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Gab.com’s Response to Congress

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201–210 of 254 posts

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#201
post #144

"In each case, these people – good people, normal people without political power – were persecuted because their viewpoints were, in one way or another, perceived as a threat to the established order" That's true, but the investigation is specifically about criminal actions, not persecution for beliefs. And if I am reading the subpoena correctly, they're basically looking for data on moderation activity and policies.…

Not exactly. Some points are about Gab's policing. But the subpoena requires all "data" about "misinformation", "disinformation", "efforts to challenge election results", etc. Why does data about people freely expressing/protesting viewpoints should be handed to government? It is also not clear why people /talking/ about overturning election is criminal, if they do nothing? Second, when government need to know about…

Small nit: this is a request, which Gab can essentially ignore. I imagine their response to a subpoena would be similar, though.

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Interesting. To me, Facebook and other social media sites are most definitely not the Internet and don't really prevent anyone from being able to conduct free speech, since you can always go outside these places. (This very conversation is happening outside them!) Facebook is a for-profit business and we've seen these come and go over the years. Yahoo was ubiquitous once; now it's in some hedge fund's portfolio. Ther…

> but it may not always be as convenient as some would like.

This is the entire rub, though. Exactly how convenient it is should be a matter of primal importance to the root relationships between citizen, state, and countrymen that the founders found and advocated for. Beyond the momentary mire of the current legal/political order, one feels that all citizens should have some instinctual understanding and positive desire for the sort of healthy, dynamic, and free social order that we're all ostensibly (or increasingly just nominally) in support of as Americans. Whether this dynamic comes under repression from this type of entity or another is a flatly ridiculous non-sequitur (I'm positive that the founders had the same level of love for the East India Company as they did for the British crown)

Complicating this, the surrounding legal framework and precedents around computing technology is near-universally acknowledged to be in a state of completely hopeless shambles; every critical chunk of the system was designed and implemented in the 20th century, with the assumptions of 20th century media tech casted squarely into them. Exceedingly few TOS and EULA precedents have progressed an inch since the era of 1980s shrinkware tech. The "Congressional inquiry of big tech leaders" parade we continue to put on is a gigantic joke and a gross historical embarrassment. the DMCA and the CFAA routinely horrifies any sensible person that examines them for a couple of minutes.

So two things; while the current legal system collectively catches up to modern tech basics like "how to use an AOL modem", we should be direly concerned that a large portion of the country seems to have abandoned any personal sense of (first creeping, now a torrent) of the predictable horrors incurred under a tyrannical regimes that expressly suppress YOUR (God-given!) constitutional rights.

The second thing, of course, is that all this stuff eventually needs to get resolved in the tangible court of legal opinion. I have no doubt that Mr Torba's constitution claim will fail under our current legal system, and I generally accept the rebuke that the 'digital native' class haven't done enough of the aforementioned positive work themselves to outline how these new usages of these new technologies should harmonize with the constraints and institutional knowledge of the existing legal/political system, which has accumulated a ton of valid merit over its mostly-contiguous 250-year-long history.

At some point there's going to have to be a big palaver regarding one's fundamental right to own, operate, and make sovereign decisions (as a citizen subject to the constitution) about some part of their computing stack. Probably won't get resolved today, but I think Mr. Torba's response seems like a healthy statement to rally around.

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#203
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you storm a building when the police are holding the door open for you and ushering you in?

Like so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukU_aTzmF3M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1pIkbPvI8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2npCYNnV18

And you would use the actions of a few agents provocateurs to smear the rest of the peaceful protestors who were let in by police?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiF4EIReuY4

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#204
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like so: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukU_aTzmF3M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1pIkbPvI8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2npCYNnV18

And you would use the actions of a few agents provocateurs to smear the rest of the peaceful protestors who were let in by police? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiF4EIReuY4

Your implication that they were "agents provocateurs to smear the rest of the peaceful protestors" is lacking evidence, where there is plenty of evidence, both in testimony and captured communications from various groups of protestors intent on committing violence and mayhem, to the contrary.

At best, those "peaceful" protestors (who somehow in their naive purity managed not to be able to read the vibe of a crowd that erected a noose and gallows outside the White House, or notice the rioting, broken doors and tear gas) are still at least guilty of trespassing, and some of vandalism.

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#205
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yesterday. After that, last week, easier; then last year, yet easier; 5 years ago, easier still, and so on. I will not speculate as to when the maximum was reached, but it was somewhere between the creation of the internet and the present.

I would argue that the peak was on reddit, very briefly before the culmination of the Democrat primary in 2016. The descent was a panic response to two populists nearly winning the major party nominations in the US. We can likely reach pre-2016 levels of Internet freedom again. I'm not sure if Gab is a critical piece of that, but they seem to be doing mostly the right things right now (though I would like to see some…

On Reddit, it would have been right before Gamergate became the political opinion spam that never went away. 2014 rather than 2016.

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, my friend. It does not. The citizens have gun rights and we have a LOT of guns. And if you think millions with rifles and handguns can't stop the US government, you've not been paying attention to what happened in Afghanistan.

The government has the monopoly on the legal system allowing you to use the guns. Afghanistan only worked because of complete lack of government.

No it doesn't. The government operates part of the legal system. It's an oppositional system. You can fight the government and get a favorable outcome. It happens every day in all 50 states. People are so spooked of a weak, inefficient government staffed by underpaid and corrupt losers. Sure, you can't win every time, but it's not like it's impossible. People just want to build up the government to be something it isn't... it's not god: it's mostly just a bunch of fat people in Washington who couldn't make it in the private sector.

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#207

> American citizens may have freedom of speech, but they find themselves with vanishingly few public forums in which to exercise it fully. Well put. As we've also seen from numerous leaks and incidents over the years, big business and government often works hand-in-hand, with revolving door policies and barely legal indirect bribes happening regularly. That the government is now seeking to curtail the First Amendment…

The most recent Congressional Dish episode[1] has a discussion on this exact topic. Now I'm off to a rabbit hole of looking up information on fusion centers.

[1]https://congressionaldish.com/cd-237-hunting-domestic-terror...

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. What some people don't understand about freespeech is that it's a bigger principle then just the 1st amendment protections. Most of us are not arguing that companies ARE violating the law/first amendment. only that political/relig…

What some people don't understand is that the freedom to create a reputation by selecting which speech to amplify and disseminate is, itself, an integral part of free speech, and the reputations of the oldest, best established social institutions for the dissemination of information -- such as schools, universities, and publishers -- have been built on what they don't publish as much as on what they do. We are arguing for more freedom of speech for organisations to allow them to choose what level of scrutiny, or even what bias, to apply, so that we can establish the level of trust we think they deserve based on their record.

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#209

why is this flagged?

gab platform is fairly pro far-right, as is the founder. HN crowd is susceptible to tribalism just like any other group.

If by "fairly pro far-right" you mean the founder regularly shared QAnon and far-right propaganda along with far-right conspiracy theories like the election being stolen, anti-vax, etc.

Re: Gab.com’s Response to Congress

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

gab platform is fairly pro far-right, as is the founder. HN crowd is susceptible to tribalism just like any other group.

I thought flags weren't downvotes though...

They are sometimes, unfortunately. I'd wager there are some folks flagging a direct link from HN to a site like Gab, though.
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