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America's internet is splitting along party lines

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Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#31

Post by bluescrn »

jaegerpicker wrote: post #21
JasonFruit wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you want a corporation or government to decide for you which of your neighbors you shouldn't tolerate, without letting you get to know them, or would you like to make an informed decision yourself?

No Corporation has decided anything like that. Corporations are responding to their customers requesting those users to not be tolerated. This isn't Twitter banning anyone because they want to. It's Twitter deciding that enough users have decided that tolerance has run its course. They were in response to campaigns of users to deplatform those who we consider harmful.

Corporations seem to be responding to tiny but very vocal mobs of activists. These groups don't necessarily represent the majority point of view.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#32

Post by peoplefromibiza »

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #13
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, but censors (on both sides) cheer for this, because it's not them... yet.. atleast not on 'that' platform.

Sadly, even on HN we have people arguing for that. You are labeled 'absolutist' if you argue against censorship. It is fascinating really.

> You are labeled 'absolutist' if you argue against censorship. It is fascinating really

what's fascinating is that you are writing it on a website that "censors" opinions, based on your definition.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#33

Post by beaconstudios »

seneca wrote: post #10
tedajax wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just conveniently ignoring the content of these sites/services that gets them banned in the first place...

Twitter has just as vile content as anything you can find in the other cesspool. It just happens to overwhelmingly lean the right way politically, so is not only still around but treated as some legitimate source of news.

twitter itself is left-leaning (in the liberal sense), yes - are we pretending that progressivism and far-right ideology have equal legitimacy? parler was founded to be a haven for the latter.

I might be out on a limb with this, but I don't think we should be giving far-right people a platform to spread their views.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#34

Post by [deleted] »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #25
snowwrestler wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the service provides should have no say Who’s the censor in this conversation again? I’m having a hard time squaring the idea of free speech maximalism with “a certain group of people should have no say.”

Service providers should act as an utility, such as roads, waterworks, sewers, etc. We have laws set in place where we decide who can drive on roads using which kinds of vehicles, and road operators and owners (not sure how road system works in USA, in my country, some roads are country-owned, some are owned by the municipality, and some private ones can join the road system - eg. the long road from the main street t…

[deleted]

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#35

Post by periphrasis »

grapeskin wrote: post #22
k__ wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand this. There are well-known arguments for not tolerating intolerant people. Do those who advocate for tolerating intolerant people act in good faith, or are they simply part of them?

I accept the right of others to say things I find absolutely abhorrent because I recognize that I sometimes say things I believe to be perfectly rational and someone else finds intolerable. Fighting disagreeable speech with more free speech is harder than just banning it, but generations that follow will be better off for it. Just seeing the Russia v Ukraine conflict and seeing how one country can enforce a narrative…

The irony of course being that the American political demographic, MAGA, with the biggest grievances regarding tech “censorship” also appear to be most willing to make excuses for or deny Russian war crimes.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#36

Post by wowokay »

JasonFruit wrote: post #3

This article is confusing or confused. It conflates the people and companies that use the internet with the network itself, and then supports its argument that the internet is splitting by talking about what's going on with TV networks. There's a lot of division going on in America, but I think they've failed to see its shape.

Agreed. I think the premise is sound. I feel like the US needs to incorporate a new right, similar to the separation of church and state but instead focused on the separation of politics and companies. I have no idea how politics would be defined or how it would be enforced. However similar to the premise of this article I think the one thing both sides can agree on is all of this became worse and jaded when companies became self aware and brandished a political agenda.

I mean if we want free speech how can their be disinformation? Even if crazy earl wants to talk about the “good old days” where women stayed home and cooked all day why does a company need to take a stand on eliminating that post?

Why do people working at companies feel compelled to incorporate their beliefs into their work? Disney makes movies for kids. I understand that a small % of the population feels marginalized because they don’t have direct representation in media, but kids are inpressional, and if we want to be “Fair” we’d present ALL sides, from straight, to gay, from hero to terrorist. Or Disney could go back to making neutral kids movies about fictional talking animals struggling through life. Why do they need to take a stance on something.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#38

Post by pyronik19 »

k__ wrote: post #6
tedajax wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just conveniently ignoring the content of these sites/services that gets them banned in the first place...

I don't understand this. There are well-known arguments for not tolerating intolerant people. Do those who advocate for tolerating intolerant people act in good faith, or are they simply part of them?

Most of the people getting caught up in all this banning aren't rabid racist or misogynist or whatever ism or ist they are being smeared with. They are non hateful individuals who don't fall in line with the "current thing" and have a non-approved view point. The woke crowd somehow has been given a monopoly on who has a voice in the modern era. Is someone a "transphobe" and intolerant of trans people because they think the definition of a woman is the same as sex? This isn't intolerance this is a disagreement on the nature of reality.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#39

Post by throwaway82652 »

chasd00 wrote: post #30
rayiner wrote: post #15

At least we have an Internet. Imagine the bad old days of the 1980s when everyone had to get their news from CNN! For all the bellyaching conservatives do the fact is that information is freer today than it was in the past. Ultimately we all found out about Hunter Biden’s laptop notwithstanding the Facebook and Twitter blackout. (And when it turned out to be real, I’m sure the Facebook and Twitter censors felt shame,…

so, yet again, the censors were wrong. I've said it before, if you're going to censor you better be right 100% of the time. The moment you get it wrong all credibility and benefit-of-the-doubt is gone and now you must censor by authority and not out of good will. The first case i recall is the lab leak theory censoring and now the laptop thing. The platforms should stop censoring except for content defined as prohibi…

>content defined as prohibited by law

They weren't wrong, deleting illegal content is exactly what they were doing. Revenge porn is illegal in almost all US states.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#40

Post by ajsnigrutin »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #18
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's illegal, the governments should take care to punish the reponsible ones via the court system. If it's legal, the service provides should have no say. This is like christan toll-bridge operator not allowing people to pass the bridge, if they drove in from the direction of a brothel.

> If it's illegal, the governments should take care to punish the reponsible ones via the court system if it's abusive of the people patience and potentially dangerous, the government can and should shut it down. it's not illegal to carry arms in most of the US, but in some places they can ban you if you carry one, because they don't want to deal with you or be responsible for what you could do with it. it's not ille…

Yes, and some parents influence the schools to ban harry potter, because of anti-god magic, and those parents then organize book burnings (yes, this year - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/04/book-burning... )

Some of us consider this a bad thing, even though it's still done in some societies (eg. USA).

If someone starts a harry potter microbloging platform, and the content there is legal, and the technology works in a way, where a want-to-be-offended pastor has to actively type in the url/name in the browser, to see the content and get offended, this should not be a reason to ban that platform. The same with eg. not being able to disallow customers of the shop that sells harry potter to use public roads.

Internet services and payment processors should be treated the same as other utilities... as long as it's legal, the services/processors should not be able to deny service due to political reasons, because they believe harry potter is against gods will.

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