This thread baffles me. There are a lot of replies that either didn’t read the article (or even the headline) that seem to be government apologists, or arguing that a particular email isn’t coercive enough, etc. A court found that the government abused its power and infringes on people’s first amendment rights by using its intimidation power to coerce social media to censor free speech of citizens. Freedom of speech…
In the same article see the section "Exceptions include voting misinformation" - does it really baffle you that people think public health is as important as elections?
Russian and Chinese troll farms... Do I really need to say more? They are engaged in active disinformation and harrassment campaigns funded directly by government. Or are you being willfully daft? And I then there's the Israeli and Iranian efforts, let alone the hundred other government funded agencies with thousands of agents whose sole purpose is to bully and intimidate.
There are plenty of authoritarian nanny states that agree with you that government censorship is the answer to these problems. For now, in the US, that's still illegal and we'll continue to oppose you on this til the end.
... did you really not even take a moment to try to comprehend what was being raised, or did you actively choose to ignore it?
The issue is the need to silence those bad actors, not citizens of one's own nation. There needs to be mechanisms in place.
We can dither on the particulars, with my belief the same as yours regarding domestic censorship of good faith actors, but there definitely should be action taken to minimize the harms externally funded or situated bad actors cause.
Do you really not agree with that? Because then you may as well start waving one of the foreign flags now...
> What they can't do is order the political speech of citizens be censored. Agreed. That doesn't appear to have happened. Even the worst examples the Twitter Files sort of reporting could dig up is some loud huffing and puffing followed by a :rolleyes: emoji and inaction from various social networks.
> That doesn't appear to have happened That appears to be exactly what has been happening. It seems we disagree on this point.
> That appears to be exactly what has been happening.
None of the Twitter Files involve a government order to censor speech.
There's begging, cajoling, suggesting, implying, etc., but they don't have the power to order in most of these cases, and that's evidenced by the fact that quite a bit of the time the social networks said no.
Do feel free to cite an actual order to suppress speech that we can specifically discuss.
I think looking back at the alacrity with which she was appointed, the speed at which Roe was subsequently overturned, not to mention the stated rationale of the POTUS at the time, we can all be confident that the true reason for her appointment wasn't her qualifications as a jurist.
>we can all be confident that the true reason for her appointment wasn't her qualifications as a jurist. Of course that's true. All judges are picked for their political bias. If you want to argue that she's unqualified, I refer you to the ABA assessment which disagrees.
My point is that discussing her qualifications is irrelevant. If she were there to be a judge, then her qualifications as a jurist might matter. But she's not there to be a judge, she's there to be a political operative. I know it, you know it, Senate Republicans know it, the plaintiffs pleading cases before her know it, and (most importantly) she knows it. So why the hell is anyone talking about her qualifications as a jurist? In her role on the Supreme Court, her only role that matters, she's a political operative, and she behaves as such. Accordingly, that's the only lens under which she should be analyzed. The ABA has nothing relevant to say about her.
>we can all be confident that the true reason for her appointment wasn't her qualifications as a jurist. Of course that's true. All judges are picked for their political bias. If you want to argue that she's unqualified, I refer you to the ABA assessment which disagrees.
My point is that discussing her qualifications is irrelevant. If she were there to be a judge, then her qualifications as a jurist might matter. But she's not there to be a judge, she's there to be a political operative. I know it, you know it, Senate Republicans know it, the plaintiffs pleading cases before her know it, and (most importantly) she knows it. So why the hell is anyone talking about her qualifications a…
>But she's not there to be a judge, she's there to be a political operative.
While I agree here, I want to add a caveat that the linked article is technically a "commentary" pieces, not a news-side piece (aka: it's published on the opinion pages). But even given that, the opinion pages of the WSJ is just as fact-filled as the news side, but just highlights that the person writing it may not be a disinterested party. The Opinion Pages of the WSJ also tend to lean more conservative, while the n…
'lean' lol. the wsj opinion section has gone wildly off the rails. love their journalism. can't read half the crap they allow to be published in opeds. at a minimum, is it too much to not publish outright provable lies? it actually feels like a similar persecution complex vibe to these lawsuits and congressional hearings to me that somehow if we aren't forced to listen to them, or that their megaphone isn't as loud a…
> at a minimum, is it too much to not publish outright provable lies?
I'd love to hear some examples. From what I can tell, they don't lie, but they will leave out details that may provide additional context (much like the NYT and WP opinion pages tend to do).
There is a careful line between opinions and facts. From what I can tell, the editorial board doesn't allow outright facts that can be disputed from being published. But things where there may be a disagreement on a given topic, they will allow it to be published.
> Absolutely nothing you stated is legal now. Sure, I didn't mean to suggest that those things are legal. Just giving a few examples of speech that is harmful, rather than merely distasteful. > The government would not have to intervene asking for censorship in any of these cases. Hm, I think that may be pinning quite a lot on some questionable definition of "censorship." In these examples the law would be banning so…
Your first two examples are fraud, not speech. Your third example is speech, but if you remove the mugger and have a friend say the same thing to you it becomes a joke.
The second example is fraud _and_ speech. The first one would be more like perjury, _and_ also speech.
That's the whole point: fraud, perjury, and several other harmful things are subcategories of speech.
Yes, but the key difference is that White House staffers aren't personally pressuring dang.
They don't feel the need to, because HN mods do their job and there aren't millions of people spreading verifiable misinformation here unchecked.
It has nothing to do with the amount of time Dang spends working. It's because the HN userbase is tiny compared to the social media giants.
There are many small forums that spread misinformation because they enjoy trolling. The moderators even encourage it. The DOJ and White House do not care about these forums because they collectively have less than 0.1% of Facebook's DAU.
You don't see a difference between a toddler being demanding with a parent and the federal government demanding something of a corporation? What kind of Republican's wet dream do you live in where those power dynamics are akin?
> What kind of Republican's wet dream do you live in where those power dynamics are akin? Have we already forgotten that it’s the left pushing for the censorship? When will the left quit trying to flamebait and start focusing on repairing the divisions caused by attempting to demonize the other side.