitalism people usually mean the freedom to own capital, the freedom to invest or spend it as one likes and the freedom to benefit individually from the fruits of one's labour. These are all real freedoms.

If we redefine it so that Maoism, Leninism and even Marxism are all forms of capitalism then it really loses it's usefulness as a term and makes it impossible to understand what most people have ever said or written about it.

Re: Facebook users in Romania see content related to street protests reviewed

#310

Post by nickpp »

maxxxxx wrote: post #299
nickpp wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have an example? In most dictatorships I know state was deeply involved in the economy, thus making it socialist. Capitalism requires free markets. Freedom, the opposite of dictatorship.

"Capitalism requires free markets" I don't think that's true. Under the Nazis plenty of businesses did well despite not having free markets. In the end capitalists want to make money first

A bunch of state-run or government friendly companies making money does not make it a capitalist regime.
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