481–490 of 602 posts
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?
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> The Constitution may not differentiate between individuals and other entities, but the courts have differentiated between them. When? To my knowledge, there are no major landmark decisions which hold that an association of individuals may be treated differently from individuals; especially as it relates to the First Amendment. We even have a precedent in Citizens United v FEC which reinforces the consistency betwee…
There's nothing I know of that applies to the First Amendment, but there are many examples where individuals and organizations, or even organizations in different levels of government, are held to different standards under the law. The standards for HOAs versus local government is a good example. Some states require that HOAs enforce code equally, but will permit local government to enforce it unequally because local…
Citizens United. It ruled that a law banning corporations (and other kinds of associations such as non-profits and labor unions) from making campaign contributions was an unconstitutional abrogation of their First Amendment rights.
When people fulminate against the idea of corporate personhood, what they're really fulminating against is the idea that corporations have First Amendment rights. Which should tell you just how likely SCOTUS is to distinguish between private individuals and corporations when it comes to First Amendment rights: not at all.
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> Mass media needs the fairness doctrine back to take the carnival show out of the news. Social media is no exception. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine ("The fairness doctrine had two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude…
> * I would love to see MSNBC airing opposing viewpoints on controversial issues.* ME TOO. Something that drives me nuts about the current political climate is that some people are so sure of their views on seemingly every hot topic. I think this is because of a complete lack of discussion of any opposing viewpoints, which I believe is fundamental to actually understanding an issue. If you refuse to consider why peop…
yes, but not THINK. The last thing activism wants is for people to think and consider the alternative.
I suppose they mean disinfo and not misinfo? seems like a slippery slope when one can't trust their own people to be able to distinguish between facts/non-facts, so much that one needs laws to ban certain types of content and prevent it from being seen. makes me wonder if this will not even cause further conspiracy and drive traffic to alternative (underground e.g. outlawed) information channels pretty hard to draw a…
>I suppose they mean disinfo and not misinfo? misinformation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, and lies PDF says all of the above. Obviously the democrats are the ones who will define what's a lie. Any Americans here think it's appropriate to allow the democrat party to define what's a lie and then have it censored? "Right-wing media outlets, like Newsmax, One America News Network (OANN), and Fox News" It's inter…
How can you live through 4 years of President trump calling "fake news" and "lying media" about something at least every week, and then straight faced say "obviously the democrats are the ones who decide what's a lie"?
> "Any Americans here think it's appropriate to allow the democrat party to define what's a lie and then have it censored?"
Remember last year when Twitter fact-checked a tweet by President Trump and "In response, Trump threatened in a set of tweets Wednesday to “strongly regulate or close” down social-media platforms. He followed up by signing an executive order late Thursday that seeks to limit some of the broad liability protection social media companies have under federal law."?[1]
Yeah, any americans think it would be bad if the Democrats did this? Hopefully.
Any Republicans think it was actually bad when Republicans actually did this? People in this thread are saying that two members of Congress sending a letter is "chilling intimidation", compared to the President signing an executive order removing legal protections from social media companies?
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbrewster/2020/05/27/close-t...
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Who determines what is true and what's a lie? Why do you trust them to make the right call?
Precisely -- and let's be clear here: the disinformation being discussed here breaks down along partisan lines. We can barely get republicans and democrats to agree on a budget, what makes anyone think that they could reasonably come to an agreement on objective standards of truth in media? Let alone a process by which those standards are enforced? This is way, wayyyyy outside the realm of reality.
On the other side, facts are facts. Assuming you actually have all the facts (which often we don't), there is only a single truth.
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> If only somehow the government could determine what is true... You say this in relation to a criminal trial but two things: 1. The government can not determine guilt or innocence. It determines guilt beyond a reasonable doubt which is a distinction worth considering. There is an implicit admission of uncertainty and unknowability. 2. A panel of judges determining truth is a concept that has existed historically and…
What about lying to the feds? It's a felony. Who gets to decide was was the truth?
> Do you really want the entirety of your life to be a criminal trial where a panel of judges (or citizens) determine what you ought to think and feel?
I would argue against your point that "lying to the feds" is illegal. I think some cursory research into the subject would temper your opinion (at least to the point where you wouldn't consider it a "gotcha"). But I won't argue it here because it detracts from my larger point: the criminalization of all thought not arbitrated by government censors is a terrible idea and is fundamentally incompatible with the Bill of Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and common sense.
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Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are a clear example of the latter group in my previous comment.
Your analogy is incorrect though. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and Parler are all bars. The gang members (insurrectionists) went to the Facebook, Twitter and Youtube bars and got into fights. The Methodist (non-insurrectionists) went to Parler and did not get into bar fights. According to you the solution is not to ban the bars where the bar fights took place but the place where there were no bar fights. It really make…
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 statement…
First of all, "insults" are not excluded from free speech protections in the US, except in very narrow circumstances. Second, the distinction between normative and descriptive statements, as you define them, is not always clear-cut. As a simple example, is which bucket is "I think these doors are the same color" when said about a red and green door? What about (to use your example, but with a slight tweak), "I think…
True but does not matter. Those statements, that fit into the descriptive/normative categories are the key ones of any text, the rest is either allusion or up for the courts to decide. IMO phrasing like "looks like there might be voter fraud" would not have let to the storm of the capitol.
>"I think all are criminals"? Note that the "I think" was implicit in your phrasing
The difference of normative/descriptive statements is the same as subjective/objective ones. "I think ..." already started subjectively and can only have a descriptive component, if its backed up with a statement like "because X is ...".
>"Donald Trump is a criminal."
>The US approach to this is to generally try to avoid having the government be the arbiter of truth
But courts decide who is a criminal or not. And when such a decision is made, you could legally call Trump a criminal. Experts are frequently heard in court to distinguish it, so why not extend it? It does not have to the ministry of truth (political) but we all require the authority, that tells us the way things are, hopefully in an unbiased way.
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>Reframing the question at hand around this metaphor: What would an effective vaccine look like for these thought viruses? I'm not at all sure, but I can't imagine any kind of partisan response that would work, since these viruses infect left and right alike, and many people will bend over backwards to argue otherwise. Until we can face that fact honestly, I don't see how we could even begin to have a productive conv…
They're not partisan, no, but as you kind of allude to ("many folks don't do so") a prerequisite for using them properly is a certain ideological flexibility that is... less common these days. If someone is ideologically possessed, they will use these tools to skewer outgroup ideas but not apply them to ingroup ideas. As the letters in this very post demonstrate even our congress people can't apply them to their own…
Not just that, but ideologically-possessed people will flat-out reject a truth-finding methodology that results in conflicts with their worldview.
There's no point in giving someone the tools to find the truth if they're so wedded to their "truth" that evidence will not make them change their minds.