Gab.com’s Response to Congress • Hacker News Board

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#151

Post by natural219 » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:11 PM UTC

otterley wrote: post #90

natural219 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He literally addresses your first point a few paragraphs into the meat of the statement. Do you have any kind of rebuttal or historical backing besides "nuh uh"? [1] https://i.imgur.com/WuvtYIy.png

I think it depends on whether your point of view is pre- or post-Internet. If you take the longer view, it is an incontrovertible fact that there are more forums for discussion than in the pre-Internet age; and nobody back then was complaining that there was a lack of fora for their views. And even if you take the shorter view, there are still more places for people to discuss them. Facebook and Twitter didn’t even e…

right. my view is post-internet, since i grew up in a time when the internet already existed and already had long-evolved and widely-understood cultural patterns around its use and misuse as a very slight alteration of a substrate in which to carry out ordinary public speech (every kid and grownup I knew when I was 10 understood the root guidance of "don't believe anything you read on the internet", for instance).

to my generation, this is much more poorly framed by arguing whether Facebook is comparable to a pre-internet private establishment, than it is framed by the internet being simply the air that we breathe, an ether in which sound naturally vibrates and which trying to legislate the dynamics of should seem equally ridiculous.

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#152

Post by slumdev » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:11 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #143

slumdev wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compuserve and a number of other credible alternatives to AOL existed during that time. Usenet and BBSes also existed. Myspace and Facebook (initially) were only for teenagers, college students, and people who never grew out of those phases. You might as well put Livejournal in this list, because none of those platforms (at those times) were as effective at corralling and suppressing wrongthink as Twitter and Faceboo…

CompuServe and bbs's weren't "the masses". CompuServe peaked at 3 million users to AOL's 35 million. There have always been alternatives to the walled gardens, they have never been larger than their walled alternatives.

Apart from their obligations under the law, AOL did not police content. In one example, AOL banned explicit discussions of homosexual activity but did not ban anti-homosexual hate speech. They policed the first type of speech because the CDA required them to prevent the transmission of explicit material to minors, but they did not police the second type of speech because it was not illegal.

Facebook and Twitter are actively policing speech that is not illegal.

That is why your analogy is inapt.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gays-protest-aol-censorship/

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#153

Post by disease » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:11 PM UTC

Maybe the question everyone should be asking is: why is there such an insatiable desire among a large part of America for white supremacist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories? What is the root cause? All of this "political football" seems to just be scraping the surface of what is really going on.

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#154

Post by code_duck » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:12 PM UTC

aww_dang wrote: post #82

drewrv wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me like there are more forums for free speech now than ever before. When in our history has it been easier for the average citizen to find a platform to host their views?

>When in our history... Before the masses were corralled into walled gardens. If a free and open Internet was a threat to gatekeepers, walled gardens are the solution. You can say anything you want on their platforms, as long as it adheres to the party's content guidelines. The gate-kept illusion of freedom is arguably more toxic, because it normalizes the curated garden of propagandized views. Yes, you have more opt…

Anyone can easily obtain various forms of anonymous free hosting at the present.

What some people don’t seem to understand about the first amendment is that while the government is obligated to not stop you from publishing, no private party is obligated to assist you.

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#155

Post by josephcsible » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:12 PM UTC

jcranmer wrote: post #147

josephcsible wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I maintain that until Fox News or conservative talk radio is mandated by the government to stop suppressing my free speech rights to have access to the network to say whatever I want, that Facebook and Twitter should not be forced to support insurrection and violence masquerading as free speech. You don't think there should be a difference between platforms and publishers?

... how do you distinguish between a platform and a publisher?

I don't know of a perfect formal definition, but this kind of gives a rule of thumb: is the content considered their own voice? For example, The New York Times is a publisher, because if an article on their website says X, then saying "The New York Times says X" would be reasonable, but Facebook is a platform, because saying "Facebook says X" just because a post on their website says X would not be reasonable.

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#156

Post by CrazyPyroLinux » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:12 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #104

mc32 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there were people who organized a violent movement to overthrow the government, they should be prosecuted. Just like organizers who organized the burning of police stations should be investigated and prosecuted. However, I don't think we should prosecute people for having attended an event that got co-opted and where they had no intent on participating in an insurrection or burning police stations.

> I don't think we should prosecute people for having attended an event that got co-opted and where they had no intent on participating in an insurrection or burning police stations Totally agreed. Notably, nobody has suggested this. And nobody has, at least so far, been prosecuted for being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

"wrong place" meaning "inside the capitol at all" but certainly non-violent: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/crime/2021/06/23/capitol...

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#157

Post by debacle » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:13 PM UTC

happytoexplain wrote: post #107

kypro wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I also hate it when people have differing opinions to myself. Someone should really do something about this.

Should nobody face criticism? The parent didn't imply the user should be banned. The "you hate people for having a different opinion than you" accusation seems to be disproportionately levied against left-ish or anti-Trump sentiment, but pro-Trump sentiment is disproportionately in the flavor of "hating you for having a different opinion", in my opinion.

You are free to log onto Gab and criticize him. That's the whole point.

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#158

Post by natural219 » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:14 PM UTC

criley2 wrote: post #86

natural219 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He literally addresses your first point a few paragraphs into the meat of the statement. Do you have any kind of rebuttal or historical backing besides "nuh uh"? [1] https://i.imgur.com/WuvtYIy.png

I think you misunderstood what you quoted here, because Madison in no way suggests that invididual newspapers should be forced to print opinions they disagree with in the interest of Liberty Instead he argues that there should be a lot of newspapers, to accurately capture the growing audiences and government should not interfere in the growth of private speech It was considered virulently anti-Liberty to use governme…

the internet is not a newspaper.

you can't simply switch off of Facebook the way you would drop a publication you dislike. the network effects keep everyone trapped in. i can't believe we're still having this asinine back-and-forth a full decade after we learned how natural monopolies form via the ordinary dynamics of social graph consolidation.

Metcalfe's law is a thing people, you can read about in on Wikipedia [1] and we can maybe start moving beyond a 1993 understanding of what an internet platform is.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#159

Post by natural219 » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:19 PM UTC

simiones wrote: post #92

criley2 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's terribly put. The American concept of freedom of speech has nothing to do with access to public forums but rather is a limit on government action against your ability to run your own forum (newspaper, etc), and if you consider that when the Constitution and Bill of Rights were actually written, most Americans had significantly less forums. A few newspapers made up almost the entirety of public forums when the ri…

While I don't think the original claim is in any way obvious, and you may well be right overall, you're also making a huge mistake in your look at history - newspapers are not and have never been "public forums" (except to the minor extent that they occasionally published letters to the editor). Instead, historic public forums were mostly related to in-person meetings - town halls, clubs, pubs etc. These have not bee…

Well put. I wonder if conservatives would have better purchase framing this as more of a 14th amendment thing (private bar owners throwing out customers whose "kind they don't want around here") rather than a 1st amendment thing.

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#160

Post by slumdev » Thu, Sep 02, 2021, 3:21 PM UTC

disease wrote: post #153

Maybe the question everyone should be asking is: why is there such an insatiable desire among a large part of America for white supremacist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories? What is the root cause? All of this "political football" seems to just be scraping the surface of what is really going on.

Ask yourself: Is someone a white supremacist simply because he thinks his country ought to defend its borders? That every citizen ought to be given the same opportunities but not be guaranteed the same outcomes? That true racism is the belief that some races are incapable without special help? That true racism is in discriminating against the Asians, Jews, and everyone else who studied hard to do well on their SATs? That all people are of equal dignity? That people ought to be judged by the content of their character and not according to the color of their skin?

What if a Black man thinks these things? Is that Black man a white supremacist?

If this sounds ridiculous to you, that means there's hope. The label "white supremacist" is used to smear and excommunicate anyone who believes in these fundamentally American values that are opposed to the foreign influences attempting to destroy American culture and ideals. It's false 99.99% of the time it's used.