# Trump Launches Website to Report Social Media Censorship



## SG854 (May 16, 2019)

I thought I was done talking about Trump but I found this interesting. Trump launches a website where if you feel you are being censored unjustly for your beliefs you can report it.

Source
YouTube Video



The White House also refused International Call for Media Censorship from 18 governments saying it’s a matter of free speech concerns.

Source


----------



## notimp (May 16, 2019)

This should be fun.


----------



## SG854 (May 16, 2019)

notimp said:


> This should be fun.


Indeed


They now can quantify if this is a big or a small issue. If people are over exaggerating or not. Many smaller accounts on a few social media sites are saying they got shut down and don’t know why, even when they follow rules. And we don’t hear about it since they are smaller, they just brush it off aside and forget about it.


----------



## Saiyan Lusitano (May 16, 2019)

Social media websites censor users and then there's this.. It's a mess either way. I left Twitter like two years ago and never really liked Facebook to join it.

Most social communities online are toxic so you need to be careful which one you are willing to take part in.


----------



## Burlsol (May 16, 2019)

These sites are privately owned. Free Speech protections do not apply for very good reason.


----------



## notimp (May 16, 2019)

SG854 said:


> They now can quantify if this is a big or a small issue. If people are over exaggerating or not. Many smaller accounts on a few social media sites are saying they got shut down and don’t know why, even when they follow rules. And we don’t hear about it since they are smaller, they just brush it off aside and forget about it.


Havent thought about it from that angle - but if thats where you are coming from, a facebook co founder already has your solution:
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/9/1...s-hughes-breakup-regulation-ftc-us-government

(Facebook too powerful, does what it wants (two speps forward violating privacy rights, one step back excusing themselves profusely), no public accountability, bias towards "promoting what sells", having an issue  with counterspeech to even be visible - for any issue. Needs to be broken up. Also constantly lies about the viability of AI for their platform policing. Of course while not making algorithms public. So doing fb censorship watch is kind of a logical conclusion from that angle.

To be honest, I'm so over them as a platform... 

Politicians dont tend to agree though, because to the its a tool for public relations. Just as cynical - because also micro targeted.)


----------



## SG854 (May 16, 2019)

Burlsol said:


> These sites are privately owned. Free Speech protections do not apply for very good reason.


That argument might not hold water anymore. There was a case a while back (I forgot the name of it, I’ll have to re-track it down) where government ruled in favor of the 1st amendment over privately owned companies. So this sets precedent of the what they will do about free speech.


The problem with free speech in privately owned social media is that internet is a recent new thing, so government doesn’t really know what to do about it. But they are becoming too big and too influential especially over politics to be ignored. They can sway elections in a big way. Lots of people get information from Twitter. People are debating whether it should be seen as a public utility and then regulated with free speech protections.




notimp said:


> Havent thought about it from that angle - but if thats where you are coming from, a facebook co founder already has your solution:
> https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/9/1...s-hughes-breakup-regulation-ftc-us-government
> 
> (Facebook too powerful, does what it wants (two speps forward violating privacy rights, one step back excusing themselves profusely), no public accountability, bias towards "promoting what sells", having an issue  with counterspeech to even be visible - for any issue. Needs to be broken up. Also constantly lies about the viability of AI for their platform policing. Of course while not making algorithms public. So doing fb censorship watch is kind of a logical conclusion from that angle.
> ...


Jack Dorsey himself said that Twitter has a problem where their rules targets 1 side more then the other. And admits they have a problem they need to address. But I have yet still to see them do anything about it.


----------



## Clydefrosch (May 16, 2019)

millions of eyes rolling unconrollably.

because that's the type of problem that -TRULY- requires the president to launch a website to take action...
i hope people use it to report actual problems, like that suicide plan for the economy...

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------



SG854 said:


> Jack Dorsey himself said that Twitter has a problem where their rules targets 1 side more then the other. And admits they have a problem they need to address. But I have yet still to see them do anything about it.



i think you misunderstood the problem there.
the algorithm indeed would target one side more likely, but not because it's biased against that side, but because that side has a much bigger habit of writing stuff that is objectively against their terms of service.

which is why they're not employing that algorithm. which feels kind of bullshitty. but isn't surprising at all, jack has always made sure that white nationalists can feel at home on his platform...


so basically, their current actions are much more in favor of that one side. people can call for the most thinly veiled genocide without issue, but dare pointing out how much of a nazi that makes them and you're in 'give us your phone number' purgatory.


----------



## SG854 (May 16, 2019)

Clydefrosch said:


> millions of eyes rolling unconrollably.
> 
> because that's the type of problem that -TRULY- requires the president to launch a website to take action...
> i hope people use it to report actual problems, like that suicide plan for the economy...


If free speech wasn’t such a problem then we wouldn’t have a first amendment to protect it.


Banning people is a bad idea, because that would shut down dissenting opinions, radicalize people because they would have no where turn and the only people that would accept them would be racist white nationalist, justify their anger and justify they are being targeted and shut down. This is what Jack Dorsey also said was a problem he didn’t want happen.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------



Clydefrosch said:


> millions of eyes rolling unconrollably.
> 
> because that's the type of problem that -TRULY- requires the president to launch a website to take action...
> i hope people use it to report actual problems, like that suicide plan for the economy...
> ...


Against terms of service Jack Dorsey himself said is flawed.


----------



## Clydefrosch (May 16, 2019)

SG854 said:


> If free speech wasn’t such a problem then we wouldn’t have a first amendment to protect it.
> 
> 
> Banning people is a bad idea, because that would shut down dissenting opinions, radicalize people because they would have no where turn and the only people that would accept them would be racist white nationalist, justify their anger and justify they are being shut down. This is what Jack Dorsey also said was a problem he didn’t want happen.



free speech means you can't be persecuted by the government for your opinion or you voicing that opinion.

it doesn't mean you have a constitutional right to make any platform your platform or that everyone needs to listen to your bs.

this is not about freedom of speech is the point. literally nothing that would ever be reported to that side will even tangentially clash with the first amendment.


----------



## SG854 (May 16, 2019)

Clydefrosch said:


> free speech means you can't be persecuted by the government for your opinion or you voicing that opinion.
> 
> it doesn't mean you have a constitutional right to make any platform your platform or that everyone needs to listen to your bs.
> 
> this is not about freedom of speech is the point.


You are more focused on Racist White Nationalist. And nobody likes them. They have no governmental or social support. I’m talking more about one political side being targeted because of rules they set up that doesn’t respect their political beliefs that are not as extreme as a White Nationalist.


----------



## zomborg (May 16, 2019)

I'm very impressed. Yes yes, I know. fb is privately owned and supposedly the first amendment doesn't apply (which I disagree with) but hopefully this will be the beginning of finally being able to reign in those wild horses (fb, Twitter, etc)
 Major problem is they can and have influenced elections and popular opinion. 
From where I sit it's a brilliant move on Trumps part


----------



## SG854 (May 16, 2019)

zomborg said:


> I'm very impressed. Yes yes, I know. fb is privately owned and supposedly the first amendment doesn't apply (which I disagree with) but hopefully this will be the beginning of finally being able to reign in those wild horses (fb, Twitter, etc)
> Major problem is they can and have influenced elections and popular opinion.
> From where I sit it's a brilliant move on Trumps part


The fact that the White House declined the international call for social media censorship because it violates the first amendment rights shows that they take action and are not all talk.


----------



## Clydefrosch (May 16, 2019)

SG854 said:


> You are more focused on Racist White Nationalist. And nobody likes them. They have no governmental or social support. I’m talking more about one political side being targeted because of rules they set up that doesn’t respect their political beliefs that are not as extreme as a White Nationalist.



i know that's what you're talking about. but it's not the reality of things. that's the false pretense that racists and white nationalists on twitter want you to believe.

neither facebook, nor twitters rules target conservatives arguing conservative politics and viewpoints any more or less than they target liberals arguing libteral politcs or viewpoints.
but they do target people inciting violence against say migrants. the same they would target anyone inciting violence against literal nazis. or republicans.

here's the thing: if you're 'conservative' and a racist and you share both sides of your character on twitter, being 'conservative' can not be a shield that protects you against punshment for racism.
though in jacks eyes, it should be.



and you know why this is an issue for trump? and one that he is blowing out of propotions like this? with an official meeting to complain to Jack personally? and a website? and a string of tweets by the president who has cast out journalists and news organizations from presidential press meetings, insisting there is a constitutional crisis happening?

because he's angry that his follower count fluctuates when racists and bots are deleted once in a blue moon.
a thing that happens, not because twitter targets conservatives (on the contrary) but because, and it shouldn't surprise you, bots and nationalists and racists are a seizable part of his online support base.


----------



## tech3475 (May 16, 2019)

I wonder how long before the internet takes the p*** out of it and crashes it?


----------



## Clydefrosch (May 16, 2019)

one more thing to think about.
you know who also 'censors' opposing views on their websites with a passion?
right wing media like breitbart.
and right-leaning subreddits.
and right-leaning facebook groups.


but i have a feeling, even if the overwhelming number of reports were made for those places, it wouldn't be what this administration would focus on...


----------



## Joe88 (May 16, 2019)

Clydefrosch said:


> one more thing to think about.
> you know who also 'censors' opposing views on their websites with a passion?
> right wing media like breitbart.
> and right-leaning subreddits.
> ...


Two of those arnt even social media. 
This more has to do with the companies themselves censoring content not the random people running the groups, ie: facebook removing right leaning groups or not allowing the groups to show up in searches, etc...

I can also create list of 100 far left sites that censor other opinions into oblivion, but it has nothing to do with this.


----------



## Clydefrosch (May 16, 2019)

Joe88 said:


> Two of those arnt even social media.
> This more has to do with the companies themselves censoring content not the random people running the groups, ie: facebook removing right leaning groups or not allowing the groups to show up in searches, etc...
> 
> I can also create list of 100 far left sites that censor other opinions into oblivion, but it has nothing to do with this.



the point being that on one side of the spectrum, 'censoring' happens to suppress things like racism. and on the other side of the spectrum, it happens to suppress actual legitimate opinion.


----------



## zomborg (May 16, 2019)

Clydefrosch said:


> the point being that on one side of the spectrum, 'censoring' happens to suppress things like racism. and on the other side of the spectrum, it happens to suppress actual legitimate opinion.


But what if you are a conservative who is not racist and whose only offense, for example was having a picture of the cross as your profile picture?

Believe it or not my friend but by the 1990s or perhaps earlier, most conservatives had moved past racism. It's only resurfaced in recent years in an attempt to divide.

When I talk to my average black fellow citizen in the deep south they know nothing about all of these stories being propagated to stir people up. We are just as friendly as always.


----------



## The Real Jdbye (May 16, 2019)

I don't think people submitting reports on this website is gonna make any difference whatsoever. But hey, it was a nice sentiment. I guess Trump's not all bad. Just mostly bad.


----------



## Hanafuda (May 16, 2019)

I lol’d when Facebook said Louis Farrakhan was right wing.


And then there’s this.

https://mobile.twitter.com/HJJoyceE...xpressing-clinical-opinion-on-transgenderism/


----------



## burial (May 16, 2019)

This should be fun.....more than conservatives/christians get censored. A lot of leftists and anti-religious people are silenced too.

But trump and his ilk are too fucking ignorant to understand that.


----------



## FAST6191 (May 16, 2019)

Amusing to see. Not sure how useful it will be in the end (it is a government directed website after all) but no objections to them trying.

Re: first amendment vs private companies. Most of the argument I saw was less about that and more about figuring out whether such sites wanted to be treated as a publisher or a data carrier. If they are a publisher then they are bound by certain rules but they also get certain abilities, if they are a carrier then they get safe harbour provisions but are more limited to mess with data. There was a fairly interesting 9th circuit court case a little while back -- http://fortune.com/2017/04/10/dmca-ruling-livejournal/ https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/04/ninth-circuit-sends-message-platforms-use-moderator-go-trial https://blogs.findlaw.com/ninth_circuit/2017/04/court-ruling-makes-dmca-safe-harbor-less-safe.html
It was also noted Facebook is embroiled either currently or recently in a couple of different cases where they are trying to claim each way as it benefits them for that case.

That said from what we have seen from facebook, twitter et al this last however long they can go fuck themselves with the proverbial rusty spork, even more than usual. I am not a fan of their censorious ways, and don't think it does a tiny bit of good other than make people think they have done something when if anything they have made it worse -- "sunlight, wonderful disinfectant", cool and mysterious sees it fester and linger. At the same time "it is the new public town square" holds little water for me, at least until they get something passed into law saying people have to sort things and thus own the space -- no way this humble little forum can deploy some kind of machine learning setup to monitor the place and if that is all but required... yeah.

Hopefully people come to see them for what they are and they go the way of myspace.


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

Hilariously pointless.  Social media sites are not beholden to the government or the first amendment.  What's Trump going to do?  Bitch at them via Twitter?  He already does that.


----------



## zomborg (May 17, 2019)

His approval rating is going up with me. Last time I checked the zomborg poll he was at an historic 67%


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

Also wouldn't any enforcement action in this regard be infringing upon the business owners' rights?  "Management reserves the right to refuse service to _anyone_" and all that.  I thought Republicans were the pro-business party?


----------



## notimp (May 17, 2019)

Xzi said:


> Also wouldn't any enforcement action in this regard be infringing upon the business owners' rights?  "Management reserves the right to refuse service to _anyone_" and all that.  I thought Republicans were the pro-business party?


Please remember that facebook doesnt want to see themselves as a media company. They refuse to do so. They tell anyone that tells them that "your content is outrageous (russian propaganda, 'legal' opioid ads, ...)"  -- WE ARE JUST A COMMON CARRIER, the news is made by our independent contributors, we just push out everything to peoples feeds, thats fun to them.

IF YOU STILL havent grasped that facebook is an ad network - fuck you at this point, I mean show some grasp of reality. And if you are now concerned for freedom of speech rights for ad networks, what the eff..

You can be concerned for the freedom of speech for the 'independent contributers', but not for facebook or twitter for effs sake. Yeah, the 120 algorithm junkeys to sell the most ads, really care about speech. And a corporation is a natural person, with free speech rights, just because the law says so?

OH, I'm so very concerned about their freedom rights. I mean, they are only a monopoly so far. Lets all be worried about if they would show that constrain - entirely voluntarily.

But then again, I'm so over that platform.. Trump apparently isnt.


----------



## SomeKindOfUsername (May 17, 2019)

By "Trump" you mean the conniving members of the GOP.

This isn't about freedom of speech or censorship, God knows it's not about the first amendment (how about them press passes?) or any other such freedoms. It's about preying on hurt feelings and victimhood, fear of a non-existent threat of a wide-scale silencing of opposing views, but perhaps most importantly it's about marketing and campaigning. This is good PR even if they aren't sincere and it gets people signed onto email lists.


----------



## notimp (May 17, 2019)

SomeKindOfUsername said:


> By "Trump" you mean the conniving members of the GOP.


And by conniving do you mean - you are some nut, that thinks of politics, like their personal soap opera? As idk 30% of americans do?

Do you want to read "conniving" in headlines? Is that what you are missing?


----------



## Hanafuda (May 17, 2019)

Xzi said:


> Also wouldn't any enforcement action in this regard be infringing upon the business owners' rights?  "Management reserves the right to refuse service to _anyone_" and all that.  I thought Republicans were the pro-business party?




I pretty much agree with you. Not because I'm pro business, but hey it's a free country (or it's supposed to be) and this doesn't have much (anything) to do with government infringing on free speech.

This story did bring a couple things to mind though. Again, not the government's business necessarily, but a punishing action based on a defamatory labeling of someone's speech as racist or 'hate speech' could theoretically be actionable as libel. At least when the banned person is not a public figure (celeb, politician), and particularly where the action could have damaging effects on one's career, etc. See the link I posted above, for example, about Twitter banning Ray Blanchard. His comments were posted as professional, clinical expert opinions on a subject. What he wrote might be disagreeable to some, but it certainly wasn't hate speech. I would certainly consider Twitter's ban a damaging character smear in that instance.

Another thing this made me think of is the so-called 'fairness doctrine' that keeps getting revived by Democrats every few years, i.e. legislation to force a balance of left/right voices on the radio. Yes, the airwaves are regulated by the FCC so there's government involvement. But is the internet really any different nowadays, functionally? I'd say social media sounding boards like Twitter and Facebook might even have a more significant role than 'the airwaves' now. If the fairness doctrine is sound policy from the Democrat perspective, why can't this be?

Just thinking out loud. My personal opinion is that if your kind of thinking isn't welcome by the owners of a privately-owned discussion board, small scale or large, then you don't belong there.


----------



## SomeKindOfUsername (May 17, 2019)

notimp said:


> And by conniving do you mean - you are some nut, that thinks of politics, like their personal soap opera? As idk 30% of americans do?
> 
> Do you want to read "conniving" in headlines? Is that what you are missing?


The only thing I'm thinking is how you need to work on your non sequiturs.


----------



## slaphappygamer (May 17, 2019)

This is a great resource that will be forgotten in 3 months.


----------



## piratesephiroth (May 17, 2019)

Xzi said:


> Hilariously pointless.  Social media sites are not beholden to the government or the first amendment.  What's Trump going to do?  Bitch at them via Twitter?  He already does that.


Yeah, remember when black people were forced to sit at the back of the bus. Private businesses so nothing wrong with that, right?


----------



## SomeKindOfUsername (May 17, 2019)

piratesephiroth said:


> Yeah, remember when black people were forced to sit at the back of the bus. Private businesses so nothing wrong with that, right?


Aren't most buses municipal?

Anyway, who's with me that GBATemp needs to stop deleting posts that openly link to piracy? Free speech and all that.


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

piratesephiroth said:


> Yeah, remember when black people were forced to sit at the back of the bus. Private businesses so nothing wrong with that, right?


That's more of a human rights issue than a free speech one.  Banning someone from a site/forum (regardless of the reasoning) isn't quite on par with treating a whole race of people as second-class citizens, now is it?


----------



## piratesephiroth (May 17, 2019)

SomeKindOfUsername said:


> Anyway, who's with me that GBATemp needs to stop deleting posts that openly link to piracy? Free speech and all that.


You should first ask the content owners not to come after gbatemp when they catch those links




Xzi said:


> That's more of a human rights issue than a free speech one.  Banning someone from a site/forum (regardless of the reasoning) isn't quite on par with treating a whole race of people as second-class citizens, now is it?


it is similar when it's based on ideology or political alignnment.


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

piratesephiroth said:


> it is similar when it's based on ideology or political alignnment.


It's based on users breaking rules that were clearly defined for them when they created an account.  It's not the business's fault if the user decides not to read those rules, they still have the right to enforce said rules.

To compare low-level internet drama to the civil rights movement is absolutely absurd.


----------



## piratesephiroth (May 17, 2019)

Xzi said:


> It's based on users breaking rules that were clearly defined for them when they created an account.  It's not the business's fault if the user decides not to read those rules, they still have the right to enforce said rules.
> 
> To compare low-level internet drama to the civil rights movement is absolutely absurd.


Nope, they're openly silencing conservative voices worldwide.
They learned their lesson after Trump and other anti-establishment politicians rose to power thanks to social media.

Now they're making sure this won't ever happen again, directly engaging in election meddling.

https://www.rt.com/news/457660-twitter-bans-tommy-sargon/


----------



## supersonicwaffle (May 17, 2019)

Clydefrosch said:


> millions of eyes rolling unconrollably.
> 
> because that's the type of problem that -TRULY- requires the president to launch a website to take action...
> i hope people use it to report actual problems, like that suicide plan for the economy...



Everyone: social media is extremely important to our democratic process. It's so powerful that foreign governments use it to interfere with elections

The Left: let's do a two year witch hunt to see if the current president conspired with foreign governments to manipulate people on social media.

The Right: let's collect data. People have been banned from social media, we need to figure out whether we need to protect access because it's become so important to the democratic process.

The Left: millions of eyes rolling uncontrollably. "Don't we have real problems?"


I guess you described TDS symptoms quite well.


----------



## notimp (May 17, 2019)

Just out of interest who of you knows the difference between a media outlet, and a common carrier?

Just because I'm amazed how many people think of facebook as literally anything - but what they actually are. But isnt that the platform where I get all my free news, family pictures, coupons and personalized ads? No - moron, thats the platform that doesnt care about anything anyone does, unless it scares off advertisers, or makes you share less of the data they sell. Thats literally it. They dont employ any journalists. And if they employ censors, they are sitting in banglasch and the philippines, apart from a token office with graffiti somewhere in Palo Alto.

You are worried about their freedom of speech? The companies that literally are "the internet" and free short messages - to large parts of the world.

I mean - f*ck.

And by the way, you love them, because of emotional attribution. Grandma sees her grandchildren there. Grandma can boast with her grandchildren there. Grand ma can become important in a useless facebook group. And her grandson checks out girls there, then uses whatsapp to call them over. We all love facebook. Does it have to do anything with what they are producing? If it isnt the newsfeed (algorithmically created, so you spend as much time on the platform as possible) - no. Free speech for facebook...


----------



## supersonicwaffle (May 17, 2019)

notimp said:


> Just out of interest who of you knows the difference between a media outlet, and a common carrier?



Just out of interest, do you know that social media is neither but it can be argued that they act as both?


----------



## osaka35 (May 17, 2019)

Wait. Let me get this straight. The white house wants you to tell them if you've felt you've been silenced on social media.

Okay.

But why do you think they'd actually do anything about it? Why do you think they'd do anything other than cherry-pick examples given to them? Or draw up some statistics that'll support whatever they're trying to do? What do you think they're going to do with unverifiable opinions? This ain't no study.


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

piratesephiroth said:


> They learned their lesson after Trump and other anti-establishment politicians rose to power thanks to social media.


"Anti-establishment," rofl.  Anti-establishment leaders don't cut the corporate tax rate in half, attempt to get abortion banned, push for an uneccessary war with Iran, declare the children of gay couples 'non-citizens,' etc.  Not only is Trump a pawn of the Republican establishment, he's also pawn to a number of foreign government establishments.  Such a fucking joke to call a lifelong East-coast elitist "anti-establishment."


----------



## supersonicwaffle (May 17, 2019)

osaka35 said:


> But why do you think they'd actually do anything about it?



I believe there's already legislative efforts for regulation



> Why do you think they'd do anything other than cherry-pick examples given to them? Or draw up some statistics that'll support whatever they're trying to do? What do you think they're going to do with unverifiable opinions?



I guess that's a problem with polling and surveys in general. As long as they make the data public, this is a really good thing.
There's a lot of shit flinging from both sides that has no basis in data like censorship of conservatives on facebook and twitter or youtube algorithms pushing extremism onto people. As far as I'm aware there's no data out there to substantiate anything, with regards to youtube there's some data that contradicts that mantra.


----------



## osaka35 (May 17, 2019)

supersonicwaffle said:


> I believe there's already legislative efforts for regulation. I guess that's a problem with polling and surveys in general. As long as they make the data public, this is a really good thing. There's a lot of shit flinging from both sides that has no basis in data like censorship of conservatives on facebook and twitter or youtube algorithms pushing extremism onto people. As far as I'm aware there's no data out there to substantiate anything, with regards to youtube there's some data that contradicts that mantra.


With surveys and polling in regards to things like this, you can only measure perceptions. While you could make that leap sometimes, it'd be incredibly irresponsible to do so in this kind of situation. And I always suggest hesitation to completely trust the government just because they ask you to. This is why such things are usually handled by independent organizations with transparency. Assume this is going to be used for shady political manipulation unless there's evidence to the contrary.


----------



## supersonicwaffle (May 17, 2019)

osaka35 said:


> With surveys and polling in regards to things like this, you can only measure perceptions. While you could make that leap sometimes, it'd be incredibly irresponsible to do so in this kind of situation. And I always suggest hesitation to completely trust the government just because they ask you to. This is why such things are usually handled by independent organizations with transparency. Assume this is going to be used for shady political manipulation unless there's evidence to the contrary.



Oh I agree, I'd rather this be done independent but the market (journalism) seems to have failed in this regard, they were more interested in opinion pieces supported by anecdotes than real journalism with facts and data.

Now, this could be because they have a very incestuous relationship with social media where they rely on shares and likes but that's speculation.


----------



## notimp (May 17, 2019)

supersonicwaffle said:


> Just out of interest, do you know that social media is neither but it can be argued that they act as both?


Can be argued? As in that politics and the public say that they are media, but they always use the "common carrier" complaint to get out of any responsibility.

Heck you are dumb. Do you ever think before you speak?

Now - lets go through a few things here.

- Do they employ journalists?
- Do they produce news stories or journalism?
- Do they adhere to a media codex?
- Do they refer to themselves as mass media?
- Do they employ behavioral psychologists?
- Are they paid by their consumers?

F*ck.

People like you, see story on facebook, think its facebook - and like them for story. Story in most cases gets produced by your friends, who facebook makes you idolize more - so you get better feels, when they react to you. Thats the concept the entire influencer movement is born out of. Now are those media companies?

It can be argued for as well?

Now, what editorial responsibility were they willing to take so far?
- will fix it in algorithms (keyword filters, as far as we've seen so far)
- we'll make our censors in the philippines look over "all the content"
- we'll only push newsstories _ourselves_ (different from actual word of mounth which still can propagate freely (friends of friends)), if one of the major news networks pushed it

Now they deserve concerns about having their press freedoms upheld? As an ad company? Are you mad?


----------



## osaka35 (May 17, 2019)

supersonicwaffle said:


> Oh I agree, I'd rather this be done independent but the market (journalism) seems to have failed in this regard, they were more interested in opinion pieces supported by anecdotes than real journalism with facts and data.


can't argue too much with that. there's some good journalist out there, but it's hard to report proper news when you have to make a profit doing so. I try and stick to news directly from the AP.


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

osaka35 said:


> can't argue too much with that. there's some good journalist out there, but it's hard to report proper news when you have to make a profit doing so. I try and stick to news directly from the AP.


The larger issue stems from the demand to have news presented immediately, instead of having it presented when it's ready.  Which ties back in to social media having too much influence over our entire discourse.  The opinions of Twitter/Facebook are not the same as the opinions of the average US citizen.


----------



## Foxi4 (May 17, 2019)

The reason why this is of interest to the government despite the fact that platforms like Facebook or YouTube are privately owned is the fact that they are the de facto public square on the Internet, much like a mall is in real life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Robins

Let's not forget that these companies get a government kick-back for providing said public square - Social Media are protected by Safe Harbor laws for as long as they are vehicles for hosting user-created content which waives most of the responsibility regarding copyright claims and other forms of legal liability. If a case showing that these platforms disproportionately target specific groups of users _(which they obviously do, let's not pretend that this isn't common knowledge) _can be made then that makes them publishers responsible for moderating said content, and not just _"some of it"_, but all of it.

This isn't a _"they are private companies, they can do whatever they want"_ case, this is a case of companies that exist because the government pumped billions of dollars into the infrastructure and they _continue _to exist because the government allows them to _on the proviso _that they remain impartial.


----------



## supersonicwaffle (May 17, 2019)

notimp said:


> Can be argued? As in that politics and the public say that they are media, but they always use the "common carrier" complaint to get out of any responsibility.
> 
> Heck you are dumb. Do you ever think before you speak?
> 
> ...



They're no using the common carrier complaint to get out of responsibility. They aren't responsible because of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act



> No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider



If they were common carrier the argument for social media to ban only in accordance with constitutional rights (free speech) would be much stronger.

You can argue that their rules for content curation or promotion, because that's kinda what their rules and algorithms are, is editorial work, so they are acting like a media outlet in some capacity.

You go back to stroke your superiority complex personality disorder and tell everyone how dumb humanity is.


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> The reason why this is of interest to the government despite the fact that platforms like Facebook or YouTube are privately owned is the fact that they are the de facto public square on the Internet, much like a mall is in real life.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Robins
> 
> ...


And government (especially under Republicans) doesn't just give tons of money away to _all_ corporations?  Are you saying the government has de facto control over all the means of production?  Why, Foxi, I never knew you were such a staunch Socialist.


----------



## notimp (May 17, 2019)

Here is what being a media company means.

If they push any content, you are liable for it. Can be sued personally - by anyone that thinks that you used their name in vain.

And your main defense along those lines is - that you did it, because it was in the public interest.

Nothing facebook does is in the public interest.

Huh. Hows that for contrast.

If we get down to the legalities, they arent even 'connecting people' they are providing tech, that is connecting people.

Storage space is down to cents of a gigabyte - they compress the heck out of your images - grandma doesnt know how to upload a video - they are making money out of everyone - with every action they are doing. Uploading photos? They use to train AI sets. Setting up the college you are out of. Creating a better ad profile. Talking to people, creating social graphs. Thats what they are producing, or do you think their VR gag - was their companies output?

What do they use the money for? To buy patents on the backend. Ammunition against legal battles and anyone trying to infinge on their business model.

I mean, in all seriousness, how many of the programmers in this community do you think would it take to create some facebook equivalent? Five, ten? For three months, maybe six? Now - what are facebook doing apart from that? Being an ad sales company the entire rest of the day. Media stuff? Not so much.


----------



## osaka35 (May 17, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> The reason why this is of interest to the government despite the fact that platforms like Facebook or YouTube are privately owned is the fact that they are the de facto public square on the Internet, much like a mall is in real life.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._Robins
> 
> ...


how do you measure whether a group has been targeted?

if you target, for example, death threats for removal. and you run a poll like this and you get feedback that one particular group, let's say 90 year old ladies in knitting clubs, are being banned a lot more than any other group...do you assume that group is being targeted? or does that group just post more of the offending materials? how much should we care or know?

I suppose the question is, what responsibility does these common places have to allow fake news, personal attacks, and political manipulation (among other things)? and what other than the content should be considered?


----------



## Foxi4 (May 17, 2019)

osaka35 said:


> how do you measure whether a group has been targeted?
> 
> if you target, for example, death threats for removal. and you run a poll like this and you get feedback that one particular group, let's say 90 year old ladies in knitting clubs, are being banned a lot more than any other group...do you assume that group is being targeted? or does that group just post more of the offending materials? how much should we care or know?
> 
> I suppose the question is, what responsibility does these common places have to allow fake news, personal attacks, and political manipulation (among other things)? and what other than the content should be considered?


I don't understand how this is even a question. If one group is allowed to post content that the other group is penalised for, that's bias right there. It's obvious and measurable.



Xzi said:


> And government (especially under Republicans) doesn't just give tons of money away to _all_ corporations?  Are you saying the government has de facto control over all the means of production?  Why, Foxi, I never knew you were such a staunch Socialist.


It's a bit of a different story here. The government in large part funded the creation and expansion of the Internet, any company that operates in the confines of the Internet effectively operates in the publicly funded square and is subject to legislation concerning such public settings. I certainly agree that they should give basically no money to any private company ever, but I don't get to make those decisions.


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

osaka35 said:


> how do you measure whether a group has been targeted?
> 
> if you target, for example, death threats for removal. and you run a poll like this and you get feedback that one particular group, let's say 90 year old ladies in knitting clubs, are being banned a lot more than any other group...do you assume that group is being targeted? or does that group just post more of the offending materials? how much should we care?
> 
> I suppose the question is, what responsibility does these common places have to allow fake news, personal attacks, and political manipulation (among other things)? and what other than the content should be considered?


Largely irrelevant because the case he cited doesn't apply to websites.  You can't 'stand outside of' websites to collect signatures for a cause.  You're either on the platform or you're not.  And just to create an account, you have to agree to the platform's ToS/EULA/rules/etc, and subsequently abide by them.  Otherwise risk deletion of comments or an account ban.  It's always been the same, even before Myspace was popular and a million different forums/geocities sites ruled the web.

The Trump administration has no more right telling social media sites how to enforce their rules than they do telling GBAtemp how to enforce ours.


----------



## Foxi4 (May 17, 2019)

Xzi said:


> Largely irrelevant because the case he cited doesn't apply to websites.  You can't 'stand outside of' websites to collect signatures for a cause.  You're either on the platform or you're not.  And just to create an account, you have to agree to the platform's ToS/EULA/rules/etc, and subsequently abide by them.  Otherwise risk deletion of comments or an account ban.  It's always been the same, even before Myspace was popular and a million different forums/geocities sites ruled the web.
> 
> The Trump administration has no more right telling social media sites how to enforce their rules than they do telling GBAtemp how to enforce ours.


You're conveniently forgetting that A) yes, you absolutely can, affiliate links are a thing (as in, go to Amazon normally *or* follow my link to Amazon which gives me a kickback, or funds a cause, or whatever else) and B) the Supreme Court decision concerns all public places inside the mall that are used for the purposes of gathering and relaxation, not "outside". Read the actual decision.

It's also demonstrably false that the government has "no right" to intervene, and I explained why. Unlike Facebook, GBATemp is _not _protected by Safe Harbor in the same way Facebook or YouTube are purely due to our size. Our site is effectively responsible for what's hosted on it, and pretty directly at that. It's a completely false dichotomy.


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> It's a bit of a different story here. The government in large part funded the creation and expansion of the Internet, any company that operates in the confines of the Internet effectively operates in the publicly funded square and is subject to legislation concerning such public settings. I certainly agree that they should give basically no money to any private company ever, but I don't get to make those decisions.


Ohhh, so the government only owns all the businesses which use the internet to conduct said business.  Yeah, still gonna have to disagree on that one.  Only the ISPs should feel indebted to the government in any way, and they absolutely do not give a fuck and have not held up their end of the bargain.  Facebook and other social media companies do not get funded by the government any more than other big corporations do.  Private business is still private business, and none of them would take that government money if it meant giving up operational sovereignty.


----------



## supersonicwaffle (May 17, 2019)

notimp said:


> Here is what being a media company means.
> 
> If the push any content, you are liable for it. Can be sued personally - by anyone that thinks that you used their name in vain.
> 
> ...



Look, I haven't said they are a media outlet or a publisher, I said they're acting like one in some capacity.
They aren't liable because they provide an "interactive computer service", it's a 25 year old law, the internet was way different back then. Facebook has even argued they're a publisher in court before, but you go ahead and tell me I'm dumb.

That's all that I'm going to respond to you with, you're clearly not interested in arguing the dictionary definition of the terms you bring up yourself and I'm quite sure any rebuttal would be met by further shifting of goalposts. You can argue what a term means to you personally to a mirror for all I care.


----------



## notimp (May 17, 2019)

Social media: You all produce the media content. For nothing in return. (Emotional payouts.)

Ask Media Molecule what they are doing with Dreams, ask Ubisoft - when they wanted to make Beyond good an Evil 2 a 'community driven endless universe'. Are they media companies?


----------



## osaka35 (May 17, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> I don't understand how this is even a question. If one group is allowed to post content that the other group is penalised for, that's bias right there. It's obvious and measurable.


right, which more comes down to what you consider equivalent content.

the obvious and measurablely wrong, like anti-global warming, flat-earthers, 9-11 truthers, antivaxx, alternative medicine, chemtrails, etc., would probably say they're being unfairly silenced. it's not an easy business, combating the crazies. do you stick to the extreme fringes and go for the easy-to-disprove ones, like mentioned, or do you go for political manipulation of facts too? how do you measure that exactly?

I'm not sure why you think it's obvious and easy to measure. what kind of content are you talking about?


----------



## Foxi4 (May 17, 2019)

Xzi said:


> Ohhh, so the government only owns all the businesses which use the internet to conduct said business.  Yeah, still gonna have to disagree on that one.  Only the ISPs should feel indebted to the government in any way, and they absolutely do not give a fuck and have not held up their end of the bargain.  Facebook and other social media companies do not get funded by the government any more than other big corporations do.  Private business is still private business, and none of them would take that government money if it meant giving up operational sovereignty.


I never said that the government owns the business, I said that the government owns the medium the business is conducted on and gets to set rules regarding how said business is conducted. If the government builds 10 miles of a train track, it's a publicly-owned train track. A private company can use said train track for the purposes of commerce, but the government gets to decide what the privileges and the limitations of that usage are. It's really not that hard of a concept to grasp.



osaka35 said:


> right, which more comes down to what you consider equivalent content.
> 
> the obvious and measurablely wrong, like anti-global warming, flat-earthers, 9-11 truthers, antivaxx, alternative medicine, chemtrails, etc., would probably say they're being unfairly silenced. it's not an easy business, combating the crazies. do you stick to the extreme fringes and go for the easy-to-disprove ones, like mentioned, or do you go for political manipulation of facts too? how do you measure that exactly?
> 
> I'm not sure why you think it's obvious and easy to measure. what kind of content are you talking about?


It's actually fairly simple to make that determination - are they silenced at all? Then it's not a public square, determination made. I'm a free speech absolutist - unless the speech is blatantly in violation of the law, it must necessarily be allowed on the public square.


----------



## osaka35 (May 17, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> It's actually fairly simple to make that determination - are they silenced at all? Then it's not a public square, determination made. I'm a free speech absolutist - unless the speech is blatantly in violation of the law, it must necessarily be allowed on the public square.



hmmm ...how would you feel if anti-factual stuff was auto-tagged with warnings or evidence as to why it's crazy-land?


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> I said that the government owns the medium the business is conducted on and gets to set rules regarding how said business is conducted.


I look forward to the shitshow that ensues on the day the US government tries to lay proprietary claim to the internet. 

That said, the likelihood of it ever actually happening is near zero.  The internet is well beyond the US government's control by now, especially considering they get hacked by it regularly.

Additionally, if getting banned from websites or getting comments deleted constituted violations of the first amendment, there would've been numerous class-action lawsuits by the ACLU and such carried through already.


----------



## supersonicwaffle (May 17, 2019)

Xzi said:


> I look forward to the shitshow that ensues on the day the US government tries to lay proprietary claim to the internet.
> 
> That said, the likelihood of it ever actually happening is near zero. The internet is well beyond the US government's control by now, especially considering they get hacked by it regularly.



The medium would be the actual infrastructure like copper or fiber, idk how things are in the US but over here most of that stuff is publicly owned.


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

supersonicwaffle said:


> The medium would be the actual infrastructure like copper or fiber, idk how things are in the US but over here most of that stuff is publicly owned.


In the US the government gave tons of money to certain ISPs to install all the necessary infrastructure.  They didn't stipulate that the infrastructure would be publicly owned, and the ISPs didn't provide near as much coverage as they promised, either.  None the less, the two major ISPs in America own nearly the entire internet infrastructure.

So yeah, our government owns nothing about the internet at this point except bragging rights that they helped invent it.


----------



## Foxi4 (May 17, 2019)

osaka35 said:


> hmmm ...how would you feel if anti-factual stuff was auto-tagged with warnings or evidence as to why it's crazy-land?


How would you feel if "A Modest Proposal" was prefaced with a mandatory disclaimer that it's satire?


Xzi said:


> In the US the government gave tons of money to certain ISPs to install all the necessary infrastructure.  They didn't stipulate that the infrastructure would be publicly owned, and the ISPs didn't provide near as much coverage as they promised, either.  None the less, the two major ISPs in America own nearly the entire internet infrastructure.


We're not talking about a spool of wires and some servers, we're talking about the abstract concept of the Internet which was the result of separating ARPANET into MILNET for military purposes and the Internet for the purposes of use by the public. I reiterate, Facebook, YouTube and other companies of high caliber that deal with insane amounts of traffic lobbied for Safe Harbor in order to ensure that the liability for copyright infringement lays primarily on the users uploading content as the sheer amount of it is so huge that it is effectively impossible to moderate, even with advanced AI. They made a calculated bet that the cost of fighting legal battles was higher than the cost of providing a public square for the people where they can freely exchange ideas so long as they're not in violation of the law. That is the cost of the protection they received from the government, and they must necessarily pay up. This isn't about a fringe lunatic here or there, this is about the freedom of expression on the Internet. All I see is Silicon Valley companies colluding to remove certain voices from the public square and making efforts to squash any and all competition that might provide an alternative - GAB is a prime example. In order to show everyone that they totally do not collude, Google and Apple banned the GAB app in both of the app stores, thus proving that there are animals that are equal and more equal on the Internet. _"It's a private company, it can do whatever it wants"_ can only function if the possibility of competition exists. Let's say that GBAtemp gets delisted from Google results because _"it's a private company, it can do what it wants"_, then it gets denied hosting because _"that's a private company too, it can do what it wants"_, then it gets straight up banned by ISP's because _"they're private companies"_, and to make things even more fun, it gets blacklisted by Stripe and PayPal because _"they're private"_, give me your feasible step 1. Do we build our own Internet, now with hookers and blow? No. Currently there exist scenarios where private citizens are simply not allowed on the Internet, or their reach is severely limited, and that cannot be allowed - it is counter to the purpose of the Internet.


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> I reiterate, Facebook, YouTube and other companies of high caliber that deal with insane amounts of traffic lobbied for Safe Harbor in order to ensure that the liability for copyright infringement lays primarily on the users uploading content as the sheer amount of it is so huge that it is effectively impossible to moderate, even with advanced AI. They made a calculated bet that the cost of fighting legal battles was higher than the cost of providing a public square for the people where they can freely exchange ideas so long as they're not in violation of the law.


When have social media rules ever been aligned with US law?  Not now, not ever.  Still no lawsuits challenging that, either, because it's clearly a losing case.



Foxi4 said:


> _"It's a private company, it can do whatever it wants"_ can only function if the possibility of competition exists.


Facebook does have a bit too much of the market, but there is still plenty of competition when it comes to social media.  As a last resort there's always the cesspool that is 4chan, practically not moderated at all.



Foxi4 said:


> Currently there exist scenarios where private citizens are simply not allowed on the Internet, or their reach is severely limited, and that cannot be allowed - it is counter to the purpose of the Internet.


This ignores the entire concept of personal responsibility.  You can't just say whatever you want in public without consequences.  Same deal on the internet.  Social media sites are under no obligation to provide a platform to edgelord teenagers who post walls of text full of racial slurs.


----------



## Foxi4 (May 17, 2019)

Xzi said:


> When have social media rules ever been aligned with US law?  Not now, not ever.  Still no lawsuits challenging that, either, because it's clearly a losing case.


We don't need one. There are two solutions in this kerfuffle - either A) the government takes Safe Harbor away and equalises the market to allow start-ups to compete on a level playing field or B), the more likely scenario, the Internet further decentralises and starts working as it was originally intended to work thanks to services like Mastodon which split the network across constituent nodes. That's a true "web", as opposed to the current spaghetti factory.


> Facebook does have a bit too much of the market, but there is still plenty of competition when it comes to social media.  As a last resort there's always the cesspool that is 4chan, practically not moderated at all.


Apples and oranges.


> This ignores the entire concept of personal responsibility.  You can't just say whatever you want in public without consequences.  Same deal on the internet.  Social media sites are under no obligation to provide a platform to edgelord teenagers who post walls of text full of racial slurs.


Again, false. You absolutely _can_ say whatever you want in the public and the consequences, much like the responsibility, are _personal_. The consequence of saying stupid crap is being ostracised by your peers, not being dragged off the public square and into a dirty alley, out of sight and earshot. You are offloading your responsibility to Unfriend idiots onto Facebook by depriving the idiots of the right to speak. You can keep saying that they have no obligation to provide a public platform, but I must reiterate that they do - they operate as a public platform, not a publisher, that's why they don't get hounded from one court to the other by copyright holders.

It's funny how the proponents of Net Neutrality are always the first to point out that Social Media companies are _"private and can do whatever they want"_. It must be nice to have principles that are this flexible.


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> You absolutely _can_ say whatever you want in the public and the consequences, much like the responsibility, are _personal_. You are offloading your responsibility to Unfriend idiots onto Facebook by depriving the idiot of the right to speak.


I'm not seeing the distinction.  You offload your responsibility to stop hearing idiots yell about conspiracy theories in public onto police or third-party security officers.  Either way the offender is removed from the equation.  The only other option is letting the offender stick around and drive everyone else off, which is obviously terrible for business.  And at the end of the day, like all capitalist ventures, social media sites are far more beholden to their bottom line (advertisers) than they are to the government.


----------



## Foxi4 (May 17, 2019)

Xzi said:


> I'm not seeing the distinction.  You offload your responsibility to stop hearing idiots yell about conspiracy theories in public onto police or third-party security officers.  Either way the offender is removed from the equation.  The only other option is letting the offender stick around and drive everyone else off, which is obviously terrible for business.


...and the police does what, exactly? If the speech is not illegal, it is permissable by definition. You fail to see the distinction because you fail to understand the ramifications of operating as a public platform. I'm pretty much wasting my breath here, but I'll state it to the audience - we are not like Facebook. GBAtemp is a privately owned website. As such, membership is a privilege, not a right, and it is conditional on following our rules board. We are responsible for the content hosted on the site and reserve the right to remove content if we deem it to be in violation of the rules. We directly and plainly state that content is moderated and may be removed from the site if the staff decides that it warrants deletion. We do our best to provide a _fair_ environment to share ideas, but that's our choice, not obligation. Facebook, due to its chosen nature of business, does not operate in this fashion. If they make the estimation that their users must be moderated for content, they accept the mantle of responsibility similar to ours. There are only two futures ahead of us - one were certain websites are allowed to legally discriminate without any responsibility on their end and one where sites are treated equally.

*EDIT: *Just to be clear, any website that allows users to upload content is covered by the same DMCA regulations as Facebook, what I mean to say is that they apply somewhat differently, and the reasons for that stem purely from our size. I think I explained that earlier, but I just wanted to be a little clearer.


----------



## Freezerbomb (May 17, 2019)

Burlsol said:


> These sites are privately owned. Free Speech protections do not apply for very good reason.


The problem with that is it’s creating “echo chambers.” Why is that wrong? Because it’s making people tribalistic and self righteous. It maybe necessary to ban privately owned public social networks.


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> ...and the police does what, exactly? If the speech is not illegal, it is permissable by definition.


Usually just drive them a few miles away and drop them off where they won't bother anybody.  Or jail them if they were getting too aggressive with people.  There's no mental healthcare infrastructure in this country, after all, so getting the proper care for the individual isn't an option.



Foxi4 said:


> We are not a public platform, GBAtemp is a privately owned website. As such, membership is a privilege, not a right


I simply have no idea where you got the idea that that Facebook is a publicly-owned platform.  They're publicly *traded*, but they're still a private company.  They don't get any more exemption for copyrighted content than the rest of the internet, either.  You can't just post links to torrent downloads and shit on Facebook/Reddit/etc.  Pretty much the only stuff that doesn't end up getting taken down on most social media falls under parody law or fair use.


----------



## Foxi4 (May 17, 2019)

Xzi said:


> Usually just drive them a few miles away and drop them off where they won't bother anybody.  Or jail them if they were getting too aggressive with people.  There's no mental healthcare infrastructure in this country, after all, so getting the proper care for the individual isn't an option.
> 
> 
> I simply have no idea where you got the idea that that Facebook is a publicly-owned platform.  They're publicly *traded*, but they're still a private company.  They don't get any more exemption for copyrighted content than the rest of the internet, either.  You can't just post links to torrent downloads and shit on Facebook/Reddit/etc.  Pretty much the only stuff that doesn't end up getting taken down on most social media falls under parody law or fair use.


Where did I say that they're publicly owned? I said that they're a public platform, in the sense that they're intended for use by the public - that's how the website is advertised and that's how it operates. Are you unfamiliar with the term?

Facebook is strongly protected by Safe Harbor regulations, more so than GBAtemp, because the sheer amount of user-generated content is impossible to moderate effectively. In the case of any smaller website, any DMCA notice must be complied with in order to avoid legal action. In the case of Facebook or YouTube the process is very much internal, they simply need to show that they've implemented technology to remove infringing content - how they use it is up to them. You mentioned that challenging that would be a losing battle, it'd be a shame if someone did challenge it. Oh wait. Mavrix Photographs LLC v. LiveJournal happened.


http://copyright.nova.edu/safe-harbor/

Once again, qualifying for full Safe Harbor protection has certain requirements, and the abuse of DMCA legislation should be properly addressed.


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> I said that they're a public platform, in the sense that they're intended for use by the public - that's how the website is advertised and that's how it operates.


I'm willing to believe this, provided Facebook themselves state it to be true.  Do you have a link to any such statement or not?

Because from my standpoint, any site that requires you to sign up for an account and agree to so many terms can't possibly be intended for use by the general public.  Especially if they're selling off user data as we know they do.


----------



## Foxi4 (May 17, 2019)

Xzi said:


> I'm willing to believe this, provided Facebook themselves state it to be true.  Do you have a link to any such statement or not?
> 
> Because from my standpoint, any site that requires you to sign up for an account and agree to so many terms can't possibly be intended for use by the general public.  Especially if they're selling off user data as we know they do.


I'm not particularly interested in what you believe, nor am I interested in doing legwork for you - it fulfills the definition. If you're looking for Facebook saying as much, re-watch Zuckerberg testifying before Congress. Long story short, they're a social media platform that operates in the public space. You don't need to swipe your Facebook card that charges you Facebook Bucks to use it, it was created so that anyone can create an account and use it, or even not create one and browse the content anyways. The sole raison d'etre of a social media platform is accessibility to the public.

The problem with Facebook right now is that in the public eye and in front of Congress they present themselves as a "platform", but when they're sued they suddenly become a "publisher". They have to pick one or the other - either they claim editorial privilege or they don't. One of the posters above alluded to this already. They must pick one or the other, the contradiction has to be cleared up, because the two types of entities are treated very differently in the eyes of the law. Sadly I have to post a link to The Guardian, which I detest, but oh well.

https://www.theguardian.com/technol...ok-mark-zuckerberg-platform-publisher-lawsuit


----------



## notimp (May 17, 2019)

Xzi said:


> That said, the likelihood of it ever actually happening is near zero. The internet is well beyond the US government's control by now, especially considering they get hacked by it regularly.


And then russia just created russianet. Basically. 
And china has chinanet. Basically.

And the US have US and europe net. Basically. And the rest of the world net.

Now china wants to create europes 5G based mobile internet (new internet TM). And the US goes bonkers. (Strongarming countries into not going with Huawei equipment. Like literally saying - we will exclude you from all our intelligence findings/sharing, if you do.)

Just saying. 

In all of those instances except for maybe the last one - but neh..  its about routing.

So russia and china want to be able to look into packets going into and out of their country (Because everyone has seen the US doing so.) while preventing others to do it to them, while maybe - just maybe... looking at the traffic of other countries. Like the ones who were on the verge of revolution int he past. 

You can still reroute (using a company VPN f.e.) and encrypt. But then you'll light up onsome control board.  (No, the feds arent coming for you yet - still only a new normal for our societies..  )

This:

(And then more in the months that followed -
this: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...ase-of-foreign-disruption-putin-idUSKCN1Q92EQ)


----------



## Clydefrosch (May 17, 2019)

zomborg said:


> But what if you are a conservative who is not racist and whose only offense, for example was having a picture of the cross as your profile picture?
> 
> Believe it or not my friend but by the 1990s or perhaps earlier, most conservatives had moved past racism. It's only resurfaced in recent years in an attempt to divide.
> 
> When I talk to my average black fellow citizen in the deep south they know nothing about all of these stories being propagated to stir people up. We are just as friendly as always.



none of that has anything to do with this trump tantrum about having less followers than obama?
your what if doesn't make anyone the target of any algorithm.
unless your 'cross' is burning in someones frontyard of course.

no one said that most conservatives are racist. 
the point is that most racists are self-indentifying as conservative (or try to obfuscate their racism as conservatism) and on a political level, they mainly do support conservatives. there's a huge difference between the two statements.
the problem being, the right side of politics doesn't seem to have any issue recruiting their politicians from that cespool of obvious racists. because it ensures that the otherwise voting-lazy racist votes for their side.

no idea what your 'average black fellow citizens' really have to do with it either. being friendly and being racist don't necessarily exclude each other. most racists clearly don't present themselves as openly racist when they're out and about, because they know there usually are social repercussions for that.

and institutionalized racism can still be a thing and will affect people of color even if we could wish every actual racist to the moon tomorrow. that's how institutions work and how for example hiring practises get entrenched, or the idea that it's safer to just shoot a black guy because you, as a trained policeman, feel he's much more likely to pull a gun on you than a white guy. 

because racism is more than just angry people openly shouting insults at people of color.


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> The problem with Facebook right now is that in the public eye and in front of Congress they present themselves as a "platform", but when they're sued they suddenly become a "publisher". They have to pick one or the other - either they claim editorial privilege or they don't. One of the posters above alluded to this already. They must pick one or the other, the contradiction has to be cleared up, because the two types of entities are treated very differently in the eyes of the law. Sadly I have to post a link to The Guardian, which I detest, but oh well.
> 
> https://www.theguardian.com/technol...ok-mark-zuckerberg-platform-publisher-lawsuit


Look at that lol, you made a big stink about providing a source in the first paragraph and then did it at the end anyway.  Not Facebook admitting it directly, but it'll do.

I have no issue with cracking down on corporations exploiting legal loopholes on a whim to benefit themselves, but let's be honest: that's not what the Trump administration cares about here.  They're just worried about what will benefit them politically, and allowing far-right extremism to flourish on social media accomplishes that.  I detest Facebook and Zuckerbot, but on a business level, I still wouldn't recommend they cede any operational control to the government, who has their own obvious agenda.


----------



## Foxi4 (May 17, 2019)

Xzi said:


> Look at that lol, you made a big stink about providing a source in the first paragraph and then did it at the end anyway.  Not Facebook admitting it directly, but it'll do.
> 
> I have no issue with cracking down on corporations exploiting legal loopholes on a whim to benefit themselves, but let's be honest: that's not what the Trump administration cares about here.  They're just worried about what will benefit them politically, and allowing far-right extremism to flourish on social media accomplishes that.


Ah yes, let's pull out the good 'ol _"far right extremism"_ card, as if it actually means anything. I provided a link to Facebook claiming they're a publisher, contrary to their long-standing policy of being a platform, because a user mentioned the case earlier, not because of your request. If it coincidentally fulfilled your odd requirement of providing evidence of the obvious then that's great - a two-for-one, if you will. Let's be clear, the legislation surrounding copyright and the Internet is antiquated and needs to be revamped for the modern age - which administration does it and why is immaterial to me as long as it serves my principles. As far as I'm concerned, the government shouldn't be involved in these matters at all, _however_ since it has already inserted itself into the online marketplace of ideas and destabilised the playing field, it must be put to task again to straighten things out. Sadly, in all of time, the only method to combat the government was more government, so I have to lean towards a working solution because I'm pragmatic. I would have zero issues with Facebook operating however it wants _if_ we weren't dealing with a cabal of companies that are clearly geared to exclude any and all alternative services that have a chance to achieve a modicum of success. If Facebook desperately wants users to be liable for the content they post instead of being relentlessly sued then it must necessarily waive the right to moderate the content said users post, that's how a true social media platform should operate. If it wants to operate as a publisher and review content that is posted, it must necessarily accept the responsibility for the content it reviewed and abjectly failed to address. If it's a weird beast in-between the two then that must be addressed and regulated, just like any other service on the market. In my eyes, the Internet is an equivalent of going outside - there are public establishments ran by the government, there are private establishments ran by citizens and there are open, public spaces. These three have their equivalents on the Internet and Facebook, much like other social media companies, have to decide which one they represent. It's not the first time this kind of thing has happened - the government split the Bells before, they can do it again if it is determined that Facebook's iron grip is so tight that nobody else can compete by providing an equivalent service.


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> Let's be clear, the legislation surrounding copyright and the Internet is antiquated and needs to be revamped for the modern age - which administration does it and why is immaterial to me as long as it serves my principles.


I agree on the former, but the latter is a bit of a contradiction if your 'principles' dictate that the reforms are done correctly.  Trump has no fucking clue when it comes to technology on any scale, and I dare say neither does anybody in his entire administration.  We can't have fucking buffoons setting the rules governing the internet, or odds are that things will be even worse and more restrictive than before.


----------



## CoinKillerL (May 17, 2019)

maybe we'll finally get rid of Facebook and Youtube SJWs! Great move Trump!


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

CoinKillerL said:


> maybe we'll finally get rid of Facebook and Youtube SJWs! Great move Trump!


Ah, see.  This man knows a blatantly political move when he sees one.  Thus the reason any smart social media company will simply ignore the Trump administration here.


----------



## notimp (May 17, 2019)

Page 5. Has anyone actually looked at the reporting form?

This isnt really anything. It doesnt even have a domain.

Much to do about nothing. As a sign - interesting at least - but what they'll get is a cross section of angry folks and politically motivated reports, they probably would have been able to get internally if they cared.

Nothing about it is public - and selection probably will be quite partial.
What actually would be interesting is a statistical analysis in some form (what are facebooks decision trees), what we'll get will probably be some gotcha's.

If we get more, great - but the site doesnt even look like as if this is a half baked effort. More like an unmotivated study project.


Sorry, judging by appearance.

edit: First reaction by gab:

"Great we'll send you a dataset of 1 Mio accounts banned."  Well - saw that one coming.


----------



## piratesephiroth (May 17, 2019)

Xzi said:


> "Anti-establishment," rofl.  Anti-establishment leaders don't cut the corporate tax rate in half, *attempt to get abortion banned*, push for an uneccessary war with Iran, declare the children of gay couples 'non-citizens,' etc.  Not only is Trump a pawn of the Republican establishment, he's also pawn to a number of foreign government establishments.  Such a fucking joke to call a lifelong East-coast elitist "anti-establishment."


friggin drumpf!


----------



## Taleweaver (May 17, 2019)

Yeeeey! More divide and conquer techniques! Because surely whenever someone is banned ANYWHERE, it should be reported and the banners put to shame. Of course there is NO WAY that anyone is being censored/banned for being toxic, harassing, (sexually) intimidating, xenophobic, a spambot and/or flat out retarded.

If it wasn't for the five pages of text, I'd say: "I'll start", but hey...better late than never.

"_Dear mr. or mrs. from the anti censorship committee,

I'm making a report on this site because I feel I'm unjustly treated. According to the law, I have the right of free speech and should be able to express my opinion, especially if I'm being asked to do so. However, as of late, I'm being harassed by this bully who is making it very clear that my position - no matter how much according to law - is deemed "immoral" and "irrelevant". Because of his position, he constantly delays my right to speak until further notice. I sincerely hope you'll take proper action against this individual, as this behavior results in me being portrayed as "a traitor", despite me fully acting according to the very standards of the law.

Kind regards,

Don McGahn"


_


----------



## FAST6191 (May 17, 2019)

Taleweaver said:


> (sexually) intimidating



*Sniggers heartily*

Anyway I already went. Still no problems with someone taking a few minutes to set up a site to try to note social meeja companies being arseholes, or at least being massive hypocrites when they claim they are all about the free, free expression and discussion of ideas, or trying to hide behind various legal shields when it is convenient for them and others for very different purposes when not. If it helps them get to the point where they become a corpse in the corner that I can laugh at a la myspace, bebo and whatever else then so much the better.

I find the recent trend towards not having p2p, distributed, mutually mirrored and self run servers for things to be disturbing, especially when we almost once had them (certainly had them for text which is trivially turned into HTML and thus all that such things give us) and now we are left with good old IRC, whatever remains of XMPP, and usenet if it is not banned or nerfed because someone once heard a [insert bogeymen of choice] might once have had an account or the few providers remaining consolidated. Zero sympathy if someone/some company tied themselves to such a service and could not extricate when their time in favour was no more. With them being unquestionably a content publisher/controller from where I sit I am not especially bothered by them having some kind of political sway or trying to effect some change -- most people that push away from neutrality and objectivity don't get very far and accelerates a nice collapse. What ideals their actions seem to betray, or perhaps portray, I find to be intellectually abhorrent (though the study of how such ideals form and propagate is a fascinating one, one I shall likely be pondering for years to come), and as mentioned sunlight is a wonderful disinfectant. 

In the end if you are not paying for the product then you are the product. So many seem to have forgotten that.


----------



## Foxi4 (May 17, 2019)

Xzi said:


> I agree on the former, but the latter is a bit of a contradiction if your 'principles' dictate that the reforms are done correctly.  Trump has no fucking clue when it comes to technology on any scale, and I dare say neither does anybody in his entire administration.  We can't have fucking buffoons setting the rules governing the internet, or odds are that things will be even worse and more restrictive than before.


Arbitrary gatekeeping, nobody in the political sphere knows anything about IT, besides McAfee, which would be a funny pick for the saviour of the Internet. On a more serious note, you can keep taking digs at Trump all you want, I can't wait to see the result of this program.

Your approach to this is very interesting because not 5 minutes ago liberals argued that a Christian baker has to bake a cake for a gay wedding despite religious objections because upon becoming a business he has agreed to serve the public without discriminating his customer base on whatever grounds, and now I hear liberals arguing the exact opposite. Hmm. Makes me think. Gets my noggin' joggin'. Really toasts my almonds. Could it be possible that, perhaps, removing right-wing voices from the public square on the Internet's biggest websites with the widest reach is politically expedient and pretending to be anti-interventionist free marketeers is worth it in this particular moment in time? Who knows? I surely wouldn't be cynical enough to say that out loud.


----------



## zomborg (May 17, 2019)

Clydefrosch said:


> none of that has anything to do with this trump tantrum about having less followers than obama?
> your what if doesn't make anyone the target of any algorithm.
> unless your 'cross' is burning in someones frontyard of course.
> 
> ...



Ok, I will admit you have a point, there definitely are racists out there in 2019 and there may be a higher rate of them in the conservative community vs the left.
 But is it also possible that in recent years racism has become a buzzword? Isn't it at least feasible that people are using the word as a sword and shield in today's society? Such as, when, in the heat of debate, the person on the losing side suddenly plays the racism card to bring the debate to a halt.
 It has been an effective tactic when someone is losing in a war of words.

Today's culture is one of offense. Everyone is running around crying and whining about racism, hate speech, micro aggressions, homophobia, Islamophobia, sexism and on and on. Today people are too easily offended. They are looking for reasons to be offended. People are too busy trying to find a reason to be offended to even be an effective citizen. Today's youth and many of slightly older people are too thin skinned and can't even withstand constructive criticism.
A generation or 2 ago a young man's father would have told him to suck it up, get out of his pity pool and get over it.
If from 1941-1945(WWII) we had the current generations military /fighting age men from ages 16-25. Not talking about currently enlisted men but your average unenlisted young American male of 2019, we would currently be under German occupation. I'm ashamed. It is absurd and it is pathetic.

You don't like the way things are going in America today? You want to change it? Then saddle up, be a real man and ride. Get out there and learn how this country works, get educated in politics and run for office.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.


----------



## notimp (May 17, 2019)

It is not. Racism is racism.

If you use that word, you have a reason to use it. Also, btw, which dog race is best?


----------



## Deleted_413010 (May 17, 2019)

I couldn't give two shits what Trump says. I take everything he says and claims with a grain of salt. He's being censored because he's an incompetent dickhead who's going to lead America into fucking WW3. If I was Twitter I would have banned his ass years ago and I wouldn't give a shit if I get fired.


----------



## cots (May 17, 2019)

So you've been censored. Now the Government wants you to report it. "What will they do?" "What can they do?" I'm not sure this is a road I want to go down. I mean, technically, our Government Representatives are supposed to look out for our best interests, but I rarely see that happening. They look out for their own best interests before ours so I'm not sure what type of crap they will try to pull - I mean, they could block sites, take down sites, arrest the owners and go after the users. I'm not sure I'll be narking out anyone using this site.


notimp said:


> Now - lets go through a few things here.
> 
> - Do they employ journalists?
> - Do they produce news stories or journalism?
> ...



Haha, Liberal News Media explained. Perfect example of CNN or ABC. What a joke.


----------



## notimp (May 17, 2019)

For everyone reading along, cots is misunderstanding the quote again.

In his mind adding liberal in front of stuff makes it  "the enemy".

Haha media doesnt employ behavioral psychologists, and facebook does. He's such a buffoon. They do to make you spend more time on their platform btw. Give your feeds some push and pull.


----------



## SG854 (May 17, 2019)

cots said:


> So you've been censored. Now the Government wants you to report it. "What will they do?" "What can they do?" I'm not sure this is a road I want to go down. I mean, technically, our Government Representatives are supposed to look out for our best interests, but I rarely see that happening. They look out for their own best interests before ours so I'm not sure what type of crap they will try to pull - I mean, they could block sites, take down sites, arrest the owners and go after the users. I'm not sure I'll be narking out anyone using this site.
> 
> 
> Haha, Liberal News Media explained. Perfect example of CNN or ABC. What a joke.


Usually the Republican argument is don’t give regulation powers to Gov because what if a Dems controls the Gov then you’ll give regulation powers to Dems and they’ll censor people.


This argument doesn’t really hold because Gov can not regulate speech no matter what (unless you use speech to call for violence) because of the 1st Amendment.


Packingham v. North Carolina case shows that after North Carolina passed a law to restrict registered sex offenders  from using social media that the supreme court then later unanimously voted that kind of speech constraint is unconstitutional under the 1st amendment law that gov can not restrict access to the public square. Gov can’t pass laws to restrict speech access so Conservative argument doesn’t hold.



This also sets precedent that the Supreme Court views social media as a public square. Most people use social media to debate now a days because you reach a wider audience that way. Hardly anyone is going to go to a local event to hear debates at a town hall, it’s all on social media now because it’s easier, so most political discourse is on social media. The Supreme Court views Social Media as the modern public square, and it can be regulated like any other public square if we pass laws.


----------



## FAST6191 (May 17, 2019)

notimp said:


> It is not. Racism is racism.



Really? Because I have seen all sorts of nonsense be called racism that isn't (whatever the fuck cultural appropriation is if it is even a concept that can exist, "Islamophobia" is apparently a racist act when I was of the understanding it is a religion, one neither universally/near universally practised by a single "race", and in fact widespread among several, and thus completely different, that being "colour blind" is bad despite that literally being what most people were taught to do and it generally being said to be a good plan -- judge a person by their character and actions and all that)) and all sorts of things that are racism be said not to be (the whole "must be of a more dominant race" aka the prejudice+power model).


----------



## notimp (May 17, 2019)

Racist.

 Ok, not. But the point is kind of that people at least in my generation, dont throw the term around lightheartedly. So its an accusation, that usually is provoked, and usually sticks.

So what right wing folks did to get around that is to find different ways to tap into that 'primal thing' by slightly reframing the viewing point.

So instead of being racist, you are now for "nativism" where everyone should stay in the country they are from, and instead of being against people from asia minor, you are now just a religious critic.

In the more common use of those terms, those are codes. Sucessfully doing what they are created for and in some societies you apparently can now use them again (not in my cycles) - but still rhetoric codes.

If someone throws that (racist) at me - although no one has to this day - even if mistakenly, I stay silent - dont escalate, and dont come back with "but its only islam criticism I meant".

Different set of rules with people discussing internal modes and traditions of lets say islam, but for general use - no, thats one of the terms thats actually emotionally loaded for a reason. In my humble opinion, dont try to "take it back". (Clerks 2 video, I'm not allowed to post in here..  Would be a good reference that acts out an explanation.  )


----------



## Subtle Demise (May 17, 2019)

How many government subsidies does it take to make it not a private company anymore?
https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/facebook


----------



## osaka35 (May 17, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> How would you feel if "A Modest Proposal" was prefaced with a mandatory disclaimer that it's satire?


If you had people giving out recipes for how to best cook food that tasted like humans, the "evidence" for why it really was the healthiest diet and we should start eating people, and groups gathered every wednesday to have a human-taste-alike cook-offs, and they all used that book as their document of faith....yes. Yes i'd be good with a disclaimer it was satire. 

I think it comes down to is, how much responsibility does social media have to filter hate speech, false speech, and manipulative speech? Any? How limited by the government are they to filter spam? I think it's a lot greyer of a situation than most folks recognize. Got to agree on the problem, then try and find a solution. Are you of the mind the only problem social media would have is limiting speech? Are there any other speech concerns as far as you're concerned? Should the consequences or results of virally wrong and manipulative information be addressed?


----------



## Foxi4 (May 17, 2019)

osaka35 said:


> If you had people giving out recipes for how to best cook food that tasted like humans, the "evidence" for why it really was the healthiest diet and we should start eating people, and groups gathered every wednesday to have a human-taste-alike cook-offs, and they all used that book as their document of faith....yes. Yes i'd be good with a disclaimer it was satire.
> 
> I think it comes down to is, how much responsibility does social media have to filter hate speech, false speech, and manipulative speech? Any? How limited by the government are they to filter spam? I think it's a lot greyer of a situation than most folks recognize. Got to agree on the problem, then try and find a solution. Are you of the mind the only problem social media would have is limiting speech? Are there any other speech concerns as far as you're concerned? Should the consequences or results of virally wrong and manipulative information be addressed?


Not if it's not illegal, no. If it's so wrong and easily disproven, surely you can argue against it on the free market of ideas, no?


----------



## Clydefrosch (May 17, 2019)

zomborg said:


> Ok, I will admit you have a point, there definitely are racists out there in 2019 and there may be a higher rate of them in the conservative community vs the left.
> But is it also possible that in recent years racism has become a buzzword? Isn't it at least feasible that people are using the word as a sword and shield in today's society? Such as, when, in the heat of debate, the person on the losing side suddenly plays the racism card to bring the debate to a halt.
> It has been an effective tactic when someone is losing in a war of words.
> 
> ...



Racism just being a buzzword and the situation being blown out of proportions is certainly the case racists have been making in public for decades.
It has never been true. But it's kind of unveiling whenever you hear it.

the other stuff sounds borderline insane again, you keep on arguing within these 'what if' fantasy hypotheticals that aren't reality to make your case.
those are not arguments.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------



FAST6191 said:


> Really? Because I have seen all sorts of nonsense be called racism that isn't (whatever the fuck cultural appropriation is if it is even a concept that can exist, "Islamophobia" is apparently a racist act when I was of the understanding it is a religion, one neither universally/near universally practised by a single "race", and in fact widespread among several, and thus completely different, that being "colour blind" is bad despite that literally being what most people were taught to do and it generally being said to be a good plan -- judge a person by their character and actions and all that)) and all sorts of things that are racism be said not to be (the whole "must be of a more dominant race" aka the prejudice+power model).




yes, people have been using 'racism' as a shorthand for a group of ideals and behaviors that almost always go hand in hand with racism. like hate or 'fear' of religions, for example. because people often channel their hate of religion x as a response to visual cues, like someone 'looking like one of them terrorists with the brown skin and the white clothing and the turban and the beard and all that'. or having big noses.

people being lazy and unwilling to explain 50 other words and a dozen mechanisms for random hate based on superficialities (that often at their core do have very clear race based hatred anyways), when racism does very much suffice to get the point across, doesn't change the reality that it is very much still a thing and that it affects people in so many ways.


----------



## supersonicwaffle (May 17, 2019)

osaka35 said:


> If you had people giving out recipes for how to best cook food that tasted like humans, the "evidence" for why it really was the healthiest diet and we should start eating people, and groups gathered every wednesday to have a human-taste-alike cook-offs, and they all used that book as their document of faith....yes. Yes i'd be good with a disclaimer it was satire.
> 
> I think it comes down to is, how much responsibility does social media have to filter hate speech, false speech, and manipulative speech? Any? How limited by the government are they to filter spam? I think it's a lot greyer of a situation than most folks recognize. Got to agree on the problem, then try and find a solution. Are you of the mind the only problem social media would have is limiting speech? Are there any other speech concerns as far as you're concerned? Should the consequences or results of virally wrong and manipulative information be addressed?



There’s been an interesting discussion around YouTube’s fact checking feature a while ago. 
https://gbatemp.net/threads/youtube...ure-for-conspiracy-theory-hoax-videos.533228/


----------



## Foxi4 (May 17, 2019)

SG854 said:


> Usually the Republican argument is don’t give regulation powers to Gov because what if a Dems controls the Gov then you’ll give regulation powers to Dems and they’ll censor people.
> 
> 
> This argument doesn’t really hold because Gov can not regulate speech no matter what (unless you use speech to call for violence) because of the 1st Amendment.
> ...


Stop making sense immediately, you might get banned for explaining the obvious.


----------



## ZeroT21 (May 17, 2019)

Asif locking up wikileaks founder didn't happen


----------



## SG854 (May 17, 2019)

Xzi said:


> Largely irrelevant because the case he cited doesn't apply to websites.  You can't 'stand outside of' websites to collect signatures for a cause.  You're either on the platform or you're not.  And just to create an account, you have to agree to the platform's ToS/EULA/rules/etc, and subsequently abide by them.  Otherwise risk deletion of comments or an account ban.  It's always been the same, even before Myspace was popular and a million different forums/geocities sites ruled the web.
> 
> The Trump administration has no more right telling social media sites how to enforce their rules than they do telling GBAtemp how to enforce ours.


Currently no laws exists but they can if we pass laws.


Social Media should be seen as a civil rights issue and should be regulated as such. Platform access is a civil right. Access to these big social media platforms is a prerequisite to meaningful free speech nowadays. Most public political discourse is on these platforms, and the Supreme Court unanimously views them as a public square.



The Muh Private business argument some people are bringing up in this thread doesn’t hold because we have many civil rights laws that regulate access to private business. When private companies violate human rights we pass laws to regulate them all the time. And you probably even don’t need regulators either, you can create a right of private action and get the courts involved through litigation.


Nobody complains about courts regulating by passing civil rights laws to protect blacks that access the public square, or Bush passing the TCPA act that enforces litigation on telecom companies. Washington DC has laws that have political affiliation and source of income as protected human rights. Social Media access is a matter of civil rights, and should be treated like that.


----------



## osaka35 (May 17, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> Not if it's not illegal, no. If it's so wrong and easily disproven, surely you can argue against it on the free market of ideas, no?


as long as it's not in a private group that seek out and prey on individuals  or where they themselves delete or block folks if they have different opinions.

it's a cultivated experience on social media, driven by data and similar ideas, it's not exactly an even playing field for everyone involved.


----------



## SG854 (May 17, 2019)

burial said:


> This should be fun.....more than conservatives/christians get censored. A lot of leftists and anti-religious people are silenced too.
> 
> But trump and his ilk are too fucking ignorant to understand that.


Anti War Left are getting censored and Feminists for wrong think. This is why we need to treat this as a civil rights issue and protect access to a public square.


And it’s so weird, in this twisted reality, the left supporting the Muh Private Business argument. The left use suppose to be against Private Corporations from running wild, and God forbid people that wanting to ban together to protect the common person because they have the audacity to have an opinion.

People’s working lives that heavily rely reaching to a huge audience on social media are having their incomes damaged because of them getting banned. Especially political commentators where’re it’s their source of income, or people that promote themselves and reach out to a huge group of people and rely on social media to do that. We can introduce litigation that will protect their ability to earn income.


----------



## FAST6191 (May 17, 2019)

Clydefrosch said:


> yes, people have been using 'racism' as a shorthand for a group of ideals and behaviors that almost always go hand in hand with racism. like hate or 'fear' of religions, for example. because people often channel their hate of religion x as a response to visual cues, like someone 'looking like one of them terrorists with the brown skin and the white clothing and the turban and the beard and all that'. or having big noses.
> 
> people being lazy and unwilling to explain 50 other words and a dozen mechanisms for random hate based on superficialities (that often at their core do have very clear race based hatred anyways), when racism does very much suffice to get the point across, doesn't change the reality that it is very much still a thing and that it affects people in so many ways.



There are usually perfectly good existing words for such things, and reducing the meaning of another well understood and useful term is something that really ought to be done with good reason.
I would also feel inclined to note religion is something you theoretically choose to do (nobody really converts in later life -- it is something that you really have to have drummed into you as a kid, usually by the ones that also keep you safe and feed you, or sanctioned and encouraged by said same) and thus falls under character and actions, clothing maybe also being associated with that. It might be afforded some measure of protection but it falls under an entirely different field to the biological traits side of things, and I would also hesitate to call it a superfluous trait as well.




Subtle Demise said:


> How many government subsidies does it take to make it not a private company anymore?
> https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/facebook


Did they get it in writing? If you are throwing that kind of money around and employ some 80000 lawyers ( https://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1749 ), not to mention can be said to be the ones to write on the laws on the matter, I have little sympathy if they don't have a contract there.


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> Arbitrary gatekeeping, nobody in the political sphere knows anything about IT, besides McAfee, which would be a funny pick for the saviour of the Internet. On a more serious note, you can keep taking digs at Trump all you want, I can't wait to see the result of this program.


Nobody _currently_ in government knows anything about IT, but you'd be completely disingenuous to suggest that candidates like Andrew Yang know nothing about it.

As for the "result" of this program, I wouldn't be holding my breath.  Unless the administration is offering recompense for the advertisers lost by allowing toxic individuals to remain on their platforms, nothing is going to change in regard to the way social media operates.



piratesephiroth said:


> friggin drumpf!


Ah yes, Alabama.  Where you can be assured that your sister will be forced to carry that seven-fingered, two-headed incest baby to term.  Roll Tide!


----------



## Foxi4 (May 17, 2019)

Xzi said:


> Nobody _currently_ in government knows anything about IT, but you'd be completely disingenuous to suggest that candidates like Andrew Yang know nothing about it.
> 
> As for the "result" of this program, I wouldn't be holding my breath.  Unless the administration is offering recompense for the advertisers lost by allowing toxic individuals to remain on their platforms, nothing is going to change in regard to the way social media operates.


Did you switch from Bernie and joined the Yang Gang? Good on you, a NEET bag is sweet swag, yo.


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> Did you switch from Bernie and joined the Yang Gang? Good in you, a NEET bag is sweet swag, yo.


The only person in the Democratic primary I'd really have to hold my nose while voting for would be Biden.  And regardless of whether I vote for him or not, he's the only candidate in the race that I don't believe can beat Trump.  Everybody else has something distinctive to set them apart.


----------



## Rabbid4240 (May 17, 2019)

This looks like the beginning of TrollTrace...


----------



## SG854 (May 17, 2019)

Dr. Ray Blanchard who contributed to the DSM V was blocked on Twitter.


So now they now apparently blocked a clinical psychologists who



> Earned an A.B. in psychology from University of Pensilvania, earned a PHD at the University of Illinois, was the chief of Clinical Sexology Services in the Law and Mental Health Program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto, Ontario from 1995 to 2010,
> 
> 
> Who has published many peer-reviewed articles in publications like the _Archives of Sexual Behavior_, the _Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, _and the _Journal of Psychiatric Research, has _also has contributed chapters to many books, including the _Encyclopedia of Psychology _and _Gender Dysphoria: Development, Research, Management._
> ...



Blocked for stating medical facts and opinions about transgenders because it violates their “Rules for Hateful Conduct”. You can’t say Gender Dysphoria and Mental Disorder in the same sentence or you’ll get blocked. They restored his account after he complained probably because of his PHD, but it shows that their rules are out of wack, are anti science, how they view these types of topics and what can’t be said.


Source



This interview is very interesting too Here. He said the name change from transsexualism or gender identity disorder, was changed to gender dysphoria not because of scientific research but because of politics to make people happy.


----------



## Xzi (May 17, 2019)

SG854 said:


> Dr. Ray Blanchard who contributed to the DSM V was blocked on Twitter.
> 
> So now they now apparently blocked a clinical psychologists


Twitter is pretty terrible about consistent rule enforcement.  To be expected I suppose when you have to make a bunch of exceptions to the rules for the reality TV president, who simultaneously drags the entire platform's discourse into the mud.  There's probably nobody on the entire staff who knows what rules exactly to enforce, and when to enforce them.


----------



## cots (May 17, 2019)

SG854 said:


> Usually the Republican argument is don’t give regulation powers to Gov because what if a Dems controls the Gov then you’ll give regulation powers to Dems and they’ll censor people.
> 
> This argument doesn’t really hold because Gov can not regulate speech no matter what (unless you use speech to call for violence) because of the 1st Amendment.
> 
> ...



So I mentioned the silly Liberals so that makes me a Republican? I'm sorry, but what notmp wrote describes the hypocritical media sites (CNN, ABC, etc ...) down to a penny. I can't help that they are also the ones pushing the Liberal agenda. The Republican's are taking credit for this one and I'm telling you that going around narking out your fellow citizens to the Government is probably a really bad idea and I gave examples of what will probably happen - Sites being taken down, censorship of sites, owners and users being targeted, arrested, etc ...

How would you like it if I reported you for using a mostly Nintendo related hacking relating site using Nintendo's submit piracy form on their website?

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------



notimp said:


> For everyone reading along, cots is misunderstanding the quote again.
> 
> In his mind adding liberal in front of stuff makes it  "the enemy".
> 
> Haha media doesnt employ behavioral psychologists, and facebook does. He's such a buffoon. They do to make you spend more time on their platform btw. Give your feeds some push and pull.



Actually, what you described is almost 100% true of CNN and ABC and they do infact involve behavioral psychologists in their "bullshit news reporting" process. I had no idea you were specifically targeting Facebook, but what you said can be applied to those other scummy sites. I don't use Facebook, don't have a Facebook account, don't visit Facebook and never will. Whoever thinks it would be a good idea to plaster your personal life on one central Internet blog is fucking retarded and asking for trouble. Remember folks, privacy doesn't exist.


----------



## Foxi4 (May 18, 2019)

Xzi said:


> The only person in the Democratic primary I'd really have to hold my nose while voting for would be Biden.  And regardless of whether I vote for him or not, he's the only candidate in the race that I don't believe can beat Trump.  Everybody else has something distinctive to set them apart.


I have a hard time thinking of any current democrats who would even remotely have a chance against Trump besides Creepy Joe, but then again, I might be underestimating the long-term consequences of T.D.S. Time will tell.



osaka35 said:


> as long as it's not in a private group that seek out and prey on individuals  or where they themselves delete or block folks if they have different opinions.
> 
> it's a cultivated experience on social media, driven by data and similar ideas, it's not exactly an even playing field for everyone involved.


Funnily enough, I would be perfectly fine if Facebook policed itself by allowing users to moderate the content themselves. The public wall would be public while private groups could elect their own moderators and set their own codes of conduct. That would be entirely fair in my book, it emphasises freedom of association without excluding people from the public square.


----------



## Xzi (May 18, 2019)

Foxi4 said:


> I have a hard time thinking of any current democrats who would even remotely have a chance against Trump besides Creepy Joe, but then again, I might be underestimating the long-term consequences of T.D.S. Time will tell.


Creepy Joe doesn't stand a chance because he's basically Trump's doppelganger on the left-wing.  A corporate neoliberal.  Running someone like that would not energize the base like what happened during last year's elections.  It would just be a repeat of Hillary.

Trump won last time by plagiarizing Bernie's whole populist platform, and he delivered on none of it.  If he actually has to run against the real thing, he'll lose by a wide margin.  If he has to run against any of the younger candidates, it will highlight how old, fat, and out of touch he is.  Particularly when it comes to matters of technology.


----------



## cots (May 18, 2019)

piratesephiroth said:


> friggin drumpf!



I feel so bad for this child. She won't be able to legally commit murder. I mean, we should be saving the trees as they are living organisms, but when it comes to human babies we should just kill em off, right? I have an idea. How about we don't kill off our natural resources AND don't kill babies?


----------



## zomborg (May 18, 2019)

Clydefrosch said:


> Racism just being a buzzword and the situation being blown out of proportions is certainly the case racists have been making in public for decades.
> It has never been true. But it's kind of unveiling whenever you hear it.
> 
> the other stuff sounds borderline insane again, you keep on arguing within these 'what if' fantasy hypotheticals that aren't reality to make your case.
> those are not arguments


Funny thing about it is, you are a part of the problem. Not the solution. You typify the pc culture and whereas your response to my last post may have sounded condescending and smug, it was actually very unveiling about you. You have been programmed with this modern mentality that everything is offensive and if no real offense can be found just make some up.

 You are too busy virtue signaling to contribute anything positive. Just because a man has extensive education doesn't mean he has all the answers or knows everything. I have a novel idea. What if universities actually returned to teaching our young men and women HOW to think instead of teaching them WHAT to think. It's not as I have heard it stated many times, that receiving a higher education, enlightens young adults and leads them to the truth. Instead they are being led further away from the truth.

 If all you are learning is how to dissect opposing view points and effectively debate them. If all you are learning is how unfair the world is and that someone needs to go out there and defend against all of the isms in the world, you are not contributing anything positive to society but you are effectively contributing to make the world infinitely worse. Why don't you actually try to be contribute something productive and positive to society instead of crying mommy the bad man hurt my feelings? 

By the way, the bulk of my previous post which you so casually dismissed as hypothetical and not a real argument. ROFL! Wake up and get your head out of the sand. It was not hypothetical in the least.
It is what as known as an illustration to get my point across and to make it easier for your npc mind to understand.
 Simply put, if the world, for it's defense against an invading army had to rely on the types of young men our universities are churning out today. We would have been conquered by now. It's a scary thought to me that I may actually have to rely on weak, snowflake, virtue signaling NPCs to defend us.


----------



## dpad_5678 (May 18, 2019)

I filled it out and because I'm a 12 year old at heart, I submitted some of the most vile shit I could think of.
I should also add that private websites are ALLOWED to violate Free Speech, as there's nothing to say they have to obey them in the first place. The government does, not corps.



Xzi said:


> Ah yes, Alabama. Where you can be assured that your sister will be forced to carry that seven-fingered, two-headed incest baby to term. Roll Tide!


You're crazy if you think that that's not going to be my new sig.


----------



## KingVamp (May 18, 2019)

So, has anyone reported Trump yet?


----------



## SG854 (May 18, 2019)

cots said:


> So I mentioned the silly Liberals so that makes me a Republican?


Republican argument. You don’t have to be a republican to use a republican argument.



cots said:


> I'm sorry, but what notmp wrote describes the hypocritical media sites (CNN, ABC, etc ...) down to a penny. I can't help that they are also the ones pushing the Liberal agenda. The Republican's are taking credit for this one and I'm telling you that going around narking out your fellow citizens to the Government is probably a really bad idea and I gave examples of what will probably happen - Sites being taken down, censorship of sites, owners and users being targeted, arrested, etc ...




Of what could happen. I gave you a real life case where they tried and it failed in the Supreme Court. Gov can’t limit speech, it’s in the 1st amendment. Give me a real life example where your case has happened.



Social Media sites are becoming a monopoly. Big corporations can pay buy off/pay Twitter or Facebook to promote their agenda and silence opinion they don’t like. Which is why we need protections of free speech. They are blocking people now to promote certain beliefs over others. They are blocking people now without any gov intervention. Your case you describe is happening now.


And also should we get rid of the 1st amendment using your thinking. Isn’t giving gov power to enforce free speech laws a bad thing. So get rid of the 1st amendment. And be like European countries that have no 1st amendment protections.


----------



## Xzi (May 18, 2019)

Seemingly unmentioned in all this is the fact that Trump has been one of the most anti-free press presidents in the history of the country.  He doesn't give a fuck about the first amendment, and this isn't about enforcing it.  It's just another example of short-sighted Republicans addressing an issue only once it affects them personally.


----------



## Hanafuda (May 18, 2019)

Xzi said:


> Seemingly unmentioned in all this is the fact that Trump has been one of the most anti-free press presidents in the history of the country.  He doesn't give a fuck about the first amendment, and this isn't about enforcing it.  It's just another example of short-sighted Republicans addressing an issue only once it affects them personally.




Predecessor didn’t set much of an example to follow.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/beta.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2018/06/08/seizing-journalists-records-an-outrage-that-obama-normalized-for-trump/?outputType=amp


----------



## SG854 (May 19, 2019)

Xzi said:


> Seemingly unmentioned in all this is the fact that Trump has been one of the most anti-free press presidents in the history of the country.  He doesn't give a fuck about the first amendment, and this isn't about enforcing it.  It's just another example of short-sighted Republicans addressing an issue only once it affects them personally.


The White House rejected governments from around the world to have our own gov censor social media. They acted on our laws in the constitution. They’ve show to care about the 1st amendment.


It’s not mentioned because it’s irrelevant to the bigger picture. If creating legislation is short sighted then the creation of the first amendment is short sighted. If creating legislation is short sighted then the Dems position to create laws to close tax loopholes is short sighted, because our possible future gov might not act on it, so therefore don’t bother at all.

Creating legislation is beyond Trump. And the 3 branches of gov will check his power. He doesn’t have all the power in the world and still can’t get all the funding he wants for his boarder. And many dems hate him so you can be sure they’ll put a check on his power.


It doesn’t matter if they only want something only because it affects them personally. Because Dems will also benefit in the process since it protects everyone. A person that creates a medical invention that saves lives not because he cares about saving people but because he wants fame and money is still beneficial to the public.


----------



## Xzi (May 19, 2019)

Hanafuda said:


> Predecessor didn’t set much of an example to follow.


If he was following Obama's example, there'd still be regularly scheduled press conferences.  Huckabee-Sanders lost her will to continue spouting lies like a year ago.



SG854 said:


> It doesn’t matter if they only want something only because it affects them personally.


Yes it does matter if the White House is only adhering the constitution when politically expedient to do so.  That would put Trump in violation of his oath of office.  Not that any Republican seems to care, but real Americans should.



SG854 said:


> Because Dems will also benefit in the process since it protects everyone.


Let's see evidence of that first.  I have yet to see Trump act in any manner that doesn't benefit him personally in some way.  For the moment I have to assume they're just trying to cherry pick examples here to be used as political fodder to benefit  the right-wing exclusively.  Not that most wouldn't see right through the ruse.


----------



## cots (May 20, 2019)

Hanafuda said:


> Predecessor didn’t set much of an example to follow.
> 
> https://www.google.com/amp/s/beta.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2018/06/08/seizing-journalists-records-an-outrage-that-obama-normalized-for-trump/?outputType=amp



Yeah, however, you're only going to get "but, but ..." or deflecting replies to this fact from the Libtards. Changing your stance on-the-fly to support your floating standards is the Liberal way off life (when in all actuality that's called being full of shit). How about the Liberals see there is truth in this and say "Wait a second, maybe our Savior was also full of it".


----------



## BiggieCheese (May 20, 2019)

okay so how does someone use this and say that they were censored for attempting to incite viol- I-I mean own the libs by providing (what i perceive as) facts and logic against women and minorities
asking for a friend




This is a joke by the way, screw the people that do this stuff and try to get their platform back.


----------



## WiiMiiSwitch (Feb 18, 2021)

SG854 said:


> I thought I was done talking about Trump but I found this interesting. Trump launches a website where if you feel you are being censored unjustly for your beliefs you can report it.
> 
> Source
> YouTube Video
> ...


It's still relevant, I don't support neither Trump or Mr.Biden but I belive people should have free speech online and  be able to say what they want without being fact checked or tooken down


----------



## SG854 (Feb 18, 2021)

WiiMiiSwitch said:


> It's still relevant, I don't support neither Trump or Mr.Biden but I belive people should have free speech online and  be able to say what they want without being fact checked or tooken down


This thread is old I don't remember what I said. Not gunna read through the whole thread either. This was created two years ago. My opinions are different now then what they use to be so a bit of disclaimer if something does sound off from me in this thread. 

I think people should have free speech. But there are exceptions to the free speech thing, I'm just lazy to list those exceptions or even debate this issue.


----------



## Taleweaver (Feb 18, 2021)

WiiMiiSwitch said:


> It's still relevant, I don't support neither Trump or Mr.Biden but I belive people should have free speech online and  be able to say what they want without being fact checked or tooken down


Yeah... The problem is that people already have that. Here on gbatemp, even : just make a blog post and write away. Criticism? Just delete all their comments. It's your personal spot.
Okay, within reason (I don't think it'll stay there if I start sharing rom links or pornography), but I'm mostly free.

That 'mostly free' happens in most areas on the internet. Those who violate the rules aren't paying respect to the owners, which would in normal cases feed superstition to their motives.

... Which is that problem I'm talking about : those claiming to want more freedom are usually the ones attempting to troll or intimidate others to push their own agenda.

Same with Trump. In the two years since this thread was active, Trump has used his Twitter account to spread lies about covid. This directly impacted all sorts of communication issues that shouldn't have been there to begin with.
But he just kept using his 'freedom of opinion' to try to convince people that he won the election (even though none of his lawyers could even prove anything remotely in that regard), and finally relief them to raid the capitol. 
So... Is that freedom of speech worth it to you? That any madman with a cult following can just order his followers to commit terrorism?


----------



## Plasmaster09 (Feb 20, 2021)

Foxi4 said:


> Arbitrary gatekeeping, nobody in the political sphere knows anything about IT, besides McAfee, which would be a funny pick for the saviour of the Internet. On a more serious note, you can keep taking digs at Trump all you want, I can't wait to see the result of this program.
> 
> Your approach to this is very interesting because not 5 minutes ago liberals argued that a Christian baker has to bake a cake for a gay wedding despite religious objections because upon becoming a business he has agreed to serve the public without discriminating his customer base on whatever grounds, and now I hear liberals arguing the exact opposite. Hmm. Makes me think. Gets my noggin' joggin'. Really toasts my almonds. Could it be possible that, perhaps, removing right-wing voices from the public square on the Internet's biggest websites with the widest reach is politically expedient and pretending to be anti-interventionist free marketeers is worth it in this particular moment in time? Who knows? I surely wouldn't be cynical enough to say that out loud.


There's an important difference (which especially needs to be explained since people use this kind of bullshit false equivalency a lot right now): the asshat baker didn't have any form of ToS stating that they have any right to just... deny service to people for an arbitrary distinction out of bigotry, while platforms like Facebook lay out all their terms of service and violations thereof from the beginning. _By using a social media platform, *you are agreeing to their rules and they have every right to punish you for breaking them as they said they would.*_


----------



## Luke94 (Mar 2, 2021)

I guess it's daily routine for Russia,China,North Korea,America, Israel. Political correctness stuff.


----------



## Plasmaster09 (Mar 2, 2021)

Luke94 said:


> I guess it's daily routine for Russia,China,North Korea,America. Political correctness stuff.


what
_what_
how are you comparing oppressive regimes to basic TOS that amounts to "don't be a bigoted dickbag online"


----------



## AncientBoi (Mar 2, 2021)

tRUMP can still go kcuF flesmiH !


----------



## Luke94 (Mar 2, 2021)

Plasmaster09 said:


> what
> _what_
> how are you comparing oppressive regimes to basic TOS that amounts to "don't be a bigoted dickbag online"


Calm down dude.


----------



## MikaDubbz (Mar 2, 2021)

The ways people misinterpret the first amendment never ceases to amaze me.  The Freedom of Speech doesn't mean your speech has no consequences.  If you go about to private businesses and start spewing hate, that business can absolutely kick you out and ban you from the premises, and in doing so, they are NOT violating your first amendment rights.  You're free to say what you want, but don't mistake that for meaning that there can't be consequences for what you say no matter where you say it.


----------



## g00s3y (Mar 2, 2021)

Wow, talk about fucking snowflakes...

Trump and his supporters still out here looking like pussy


----------



## Plasmaster09 (Mar 2, 2021)

Luke94 said:


> Calm down dude.


1) tone argument
2) pathos gambit
3) deflection
you said some pretty crazy bullshit, of course I'm going to call you out on it


----------



## Luke94 (Mar 2, 2021)

Oh okay.


----------

