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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]

#561

Post by rayiner »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #183
macspoofing wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Someone sent me this article which is quite interesting: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/revenge-of-...

> Shedding its specifically Northern mainline Protestant cultural attributes, a version of Social Gospel Protestantism has mutated into the secular religion of wokeness, the orthodoxy of the universities and the increasingly important nonprofit sector. Its converts include many of the affluent white secular children and grandchildren of members of mainline Protestant denominations like the Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Methodists, which are hemorrhaging membership to the category of religious “nones.”

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

#562

Post by ThrustVectoring »

macspoofing wrote: post #99
qntty wrote: post #15

Is anyone else confused at how this is legal? I have no expertise in law, but my understanding is that the Supreme Court has agreed with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama that. > Racial discrimination in state-operated schools is barred by the Constitution and "[i]t is also axiomatic that a state may not induce, encourage or promote private persons to accomplish what it is constitutionally fo…

>Is anyone else confused at how this is legal? I They can't legally force the companies to comply and they know that but it doesn't matter. This is a threat: "If you don't do what we tell you to do, we'll make your life miserable". If the companies don't willingly comply, then they can launch a FUD PR campaign through activist non-profits orgs and claim that these companies are hosting hate speech. Too cynical?

They don't have to be nearly that indirect; they are, after all, members of congress. They have broad power to advocate for and pass all sorts of legislation if their demands are not met, to drag C-suite executives in for testimony, and to confer with and oversee executive-branch regulators and bureaucrats.

It's often "better" for congress to get "voluntary" cooperation. Not just because it does an end-run around constitutional limits on powers, but also because it launders government action through ostensibly-private actors. Note well that this letter is not addressed to Fox News, but to an important business partner. There's recent history of this strategy, Operation Choke Point did this sort of thing with banks.

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

#563

Post by ethbr0 »

Spooky23 wrote: post #405
simonh wrote: post #371

I’m deeply concerned about disinformation, it’s a major problem. Politics has always had spin, and many issues are complex and it can be easy to state things too emphatically to press your case. Accusations of lying are everyday in politics. But recently flat out knowingly lying with the specific intent of deceiving people has become normalised. It’s a serious threat. This is precisely the wrong way to tackle it thou…

Take the politics out of it — unaccountable, unquestioned mass communication is almost always bad. Mass media needs the fairness doctrine back to take the carnival show out of the news. Social media is no exception. The current model basically neuters editorial discretion and creates a “Team A” vs “Team B” environment that is bad for everyone. These problems started in niche mediums like talk radio and eventually loc…

> Mass media needs the fairness doctrine back

Commercial mass media.

If you want to operate as a non-profit, do what you like.

But if you make >$x in profit on a regulated channel (radio, tv, streaming audio or video, or platform of same), then you have fairness requirements to satisfy.

Write it in safe harbor terms. If you do one of x, y, or z, then you gain protection for all of your content.

Where x might be "ensure your feed algorithms mix content according to physically local norms." y might be "produce educational content without a clear position, about an issue of interest to the public." Etc.

> outlets like OANN, RT, etc are really self-sustaining propaganda outlets

Absolutely. They're the "news" realization of the same system social media companies have optimized for.

If the system of rules you have in place incentivizes sewer creatures, change the system. Don't waste time trying to play whack-a-mole on evolutionarily fit species created by your environment.

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

#564

Post by scythe »

rayiner wrote: post #411
scythe wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The letter complains about Fox and OANN's partisan and inflammatory rhetoric, >they suggest censoring Fox News, which accurately reported the election results and Supreme Court developments. The conspiracy theories, such as they were, came from some of the opinion hosts. It's hard to believe we're at this point, but Fox is on a different level from OANN. You can find counterpoints on Fox News. OANN/Breitbart/the Mer…

What’s wrong with posing with rifles in response to a President that’s making noise about gun control?

I wasn't quite specific. I meant the Congressmembers who include guns in their video chat office while in remote sessions, in an environment where open-carrying reactionaries have threatened and/or forcibly entered legislative offices in Oregon, Idaho and of course DC.

It's a threat of violence, particularly coming from legislators who have been reluctant to condemn said reactionaries, and it kind of looks like a wink-and-nudge endorsement.

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

#565

Post by rayiner »

protonfish wrote: post #88
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…

"The People" believe whatever information has been promoted the most. To claim that we should do nothing to stop malevolent organizations from radicalizing vulnerable citizens is reckless. To lay the blame on individuals to fight this is victim-blaming. We need to battle this industrialized con artistry with whatever power we have - including police, courts, and laws. Throwing up our hands because "censorship bad!" i…

> The People" believe whatever information has been promoted the most. To claim that we should do nothing to stop malevolent organizations from radicalizing vulnerable citizens is reckless. To lay the blame on individuals to fight this is victim-blaming. We need to battle this industrialized con artistry with whatever power we have - including police, courts, and laws.

This is exactly what conservatives said in response to people promoting liberal ideas. Violent left-wing events in the 1970s (e.g. courthouse shootings) could easily have been used as a pretext for massive speech suppression. 9/11 and cries about the radicalization of Muslims through jihadist materials online could have been used the same way. Luckily none of that happened.

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

#566

Post by claudiawerner »

gizmondo wrote: post #442
Spivak wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait no. That’s not how this works. There’s no determination of fact. It doesn’t matter whether what you said is true or false — this isn’t a rule against being wrong. It’s a rule against someone speaking something they know and believe a priori to be false with the intent to mislead people. Like it’s literally the same ideas as fraud but applied to misinformation. If you believe that climate change is a hoax then yo…

Unless you have a mind-reading device, there is no way to be sure what somebody believes.

> Unless you have a mind-reading device, there is no way to be sure what somebody believes.

In general, we are comfortable doing this in at least some contexts. The legal system in almost every case attempts to ascertain intention to satisfy the mens rea of a criminal act. They don't have mind reading devices, but they do have expert witnesses such as psychologists and doctors, and testimony.

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

#567

Post by [deleted] »

r00fus wrote: post #336
jaywalk wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obama did far more to silence opposing viewpoints than Trump did. But you probably don't know about what Obama did, because his administration's intimidation and jailing of reporters worked. How many reporters did the Trump administration throw in jail?

Do you have a cite for the Obama reference? Quick google search says it's BS. Whereas Trump did recently threaten a reporter with jail time.

[deleted]

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

#568

Post by ethbr0 »

_yoqn wrote: post #532
srswtf123 wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should probably thank the _humans_ that wrote it.

Per Thomas Jefferson the "unalienable rights" guaranteed by the US Constitution are God-given, and cannot be suspended or set aside by other humans.

If you want to cite the Declaration, you should probably quote that entire passage:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

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

#569

Post by NicoJuicy »

camelite wrote: post #552
NicoJuicy wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But recently flat out knowingly lying with the specific intent of deceiving people has become normalised. It’s a serious threat. It's literally propaganda. A Russian tactic called the firehose of falsehoods. The trick is making the truth politically related, so the real truth doesn't matter anymore. And people can just say it's a "x" opinion to dismiss it. It's unfortunately pretty effective as we've seen...

Propaganda is not an inherently russian technique and that fact that you believe so implies you are a victim of anti russian propaganda.

I explicitly mention firehose of falsehoods.

I didn't say that propaganda is solely Russian. But that technique is closely aligned to Russian propaganda which we can all "admire" in the open ( eg. rt)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood#:~:tex....

Please, don't change subjects. The technique used by T. Is most similar to what i mentioned. You haven't given any source to discredit that.

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

#570

Post by jolux »

rayiner wrote: post #511
jolux wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>All sides should be subject to the same rules, whether they're doing it a lot or just a little. Sure, absolutely. >Saying that one side or another is worse, and therefore requires special attention, is wrong: it's false that only the worst offender should be policed. This is not my position, I just disagree that the "left-wing" media outlets that rayiner identified are materially engaged in misinformation in the sam…

What exactly are those ideas?

That a legitimate election was manipulated by powerful people to install the loser, and that the people who voted for the other guy need to stand up for what’s right and defend the “real” America.
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