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Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

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Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

#31

Post by roywiggins »

fighterpilot wrote: post #28
plerpin wrote: post #14

The thing that really bothers me about Weinstein's approach is that, while he and his wife are scientists, they're exceedingly quick to assert their hunches as scientific fact. They wear their scientist labels on their sleeves but their thinking is far more ideological. In a recent podcast about fluoridation in tap water, they were talking about how they avoid iodized salt, because iodine is a reactive chemical and y…

Isn't iodine deficiency a common thing?

it was more of a thing before they started adding it to salt, yeah

Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

#32

Post by kingsuper20 »

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #13
Covzire wrote: post #11

Facebook's censoring of #Revolution via their claims of moral superiority should frighten the shit out of every free person on earth. While we still have it reasonably good in America, their willingness to suppress speech in good times doesn't bode well for people who will be oppressed during bad times. The first amendment made it clear that not even the government had the authority to use their vast moral authority,…

Media owners have always used their ownership to push their own version of reality. I guess the difference now is that we have allowed so much concentration of media ownership in so few hands. Antitrust is pretty much dead from what I can tell. Or is this just the current story? Maybe media has always been as concentrated as it is now, we just didn’t notice.

> Antitrust is pretty much dead from what I can tell

It has just been defined to mean 'thing that harms consumer prices'.

Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

#33

Post by pjc50 »

plerpin wrote: post #14

The thing that really bothers me about Weinstein's approach is that, while he and his wife are scientists, they're exceedingly quick to assert their hunches as scientific fact. They wear their scientist labels on their sleeves but their thinking is far more ideological. In a recent podcast about fluoridation in tap water, they were talking about how they avoid iodized salt, because iodine is a reactive chemical and y…

> podcast about fluoridation in tap water

This has been a staple of crazies since, what, the 50s? I'm reminded of the speech from the deranged general in Dr Strangelove: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/characters/nm0001330

You could fit that right into a modern rightwing podcast without it being out of place.

Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

#34

Post by mikeiz404 »

ndndksksl wrote: post #27
amanaplanacanal wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Media owners have always used their ownership to push their own version of reality. I guess the difference now is that we have allowed so much concentration of media ownership in so few hands. Antitrust is pretty much dead from what I can tell. Or is this just the current story? Maybe media has always been as concentrated as it is now, we just didn’t notice.

Public social media is really fundamentally different from traditional media because it functions as the public square in a way that traditional media never did. As such, it needs to be evaluated and regulated as the novel thing that it is. It's not a newspaper and it's not a telephone company, and it's time to stop trying to apply old regulatory arguments and mindsets to the new situation. So far, attempts to regula…

I’m curious as to why this was downvoted.

Is it because they disagreed with some of the opinions? I was under the impression that’s not what down voting was for here.

Personally I think it is worth considering a social media platform, once it reaches a certain scale and depending on how content is distributed, as a “public square” or at least more towards a “public square” on the continuum between a private community and a large scale public one.

Your Undivided Attention has an episode which touches on this: https://www.humanetech.com/podcast/27-wont-you-be-my-neighbo.... The rest of their series has some interesting perspectives as well.

Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

#35

Post by roywiggins »

falcolas wrote: post #4
klyrs wrote: post #2

Is there a law? Or are the platforms in question voluntarily using guidelines as guidance? Are platforms punished in the courts for failing to follow guidelines or implement moderation? As far as I know, the answers to the above are a resounding "no," and it follows that this isn't state censorship. It's the freedom of association, and freedom of speech, exercised by corporation-persons.

Corporation-persons. Is there a more dystopian concept in existence? Corporations are NOT PEOPLE. They're made up of people, but the entity itself is NOT A PERSON.

Corporate personhood is older than America. Without legal personhood, how do corporations own anything? They've always been treated like legal persons, because that's sort of what corporations are for. They're legal entities that can own stuff and do some things, like hiring people and buying and selling. That doesn't work without them in some sense being treated like persons in the eyes of the law.

What they're not are natural persons.

Exactly how many legal rights corporations should have is a very good question, of course. But people get bent out of shape about corporate personhood as if it's new or particularly Orwellian.

(Governments have always been legal persons- you can sue the government in court- if it lets you- and the government can sue you. The government owns property, pays salaries, and so on.)

Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

#36

Post by kingsuper20 »

plerpin wrote: post #14

The thing that really bothers me about Weinstein's approach is that, while he and his wife are scientists, they're exceedingly quick to assert their hunches as scientific fact. They wear their scientist labels on their sleeves but their thinking is far more ideological. In a recent podcast about fluoridation in tap water, they were talking about how they avoid iodized salt, because iodine is a reactive chemical and y…

It could be that part of the problem is that you only see their public persona. Start adding all the weasel words to imply that you think that something is 73% likely to be mostly true and you lose an audience

Everyone (well, most everyone) could stand to examine their own problems (well, issues) with stating opinions as fact.

Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

#38

Post by enraged_camel »

kingsuper20 wrote: post #37

The amount of gray posts in censorship threads always cracks me up. Please go on.

This is my least favorite thing about HN, because it strongly reinforces groupthink. I'd much rather have the number of upvotes and downvotes visible, like Reddit, and leave the styling of the text unchanged.

Re: Using government guidelines to police content: state censorship?

#40

Post by AlbertCory »

plerpin wrote: post #14

The thing that really bothers me about Weinstein's approach is that, while he and his wife are scientists, they're exceedingly quick to assert their hunches as scientific fact. They wear their scientist labels on their sleeves but their thinking is far more ideological. In a recent podcast about fluoridation in tap water, they were talking about how they avoid iodized salt, because iodine is a reactive chemical and y…

I believe the Latin name for your post is ad hominem i.e. "Weinstein is a bad person."

Maybe you could address what he actually said, instead of attacking him & Heather?

I watched the video [1] I assume you're talking about. The word "reactive" is never spoken (I searched). While I do buy iodized salt and I'm not worried about it, their concerns about getting too MUCH iodine are measured and well-spoken. The concerns about fluoridation are, too (that the evidence for it is very thin, and the fluoride in water is not the same compound as was tested). Again, these are not wild-eyed conspiracists.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1oPcYDFPRU

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