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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]

#261

Post by tetrahedr0n »

beowulfey wrote: post #124
njharman wrote: post #35

Judging what is and is not misinformation must always be in the hands of the people. Never the hands of authorities whether those be government or corporate. Why must fight all censorship. Because once you allow "a thing" to be censored, it becomes possible to censor "any thing". Things in the past which were labeled misinformation and would have been suppressed for even longer (or forever) under current social attit…

Can you explain this a bit more? At least for the first two, that information was disseminated by government bans or government-mandated labeling. I am not as familiar with Agent Orange but it was first studied by the New Jersey Agent Orange Commission in 1980 and found to be toxic — it helped lead to the Agent Orange Act. PTSD was first recognized by the APA in 1980 as well. These are all positions of authority maki…

I believe the OP's point was that those things (Agent orange, tobacco cancer, etc) which our society almost universally agree upon were once, themselves, targeted by dis/misinformation campaigns.

And that if we are to allow censorship, we are allowing the potential for disinformation campaigns.

IMO, the flaws in this argument are that it assumes a disinformation campaign is something the censor entity is controlling (specifically the US military, in the Agent Orange example). It also assumes disinformation is the only tactic available to a bad actor to manipulate the public.

To the spirit of the OP's point, though, I think we need to be wary of any corporation pledging to make the world a safer place by monitoring our communications.

Of course the situation is not binary; there are things that should be censored. I would like our law enforcement to use any tool at their disposal to stop human trafficking. Murder is not cool, AT&T should help LE look into those as well. Politician Y is trolling the internet with lies; we actually have a toolset for that and it's called journalism. Understanding that journalism/media is actually part of the problem here doesn't mean AT&T can do a better job.

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

#262

Post by buildbot »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #204
citilife wrote: post #85

This is such a dangerous game to play. CNN knowingly misleads the public every single day. It's effectively public knowledge if anyone cares to investigate themselves. Going after FOX because the ruling party disagrees with them, but leaving CNN alone is the definition of authoritarian, regardless of your views. You can't single out voices. Further, who owns CNN? (Turner Broadcasting System) Who owns Turner Broadcast…

Trump continually attacked the media, Trump literally said the media was the enemy of the people. He would ignore questions from other agencies, even those without bias. Until people in their own parties start standing up for principled government it will never change. Unsurprisingly, downvoted for stating facts once again - people are afraid to call a spade a spade.

Reading these threads has been very depressing lately, Democrats ask OANN and other _extremely_ conservative networks for information, and that's somehow an attack on the First Amendment, where as 4 years of Trump - and the rest of the Republican party - attacking anything he disagreed with as Fake News was totally cool.

Either Hacker news is being heavily astroturfed (there are many throwaway accounts participating here for example) or really that's what this community is now.

I just keep a little personal list of usernames of people who are promoting Fascism and avoid anything they are associated with.

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

#263

Post by cozuya »

citilife wrote: post #236
cozuya wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did CNN viewers storm the capitol in attempt to overthrow the elected government, leading to the deaths of 7 people?

There's actually a lot of clips of CNN & other reporters helping and pushing protesters into the Capital Building... https://twitter.com/LaurenWitzkeDE/status/134990457311734169... Also, only two persons died of wounds confirmed at the Capital (both protestors). The only person who was shot, was recorded by the "reporter" in the video above was egging on the police & protestors at the time. https://www.washingtonpost…

Lauren Witzke is a Q Anon supporter. Do you think Q Anon supporters should be given a voice here on HN?

Also, why does it matter how many people died during the attempt to overthrow our government by far right extremists? How many deaths are acceptable? 1? 7?

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

#264

Post by 74B5 »

I think many US americans despise the german approach to censorship of speech. Here in germany, we have not freedom speech but freedom of opinion, which makes a very crucial distinction.

There are two kinds of statements, descriptive and normative ones.

Descriptive statements explain "as is" relationships like "this door is blue" or "2 + 2 = 5". It does not matter if the statement is false or not.

Normative statements cover subjective "should be" relationships. These are opinions like "it should be 3 years parental leave" and thus protected in german law as beeing unrestricted. This is, what is needed for free public discourse and not the right to claim falsehoods.

In germany, you cant freely say that "jews are all criminals" and "the holocaust never happend". Over here, you can get penalized for public statements like these because (a) they are not opinions but wrong descriptive statements and (b) explicitly noted as beeing illegal. Whereas in the Us all speech is free (insults and such excluded ofc).

The question is, where do you draw the line. To which point can wrong descriptive public statements still be tolerated and where might they harm society or individuals? From the german perspective, this question is easy to answer and i am considering the storm of the capitol here :)

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

#265

Post by citilife »

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?

To be frank, the democrats have been directly calling for increasing amounts of censorship for years... In 2016-2018 it was slow at first: de-platforming people, refusing to let conservatives on media, etc.

Since, 2018-2020 has been almost a militant level of censorship being pushed.

There's a boatload of examples, but generally I recommend trying to join / visit different communities. While the right has been targeted to an extreme you can still see their points of view on gab.com or patriots.win pretty much uncensored.

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

#266

Post by leesalminen »

shakezula wrote: post #227
kryogen1c wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Things in the past which were labeled misinformation I know that item-level thinking like this is necessary to gain emotional traction with people, but this issue is just so obvious at a systems-level. the idea that we, right now the instant youre reading this, have discovered 100% of what there is to learn and 0% of what we know is wrong is so painfully, horrifically, obviously stupid (we've had computers for thir…

> misinformation is combat with MORE discussion, not less! I wholeheartedly agree, but how do you get the other side to listen? The saying goes something like "You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into."

It basically doesn’t matter if you get the other side to listen or not. Open and free discussion is out there for those who want to partake. There will always be zealots who choose not to.

Censoring opposition in order to be heard more loudly doesn’t work. In an IRL discussion, if you start talking over someone forcing them to stop talking, they’re going to shut down and never listen to anything you have to say.

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

#267

Post by r00fus »

axaxs wrote: post #104
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?

It is -very- partisan, and equivalent to poking a wasp nest with a stick. The country is very, very divided, not just between D vs R but also progressive vs...everyone else. I wish I had the answers(surprise, I don't), but I feel we should find some commonality, some give and take, and get on a path toward a semblance of unity. Trying to silence your opposition is what I'd call the complete opposite of that approach.

Hmm - 4 years of an administration doing exactly what you're describing (silencing opposition viewpoints) and now it's all unity and kumbayah?

Your post is quite ironic.

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

#268

Post by FireBeyond »

citilife wrote: post #236
cozuya wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did CNN viewers storm the capitol in attempt to overthrow the elected government, leading to the deaths of 7 people?

There's actually a lot of clips of CNN & other reporters helping and pushing protesters into the Capital Building... https://twitter.com/LaurenWitzkeDE/status/134990457311734169... Also, only two persons died of wounds confirmed at the Capital (both protestors). The only person who was shot, was recorded by the "reporter" in the video above was egging on the police & protestors at the time. https://www.washingtonpost…

By CNN, you mean an independent (QAnon-pushing) documentary filmmaker, who was egging on an alt-right activist? This one has been debunked.

> Yes, there were then three additional fatalities in the _days_ following the event. None of those deaths were linked back to the Capital building in a meaningful way (including the officer).

Oh, you're going to have to try harder than that. Just because there was no indication that, specifically, "blunt force trauma was the immediate cause of death of [Officer Sicknick]" doesn't mean anything close to "None of those deaths were linked back to the Capital building in a meaningful way".

CPR being performed on him. A hemorrhagic stroke within hours, a ventilator (multiple pepper sprayings), and death within 24 hours. All factors that you say "eh, coincidence" to.

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

#269

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

buildbot wrote: post #262
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump continually attacked the media, Trump literally said the media was the enemy of the people. He would ignore questions from other agencies, even those without bias. Until people in their own parties start standing up for principled government it will never change. Unsurprisingly, downvoted for stating facts once again - people are afraid to call a spade a spade.

Reading these threads has been very depressing lately, Democrats ask OANN and other _extremely_ conservative networks for information, and that's somehow an attack on the First Amendment, where as 4 years of Trump - and the rest of the Republican party - attacking anything he disagreed with as Fake News was totally cool. Either Hacker news is being heavily astroturfed (there are many throwaway accounts participating…

Respectfully, I don't really see anyone saying that false accusations of fake news were cool. I'm concerned that you might be stuck in a mindset of partisan battle, where anyone who expresses concerns about this letter is declaring themselves to be on the other team from the people who wrote it.

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

#270

Post by Clubber »

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #235
opwieurposiu wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Greenwald has a good write up regarding left-focused misinformation. Fire extinguisher, zip ties, firearms, etc. https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-false-and-exaggerated-c...

This article doesn't disprove much. Being "pro-trump" doesn't make the death not count. 3 of the five died because of the protests - it doesn't matter which side. You can argue that a stroke/heart attack may not have happened in a non-high pressure environment. We don't need any more evidence than the mountains of video of people storming the capital. It's bad enough as is, it could have been far, far worse.

The difference between someone dying because of a stroke and someone dying because they were bludgeoned to death with a blunt object over the course of several minutes while thousands of people stood idly by is stark.
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