51–60 of 398 posts
It's increasingly uncomfortable to realize that a handful of tech companies are in many ways more powerful than the government. I don't like the direction anything is headed in.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed! The initial intent of 1st Amendment was to protect the public against tyranny of the government. However, when entities like Google, Apple, FB have such impact on the population and spread of information, they can become the "great firewall". This is very dangerous and google should not be in the position to become the thought police.
It's even more frustrating when people supposedly loving freedom say that freedom of speech was only meant to protect from government and private companies can discriminate as they wish. I'm 99.99% certain if freedom of speech was formulated today, it would include private companies as well.
Seriously, conservatives in America want to have their cake and eat it too. "We meant freedom for corporations-as-people but only when it helps us".
>"Because internet intermediaries, especially those with few competitors, control so much online speech, the consequences of their decisions have far-reaching impacts on speech around the world." Maybe it's just me but I think enabling hate-speech and bigotry is much worse than failing to maintain 100% neutrality. There's nothing stopping these maniacs from starting their own intermediaries to host the content(trash)…
While I definitely don't support the people they're booting off I do have to agree with the EFF here. For example, "And music streaming services offered by Google, Deezer and Spotify have said they would remove music that incites violence, hatred or racism." Now these services have put it out there as policy someone has to define what's violent, hateful or racist in music. Racism? Ok nobody's really going to bat an e…
It's Tipper Gore vs. Frank Zappa all over again.
https://www.aclu.org/other/aclu-history-taking-stand-free-sp...
We seem to keep forgetting what "Freedom of Speech" means.
[Update: Added Chomsky quote]
"If we don't believe in free expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all." - Noam Chomsky
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed! The initial intent of 1st Amendment was to protect the public against tyranny of the government. However, when entities like Google, Apple, FB have such impact on the population and spread of information, they can become the "great firewall". This is very dangerous and google should not be in the position to become the thought police.
It's even more frustrating when people supposedly loving freedom say that freedom of speech was only meant to protect from government and private companies can discriminate as they wish. I'm 99.99% certain if freedom of speech was formulated today, it would include private companies as well.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I agree, in that it sucks that it's a literal handful, but on the flip side it's nice to know the government is set up in such a way that it isn't by default the most powerful entity in every imaginable way. The people themselves, private companies, etc have a chance to be more powerful than the government in a variety of ways. I'm a pro-government liberal who is extremely wary of the power of global corporations, bu…
What does it say about our system that we have relatively more corporate overlords than government overlords?
But since we've basically given up on stopping monopolies and mega-mergers the companies and now so big and control so many things they have power without competition to keep it in check.
>"Because internet intermediaries, especially those with few competitors, control so much online speech, the consequences of their decisions have far-reaching impacts on speech around the world." Maybe it's just me but I think enabling hate-speech and bigotry is much worse than failing to maintain 100% neutrality. There's nothing stopping these maniacs from starting their own intermediaries to host the content(trash)…
silencing people is never a good idea. let them speak their mind. only through interaction can a person's mind change. caging them in and then being surprised they did something awful is probably about as bad idea as the ones they have.
I'm not arguing that this is the right strategy, only that it is often extremely effective.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's even more frustrating when people supposedly loving freedom say that freedom of speech was only meant to protect from government and private companies can discriminate as they wish. I'm 99.99% certain if freedom of speech was formulated today, it would include private companies as well.
> I'm 99.99% certain if freedom of speech was formulated today, it would include private companies as well. Freedom of speech already does. Unfortunately Americans tend to conflate the broad concept with the US First Amendment.
There were cases where people lost their jobs for their extracurricular legal activities that were hate speech according to someone. Like in US, private companies seem to give in much quicker than government that tries to follow the law to the letter.
If recent events have shown anything, it is that we need to do a lot MORE to stop neo-Nazism. I'm not saying doxx all neo-Nazis and whites, supremacists. But we need to name them. Make them known. Don't support their businesses. Don't let them have domains or websites. Kick them off Google platforms, Facebook, even OKCupid. All private companies need to take action now and make sure none of them can use the internet…
It's increasingly uncomfortable to realize that a handful of tech companies are in many ways more powerful than the government. I don't like the direction anything is headed in.
I agree, in that it sucks that it's a literal handful, but on the flip side it's nice to know the government is set up in such a way that it isn't by default the most powerful entity in every imaginable way. The people themselves, private companies, etc have a chance to be more powerful than the government in a variety of ways. I'm a pro-government liberal who is extremely wary of the power of global corporations, bu…
That's been the case before, it's not a great thing. In the late 18th and early 19th century, a few magnates were arguably more powerful than the US government. They certainly ran the US government. A lot of the protections we have today are a response to that time period