521–530 of 550 posts
For any non-Brits, the SWP is the main left of Labour party in Britain. As a student in the 80s I remember them as an earnest, way too serious bunch of ideological zombies ranting into microphones at the Student's Union about the latest crimes against humanity perpetrated by 'Thatcher'. They're the kind of people that come up to you in the street with leaflets about some atrocity in Africa and shout "Would you murder…
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> Even as our nation spent years outraged over Russian interference Only a minority of the country was (supposedly) outraged about the mostly non-existent Russian interference. Most of the US knew it was bullshit the entire time, the Russians had near zero impact on the prior election (amazing how they didn't somehow swing this latest election, given their apparent god-like powers, despite how close it was). Trump's…
If I was American and there was clear proof that Russia had interfered in elections, I don’t care how ineffective it was. I’d want it investigated and stopped. I’d also rain fire and fury on anyone who interfered with or obstructed those investigations. But that’s me. I suppose caring about free and fair elections in the US is now a partisan issue over there. For a British conservative that grew up under Reagan/Thatc…
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> Even as our nation spent years outraged over Russian interference Only a minority of the country was (supposedly) outraged about the mostly non-existent Russian interference. Most of the US knew it was bullshit the entire time, the Russians had near zero impact on the prior election (amazing how they didn't somehow swing this latest election, given their apparent god-like powers, despite how close it was). Trump's…
> mostly non-existent Russian interference This is not true. The Republican-led, bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee found, over the course of their 3.5 year investigation, that there was in fact Russian interference. You can find the actual report (all 5 volumes) here [0]. Alternatively, a TL;DR summary can be found here [1]. > amazing how they didn't somehow swing this latest election Let's for a moment, assum…
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Citations needed. Strong statement with zero points argued to back it up. Edit to add: downvotes don't count as argument points.
No, they don't, but that's what you get around here. If there's a bigger hive of intellectual douchebaggery in this sector of the galaxy, I haven't found it yet. Still, the good usually outweighs the bad by far. To be fair to my downvoters, it would be more accurate to say, "Any sufficiently dominant corporation is indistinguishable from a monarchy." With the US government, at least, you have the right to vote, along…
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I'm mostly tired of this take, especially by technologists. First off: you're right. You can't compel a private company to support speech. But the entirety of political discourse happens online now. There's a clear and prevailing interest that free speech can happen online, at scale.
Honestly, the market will take care of it: who's comfortable hosting their content on the platform any more? They've alienated the right and the left. At the end of the day/century, FB is just a random internet site/app. Discourse is online, yes, but the zeitgeist left FB years ago. Zuck's fate will catch up with him fast, now that their network effect has broken, or is close to doing so. It's already over. FB/IG/Wha…
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If I was American and there was clear proof that Russia had interfered in elections, I don’t care how ineffective it was. I’d want it investigated and stopped. I’d also rain fire and fury on anyone who interfered with or obstructed those investigations. But that’s me. I suppose caring about free and fair elections in the US is now a partisan issue over there. For a British conservative that grew up under Reagan/Thatc…
> ... I don’t care how ineffective it was. I’d want it investigated and stopped. The level of interference to the election was so trivial I doubt you can back that attitude up. At some level of ineffectiveness, having an investigation and stopping the activity is more costly than just ignoring it. Investigations take time, money and it turns out have collateral damage: Looking at the charges out of the Mueller invest…
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This is a contrived fantasy, or a realistic question? We have a system of justice, you get to defend youself, judged by your peers and posting general BS about politics is not a crime. Youtube, on the other hand, will ban your channel without any recourse, so if you are earning a living from it, you kids might be on the street because something in a mysteruous machine learning algorithm got triggered.
Read the comments that I was responding to, if it's not clear to you. The GP described this scenario as being realistic, and the parent comment said that this seemed preferable to Big Tech acting without extensive regulation. > We have a system of justice ... That's irrelevant here, and there are probably far more people who are likely to lose their livelihoods if they post unpopular stuff about politics under their…
I do not see how that is true outside of US, unless we are talking about seriously extremist stuff
"they can always move to a new platform"
Like what? What platform has at least 10% market share as alternative to YouTube?
"Of course governments can surveil people currently, but in relatively limited numbers"
Millions of people is 'limited numbers'?
The liberty you are talikng about was already lost to corporates, the survalience state is alrwady here. you have no ability to escape phone providers selling your date and no knowledge of them doing it.
At least governments can be held accountable at the voting booth, a monopolistic company can't.
There was a really good quote adressing monopolies: "If we will not accept kings and tyrants over over lives, then we shall not accept a king over necceseties of life"
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> CPGB-ML who are full on tankies It remains astonishing that a number of these people did a full 180 turn to right-libertarians and from there to Brexiteers, eventually leading to Claire Fox, apologist for the bombing of Manchester, becoming a member of the House of Lords. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claire_Fox
Not really, ideology doesn’t matter to (some) extremists, they’ll follow whoever uses the tools of fear and hate most effectively. See the “Bernie Bros” who flipped into full Trumpists a few short months later in 2016. I’m sure if you look back at the Spanish Civil War and other divisive historical time periods you’ll find plenty of turncoats that flip from one extreme to another.
There really aren't very many of those people.
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Read the comments that I was responding to, if it's not clear to you. The GP described this scenario as being realistic, and the parent comment said that this seemed preferable to Big Tech acting without extensive regulation. > We have a system of justice ... That's irrelevant here, and there are probably far more people who are likely to lose their livelihoods if they post unpopular stuff about politics under their…
"there are probably far more people who are likely to lose their livelihoods if they post unpopular stuff about politics under their real name.' I do not see how that is true outside of US, unless we are talking about seriously extremist stuff "they can always move to a new platform" Like what? What platform has at least 10% market share as alternative to YouTube? "Of course governments can surveil people currently,…
> I do not see how that is true outside of US
It's true amongst much of the Anglosphere. And of course China, Russia I imagine, most of the Middle East, Africa, the rest of Asia, and South America. So the vast majority of the world's population. And if people can't speak anonymously or pseudonymously, it's going to have a huge chilling effect on free expression online. By the way, look around the world to see just how much the definition of "really extremist stuff" can vary.
I didn't suggest that moving to a platform outside of the Big Tech hegemony was necessarily easy, but I did suggest that it was possible. We're in the early days of the consumer revolt against Facebook/Youtube, but if people are suitably motivated to move to other platforms, those other platforms will grow and develop. And it's a whole lot easier to move to a different tech platform than it is to move to a different country, or to change the law when you're in a political minority.
Governments can really only properly surveil people who are taking active measures to conceal their activities in relatively small numbers. They can get a certain amount of information and metadata about the majority of the population who use popular platforms and services, but there has been a tendency in recent years to encrypt everything and then to collaborate with the security services of particular countries.
> The liberty you are talikng about was already lost to corporates, the survalience state is alrwady here. you have no ability to escape phone providers selling your date and no knowledge of them doing it.
If I'm concerned about Alexa hearing my private conversations, I can unplug her. I get to decide whether the potential risk to my privacy is worth the benefits of using particular products and services. I can ask my friends not to livestream me on Facebook when they walk into my house. There's loads of popular technology that I'm perfectly free not to use, or to seek out alternatives. The fact that so many people choose the easiest, shiniest option is their decision, and their problem, and you don't get to make that my problem. It's both untrue and it's also a complete non-sequitur to say that we're already living voluntarily in a corporate surveillance state and then to say that we might as well therefore make it into a government-controlled surveillance state, and to replace terms and conditions with laws, and account cancellations and bans with criminal penalties.
> At least governments can be held accountable at the voting booth
In practice, this only tends to happen in countries where people are relatively free to do things on the Internet without the government tracking and controlling their activity. There's a causal link here.
> a monopolistic company can't.
Facebook will only continue to be the pre-eminent social network as long as vast numbers of people choose to continue to use it. You, personally, can hold it to account by not using it any more, but you have no right to stop other people from using it if they want to.
> There was a really good quote adressing monopolies: "If we will not accept kings and tyrants over over lives, then we shall not accept a king over necceseties of life"
To suggest that Facebook is a necessity of life really highlights what a position of privilege we're in. Perhaps people who are trying to advance that kind of argumentation need to have a good, hard look at what the "needs" and the "wants" really are in their life. I'd also recommend that you read some of the Austrian economists to find out what a real monopoly would actually look like, and why it is that you're unlikely to encounter one.
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I think the UK population, as in most countries and maybe all of them, have a higher tolerance for such things when their own fellow citizens are being murdered and blown up.
I think this misses the point, which is that many (maybe most) of the citizens of Great Britain don't consider nationalists in Northern Ireland as citizens at all, even while they are murdering them. After all, while the majority of the deaths during the Troubles were caused by Republicans, most of those killed by Republicans were members of the British Armed Forces. Most of the civilians killed by any party were kil…
You raised the attitude of the UK public, and that’s all about perception. You may well be right about the numbers, but the UK government don’t see sectarian murders and knee cappings in NI as affecting them because they, in general from a majority point of view, don’t live in NI. They do live in or visit or have relatives who live in and visit Manchester, Birmingham, London, etc. So when they see people being blown to bits in these places they perceive that as an attack on them. The thing is it’s bad enough to register as a direct attack, it’s enough to make them hate the IRA and by extension Republicans, but it’s not enough to make them feel any pressure to negotiate. So it has the effect of making them want blood in return and not care too much how they get it.
I think the IRA leadership finally figured this out, along with the fact that long term demographics are on their side.
Picking on Maggie is a bit of a tell. There was no appreciable difference in policy between any of the major Parties on NI and in the mainland UK it simply wasn’t a partisan issue. There were some in the far left sympathetic to Republicans but they were very much a fringe in Labour. What this has to do with MT particularly is hard to fathom. E.g. Bloody Sunday was under Edward Heath, so if your going to pick anyone I’d have though it would be him, but it’s not as if everything was peace and flowers under Wilson or Callaghan.