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Letters from House members to cable providers [pdf]

eshoo.house.gov

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

#521

Post by tylerritchie »

tptacek wrote: post #519

This appears to be a letter from just two House members (the Democratic majority has 221) --- Eshoo, whose district includes the south bay area, and McNerny, from Stockton.

The best part about your observation (this is less than 1% of the Democrats in the House) are the (currently top, highly-piled-on) comments with people clutching their pearls and wondering how The Democrats--as a collective--strayed so far into Orwellian territory.

It's left as an exercise to the reader to determine whether those commenters are being genuine, or are just grossly incapable of critical thinking.

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

#522

Post by tptacek »

tylerritchie wrote: post #521
tptacek wrote: post #519

This appears to be a letter from just two House members (the Democratic majority has 221) --- Eshoo, whose district includes the south bay area, and McNerny, from Stockton.

The best part about your observation (this is less than 1% of the Democrats in the House) are the (currently top, highly-piled-on) comments with people clutching their pearls and wondering how The Democrats--as a collective--strayed so far into Orwellian territory. It's left as an exercise to the reader to determine whether those commenters are being genuine, or are just grossly incapable of critical thinking.

It's too late to do anything about it now, but it's for this reason that we have a general norm against these kinds of stories on HN --- this falls into the same bucket as "proposed bill" (this is far less than a proposed bill), which are virtually always off-topic on HN, as you can confirm with a quick search of 'dang comments.

The normal good thing to do with stuff like this is to flag it before it sprawls into a 500 comment thread.

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

#523

Post by mynameishere »

cozuya wrote: post #233
ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #92

Scary stuff, I feel like I'm slowly watching as the U.S turns into a one party state, and enforced by the government itself. We argue about how it's okay for private companies to censor whatever they feel like, but what if it's the government pressuring them to do so? They themselves in this letter mention that 50% of Americans get their news from TV, and many American's have one choice of Cable provider, and even if…

Citation to Democrats "wanting to add 12-20 million illegal immigrant voters". An outrageous claim.

Outrageous, yes, but not an outrageous claim. (It's probably on the low side.) However, it is worded badly. They won't be "illegal" anymore because they will have been handed a "pathway to citizenship".

It's strange that a core part of the Democratic plan for this country is considered an "outrageous claim". That's a sign of just how strong disinformation actually is in the media.

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

#524

Post by Retric »

rayiner wrote: post #510
Retric wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Odd, I was initially thinking in terms of a non governmental organization to regulate the terms Reporter and News much like how Doctor is a protected. But, that doesn’t seem viable.

The medical monopoly is more expansive than that. It regulates not just the use of the terms but the practice of medicine itself. And those rules are backed by the force of the government. If that’s what you’re suggesting for journalism, it’s even worse. It ultimately has the backing of government, but without the political accountability.

That’s one of many issues, however the peanut butter vs peanut spread line feels like a useful benchmark.

You could call your a current events organization and say anything or call yourself a News organization and be held to some standard. That IMO avoids limitations on free speech as the body of the message is what’s important not the label of such a method. As you say using government force to require organizations to change their name is distasteful.

However, coming up with a new term like whizphish that currently has no meaning but could gain meaning in this context should avoid stepping on any toes while achieving similar goals. LEED Platinum certified doesn’t directly have government backing, but a building falsely claiming such is simple fraud.

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

#525

Post by [deleted] »

onethought wrote: post #520
avesi wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who determines what is true and what's a lie? Why do you trust them to make the right call?

I don’t understand this. Can you give an example where the truth is some how elusive or difficult to obtain? Human knowledge is pretty advanced and accessible.

[deleted]

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

#526

Post by rayiner »

kelnos wrote: post #485
dnissley wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I agree with your point, though I think your example is a bit flawed: I think it's reasonable to disagree on what should be in a budget; there's no one "correct" budget where all other budgets are wrong. 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.

What people call a “fact” for these purposes is a lot broader than what epistemologically qualifies as a “fact.” You can see this with a lot of “fact checking” websites. The second item on the fact-check.org website is whether reduced wind power caused the Texas electrical outages: https://www.factcheck.org/2021/02/wind-turbines-didnt-cause-...

The percentage drop in window power megawatts is a “fact.” What “caused” the Texas power outage is a multi-variable system analysis that produces a conclusion, not a fact, under certain specified assumptions. (This is obvious to an engineer: the NTSB spends months investigating what “caused” a plane crash, and issues a report with conclusions, not facts. The notion that some journalist can in a day or two perform a similar analysis on a complex system like a power grid, and report the result as a “fact” blinks reality.)

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

#528

Post by jimbob45 »

noahtallen wrote: post #513
InfiniteBeing wrote: post #503

Meanwhile the major Democrat leaning/voting news outlets peddled russian collusion conspiracy nonsense for years and then stoked the flames of racial and anti-police violence last year. And I see we have people here clinging to misinformation and melodramatic interpretations by the major liberal news outlets on events of january 6th, and these people don't know that they are living in unreality themselves and yet wan…

You may find the Mueller report enlightening, then. [1] The claims are hardly nonsense: it’s a bipartisan fact that Russians made a big effort to influence at least the 2016 election, and succeeded. [2] Rather than taking a hard stance against Russia because of this, Trump officials have been convicted related to their lies about the situation. [3] Alleging or assuming that trump knew about this and/or encouraged it…

The problem is that it wasn’t evidence enough to convict Trump. It’s fine if you want to insist that Trump did in fact commit a crime (I might even agree with you) but then you can’t criticize the people saying Trump actually won the election because you’re also promoting a conspiracy without evidence.

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

#529

Post by rayiner »

jimbokun wrote: post #406
ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~75 million people voted for Donald Trump - it is hardly socially unacceptable to vote for a republican and you have a secret vote anyway.

For the most part, it is socially unacceptable to vote Republican if you live in a large US city, and it is socially unacceptable to vote Democrat if you live in a rural area.

I live in a Trump precinct in Maryland and if I said I supported Biden nobody would blink. If I went down to DC and said I voted for Trump people would look at me like I grew a second head.

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

#530

Post by ldbooth »

helen___keller wrote: post #308
ldbooth wrote: post #301

I think they would do better to solve the business model at the genesis of the issue. The Attention economy brought the conspiracy and outrage machine to each of our phones. There's an addict in my pocket. We need the political willpower to say "Yea you are a rich money making company, but a harm for X, Y reasons, and therefore this is the new regulation for companies profiting on an attention based model." There wil…

> The Attention economy brought the conspiracy and outrage machine to each of our phones. Speaking of, just take a look around the responses to this very submission

So true. It's gonna take an external crisis to unite these states. I'm praying for vegan aliens.
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