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Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

nytimes.com

441–450 of 472 posts

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Users could post stuff that would get them booted off twitter, but that was legal speech I'm curious what kind of posts would definitely fall into this distinction. I see plenty of really distasteful, vile comments show up on Twitter. And AFAIK inciting violence is illegal. So the area between those seems to me like it would be pretty narrow. My impression of Parler is more that they only deleted illegal speech of…

> pretty narrow Not so for better or worse. Multiple people have been banned from Twitter for calling a human rights litigation troll (and Twitter troll) a man (he is male). https://nationalpost.com/news/free-speech-activist-lindsay-s... https://mobile.twitter.com/bindelj/status/118726943929891225... Calling a male troll “he” is definitely not illegal, yet you can be banned from Twitter for it. It’s not an incitement…

No, she is female.

Before we had all this mess with real identities on the internet, nobody cared about your genitals when you wanted to be addressed with "he/him" or "she/her", they just did it. I wonder how we lost that.

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#442

So is Google going to throw them out of the Play store? What's the argument for banning one social media and not another. Where do you draw the line that manages to keep Facebooks app available, while still being able to defend the removal of Parler. I know many will think I'm defending Parler, I'm not. I just don't see why Facebook is continuously given a free pass for all the horrible stuff on their platform. Is it…

Here are a couple: Facebook could have 100 times more violent content than parler, but it would be a much smaller percentage of content because Facebook is 1000000 times bigger. It's that simple really. Banning Parler is more efficient. Also, Parler went out and sold itself as somewhere this was allowed, protected and encouraged. Facebook didn't, quite the opposite in fact.

Just to make sure we're clear on the numbers, Parler had ~2 million accounts last I checked. Facebook being 1e6 times bigger, as you claim, would be quite the feat.

I get your larger point, but the actual numbers you picked to illustrate it are just completely divorced from reality.

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#443
Observation: A party can incite insurrections -- by claiming that other parties incited insurrections...

Advice: If a party doesn't want to incite insurrections -- it should never claim that other parties incited insurrections...

Shakespeare Quote: "Neither a borrower, nor a lender be..."

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#444
post #423
post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that: - the Chinese culture will never be the same as the US, and - Chinese opinion is not a single blob, but I think “oriental” countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan show that they could be persuaded (let’s not use “educated” here) to be: - less aggressive to neighbors, and - not trying to dominate, to overthrow world order by exporting authoritarianism and censorship. And regarding swaying opinions,…

I concur with the general sentiment. I don't want to speculate too much and go into armchair territory. That said, I wonder if it isn't more productive to look at China and each country in the region based on its own characteristics instead of a regional idea. Looking at all those you cited, they all have pretty specific ways of doing things and very different histories. I think they have less in common than say Fran…

I agree that:

* each country has their own history and trajectory, including China, its neighbors (Japan, Taiwan, etc.), or others.

* China has much to gain from changing the world order.

But, I speculate that:

* a transition of power from a US dominated world order to a bipolar (or China dominated) world order would be chaotic and likely non-peacful, given the history of the bipolar world order of the Cold War with lots of proxy wars.

* hence the world has much to lose from such a transition of power: this is essentially the one-party stability argument of CCP applied to the world, because the world institution inherently lacks the peaceful transition of power that democratic countries have—the result will be more chaotic, and likely violent, than what US is having now.

I agree with your objections to cargo cult and magical thinking, and thus I support public discourse sans government censorship or unreasonable moderation, to find out why things are the way they are.

I love the discussion we are having now.

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#445
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes Facebook worse, in my mind, is that people don't seem to care that it's their real name associated with terrible radical, violent and angry comment. At least on something like 4Chan you'd be anonymous, but nope, people will write the most grotesque comments, while everyone can see their real name, where they live and who they work for. Some people don't seem to care, and that's pretty scary.

A lot of 4chan was self aware. But on Facebook they think they're saying what everyone is thinking. They aren't trolling

Adding a big consideration to this:

Poe's Law is in effect, and with the death of irony can be a (intended or not) recruitment tactic.

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#446
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is literally the worst parallel I've ever heard. guns are deterant against serious bodily harm. You've obviously never been in a situation when someone else was threatening your life. A better assumption is maybe Parler was a deterant from suppression. I love how parler criticism existed in 24hrs after "trump" ban. I was on the platform for months non of this hainiss violence or racism was ever in my feed.

Indeed, I was never in a situation where someone threatened my life. I know why. I life in a first world country. With reasonable people, and proper gun control laws. The gun laws are what make me consider the USA not a safe place.

> I life in a first world country. With reasonable people, and proper gun control laws.

So do I (although I might disagree to some extent on the reasonable people), yet I've experienced multiple direct threats against my life. This is in England, where it's supposed to be all tea and biscuits.

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not being sarcastic, but a lot of them are honest-to-god cultists; their connection with concrete reality is tenuous at best. They think that Q is real, and that Trump had secret information about vague evilness being done by Congress (eating babies or similar) that was going to be revealed when they got into the Capitol. Then they were going to arrest them all and execute them as punishment for their alleged crimes.…

I've heard that too, not that they're a cult so much as a kind of Live-Action Role-Playing that escaped into the real world. I don't know to what extent that's true, but it helps me try to answer one of the questions foremost on my mind, to wit: what the hell did these folks think they were going to do? What was the plan here? - - - - From the article you posted there's a line that seems particularly telling to me as…

I don’t think “LARPers escaped into reality” is a good metaphor, because LARPers know they’re playing a game.

The QAnon crowd unquestionably has a lot of members who genuinely believe this stuff. Generally LARPers don’t play act their way into hundreds of federal felonies, nor do LARPers vote along LARP lines.

Also, those guns and bombs are sure real.

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Users could post stuff that would get them booted off twitter, but that was legal speech I'm curious what kind of posts would definitely fall into this distinction. I see plenty of really distasteful, vile comments show up on Twitter. And AFAIK inciting violence is illegal. So the area between those seems to me like it would be pretty narrow. My impression of Parler is more that they only deleted illegal speech of…

> And AFAIK inciting violence is illegal. Sure, but in the USA it's actually really hard to incite violence in the eyes of the law. For example, when it comes to USA laws, Trump almost definitely did not incite violence. But lots of people would disagree with the statement that he didn't incite violence.

>Sure, but in the USA it's actually really hard to incite violence in the eyes of the law.

According to the Ars piece, Amazon claims that Parler users were planning violent attacks openly on the site.

That may or may not be true. I guess we'll just have to wait until the archive[0] is fully released.

If it is true, that might be incitement, but it's definitely conspiracy. And since folks died, it's quite possible that at least some folks could be charged with Felony Murder (discussion here[1]).

But we obviously won't know until we can get our greasy little paws on all those messages, photos and videos.

[0] https://threatpost.com/parler-archive-amazon-suspension/1629...

[1] https://www.lawfareblog.com/felony-murder-and-storming-capit...

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#449

So is Google going to throw them out of the Play store? What's the argument for banning one social media and not another. Where do you draw the line that manages to keep Facebooks app available, while still being able to defend the removal of Parler. I know many will think I'm defending Parler, I'm not. I just don't see why Facebook is continuously given a free pass for all the horrible stuff on their platform. Is it…

Google has their own complicity as their algorithm similarly encourages monetising conspiracy theories - which is the problem. Facebook just have a bigger problem in that their monetisation requires a captive audience which amplifies any groupthink, not just showing people what they might be looking for.

Call it the Alex Jones method. Promote a conspiracy theory and monetise the traffic via advertising views, affiliate links or actually selling products that mitigate the effects of conspiracy theory you pushed. All online advertising makes this profitable to anyone and that's what needs to be addressed.

Re: Facebook Incubated the Insurrection

#450
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it's up to interpretation, but I think we're fooling ourselves a bit to say he didn't incite violence. People raided the capitol on his behalf. His rhetoric must have had something to do with that.

I think morally he did. And he should be impeached for both that and his inaction in response to that. But the statement was "inciting violence is illegal". Which involves the law. That's a different question.

>I think morally he did. And he should be impeached for both that and his inaction in response to that.

And an impeachment trial is not an Article III court. Nor is it intended to be. It is inherently a political proceeding and not a criminal trial. As such, ethics and morals are certainly at issue and the rules of Article III courts are not relevant.

Nor did the founders intend[0][1] them to be criminal trials. Which is why someone who is impeached and convicted is not immune from criminal prosecution in an Article III court.

[0] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed65.asp

[1] https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed66.asp

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