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Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

frenchpress.thedispatch.com

351–360 of 366 posts

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About as for free speech as Fox News.

And CNN, WaPo, and basically every other news org out there. But it’s nice that you just called out your enemy!

I'm not from USA so I don't really care. I just named the station that most often contradicts science, defends itself in court by saing they shouldn't be taken seriously because they are entertainment organisation not information organsation and boldly defends free speech when it allows for voicing same manners of idiocies as they do.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And CNN, WaPo, and basically every other news org out there. But it’s nice that you just called out your enemy!

I'm not from USA so I don't really care. I just named the station that most often contradicts science, defends itself in court by saing they shouldn't be taken seriously because they are entertainment organisation not information organsation and boldly defends free speech when it allows for voicing same manners of idiocies as they do.

Ok well intro to news in America, I can point to an instance where every major news organization in this country has disregarded facts. News in America is about selling newspapers, not distributing facts. They’re more like supermarket tabloids (if you don’t know what those are, those are the real fake news, things like lizard people are discussed there). All of them are guilty of the exactly this problem. Which is my point. Yet lefties like yourself only call out Fox News, ignoring CNN, waPo, et al. Not to mention is a bit passive aggressive. You’re not gonna get people to stop watching Fox News, so why spread more passive aggressive hate?

CNN recently, because of all of their “factual reporting”, lost about 90% of their viewership. Trump left, people got bored of Jan 6, and they had nothing else to sensationalize, so their viewership tanked. Interestingly they lost their viewers to Fox News. This is the state of news media in America, and if you’re actually interested in facts and not promoting your side of the narrative you’d easily acknowledge as much.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand, didn't GoFundMe take money but refused a service that was paid for? If they decided to ban that particular campaign, they should return money to the donors not donate it to some other cause, no? I am not super knowledgeable about the situation, apologies if I misrepresented something.

They have since decided to auto-refund.

That doesn't change that they first tried to misappropriate the money.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#354
post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He says exactly what he would do. I am under no illusions of what these people are like (my step brother is affiliated with such groups). That does not mean his analysis of the free speech debate is incorrect If you are alluding to restricting people's speech of views that are unpopular. Those powers will be used against the general population when it becomes politically expedient or will be abused by the authorities…

Of course there's an objective standard. You look at the politicians, the judges, and look up their standard. It's gross (no pun intended) that one needs to do that, but AFAIK lawyers do that all the time. More cases (both civil and criminal) are decided on those bases than you'd expect. (Can't speak for all places, but I'm passably familiar with UK law and precedent... and I suspect the US is similar)

> Of course there's an objective standard. You look at the politicians, the judges, and look up their standard. It's gross (no pun intended) that one needs to do that, but AFAIK lawyers do that all the time.

1) No that isn't true. There is one rule for those that are in the club and another rule for the rest of us. e.g. Just today I saw a new story of Jimmy Carr being criticised for jokes about the Holocaust. I had told the exact same joke and uploaded it to Youtube / Facebook or Twitter I would expect to have a visit from the authorities.

2) Even 1) wasn't true. What you are describing is not an objective standard. I would rather they have in black and white "You cannot joke about the Holocaust", "You cannot say ". At least you know what you could and couldn't say.

The standard is vague so it can be applied selectively and arbitrarily by the authorities when they see fit. Social media platforms do the same.

> More cases (both civil and criminal) are decided on those bases than you'd expect. (Can't speak for all places, but I'm passably familiar with UK law and precedent... and I suspect the US is similar)

You should not be criminalising unpopular speech because it may "caused offence". What is and isn't offensive is entirely subjective and what is an what isn't considered offensive is entirely transitory.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#355
post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understood what he meant, and you didn't, what accounts for our difference in understanding? The "author" is David French—not exactly an obscure figure.

You "understood" what he meant because what he meant is a vague term meant to be taken differently depending on who reads it.

You're very quick to dismiss others' opinions. What have you done to earn the benefit of the doubt? Instead of assuming the error is on my end, maybe you should try engaging the author critically and charitably.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#356
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

David French is a conservative (and very Catholic) American political commentator, one of the OG never-trumpers. Like many people like that - at least, the ones who aren't hopeless hacks - political developments (in the US) of the last few years have made him Work Through Some Stuff™. This article is, in his pundit-ish way, part of that process. I don't think his analysis and takes are beyond critique and there's bee…

That context you mention was actually immediately obvious since he mentioned the "new right", his opposition to it, and his faith several times throughout the article. And I personally think he qualifies very well for bad faith, given that he is obviously a conservative on the right and parrots very well trodden conservative ground - like I've stated above. For him to portray himself as even or balanced on this, to b…

I'm not trying to convince you to like or even give much of a hoot about David French. I'm saying is that there's more there than you can derive by mere keyword keyword matching, you asked my why I think that. I told you why and now you're telling me you can also derive that by keyword matching and additionally, I should provide citations. I think we've sucked what limited interestingness there was in this topic dry.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#357
post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems like this flag was counter protesters trying to label these Indian truckers as white supremacists. That's quite a claim to make w/out providing evidence.

>That's quite a claim to make w/out providing evidence. There's literally 3 links providing evidence in my post. Furthermore, the onus is on the claimant. The claim being made that these Indian truckers are white supramacists and nazis; or that their friends and fellow protestors are nazis? That literally doesnt make any sense. Sorry but the yellow journalism or, might i even say it, the propaganda asserting these pr…

There are links but they don't provide evidence of the claim you're making that protesters are 'false flag' plants.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#358
post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That context you mention was actually immediately obvious since he mentioned the "new right", his opposition to it, and his faith several times throughout the article. And I personally think he qualifies very well for bad faith, given that he is obviously a conservative on the right and parrots very well trodden conservative ground - like I've stated above. For him to portray himself as even or balanced on this, to b…

I'm not trying to convince you to like or even give much of a hoot about David French. I'm saying is that there's more there than you can derive by mere keyword keyword matching, you asked my why I think that. I told you why and now you're telling me you can also derive that by keyword matching and additionally, I should provide citations. I think we've sucked what limited interestingness there was in this topic dry.

All I can say is that my serious critics don't think I'm keyword matching.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most places according to incarceration rate is more free than USA

Why is this a metric we should use to understand if a place is “free”?

It seems like a pretty good one. To truly answer the large question you need to answer smaller ones like "do citizens have opportunities aside from crime"? That seems relevant to how "free" a country is.

Re: Our nation cannot censor its way back to cultural health

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine what the government of Mississippi or Indiana during the Jim Crow era would label as blatant misinformation. But we're not talking about the government, we're talking about private platforms. Others are allowed to spread misinfo if they so choose. > Also, in a recent court case, Facebook admitted their fact checking was opinion and therefore protected from defamation. So to put those together, Facebook is c…

>But we're not talking about the government, we're talking about private platforms. Others are allowed to spread misinfo if they so choose. Yes, but we are. A lot of the COVID misinformation isn't declared misinformation because the fact-checker isn't an expert at COVID, it's because they are cross checking it with what the government says (CDC/NIH/etc). So the fact checker is using the government's facts, so imagine…

That's irrelevant: it's still not the government doing the banning, other platforms could use different heuristics or just not have those moderation policies at all.
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