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Mark in the Middle

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Re: Mark in the Middle

#321

Post by TeaDrunk »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #226
actuator wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said if I agree or disagree with her, but seeing her experience with assault in the past. Can you see why she might feel like that? I sympathise with her and the groups she referred to as well. We all are a product of our experiences and hardships, at the end of the day that shapes our opinions. We can disagree with her but do we really need to resort to these methods.

I understand why she has these sorts of terrible beliefs, but I still think she deserves criticism for having them. Did you know that some anti-black racists also justify their beliefs based on their personal experiences? One person's individual experience is not an excuse for having terrible beliefs. It all comes back to the fundamental question: is it ethical to criticize racists/sexists/homophobes/etc? You seem to…

A bigot can point to one experience with a minority and blame the entire demographic, but a minority can't say one white person said a slur to them therefore all white people are racist pigs without backlash. There's an XKCD comic about this and girls in math.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#322

Post by slg »

echelon wrote: post #279
shadowgovt wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's "people these days;" I think it was the norm that has been disrupted by modern technology. Network broadcast television operates under standards and practices, where certain things are not allowed for broadcast. That includes the news---even news stories are subject to S&P constraint. Does network broadcast television "police political opinion" if it doesn't give a pedophile a half-hour of air time…

Very nuanced analysis! Fantastic. In the past, the effects of freedom of speech were bounded by the cost of communication. Very few people could afford a soapbox with which to reach the world, so only certain messages were broadcast widely. Now everyone can send (and even amplify) messages quickly and easily. Previously celebrities, politicians, the media, and advertisers had a wide channel. Now interest groups, stat…

>My biggest fear is that state actors will inject information designed to polarize us, and that we'll respond exactly as they want.

Are you being facetious with this? This has been a long documented behavior of Russia. The future you fear is already here.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#323

Post by toxik »

dandersh wrote: post #193
notional wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last 24hrs top-performing pages in the US, for anyone who can't click the link. 1. Dan Bongino 2. Dan Bongino 3. Breitbart 4. Fox News 5. Robert Reich 6. NPR 7. Ben Shapiro 8. Dan Bongino 9. Mark Levin 10. Bernie Sanders This is curated by https://twitter.com/kevinroose I had to look up most of those names but if you're wondering, looking back a couple weeks it's usually 9/10 or 10/10 right-wing talk hosts/sources. I…

Very interesting, thanks! Only one I didn't recognize is Bongino. I would be very curious in the age demographics of FB users. My understanding is that initially the user base was young and now it's older, specifically boomer age range. I could be completely wrong, I've never had an account and am just going off the people I know personally and what I've noticed being online.

Interesting to know that if there was a facebook.com/r/all/, I wouldn't even recognize who the top posts were made by. Guess I'm just really disconnected.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#324

Post by jamiequint »

ordinaryradical wrote: post #183
jamiequint wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's actually not, because people have different moral foundations, and many people value loyalty/authority/sanctity over care/fairness. It doesn't mean they don't care about care/fairness, it just means they don't make it their moral priority. If you refuse to engage with these people and view them all as sub-human there's no path forward for society.

You can't build a functioning society that embraces people who reject the humanity of its other members. Or rather, you can build a society that way, but the moment that opinion is accepted you are on the road to terrible persecution of that out-group, whoever they are. A pluralistic society can handle many different viewpoints, but it cannot give them equal value or acceptance.

Of course you can't, however many people have different definitions of "rejecting humanity" and you don't get to just define that however you want and then make anyone who doesn't agree with your definition the de facto outgroup.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#325

Post by WalterSear »

AlexandrB wrote: post #283
oxymoran wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don’t understand is that if they are going to police opinions, they are acting as editors, not a platform. They should thus be held accountable for any improper editorial decisions that they make in the same way that a newspaper would be via civil suit.

They're already acting as editors thanks to the algorithmic feed. Thus people are trying to hold them accountable for any improper editorial decisions.

The simple solution would be to stop recommending posts - either from within our social circle, or from people and organizations we aren't affiliated with.

At that point, whatever damage is being done won't be undone, but facebook can genuinely say it is not maintinaing editorial control.

But, they won't do that, because their business model is based on editorial control. There's no way around their culpability.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#326

Post by ravenstine »

grawprog wrote: post #203

So, facebook employees are mad they're not allowed to censor things they disagree with that people post on facebook? I don't understand how facebook came to be responsible for policing political opinions anyway. In fact, I don't understand why employees at tech companies believe they have the right to police people's opinions period. I see it amongst commenters here too. What gives any of these people the right to po…

> I don't understand how facebook came to be responsible for policing political opinions anyway.

There's tons of software engineers, product designers, etc. on an ideological bent. If companies like Facebook and Netflix hire these types of people, even if they think they're on the same side, they shouldn't be surprised when their employees begin making collective demands.

> I see it amongst commenters here too. What gives any of these people the right to police the opinions of others?

Intellectual types tend towards seeing every issue in life as an engineering problem that can be solved with code or mathematics, so control over dangerous ideas makes sense to them and appeals to their ego sense that their intelligence gives them. It's just more apparent than ever because our environment rewards the ego in ways we didn't see even 5 years ago. We haven't even reached peak ego yet.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#327

Post by adt2bt »

Covzire wrote: post #271
notional wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last 24hrs top-performing pages in the US, for anyone who can't click the link. 1. Dan Bongino 2. Dan Bongino 3. Breitbart 4. Fox News 5. Robert Reich 6. NPR 7. Ben Shapiro 8. Dan Bongino 9. Mark Levin 10. Bernie Sanders This is curated by https://twitter.com/kevinroose I had to look up most of those names but if you're wondering, looking back a couple weeks it's usually 9/10 or 10/10 right-wing talk hosts/sources. I…

Maybe people are a lot more conservative than CNN or NYT are willing to let people believe.

Or maybe liberals tend to not use Facebook to get their news.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#328

Post by AlexandrB »

ThomPete wrote: post #112
charlesu wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like that time a professional athlete was blacklisted from his league for kneeling silently during the national anthem? Is that the cancel culture you're talking about?

I talk about all forms of cancel culture and don't care which side of the political ail it comes from.

But you said:

> A lot of kids must have grown up never facing and learning to to deal with disagreement or what is it that have created such a thin skinned generation of seemingly well educated people?

Are you referring to NFL executives? I suspect not.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#329

Post by dimgl »

isoprophlex wrote: post #274
grawprog wrote: post #203

So, facebook employees are mad they're not allowed to censor things they disagree with that people post on facebook? I don't understand how facebook came to be responsible for policing political opinions anyway. In fact, I don't understand why employees at tech companies believe they have the right to police people's opinions period. I see it amongst commenters here too. What gives any of these people the right to po…

Some opinions are toxic due to their memetic power, their ability to rapidly spread amongst a population whilst evading critical reflection. We're a global species. Technology made us become larger than the sum of our parts. It is our moral duty to police those opinions that are so polarizing, or so devoid of empathy, that they do harm. "Policing" can be milder than all out censorship. Personalized feed algorithms ca…

You're actually advocating for censorship on a global scale. We've truly regressed.

Re: Mark in the Middle

#330

Post by shadowgovt »

echelon wrote: post #279
shadowgovt wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's "people these days;" I think it was the norm that has been disrupted by modern technology. Network broadcast television operates under standards and practices, where certain things are not allowed for broadcast. That includes the news---even news stories are subject to S&P constraint. Does network broadcast television "police political opinion" if it doesn't give a pedophile a half-hour of air time…

Very nuanced analysis! Fantastic. In the past, the effects of freedom of speech were bounded by the cost of communication. Very few people could afford a soapbox with which to reach the world, so only certain messages were broadcast widely. Now everyone can send (and even amplify) messages quickly and easily. Previously celebrities, politicians, the media, and advertisers had a wide channel. Now interest groups, stat…

I think it's worth noting that the wave of fascism that swept the world during the early 20th century coincided with radio and television being widely deployed.

This may be correlation that does not imply causation. But demagogues had, for the first time, a way to reach into people's homes directly with their messages all the time, if they had access to microphones, video cameras, and broadcast towers. And it was a mechanism that excluded the ability of any antithesis messages to reach people on those same channels (once the government had control of the channels). Mussolini and his ilk certainly knew how to take advantage of these tools.

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