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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

#71

Post by Jtype »

throwaway82652 wrote: post #39
chasd00 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They were wrong about a crapload of things. They completely censored the Biden Laptop story and called it Russian propaganda. Twitter and facebook banned accounts that posted links to the story, for example. Just because you don't want to believe it doesn't mean it isn't true.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#72

Post by jermaustin1 »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #43
riidom wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an oddly specific example, did this happen somewhere?

It was just an example of a public utility blocking access to a service they disagree with, but the service is still legal. The first idea was EU blocking rt.com (and some other russian sites), even though their content is perfectly legal, but EU doesn't want the people to look at that content there.

EU was sanctioning Russia, and cut off sources of income (advertising and eyeballs) to a Russian state media organization. Not because they didn't want people to look at the content, but because they are going along with sanctions.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#73

Post by zozbot234 »

beaconstudios wrote: post #33
seneca wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let's not pretend that this is just about progressivism (though it's not like even Progressive ideas were ever exempt from being highly problematic: eugenics anyone?). You could find plenty of literal tankies posting on Twitter before Putin made the whole 'tankie' thing rather unpopular.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#74

Post by ajsnigrutin »

Steltek wrote: post #67
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was just an example of a public utility blocking access to a service they disagree with, but the service is still legal. The first idea was EU blocking rt.com (and some other russian sites), even though their content is perfectly legal, but EU doesn't want the people to look at that content there.

I doubt you're going to win your argument using RT as an example. We're one whoopsie away from war. That's very different than regular censorship.

We're always one whoopsie away from a war, and some of us (i'm from the balkans) have had a few whoopsies not that long ago here and not that far from my location.

Globally speaking, in the same time, US (and nato and other "allies") attacked quite a few other countries, iraq, afghanistan, syria, libya, they're bombing somalia, bombed pakistan, etc., and none of the media was blocked back then.

Even the taliban are allowed to maintain their twitter accounts ( https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-twitter-allows-taliban-ma... ).

And now, we're blocking RT, for what?

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#75

Post by beaconstudios »

zozbot234 wrote: post #73
beaconstudios wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let's not pretend that this is just about progressivism (though it's not like even Progressive ideas were ever exempt from being highly problematic: eugenics anyone?). You could find plenty of literal tankies posting on Twitter before Putin made the whole 'tankie' thing rather unpopular.

are tankies progressive? I think their primary axiom is hating America.

Either way, I agree that there's a range of legitimate discourse and it shouldn't just be the current flavour of progressivism. I was more cutting out a negative exception for the far right than a positive exception for libsocs.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#76

Post by ajsnigrutin »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #72
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was just an example of a public utility blocking access to a service they disagree with, but the service is still legal. The first idea was EU blocking rt.com (and some other russian sites), even though their content is perfectly legal, but EU doesn't want the people to look at that content there.

EU was sanctioning Russia, and cut off sources of income (advertising and eyeballs) to a Russian state media organization. Not because they didn't want people to look at the content, but because they are going along with sanctions.

Advertising income can be dealt with differently, but 'eyeballs' is effectivly political censorship, which was until now a thing of the "bad guys" (political dictators, etc.).

I mean, even the taliban are allowed to keep their twitter accounts - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-twitter-allows-taliban-ma... - but not russia?

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#77

Post by periphrasis »

nsxwolf wrote: post #52
periphrasis wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can go on Twitter and see a lot of examples of this and generate that impression, but then I don’t see it in real life. What’s real? How do we know our perception of reality isn’t being distorted by algorithms and sampling bias?

The question would be a lot easier to resolve if the major MAGA thought leaders would stop making excuses for genocide. Anecdotally, my dad is MAGA-leaning right, and while he opposes the invasion and is happy to see the Russian army destroyed, his immediate response when I brought up the mass graves was “how much of that is propaganda though?”. Skepticism about what we are told about a war is always warranted, but right wing Americans are being actively persuaded right now to deny or doubt Russian war crimes despite overwhelming evidence.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#78

Post by tablespoon »

wowokay wrote: post #36
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 companie…

Your suggestion goes directly against freedom of association. Also there really isn't such a thing as being "neutral" like you describe, "neutral" is just when everyone agrees to the point where they don't release there's something to disagree about.

However your comment does seem to touch on one the major deficit/contradictions in small-l liberalism: you don't really solve disagreements by pushing them into the private sphere, you just avoid them, and eventually that avoidance can tear society apart.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#79

Post by tablespoon »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #63

"America's internet" The first two words of the headline are wrong. Applications are not the I nternet. This must be some kind of record for HN headlines.

> "America's internet"

> The first two words of the headline are wrong. Applications are not the Internet. This must be some kind of record for HN headlines.

It's not actually wrong: you just have to realize that words have different meanings. The internet is simultaneously: a TCP/IP network and the collection of applications built on top of that network that people use. The first meaning is technical jargon, the second is a more colloquial meaning. Technical meanings are not more correct than other kinds of meanings.

Re: America's internet is splitting along party lines

#80

Post by briandear »

periphrasis wrote: post #35
grapeskin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ukraine has stationed soldiers in schools. Russia bombed schools for that reason.

Is Ukraine committing war crimes? I am not pro-Russia by any stretch, but the actions taken by both sides in that war aren’t so black and white.

Watching this war as a dispassionate observer, it’s a study in propaganda. Zelensky broadcasting using a green screen to make it look like he’s on the streets for instance. The famous “I don’t need a ride, I need ammo” quote. The so called Ghost pilot who supposedly shot down a bunch of Russian fighters (which didn’t happen by the way.)

There is also the stories of torture — stories being given to the media by the Ukraine government. At least some of which are unverifiable: https://www.reuters.com/world/pentagon-cant-independently-co...

Other media outlets have run stories of torture based on materials given to them by a government that has a vested interest in anti-Russian sentiment.

And still other confusion on the air strike on the materai it y hospital: https://thegrayzone.com/2022/04/03/testimony-mariupol-hospit...

https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/02/11/ukraine-attacks-military...

So we aren’t making excuses for Russia (why would I, an American in Texas, give any fucks about Russia?) — but we are used to the media lying and lying over the past several years.

Case in point: Hunter Biden’s laptop. Whether or not it matters, the point is that a bunch of media and intelligence types told us it was “Russian disinformation.” Yet two years later WaPo and The NY Times have confirmed the authenticity of the laptop contents. Two years after they made a big point of suppressing or discrediting it.

So we’re supposed to believe those same media outlets when they are getting hand-fed by one of the participants in the Ukraine War?

A lot of people have lost the ability to think critically. Read the North Korean News Agency sometime. The language isn’t much different than how the western media frames the Ukraine War. One sided, with a strong propaganda diction.

Was the Russian invasion wrong? Possibly. But what’s the other side of the story? What’s the background? What exactly was the situation in the Russian-speaking regions of the Ukraine? Are there actual neo-Nazis in Ukraine? What’s the real story of the Azov battalion?

War is messy. Propaganda can never be trusted. And calling the other side a war criminal serves a valuable purpose. To be clear, I am not saying war crimes haven’t happened. I am saying that such claims ought to be dispassionately evaluated. Using schools to base troops and them complaining when Russia bombs a school — that seems a bit ridiculous. That’s the same tactic Hamas uses. And it works. It generates sufficient international outrage because apparently a large portion of the world lacks the ability to think critically

So no, not making excuses for Russia — but also not blindly cheerleading Ukraine. I don’t know enough about the background of that conflict to have much of an opinion. My opinion is more in line with media criticism rather than any version of the facts.

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