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Leaked Google briefing, admitting a “shift towards censorship”

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Re: Leaked Google briefing, admitting a “shift towards censorship”

#281

Post by Finbel »

atypicaluser wrote: post #273
zmix wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. If with "American" you mean the US, then their democratic system is very weak. It constantly gets bought out by lobbyists (but then, maybe it's just more obvious, more visible than here in EU), they only have two parties, who, judging with a European eye, the spectrum of politics is very narrow. There is much less open discussion, the political shows are more often depending on the personality of the show…

> their democratic system is very weak. And with good reason, e.g. mob rule. (As an American I hope this remains so.) > bought out by lobbyists On all sides. Goldman Sachs has their man in Washington, as does Planned Parenthood. > only have two parties America has multiple parties, but two are the most ascendant. And the reason for this is more complicated than the US Constitution, e.g. writing state laws that a part…

> On all sides. Goldman Sachs has their man in Washington, as does Planned Parenthood.

I might be misinterpreting you here but it sounds as if you're saying that all is well and good since all lobby organisations are represented in Washington. The problem to me with this idea would be that not all of the people are represented by all of the lobby organisations. Which makes the system not even a mob rule, but simply a plutocracy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig

Re: Leaked Google briefing, admitting a “shift towards censorship”

#282

Post by vkou »

sanxiyn wrote: post #249
vkou wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you OK with dishonest speech? If so, then not marking bot speech as such is mere dishonesty. Not to mention that, in the general case of speech, I do not have to disclose if I am being paid to express my viewpoint.

I am okay with dishonest speech (or paid speech, for that matter), because it affects your reputation. Sockpuppets and bots harm reputation tracking.

Nobody in the real world - outside the ivory tower - actually cares about tracking the reputation of a PAC that was spun up for an election in order to run political ads, and will disappear in two months.

What makes a bot any different?

Re: Leaked Google briefing, admitting a “shift towards censorship”

#283

Post by joshuamorton »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #270
joshuamorton wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really buy "unrestricted free speech is worth letting people die over". Sure, censorship can be harmful, but if the best argument your can put forward is a slippery slope, thats not particularly compelling. Hypothetical harms are generally less harmful than real ones.

> I don't really buy "unrestricted free speech is worth letting people die over". I don't really buy "restricted speech is worth letting people die over". > Sure, censorship can be harmful, but if the best argument your can put forward is a slippery slope, thats not particularly compelling. What slippery slope? Censoring climate scientists is the first thing politicians in the pocket of oil companies would do with ce…

>I don't really buy "restricted speech is worth letting people die over".

Only one of our positions is hypothetical.

>What slippery slope? Censoring climate scientists is the first thing politicians in the pocket of oil companies would do with censorship powers.

Says you. You're running under the (faulty) assumption that such censorship would be unregulated. I also wouldn't support such a system, but thankfully that's not what I'd propose either.

Yes, the actual harms of unrestricted censorship are widespread and well documented. But most of the EU censors things that are free to say in the US (antisemitism, as an example), and yet somehow manage to rate higher on independent ratings of press freedom[0].

You're argument reduces to "unregulated power is bad". Yes. Agreed, completely. Unregulated power is bad.

>Much of the scale and inhumanity of the holocaust wasn't discovered until the end of the war as a result of Nazi censorship, and keeping it quiet allowed it to continue for longer with less opposition both domestically and internationally. For example, the US could have entered the war earlier.

This is some strong historical revisionism. No, the US just took a strong turn toward isolationism post WWI and the great depression. The atrocities of the holocaust were not some perfectly kept secret. I'd encourage you to read up on US foreign policy in the 30s, as well as general sentiment among the population [1]. Among other things, antisemitism, worry about another economic downturn, and a strong isolationist ideal underlined by the opinion that "We shouldn't send American boys to die solving a European problem"[2] were the main reasons the US didn't enter the war.

Even when they did, it wasn't out of a sense of civic duty to save the Jews, it was because "oh crap, Germany could actually threaten the US and the world".

Allied governments absolutely knew about the crimes the Nazis were committing, they just didn't care. The population didn't really care either.

Immediately jumping to "the Nazis and Stalin censored people, so censorship is bad" isn't an argument, its fearmongering, especially when the claimed impacts of censorship aren't really true.

[0]: https://rsf.org/en/ranking# [1]: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-united... [2]: And honestly, given the horrors of WWI and trench warfare, I can understand this attitude.

Re: Leaked Google briefing, admitting a “shift towards censorship”

#284

Post by atypicaluser »

Finbel wrote: post #281
atypicaluser wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> their democratic system is very weak. And with good reason, e.g. mob rule. (As an American I hope this remains so.) > bought out by lobbyists On all sides. Goldman Sachs has their man in Washington, as does Planned Parenthood. > only have two parties America has multiple parties, but two are the most ascendant. And the reason for this is more complicated than the US Constitution, e.g. writing state laws that a part…

> On all sides. Goldman Sachs has their man in Washington, as does Planned Parenthood. I might be misinterpreting you here but it sounds as if you're saying that all is well and good since all lobby organisations are represented in Washington. The problem to me with this idea would be that not all of the people are represented by all of the lobby organisations. Which makes the system not even a mob rule, but simply a…

> all is well and good

I would say that striving to be 'all is well and good' is a never-ending chore. (As in never will end.)

> since all lobby organizations are represented in Washington.

Not all, but many. There are also many lobbying firms local to states and cities.

Can we do with less lobbying? Sure. But we'll only ever be able to go so far given that organized petitions are guaranteed by the First Amendment '... the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.' This can take the form of a single person, a parade of protestors, a lobbying firm, or what have you. Which also means a single person with deep pockets (e.g. actor Kevin Costner) can have more sway than a lobbying outfit (e.g. a law firm representing the Lakota Sioux of the Black Hills.)

> not all of the people are represented by all of the lobby organizations.

Agreed.

I would go even further and say not all of the people are represented by those who actually vote or those who actually occupy office. Undocumented migrants, children, the mentally challenged, jailed felons, those who don't vote whatsoever—all are supposedly represented by Congress and the President, but who really gave Congress and the President the right to represent those who didn't vote for them? (Joking here—many in the US feel that Trump does NOT represent them, despite him being President. Not joking here—but are they right?)

> plutocracy

It's close. Given the lobbying arms of Planned Parenthood, the Teamsters, the Southern Baptist Convention, the National Audubon Society, and many, many (, many) others, that is, the lobbying arms of well-monied groups, we see that organized groups can act as wealthy individuals. So it's a mix of plutocracy and monied non-profits.

> youtube

Good video, and it captures the big-picture problem with American political lobbying. I wish them luck with the solution they've offered—currently, marijuana laws are undergoing the same course that women's suffrage did, so it works as long as people are driven to finish what they started. (Which is not necessarily a good thing—US Prohibition also was a state matter before finally being made an Amendment, the 18th, the one that came right before giving women the right to vote. Check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_state .)

Re: Leaked Google briefing, admitting a “shift towards censorship”

#285

Post by noobermin »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #196
noobermin wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you potentially have a point but the moderation the slides talk about are also posterior to the speech. For example, tell someone to kill themselves, get reported, get shadowbanned. Deciding what is "wrong" or "uncivil" or "out of bounds" is the value judgement, like deciding defamation is or threats are.

> I feel like you potentially have a point but the moderation the slides talk about are also posterior to the speech. For example, tell someone to kill themselves, get reported, get shadowbanned. When the penalty is censorship of future speech, it's still a prior restraint. And shadowbanning is obviously not compatible with any kind of due process or even an opportunity to know that you've been accused. > Deciding wh…

I mean, how is making libel unlawful not censorship of future speech under your definition, or making threats unlawful censorship of future threats? How is this different?

Re: Leaked Google briefing, admitting a “shift towards censorship”

#286

Post by burfog »

hef19898 wrote: post #278
atypicaluser wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The electoral college (EC) is a state system connected neither to Congress nor the Senate. Rather the EC is apportioned representatives based on the total number of Congressmen and Senators a state has. These representatives are chosen by (and vote at the behest of) the individual states according to how those states choose. All but two states require their EC representatives to vote for the Presidential candidate wh…

Thanks for the answer. I knew that, and yes the German syatem has a tendency to blur the lines between legslative and executive branches. My comment was in reply to a comment that equated a parliament electing a chancellor / prime minister with an electoral college. Despite all the downsides of not electing the head of government directly they still are different things.

It's just a unification of some government functions. The functionality is the same.

parliament == electoral_college + congress

Specifically for Germany and the USA:

Bundestag == electoral_college + house_of_representatives

Bundesrat == senate

So you effectively do have a congress and an electoral college. In your system, they are merged and thus have the same members.

There are six typical roles:

1. lower legislative body

2. upper legislative body

3. electoral college

4. supreme court

5. head of state

6. executive

You have the 1==3 and 5==6 mergers. The USA has only the 5==6 merger. The UK has the 1==3 merger and prior to 2009 had the 2==4 merger.

Re: Leaked Google briefing, admitting a “shift towards censorship”

#287

Post by plaguuuuuu »

tropo wrote: post #27
jhabdas wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So where's the video? Or was that censored too?

I think you mean the video of Google executives showing partisan behavior at a meeting. If so, it's on this page: https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2018/09/12/leaked-video-googl... The group hug at 0:16:50 is seriously creepy. Grabbing your coworkers is considered inappropriate or worse in normal American workplaces.

Hugging people, literally the worst thing that has ever happened

Re: Leaked Google briefing, admitting a “shift towards censorship”

#288

Post by webkike »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #226
webkike wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s the point. That used to be enough. Now just giving your child access to a computer could seriously tamper with their mental health

By the way, is there any evidence of this? Or are such claims perhaps similar to how old people never understood new things and claimed that "punk rock and heavy metal could seriously tamper with kids' mental health"?

http://ur.umich.edu/9899/Mar29_99/9.htm

Re: Leaked Google briefing, admitting a “shift towards censorship”

#289

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

vhakulinen wrote: post #162
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what sense is what happens online not part of the real world? If nobody reads a tweet, did it really happen? If nobody hears me hurl racist abuse at my lawnmower, did it really happen?

> In what sense is what happens online not part of the real world? This is mainly the reason why the last "real world" was in quotes. When you take statistics of something, you usually want to compare them to something. For me, a natural comparison for internet statistics is some physical places like offices, public streets, schools, bars. "a real world" - I'm not saying that the internet is not part of it.

Righteo, fair enough. Thanks for taking the time to clarify.

Re: Leaked Google briefing, admitting a “shift towards censorship”

#290

Post by dibujante »

vkou wrote: post #141
dibujante wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! I am OK with only humans having a right to free speech.

Humans express their right to free speech through bots. It's no different from expressing your right to free speech through paid advertisements.

Not really. There are disclosure rules for paid advertisements. People can express whatever they want through a bot, as long as they also make it clear that this expression is being delivered by a bot.
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