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Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

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Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#181

Post by colpabar »

ineptech wrote: post #136
surge wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It pretty much is and is a chilling attempt at limiting speech. Free press, is free press. CNN and MSNBC both spread their share of misinformation. You need to be able to watch multiple news sources with different takes in a free society, to determine whose wrong or whose omitting key facts in an attempt to frame the news.

How is asking Fox for viewership numbers, "a chilling attempt at limiting speech"?

Would you feel the same way if house republicans sent letters to twitter asking how many users used the #blm hashtag last summer? It seems to me that we'd get lots of headlines declaring that they were attempting to silence anyone in favor of police reform.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#182

Post by temp8964 »

dang wrote: post #84
temp8964 wrote: post #57

Flagged. Lol. Because the letters didn't use the exact words "demand", "censor". Haha.

You broke the site guidelines with that title, which was neither accurate nor neutral (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26240472 ). Using titles to editorialize isn't "haha", it's against the rules and will cause you to lose submission privileges on HN. That goes double for divisive, inflammatory topics like this one. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking t…

NYT used the title "House Democrats Press Cable Providers on Election Fraud Claims", I don't think it is much different and I think my edit is based on the actual content in the letters. But thank you for unflag the post.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#183

Post by BitwiseFool »

macspoofing wrote: post #89
tarboreus wrote: post #16

Is anyone finding this terrifying? When did democrafts, the party I vote for, become the people calling for tight censorship in every sector? Weren't the last people to make this move (more more ineffectively, thankfully) the Christian right? Is there something we can do to stand up for speech?

>When did democrafts, the party I vote for, become the people calling for tight censorship in every sector? When Trump got elected and it broke people's brains. At that point, everything became permissible in order to fight Trump. Now that Trump is gone, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. Since Trump, the Democratic establishment has effectively captured Mainstream Media, Big Tech and Social Media (with Acad…

I can't help but think 'puritanism' is a personality trait and there has always been a sizable portion of the American public dedicated to policing the thoughts and behavior of others. The underlying ideology may have changed, but the archetype sure hasn't. Maybe the so-called SJWs of today would have been Temperance activists 100 years ago.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#184

Post by sneak »

mindslight wrote: post #160
bhupy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The New York Times vs Sullivan precedent pretty specifically addressed that issue: organizations (like the NYT) are protected by the First Amendment. Also, just taking a step back, the Constitution makes no mention of a difference between individuals and groups. If you and I were to group together to advocate for something, our rights to advocate for that thing don't magically disappear. In fact, by this logic, we do…

The New York Times is a corporation with a government-granted charter that grants it things like limited liability. It's fallacious to characterize it as just some ad-hoc "group" of individuals joining together to individually exercise their rights. And yes, I agree that we don't actually have a free press. Given our microkernel government, institutions like the New York Times are better seen as part of the de facto…

Important to remember that corporations, like all groups, have no mouths, no hands, and cannot act.

All corporate actions, all corporate speech, is carried out by individual humans. Group rights are individual human rights, as groups have no brain and cannot act.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#185

Post by protonfish »

pfortuny wrote: post #131
protonfish wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember when we all agreed Nazis were bad? Good times.

What does that even mean? Did I agree to that?

You seem to want us to fight them with one arm behind our back. I, however, don't care whatever it is you think "we" decided. I believe we should fight fascist propaganda with all the the tools we can grab. Lord knows they are. Current authoritarian disinformation campaigns are a massive and immediate threat to all humanity. If you think so too, then stop bringing knives to this gunfight.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#186

Post by cwkoss »

rayiner wrote: post #37

The letter complains about Fox and OANN's partisan and inflammatory rhetoric, with supporting citations to sources on the left who trade heavily in partisan and inflammatory rhetoric. Just three citations in you get to Karen Attiah, Washington Post's Global Opinions Editor: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/jun/29/karen-attia... > “White women are lucky that we are just calling them ‘Karen’s,’ and not calling…

MSNBC is just as partisan and loose with the truth as fox news, but with a centrist liberal perspective. CNN seems slightly better, but they have a lot of questionable reporting and analysis as well.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#187

Post by dang »

minikites wrote: post #94
BitwiseFool wrote: post #4

"How many of your subscribers tuned in to Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN on U-verse, DirecTV, and AT&T TV for each of the four weeks preceding the November 3, 2020 elections and the January 6, 2021 attacks on the Capitol? Please specify the number of subscribers that tuned in to each channel ." Does this strike anyone else as a nakedly partisan move?

Apparently moves like this are only "nakedly partisan" when Democrats do it, but it's fine when Republicans withhold aid from Democratic states.

Please don't take HN threads further into political flamewar. Admittedly the GP pointed that way, but there's a difference between pointing and going there—and there are other reasons besides outright battle why one might want to talk about partisanship in this context.

The goal of HN threads is to be curious conversation; that tends to require not burning alive. So far this thread is mostly managing to stay on the good side of the line.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#189

Post by sneak »

tarboreus wrote: post #16

Is anyone finding this terrifying? When did democrafts, the party I vote for, become the people calling for tight censorship in every sector? Weren't the last people to make this move (more more ineffectively, thankfully) the Christian right? Is there something we can do to stand up for speech?

The dirty secret of American hyperpartisan battle is that the two parties in the US are fundamentally identical where it counts: pro-surveillance, authoritarian war machines.

Re: Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

#190

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

jolux wrote: post #66
temp8964 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" 4. What steps did you take prior to, on, and following the November 3, 2020 elections and the January 6, 2021 attacks to monitor, respond to, and reduce the spread of disinformation, including encouragement or incitement of violence by channels your company disseminates to millions of Americans? Please describe each step that you took and when it was taken. 5. Have you taken any adverse actions against a channel, i…

>Not a demand for censorship? No, those look like questions to me. A demand for censorship would be "stop carrying these channels." Such a demand may follow after these questions are answered, but do they not constitute a demand for censorship of themselves.

and when the mafia boss says, “You have a beautiful family” he is only complimenting you.
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