This whole post looks like "50 Shades of Comments" with all the mixed levels of downvotes.
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Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting
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Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting
#692This was a shockingly dumb move. Whether or not you think these actions were politically motivated or made in good faith, it just poured liquid oxygen on the "reform section 230" fire you're seeing from both sides of the aisle - one using the censorship reason, the other using the disinformation reason. There's no way you don't block a newspaper, and the press secretary, and prevent anyone from even private messaging…
I have figured it out why this move was done despite being stupidly obvious. It is done to provide cover for the next thing Section 230 repealed. Section 230 provides immunity for website publishers from third party content. By repealing section 230, big social media tech gets an even larger monopoly but that's not the reason why this happened. There are lot of people on these social media platforms who are behind the scenes worker type of people. They know how things work and run their mouth freely. Somebody predicted Kamala Harris as VP 1 and 1/2 years out. The politicians can't risk losing control.
Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting
#693Earlier quoted context omitted.
> possibly faked or hacked emails What gives you the impression that this is the case? Hunter Biden's receipts from the computer repair shop are public for this too. I think bias might be clouding your judgement. EDIT: Because HN isn't even allowing me to reply to the comment by user heartbreak, I will just edit this here: He was NOT impeached for bribing Ukraine into fabricating exactly this sort of story. He was im…
source?
The NY Post story allegedly has pictures of the receipt as an attachment to the FBI subpoena for the laptop.
Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting
#694To be honest it sounds like a regular end of the election craziness. To all those people, who think this is somehow special and deserves special new set of rules, I can only point to 2016 ( Comey saga that also included Guliani ). It is not special. It is not new. It is still speech. It may be lies ( and I am sure we will find out soon enough ) and I get that a lot of people can be influenced. I get it. And it still…
"What I do not get is why some people honestly do believe that an average person needs to be protected from lies by a censor?" I was a Chomsky style free speech ultimatist. Unfortunately, humans aren't rational. Lying is super effective, its effects pernicious. They activate identity and trigger negative partisanship. Simply trying to refute lies only embeds them further. Profiting from the outrage machine (dopamine…
> What's the alternative to censorship? How does Truth prevail in the public square?
Even Good Samaritan Chomsky has no response to the Paradox of Tolerance.
As someone who's still on the free speech bandwagon. I think that this situations is pretty straight forward. One of the founding motivations for free speech is that it allows us to form accurate beliefs. Any approach that uses censorship to deal with the problem of misinformation and lying doesn't even pass the sniff test as a solution. This is because if the censor is factually wrong, it's game over. There is no recovery from that situation. The second you start filtering information that disagrees with your beliefs is the second you lose the ability to change them when new information comes in.
You can't fix the issues with free speech by selectively attacking individual topics based on your belifes about ground level truth. You have to do it at least 1 meta level up. Ask yourself, if humanity was a collection of nodes in a network, and social media was the protocol, "how do I choose a protocol which maximises the probability that the nodes in the network all converge to the truth even when I don't know it a priori".
You'll quickly find that platforms like twitter, instagram, and tiktok are the opposite of the answer. Each of them is engineered to minimise critical thinking, source checking, viewpoint sharing, and discussion. Facebook and reddit are bit better, at least on those you can post an essay and respond. Hacker news is even better, it has a simple UI that prioritizes text.
You also get more interesting ideas, like integrated cryptographic signing into social media platforms, or tuning feed algorithms to promote discussion using simple unbiased mechanism.
There's a whole bunch of shit we can do to solve the problem. Most of it hasn't been tried. Don't let people who are extremely intolerant use the paradox of tolerance to shut down opinions, ideas, and cultures they won't tolerate.
Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting
#695Earlier quoted context omitted.
There won't be legislative blow back, the GOP is days away from being wholesale evicted from controlling anything at all in DC. As a legislative move, this is changing their bet to the horse that's about to win. The social media companies are clearly more afraid longterm of what happens if they let this kind of stunt spread than they are afraid of the lame duck.
Democrats’ victory will be built on purple House seats, COVID blowback, and suburban women and seniors getting cold on Trump. That’s not going to last forever. The “demographic destiny” thing is looking increasingly dubious as Trump continues to outperform expectations among Latinos, even after, well, four years of Trump and COVID and everything. Meanwhile, there is no bench of strong moderates behind Biden. Republic…
Nonwhite Democrats are culturally far more conservative than white progressives on every issue except for racial issues. This will come to bite Democrats in a big way probably, as I’m almost sure the republicans will sooner or later nominate a nonwhite candidate (Nikki Haley??) and Democrats won’t get the ‘demographic’ vote they were hoping for.
Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting
#696Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm curious why you seem so confident in a widespread democratic victory when the republicans did so well in 2016? EDIT: for those unaware, not only did the republican party take control of the House, Senate, and Presidency in 2016. They also made big gains in state elections. In fact, the republican party had a 'trifecta' (house, senate, and executive) in 25/50 states. It was a very significant shift in power: https…
Many polls are showing a Biden win is above 80% probability, the House is solidly Dem, and a possible sweep in the Senate. Make of that what you will. Its a fair point that polls missed in 2016. 2020 has kicked the hornet’s nest (rather, the last four years), voter turnout appears to be higher than previous years, and I’d bet an expensive bottle of bourbon current polls align close to what results will be (with model…
Except Millenials are becoming more conservative as they age, and Republicans have way more kids than Democrats: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/republicans-more-kids-democra...
Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting
#697Crux of the issue is that everyone knows there’s a double standard. Why do they co-ordinate to block this story and not the countless other “unverified” scoops? Because it threatens a protected politician.
Isn't it because a hack was involved?
No it’s not. Had it been leaks concerning Trump collusion with Russian to rig previous election (you know, that fake news that runned for 4 years), it would have been placed in trending topic instead. GP is right, there is a very obvious double standard at play, and this is not happening only in the IS.
Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting
#698Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is this being downvoted? As far as I can tell from reading the article, this is an accurate summary. The provided evidence that said laptop is genuinely connected with Hunter Biden is 1) a Biden sticker on the laptop, 2) the fact that it's a Delaware repair shop, and 3) a pornographic video featuring somebody who "appears to be" Hunter Biden. What about this is convincing evidence?
I think the other points are that the laptop had pictures of Hunter Biden, the FBI allegedly confiscated the laptop, and that Hunter Biden's lawyer didn't deny that it was Hunter's.
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Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting
#699Earlier quoted context omitted.
> it just poured liquid oxygen on the "reform section 230" fire you're seeing from both sides of the aisle - one using the censorship reason, the other using the disinformation reason The GOP is prioritizing § 230 reform. Given their likely fall from power and prioritization of the SCOTUS confirmation, as well as Democrat control of the House and its focus on stimulus bills, the short-term threat is minute. From an a…
GOP is talking big about Section 230 reform, but it is absurd on its face. Prior to Section 230, if you censor ANY content (say, child pornography) then you are "moderating" the discussion and are liable for ALL content. If Twitter deletes a death threat tweet, why didn't they delete the defamatory tweet against Hunter Biden or whomever? Biden could sue. So Section 230 allows websites to delete the kiddie porn withou…
This is has the right idea. Both politicians and tech companies are in on it. Politicians get to silence people and control the narrative. Tech companies turn into publishing houses and now have a moat (moderation and legal costs, political connections).
Re: Facebook, Twitter block the NY Post from posting
#700Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many polls are showing a Biden win is above 80% probability, the House is solidly Dem, and a possible sweep in the Senate. Make of that what you will. Its a fair point that polls missed in 2016. 2020 has kicked the hornet’s nest (rather, the last four years), voter turnout appears to be higher than previous years, and I’d bet an expensive bottle of bourbon current polls align close to what results will be (with model…
Except Millenials are becoming more conservative as they age, and Republicans have way more kids than Democrats: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/republicans-more-kids-democra...
Rural conservatives who have kids will eventually have those kids leave for good paying jobs in urban areas, or those kids will likely not have a great life expectancy from lack of opportunity in their small community (dying small communities are well documented: https://www.google.com/search?q=dying+small+towns) and deaths of despair (alcoholism, meth, opioids: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolinekee/maps-despai...). As long as prospects for women continue to increase (education and earning potential), and the data shows well off educated women prefer a partner on equal footing, conservative birth rates will eventually converge with that of other ideologies (this can be inferred from the total fertility rate trend for religious vs non religious women of childbearing age).
While your point about ideology drift over time has some merit, I don’t believe it to be significant enough to materially consider.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/706889?jou... (https://doi.org/10.1086/706889 if you want to grab the full paper from SciHub)
“Consistent with previous research but contrary to folk wisdom, our results indicate that political attitudes are remarkably stable over the long term. In contrast to previous research, however, we also find support for folk wisdom: on those occasions when political attitudes do shift across the life span, liberals are more likely to become conservatives than conservatives are to become liberals, suggesting that folk wisdom has some empirical basis even as it overstates the degree of change.”