91–100 of 652 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
These things always start with moves that sound completely reasonable. Only time will tell if they expand their moderation demands.
What are these things , specifically?
I've been trying to come to grips with the societal impact of echo chambers, "hate" speech, and the obligations vs. rights of sites and hosting providers. So far, my take is that websites have less obligation than hosting. It concerns me that AWS booted a site off their platform for speech issues - I am leaning more and more to the idea that colos, IaaS and ISPs should be considered common carriers, and that only a c…
> It concerns me that AWS booted a site off their platform for speech issues I'm sorry for the caps but you and a host of others are forgetting something repeatedly and it's getting fairly annoying: AMAZON HAS FREE SPEECH RIGHTS TOO. Just as Parler does, and you do, and I do, and Twitter does, and the various owners and employees of these organizations do, and on and on. It's Free Speech all the way down. And a funda…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's worth noting how much actual political power the right in America has, despite being about 50% of voters. The Senate and electoral college favor them massively. This means you should expect to have an uphill battle if you want to change any laws that might counter their preferences.
50 Senators are Democrats or caucus with them, and the Electoral college just put a Democrat in the White House -- so you can't really make such a claim with a straight face.
The electoral college was decided by about 40k votes this time, and about 80k votes last time. The popular vote margin was in the millions. That should tell you something about how far the EC is from reality.
I've been trying to come to grips with the societal impact of echo chambers, "hate" speech, and the obligations vs. rights of sites and hosting providers. So far, my take is that websites have less obligation than hosting. It concerns me that AWS booted a site off their platform for speech issues - I am leaning more and more to the idea that colos, IaaS and ISPs should be considered common carriers, and that only a c…
There are two separate issues: 1. Is it good that a few people at a few large companies can decide what is and isn't acceptable speech in America. 2. Do media companies have the right to end business relationships with companies who they feel violate their contracts and Terms of Service. The obvious answer to #2 is yes. Otherwise you would be forcing Fox News to run adds calling all Fox News viewers racists, and forc…
Biden just hired a tonne of ex-big tech staff to work on tech oversight policy, lol.
I've been trying to come to grips with the societal impact of echo chambers, "hate" speech, and the obligations vs. rights of sites and hosting providers. So far, my take is that websites have less obligation than hosting. It concerns me that AWS booted a site off their platform for speech issues - I am leaning more and more to the idea that colos, IaaS and ISPs should be considered common carriers, and that only a c…
> It concerns me that AWS booted a site off their platform for speech issues I'm sorry for the caps but you and a host of others are forgetting something repeatedly and it's getting fairly annoying: AMAZON HAS FREE SPEECH RIGHTS TOO. Just as Parler does, and you do, and I do, and Twitter does, and the various owners and employees of these organizations do, and on and on. It's Free Speech all the way down. And a funda…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's worth noting how much actual political power the right in America has, despite being about 50% of voters. The Senate and electoral college favor them massively. This means you should expect to have an uphill battle if you want to change any laws that might counter their preferences.
A business that is heavily involved with local government has to sweat Republican politics, a business that is heavily involved with technology, the media, or other forms of nonstate power has to sweat Democrat politics. I guess it would be nice if companies could simply focus on getting their job done and not have to sweat anyone's politics at all.
Turns out being `apolitical` is kind of a myth.
As much as I don't like Parler's digital death sentence from Silicon Valley, they should've known this was coming and prepared. It doesn't take a genius to know that such a controversial website is going to get dropped, even if it's just because it makes the webhost look bad. Yes it's unfair that Twitter gets away with hosting way worse content, but life is unfair, that doesn't mean you stick your head in the sand an…
It's worth noting how much soft power the political left in America has, despite being about 50% of voters. Hollywood, Silicon Valley, academia, and the news media all lean left. This means you should expect to have an uphill battle if you want to do anything in these areas that might counter their preferences. I think all this soft power actually hurts the left in America, because our country's default state is a bi…
Here's the denial of the TRO: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qhXD-4Kaw5dCEBv0dUM8buygEKg... Parler hasn't lost the case, just a TRO that demands reinstatement on AWS, but the ruling on the TRO requires the judge to tip their hand about the case, and Parler is going to lose. I don't think you even need to read the AWS AUP to know that Parler has no real case here. To buy Parler's contract claim, you'd have to believ…
Expanding on this, "courts have repeatedly emphasized, an injunction represents an 'extraordinary remedy' that is never awarded as a matter of right... For a preliminary injunction to issue, the moving party has the burden of demonstrating all four of the following elements: (1) that it is likely to succeed on the merits; (2) that it is likely to suffer irreparable harm in the absence of preliminary relief; (3) that…
Clearly Parler will suffer irreparable harm here, but they failed by a good margin to meet any of the other tests here.
Parlers goal of being the alternate free speech platform is horrendously thought out. The same companies and that they are trying to remove influence from (Silicon Valley - amazon, twitter, facebook, etc.) are the same companies that they're doing business with. Gab is ridiculous and I get a very religious "holier than thou" (lol) vibe from them. Their founder(s) are very puritanical and will likely not survive the n…
The 'free speech platforms' almost always skew towards the extremest side (more so over time)and aren't anything about the benefits we think of when it comes to free speech, lots of ideas that can be discussed, and we can think about and learn from. I wonder how that can be avoided.
I dislike the people that support facist, racist beliefs, but I 100% will defend their right to say such things. In my opinion, once you start talking about restricting speech, you get into the grey area - who decides what speech to restrict? Off the top of my head, the most "capable" organizations would be either:
- The companies who run these glorified advertising platforms (which would regulate speech based on "how much money will we lose?"), or
- a Governmental body (which by its nature has a monopoly on violence - "if you say something we don't like, your social credit score goes down and you can't leave the country or we throw you in jail"). I think freedom of speech is a very large part of what makes America distinctive from other countries.
- Alternatively, we could have whoever the loudest complainers are control speech, which would be very reactionary - driven by misinformation or coordinated culture change campaigns(?)
If the people with abhorrent opinions decide to start causing direct physical harm to people in reality - that's when police, government, etc. should step in and penalize them - not social media companies or governments, or the vocal minority determining what people should and shouldn't say.