The difference is how the platform responds. Parler tolerates it, while Twitter and Facebook typically remove such content. Broad strokes, but those are the ones that get seen right?
But all the calls for violence that the left made are still there. Even from elected officials and journalists who encouraged those who were acting violently.
There's a double standard and it shouldn't be that hard to condemn violence no matter what side it comes from.
I always thought it was the perfect solution, if by accident. The network is segmented, and people can connect to who they tolerate. It avoids censorship but still lets people curate their own experience. Win/win.
Gab used to be federated through to Mastodon (not directly of course, but via a hop or two). For some reason they stopped, but there are other "non-conforming" Mastodon instances out there.
I thought so too, until I saw how this works from inside. Segmented networks sound fine in principle, but there's a pathological behavior happening: there's a group of people around the core instances that like to take offense over things, who then try to pressure the administrator of that person's instance to ban that person, or else they'll defederate the whole instance. The source of offense may be some wrongthing the person posted, or reposted from another instance, or any "known association", etc. Also defederation because of incompatible codes of conduct is a thing, and as you expect, this creates a pressure towards CoC extremism.
The Gab thing was funny to watch, lots of people behaving as if that service was a literal existential threat to Fediverse, and banning - or advocating to ban - anything related to it up to two degrees of separation. It also revealed an interesting pattern - Mastodon itself may be decentralized and instances are theoretically independent, but there for sure is a community of Fediverse people that's pretty hiveminded. And left-leaning. Gab definitely wasn't welcome, and wouldn't be able to benefit much from federating through Mastodon, even if technically nobody could stop them.
(To be clear: I don't like Gab, never interacted with it, and I don't particularly care about it. It was just weird to see the degree of moral panic on Mastodon happening the moment they said they are considering joining the network.)
Mastodon is therefore an interesting experiment in how the ideal of distributed web - of virtual archipelago[0] - falls to realpolitik. Freedom of curation is limited by your ability to deal with threats of defederation.
In this sense, when you're switching from Twitter to Mastodon, you're switching from a stable tyranny to highly volatile sorta-democracy. Pick your poison, I guess. I stick to Mastodon, and try not to give the admin a reason to get me banned for going against the party line.
I thought that was the reason they didn't want to do it in the first place. But for whatever reason they changed their mind. Which was good, because I know of at least one instance that did not ban them. Also I think they tried selling the idea of other people running Gab instances to federate with each other. But I guess it was just too much to keep up with or something as they made their own changes to it.
Gab is really scrappy, to say the least. They might hate Silicon Valley but they've most definitely adopted "move fast and break things".
Parler, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook were definitely used to storm Congress. Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook also were definitely used to burn down parts of Minneapolis, Chicago, and LA.
Massive Big Tech conglomerates must be busted through antitrust enforcement and Section 230 must be updated to ban predatory algorithms which have inflamed 7 years of sectarian chaos.
It's not a free speech issue: It's about Too Big To Fail.
> Snapchat, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook also were definitely used to burn down parts of Minneapolis, Chicago, and LA.
Source?
Edit: lol at the downvotes. Anytime someone talks about something obvious regarding society/wealth inequality, all the wannabe Elon Musks come out to demand sources. But infringe on their dear property rights or otherwise critique the current economic system, and oh boy, they have that downvote finger ready. Cheers.
> Are you unironically contesting that popular social media was used to organize
No, everything must be organized, I get that.
> riots and massive property damage last summer?
I'm asking for a source regarding the accusation that they were used to "burn down parts of Minneapolis, Chicago, and LA"
And before you ask, yeah, I take issue with the idea of most of those events being called "riots" - they were almost entirely peaceful protests, with unarmed protesters, that were met by militarized police forces and unnamed federal agents. Furthermore, I take issue with the emphasis on "property damage" as property is fairly meaningless when you fear for your live or live paycheck-to-paycheck.
America has an unhealthy obsession with "property damage" as if it should be the driver for any sort of discussion on societal issues, when in fact, it should not be.
>Furthermore, I take issue with the emphasis on "property damage" as property is fairly meaningless when you fear for your live or live paycheck-to-paycheck. America has an unhealthy obsession with "property damage" as if it should be the driver for any sort of discussion on societal issues, when in fact, it should not be.
Ah right, so the ends justify the means. It is OK to vandalise and destroy a small business if you feel bad and frustrated, but only if you share the corporate-approved politically correct opinion. Do you not see where this road ends?
> And before you ask, yeah, I take issue with the idea of most of those events being called "riots" - they were almost entirely peaceful protests, with unarmed protesters, that were met by militarized police forces and unnamed federal agents.
Most of the people at the capitol on the 6th were peaceful too. However, those "mostly peaceful" riots this past sumer resulted in billions of dollars in property damage, dozens of deaths, and a massive spike in crime (including violent crime). Many of these rioters were either bailed out by politicians (including the incoming VP) or simply refused to be prosecuted by local DAs.
Now, I have no doubt that there was police brutality against peaceful protesters, which is horrible and inexcusable. I also think there are many legitimate grievances against the police. I even understand (though do not condone) the attacks made against police precincts and federal buildings.
But the suffering inflicted upon innocent civilians by the rioters is completely monstrous and likewise inexcusable. There is no honest moral framework to justify it.
It was also incredibly counterproductive. With the excesses taken by police on behalf many governors during the lockdowns, this past year has possibly been the best time in decades to introduce bi-partisan police reform. The riots effectively killed that because many people would rather support the police (who are at least nominally there to protect them, even if they frequently stood down to the rioters) than they are to support the people threatening to loot and burn their homes and businesses.
> I take issue with the emphasis on "property damage" as property is fairly meaningless when you fear for your live or live paycheck-to-paycheck.
That's pretty obviously not true. If you are living paycheck-to-paycheck and your home (apartment, house, whatever) or the place where you work is destroyed you are going to care a great deal. Even if it is just your car - you might night be able to afford a new car, but without the car you might not be able to get to work and thus lose your job.
> America has an unhealthy obsession with "property damage" as if it should be the driver for any sort of discussion on societal issues, when in fact, it should not be.
"Property damage" isn't some abstract thing. It's the destruction of peoples homes and livelihoods. It is the very means by which we live. Even if we lived in a perfect socialist utopia with no private property, it should be fairly obvious that the destruction of the communal property that houses and supports the community would be a serious offense.
Zuckerberg, Pichai, Wojcicki, and Dorsey have failed as guardians of the internet. Split their companies into pieces and let organic conversations happen again. I tire of them profiting off of hate while spamming the world with ugly art of squiggly cartoon people in a phony attempt to paint themselves as anything but evil.
They never were guardians of the internet. They are the worst scum/good businessman, that led to creation of successful businesses/profit centers riding off engagement.
It doesn't matter which way the wind blows, they make money, there's an audience and there's engagement and user-base.
To think these people ever thought about being guardians or Internet ambassadors is foolish and downright ignorant. They are profiteers.
Tom was so smart to take the Myspace Exit and live a excellent life.
Who decides what is a lie and what is the truth? Does the intention to lie matter or is an accidental lie (e.g. a quoting mistake) an offence as well? Is telling incomplete truths or ignoring important or relevant facts lying? Is representing information in a factually correct but misleading or easy to misinterpret way lying?
Facebook makes far too much money showing ads to their "more conservative user base" to do anything more than token gestures to stop racism and calls to violence.
Idk if simply used by the wrong people is the right way to decide if we should ban a tool. If foreign spies use firefox and thunderbird should we fine mozilla? They might have used nike shoes to walk there after getting a flyer in the mail printed on a cannon printer using an apple computer.. etc etc.
In Facebook’s case, they specifically show you posts and news that will make you angry, since making you angry engages you more. It’s literally their business plan.
I'd argue Facebook is doing something to remove problematic content ("Good Samaritan" section of the Section 230). Definitely not enough and there are myriads of ways that they can improve, but that's clearly different to Parler that does next to nothing.
The messages in my IRC channel don’t appear based on how incendiary they are. They are a strictly chronological timeline with no “viral amplification”. Closest we had to that was people reshaping bash.org links.
I mean, I definitely recall the need to turn off unauthenticated DMs because of all the IRC bots recruiting racists to their "ChimpOut" network, which purported to ban black people. So it's not like you really need viral amplification to coordinate a rally, nor is it that hard to fake.
I'm not sure how antitrust enforcement would address content problems. Assuming a social media network could be split off from a larger company as a separate line of business, the legal operating environment influencing its content moderation, algorithms, and so on wouldn't immediately change, just because the business was restructured. I'd expect far more fallout from the financial and operational ramifications, not all of which would be good, than any legal ones.
I'm still not exactly sure how Section 230 relates to any of the issues in public discussion. Only that it's good for the platforms, and some folks want to hurt the platforms, so Section 230 must go. I've seen at least one draft of a proposed bill for adding additional conditions to Section 230, but they reminded me, more than anything, of hypothetical First Amendment questions from law school exams. It's by no means clear that platforms, especially new platforms, will simply do whatever you tell them to do in a condition to Section 230.
Thank fucking god. These tech companies were complicit in an incompetent but serious insurrection attempt. Better late than never, but they must have known things were going to get bad.
The right and the associated white supremists have far too much freedom to spread disinformation, racism and hatred.
I'm sure we'll see free speech absolutists in arms about this, but today is a good day for democracy.
Isn't interesting that last week, an article summarizing the soft sciences' best attempt at determining whether allowing children to play violent video games makes them actually violent later in life was so well received? No one on Hacker News was surprised that shooting people in video games does not correlate to shooting people in real life.
But if someone is permitted to watch Islamic terrorist propaganda, or read white supremacist's flawed logical arguments, that's somehow guaranteed to convert some percentage of people to those ideologies; therefore they should be banned from all platforms.
Few videos games are explicitly meant to instill hatred, and especially not through actual people. DOOM might suggest me to RIP AND TEAR, but there is a quite obvious disconnect from reality. The closest game that I can think of in this case is Hatred. But even then, it is so ridiculously over the top (both in terms of writing and the angle at which the game is played) that you're disconnected from it.
Compare that to Parler, where you usually join because "hey, those people are conservatives, like me". Neonazis have gotten pretty damn good at slowly steering people to what they want. Hiding your power level and all. Suddenly, in a place where you feel safe, some people start telling you that, say, it's all because of antifas. You might not believe it at first. But through repeated exposure, in a place where you feel safe, slowly but surely it seeps in. There are studies on how much more easily the brain is affected when you feel in a safe place.
Going to Parler for most people isn't to see what the white supremacists are about these days. Just hop on /Pol/ for that, or Stormfront for actual Nazis and you'll see it.
> I'm sure we'll see free speech absolutists in arms about this, but today is a good day for democracy.
Yeah, I think I'm done with this industry. When did everyone become a fascist all of a sudden?
Edit: Fascism literally means big corporations and governments imposing a moral structure on society. What Apple is doing is fascist. It's also stupidly anticompetitive by not booting Facebook and Twitter off for the same reasons.
Good for you? If you think getting the alt-right and Q-conspiracy people off easily-accessible platforms is facism, I'm glad you're leaving the industry.
" Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/) is a form of far-right, authoritarian ultranationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition and strong regimentation of society"
Strong, independent corporations are essentially incompatible with fascism. You can't really have distributed authoritarianism. Corporations imposing a moral structure on the people they choose to do business with is the freedom of association protected by the first amendment.
This isn't, to be clear, me advocating for a corporatocracy. But fascism it ain't.
Who gets to decide what constitutes disinformation, racism or hatred?
If you have someone who decides who can speak and what they are allowed to say, that person holds all the power and is hence a dictator. Having a dictator isn't very democratic.
> I'm sure we'll see free speech absolutists in arms about this, but today is a good day for democracy.
This was not free speech, as has been defined by the US Supreme Court for at least a century, because "fighting words" (speech that may lead to the harm or limitation of rights of others) are not considered free speech.
Talking about racism and other bad ideas is protected, but suggesting sedition and bodily harm is not.
This is good to know in the coming days when the fascists come out of the woodwork.
And herein lies the danger behind scurrilous invocation of terms like “insurrection” and “coup”.
It’s an attempted justification for the “cleansing” that’s already well underway on Twitter today, and will continue unabated for as long as the majority is silent while the radicals cheer it on.
While a small minority loudly yell ”good riddance” the rest of us wonder what happens next time we write something wrong.
They don't have not understand boundaries, they can't see beyond the tip of their nose, and as long as Amazon is still delivering, this will never end.
I don't think there's much doubt that social media platform algos increased the flaming the flames over a period of years. What we're talking about here is their role as a means of communication over days/weeks.
If we are talking about their role as a means of communication, where is the rage at Verizon, ATT, T-Mobile, etc.? The is where the argument of repealing Section 230 because of the insurrection breaks down.
Someone brought an interesting perspective in another thread and I can't shake it off.
The other side keeps deplatforming them. Their legal cases are rejected. The mainstream media refuses to take them seriously. We're not even listening to them, because it's science and they're *ists if they disagree. We're not debating anymore. We just assume we're right.
We are slowly squeezing a significant segment of the population out of public debate, and they are powerless to stop it. Is it surprising that they are furious about it, and explode in unpredictable ways? Wouldn't you do the same?
E: I accidentally hit submit halfway through my argument. You might be replying to a really different comment
"I don't agree at all with those people storming the capital. This does not represent who we are, but what do you expect when the media claims not a single voter fraud case was won in court when in fact almost all of them never went to trial? They are lying."
Nearly half the nation voted for Trump. I don't believe half the nation is full of hatred and disinformation. No more so do I feel people burning businesses and shooting cops represent the BLM movement.
These people protesting. BLM, Occupy Wallstreet, Tea Party, Voter Fraud. At a certain level, they are all protesting the same thing. They are protesting the system. Cops, Bankers, Regulators, Politicians. The wealth gap is widening and people are getting frustrated. Unfortunately people are easily misled and are resorting to group think instead of recognizing the real problem.
I'm not a republican, but does anyone not feel just a little uncomfortable that the less worse option this year was a career politician with his own sorted history and snake oil salesman smile? Come on man.
If your lawsuit doesn't even go to trial (for a variety of reasons), you clearly haven't won it. Unless you win a lawsuit, "haven't won any of their lawsuits" is 100% true. And the media did report on sme of the lawsuits being thrown out, but I'm sure they would have found something wrong with reporting that too. Or should the courts just suddenly start entertaining invalid lawsuits just so Trump lawyers don't look as incompetent? (And from reading up a bit, multiple courts have judged on merit and found that the claimants didn't provide compelling evidence for their claims)
Yeah, I was hoping that the HN crowd would be pondering over the root cause for how we got here. There is a reason a lot of people are angry on both the sides, and the reasons mostly overlap.
I couldn't tell, since what they have to say never reaches my feed. However I've been reading comments like yours across every platform for over a decade.
At some point I'm not sure if they're really all that, or if I was just conditioned to believe that, and to leave them out of the conversation.
I spent the last few days reading the donald site and it's just as bad as everyone says it is. Calls for refreshing the tree of liberty, calls for violence (in minecraft), etc.
Yah. IMO-- only the most directly dangerous stuff -- incitements to violence-- should be removed. If you chase them out of Twitter, they'll make an even worse echo-chamber.
> Their legal cases are rejected. The mainstream media refuses to take them seriously.
> If you deny them the usual channels, is it surprising that they take the other route?
On the other hand, if what they're asserting is crazy and unsupported by fact, what's the alternative? Report it uncritically as part of "both sides"? Listen to them in court and give them relief anyways?
> On the other hand, if what they're asserting is crazy and unsupported by fact, what's the alternative?
How is this any different from the entirety of human history? America has gotten along quite fine without a central Ministry of Information directing what people should and should not believe is true. It is especially galling to think that some content moderators in the very narrow slice of society in Bay Area tech is qualified to do that job.
We've reached the point where the American left is afraid of the idea of free speech.
> How is this any different from the entirety of human history?
The difference is the echo chamber effect and the removal of opposing view points from an individual’s “feed”, while simultaneously facing no social pressure to conform to actual not-on-the-web society.
> We've reached the point where the American left is afraid of the idea of free speech.
Debating the merits and demerits of free speech surely has to fall within free speech. From what I've seen, free speech often gets raised as an unquestionable ideal and kills off sometimes uncomfortable discussion.
> How is this any different from the entirety of human history? America has gotten along quite fine without a central Ministry of Information directing what people should and should not believe is true. It is especially galling to think that some content moderators in the very narrow slice of society in Bay Area tech is qualified to do that job.
I agree that information being concentrated in a few platforms is harmful. But are you saying that you are owed having your speech amplified by others?
Remember our founding fathers starting opposing media outfits to slander each other? I don't think they were willing to print each others' stories verbatim.
> We've reached the point where the American left is afraid of the idea of free speech.
Not only that, but people like you and me who comment in defense of it are fading from the major platforms. For each of us who grew up with free speech as the cornerstone right in a free and just society, there seem to be many others who did not ever care about this, or actively seek to destroy it for the benefit of their own group.
It's worth remembering just how many warnings that this would happen eventually we have been left historically. Centuries of being reminded that people would come for these rights if we did not defend them. I never thought it was going to have to be our generation, though.
I'm concerned about major platforms gaining in power as gatekeepers of everyday communication, but-- I don't believe any party should be compelled to repeat your speech. It wasn't that way in 1791 and it shouldn't be that way now.
I do think that Twitter and Facebook need to be exceptionally careful and use their powers more sparingly, but there's absolutely no reason that they should have to repeat people literally coordinating and normalizing shooting elected officials, like many threads on Parler are at the moment--- speech that almost everyone agrees is not protected by the First Amendment anyways.
< I don't believe any party should be compelled to repeat your speech
Freedom of speech shouldn’t necessarily be compelled by law to be allowed by online platforms. But freedom of speech is not just a legal principle and individual right, but considered by many of us to be a core American cultural value. It seems reasonable for there to be public outcry and negative response to a company suppressing free speech. Free speech doesn’t include provable lies or inciting imminent violence which unfortunately I believe occurred this week.
> but considered by many of us to be a core American cultural value
Free speech includes being able to -not- utter things of your choice, too. No one will join me in decrying that my local paper will not publish my 30 page treatise on Flat Earth.
Yes-- power concentrating with a few gatekeepers of speech in tech is troublesome. That's what makes their moderation decisions so worrisome: that they're so empowered.
> Free speech doesn’t include provable lies
I think most provable lies are included in free speech, actually.
> or inciting imminent violence
Yup. But we kicked all the people off the mainstream platforms for things that were less than this, so now those platforms have less power to suppress the cries for violence.
where's is the line drawn between incitement of violence and thought crime? If i write a short story calling for the murder of my neighbors but claimed it as a work of fiction is that ok?
And there is no ministry of information. The 1st amendment protects us from governmental interference, not a private party discriminating based on content.
Deplatforming is happening because of cultural pressure and values, people still have the ability to create organizations with different values. The history of 1st amendment lawsuits is filled with examples of speech that was really offensive at the time, lawsuits were won because the government tried to restrict it.
Diversity in beliefs is valuable, but private parties should be able to have standards. I find an argument that companies should be forced allow speech that violates their standards because it is political dangerous.
Parler has been hosting TONS of incitements to violence and seems to refuse to take it down (or is at least extremely slow to). I don't see why it's particularly crazy that Apple would want to avoid the liability from that.
FWIW, I think alternatives to Twitter, like Parler and Mastodon, are a good idea, but Parler acts like they have a fair takedown process when it's evident that it is not working particularly well.
It's like, before the_donald was banned: at least there was a grownup in the room reining it in some and it could be seen. But if you wholesale kick out the extremists, they make their own happy place where there's nothing to slow them down at all.
(And then, in turn, you end up playing wack-a-mole with those cesspools, asking Apple/Google to deplatform them, etc.)
What I'm not sure on is the effect of making a community smaller. If you have 10 million people in a tepid cesspool, shutting down that cesspool might make 100k of them move to a more extreme location, while the remainder stop being exposed to that influence. The remaining smaller community is more extreme, but primarily because it has only the more extreme members of the previous iteration.
Sort of like how doomsday cults get more fervent with each incorrectly predicted apocalypse. The cult gets smaller, but those that remain are the true believers.
It's not quite that simple; it's not zero-sum. Whacking one mole breaks up recruitment and kills momentum. People on the fringes lose interest and don't bother to find out where the core moved to.
When the next mole comes up it's smaller and more divided, so you whack that one, and again, smaller, more peripheral, less momentum. That gives people who have peeled off a chance to get re-integrated into more sane communities rather than being bathed in constant toxicity, so they crawl back from radicalisation. At least, that's how it works below a certain size, and is why it's worth doing these things early, before they get to the_donald sort of numbers.
And ridicule doesn't work, clearly. Vanity may work for less-devoted people, but when you live in a deeply red state and are surrounded by Trumpers, there's no way you're going to speak up IRL, or break through the power of numbers in that social sphere.
There's enough people believing this that they're guaranteed to come into existence if you deny them access to mainstream platforms.
> but when you live in a deeply red state and are surrounded by Trumpers, there's no way you're going to speak up IRL
You can't interrupt the in-real-life contacts by any means (short of despotic ones).
But there's a certain number of people that will stop polluting an online space if they're being laughed at. But when you force them to create their own echo chamber even the more timid and susceptible to social pressure will be unbothered.
The flip side of that coin is that it also makes it harder to recruit people from broader platforms.
When the_donald left reddit, it became impossible for them to get their propaganda seen on the front page of reddit and seen by people who might join them. People won't casually stumble into a cesspool of lies and BS. Now they have to know it exists and actively seek it out.
I just googled "the donald" and they aren't even on the first page. Seems like deplatforming kind of worked....
the donald crowd has moved on to stuff like duckduckgo etc. This is the point the divide will grow with such tactics. and the donald is the first website in duckduckgo
That's because you use google, and vast majority use google... You kick enough people off, guess what their will be a conservative google, people who grew up in conservative households will use the same. What you suggested works when the numbers are small, but when its 50% of the population it's very likely they will make their own ecosystem. Tech giants became monopolies based on good faith...
> Their legal cases are rejected. The mainstream media refuses to take them seriously.
Well these last two seem pretty par for the course for illegitimate claims been promoted as legitimate. At a certain point the line of absurdity has been crossed at it is not the duty of society to constantly debunk illegitimate claims.
> The other side keeps deplatforming them
In this particular case, Parler has been host to a number of specific violent threats against the Vice President and members of Congress. Those threats are a crime under Title 18 Section 871 of the United States Code. Threats to others could constitute assault in many jurisdictions.
I really see it as no surprise that platforms hosting Parler entry points are concerned about this. They could be potentially held liable since this type of speech is not protected by the first amendment.
Yes, that is what reddit, twitter and Hacker News reinforce constantly. It's either because it's true, or because the other side has been repeatedly discouraged from adding their two cents in those communities. I've been seeing the world through this lens for so long that I can't tell.
I find it somewhat implausible that half the population is dumb, racist and all those other labels. It seems much more likely that I don't fully understand their perspective.
It's not half the population but a significant portion of people are really that dumb and racist. We just need to figure out how to avoid them getting programmed like this.
A large portion of extremists are not willing to discuss the results of the election even with other Republicans. People were calling Pence a traitor, boycotting Fox, etc.
Those people are not willing to talk to or listen to anyone who's supposedly on their side but has a different opinion. What makes you think they will listen to the "other side"?
I understand what you're saying, but in my limited experience, it appears it isn't exactly what information is being presented so much as How it is presented. Often I see some with a differing opinion begin along the lines of: "You're an idiot Trumper, you're killing the planet!!" How about begin with a question to engage? For example: " why is it you think climate change doesn't exist? From the studies I've seen, I was convinced. " That's better right?
You seem to be requesting perfection from one side but not from the other.
To keep on the previous example: Pence and Fox News never called anyone "idiot Trumper" or anything and they are being attacked by that crowd.
About climate change: Greta Thunberg has been called all kinds of names without equivalent provocation.
And there's a lot of people willing to engage with climate change deniers in the way you're suggesting they should, but a large part of climate change deniers are not willing to accept that those people are acting in good faith. There's lot of accusations that non-deniers are paid shills and stuff like that.
Again, why does every person on one side has to be perfect, but the other side gets a pass? Even the Republicans can't control the Trump crowd.
Absolutely, and I acknowledge that: the right itself is full of completely reasonable people that is being shunned by some of the extremists.
On the other hand, the same thing should apply to the left! Just because someone on the left has not been using logical arguments and acting in bad faith, it doesn't mean the whole left is doing it. People don't get a free pass on claiming "the left caused it" or (EDIT) "the left not talking to them is the reason they have this opinion".
Wait, just so we're on the same page: by "the left caused it" I mean that I don't believe the theory that "the left is to blame for people having extremist opinions because the left doesn't want to talk to them". Not some specific event.
I also believe that blaming the whole right for anything is incorrect too, and repeatedly mentioned that some of the right are being shunned by extremists too.
I think that one possible disconnect is the issue of ‘extremism’. I don’t think we can make a black and white division between extremists and everyone else.
For example, I think things like saying ‘whiteness’ is the problem, is not particularly associated with the extremes and yet very much are part of the cause of the problem. Similarly, calling everyone on the left a snowflake or a communist, is not only the purview of extremists.
> I don’t think we can make a black and white division between extremists and everyone else.
I haven't made any black and white division between extremists and anyone else. I always said "large portion of extremists", "a large part of climate change deniers", etc.
What I'm replying to here is the multiple posts (not yours) saying that the problem is that some people on the left have been communicating in a combative/ineffective manner.
While this is true, I don't believe this is the source of the problem. And demanding perfection from one side while absolving the other is not a fair tactic. It's pure bullshit. Why must the left be flawless? In fact, it's a bit condescending to the extremists.
I don’t believe it is the only source. However the situation is a non-exclusive OR. When either side does this, they become part of the cause. The behavior is the source of the problem - not a side.
No ‘side’ can claim not to be the cause unless it can curb the behavior. The left cannot curb the right behaving unreasonably, but it might be able to curb unreason on its own side.
However this: “demanding perfection from one side while absolving the other” seems like a straw man. If this is being done, it’s clearly being done by the right and the left.
When the right say the left are causing the problem by doing this, they are correct. You are also correct to say they aren’t the only ones causing it.
However the left cannot improve the situation by pointing fingers at the right and doubling down.
The left doesn’t have to be ‘flawless’, but if it’s not better than the right, then how does it expect to improve anything?
It's not a strawman. The posts I answered virtually said that the reason extremists still hold their extreme position is due to "the left" being too combative and being unable to create arguments to debate with the extremists. Note I'm not saying "the right" to refer to them.
I'm not talking about "the right" here. The right is too varied (as is the left). I'm talking about extremists.
I pointed out that some extremists are not even willing to listen to people on the right itself. Pence and Fox News are definitely not calling people "idiot trumpsters" and are still being attacked by them.
It's not even a matter of the left trying to engage in discussion. People have screamed at me and called me "sheeple" for wearing a mask in the supermarket. How do you engage? I just left. Am I the cause of the problem for not speaking a word before or after the engagement?
The left can't improve the situation by trying to debate with people that's unwilling to debate in the first place, period.
“The left can't improve the situation by trying to debate with people that's unwilling to debate in the first place, period.“
This is true.
However the left can improve the situation by being willing to debate people who are willing to debate, and yet casual dismissals or irrelevances about whiteness and racism stop that dead.
The people who claim to be willing to debate aren't necessarily willing to debate though. Someone like a Richard Spencer is really looking to gish gallop and not debate
ratww, I didn't intend to suggest perfection from either side. But, only one side wants to censor the other for their opinion, the manner in which they convey it, or broad association with extremists by way of similar beliefs on a much narrower subset of ideas.
My example of climate change was merely a "for instance" rather than for the topic of the example to become part of the discussion.
Point being, silencing one side doesn't work if the alleged reason is their ideas are so wrong they are too dangerous to be read unless you can properly show what you claim is "right".
I never mentioned anything about censorship here, so I don't see how this applies to my reply.
What I was objecting here is the theory that people on the right has been radicalised due to the left not wanting to discuss. I'm just demonstrating that not only the left wants to speak to the extremists, but also the right itself wants (Pence and Fox News). But the extremists don't care: they're even attacking both left and right preemptively. There's zero interest from extremists to understand opposing opinions.
This theory that the left is to blame for the radicalisation of those people holds absolutely no water.
It’s really tiresome seeing the “Republicans are victims of the left“ meme over and over. You’ve controlled the government for years. You’ve mismanaged the pandemic, killing more Americans than world war 2. We’re not supposed to take the president’s words literally, unless he’s saying something that you happen to personally agree with.
And no, discussing studies doesn’t work. See the anti-vax debate. We’ve been pointing out the science on climate change and vaccines, clearly and respectfully, for _decades_ and it has not mattered.
I’ve never seen anyone directly start a persuasive argument with “you’re an idiot Trumper”. It isn’t that common. Your helpless victim attitude is showing.
Trump had every opportunity to win this election rightfully. He is not a victim and neither are you or his supporters. Stop playing one.
> Others called for Vice President Mike Pence — who enraged Trump when he acknowledged that he did not have the power to unilaterally throw out electoral college votes — to be tried for treason. One Facebook post, quickly deleted, said Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell should be hanged.
Deplatforming isn’t censorship, it is publishers saying they find said speech to be garbage. I don’t typically stop arguing someone because I have convinced them of my view but because I guess further interaction with them on the topic is a waste of energy. I am confident in all my arguments but a lot of people are too dumb and too emotional to be worth debating. And in the group context, arguing without moderation has mostly devolved into name calling and child porn. It is an experiment often repeated. Some people want a different experience, which seems to mean they want moderation in exchange for a good forum, e.g. this web site.
That is censorship. Prior to this point in time only hate speech, inciteful, vulgar, things were censored. To remove speech from the view of others that is contrary to your own simply because you believe it is "garbage" is censorship. Perhaps the other side believes your speech should be censored. Let's have your comment removed because of your generalization of speech you don't like as "garbage" doesn't conform with the guidelines i just thought of right now and actually, i think your comment is "garbage". How to punish you for your opinion now? 12 hours ban? 24? Deplatformed? Where does it end? THAT is censorship.
Stop using someone else's services for your expression. Just imagine you are in Walmart or a Target or your local grocery store. You don't have a right to be there or to engage in any speech or really anything else if the manager wants you removed from private property. If you want to nationalize Twitter and Facebook be my guest but until then the owners of said private property can continue to kick people off of it. I still have yet to see one case where a person's right to free speech were somehow infringed upon.
I would put forth that you're not going to get far in this conversation if you can't acknowledge that censorship and government abridgement of free speech are not one and the same.
A company deplatforming an individual is indeed censorship, but is not government abridgement of free speech.
Isn't deplatforming the term that gets used when certain individuals, invited to speak at a University (for example) get prevented from actually saying anything due to intentional disruption?
Would you consider this to be censorship? Does it make a difference who the speaker is?
I'm not sure if you're applying that statement in mass or not, but I have seen this reasoning from both sides, straw-manning people into a belief system and calling them irrational because they disagree. I see this much more about the right from the left though.
I think if you sat down with an educated conservative and an open mind you'd have a different point of view.
If your statement was just a blanket statement about people in general, I apologize for mis-categorizing it.
Agreed. If I say, “One equals two”, and you say, “Don’t ever talk to me again, you racist”, then I’m never going to understand the flaws in my thinking and you’re going to wonder why you are unable to convert people to your side.
Nobody is going to call you a racist because you claim that 1=2.
If you want to debate in good faith whether people are too quick to call others racist, maybe you should start the debate by enumerating what kind of speech have sparked those claims? Otherwise you're just being hyperbolic and increasing the political divide.
I get that people are pissed for being called racist, but if they REALLY wanna fix that, the first step is admitting that the other side might be pissed about something too.
"Nobody is going to call you a racist because you claim that 1=2."
? A woman is under arrest for trying to grab what she thought was her phone back from a black kid. It's a national story.
In 2020, getting into an argument with a Black person is 'racist' and 'criminal' if you happen to be wrong.
The woman did 1=2, in that, her actions are wrong.
But because someone is a different colour, she's being destroyed and doxxed on the MSM for the assumption of racism. (Ironically, she could easily pass as a 'person of colour' if she chose to).
This is unfortunately a problem right now in politics and it's perpetuated by the press.
That's a terrible example. She not only falsely accused, but also assaulted someone she had never seen before.
False accusation and assault should be crimes, period. If she had done the same thing to me you can be damn sure I would want her ass in jail regardless of my skin colour. Her arrest is a good thing. Actions that affect others negatively should have consequences.
Assault is a crime, yes, what she did was wrong - yes, of course - I agree with that.
But what she is being destroyed for is 'racism' - not 'assault and false accusation'.
She was being irrational (1=2) and then because of this, castigated for racism - which is a much more devious charge.
Also - it's shocking that anyone is 'shocked' over such a pedestrian encounter. Have HN readers never been in a fight before? Have folks literally never been in an argument?
This kind of stuff is 'daily' on the streets, at WallMart, etc. It's not very civil obviously, but it's really common for people to get upset over things. We have bouncers at bars for this reason. But we're adults and we move past it.
And - 'false accusation' in this manner is clearly not criminal. The woman had her phone stolen, it's reasonable for her in a hysterical state and just see the first iPhone and possibly think it's hers. Again, not nice at all, but not completely crazy.
The proper response to a hysterical person who had their phone stolen, and who maybe thinks you have it is to 'take the high ground' and calmly demonstrate your ownership. That's all. I don't expect this of a kid, but that could have happend.
That we have a 'national story' with literally Al Sharpton because someone 'grabbed someone's arm' is utterly ridiculous. The kid is 'seeking counselling' because someone 'touched him forcefully'? It's a farce. They've turned this utterly minor incident into a bad SNL parody.
Finally - I'm not implying their couldn't have been racism either, this woman could possibly just as nasty as it gets, it's impossible to tell.
And of course, the whole point of CNN putting this on the news is not that this specific moment is important, but that it could be demonstrative of 'systematic racism in the commons' and they want to make an example out of her - but lacking any possible reference to racial motivation, it's just plain stupid.
In summary - this is an example of certain parts of the media castigating individuals who may be of a certain persuasion (in this case 'White') for no reason, and I can see people getting upset over that.
The riot on capital hill however was not mostly a political movement of general malaise, rather, it was specifically about that certain people feel the election was stolen. It was mostly certainly not stolen, but they believe that because Trump told them so, and that's the primary motivation issue of the violence at this point.
No, it's nowhere near reasonable for her to do what she did. Everyone has a damn iPhone and they have very few models which all look very similar. The kid even had his own phone case which she asked him to remove. It's unreasonable to ask a stranger that just appeared in an elevator to give their phone to you.
And maybe it's a cultural thing but I've never seen a grown woman tackling a 14 year old kid to the ground like this, and if I ever do you can be sure I will call the police. Just because you've seen it often doesn't mean it should be normalised.
And no, she's not being "destroyed" by the racism accusation. But she might be destroyed if she goes to jail and gets a permanent record. And she had it coming. Actions HAVE consequences.
This is hyperbolic and disrespectful to people who actually went trough it.
Breaking the law has consequences. And the only consequence here is her being prosecuted for assault and battery and potentially going to jail. This has nothing to do with racism accusation, and is nothing compared to the torture you're suggesting.
So I don't mean to say it's reasonable in normal circumstances, just given a little bit of hysteria after having lost an iPhone.
I guess I should have said 'undersandable' when someone is angry.
And yes - she is totally destroyed.
Do you understand the implications of your face being all over TMZ and CNN, publishing your name?
She will have death threats.
She will almost certainly lose her job if she has a normal job.
This will tar her for the rest of her life.
People commit suicide over this kind of stuff.
'Naming and shaming' for such a minor even is vindictive and terrible.
I understand CNN wanting to call attention to casual racism, but they should probably using these as 'lesson events' and probably not using real names.
They also dramatize by giving some back story 'son of a musician' and 'lady with a history of DUI' which is shameful - none of that is relevant.
Given how sensitive these things are they could be really polite about it, talk about what happened objective, talk about how the actors could have acted differently without names and colour commentary.
A significant number of people are threatened by rational critical thinking. They instill these values in their children who then they go off on raving rampages touting false patriotism. You can't make them listen. Taking away their echo chambers is the only way to cool them off.
I don't need them to think like me. I need them to be self-reflective enough to admit when they're wrong. You can see this inability in action when their pugnacious behavior is held up to the light and they immediately dodge with conspiracy theories about planted agitators from the other side.
From my side, you are wrong. The stances you think I have are probably inaccurate too. Your side seems to always lock us into a prison of two ideas without letting us speak for ourselves.
The extreme assumptions and generalizations don't help. There are many of us that don't agree with you but don't exactly line up with Republicans or even Trump supporters at times.
Many Trump supporters are Libertarians that do not agree full with Republican ideals completely, but it's the closest home.
You're setting yourself up for lots of disappointment, in this life. If you truly need complete strangers you haven't met to do pyschological work for you, happiness will always slip away.
> Well there were pretty heavy gun regulations that were enacted under Obama.
No there weren't.
> I guess Obama did allow cartels to have guns by continuing Fast & Furious so you're half right.
You're half-right because of this one, the Obama administration circumvented federal law to allow known prohibited persons to buy guns and then let them take the guns across the border. over 1200 guns were lost to known organized crime without even getting Mexican gov't permission.
That already happened though. Black people aren't allowed to have guns. That's why police shootings now have to mention "unarmed black man" because being armed is breaking the law for a black man.
You just aren't the free thinker you think you are
Wait, has this actually worked before? Ever? Do you have examples? For instance, when they denied "radical Islamist groups" access to popular social media, "radical Islamist groups" just started using less popular social media that is harder to keep tabs on. "Radical Islamist groups" certainly haven't disappeared...
I have an example - I remember a time before social media and internet populism. In those days these same groups existed, but were exclusively on the fringe. You didn't hear people bring up radical alt-right talking points, or sympathize with nazis, or spout outright racism (as much).
The fact of the matter is that echo chambers encourage extremism and social media is nothing but echo chambers.
Another fact of the matter is human psychology. Humans have a biological tendency to accept as truth the first opinion they hear on a topic. This is a result of evolution. If your tribe member tells you a berry is poisonous, is the first response to argue? Or to just listen. Better to be safe than sorry.
When you combine that bit of psychology with social media, you see people go online to some circle jerk, innocently at first, and then get radicalized.
Now before any counter examples get brought out, just consider that while it doesn't work this way for every person, in every context, it does work this way for some non-trivial amount of people, and that's what we're seeing. A lot of users on parler aren't domestic terrorists, but if it's even 1% who fall victim to basic human psychology, that's enough for what took place on Wednesday.
So yeah - the example is the time before social media.
The time before the printing press was invented is certainly not an example of "taking away printed materials". Both the printing press and social media exist now. You wrote lots of stuff without including the example I requested.
Also, if you didn't hear racism in USA in the 1980s you've led a very sheltered life.
YES. Recently many platforms were key in deplatforming ISIS and slowing the rate of radicalization. ISIS was an internet phenomenon and when their media was pushed to less famous outlets then their outreach was weakened.
Ever since the beginning of the Internet webhosting companies have colluded to deplatform the KKK and a few other notorious white supremacist groups. This has been largely successful in curbing the outreach of the KKK in the United States. It's also why YouTube is getting a lot of criticism for embracing white supremacist groups and facilitating thier growing outreach. This is a break from long-running comm business practices.
Daryl Davis has certainly proven otherwise, but I freely admit that no one should have to have the sort of patience or dedication to the cause that he's demonstrated in doing so.
> What I have come to find to be the greatest and most effective and successful weapon that we can use, known to man, to combat such adversaries as ignorance, racism, hatred, violence, is also the least expensive weapon, and the one that is the least used by Americans. That weapon is called communication. [0] [1]
Incorrect, you CAN NOT make someone listen, you can only take advantage when they are willing to do so. No one will believe anything they're not willing to. If they open the door, only then does communication work.
You can certainly encourage someone to open the door. I've found that staying calm, humble, and listening first tends to cause others to listen in return.
> It isn’t “censorship” to toss your ass off Twitter for violating their TOS
This is a misnomer. It's certainly censorship to "toss your ass off Twitter", even if somebody's arbitrary interpretation of a TOS concludes in the finding of a violation.
The concept of free speech doesn't just restrict the government via the First Amendment... it is a tradition and a founding principle (as documented in the Federalist Papers) of the United States of America, as well as a social contract.
I would argue that companies are obligated to abide by the principles of free speech, not from a legal perspective, but from a social perspective, lest they face the consequence of controversy Twitter is currently facing for banning the account of a sitting US President.
Ultimately, silencing people you disagree with is a no-win path to go down.
Because every single time the left agrees to sit down and have a conversation with “reason and logical arguments” they get met with bad-fair arguments.
In spite of this, they keep offering. As soon as they do anything except bend-over-backwards to accomodate the right, they are met with “so much for the tolerant left”. Is it any surprise that people get fed up when this is all they’re ever met with. If you can’t come to the table and behave like an adult, don’t be surprised when you get relegated to the kids table.
I am quite worried for the future of the country when Republican voters elected not one but two adherents of QAnon to the House of Representatives.
What is any sort of reasoned debate about policy going to look like when one of the participants is coming into it with a set of beliefs as divergent from reality as QAnon?
Why not try both approaches? We'll let Pence and Graham explain, with logic and reason, why the Electoral College selected Biden, and then we'll see how people respond.
In case it isn't clear to people who only watch briefly, the people in the video are Trump supporters, yelling at Graham for giving up on perpetuating the "stolen election" lie.
These are people who are nominally on his side, angry that he's no longer carrying water for Trump.
The left/right dichotomy is not something that is rooted in logic or argumentation but in psychology.
The left is succeeding because it has abandoned argument in favor of the raw pursuit and exercise of power, including their incessant moralizing, which is of course how a priestly caste expresses power.
Why would they go back to debating?
They censor because its playing field they're winning on.
Research into belief perseverance shows that even when people are shown overwhelming evidence contradicting one of their beliefs that they dig in their heels and stick to the belief anyway. [1]
There's also Frank Lunz's observation that many people form opinions based solely on the emotive content of the words (Russell conjugation [2]) they're presented with, regardless of the facts. [3]
They feel that the deck is rigged against them, debating reinforces the current oppressive system, that all disagreement is illegitimate, and that anyone with power who isn't dismantling the current system is evil.
> I find it somewhat implausible that half the population is dumb, racist and all those other labels.
It's (thankfully) not half the population. The vast majority of trump voters would be just as disgusted with the nastier parts of parler as you and I are, just like most Biden voters are honestly pretty disgusted with some of what happened under the cover of the BLM protests.
When I study history of various places and times, fifty percent of the population has often done a lot of questionable things, especially at the behest of leaders willing to use irrational divisions, like skin color, to enhance their power over that fifty percent. And, to tie it to ycombinator, isn’t the software motto 80% of everything is crap?
And to semi-agree with your paean to understanding, there are people whose actions I deplore and whom I know well enough to glimpse thru their eyes, and the combination of constant emotional disregulation and self-centered ness means one can try quite hard to be good and be nothing be a source of evil actions. Understanding this emotional reality has helped me to stay clear headed when confronted with the maelstrom, but has not lessened my determination to oppose the actions.
It's far more likely that half the population has been duped into following someone because of clever conniving. Trump knew exactly what to do to build up that base and now that their head is gone, the chicken is running around in the yard with no direction wondering what the hell happened. Once the dust settles, I think a lot of those people will reintegrate into society, especially if they start to receive the benefits of good governance, such as healthcare, assistance due to COVID, robust anti-discrimination, job prospects, etc.
I don't doubt that so many people on the right are hurting. Their constant accusations of being called the "fly-over states" is totally true. There is endless rural decay, industry is gone. When life is difficult like that, it is very easy to pine for a time gone past when things were better. But now it's gotten so bad that people are desperate. COVID-19 has made it much worse, and people don't want to follow restrictions as it could be an existential threat. So they try and latch on to the one guy that is rich, because they are not; the one guy that talks straight, tells them what they want to hear. And they fall for him, and pledge their support. Combine that with a severely underfunded education system where people don't think critically and just think to tests or drop out, people can be swayed easily. Just look at the people at the Capitol riot. These people are not smart and thoughtful, you can tell by their incoherent ramblings. They have been incited by their environment. Yes they chose to go to DC and they deserve to be punished for it, but I can sympathize with what brought them to this place. The problem is Republicans are so bad at dealing with those issues, because they require broad-based governmental programs since private enterprise has abandoned those communities.
My optimistic hope is that with a few years of widespread governance by the Democratic party, we may see some wide-reaching assistance reach these people. Get education reformed, get police reformed. Teach these people that hating black people actually causes their own outcomes to get worse. Support their businesses that they have had to scrape together. Pass widespread healthcare reform so healthcare is accessible to all, not just the rich. Build up people, don't tear them down. And, most importantly in the short term, vaccinate the whole country to get past this COVID-19 pandemic so the economy can get back to full strength. I think once that happens, and the Trumpers have some time to grieve from the loss of their former leader, these people will come back to the fold and see that hate isn't a useful method of getting what they need.
Thanks for sharing. I gather your optimistic view is founded in sort of taking election promises at face value. I’ve always thought they are more like things politician say to seem cool, so my pessimism builds from assuming they won’t come to fruition.
Understandable. I put my trust in activists who do it for the cause. When government and activists actually work together instead of in opposition, great things can happen. We've seen it in New York and we can see it nationwide.
> My optimistic hope is that with a few years of widespread governance by the Democratic party, we may see some wide-reaching assistance reach these people. Get education reformed, get police reformed.
Aren't there areas in the US that have been governed by Democrats continuously for decades, yet also don't have the programs you list above?
I don't know any area that's continuously controlled by Democrats except for maybe certain municipalities. Even New York had a Republican Mayor and Governor for many years in the 2000s.
take a look at the top X cities in the US, and see which party is running them. Then, see how long they were there... then see if the data supports your assertion.
Maybe because he is a lying blowhard grifter. This is not new, he has been this way for fifty years. You can go back to his interviews in the 70s and 80s, and see the same behavior.
I think what you're saying about causation has a lot of truth to it. I believe one of the other fundamental considerations is simple numbers. Looking at the pictures of the Capitol riot it doesn't look like there were more than a few thousand people there and probably less than ten percent of those breached the Capitol and/or engaged in violence. There are more than 328 million people in the US, some minute percentage of those people, because of mental illness or some sort of subclinical ideological derangement are going to be drawn into this kind of idiocy given the present environment.
The rise of online platforms unquestionable explains part of why large hordes of conspiracy addled red hats have taken to the streets. But I am very pessimistic about the potential for deplatforming to solve this problem. Clinton famously said that the Chinese censoring the Internet would be like, "nailing jello to a wall," basically impossible. It turns out, for the most part, the Chinese have been able to hammer down dissent online. But they were able to write almost any laws they wanted, create a massive censorship apparatus, and exert control over every aspect of society. Even with all these advantages they barely managed it. Western society will never be willing to exert the control necessary to effectively manage online speech. There are simply too many members of the alt right, creating too much demand, for them to be effectively cut off from communication platforms. Trying will likely be counterproductive. It will balkanize the internet into more ideologically extreme and insular networks where "responsible adults" have less influence. It will feed a sense of paranoia and persecution. Over time it will lead them to harden their platforms and improve their tactics of evasion making it more difficult to monitor them and exert any kind of control.
We also have the very significant problem of where to draw the line. Now that the big tech platforms have decided to remove political speech that they believe is dangerous, there will be a lot of pressure on them to keep going. "If you removed $X for $I why are you now giving a platform to $Y to say $J?" There is going to be a lot of discussion in the coming months about what kind of opinions should lead to deplatforming, not all of it is going to be productive.
There is no easy solution and deplatforming is probably part of the answer. I believe a larger part will (or at least should) be finding more effective ways to reach out and influence opinions when possible. The Capitol police being caught so unprepared shows the urgent need for effective intelligence and responsive protection strategies. If deplatforming is used in an excessive or capricious manner it is likely to make any kind of effective action much more difficult.
Different poster, but I share the same hope. Most people won't put their life on the line for the revolution if their life is sufficiently comfy. Revolutions only happen when people have no other choice. When it's revolt or die, you revolt. When it's revolt or watch netflix, most people watch netflix.
We'll see if it's different this time, but I bet this time will end up like all the other times it has felt like "the end of civilized society". Society just keeps putting along.
- what if “society just keeps putting along” only until it stops? I heard somewhere that complex empires historically have a life expectancy of ca. 300 years.
- I also heard somewhere that the Arab Srping revolutions took off in full only when the panicked government shut down social media. True or not, it’s an insteresting “what if”. The “panem et circenses” government should maybe think twice about turning off Twitter (in practice) for these subjects, no?
- life looks to be getting less comfy, with COVID. A year ago I would feel more at home in the comfy prosperity argument but today that rings hollow
> - what if “society just keeps putting along” only until it stops? I heard somewhere that complex empires historically have a life expectancy of ca. 300 years.
Yup, that's the worry.
> - I also heard somewhere that the Arab Srping revolutions took off in full only when the panicked government shut down social media. True or not, it’s an insteresting “what if”. The “panem et circenses” government should maybe think twice about turning off Twitter (in practice) for these subjects, no?
I had not heard that. I think it's a bit unfair to compare people being oppressed by an actual dictator in a relatively poor country to people who live in one of the richest countries in the world. All these people had the means to pay for transport across this massive country and pay for lodging. If you're really struggling can you afford to buy a round trip plane ticket and a hotel?
Also Twitter hasn't been turned off for the people, just for the leaders and presumably instigators. They're still all gonna be able to freely talk shit about Biden and libtards, they just won't be getting orders from the top.
> - life looks to be getting less comfy, with COVID. A year ago I would feel more at home in the comfy prosperity argument but today that rings hollow
True, COVID has caused a decrease in the QOL. But on a macro level, there is still enough food, shelter, healthcare, and Call of duty to go around. I think it's enough to keep a large chunk of the population from seriously considering taking up arms.
It's easy: this is a Trump phenom, and not an ideological or cultural phenom, mostly.
Trump has no ideology, he used Twitter, FB and mass media to lie to the masses, and a certain group believed him.
Once he has less power, he'll have less influence.
FoxNews commenters became rabidly in favour of he $2K stimulus checks when Trump announced it.
It was pretty funny watching thousands of Fox commenters, normally screaming at the hint of 'Socialism' - backing up Trump's $2K checque claims and how 'people are having a hard time these days, they need the money'.
It's really sad how they will flip ideologies to be consistent with whatever he says.
Once Trump has moved on, then there will be other priorities.
Just a nitpick but not "half of the US population" follows Trump.
Not even getting into the fallacy of attributing more than can be to participants of a binary choice dilemma, the American Republic presidential elections are not "1 person 1 vote" like most other democratic Republics.
>I find it somewhat implausible that half the population is dumb, racist and all those other labels. It seems much more likely that I don't fully understand their perspective.
I don't think you've met enough people. Most people I've met are gullible idiots who are looking for excuses to believe nonsense.
In all seriousness, if most people you have met are 'gullible idiots who are looking for excuses to believe nonsense', then it may be you, perhaps, who has 'not met enough people?'
> I find it somewhat implausible that half the population is dumb, racist and all those other labels
Why do you think this?
Racism was the absolute norm in the US until ~not that long ago. It’s literally written into the constitution and it took literal bloodshed to change that. And then when we did, there was massive pushback in the form of Jim Crow laws.
Statistically you’d expect half of people to be dumber than average. Our (non-higher) education system in the US is nothing to be proud of and wildly inconsistent at best.
Add in politician deliberately lying (e.g. republicans ignoring climate change, republicans denying covid while adjusting their portfolios to take advantage) and stupidity is clearly the norm.
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
The Three-fifths Compromise was a compromise reached among state delegates during the 1787 United States Constitutional Convention. Delegates disputed whether and how slaves would be counted when determining a state's total population, as this number would determine a state's number of seats in the House of Representatives and how much it would pay in taxes. The compromise counted three out of every five slaves as people...
In the US Constitution, the Three-fifths Compromise is part of Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3:
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons [italics added].[2]
Article I, Section 9, Clause 1 is even more damning I think. Basically saying that importation of slaves must be allowed for at least the first 19 years of the country's existence.
> The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
How is that damning? The alternative was to create the union without the south. Then slavery would have continued much longer in the south. How would it have been better for the north to refuse to compromise? The constitution brought the end of slavery. It didn’t prop it up.
The Jamestown craftsmen's strike of 1619 took place in the settlement of Jamestown in the Virginia colony.[1] It was the first documented strike in North America.[2] Skilled craftsmen were sent by the Virginia Company to Jamestown to produce pitch, tar, and turpentine used for shipbuilding.[3] When the colony held its first election in 1619, many settlers were not allowed to vote on the grounds that they were not of English descent, and they went on strike.[2] Due to the importance of the skilled workers in producing valuable naval stores for the colony, company leaders bowed to labor pressure and gave full voting rights to continental workers.[1]
Of course slaves weren’t allowed to vote, and 3/5ths meant that the South would get more representation as recognition of the economic strength they were bringing to the union.
It’s not like the Northern vs Southern states were arguing about whether a slave’s vote was worth 0, 3/5, or 1. This was about ascribing more (or less) power to slave owners.
No... the 3/5 compromise reduced the power of the south, because it kept them from getting representation for those they refused to allow to vote.
The south wanted 1, the north wanted 0.
The 3/5 compromise was one of the forces that eventually brought about the end of slavery. It didn’t increase the south’s representation, it decreased it.
Oh wait... we don’t actually want to learn about history here unless it reinforces our identity politics mindset. Please remember this before posting logical, factual information.
We live in a totally post fact world. Nobody wants to hear truth, they just make up whatever story they want to believe and pretend that makes it fact.
That’s right, the south wanted 1 and the north wanted 0.
What I’m saying is that it “increased” the representation versus 0. Which is equivalent to your formulation that it “decreased” the representation from 1. In other words, 3/5 is more than zero and less than 1. No disagreement here.
My point is that it wasn’t about giving rights to black people, it was an argument about how much representation slave owners would have.
Aside from the place mentioned in numerous sibling comments, Article I Sec. 9. Cl. 1 (it's not phrased in racial terms, but it's literally Constitutional protection of the slave trade.)
This is something I've had an issue with for a while. It's not a great move to assume that conservatives are dumb.
There are plenty of brilliant people who hold conservative values. Their idea of "success" may not follow the path of others who have moved from their hometown to a coast working in IT. Or the path of those who were "enlightened" with advanced degrees where the sophisticated choice is obviously to be a democrat. It's different strokes for different folks, and there are many ways to live in the United States.
A vote for Trump isn't necessarily a vote for Trump - It can be a vote for "Not Democrat." Whether or not you believe that voting "Not Democrat" is appropriate, it's a far reach to say that all, or most, of those people, are idiots with racist views. This approach discounts legitimate differences that should be open to debate and should be discussed. We can't expect the United States to last or be successful if we assume everyone in the middle of the country is an uncultured idiot who should be censored. Or assume that those who don't share the same views must be racists who just can't be reasoned with.
If Democrats somehow lost control of the primary to a less ideal celebrity candidate (and this is possible: https://www.london.edu/think/why-most-elections-are-ineffici...), there would be many democrats who choose to vote for that person because it is "Not Republican." It wouldn't matter who is on the ticket as long as it is "Not Republican" because a republican choice would be dumb, racist, and unsophisticated.
I grew up in the rust belt, I've lived in the most diverse city in the country (Houston, TX), and I've lived in Cambridge, MA. People are largely the same all over the country - they care about being left alone with the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. How they define those things differs (e.g., is a fetus "alive"?), but as long as people have those rights protected, then it's all good.
But we need laws where these rights come into conflict: if someone's pursuit of happiness involves owning slaves, this is in direct conflict with another's right to life and liberty. And they are ordered in importance - life > liberty > pursuit of happiness. So obviously, slavery should be outlawed. But other things aren't that clear. Federal legislation doesn't impact everyone evenly, and those who are impacted should have a voice. Assuming every "Not Democrat" (or "Not Republican" or "Not X") voice is a racist, dumb person who should be silenced or ignored is a fast path to division and the collapse of a functioning Democracy.
> It's not a great move to assume that conservatives are dumb, racist, and unsophisticated.
I don't love labels, but I don't think "conservatives" are simply any of those things.
This isn't an original thought, but I think they are mostly afraid of losing their community if they change their mind.
Fear of disconnection is innate and biological. When my trump supporting friends say "I believe it" to somebody suggesting that the Capitol Hill rioters were antifa pretending to be trump supporters, their lack of interest in challenging their own beliefs stems from the risk incurred with disagreeing with their friends and loved ones.
This effect is so strong that our brains give hits of dopamine whenever our beliefs are confirmed. We are not weird to change our minds.
So no. "Conservatives" aren't dumb. Just like the rest of us, they biologically afraid of social disconnection. And all that shouting across the isle makes it harder for them to see "progressives" accepting them.
I'm a conservative and it has zero to do with identifying with a certain community or concern about being rejected by them.
Republican candidates are more likely to vote on issues I care about in a way that aligns with my values. That alignment is far from perfect, but it's a lot better than it would be with a Democrat, especially a progressive Democrat.
That's why I typically vote Republican, sometimes begrudgingly. Has nothing to do with belonging to a community. In fact, the communities I am a part of rarely discuss politics. We discuss values that inform our politics, but the politics themselves are secondary.
I have absolutely no fear of social disconnection due to my political views. If I was to suddenly start voting democratic, no one in my closest circles would even need to know.
And I care nothing about whether progressives accept me. I simply have very different values and don't believe where they want our culture and country to move is healthy. So, I don't support them in elections. How they feel about me is irrelevant.
I'm not the OP but I know several voters who seem to match the OP's sentiment:
1. Abortion is simply the legally sanctioned killing of helpless human beings. I know _many_ single issue voters who begrudgingly voted for trump because of this.
2. Climate change denialism is pretty much anti common sense. Anyone who completely ignores the issue stinks of corruption.
Many complex topics with a lot of gray areas are often framed in soundbites that are extreme - you're either pro-life or pro-choice. You're either pro-Trump or anti-Trump.
A person can be a staunch supporter of women's rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness but draw the line at a woman's right to end another's life. The "all-or-nothing" approach pushes people into one of two camps that each holds extreme opposing views, and it's happening across the different issues we face today.
Take the bathroom ban in North Carolina. It got polarized into a trans/non-trans fight, where all people who supported separate gender bathrooms were dumb, transphobic people. The polarization marginalizes a legitimate argument:
Women should not have to walk into a rest stop restroom at night during a road trip, see a man, and then think about whether or not he should be there. And a man should not have the right to be there because he "identifies" as a woman when he really doesn't and is just a pervert in a rest stop bathroom. But with a new law, it then has to go through the court to prove whether he had the right to be there. The damage is done way before that day shows up.
The polarization and simplification meant that democrats couldn't vote against this because it became associated with transphobia. A vote to keep separate bathrooms would mean being canceled and losing their seat. The republicans were villainized, but they have a fairly decent point. Obviously, no one should feel uncomfortable using the restroom, but what unintended consequences come with the law? You can say perverts in bathrooms is an edge case, but I'd argue a trans person being denied a restroom is also an edge case.
Starbucks arguably came up with the best answer with gender-indifferent restrooms that are single occupancy, but this isn't always scalable. There are single occupancy family restrooms in many places, so if someone truly feels unsafe to use a restroom, they could use those. These were options that were put into place without laws.
It's not "right or wrong" or "black and white" on nearly any issue we face today. It's complex, and federal laws, given they impact 330 million Americans, have more unintended consequences than laws enacted at the local or state level. And that's what the republican, conservative party wants - less "big laws" with fewer unintended consequences in favor of state laws that allow people to govern themselves at the local level. It's also why any vote to undermine a State's right to certify its election results flies in the face of conservatism.
Votes in a functioning democratic society are anonymous. You can vote one way and tell folks you voted another to "fit in".
But people become who they hang around. So if they are in a vacuum and they only hear that the election was stolen, anything else is fake news, and the president is telling them this, they may seriously believe that democracy is under siege.
Amp it up with technology echo chambers and reinforcing behaviors and you wind up with extreme situations where a group of people storms the capitol.
It's when people don't believe they can end up with similarly distorted views on a topic that they are susceptible to this themselves. This is along the lines of the Lucifer Effect.
Conservatives are in no way synonymous with Trump Republicans. Many of the stalwarts of conservatism have not just disavowed Trumpism, but have worked actively against it. Much of the discussion in modern (Trump) Republican circles would be unrecognizable to self-identified conservatives of 20, 30, 40 years ago.
I think we're in agreement here. Maybe it would have been better to say "republicans" than conservatives. But the point stands that not all Trump voters are Trump supporters that OP identified as racists with below-average intelligence. They may just be voting "not-democrat" on a ticket with two sub-optimal choices.
> Racism was the absolute norm in the US until ~not that long ago.
The racists during the time of slavery and Jim Crow made no attempt to deny their racism. The large majority of Republicans, including Trump, denounce racism.
The news will find every schmuck with a confederate flag and put them on the TV, but that doesn't explain why a Republican majority Senate passed criminal justice reform and Trump signed it.
> Statistically you’d expect half of people to be dumber than average.
The implication being that one major political party constitutes the entire lower half of the distribution?
You seem to be contributing to the discussion, but people are downvoting without actually voicing any disagreement.
This seems to be common when you take the conservative "side" even if it's not really a partisan position you take, simply disagreeing with implications that the entire right are dumb racists.
> You seem to be contributing to the discussion, but people are downvoting without actually voicing any disagreement.
downvotes are the voice of the unheard.
> This seems to be common when you take the conservative "side" even if it's not really a partisan position you take, simply disagreeing with implications that the entire right are dumb racists.
its common on both sides because its part of the human condition. However hn is one of the few places on the internet where it is even possible to achieve this, despite the downvotes.
> This seems to be common when you take the conservative "side" even if it's not really a partisan position you take, simply disagreeing with implications that the entire right are dumb racists.
I don't even want to be doing this. Trump supports coal. Ajit Pai. He's a pathological liar. Trump sucks.
But a lot of the things he gets wrong actually help him in swing states. There is a lot of coal in Pennsylvania. So lazy opponents can't easily use those things to attack him because it would only get him more votes in places that matter.
And then we end up in a situation where the majority of people hate Trump for reasons that are actually lies, because the truth translates inconveniently to the electoral map and too many people care more about winning no matter the cost.
The implication is that one major political party has eaten of the forbidden fruit of no-bottom populism. Power at any cost, and who cares if it means we rile up rubes by telling them whatever they want to hear - sympathising with whatever dumbass thing they believe in (without actually saying we believe it too). Everyone in the RNC that went along had the delusion that they could control this golem of their own making. Recent events provend them wrong, and a whole bunch of them just had their "oh shit" moment. So no, the Republicans aren't dumb. They just got too greedy. Gerrymandering wasn't enough. Voter disenfranchisement laws weren't enough. They had to " go there" - where many, many other political movements have gone before. Take one poor, struggling, powerless mass of people, and relentlessly feed their ignorance, victim-hood, desire for some control in their lives. And do so dishonestly, carelessly and with no thought for the outcome or those people themselves.
EDIT: It occurs to me that the DNC has done this _to an extent_ with people of colour. However I do believe there is a qualitative difference. Think Bolsonaro vs Ardern.
So one political party is just full of dumb racists and the other party is full of clear, rationale thinkers with no biases who only believe the truth and have never made a mistake or believed something that is untrue.
I appreciate your honesty and I will attempt to explain, briefly, so you might understand better.
1. Most people on the right are against abortion for the reason that it is against their particular religion, which declares it as murder and murder is wrong.
But, the others don't care at all about a woman's right to choose, they just don't want their tax dollars paying for that choice instead of other things they want. It really is that simple.
As far as the court goes, that is completely different. The saying goes "you can indict a ham sandwich ", and that is largely true. Courts all over the nation entertain frivolous actions on a daily basis, people love this (Judge Judy), but when cases are preliminary dismissed without the "day in court" faith in the court will be quickly lost by those who believed win or lose, it should have been heard.
Each person reading this was raised in a time when they were taught every vote counts, your opinion matters, and to stand up for what you believe in while respecting the opinions of others. The opinion of one side is no longer even listened to, let alone respected. How many of you have ever genuinely tried to explain to someone with a different opinion why you disagree with them? I don't see that much anymore. Not everyone with a different opinion is set in their beliefs. Some may welcome your perspective and shift their viewpoint to yours. It's worth a try, right? Apparently not for most. Instead, the right is vilified, insulted, and they believe they are treated differently and unfairly from the left. Their voices are being systematically taken away through deplatforming. They are being stereotyped and lumped into a single category along with extremists. So, the logical conclusion is that if you isolate, disparage, and discourage someone enough, they will become you've now convinced them they are. Multiply that by 70 million. Instead, try talking to people with the goal of explaining your point of view and why you feel that way. It certainly can't hurt more than what's happening now.
But your own post makes clear the problem with your logic. This isn’t about convincing people. It’s about the fact that people’s political views are guided by gut, instinct and the bubbles they’re in instead of by critical thinking. These people believe abortion is killing an innocent baby. They don’t want their tax dollars spent on thing X. They believe the election was rigged — evidence doesn’t come into it. How do you change what people believe? I think we’ve tried rational debate. God knows I have. It’s frustrating to be told over and over, “well, if you just explained better...” when the people I’m trying to convince aren’t interested in learning. They’re happy with their beliefs, their beliefs work for them. And that’s a pity, because their beliefs are destructive and increasingly inhumane. That’s my belief, obviously, but I think it’s one supported by facts: abortion is wrong but you can cage Mexican children. The Jews control the government. Voter suppression is a reasonable response to higher turnout in urban centers. Chinese students shouldn’t be able to go to grad schools in the US. I could go on.
At a certain point, just take the hit. I’m sorry, but one side has more moral politics than the other. I don’t see how this is a debate at this point, and I’m honestly frustrated that people like you keep asking us to have the debate. If anything, it’s the right that keeps crying that they’ve been deplatformed when they’re doing it to themselves by having horrific opinions.
AND the right doesn’t even argue in good faith! Like they just make stuff up. For instance, about ANTIFA being behind the attempted coup on Wednesday. You want us to argue with that?
> about ANTIFA being behind the attempted coup on Wednesday
You want to provide a source for the claim that the entire republican party (or even a significant fraction of it) either (1) supports this claim in particular or (2) makes up these things on a regular basis, as opposed to a tiny (but extreme) faction, identical to the same distribution on the left?
I've seen people on HN make claims that the Antifa violence during the 2020 riots was just a false-flag operation by the feds - so we know that there are people from the other political party who do exactly the same thing. Where's your evidence that there isn't more of them than people in the first party?
Just wanna add that the left seems to believe what institutions and the legacy media tell them, at face value.
Many on the right use critical thinking, however they seem to believe that numbers and “science” can be spun into any narrative the gatekeepers want (whoever they may be).
Most of the schism really seems to be based on trust. Left trusts by default, the right does not. The left trusts that the government knows best, the right does not. The right believes in personal responsibility for running your life (not trusting it to any other party), the left does not, requiring collectivism and social programs.
> Nah, the right trusts everything the tv and radio hosts tell them.
I don't agree. The media, as a whole, leans left. Except for comparatively far fewer right leaning news outlets. I don't think I can name a single newspaper that doesn't have a left slant. LA Times, NY Times, WashPo are the giants, plus any of your local city newspapers. People on the right are not likely to trust any of those entities.
For news stations there's CNN, NBC, ABC, which all lean left. For the right, there's Fox and a couple a low-key bum ones like OANN and NewsMax. Again, right leaning people are likely to view most of tv media sources as untrustworthy.
The media leans neoliberal, not left. You never see leftist leaders painted in a good light by CNN, ABC, NBC, WashPo, NY Times or LA Times, as those leaders threaten the continued consolidation of wealth by the upper class.
From my experience, the right is terrible at judging who to trust (i mean most people are really). They mistrust the government for instance, and rightly so, for you should have a healthy distrust of the government. However, they then go and trust absolute quacks like anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, Trump, etc. ???
I've seen some of the links shared in right wing forums (I used to frequent one a few years ago), and the sources they link scream "bullshit" to me, and not because I disagree with what they say. It's just that life experience of identifying what is BS and what is not necessarily BS. Some people just will not believe authority, but will believe the first thing they see that goes against mainstream.
Maybe unrelated, but there's actually largely even distribution of anti-vaxxers between left and right. It's not an issue split by political affiliation. You could say the same about conspiracy theorists, but it'd probably be more difficult to poll/test.
Yes, the left trusts “science”, broadly. That’s because when we see 99% of scientists in a field claiming something, we don’t pretend we know better than them. We respect science, we understand on some level the work that goes into good science, and so we aren’t arrogant arses.
> Second, most research questions are addressed by many teams, and it is misleading to emphasize the statistically significant findings of any single team. What matters is the totality of the evidence.
93% of surveyed geneticists and behavioral psychologists claim that the black-white IQ gap has a non-zero genetic component. Do you know better than them?
I'm inclined to believe them, but not rule out the possibility it was their bias speaking. Historically doctors have believed a white woman's pelvis is better for child bearing, whereas a black woman's is better for hard labor. That has since been proven wrong. There is no discernable difference between the races in the pelvic area.
Regardless, the argument against discrimination is that one has no CHOICE what race they are born with. Because there is no choice, race does not reflect their invididual merits or lack thereof, and one should not be awarded or punished based on that factor alone. There is also significant variation within a race with regard to IQ or otherwise, that exceeds the difference of the mean value between races
All I see are people listening. Scores of legal professionals, attorneys, and judges have read through thousands of pages of serious arguments made by the right. Election officials have burned the midnight oil over and over again searching for issues after listening to complaints from the right. Journalists have spent countless hours chasing down people to listen to, only to find deception. After all of this listening, all we ever seem to find is deception. If the right doesn’t change their tune, then all the listeners can do is see them as a group he’ll bent on deception. You make your bed, and you sleep in it. Period.
And yet if we look at it objectively, the right is clearly overrepresnted in our political system. Republicans lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. In the next presidential election there will be many eligible voters who weren't even born last time they won. The Senate gives a seven point advantage to Republicans. So please, explain to me where you get this idea that the right is "treated unfairly," because it's getting very hard to see how this argument is being made in good faith.
How about instead we say, "appointed by a Republican president," so we don't get bogged down in semantics? Since Heller, Citizens United, Bush v Gore etc were clearly the products of partisan Republican justices.
Sorry to be blunt but this just goes to show how often your "feelings" diverge from objective reality.
One can be moderately conservative and still conservative. If you look at the court's decisions, the only time in the last one hundred years SCOTUS has had a sustained liberal streak was in the 1960s.
> And yet if we look at it objectively, the right is clearly overrepresnted in our political system.
That isn't nearly as clear as it seems, because of the incentives the electoral college creates.
Republicans could pick up a lot more votes in places like California or New York if they had any reason to try, but none of those votes help them if they can't flip the state. Spending resources campaigning in California so that it goes to the Democrats by 54 to 46 instead 65 to 35 is a losing strategy, so they don't.
But then that's why the popular vote numbers come out the way they do. If you actually abolished the electoral college, suddenly the foregone conclusion states would matter, everybody's campaign strategy would change and so would all the numbers.
The people the electoral college actually underrepresents are the people of California and Massachusetts. But also Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, etc. The people it overrepresents are the people of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, etc. The swing states. Because they're the only people whose vote can plausibly change the outcome, so they're the only people whose concerns politicians care to address.
Which means you can pretty easily end up in a situation where people from deep red states feel underrepresented, because in practice they are. The same as the people from deep blue states.
Thanks for your reply. Let me start by saying that I agree the numbers would look completely different if it weren't for the Electoral College. That is because the Republican platform has consistently failed to win over a majority of Americans: absent the EC, the Republican Party would have to recalibrate its platform in order to remain competitive. This feedback mechanism is essential to a functioning democracy, and it's currently broken, because Republicans still have a decent shot at winning nationally thanks to the bias in the EC.
With respect to your argument that the EC actually overrepresents swing states, you may be correct. However, the EC bias clearly favors Republicans over Democrats. In 2020, that bias was 3.9% in favor of Republicans, although it varies from election to election[0]. When the size of the bias exceeds the margin of victory for the winner of the popular vote, the popular vote loser takes the EC, as in 2016.
Furthermore, you didn't actually address the most antidemocratic institution of all: the Senate. The Senate is heavily biased towards small states; California (pop 39m) and Wyoming (pop < 1m) each have two senators. The average state is currently much more Republican than the average American, amounting to 6.6% bias[1]. That is to say, Democrats could win by five points nationally (a huge victory given current polarization levels) and still not control the Senate.
Finally, I'm sure that you can end up with a situation wherein conservatives "feel" underrepresented; my whole point is that they objectively are not, so this whole persecution complex evinced by some is completely ridiculous. People are entitled to their feelings; they should also be willing to look at facts and adjust their reactions accordingly.
> absent the EC, the Republican Party would have to recalibrate its platform in order to remain competitive.
Absent the EC, both parties would have to recalibrate their platforms in order to remain competitive. It would completely upturn the map. You would see Republicans campaigning in New York and Democrats in Texas. Wall St. and Big Oil and Hollywood would gain influence, retirees in Florida and auto workers in the rust belt would lose it. It would redraw all the lines and fundamentally change both of the parties.
I think that's really where you're going wrong. Treating the members of each party as two different species, as though every voter for a given party has uniform shared interests with all the others. There is no such thing as "Republicans" being over-represented. Pennsylvanians are over-represented, which influences the party platforms of both the Republicans and the Democrats. Which allows them both to ignore California and Texas and New York, but also the entire dozen odd little deep red states that are supposed to be the most "over-represented" despite not being competitive at all and consequently being totally ignored by both parties.
> The average state is currently much more Republican than the average American, amounting to 6.6% bias
The obvious flaw in the party-based analysis being that we're currently going into a legislative session in which the Democrats control the Senate, which they do approximately half of the time. Because they adjust their policies to the map.
Also, the purpose of the Senate is to be this way, in the same way that Justices of the Supreme Court are not elected. Senators were not originally elected, they were appointed by the state legislatures. It's by design as a check on the populist tendencies of the House, and causing Senators to be directly elected has only made everything worse by depriving the states of their voice in the federal government and the destroying the restraint on federal power that once implied.
> Treating the members of each party as two different species, as though every voter for a given party has uniform shared interests with all the others. There is no such thing as "Republicans" being over-represented. Pennsylvanians are over-represented, which influences the party platforms of both the Republicans and the Democrats.
For the reasons I've outlined above, Republicans are overrepresented. To reiterate, it takes more Democratic votes to achieve a majority than it does Republican votes. This is a matter of fact.
> The obvious flaw in the party-based analysis being that we're currently going into a legislative session in which the Democrats control the Senate, which they do approximately half of the time.
But Republicans have controlled the Senate even when Democratic Senators have gotten more votes and represent more people. So Democrats are forced to adjust their policies while Republicans are under much less pressure to do so.
> Also, the purpose of the Senate is to be this way, in the same way that Justices of the Supreme Court are not elected.
When the Senate was created, the difference in population between the largest and smallest states was 12x. Today it is 68x. If you still think this is a feature rather than a bug, you and I have fundamentally different ideas about what democracy should be.
This will be my final comment as all those who keep telling me that it's my duty as a liberal to engage in dialog with the other side also seem to downvote my comments to oblivion when I try. Ciao.
Yes, but the average person is smart. For instance, if I average 95, 95, and 95, then the average is 95. If I average 94, 94, 94, 95, 95, and 95 and the average is 94.5, does that mean the other half is stupid? Of course not, which is why people who keep saying this over and over are below average. You can tell because they aren't saying anything important.
It's highly improbable that the right wind of politics solely resides within the lower half of the bell curve, or that there is even a strong correlation.
No, it's not, because it's a self-association. You might as well say it's highly improbable that the lowest income are also the least educated -- nothing says these variables are independent, and it's highly likely that they are, in fact, linked.
depends on how you calculate average. More than half the population could be dumber than the mean intelligence. Intelligence is not a normal distribution, but skewed left.
In my view, ever since the "deplorables" gaffe, the left has been bending over backwards to pretend to take the "base" seriously instead of just dismissing them as cretins. Naturally the leaders of the "base" are going to take advantage of this.
Is it really that implausible that half the population isn't willing to think critically about a nuanced problem, or to accept evidence that contradicts their desired narrative?
Statistics aren't always reliable, but somewhere around 1/3 of American adults believe that climate change is a hoax, and evolution is a lie.
They're clearly not shut out. There are major news outlets that represent them, and their voices are heard loud and clear all over the internet. One of them was elected president FFS.
They aren’t shut out. It’s not a left vs right thing. Whether your ideas are hairbrained or not, left wing or right wing — if you incite violence they should take away your account.
Let's assume that all the issues are binary (i.e. you are either for or against a proposition). But there are a large number of them. Humans are lazy. We try to use few categories to organize people we come into contact with (e.g. left or right, colored or white).
What will happen next? We feel that "the other side" seems to be all around, almost half the population. Example: many who oppose abortion probably also believe Black Lives Matter.
> or because the other side has been repeatedly discouraged from adding their two cents in those communities.
They have been discouraged from making threats, being racist, etc. If that is their two cents, it's not worth two cents. If they can't have a civil discussion without threats, racism, bigotry, etc, again, it's not worth two cents. This is they key, they KEEP coming back with vile speech. No one deplatforms them for simply having DIFFERENT opinions, they're deplatformed for having violent, racist, bigoted opinions. You can't equate silencing dissent from not tolerating hate speech.
I think what really annoys the far right is how the far left seems to get an easy ride.
There's plenty of left-wing conspiracy theories. The current ones seem to be that the Capitol Police were allowing it to happen (not just through incompetence). This is given a huge amount of credence, but I'm willing to bet that it will mostly be proven to be conspiracy thinking and hysteria.
It's actually a bit exhausting.
It's not at all clear that the police are "opening gates" on that one shakey zoom shot (hundreds of people, but it's just one zoom shot that shows it, hmmm). It looks to me like an officer has their hand forced aside as a large number of protesters push the barrier, which looks a bit like they are "opening the gate" (it's not a gate). And they do abandon the post once they're outnumbered and no longer have a barrier, so what? If there's a shot from another angle that makes the police look better, I expect very few people on the left will want to share it.
I don't expect any real thanks for pointing this out. Rather, like hysterical conspiracy theorists, I expect people will then say "Yeah, well ... how about the selfie?" (You mean, the cop who was encouraging criminals to post evidence of their crime?). That's what conspiracy theorists do, they don't stop and critically reassess their position when they're shown that a piece of evidence is weak. They don't realise that they're caught in a bubble where poor evidence is amplified as long as it supports their position, they just assume that the debunker is a bad guy and reach for a new piece of evidence to use as a weapon.
> I find it somewhat implausible that half the population is dumb, racist and all those other labels.
The reality is that most Trump supporters are focused on economics and governmental overreach, not race. They are angry that businesses are shut down, and people are unemployed. They are angry that, over the past several decades, production in this country has dropped to near-nonexistence. They are angry that the lockdowns have made it impossible, even in small towns and other places without significant Covid problems, to simply work and live their lives semi-normally.
Then, the straw that I believe broke the camel's back, is the way most conservatives view taxes and the "stimulus"
In short, the conservative view is that the US government took $2700 from every citizen (much more if you look at the long-tail economic effects) and 'gave back' $600. At the same time, even a cursory read of the omnibus spending would be enough to make anyone's blood boil, let alone someone who feels like they, or people they care about, have lost (or are losing) everything. It's easy to see how the phrase 'Taxation is theft' is picking up so much steam right now.
The entire time they are dealing with this, people call them a Nazi or White Supremacist. They get banned on Social Media for sharing (now verified by left-of-center Media) stories about Hunter Biden, or concerns about the election. To them, it feels like they are being silenced and oppressed. When the media/social media censors stories and information (and even raw footage) it increases tensions. 'Over the target' has become a phrase in common use for when someone is banned or a story gets censored that seems to go against the mainstream narrative.
The Hunter Biden story is one such example. When that story launched it was discredited and called fake news, today the same institutions who called it a lie are publishing that there is an FBI investigation into Hunter Biden. Many saw that story, saw the leaked photos (many of which are extremely unsettling), and then saw the story getting silenced and discredited.
Looking at comments on HN, a site where the average commenter has far above average education and income, it is easy to find people openly commenting that they do not care about the opinions of these people. They openly comment that 'anyone who would storm the capital is an idiot' or that these people are racist.
Finally, after all is said and done, the reaction from the left in Washington isn't to reduce tensions and try to reach peace. Nor is it to address the concerns of the people publicly. Instead, they are ramping up the tensions and saying that people are guilty of treason - a crime punishable by death. You have elected officials calling everyone who was there, whether they were violent offenders (criminals) or not, terrorists. Now, they're calling this riot 'as bad as 9/11' where thousands of Americans were killed.
It’s possible to both think that the Capitol Riots were absolutely treasonous and an attempt to subvert the constitution, and agree that reflexively calling people Nazis, White Supremacists, or Racists, for expressing totally legitimate views had a lot to do with why they were angry enough to do it.
Just to be clear - I don’t think the capitol rioters views were legitimate, but I do think the views of a lot of people on the right are, and the rioters thought they were acting with their support.
Fair. It worth pointing out the 'stimulus' bill included next years government budget as well. So its not as simple as taking 2700 and giving 600 back. Most years they'd be taking 2100 and give nothing back. This year they decided to take 2100, borrow 600 from the central bank, and giving that 600 back
I excluded the omnibus spending from that number. Most folks, including myself, are appalled at how irresponsible the spending is. However, it would be intellectually dishonest to combine them to make that argument.
The stimulus component was roughly 900B, of which each American (there's roughly 330M of us) will only receive $600. Of course, this is all accomplished by [0]printing obscene amounts of USD and saddling Americans with a debt that will likely never be repayable. [1]At present, the debt to GDP ratio exceeds 130%.
>> It seems much more likely that I don't fully understand their perspective.
I think two things are going on here:
1.) There is a radicalized minority of conservatives that believe in Q, storm the capital, etc etc. I think this minority is growing in size, as their publicity alone is lending them credence. It's easier to get someone to believe what they want to believe, than the truth if it goes against their world view, etc etc.
2.) The large majority of R voters are not off the wagon lunatics, and many claim they liked trump the least of all the R cannidates in 2016. But I think huge portions (*of both sides*) are so conditioned to whatever group of beliefs they hold, that they will never switch or compromise. So now we have a bat shit crazy president, because he out primaried several indistinguishable moderate opponents in 2016, and the whole R side (that is not stark raving mad) went with him, purely because they couldnt even start to entertain the thought of ever voting for a D. And now some of them are becoming radicalized, and it's kinda scary when people you know to be rational are asking you about election fraud... remember, its easy to believe what you want to believe... Below is something I posted some time ago, where I tried to outline how I thought many trump voters rationalized voting for him.
>>. What I fail to understand, as a foreigner, is how someone can vote for a president who is an outright liar. Look no further than his last tweets as of right now.
I don't fully understand it myself, but as it's been explained to me by trump supporters is: "don't listen to what he says, look at all the good policy, look at how hard he is on China, look at how many jobs there were pre covid, etc etc". Whether or not you see his policy as good, some people do, and they are willing to overlook his madness because they think he is achieving good things. (actions speak louder than words, etc) Some of his supports do bring up his appointing of tons of federal judges, and this what I would probably consider the most valid reason for voting for him (if one is aligned to a more conservative viewpoint), as his judges are more likely to enforce (or not) the laws that align with "traditional" republican political ideals, and that's the what matters to the voters.
Or also because they've always voted R, and Biden= socialism (which is worse than satan worship according to some people's moral codes..), or Biden= Let our cites get burnt down by rioters. This goes back to the, it's easier to vote against someone than for someone. And now that I put this all in words, this second justification is probably what I heard the most during trumps 4 years, some peoples defense of trump always came down to, "but hillary would be way worse". Some level of cognitive dissonance definitely plays into it.
Also having some subset of the population support a populist, pathologically lying sociopath is not necessarily a new or uniquely American problem. It's just that the problems seem to be amplified when they are American, cuz everyone is watching.
"I find it somewhat implausible that half the population is dumb, racist and all those other labels. "
No - they aren't.
The answer is very easy: They believe Donald Trump.
Trump has credibility in their minds, and when he repeats the lie, over and over - that 'the election was stolen' - they believe it.
On election night - he literally came out and said 'If you count the fake votes, Biden won' - declaring mass fraud, without any evidence.
His followers believe him.
Contemplate the implications of that.
These people do not watch CNN, they watch Fox, OAN, Breitbart etc. where the falsehoods are propagated, or at least never debunked.
They are simply misinformed.
On CNN they were interviewing quite a number of protesters and unanimously 'they believed the election was stolen'.
A close observer will have noticed that the court cases were thrown out, that Homeland Security and the DoJ cleared it etc. - but that truthful information is not passed on to people in the Trump Bubble.
Trump's base don't get their news from sources that will explicitly and clearly debunk the conspiracies.
It's important to contemplate what this means: it's almost entirely not a political divide - it's mostly a divide based on what the facts are.
Consider the corollary: Trump won the election, but there was point-blank, irrefutable evidence that he rigged it. The DoJ, Homeland Security - everyone - points out his fraud.
Trump could merely deny the allegations, declare that he is 'under attack' and rally people to his cause on Twitter and Facebook.
His followers would believe him.
Meanwhile - how would you feel? Literally the election was stolen by Trump. Point-blank evidence.
Would you hit the streets in protest?
Would you 'occupy DC'?
Millions would be enraged, we'd see protests like we've never seen before.
So just contemplate that a considerable number of Americans are completely misinformed and deeply believe the election was stolen and that the Republic is being usurped.
From that perspective, their actions seem more rational.
I've been watching the right-wing media carefully - and while Fox mostly doesn't openly support Trump's claims, they don't spend a lot of time debunking, and they 'go along with it' in a sneaky way by saying 'Millions feel there was fraud and their voices must be heard' - essentially avoiding taking the position that Fox agrees there was fraud, but rather sympathizing with the angry masses who they darn well know are misinformed.
FYI it's actually considerably easier to 'cast doubt' on elections where there is always some small degree of fraud whereupon the tiniest case can be used as 'evidence'.
This insurrection is not about racism or any of that (these things overlap obviously) it's an election based on Fake News.
I know that HN is pretty serious about 'Free Speech' - but folks - Twitter is Trump's primary tool of misinformation - it's his daily dose of koolaid and falsehoods to quite a few million who absolutely take his word for it.
And finally - the opposite is also true: these followers assume that CNN, NBC, NPR etc. are entirely made up of lies. Nothing on those channels has any credibility in their eyes.
The thing I find interesting, seeing distant relations on Facebook talk about this, is that they tend to hold seemingly mutually-contradictory views and spout them in a span of minutes.
e.g. "I was there, and it was antifa dressed as Trump supporters that broke into the Capitol. We believe in law and order and would never do anything like this ..." followed by statements saying that they are going to take over buildings in DC again on January 19th.
There's something deeper here, among many of them, than simply consuming different media.
People need to think intelligently and everything requires context.
There are 1000 random people at an event, there's no doubt that there were a few ANTIFA interlopers there, but that doesn't really mean anything.
A single cop 'opening a gate' doesn't mean much either.
Neither does the Republican guy who tried to prove electoral fraud by himself, committing a single act of voter fraud.
Most of the mainstream media is highly credible. Biased - but credible.
The fact that a few individuals maybe planned on doing something 'really crazy' doesn't actually mean there's a larger movement there either.
That's why we depend on the press to try to get a generally factual and broad view of the situation. Watching a mix of CNN, PBS, Fox, NBC etc. will give most people a rounded purview of the situation, even if there is a lot of bias.
Watching Fox since the election has been a very interesting experience because they cannot support Trump's false claims they have to have 'integrity'. But what some of them are doing (Ted Cruze as well) is saying 'people feel the election was stolen and they have a right to be heard' - basically they've taken the line of sympathizing with people who are angry, though they full well know the anger is based on absolute falsehood. Fox has been losing viewers to OAN where they take a 'hardcore Pro-Trump' position no matter the facts, which is what many want to hear.
On many Fox articles, the comments are split 50/50 with many hating on Trump, many supporting him. OAN and Breibart however, it's full on Trump. The language is scary, many calling for violence against Pence etc. as a 'traitor' for literally not committing Sedition and overturning the election on behalf of Trump.
So 'the truth' is going to be a real problem for the next little while.
To be fair, CNN has proven multiple times in the last few years that their credibility is worth very little. They have a VERY extreme slant to the left, so much so that news casters were even becoming anti-vaxxers against the Covid-19 vaccine simply because Trump was the president at the time trying to push for people to take it. Their handling of Covid-19 early on was also atrocious. I don't mean to demean them if they're your favorite news source, but they've lost a lot of faith in the past few years.
The others, NPR, NBC, etc, I think you'd be surprised how many Republicans watch them for a differing point of view. There are many republicans who are more libertarian, classical liberal, or independent leaning than classically conservative leaning.
That's part of the problem though with this argument, is that the "right" or "conservative" or "republican" can actually be very different things. It seems that most people on hacker news lump them all into the same category.
Also, not every conservative is an over-the-top Trump supporter. I'm definitely not. It doesn't mean I don't like some of the things he did, but he's got a lot of issues and was FAR from my ideal candidate.
I can tell you from my experience that, regardless of forum, I feel rarely given the chance to even give a perspective that I feel is taken seriously, because the immediate assumption is that anyone who has opinion "x" on subject "y" must be a bigot and/or uneducated (and therefore should not be listened to), and, using circular logic, they know this because opinion "x" is a bigoted or uneducated opinion.
I have highly conservative economic policy views, and they are the result of both education and personal experience.
I grew up in increasing poverty as a kid, culminating in facing homelessness in the 2008 housing crisis. I saw the effects first hand of several policies sold by "progressive" politicians to me and my family as instruments of change that would expand the welfare of the nation to us, and for several years hoped they actually would.
Yet each policy meant to help us, only ever seemed to do the opposite. I drove a car that I was lucky if I could get started each day to go to college and to work, yet the liberal "cash for clunkers" program meant to give people an opportunity to buy a new vehicle meant that not only could I not afford a new car even after the additional "cash", but now the used car parts market was so expensive because of the sudden destruction of "clunkers", it also made keeping my car running nearly impossible.
A healthcare bill that I hoped would fund my parent's healthcare needs ended up giving us a choice - pay for a plan we couldn't afford with deductibles so high we would never be able to use it, or take our chances that the IRS would never collect on the individual mandate.
Each step of the way, liberal politicians would pass something on the notion that it was to help people like me, only for it to hurt me, but even worse, I was now "racist" and "dumb" for opposing them.
I reached a point where I no longer wanted government to help me be "equal", I just wanted them to leave me alone and stop making it harder than it already was. Yet I kept being told this elitist group of leaders in Washington knew better than me, even as with each "experiment" they were left completely unaffected by the consequences that I was left with.
After 4 years of college towards a computer science degree, I'm incredibly grateful for my education, and I have since been able to do incredible things for my family with my income from a career I love.
I now have the freedom to advocate for the same liberal policies my co-workers advocate for, knowing that whether they work or not, I will be wholly unaffected. This way, I could be easily accepted and free to voice my political opinion along everyone else, without fear of being called a bigot.
But my experience growing up is exactly why I believe what I believe, and I can promise anyone willing to listen that, for as strongly as you believe you are representing the welfare of the poor, or of minorities, so do I. Not out of racism or ill intent, but precisely the opposite - my own experience, and my desire to help others with what helped me.
My education served to expand my mind to be open to everyone's perspective in a way that I feel gave me empathy. Empathy to see that, while my experience drives me to conservative fiscal policy and socially libertarian policy, I would never want to judge someone else's motives based solely on their political persuasion. Others likely had different life experiences that I would do well to learn from.
To me, the goal of an education is the ability to have empathy for multiple, potentially conflicting views at once, and make decisions based on that. I really struggle with the notion that many seem to have that, instead, being educated seems to mean "empathize with a single viewpoint, and make decisions for everyone based on that, with the assumption that I must be more correct in my assertion than the people for whom I'm deciding, because I'm educated and ...
Thank you for your comment. It's thoughtful and insightful. And while we could argue some of the points (e.g. health-care - my view is Obamacare was hobbled). If I may however, I'd like to point out how unlikely it is that anyone making this exact comment would ever be banned from any platform. Given the topic of this post, this is an important point. And by the way, it's this quality of post that keeps me coming back to HN. So, thank you and best of luck to you. Please continue contributing to the commons with your comments.
“ If I may however, I'd like to point out how unlikely it is that anyone making this exact comment would ever be banned from any platform.”
They might not literally be banned from Twitter, but I have seen many people attempt to make reasoned comments like this be effectively deplatformed, shunned, and shamed for making such comments.
> I find it somewhat implausible that half the population is dumb, racist and all those other labels.
The GOP is only 29% of the electorate by party ID, 31% by share of eligible population voting for their 2020 Presidential nominee. Not “half of the population”.
But whether the members of the GOP are “dumb, racist, and all those other labels” kind of has nothing to do with what you quoted, which is about whether lawsuits filed by a narrow segment of the party in this cycle are overwhelmingly legally without merit or are somehow being systematically reject by rampant conspiracy or bias against the President in both state and federal judiciaries, which in the relevant states and the Federal system lean significantly Republican, and where many of the specific decisions have been handed down by Republican judges (some appointed by this Administration.)
That's not a question about whether the GOP membership as a whole racist, stupid, or whatever else, but whether a present President and his allies are filing lawsuits in bad faith as part of propaganda campaign to publicly discredit their defeat in the election.
The problem is that you have a two party system, so all viewpoints have to fit into one of those parties. Democracy is a spectrum running from North Korea to Scandinavia.
I.e from Dictatorship > One party > Two party > De-facto Two party (first past the post Parliamentary) > Coalition government with proportional representation.
The huge advantage of coalition government being that unless you have extreme views, your politicians are always at the table so your views are never completely ignored for 4 or 8 years. So yes I’m arguing that the US is actually quite undemocratic compared to other first world countries, and the U.K. where I am is not much better.
95% of the country was racist 100 years ago. Why would things change so fast? And for dumb... remember Carlin’s observation: think about how dumb the average person is, then realize that half of them are dumber than that.
There were certainly failures that led to this man's death, but all of the failures happened before he picked up the knife and went downstairs to the candy shop. I don't see how protesting the police helps.
Also the MSM seems intent on telling me the only acceptable thought is that Bruce Jenner is a proud, strong, beautiful woman. I don't think I want them as the arbiters of reality.
> Also the MSM seems intent on telling me the only acceptable thought is that Bruce Jenner is a proud, strong, beautiful woman
This is weird, because while I’ve seen this specific complaint with alight variation in wording enough to think it must be a potent right-wing meme (in the Dawkins replicating unit to of behavior) sense endemic among a certain segment of the right, I've never actually encountered anything in the MSM approximating what it describes, and, despite that segment of thr right’s frequent use of it to paint the media as allies with the Left, also don't find that it describes the Left, either, which while it tends to accept that Caitlyn Jenner is a woman, isn't particularly inclined to agree with any of the other descriptors. (And is, in fact, attacked by a different segment of the Right for that, since Jenner is politically conservative Republican Christian trans woman.)
Not so literally. The complaint is that 'Trans' is even a thing, that it seems the push isn't even to just tolerate the crazy but to celebrate it and it's being peddled to kids.
Have you read the actual lawsuits which were filed? You are aware the "60 lawsuits being dismissed" is a lie right? Trump campaign only filed 5 lawsuits. The Georgia lawsuit still hasn't even had a judge assigned even though it was filed on December 4th. The TX lawsuit to the SCOTUS - they refused to even hear it.
So how exactly can you say "illegitimate claims been promoted as legitimate"?
Thousands of dead people, illegals, underage voters, poll watchers getting kicked out etc and they still want people to believe everything is normal?
Here's an entire list of dead voters from Michigan alone and their obituaries:
I even have saved messages of me showing this to multiple friends of mine.
No, the two dead voters you mentioned is firstly NOT from Michigan, it's from Georgia. Also that two dead voters is also wrong. It's thousands in Georgia but the SOS (who is a Trump hater) refused to even give the list of voters. So they expect the public to just take their word without showing the actual voter rolls. "Trust me, everything's fine, nothing to see here, move along".
A random check of about a dozen names from the pasted list found that the voter either did not exist, or was no longer registered to vote on account of being dead...
There were two people who had obituaries that showed up in the voter rolls...twice. In both cases, a quick lookup in the phone book suggests that two people with the same name (but different initials) live in the state.
So, thanks for the example that the Michigan election rolls are correct?
I'm not in a place to practice google-fu, but if I'm remembering correctly, wasn't the Texas lawsuit not heard by the USSC because they didn't follow the protocol necessary to have a case heard by the USSC?
> because they didn't follow the protocol necessary
Texas followed the protocol, which included filing a motion for leave to file a bill of complaint in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, however denied the motion.
The supreme court in fact ruled against Texas in dismissing the suit, by mkaing it clear that each state has sole discretion on how to run their own elections, as prescribed by the Constitution. Whether state elections laws were followed was for state courts to decide, not Texas and not the federal supreme court
States can run their own elections. So long as they abide by Article2, which indisputably, PA, MI, WI, GA did not. NV did use their legislature to make the changes which is why they weren’t a defendant. Texas’s position was that they states didn’t follow the constitution and the winner of these federal elections would effect rule and law in Texas.
It's uncommon, but the Supreme Court also has original jurisdiction, "In all cases affecting ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, and those in which a state shall be party." U.S. Const. Art. III. Here, Texas attempted to sue four other states over how they conducted their elections, so it fell under original jurisdiction.
The State of Texas's motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.
Statement of Justice Alito, with whom Justice Thomas joins: In my view, we do not have discretion to deny the filing of a bill of complaint in a case that falls within our original jurisdiction. See Arizona v. California, 589 U. S. ___ (Feb. 24, 2020) (Thomas, J., dissenting). I would therefore grant the motion to file the bill of complaint but would not grant other relief, and I express no view on any other issue.
Saying the Trump Campaign only filed five suit begs to split hairs. Many of the suits haven't technically included Trump personally, or his campaign entity, as a party. However, they seek precisely the same results, and recycle many of claims in suits he has filed in his own name.
Example: The Texas motion to the Supreme Court to bring a case against Pennsylvania and other battleground states did not include Trump or his campaign as a plaintiff. Trump did, however, seek permission to join the lawsuit. That was doubly odd, considering the reason the states thought they could go directly to the top court was its "original jurisdiction" for suits between states.
Either way, does the defeat of the states' petition to the Supreme Court count toward the number of suits lost?
I believe the source for "more than fifty lawsuits" is Marc Elias, an admittedly left-leaning lawyer who's been keeping track. You might prefer to cast off his conclusion based on who he bats for. But you could also search for him and find his list.
I get what you're saying but the other side of the coin is maybe the society at large is rejecting them. And they need to understand that they're not guaranteed an audience, If the society at large doesn't want to listen then they'll have to sloowly try to win some support.
They seem to forget that many on the left fought tooth and nail historically for things we now consider for granted but society wasn't on board for in the past.
And maybe some ideas just aren't that appealing and they'd do better to pull other ones to advocate for.
The power of the internet means sure they can. Like that poor Macedonian women who was so upset to be maxed when she was trying be a revolutionary. Our brains are surprisingly susceptible to weak thinking from the internet.
And yet Parlor is being de-platformed specifically because it refuses to police the portion of the conservative conversation that is so. It's not because they believe in smaller government or lower taxes.
Conservatism plays this game where it uses this violent rhetoric casually and then acts all surprised when its own members act on that rhetoric. They tell each other that anyone who disagrees with them is an anti-american who want to make this a communist/socialist/fascist state. That voter fraud is rampant and that they will need to overthrow the government with violence. They do this is, in much more graphic detail than I'm using here.
Then, when something violent occurs, we're all just supposed to sit here and pretend like it's just some happenstance and we shouldn't judge them by their own inaction in stamping out the rhetoric from their midst.
The violent groups that organized on Facebook, does anyone feel Google or Apple should penalize Facebook for allowing that to occur? Should all Facebook users be deplatformed?
Half of the US fought for the right to own other humans as property. You are very, very sheltered if you think large numbers of people aren't capable of holding terrible ideas and performing horrific acts.
The CSA was certainly not half of the United States at that time. They inflated their numbers with the "3/5 compromise". Even with that method of inflating their representation, 11 states with 66 House Representatives seceded, while 23 states with 173 House Representatives did not secede. It wasn't close to half.
On top of which, the decision process for secession was (shockingly, I know!) not democratic in the least. The Union didn't need a "Home Guard" to enforce conscription, but the South did.
I suggest we call it what it was and say the "slavery war" instead of the "civil war" (civil war is generic and even the American Revolution was a civil war)
Looking at the size of alternative online communities like Parler, they're definitely not half of the voter base. Majority of republicans seem to not have a problem with mainstream platforms, only a small minority gets banned.
And it is really easy to see they are a minority. Most of alternative platforms like Parler have a small number of users and attract a very narrow audience which talks only about politics. Usually these sites have bad user experience which means there's not a lot of designers who would want to work for them, they are really bad in technical execution meaning there's not really many programmers who want to work for them. They don't advertise meaning there's not a lot of marketing experts wanting to work for them. There's not a lot of investors willing to invest in those platforms, no one wants to advertise on their sites. All this can lead to a conclusion that the users affected by deplatforming and censorship on mainstream social media is a really small group of people. They believe they are half of the voter base, while in reality the majority of society, from conservatives to liberals, rejects their world views and this is why they are marginalized.
If it was really half of the voter base they wouldn't have any issues. There would be some viable, popular alternative social media platforms used by that half of voter base. Among that half you'd have no issue with finding anything you need to have a widespead, catch-all platform - you'd find investors, you'd find companies willing to advertise, the user base would have diverse interests so that you can discuss anything on those platforms like on mainstream social media, and not just politics, conspiracy theories and memes. The fact that they constantly can't find support means that they are a fringe movement.
It's simply not possible that all investors, programmers, designers, hosting companies, payment processors, advertisers, etc. are all run by the left half of the voter base. That is simply statistically unlikely.
>I get what you're saying but the other side of the coin is maybe the society at large is rejecting them.
"Society at large" isn't doing any of this - a few billionaires in silicon valley are - that's the issue. Who is this, "them" you speak of? The false, binary left/right paradigm is a contrived illusion used to fool and manipulate simple people. What speech isn't okay? What's the standard used to silence people from the public square forever? There is none. Its an ever-evolving, subjective imposition of censorship. What "bad" speech results in your erasure? Many are suggesting its, "violent behavior". Others say, "incitement to violence". Many on capitol hill are saying, "aiding and abetting" those who would incite violence. Anyone who is informed and aware of what the phrase, "aiding and abetting" has been construed to mean since 9/11 knows just how amorphous that phrase is and how wide a net it can cast. If you defend the principle of unfettered free speech (as I do), can that be considered, "aiding and abetting" violence? Nobody has accused Parler of engaging in violence, but merely offering a platform for people to engage in free discussion is good enough to have them erased from the public square in a coordinated effort by tech oligarchs. This is exactly the concept of "prior-restraint" that our founders warned against. Silencing people because of what they might say. Watching sitting politicians openly calling for a, "domestic war on terror" should absolutely terrify anyone who has been paying attention to the results of our original, ongoing, "war on terror". Anyone who doesn't fully understand that any deviation from the official narrative on any issue will be silenced and considered, "domestic terrorism" has their head buried deep in the sand. How long until a comment like this is considered, "aiding and abetting domestic terrorism"? How long until Hacker News will be forced to ban me and censor comments like this in order to protect themselves from being silenced ala Parler? Even worse, how bad will the self-censorship be by people and platforms who are terrified of being erased, or put on a no-fly list, or have their bank accounts closed, or being subject to government sanctions and criminal charges, for saying the wrong thing?
Hunter S. Thompson made a prophetic quote after the towers fell on 9/11 that is very poignant in light of what we are seeing today:
The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now — with somebody — and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.
Who is being silenced from what public Square? Facebook and Twitter are not the public square. If you'd prefer that they be considered as such then you better get cracking on some legislation/regulation or nationalize these privately held for-profit companies.
Twitter, Google, Facebook and Apple are monopolies that are most certainly the public square. "Market Allocation Schemes"
where companies collude to fix prices and rig markets are explicitly illegal, and I don't see why the collusion of monopolies to "fix" speech is any different.
If we lived in a country with a functional government these monopolies would have been broken up long ago and the internet would be regulated as the public utility that it is.
They are not the public square they are private property that people gather on at the behest of its owner(s) but I will totally agree with you that to most people they are the defacto public square and that there plenty of monopolies that need to be broken up. Id also agree with you that regulating these companies as public utilities is the solution to your grievances (as well as having net neutrality). The only thing I disagree with you is the collusion aspect, even if they were colluding to "fix" speech, and not just towing the same line, that isn't actually illegal. Price fixing on the other hand is. I feel like there is common ground here that sensible governance, accountability and nonpartisan compromise could absolutely solve.
>The only thing I disagree with you is the collusion aspect, even if they were colluding to "fix" speech, and not just towing the same line, that isn't actually illegal. Price fixing on the other hand is.
A persuasive argument can be made that coordinated efforts by tech giants to block rivals such as Parler is in fact illegal. In many ways it reminds me of the (ultimately successful) 1998 anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft which ironically allowed the rise of Google, Twitter, and Facebook who are today engaging in similar behavior. Although perhaps if the Microsoft lawsuit were brought today, Microsoft could simply argue that they were afraid of the "hate speech" that might occur on these new platforms and were therefore justified in using their massive market share to stifle all competition.
They are being deplatformed because their speech is violent and damaging—in many cases it’s literal incitement to violence. Their legal cases are being rejected because they have no legal merit. The mainstream media refuse to take them seriously because they have again and again shown themselves to be bad faith actors, peddlers of unsubstantiated conspiracy, outright liars, and so on. I don’t need anybody to tell me any of the above secondhand—they themselves, via Twitter accounts and so on, are primary sources.
All things are not equal. Order and chaos are not equivalent. If a rabid cougar gets loose in a shopping mall, it does not earn the right to be there just by being there (de facto) and being really, really mad. It’s going to hurt people if we let it do its thing, and we take whatever measures we have to to get rid of it for the greater good of society.
This is a great point that is not made often enough. The logical conclusion is that the de-platformed actors get mad enough that they start lashing out in criminal ways, doing stuff that gets them locked up or killed, or otherwise "de-platformed" in real life. There's some short term pain, but ultimately society has a net win.
Remember your post when things don't end up going down the path you think you've expertly designed for your preferred outcome. When you ask "why is this happening?", know that you were part of the reason why things ended up the way they end up.
> The logical conclusion is that the de-platformed actors get mad enough that they start lashing out in criminal ways, doing stuff that gets them locked up or killed, or otherwise "de-platformed" in real life. There's some short term pain, but ultimately society has a net win.
Convince me I'm wrong...
Aren't you, in this comment, doing the same exact thing for which those people are getting deplatformed?
I read that as a "if they get killed that's a win for society".
Would you feel comfortable if somebody said the same thing about other categories of people?
I feel the real underlying issue is economic disparity. When breads and circuses stop, you will see riots. It gets worse when media has a hard time getting eye balls unless they can show outrage.
But the thing with these sweeping generalizations of "them" as being violent and damaging is - who gets to define what is violent and damaging?
Glenn Greenwald, who I respect a lot and was instrumental in breaking the mass surveillance in US by intelligence agencies recently spoke about these very issue:
"
My insistence that we look at the other side of the ledger — the costs and dangers not only from such attacks but also the “solutions” implemented in the name of the stopping them — did not come from indifference towards those deaths or a naive views of those responsible for them. It was instead driven by my simultaneous recognition of the dangers from rights-eroding, authoritarian reactions imposed by the state, particularly in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic event.
"
and then this:
"
It has long been clear that, in the post-Trump era, media outlets looking to keep viewers hooked, and government officials looking to increase their power, will do everything possible to center and inflate the threat posed by right-wing factions. I’ve said this more times than I can count over the last year at least.
Like all inflated threats, this one has a kernel of truth. As is true of every faction, there are right-wing activists filled with rage and who are willing to do violence. Some of them are dangerous (just as some Muslims in the post-9/11 era, and some Antifa nihilists, were and are genuinely violent and dangerous). But as was true of the Cold War and the War on Terror and so many other crisis-spurred reactions, the other side of the ledger — the draconian state powers clearly being planned and urged and prepared in the name of stopping them — carry its own extremely formidable dangers.
Refusing to consider those dangers for fear of standing accused of downplaying the threat is the most common tactic authoritarian advocates of state power use. Less than twenty-four hours after the Capitol breach, one sees this tactic being wielded with great flamboyance and potency, and it is sure to continue long after January 20.
"
I’m not talking about government suppression of speech. I’m talking about society itself rejecting a certain kind of speech, by the actions of private citizens and organizations, and generally having an awareness of the fact that two sides of an issue are not always equally right.
We have to do our best. The fact that it’s a hard problem to solve without going too far doesn’t give us license to throw up our hands, cast off from reality, and inhabit a dreamland where there is no difference between a truth and a falsehood.
I can read quite clearly between the lines of your comment, but I’m still having trouble finding where in my comment I said that users calling for violence on social media should be exempt from sanctions if they’re left-leaning.
Also, beware the false equivalence between smashing a store window and stealing some crap vs. actually attacking a human being. They will use the word "violence" to describe both, rather than get into a definition war with them, just keep the distinction clear.
Here is a curated selection of the logical failures in your two line comment:
* saying that economic circumstances are "oppressive," then trying to draw this to "violence"
* a claim that if a thief steals all of your stuff, you "starve" -- please give an example of one person who "starved" because BLM looters stole their stuff
* implying that being in a situation where you are "starving" is the same as actually being violently attacked, i.e. shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, etc.
>>* a claim that if a thief steals all of your stuff, you "starve" -- please give an example of one person who "starved" because BLM looters stole their stuff
You are 100% sure that nobody who lost a job because his place of work was destroyed in riots is not starving? Not everybody is so privileged to have enough savings to support himself after loosing a job.
Of course I'm not 100% sure of that, but there is a long sequence of events between smashing a window and getting to that outcome, unlike bashing a guy's face in with a crowbar where the consequence is guaranteed within milliseconds. The two acts are not equal and attempts to equate them are either idiotic or in bad faith.
Once upon a time in Germany there was a special night, it was called "Crystal Night"[1]. It got it's name because of all the glass from the smashed windows lying on the ground. There were some people arguing that it was violence, but some said that those people were either idiotic or arguing in bad faith.
I'd have gone with the hundreds of Jews murdered that night and subsequent tens of thousands sent to concentration camps in the aftermath as the important violence there, honestly.
You are right, some people just fail to see that the broken windows were just the beginning and what followed was even more vile. The mental gymnastics some people do to downplay violence only because it might look bad for their side is astonishing. The value of a human life for them is nothing more than a sacrificial pawn on their ideological chessboard.
No, mask wearing people (supported by a large part of the political elite) destroying property of a specific social-economic class is the more apt analogy today in the USA.
That's a strange view to hold. For most people there's a significant cognitive difference between being willing to destroy objects and being willing to attack people.
> I really do not think that most willing to smash a bunch of windows would hesitate to attack you if you stand between them and said windows.
Unless I misunderstood it this statement implies that a window smashing person would as well attack another humane being. It's not true. These acts are different, require different motivations and a different mentality/personality traits to follow through.
We've banned this account for repeatedly breaking the site guidelines, repeated flamewar, and using HN primarily [1] for political and ideological battle. Those things aren't allowed here because they destroy what the site is for, which is curious, thoughtful conversation. To protect the site, we therefore have to ban accounts that do them—especially that primarily do them.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
Why should anyone engage with your arguments when they are easily debunked both on principle, and with evidence widely available online? Why should anyone engage with your arguments when they are made in bad faith?
More to the point, can you demonstrate that you aren't trolling?
Only if you read it in the least charitable way possible and in the context of unverified claims from fringe figures like Adrian Zenz. It's a bad tweet, but the literal reading is that due to "emancipation" they are no longer only "baby making machines". Not even CCP propagandists are clumsy enough to admit to forced sterilization in a public forum.
Their "Crown Prince" assassinates a dissident journalist by placing a plastic bag over his head to suffocate him while his fiance waits outside the embassy in her car.
And leaders like president Rafael Reif at MIT invite this brutal dictator onto the MIT campus in order to thank him for his donation to the Media Lab in a photo op covered by the newspapers, presumably as a form of reputation laundering and because Rafael Reif cares about human rights about as much as he cares about the sexual abuse of 12 year-old girls.
Why is the Crown Prince's violence "more legitimate" than folks who perhaps mistakenly think the election was stolen from them and feel the need to break a few windows in order to protest the ballot count?
What makes the legal route legitimate is a negotiation in society. If the legal route is rescinded, then, the courts will be considered illegitimate. Perhaps that's right. But, that's also how revolutions start.
The legal system is certainly a flawed creation of man, but it isn't a magic wand. I'd go so far as to say that most legal systems, extant and otherwise, won't (absent corruption) serve as a vehicle for you to do literally whatever you want. I'm not a lawyer, but I get a strong impression that the Trump campaign's attempts to have the election results invalidated or reversed in various jurisdictions were in that vein, and literally laughable.
I agree that revolutions are real, that many have happened in the past, and presumably more will in the future.
Public outrage is what these companies are responding to. If they didn't think the majority of their users wanted this, they wouldn't do it. For example, you don't see Parler banning the domestic terrorists organizing on the platform, do you?
> I see nothing done except “use tribalism to decide.”
I disagree. You don't need tribalism, for instance, to see that somebody spreading lies and conspiracy theories in a transparent attempt to undermine confidence in our elections is going to do an immense amount of damage to the institutions of our democracy if he isn't muzzled.
We have to remember that truth is real, that people can act in good faith, and simply do the best we can. Perfect is the enemy of good enough.
Who decides what counts as lies and conspiracy theory? What if they decide spreading the attitude that “all cops are bastards” or the notion that police shooting events are mostly motivated by bigotry a conspiracy theory that leads to additional violence and start banning tangential speech?
Lots of lies can't easily be proven false, but many can, as long as we agree on some really basic principles.
For instance, if you tell me that two plus two equals five, I can count out two sets of two coins, then put them all together, count them again, and see that the answer is 4. So in that case I will be confident in calling you a liar.
“But everybody knows what ‘two’ is! You’re being facetious.”
No, not really. Most of the ranting here comes from
1. not precisely defining, and agreeing to, the terms that are being used in discussion, or
2. misinterpreting, intentionally or not, how others are using a term (so easy because the term was not defined properly by the poster in the first place)...
This provides the opportunity to reincarnate a long-neglected topic of study, closely connected to San Francisco, known as General Semantics.
If this “discussion” occurred among US intellectuals 70 years ago, someone would have already made my observation about defining terms.
A basic tenet: If nobody is defining and gaining an acceptance by others of the terms used in a discussion, you will get intellectually nowhere in your discussion and you will come to no agreement...or...each of you will think an agreement means something different. Dead waste of photons...
Soviet communists hated the idea at the time. “How can you rile up the masses if they objectively and rationally discussed things” seemed to be the concern. Ironic, because if the German people had used the basic techniques in the Nazi 1930s, there would have been 50% more young Russian men alive in the 1950s. Which is why it was so popular among the young intellectuals in the US after WWII who really didn’t want another war.
It is particularly appropriate for a Bay Area group since one of the leading proponents was S.I. Hayakawa who was President of San Francisco State University and former US Senator for California. His book, Language in Thought and Action, was a popular explanation of General Semantics for normal people.
Sold a million copies and was his ticket to politics. An easy and pleasant read even today.
If you pursue General Semantics further, skip the esoterica by the founder Korzybski. It is sort of Eselen-culty without any nudity, so, what’s the point?
My experience with internet interlocutors has been that the ones who have the most “trouble” understanding what others have said are also the most resistant to having the discussion about definitions. It’s pretty obvious that this is a common problem, but when so many people are arguing in bad faith the solution isn’t obvious since they will actively resist finding common ground upon which they might finally be pinned down. Simply making an “observation” might have been good enough “among US intellectuals 70 years ago”, but it’s certainly not going to be good enough today in these Hacker News comments.
In some contexts, I might love to talk for hours about what ‘2’ really is, but in this particular context the absurdity of following that rabbit hole is kind of the whole point: you can surely dissemble for hours if I press you on the ‘2’ issue, but what that amounts to here is you (the general you) retreating into intellectual masturbation to avoid admitting that there’s a difference between a truth and a lie (or directly arguing otherwise, though I think the same pitfalls apply there). I write comments like the one you replied to because I like to test what level of mental gymnastics these people are willing to resort to to avoid admitting that we can make any sort of factual statement about the world.
Please remove the blinkers. Dozens of murderous world leaders that regularly espouse violence are still on Twitter but Trump is eliminated.
BLM leaders who explicitly called for violence, arson and looting were never "fact-checked". Not until they started openly talking about murdering whites.
Face it - this is because the Twitter CEO actively dislikes Trump and has little to do with any sort of violent speech.
Cite even one example of a BLM leader explicitly (or even implicitly) calling for violence, arson, and looting.
Go ahead, I'll wait. You won't find anyone, because it didn't happen.
OTOH, the Proud Boys did explicitly call for violence, arson, and looting during the BLM rights, and their leader admitted as much in a live television interview.
“When the fires were burning, and people were chanting, I just felt liberated for a brief moment, and I felt for one of the only times in my life that the government had no control over me," said Newsome.
Now replace Newsome by a Trump supporter. Suddenly it needs "suppression".
The guy saying we are going to "burn down the system" did not actual want people to burn down the system. If you had read the entire quote, you would have seen that it was a metaphor for voting.
Similarly, there is no "video" in which BLM speakers advocate killing cops. The video does not exist; the transcript was made up in its entirety by right-wing extremist Paul Watson, a British neo-Nazi.
And the twitter quote you lead off with: was made up by the poster, along with her other tweets, which are easily debunked by visiting the posts she links to as evidence.
Next time you might want to actually do some follow-up evidence before you blindly swallow right-wing extremist lies.
Given how closely aligned your links are with neo-Nazi extremists, I'm not going to engage further.
For record, I am no neo-nazi extremist. I am coloured btw.
Did not downvote you. But your reply just fascinates me. How do you even compare "burning down the system" as a metaphor for voting ? Do you even truly recognise your own bias here where Trumps tweets are taken as a "incitement to violence" whereas any statement made by a BLM leader is played down as peaceful ?
> Cite even one example of a BLM leader explicitly (or even implicitly) calling for violence, arson, and looting.
He cited it. You're refusing to acknowledge it.
> The guy saying we are going to "burn down the system" did not actual want people to burn down the system. If you had read the entire quote, you would have seen that it was a metaphor for voting.
False. If you had read the article, you would have seen what he said next: "All right? And I could be speaking figuratively. I could be speaking literally. It’s a matter of interpretation"
That's literally as close as you can get to inciting violence without getting in legal trouble. This is a BLM leader inciting violence, full stop.
> neo-Nazi
> neo-Nazi
> neo-Nazi
All labels, no arguments. This is called "anti-intellectualism" as well as "ad-hominem". The fact that you refuse to acknowledge the valid example GP presented to your challenge, in addition to your absence of any sort of logic whatsover, show pretty conclusively that you're not actually interested in holding a debate - just slandering those who don't agree with you.
Please read my comment again and see that I did not suggest any defense of Twitter's not banning people who are not Trump. Less of blinkers and more of blindfold, I guess.
To follow up on caconym's comment, FBI has confirmed that more than a dozen explosive devices were found at the Capitol after the siege, including pipe bombs left in front of the DNC offices.[1]
5 people died. 50 officers were wounded, some seriously enough that they are still in the hospital.
Multiple protestors had zip ties and other means of restraint on them, knives, and guns, and on their social media profiles were promoting violence against legislators.
This wasn't protesting. It was terrorism. And these terrorist attacks were organized and coordinated on Parler and other social media.
Seven people died in a single weekend of BLM riots[1], which happened throughout all of 2020. That was also terrorism, yet no social media company deplatformed any Antifa- or BLM-related group.
> None of the people killed were involved in the protests. The shootings simply happened while protests were occurring elsewhere.
Objectively false - you didn't read the article again. It says "In Louisville, Kentucky, early Monday, a man was shot dead during a protest against the death of Breonna Taylor." right in the middle.
Other HN commenters who are acting in good faith: I invite you to click the article and C-f for that text. Yes, not all of the deaths were at the protests - my apologies for not reading carefully - but the claim that none of them are is factually incorrect.
> puppet
You've been continually resorting to ad-hominems and content-less fallacies, labels, and accusations. This is anti-intellectual.
You need to read the entire paragraph. The shooting occurred while the protest was going on elsewhere in the city.
You are not acting in good faith by deliberating leaving out the most important part of the paragraph, or the article, which repeatedly points out that none of the actual shootings were related to the protests.
I hear you - I really do. Violence in any form cannot be condoned, especially death.
One thing I don't see mentioned is scale of death vs. scale of demonstration. There was a relatively small number of people in Washington, and in one day, much damage was done. 5 killed, O(100) injured, and the capitol overrun.
The demonstrations this past summer were on another level. It's estimated that 20 million [0] people were involved. Yes there was violence and people acting in bad faith. But as a percentage of total protests it is _far_ less. I believe this says something about the intent of both demonstrations.
I've been trying to say this wherever the comparison is made. I haven't done the math, but in terms of fatalities per participant-day I think Wednesdays' events are probably at least two orders of magnitude more deadly than the "BLM protests" taken as a whole.
> Police officers and National Guardsmen were shot at while trying to clear an area during a curfew, Louisville Police Chief Steve Conrad said. The man, since identified as 53-year-old David McAtee, was killed when they returned fire. One witness told the Associated Press that the group of people was unrelated to the protests.
There’s no Antifa platform to be banned and BLM violent speech, if any, is cenored as well. BLM is a movement not a faction. And whatever I saw posted with the hashtag BLM were videos of police deadly violence towards balcks and it hurt me to watch these too as a non-black American. It hurts me that some are indifferent.
I am not idiotically following democratic ideology and am willingly letting anyone get their shot, i’ll listen all sides sides. The problem with these radical people is that they are not making much sense, they seem confused and alienated. If you ask them what they want you don’t get a well shaped idea. Banning them from the table doesn’t seem like a good idea, but what’s the alternative, start believing the parallel reality the live in? It is contagious and dangerous, I lost some elders in my family to this nonesense, it is absolutely saddening and we have to do something about it. Otherwise a large part of humanity is going mad, do we want that? What is your soluion to stopping this mess? Be honest, do you not think at all that Trump stoked chaos during his reign?
I’d like for all of us to take one month off electronic information and start taking informaion directly from our own small envitonment and tune in with nature whenever possible. A break like that would reset things in part. The other part is that we have to put a hand and build the future however we want
When you say "these terrorist attacks", do you have a concrete definition in mind? Or are you just expressing outrage and disgust?
Because right now, people accused of terrorism can be held in Guantanamo without habeas corpus. They are also subject to inclusion on government "kill lists"[1] with no opportunity for judicial review. The executive branch is claiming powers it has not had since the time of absolute monarchy. We should carefully consider any proposal to expand the meaning of the word "terrorism".
I'm outraged too, but I think these criminals should be afforded full due process rights. At both the investigatory stage and the trial stage.
If a group of muslims rushed a barricade and put pipe bombs outside Republican offices in the Capitol because they disagreed with the outcome of a political election, what would you call this action?
Please don't insinuate that I think people should be treated differently based on their religious affiliations.
I think that due process rights of despicable people should be protected precisely because I want them to be available to disfavored affinity groups like religious minorities, labor movements, and pacifists.
No, domestic terrorists are treated as criminals if they are citizens or permanent residents because they have Constitutional rights. If convicted, they go to the Supermax in Colorado.
Non-state foreign terrorists are held at Guantanamo.
> 70 people died because of the BLM riots and they are not getting deplatformed.
Who is the "they" that should be deplatformed for the actions you describe? Were there particular BLM organizers / leaders that were calling for destruction of property, violence against people, and the overthrowing of legally elected governments?
Certainly there were folks that took advantage of the crowds to do nefarious things, and I don't doubt some actual BLM folks committed acts.
There were also documented false flag operations against BLM:
And you follow up by proving just how right he is. First you dehumanize your political opponents--"If a rabid cougar gets loose..."--then you tell us what we need to do--"we take whatever measures we have to to get rid of it for the greater good of society."
And you claim it's the other side's speech that "is violent and damaging"?
P.S. At the time of this reply, it's not the current POTUS calling a sitting US Senator a "Goebbels". Care to guess where this is going?
The point of the cougar analogy is not to dehumanize anybody. It is to demonstrate that sometimes problems exist (problems as in configurations of reality that can be articulated as bad), and that doing nothing is often not the solution that will yield the greatest good in a utilitarian sense.
I'm sorry if that wasn't clear.
I'm curious, though—would you just let the cougar do its thing? Like, if that literally happened, and you were the guy at animal control who got the call?
Okay. But if you want to imagine I'm making a point I'm not making and respond to that rather than the point I am making, could you do it offline in a Word doc or something? There's already a lot of noise in this thread.
> They are being deplatformed because their speech is violent and damaging—in many cases it’s literal incitement to violence.
I challenge you to provide any concrete evidence for this claim - in particular, that (1) the majority of their speech specifically consists of calls to violence (not just "violent" because that term has been twisted recently to mean a wide range of things that a certain political party disagrees with) (2) that the behavior of the tens of millions of people in this political party are at all correlated with the several hundred people who stormed the capitol and (3) that this was significantly worse than the Antifa and BLM riots that we had throughout the entirety of 2020.
Reducing your fellow countrymen to an animal analogy is exactly the kind of dehumanization that has become commonplace in popular discourse. It's not enough that you disagree with them, they must be put down like some rabid beast.
We're on a path with this kind of thinking. If history is any guide, it doesn't end well.
Wasn't there an insurrection involved in the American Revolution?
And just think, we celebrate that one every July 4!
Sometimes working toward "the greater good of society" requires violence.
Therefore the real issue here is not the violence but rather the "misinformation" ... both in the form of dubious claims about election fraud as well as the attempt by powerful technology elites to silence the misinformed by de-platforming them instead of "federating" the flow of information through technologies like Mastodon that respect their users' freedom.
But there are some suspicious looking numbers and events that happened. I personally don't believe that they are true, but why not just investigate them? People distrust dominion voting systems; Just allow a bipartisan audit. People think certain votes were counted without both parties present; just recount those votes. Where is the harm in just being absolutely sure of things? If you just shut down people because there is no absolutely solid, undisputed evidence, they just think you are hiding something.
First, the position of the plaintiffs of those cases is that the actions of the “other half” have effectively disenfranchised them. If disenfranchisement is the issue at hand, it follows that one should investigate when someone claims to have been disenfranchised.
Second, every case that I’ve followed up on has been denied on the grounds of standing. My understanding is that this means that either the court believes that there was no harm or that the court believes that there is no reasonable way the outcome of the case could provide relief for harm that may have taken place. Either way, to my knowledge, none of the court cases have actually been heard. No evidence has been presented and no arguments have been made.
I mean with even the briefest of searches you can find numerous (maybe doctored) photos alleging various crimes around this election. Yes maybe they were very narrow edge cases and maybe the photos were doctored, but there's easy enough to find "evidence". But we don't know if that's actually evidence or not, because it hasn't been heard in a court (they'd have to commit perjury to try to submit fraudulent evidence).
You’ve heard of this report, correct? Or the paper written by John Lott of the DOJ?
There is evidence, but it sounds like you’ve only heard contradictions (not rebuttals) and rhetoric designed to avoid factual debate, as evidenced by your comments in this thread.
Evidence has not been presented but it has been solicited. When the courts asked for evidence the President’s lawyers have reduced their claims from fraud or illegal voting to irregularities unsupported by evidence which was asked for. E.g. the case where they said R observers were kept out and then they had to admit that R observers where present. The judge confirmed that and then found for the defense.
>Second, every case that I’ve followed up on has been denied on the grounds of standing.
Also laches.
One I followed because it was in my state and I know a lawyer involved was out right dismissed, but the judge was extremely forthcoming that this just wasn't appropriate for their court and issued an immediate appellate number and got that process going. Later in the media, I read how "Another Trump Fraud Case Tossed Out Of Court" which was at best disingenuous and at worst something else.
I still have no idea if the case had any merit! Probably not of course it was denied later a appeal, but that's the point. If you thought there was wrongdoing, from your point of view this doesn't help. I don't agree of course, but I get the perspective.
It wasn’t “zero evidence.” Hundreds of signed affidavits are by definition, evidence. If the evidence rises to a high enough standard, that’s a question for the courts, however, “zero” evidence is simply not true.
We already know from history what happens when large groups are disenfranchised from the public sphere. Violence. Lots of it. And once it starts, it's not easily stopped. Some welcome this because they think it can be managed for their own purposes. But once civil order breaks down, things simply accelerate with no possibility of talk being able to stop it anymore. It takes on a life of its own. Those who dream of the power they can seize once the violence starts are completely delusional. The winners and losers cannot be predicted ahead of time. There's no good path through it but this does appear to be the path that some have decided to force society down. Doubt most of them are even aware that this is what they're doing.
Ironically this mildly marginalized group seems to be very unforgiving of other marginalized groups. When they have to put their most extreme words on alternative websites they blame that preemptively for extremist actions.
When other groups have been marginalized systemically by public infrastructure, violence and a lopsided legal system, they advocate personal responsibility as a solution for systemic problems.
We've spent a couple years now (right?) tacitly approving rioting as an acceptable response to feeling disenfranchised. Now we're surprised when the same medicine gets used by others. For either side, I'm not sure it's proper minimize their complaints. If the BLM crowd says they have a serious problem with police violence, the best reaction is, "what can we do to restore confidence?" Similarly, when 40% of the country says they have serious concerns about the integrity of voting in this country the proper response isn't "everything is okay", it's "what can we do to restore confidence?".
The lesson here is to condemn all rioting, set expectations that are equally applied to all segments of society. Listen to those feeling alienated and see what can be reasonably done to promote inclusiveness. It's hard to take advocates of inclusiveness seriously when they eagerly cancel, disenfranchise, and deplatform people that disagree with them even remotely (and yes, there are plenty of examples of rational criticism being deplatformed).
I'm not convinced about a critical amount of 'fraud' in the election, but I think you're off your rocker if you think the US election system generally has sufficient controls in place not to be easily abused. This year saw even more loosening of the control structure because of knee-jerk reactions to perceived pandemic limitations (warranted or not, I don't care). I also don't care what your politics are or which team you root for, but from a systems perspective there are very obvious control deficiencies in how elections are carried out in this country.
Claims of fraud would be far, far, far easier to dismiss if a better control structure was in place. Maybe a national certification (a la NIST) that would be optional for states to adopt, but would at least would provide a framework for transparent state and local alignment (or misalignment) with best practice.
Well, I have, and it's not nonsense IME. Our state currently has a candidate under felony investigation for election fraud. We have multiple counties whose decisions are made by razor-thin margins. I mean, to repeat someone else (I don't even remember who) politics is one of the few truly zero-sum games out there, with much to lose. To think that humans (particularly politicians) are above pushing the envelope to the point of breakage in such circumstances strains credibility. Your easy dismissal may strike some as being a bit naïve. If you're assuming all the bad ones get caught, I have a drug war to sell you.
I posted in a sibling thread but there is evidence that it was enough to sway the election. Check out the Navarro Report, for instance, which provides several dimensions of evidence for this claim.
The cheating only really needs to occur in a handful of key urban counties to sway a national election, so it doesn’t actually need to be wide spread.
Context is important - I was responding to someone asking for local experience(“go work at a polling place”). But examples seem all too easy to find. A better response is to consider what concessions in the control structure can be made to restore confidence.
You may have faith that everything is okay, but that does little to satisfy those with experience of fraud or hearing stories of fraud. One can see a local example and easily (and not irrationally) imagine that the systems work similarly in the neighboring city, county, or state.
Whether your intention or not, it’s easy for your attitude to come across as accepting of deficiency - and an endorsement that may run out when the tables turn (and in American politics, they always do). The unending cycle of dismissal by each side to the other’s sincerely held concerns is getting us nowhere but a bad place.
I think you are not seeing the problem set for what it is. Your attitude seems to be: “there is no issue with the integrity of the number summmary.” Let’s say the problem at this point has nothing to do with who won - the problem at this point is that a great many of your countrymen are convinced they cannot trust the system. Your hope is they get over it. I can only tell you that from observing politics for a long time that the concerns over election integrity are getting worse in this country with each iteration, not better. In the face of this we are relaxing the control structure, not strengthening it. The result of continuing down this path should be easy to perceive.
What you describe is indeed the problem, but SHOULD it rightfully be the problem? Or should we really be concerned about the truth of who won, and leave it at that? The mistrust was fueled entirely by Trump. Prior to Nov 3, more Republicans than Democrats expressed confidence in the integrity of the system. So if you dont dispute the election result, then the problem would seem to lie entirely with Trump lies, and all who choose to believe them over evidence. You know Mccarthyism was a thing? Was it because there were systematic issues at the time making our Congress susceptible to a Communist majority, or was it because of a demogogue, lies lies lies, and willfully ignorant believers?
It's important that claims are investigated, but claims have been investigated, courts have made rulings, all the way to the Supreme Court.
The system will never be perfect but nobody is. Holding it to a 100% standard and saying it isn't a good system if it fails in a few points is not acting in good faith.
I have yet to see any real evidence of election fraud. The Trump lawyers have been shutdown by bipartisan courts across the country. Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell, lifelong republicans, agreed.
I agree that the process has been engaged and the verdict delivered. However the concerns about election integrity greatly predate this election, and in my lifetime the controls have been getting weaker not stronger. I don’t think the broader issue is going away anytime soon.
About the controls getting weaker? Review the evolution of controls over time. This year alone my own state eliminated the requirement for absentee ballot witnesses, extended the dates after Election Day for which ballots may be received, loosened the postmark requirements for such ballots. Is this a case where you have evaluated the suitability and effectiveness of the control structure for election integrity and believe that the tendency of loosening preventative and detective controls is immaterial or are you not familiar with the changes? For these are two different conversations: a) I believe the lack of controls to ensure integrity of the process is immaterial to the outcome; b) I believe controls are necessary but don’t see them loosening.
For conversation a, we would disagree in principle - regardless of whether we’re talking about the integrity of the corporate books, the management of systems access, or the integrity of the voting process, to the degree the control structure weakens it is introducing increasing amounts of risk not only in the reliability of the reporting but into the faith held by the stakeholders.
Now you ask, how much risk is appropriate and sustainable, to which I (quick on the repartee) would say storming the federal capital is a benchmark of failure, a growing (not ebbing) concern over election integrity over decades is a bad trend getting worse not better.
Even via the most cynical outlook about one side imagining problems that aren’t there, what happens in sports when one team believes fouls against them aren’t being called? Or in a company when rumors are commonplace that the books are being cooked? It doesn’t make things better, is my point - things get worse. And that’s where turning a blind eye to the very real concerns of others only continues the destabilization.
Absentee ballot witnesses? Really? That's your argument?
> extended the dates after Election Day for which ballots may be received,
Yea maybe it was because there was a global pandemic and the president deliberately weakened the postal service to help himself. I don't see how legal ballots sent in being counted is a weakening of integrity.
None of this is evidence. These are things that happened - but you have not provided any evidence that this weakened the integrity of the election.
Addressing the trust problem is what needs attention now, and in that conversation your litigation of the “fraud” evidence question becomes less useful.
Imagine it like a problem in GAAP or in NIST 800. It’s not about whether _you_ can or cannot see fraud, it’s about whether the community at large (let’s just use Pareto’s 80%) has faith that there are sufficient controls to make fraud unlikely.
Here’s an easy example: your company doesn’t require dual signatures on wire transfers over $250k. One person can make a decision on moving material amounts of cash out the door. You say, we’ve not seen any evidence of large scale wire fraud so we don’t need stronger controls to prevent it. To your auditors and investment community this is a ticking time bomb for several reasons, the least of which may be questionable confidence in your specific ability to detect instances of fraud thus far.
This type of problem is encountered frequently in the regulatory world and I’m not sure why the voting process is so special that we can’t apply similar solution sets. That is, look to sensible, auditable control structures that can be demonstrated to be effective.
The control structure around voting is getting looser, not tighter, and this has been a trend predating the prior four presidential election cycles at least. Looking at the anecdata, many operations are a clown show where if not being abused are clearly ripe for abuse.
I’m not sure how to put it more simply: the debate about the degree and type of fraud that _you_ are aware of is immaterial. The question before the country is how to react when some 40% of the country is losing confidence in the system. Not just in a joking way but shifting to where the fringes are just done with it and parts of the non-fringe are increasingly finding sympathy for them.
My OP was about how the US needs to be prioritizing a fix for the confidence problem. Solutions such as more censorship are a poison pill.
Your comment reflects your self interest in the outcome of the last election, rather than the national interest for the next election. You can tell people to go pound sand, but I don’t think that solution has longevity. This is the first time in my lifetime I can remember the Capitol being stormed, and I’m aware that the confidence issue has been percolating for many years. Ballot harvesting, loose validation checks, willfully bad voter roles, etc., have been making the problem worse not better, again from a confidence level. This year in California the Republicans got in on the ballot harvesting.
Again, what happens in sports when one team thinks the fouls aren’t being called? Does it matter whether you, on the other team, hold a different opinion about the state of refereeing? The whole thing turns into a clown show.
I don’t think an endorsement of continuing down this same path is a good prescription for this country. In terms of the Four Boxes of Liberty, I worry that two of them are increasingly perceived as being locked out for one of our large political factions. Not good.
The confidence problem is unfixable with these people. They will never have confidence in the system unless their side wins - as such they are a threat to it and society should do everything it can to peacefully ostracize this.
If the goal was to truly add trust they would not have stormed the capitol at the behest of Trump and his allies. This immediately proves the goal is not trust - it is power.
Now you must prove to me why I should trust these challenges - as they are filled with lies and conspiracy theories. The trust problem is with the insurrectionists. You have not dealt with this or have proven the system has no integrity. You are using ambiguity, like a flat-earther. It won't work here, sorry.
You're not being honest about the situation. None of the official cases were given the chance to be aired, all were dismissed on procedural grounds. The Supreme Court did not "make rulings", they refused to hear the case.
Sadly, that decision may have led to this state of affairs. When people think they have no voice, violence comes soon after.
The Supreme Court rightly ruled that the traitor's case from Texas did not have legal standing.
I'm a Pennsylvanian. Texas should have no right to tell our legislature and government how to run its elections. The Supreme Court rightfully agreed:
> "Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections," the court wrote in an unsigned ruling Friday evening.
But again, you aren't arguing in good faith. I can't wait til Jan 20.
Have you read the Navarro Report (two parts), or the paper written by John Lott at the DOJ? You may not agree with their politics but these are Economics PhDs from Harvard and UCLA, not exactly knuckle draggers.
There was also hours upon hours of witness testimony given to state legislatures.
The media didn’t really cover any of this material, instead just repeated ad homs and contradictions (not rebuttals) and touted all the tossed court cases, all of which were for procedural reasons like standing and laches so evidence was never considered.
I would say there’s actually a significant amount of evidence, but nobody wants to hear it because it implicates players on both sides of the aisle.
We've banned this account for abusing HN with flamewar and political battle. Those things are not what this site is for. Creating accounts to do that will eventually get your main account banned as well, so please don't.
If your sources for "proof" are from anyone that is pro-Trump and repeatedly tears into Trumps opposition, you might want to start with the assumption that motivated reasoning is in play. You can be well-educated, and still have a bias and be inclined to argue for your side to win.
I’m aware of the politics of the authors. Both articles you posted amount to ad homs. Neither even attempt to engage with the evidence presented in the reports.
> you might want to start with the assumption that motivated reasoning is in play. You can be well-educated, and still have a bias and be inclined to argue for your side to win.
yes, this is the human condition and applies equally to both sides of this debate.
My initial comment was an abrupt dismissal based on the authors of the two listed items of evidence. Here are some articles worth reading that are thorough dismissals.
Now, if you buy the conspiracy theory that the above news agencies are all on the take and not a single one of them has a whistleblower that would blow the case wide open for a few bucks, then you can argue all these prove nothing. On the other hand, it's really easy to argue that people that publicly support Trump and criticize his opponents have motivation to put out readily debunked documents hoping that enough people will accept them without doing due diligence to determine if they are legitimate.
With regard to those questioning the general integrity of such a large, heterogeneous system as the US electoral process, I don’t think the relevant question is “Is there any reason to believe that some amount of voter fraud may have occurred.” Instead, we should be asking, “If voter fraud did occur, is there any reason to believe that it would disproportionately favor one party over the other?” It’s a big leap from “the system’s latent vulnerabilities likely resulted in at least some failure” to “the system’s vulnerabilities were systematically exploited to the benefit of one party.” I haven’t encountered any convincing evidence in support of the latter conclusion.
I think escalation is the problem here, similar to concerns about "the algorithm" (YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, etc). Some people who begin with reasonable questions in the vein of example #2 are radicalized into believing falsehoods because they are getting their answers from poison information sources.
> A senior vice president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce, Steve Baas, had a thought. “Do we need to start messaging ‘widespread reports of election fraud’ so we are positively set up for the recount regardless of the final number?” he wrote in an email on April 6 to conservative strategists. “I obviously think we should.”
> Scott Jensen, a Republican political tactician and former speaker of the State Assembly, responded within minutes. “Yes. Anything fishy should be highlighted,” he wrote. “Stories should be solicited by talk radio hosts.”
I think so, yes. The stand down orders given to police departments in major metro areas, for example. The discretionary lack of prosecution for many of those arrested. The allowance for protestors and counter-protestors fighting to become spectacle/sport. The national media coverage I watched and listened to was largely sympathetic to the idea that understanding was needed in the face of the burning and looting rather than reactionary exercise of control to enforce order.
“Recently, at the direction of Mayor [Bill] Peduto, the Pittsburgh Police presented to my office tangible evidence for the refiling of these failure-to-disperse charges in the form of body camera footage, as well as surveillance video and more comprehensive investigations,” Zappala said in a statement on Friday. “The demonstrative evidence shows that the individuals being charged were repetitively directed by the police and given ample opportunity to disperse, often over an extended period, and failed to heed these notices.”
Again, I disagree. There is no tacit acceptance. That is just false.
Just google the term by each major city or location where buildings were lit up. I’m certainly not claiming that prosecutions didn’t happen, but when a city declines to prosecute a great many arrests and national organizations are paying bail money for those arrested, along with police stand down orders, it sends a message.
In India, we have the concept of 'bandhs' or 'lockdowns' for a day or more to highlight certain issues.
it is known as a fact that only those that are supported by the local government are deemed as successful, regardless of the validity or support for that cause. The police are just the pawns.
We see the same for both BLM protests as well as the Capitol Hill protest.
> The lesson here is to condemn all rioting, set expectations that are equally applied to all segments of society.
I can't agree with this more. Through this event and what happened last year I can see how incredibly bias the media is when portraying protests and riots. During BLM, there's barely any coverage on the looting and destruction caused by "protesters" on mainstream media. There was a very clear attempt to downplay the severity of these actions.
Yep, the BLM rioting and looting was not covered well by the leftwing media, in the same way that the right wing media covers only the sections/events they want to display to make their point and distort their truths. Both sides is guilty of such.
Weird how it's only looting when black people do it, whereas when white people occupy and steal from a government building they're just voicing their displeasure with government.
If you don't see the incredibly stark contrast in how the authorities handled and prepared for the Capitol insurrection (yes, the insurrection plans were public and known weeks in advance) compared to BLM protests, I don't understand how there can even be a debate about this because we are clearly operating in two different realities.
>Several fires have been set near the courthouse, which federal officials have said could spread to the building and harm the agents inside.
If you think this is on the same level as the mob of violent insurrectionists who invaded (and planned to take hostages) inside the highest legislature in the land simply because "their guy" didn't win the election, I don't think there is anything I can tell you that would convince you otherwise. The Portland protestors were both less violent and actually had legitimate grievances (decades of police brutality and state violence against people of color).
While I agree that all protests and riots are a response to feeling disenfranchised or angry about a situation, it’s important to think of the cause in each case.
For BLM protests, the cause is partly real police violence that lots of people have experienced. Lots of people have this firsthand, negative experience with the police, and are frustrated that they cannot feel safe in the hands of people meant to protect them.
For the voter fraud protests, the cause is a propaganda and disinformation campaign. For months and even years, Trump has been saying that things are stollen from him, that the election would be stolen from him, etc. He really incensed this narrative of voter fraud with a lot of lies. The cause is not people’s firsthand experience of voter fraud: republicans were not turned away from the polls nor were their votes discarded. It’s that they were told by Trump and other republicans that if they loose elections, then it must be fraud.
The response, then, is totally different. In the one case, addressing the cause means to reform the police. In the other case, addressing the cause means... what? I would say it is addressing the propaganda campaign. This is what news orgs and social media sites have tried to do.
No matter how secure this election was, or how many policies got implemented, the election fraud claim would persist because the cause is propaganda, not evidence. People (even republicans) who know way more elections than I do say that this election was one of the most secure ever. The few instances of fraud that occur — and always occur in events of this scale — are hardly proof of a sinister campaign.
While I’ll agree to make voting as secure as possible (I’d support voter ID if it didn’t take 5 hours at the DMV just to be eligible to vote), that’s not really the narrative voter fraud protests are about. That’s why we push back when people try to say that the election was fraudulent: these folks are really trying to say that they should have won. They are not (primarily) trying to say that we should fix the handful of fraud instances that happened even though it wouldn’t change the result.
If I said “you’re right to be angry here,” I would be heard as saying, “you actually should have won.” Therefore, I must be honest and say “you’re wrong to be angry about this. The evidence of fraud will not address your anger about this loss.”
And let me be clear: I support trump folks right to protest because of their anger over loosing. But I cannot agree that it ought to be addressed as they say it should be.
Right but weren't there tons of demonstrations and violence because of black criminals who got killed by police? Tolerance is easy if you pick and choose, hence it's not tolerance.
I don't hear a lot of excuses for those trump fans for their sins because of lack of education, money, opportunities. They get lumped in with privileged white people posting here from Silicon Valley, that's what they obviously feel.
Why didn't the so called paradox of intolerance imply to a case where someone is doing an armed home invasion and why are people surprised when political and protest violence was long normalized and tolerated? It doesn't make any sense looking it over the ocean.
Also the main argument this group was making for the last 2 months was to disenfranchise much of the US voting population. The people voted, and this group attempted to say it wasn't legitimate. They proved nothing in court to their claims, but persisted anyway right up until they got worked up into a frenzy and stormed the Capitol.
Voter ID, removal of hackable voting machines, and hand count of votes are not disenfranchisement. You may have been told by the media that it is, but it's not. Many advanced democracies have such things in place.
The machines are not hacked, and the voter rolls are legitimate.
There is zero evidence of systematic fraud, therefore, there is no 'disenfranchisement'.
To suggest that 'maybe one day, someone could mess with our election' is not 'disenfranchisement'.
"You may have been told by the media" - Rudy Giuilani and the President clearly failed to make a case or provide any evidence - moreover, they lied, lied and lied through the process and have no credibility.
The election was fine - Trump's claims of fraud are completely fabricated.
> The machines are not hacked, and the voter rolls are legitimate.
> The election was fine - Trump's claims of fraud are completely fabricated.
Their capacity to claim fraud is _because_ of these weaknesses that make such a claim possible. Regardless of what the truth is, there are millions of people who think the election was rigged. If we don't placate those people and fix the issues, it could continue to escalate.
We don't investigate innocent people for murder to placate an angry mob.
What we do is implement a communications strategy to get the mob to realize the random person is not guilty of murder.
The President is using the authority of his position to lie and misrepresent the issue, so we'll have to stop that somehow and get the proper message out.
There are no fundamental weaknesses in the system to the point wherein any organized attempt could flip the election - other than in the known grey areas which we fight about in public such as 'voter rolls' and how we purge them etc. There is ambiguity there.
But the voting itself is actually really credible. The 'voting machines' and ballot counting is probably the most impossible to defeat system.
Russians wanting to throw the election would have far more effect using Twitter and FB to incite crowds and to divide Americans, which is exactly what they have shown to be doing.
Do we placate them by refusing to acknowledge an obvious win? I'm sorry but it went way too far. The president and everyone who went along with his BS were writing checks they couldn't cash and so their followers go all worked up because of it.
There is a lot of evidence of voter fraud. I'm not sure if enough to turn around a presidential election but it can change local ones. https://youtu.be/ZD1-dBrP4Pw
No one is saying there's zero fraud, it happens every election on very small scales, but its only ever at the scale to affect elections that are within a few hundred votes. None of the states were anything close to that.
> There is zero evidence of systematic fraud, therefore, there is no 'disenfranchisement'.
"This study applies Benford’s law to detect anomalies in county-level vote data for the 2020 US presidential election. Most prominent distribution violations are observed with Republican vote counts in blue states, all vote counts in states won by the Democratic candidate, and Democratic vote counts in swing states. Distributions are anomalous in swing states won by the Democratic nominee and not anomalous in swing states won by the Republican nominee." - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3728626
Yep. One side is screaming "No fraud! You're bad for even considering the possibility!" while simultaneously being against every single transparency or robustness measure that might actually convince the other side that there was no fraud. Hmmmm...
One side is insisting on so-called transparency and accountability measures which make fraud much easier. Hmmm...
In the meantime it’s not the vote counting system that is the problem so much as the single candidate seats, winner takes all style representation along with the electoral college.
The people who actually are underrepresented would be far better off with multiple electorates being merged and represented by multiple representatives, and switching to something like Hare-Clarke voting (single transferable vote).
>But once civil order breaks down, things simply accelerate with no possibility of talk being able to stop it anymore.
The left is mad that they're getting shot in the head by cops for peacefully protesting. The right is mad that they can't tweet insurrectionist rhetoric. I don't buy the "civil disorder" argument, the USA hasn't been "civilized" for a long time.
Their legal cases are not being silenced though. They've been free to submit their many lawsuits and they've been rejected for not having any legal merit.
The mainstream media gave them a platform for 5 years. When Trump announced that he was running for president, every media platform was reporting on it. We've been seeing and listening about this administration and it's supporters more than any other administration in the past. They've had a very loud voice that this week culminated on the invasion of the US Capitol.
The were not squeezed out of public debate, they've had a huge platform but their arguments as of late have become violent and dangerous.
I'm not sure if any complaint was dismissed solely on the basis of the evidence, and not also because the plaintiff also failed to do other things like show that the court actually had article 3 jurisdiction, but certainly many courts found the evidence and legal arguments lacking enough to dismiss the case, in addition to finding that it would independently need to be dismissed for other reasons.
The legal arguments being so bad that they failed procedural is not a defense for the Trump side, it's a demonstration of how badly they are failing to make a case at all. The easiest part of an allegation of fraud is to not fail on procedural grounds.
Edit: I mean - actually - easier than that is not being so aware that your evidence is lacking that you try and claim a case is and isn't about fraud in the same oral argument - but that's just a particularly special brand of incompetence and flailing that I've never heard of outside of the Trump campaign lawsuits... https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/hear-it-for-yourself-r...
> We are slowly squeezing a significant segment of the population out of public debate
They didn't exist in the public debate to begin with. Social media opened that up. We're realizing just how negatively impactful a village idiot with a megaphone the size of a city block can be.
Yes, the problem is this; I’m not interested in what someone who is dumb enough to storm the Capitol building has to say. And they aren’t interested in having a debate on the facts either, so what are we going to discuss? I don’t get how we can come together and make this better...
Look into targeted individuals - they are similar to QAnon but clearly exhibiting classic schizophrenia symptoms and now organized and helping each other come up with ways to keep the thought rays out of their heads etc. I have no answer but I remember how intoxicating it was when I first got access to an world wide communication network and could learn from neuroscientists all over the world (as a then 16 yo I got flamed a good bit.). We for sure haven’t figured out how to use global networks safely.
Honest question: Who do you consider the smartest Trump supporter? Do you think you have anything to learn from them by engaging in a good faith discussion?
My point being maybe you think 95% of MAGA-hats are off their rocker, and Trumpism taken as a whole is grossly misguided. I don't really disagree. But is it possible that there's some core nugget of wisdom to take away. Something, perhaps that your current worldview is glossing over.
Instead of just writing off the political beliefs of literally half the people in America, maybe we should really be super certain that we make a genuine attempt to understand where they're coming from.
At worst, we've wasted some time talking to idiots. But my guess is if we make a good-faith and honest attempt to find the best and brightest Trumpists out there (instead of just smugly dunking on the dumbest trolls on the Internet), that maybe, just maybe there may be a kernel of truth underlying their ideology.
Not OP, but I'd gladly have a discussion with some coal miner who felt like politicians weren't representing him and fell for the populist rhetoric Trump would sometimes use.
The reason? I don't think that sort of person voted for Trump because of the idea of Trump or a cult of personality. They simply got duped and there are better solutions to their problems.
The folks that stormed D.C. are too far gone at this point.
I don’t know how anyone can rationally support Trump after he has clearly stated a desire to overturn a fairly contested election. In my book that means agreeing with him at this point is essentially saying you don’t value democracy. The man has had meetings to discuss getting the military to rerun elections injustice the states he needs to regain White House... He’s been trying to push violence to happen, he’s a racist. I don’t really know how he can be morally defended at this point. I would have had more respect for his positions and voters before the election but what he’s done to the US is a disaster that will take a long time to fix.
This is an interesting idea. But I bet it would amount (excuse the silly metaphor) to talking to more and more hyenas to figure out where Scar’s true ideology lies. Maybe it’s hyenas all the way down, maybe not. But why would Scar tell you?
> Who do you consider the smartest Trump supporter?
Depends how you define supporter. He’s received support from some smart, cynical and extremely nasty people; he serves their agenda, one way or another. But they’re not fans; they’re probably privately pretty contemptuous of him. The Mercers would be an obvious example.
If by supporter you mean the people who believe him about the election being stolen and so on, there are no smart people in that category. There are smart sociopaths who don’t believe him but go along with the idea, of course.
My mother read a book to me called "The Emperor Has No Cloths" when I was very young. The book is silly, but it stays with me to this day. Every time I hear my president repeat absurd, dangerous and divisive conspiracy theories, this book always comes to mind. Same goes for the supporters that defend him.
Public debate is fine, but we are watching a huge population of people absurdly follow this man in his birthday suit. People so easily "persuaded" deserve the (non violent) pushback they get.
Sorry, what I meant was this: after the child pointed it out, everyone acknowledged the truth.
What these disastrous last 5 years have proven is that people will refuse to acknowledge the obvious truth as long as there's a plausible lie they prefer.
To follow up: it was hard enough for the two parties to agree on policy when they couldn't agree on the impact of those policies. How do you predict the second and third order impact of a new law?
Now the parties, or at least their supporters, can't agree on the past and present truth of what's happening in the country.
When there's no common agreement on what basic truth is, you can't expect agree on policy to address the problems we face.
Media didn't exist in the public debate to begin with. The printing press opened that up. We're realizing with events like the one described in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller how negatively impactful letting only a select few that are sponsored by the government to be part of the public debate.
This is total bs. I grew up in the 90s when tolerance was the word of the day and the exact logic was that the idiot with a microphone and a klan hood is only a problem if they're attacking people at which point the police handle them.
No, it's not surprising that they explode in unpredictable ways. That's why you need the tanks and the guns for when they do, not just let them run roughshod over the basic concept of fact-based reality.
I did not spend the summer complaining about police militarization. I also believe that every single murderer should be executed (do not confuse that with "every single person convicted of first-degree murder.")
They’re being de-platformed for the same reason the Marriott kicks a homeless person out of the lobby or Amtrak kicks a loud person out of the quiet car: most of the platform’s users don’t want them there.
They were never part of public debate. They were just talking amongst themselves, showing each other what they wanted to hear, and validating their own beliefs in a downwards spiral towards eventual extremism. This is enabled by the internet more than any specific social network. It's like sending someone to prison and expecting them to turn into a law abiding citizen: hard when all your peers are also criminals. Now the internet has essentially allowed such criminals to gather virtually and fester in their toxic ideas much in the same way a high school outcast may find they aren't alone when they get out of high school.
One of the logical fallacies from pro-free-speech defenders of these people is the assumption that these ideas were organically developed. But I can assure you there is propaganda and foreign and domestic special interests that are intentionally shaping the thoughts and ideas from these people. I know in the Chinese community that interests like Falun Gong (an organization that believes extra-terrestrial Aliens are manipulating humans to intermix racially in order to subjugate us as well as other less-than-progressive beliefs like homophobia) have been heavily pro-Trump because of his anti-China policies, and they've been putting out a lot of toxic content aimed at Chinese-Americans [1] [2]. This is a disinformation war and taking actions like this is a part of war, otherwise services like Twitter are just complicit in aiding misinformation campaigns by one side.
>They were never part of public debate. They were just talking amongst themselves, showing each other what they wanted to hear, and validating their own beliefs in a downwards spiral towards eventual extremism.
Isn't the exact opposite true as well then? If one side is siloed, by definition the other side must be in an opposite silo. You've taken it upon yourself to define that your side is in the "public debate" and therefore somehow isn't just "talking amongst themselves". Don't you see the issue here? Left Twitter/Reddit/Facebook absolutely exists, and they are not meaningfully conversing with the other side.
And, if anything, having a sitting president on your side should by definition mean that you are "part of the public debate", since everyone at least hears the president's words (and especially Trump's).
I'm not sure what side you think I'm on, but that's besides the point. I did not say what my side is, nor did I say that any other side is part of the public debate. A debate requires at least 2 opposing parties, so not sure what point you're trying to make. The point I am trying to make is that these people are not part of any debate, public or otherwise. There is flat out no "debate" happening because it's primarily involving a special group that has become the victim of internet and technology allowing the manipulation of information to control mass opinion. Nobody wants to have wasted their lives away playing Farm Ville, but Zynga's manipulation of technology sure is able to wrestle away that control from the common people. Likewise special interests were able to manipulate people at light speed by telling them exactly what they want to hear, and riling them up.
Propaganda is in the very nature of communication and because of the internet it has allowed special interests to capture the attention of potentially millions and instill extremist ideas. For free speech to work propaganda must be employed and countermeasures must be employed. Free speech doesn't mean giving equal weight to all ideas, just like equality of opportunity doesn't mean making everyone equal all the time.
They’ve been shifting the Overton window for years.
Are against open borders? Then you’re a racist.
Are against abortion? Then you’re a misogynist.
Are for a pro worker visa policy and tariffs on imports? Then you’re a nationalist (which isn’t even a bad word but they make it sound like one)
Are for the right to bear arms? Then you’re an uneducated hillbilly.
Are for churches and other religious institutions to decide for themselves if they remain open? Then you’re a religious nut job who thinks the world is flat.
Find me one Democrat with actual power advocating for open borders.
And it's not as if the speech used by xenophobes is free of racial overtones and dogwhistles, either.
> Are against abortion? Then you’re a misogynist.
If you are against a woman's right to do what they please to their own body, you have to give compelling evidence for why. There is no such evidence.
> (which isn’t even a bad word but they make it sound like one)
Because it is a word that historically was used by people who started a lot of wars and were fixated on who/what was _truly_ part of their nation.
The "they" in "they've been shifting" is a strong majority of the people around you who now value racial inclusion and self-autonomy far more highly than ever before. This is a problem of values and pretending that all of them are created equal.
... a word that historically was used by people who started a lot of wars...
That's us. USA starts lots of wars. We've still got, what, seven going right now? Maybe it's down to six? (Ummm... Iraq Afghanistan Syria Yemen Korea Palestine Iran well that's at least seven but I'm probably missing multiple wars in Africa...)
An infinitesimal part of the population and debate around border/immigration policy favors open borders. The framing of anything remotely mainstream as “open borders” definitely strikes me as a likely sign of racism.
> Are against abortion? Then you’re a misogynist.
Yes. This is correct.
> Are for a pro worker visa policy and tariffs on imports? Then you’re a nationalist (which isn’t even a bad word but they make it sound like one)
Pro-worker? Or pro-worker-with-citizenship? And last I checked the objection to tariffs is that they’re harmful to all the people they’d ostensibly benefit.
> Are for the right to bear arms? Then you’re an uneducated hillbilly.
Not sure what uneducated hillbilly has to do with any Overton Window but the debate right now is over limiting access to certain kinds of arms, not eliminating the right to bear arms totally.
> Are for churches and other religious institutions to decide for themselves if they remain open? Then you’re a religious nut job who thinks the world is flat.
I don’t think the judgment has anything to do with religion, it has to do with allowing exemptions to gatherings being a public danger. You’re still a superspreader if you’re a superspreader with a good healthy positive religious faith.
Yes, I’m aware of zillions of examples of people actively participating in their own oppression. I think you’ll also find that not nearly as many women are actually anti-abortion as claim to be, at least in their own personal choices. And the women who are are perfectly comfortable forcing other women to carry pregnancies to term. How is that not misogyny?
Why ask me? I don’t claim to know what they’re thinking, I’m just skeptical at the idea that misogynists are so evenly distributed between genders.
Why don’t you actually go talk to pro-life people and really listen to what they have to say? You might discover a better line of argument than just saying “stop being a woman hater”.
It’s not like this is a new concept for me. I’ve had plenty of conversations with women who want other women to carry pregnancies to term against their will. It’s almost always god’s will. One of my dearest friends takes a feminist perspective on it, but only in terms of cherry picked historical positioneering. I’ve yet to hear a single explanation for forcing a woman to carry a pregnancy to term that isn’t dehumanizing to the woman. Because it’s inherently is dehumanizing.
I’ll ask you again: isn’t forcing a woman to use her uterus to host another life against her will misogynist? You don’t have to be one of the women who share that view to agree that the women who don’t (and the large number of women who do but get abortions anyway) don’t deserve to be forced to be living fetus nurseries.
You certainly can label it as misogyny if you wish to, and you’re not wrong, but ultimately it’s little more than a pejorative. Outside the confines of a Foucauldian academic discussion, these words are used to define and exclude people, not to understand them.
It damages our ability to have a constructive conversation with people who have opposing views, because it implies that they carry some unreasonable inner hatred of women within them, and that they can never be persuaded, only defeated and disempowered politically.
I don’t wish to carry on a conversation with people who want to force women to carry fetuses in their bodies. It is worth excluding from any further conversation. I’ve learned all I need to know about it. I want to defeat and disempower them so they can’t harm more women.
I wonder if you'll someday see that this dismissive, self-satisfied attitude is actually harming your cause much more than it is helping. All you're doing is coming off as the same brand of ideologue you're specifically trying to take down.
I’m not sure where you got the impression that the problem I have with anti-abortion is ideology. The problem is moral: they want to force women to be pregnant against their will. What is there to discuss? What would it benefit women who don’t want to be forced to be pregnant against their will for me to consider it more? Who would it convince? Who is going “oh maybe I don’t want to force women to be pregnant against their will, but this guy is certain about it so I’m gonna have to go ahead and force them after all”?
There’s a long history of oppressive systems favoring their target of oppression as champions of their oppressive views. It’s not misogyny to say that it is misogyny for some women to force other women to keep a fetus in their body.
How's being bigoted relate to this? Most people oppose killing innocent people. What is and isn't a "person" is partially a subjective judgement; people who oppose abortion might believe that e.g. a one-month-old foetus constitutes a "person", while people who support abortion might disagree. People have a right to believe that killing one-month-old foetuses is wrong just like vegans have a right to believe that killing animals for food is wrong; there's no objective answer to moral questions.
No one believes that people shouldn't have the right to kill a parasite. If the embryo/fetus could survive outside the womb I would be pro-life, but it can't. If you were the only match for someone who needed a kidney transplant should you be forced to give up a kidney? Abortion is no different.
>If the embryo/fetus could survive outside the womb I would be pro-life, but it can't.
The youngest foetus to survive premature birth was around 24 weeks old, so does that mean you oppose abortion of foetuses older than that, as they could survive outside of the womb?
If the doctor believes the fetus can survive I can see the argument. Would have to think more to come to a conclusion. So I guess I was a bit presumptuous there, but I'm leaning toward save the fetus. Now that probably doesn't mean 24 week cutoff, since I assume many if not most fetuses would not be able to survive at that point.
So you are ok with people that just leave their babies to starve or in a trash can? After all, they can't survive without the outside help, those fucking parasites...
Well the government is willing to care for the baby at that point. So no, you should be obligated to drop the baby off with child services. If no one was willing to care for your child I'd probably be ok with that though.
Yes, of course, the only possible expression of border control is absolute, and the only measure available is to treat people who have crossed the same as people who haven’t.
For what it’s worth I’m much closer to an open border advocate than the vast majority of the liberal-left spectrum, and it’s frankly absurd that the right’s take on this is “trump’s bigger detention camps and more aggressive policy means all the others literally didn’t exist even if they were basically his prototype”, when what he effectively did was add malice and lack of humanity to existing policy.
But we can agree that not every interest in national well-being is bad.
I think that's what GP is saying - talking about (for instance) NATO members contributing their contractually agreed funding to the organization and aligning with our own contractual commitment seems like a sane position, but when it's called "nationalist" either the word isn't bad anymore or the level of hyperbole is so off the charts that the accusation doesn't mean anything. Many other examples of the "nationalism" criticism that have been pretty hyperbolic in the last four years.
For benefits and worker protections, like unions? You're a snowflake and don't want to work
This is a meaningless exercise.
We have multiple levels of government, we have a courts system, a legislature, and an executive branch, all directly or indirectly elected by the people. I'm not going to make any excuses for anyone for threatening the foundation of everyone's way of life here.
Holy hell. To anyone reading this; if you believe everyone not in your bucket is in the other bucket, and there are only two buckets.. I would caution you to step back and consider:
1.) Everyone not in your bucket is NOT in the other bucket
2.) Everyone not in the other bucket is NOT in your bucket
Your arguments just appear to be a bunch of straw men to me. I can't identify a single one of those as mainstream viewpoints. Nobody I know who voted against Trump holds them. I'm personally a "liberal" that owns guns and am against bans an buybacks.
People, please, be warry of people trying to convince you there is a binary set of beliefs and it's all-or-nothing.
Is it surprising that when fascists and racists are muzzled, they lash out to try to maintain the power to hurt others? No, it’s not surprising, and the lack of surprise is not part of any of the newsworthy stories of the last several days.
What do you expect when Fox News and many other right-wing outlets are just lying all the time? When lawyers for DJT go into court and admit there is no fraud and then go out to the steps of the courthouse and give a press conference saying there is fraud and it must stop.
Fox News, et al are talking about this non-stop since the election. Just think of all the people that have listened to this and believe it. What on earth do we expect them to do?
For what it is worth, the vast majority of those who would be labeled as “far right” here on HN see Fox News as part of the problem, not a source of truth.
I never said there are far right people on HN, and frankly, I don't really see them. There are a few trolls that get their comments killed, but I don't count them.
Yeah, because both sides are equal in value and sanity. This is not about both sides. This is society taking control of itself again and deciding that this cancer on this society will not be allowed to grow further. Unfortunately it happened much later than it should have, so there will be collateral damage. But this hatred must be removed if society is to progress any further.
The ones radicalizing these people are responsible for squeezing them out of public debate. What if these people were going around insisting the Earth is flat, trying to force other people to agree with you, then increasingly lashing out when others don't agree? Oh, and they are picking up new adherents by doing this as well.
Consistent enforcement of the rules (which Apple is not good at, I will say) would have avoided this becoming such a problem. Parler has been a cesspit for its whole existence, as far as I know, and approximately nobody would have cared if Apple never let them on the App Store. And fewer people would blindly believe that the earth is flat.
That’s just it, though: we assume we’re wrong. We audit ourselves. Watch any of the press conferences where the Georgia election officials detailed the extra work they did.
It is that we assume we are wrong for the important things, and double check, triple check, that separates our viewpoints from those being deplatformed.
It can’t possibly work like that, logically. Those being deplatformed are as certain as you are that they are right.
I’ve been disillusioned about this e.g. in trying to have conversations about religion with believers. No matter how much better I think my case is, they will think their case is just as much superior to mine. For every time I double check my books, they double check theirs.
Philosophically, I don’t think that’s a “solution” to the puzzle.
What are you checking books for? Run experiments. Don’t go to your books about dropping weights off Pisa, just _drop weights off Pisa_. I don’t care what people are certain of: either those weights fall independently of their mass or don’t. If you are treating it like philosophy instead of science, you’ve already lost the thread.
Gravity isn’t particularly controversial these days, no. Many things that aren’t now, though—like the curvature of earth, or heliocentricity—once were; that a topic is controversial doesn’t mean there’s no right answer.
And I would agree that political science is largely concerned with philosophy, but let’s not mistake any old politicized belief as fitting under the umbrella of “political science”: that e.g. a manual recount renders any conspiracies about an automatic ballot-counting machine irrelevant to a final vote tally is a matter of common sense, not profound debate—and yet this has proved a controversial point these last few weeks.
I remember a time when this set of ideas was well known and understood, and routinely discussed for the benefit of civic enrichment and historical background. It was also well known that some holdouts were holding on to the ideas, but they were generally assumed to be cranks and their numbers were small enough to ignore.
Then the internet. And their ideas were able to find purchase where they hadn’t, and to grow like a hateful tumor. Even then they were at least nominally a minority view. And then they found a path to power, and public vocal support became mainstream.
Perhaps there was such widespread support for violence and hatred and malice before, but it was so shunned it couldn’t find its voice. That’s a pretty grim possibility but I accept it’s a real one.
Or perhaps the attitude that all ideas are welcome combined with their amplification has expanded the base of people it could attract.
In either case, I’m less concerned about whether a hateful viewpoint has easy access to eyes and ears, regardless of the size of the population holding those views, than the impact it has on those they hate.
If (hypothetically) 35% of the population were literal nazis literally trying to get a genocide going, and the mainstream were trying their best with available measures to limit that possibility by excluding their views from most outlets commonly accessed by the remaining 65%, I’d say that’s a welcome relief for the most vulnerable among their targets.
I don’t know how society benefits from the presence of hate in the public debate. Sure, the people who espouse hate are left out and pity for them. But what does their view contribute that we don’t already know? Are we actually better off with their views being a part of shaping our future?
This is not an interesting perspective, nor is it new.
Americans have been politely deplatforming each other for a long while. It’s only become an issue now, and attracted a nice term for it.
I’ll skip the issue that one side isn’t really there for a conversation in the first place.
Instead I’ll demonstrate that the cable news era already built its own filter bubbles and significantly reduced the ability for one side (the left) to Influence the other (the right).
I clearly remember that climate frauds were given air time on Fox. When that air time resulted in politicians pushing anti climate views, actual climate scientists came to FOX to make their case. Instead they were faced with ridicule, in the same way that throwing people to lions was a fun spectacle for the audience.
This ability to divide reality kept evolving till America showed the world that its possible to undo science. Remember Creationism? An anti science argument, designed to confuse children and adults with the goal of disproving evolution!
“Teach the debate”, that most fraudulent of arguments, implying that scientific debates on evolution meant that evolution itself was not a solid idea.
And it worked!
When the right filter bubble avoids reporting things in a manner that allow for a fair middle ground to be reached, then what?
I’ll tell you now, you need to remove money from the news, which even to me sounds like an insane idea.
I would heartily recommend that people stop worrying about deplatforming. It’s worked great for the American Right. While people here may decry Trump, he managed to snag 2 SC seats, unknown numbers of other judges, defunded everything, fought China, and even today has a 42% approval rating!
MORE people came out to vote for Trump this election than they did when he ran against Hillary.
Worry instead that deplatforming works.
And then realize that while this will go on to be a massive comment thread, there are entire countries under the thumbs of despots or regions ruled by local leaders who never get heard about, and who will never get deplatformed, because it will never get the attention of the people running Twitter/FB.
Five years ago civil society was in general agreement that racism was bad and that we should respect the democratic process instead of seeking to violently overthrow it. Of course there were people who disagreed but they were at the margins and their voices were isolated to a few forums most people never heard of.
A demagogue came along and used mass media platforms to destabilize the norms of civil society and give a large platform to previously marginalized views. Being able to air those views on mainstream outlets perpetuates the problem and shifts norms.
We need to at least try to put this genie back in the bottle. Most people will revert back to previous mainstream views. The significant segment needs to go back to an insignificant segment. That insignificant segment will be angry that they didn't win, and likely some of them will be violent. But they've always been that way anyway.
There is no going back. It is because the “winning” side is actively doing their best to demonize everyone who doesn’t fit into their mold. So much for reconciling differences.
You can say "the wrong side of history" because your ideas happen to be in alignment with the current zeitgeist, but there's no guarantee this will hold true.
In other words, it's a poor argument for anything and only interesting when used ironically.
Republicans will take back both houses of Congress in two years. So, the overblown rhetoric that Democrats have to stage in order to hide the fact that they are basically Republican by most policy measures ("why don't we have affordable healthcare like other nations have, especially in a pandemic?" "Because fasciststs!1!") only has to last until then.
Rather than fixating on the mailed ballots, which are used in many places and by which Republicans have been elected in the most recent election and before, concentrate on designing an end-to-end system which could safely incorporated mailed ballots.
Two years of lots of shouting and no accomplishments by Democrats, with more covid deaths in 2021 than in 2020, is going to powerfully depress their turnout in 2022. Also there is a new thing called "Movement for a People's Party" [0] that will take more votes from Democrats than from Republicans. Don't be discouraged about Republican political prospects!
Agreed on mail ballots. Thanks for sticking to the facts too. But are you rooting for more people to die to further your political agenda? Thats morbid. Thats what Republicans did when Obama was in office BTW, which arguably caused a slower, more painful and incomplete recovery from the great recession than was necessary. I was disgusted voters rewarded that behavior by giving Trump the win in 2016. Republicans legit STOLE 2 supreme court seats too and voters almost rewarded them again in 2020. That's put me firmly in the anti-Republican independent camp, if such a camp exists
That would be morbid, but ISTM I'm not rooting for it so much as observing its near inevitability.
Americans have not worn masks, for ten months during which it was clear wearing masks would save many lives and shorten the economic downturn as well. Now the anti-liberal and anti-vax and anti-thought camps have joined forces (some would say the latter two camps have been at least associated for some time) to decline vaccines. Millions of doses are expiring in their very-cold freezers. Morons like Gov Cuomo are scheming to make it more rather than less difficult to receive vaccines. Also people still aren't wearing masks, which (when pressed) experts will admit are and have been actually more effective at preventing infection than vaccines. High-quality masks are still more difficult to obtain than they should be.
All of that is to say that the "effective reproduction number" (R) still far exceeds one, and will for the foreseeable future. Since that hasn't changed, the salient difference between 2020 and 2021 is that on 2020-1-1 there were very few infected and contagious Americans. On 2021-1-1 there were millions. My prediction is simple arithmetic, though it's not allowed on all-wishful-thinking-all-the-time TV news.
Of course R could be changed dramatically by dramatic action. Other nations such as Taiwan opted for that early last year. I really do hope we do that. We could make masks mandatory for all public interaction. We could pay people enough money ($1000 a week might do it?) to stay home. We could make covid vaccination mandatory in the same way that e.g. measles vaccination is. We could actually make enough high-quality masks (currently, massive government/corporate/whosever failure to do so is hidden behind the fact that lots of easily duped people have been persuaded not to wear masks). We could actually make enough vaccines (ditto).
Surely I don't have to finish the argument? No currently-conceivable USA government, whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans, is going to take one of the eminently reasonable steps I've suggested above, while invalidating my prediction will require several of them.
Also, you're completely wrong about 2009. Allowing firms to die is "capitalism" as it's always inaccurately presented. Allowing humans to die is inhumane.
You have a rosier view of five years ago than I do.
Anyway, demagogues are products of their respective times. To focus on them and their personalities and their rhetoric is to completely miss the forest.
Edit: In fact, that approach is part of what gives them their power. And it certainly makes avoiding their ascent nearly impossible.
I agree with you about demagogues being products of their times. In this case it seems the forest being missed is social media platforms allowing intolerant content and the organization of domestic terrorism.
If that is your point, then I agree. Social media companies need to do more to fight against the pressures that allow demagogues rise to power. Deplatforming them seems like a good place to start.
I think the parent poster means that if you focus on the proclivities of a leader, then you’re missing the point that they won a democratic election and that you might have bigger problems on your hands than a blowhard.
A republican sees this election as an attack on democracy -- an election that was stolen. A democrat sees the election as a grab for power. Both are right in their actions from their own point of view.
if it were trump who won by the same narrow margin i would not have been surprised if the exact same thing happened only with the sides reversed. I don't see any difference between the two sides, only that one is on top and one is not and from time to time it rolls over. This is why the "deplatforming" is eyeroll inducing, eventually the pendulum swings back the other way and it will be the other side getting deplatformed. and so on
False equivalence, because there is zero rational basis to believe the election was stolen. People who are motivated to convince others of this are lying to them. Some are literally inventing "evidence" like registered voter counts that have been shown to be inaccurate, or arguing that states violated their own laws, when the state supreme court, the final adjudicator, rules otherwise.
Frankly, it doesn't matter "who is right in their own point of view." We have to be able to stipulate to a basic set of facts that are supported by objective evidence. You can't just make shit up and expect everyone else to cater to it.
What exactly do you expect to learn from debating anti-semites, self-proclaimed Nazis, or people that are shouting “hang Mike Pence”? https://youtu.be/Fag0aC_M0_U
Today’s news:
Joe Biden condemned the rioters who stormed the Capitol as “a bunch of thugs,” “domestic terrorists” and “white supremacists.” The president-elect specifically called out the rioters who wore shirts saying “6MWE.” “6MWE” is an anti-Semitic phrase that stands for “Six million wasn’t enough,” referring to the six million Jewish people who were murdered during the Holocaust.
If you feel like we are where we are because we’re not listening to these people than you can count me out. I have absolutely nothing to learn from a white supremacist or someone inciting violence. And likewise, they have absolutely nothing to contribute to political discourse.
We have places for discourse and for them to say what they think. But we expect human decency that has nothing to do with political views.
The media reports on facts, with proof, because their reputation sort of hinges on it. Retractions don't make them look good. These people don't live in the realm of facts. So the best that can be done for them is to print their opinion with the actual evidence next to it. It's not the medias fault if that evidence totally disproves whatever they thought.
I think this is an exaggeration, though, no offense.
De-platforming extremists is not the same as limiting dialogue or public debate.
I think of it like this - the crazy person on the street corner yelling at everyone that the world is going to end for years on end is not taken seriously be anyone. They could be right, sure, but that's not really a conversation worth engaging in.
These sites are full of users who are shouting crazy conspiracy theories and promoting them like crazy. The worst of them are grifting, and lots of them are victims of human psychology and circumstance.
I haven't seen any reasonable take from one of these communities be discarded or ignored. A lot of the issue comes down to how the reasonable ideas are mixed with the toxic ones.
At some point it's just toxic, though. How many lawsuits are required to show the election was legitimate? There have been so many already. How many claims of voter fraud have to be investigated, when each new claim isn't real? How many times does congress need to investigate Hillary's emails?
For the people in these communities it seems as though the only outcome they will except is the one they have predetermined. Along the way they will kill people, commit acts of sedition and treason, send bombs to democratically elected officials, and more.
There is no reason to continue debating with them. The debates on those issues are over. When a petulant child argues with you about the color of the sky, how long do you entertain their claim that it's red, not blue?
Furthermore, there are plenty of outlets for civil discourse all over the internet and other mediums. Why should we be upset when these private companies remove these toxic groups from their platforms? It's not like the platforms want less users. They want a stable country of laws, which the groups on these platforms are trying (intentionally or otherwise) to undermine.
At some point the adults in the room need to say "enough." That's what is happening now.
I reject the idea of an “other side” here. It’s very popular to bucket these things into black and white binaries but I don’t buy it. There are people who are on the fringes, both left and right, and then there are a lot of people who fit somewhere in the middle. Even “left” and “right” is a vast oversimplification at times.
When you start to think about it that way the perspective you’ve outlined doesn’t make a lot of sense. Should these people have legally nonsensical court cases heard simply because they’re a minority group and we need to ensure diversity in plaintiffs or something?
Overall, the argument only makes sense if there is some innate “right to be heard” that these people are being deprived of. There isn’t. There have been fringe movements that weren’t indulged by society at large for thousands of years, I’m not sure why any obligation would have changed.
Parler, Apple, Google, Twitter are not public venues. In no possible way are they for public debate.
If you go on Parler and call Donald Trump a malignant narcissist, you will get banned. If you say too many political things on Hacker News, you get warned and banned.
None of these places are public venues. They are not the thing you seem to think they are. Maybe they aren't even what they have purported to be up until now.
I'm not an American or in the US, but it seems to me that the Supreme Court could likely have prevented all this, instead of dismissing the Texas suit with a two sentence response.
> We are slowly squeezing a significant segment of the population out of public debate, and they are powerless to stop it. Is it surprising that they are furious about it, and explode in unpredictable ways? Wouldn't you do the same?
What did African-Americans do when they were marginalized for a century until the Civil Rights era of the 1960s? (And still are in many ways.)
The folks you are referring to can say whatever they want: they have Fox, OANN, and Newsmax. They can set up phpBB to have online discussions. Mastodon and IRC are open source and distributed. They can rent a hall and have meetings and sign up as candidates for various political offices and put forward their platforms on Wordpress-powered sites.
They can say whatever they want on myriad of platforms. But that doesn't mean anyone else has to listen.
I'll be honest -- I haven't really seen any cases where someone was deplatformed for a legitimate political view. By that I mean a viewpoint that is at least tolerant, if nothing else. If the argument against deplatforming is that people should be allowed to heap hatred on gay people or other minorities, then it's not a particularly strong argument.
Maybe this is just inherent to a conservative viewpoint, I don't know. If progressives are pushing for more freedom, more tolerance, then to oppose it you have to, by definition, advocate for less of those.
I like a spirited discussion, but I believe that intolerance is the one single thing we cannot tolerate. It destroys everything else.
Were you not here when the James Damore debacle happened? And he was hardly expressing a political PoV, just trying to marshall some data on good faith to respond to his company's solicitation for ideas people had to solve a tough problem.
And he advocated for policies that would tangibly make the workplace better and more equal like allowing for flex days and for employees to go part time during maturity/paternity leave.
The Google engineer, right? I try not to read too much into company politics. Even at a relatively large company it can get very personal. AFAIK he wasn't really deplatformed anyway, he was fired. It seems that the NLRB decided the firing was proper. That's the sum total of my knowledge, and at first glance I don't think it's a good comparison with the larger discussion about deplatforming on public services.
I'd consider getting fired a much more serious form of ostracism than deplatforming. Getting banned from Twitter doesn't affect your ability to pay rent.
I personally put the blame for his firing more on the blatantly distorted and sometimes even outright counterfactual coverage of his message. The number of mainstream and well respected outlets that falsely claimed he wrote that women are biologically less capable engineers, rather than that they lower predilection to enter the field , was disturbing. After his memo Google announced that they wouldn't set quotas for groups beyond the demographic's representation in the field. The people I know at Google felt that the reaction was overblown.
I see you got no further than 'legitimate political view' and then immediately decided to reply. Read the whole comment before replying, please. And go ahead, disagree with my definition -- I was pretty clear. Convince me that intolerance should in fact be tolerated; that it will not destroy a tolerant society.
Why is it that conservatives consider intolerance to be their right above everyone else?
I have seen it quite a bit over the last year in particular. Are the views being expressed popular? No. Are they "legitimate"? Yes. (what ever in the world that is supposed to mean, outside of being unlawful I would consider all speech legitimate even if I disagree with it, but not many people seem to like Voltaire these days I suppose.)
I'm very disappointed that the rhetoric has devolved into "but they all deserved it so it's ok"...
I defined it. Intolerance is not a legitimate viewpoint. It is not the expression of an idea, but the suppression of someone else's. I think I was pretty clear, I consider intolerance the one viewpoint we cannot tolerate. Everything else is fair game.
My point is that you are then deigning someone to have the power to decide what is tolerant and what is not, when that is not nearly as acceptable or uncontroversial as you seem to be assuming. For example:
> If progressives are pushing for more freedom, more tolerance, then to oppose it you have to, by definition, advocate for less of those.
The framing of this is not correct. The problem is that not all "progressives" are pushing for that, which then undermines the assumption that opposition is therefor automatically intolerant and therefor automatically bannable/deplatformable. Some of the real progressives I follow such as Graham Elwood and Jimmy Dore have frequently had issues with their platforms giving them a hard time (demonteizing, etc) just because their positions or even topics of conversation are controversial, and many of them frequently mention they wouldn't be surprised to be deplatformed for said reason.
To me, the real crux of your position, is that by completely bucking the standard of free speech in which we have legal definitions for speech that isn't tolerable, positions like yours seem to want to expand those definitions (libel, defamation, imminent incitement to violence, etc) to a point that you must now designate some non-legal entitiy as the moral arbiter of what is intolerant/tolerable, and that is indeed a most slippery slope.
I think I have rewatched these two videos of Christopher Hitchens on the topic a good half dozen times each in the last year, and I keep thinking about their content. [1,2] From [2], I will link the timestamp of what I am about to quote [3]: "Whose going to decide? ... Who will you appoint? Who will be the one who says, "I know exactly where the limit should be, I know how far you can go, and I know when you've gone too far, and I'll decide that" Who do you think, Who do you know, who have you heard of, who have you read about in history who you would give that job?... Not for you, but for the people you are listening to and the peoples whose comments you hope to hear in return, for your own education, for your own elightenment, and for your own elucidation, as Mr. Paine says, commenting on Milton, one of the vices of those who would repress the opinions of others is they make themselves prisoners of their own opinions, because they deprive themselves of the means of changing them."
It's easy to say "we tolerate everything except for intolerance" without defining specifics of what is or isn't intolerant. To use the two examples in your comment, if someone claims that opposition to gay marriage is hatred does that mean it was an act of tolerance for Mozilla to fire Brendan Eich for donating in favor of Proposition 8? What about people who claim that opposing affirmative action is an act of intolerance towards underprivileged minorities? What about people who claim that supporting such programs is intolerant towards successful minorities?
I've witnessed all 3 of these claims asserted in real life. And note that the latter two are directly contradictory. Just saying, "tolerate all except the intolerant" is an answer devoid of actual meaning. Genuine tolerance is refusing to ostracize or expel people even when you feel that their views are intolerant. Because I guarantee you: there are plenty of people out there who would find at least some of your views intolerant. And it also allows people to use allegations of intolerance as a tool to shut down debate.
Effective codes of conduct focus on specific behaviors or actions, not abstract ideas like tolerance.
I'm not surprised that they're furious. I'm just 50-50 on whether "explode in unpredictable ways" is worse than "spout and promote their blather in predictable ways".
Right now, I'm thinking an occasional bomb planting here and there is better than normalizing the idea that "Famous Jew (((Bernie Sanders))) wants to eat your young" or whatever kooky shit they've come up with.
Yeah, I think I'll take the unpredictable exploding for the moment. It's really not that bad.
Because their claims are held up to the law and don't pass muster.
> The mainstream media refuses to take them seriously.
Some particular popular outlets are allied with them, the rest of the major media takes them quite seriously (it often investigated their claims and finds them unsupported, but that's not failing to take them seriously.)
> We're not even listening to them, because it's science and they're ists if they disagree.
No, we’re listening to them. The rest of us aren’t agreeing* with them. (On the other hand, this is more literally true in the opposite direction.)
> We're not debating anymore.
You can only debate from a certain degree of shared basis, which does not exist.
> We just assume we're right.
On the issues of objective, verifiable fact, this is a conclusion not an assumption. On the matters of fundamental moral values, beliefs on those issues have a fundamentally axiomatic nature: there is no debating them.
On the other hand, this claim is, again, more true in reverse (especially on the issues of verifiable objective fact.)
> We are slowly squeezing a significant segment of the population out of public debate,
Or they are excluding the rest of society from their debate.
> and they are powerless to stop it.
They are not powerless to stop disengaging or engaging only in bad faith. Well, I mean many of them individually probably psychologically are powerless to do so, especially while those they take their cues from are doing so, but as a collective group they are not.
> Is it surprising that they are furious about it, and explode in unpredictable ways?
What unpredictable ways? Most of their explosions are publicly telegraphed quite specifically, and have a direction that has been publicly requested by the public figures that they overtly venerate.
It's not chaotic, unpredictable explosions of impotent rage of the factually disenfranchised, it's strategic, directed action at the behest of some of the most privileged segments of society, with the masses directed using mechanisms that are textbook features of cults.
I mean, if you are talking about the Tes Party/Trump/Q/alt-right/etc. group.
If you are talking about the people considered about the lack of accountability for murder of people of their race, actually, barring a partial shift that happened well into the paroxysm of protest over the last year, yeah, you are mostly exactly correct (though the nondisputable nature of fundamental moral principals is an issue there, too.)
For those who think the parent comment was conflating extreme right and average right, I just want to add some clarification as to why deplatforming still affects large swathes of the population and not just extreme segments.
I’m a strong social and fiscal conservative who never voted for nor liked Trump. I’m religious and that informs my opinions on a lot of social issues. I would be in strange company on Parler, but this still bothers me.
My family are all strong Trump supporters to the point that leaves me shaking my head. Working in technology, I also have a lot of progressive friends and coworkers.
As a racial minority, I think I can say this. There’s a real analogue to the general sentiment that LGBT, POC, or female Americans experience and worry about social or professional consequences to voicing their experiences and opinions and the general sentiment conservatives experience from voicing theirs.
Before you castigate me and say it’s false equivalence, take the good advice of the anti-racism movement and “just listen” to why I feel that way.
This is my personal experience as a POC and as a religious conservative working in tech. Even as a more moderate conservative (e.g., I believe climate change is anthropogenic and the state needs to correct for market failures), I genuinely feel like my voice is being suppressed—that is, my opinions are becoming less tolerable by the mainstream. For example, I have very traditional views about LGBT issues and abortion, but those views are becoming labeled as violent (I don’t believe in any kind of violence, BTW, but just believing that doesn’t accord with mainstream beliefs is considered hurtful and violent), in spite of how I support legislation and personally demonstrate fairness and tolerance for my LGBT friends and am sympathetic to women’s health issues.
There are a lot of people on the right who would do well to listen to BLM and those who feel like their voices are being suppressed. There are a lot of people on the left who would do well to listen to conservatives who feel like their voices are being suppressed. Let’s just have more humility about these things. If you feel like you’re in a morally/intellectually/factually superior position, quit treating people who aren’t as enlightened as the enemy. Treat them with some decency and compassion and listen so you might persuade them instead of berating them about their wrongness.
I think it’s hubris to be so confident in our own positions as to preclude accepting people’s lived experiences (like mine) as meaningful anecdata.
As I continue to feel the shift to fewer and fewer outlets for my voice, I genuinely worry. I blame the extremists on the right, absolutely, but I also blame extremists on the left. At the core I blame the tendency to not listen.
I feel like you are saying that we should all just take a step back and talk with each other instead of shouting at each other. If so, I agree. We are supposed to have different views and opinions. It's OK to believe different things than your neighbour.
I think the problem comes in when your neighbour has views and beliefs that are not based in reality and just can't see the other side. I don't have a problem with "preppers", as I can see that it's entirely possible that society might collapse and it's good to be prepared.
On the other hand, how do you deal with those that believe that the Earth is flat? Even when they discover that the facts don't align with their beliefs, they still can't accept it. If you can't agree on literal "facts" then it's hard to find any common ground on which to stand.
Who is "We"? Why do you assume HN users aren't Trump supporters? Many people see this from a totally different perspective. In most countries, these recent events would be called a coup, performed by the blue faction of the establishment.
No, if every educated person, scientist, lawyer, and generally decent person starts treating me like I'm radioactive at some point I'd probably start pondering if they're right rather than putting on a Viking outfit and storming the capitol in the name of Q. I actually lack the imagination to conceive of what goes on in the mind of someone who stands in a crowd of people who look like a mix of dollar-store militia and medieval role-playing convention and not ask themselves where they went wrong
> We are slowly squeezing a significant segment of the population out of public debate
Or maybe just a loud segment of the population.
~22% of the US population voted for Trump (75M out of 330M).
How many voted because they love Trump and his dangerous brand of politics? How many voted for him as an FU to liberals? And how many voted for Trump because they want conservative judges, lower taxes, a ban on abortion, etc. and are willing to hold their nose and vote for him?
Trump rallies were dwarfed by Obama’s crowds. Trump marches were dwarfed by BLM, climate and women’s marches. But the media loved every non-traditional thing he did and America was happy to watch the train wreck.
It’s an emotional time right now, but my neighbors with Trump flags are still nice people and are a far cry from the few hundred (or thousand) lunatics that are drumming up trouble.
If we can give folks direct representation or at least something other than winner take all voting, we might start getting the politicians we deserve.
Don’t forget, Trump had the lowest % primary vote share of a presidential candidate. He simply won because so many other candidates were splitting the vote. Put him head to head against other politicians and he loses. Give republicans ranked voice voting and I doubt he ever gets nominated.
This too shall pass, but I doubt it gets as big as the civil war some fear. A Republican will step up to fill the political void and reprint the party in their own image and voters will fall in line.
People say that censorship is wrong because good ideas should beat out bad ideas in the public discourse. Truthful and science based thought has won this battle. That's it, there isn't a rematch.
At the end of a sports contest, one side my be very unhappy with the result. Perhaps even violently so. But it doesn't change the outcome. This was contested and decided, even if there are people who still disagree
They had 60+ chances to make a case, and couldn't...
>> We're not even listening to them
>> We're not debating anymore.
I'm not listening anymore because there IS no debate. 'Debate' is an exchange of ideas. This is basically a 'harangue' - and personally, I'm tired of it. No one has a 'right' to force people to listen to them.
>> We just assume we're right.
No, I assume they're wrong as the logic doesn't hold up. There is a difference. Personally, I think the election basically boiled down to 'rural' vs 'urban', but I'm sure there are other views. I can't force people to believe my views 'cuz I said so!' anymore then Trump can force me to believe him, 'cuz he said so!'
>> Wouldn't you do the same?
I don't recall doing the same when Bernie was written off by DNC, and there actually WAS evidence the DNC tilted things against him.
Their legal cases are being rejected because they are filing bogus claims without evidence...totally made up crap..not quite the victimization you make it out to be...
"No, because that doesn't violate the First Amendment, and you're not allowed to feel uneasy about suppression of speech that's 1A-compliant, like the Hollywood Red Scare." -- 80% of comments when this topic comes up
It’s not that they’re being deplatformed; it’s that Parler violated the App Store TOS. Specifically Review Guidelines Section 1.1 - Objectionable Content.
And Donald Trump violated the Twitter TOS.
No one is being deplatformed, and it isn’t a left vs right thing. It’s reasonable that these companies enforce their TOS as they would against you or me.
There’s no Apple TOS for websites viewed in Safari. And Apple has not made it so you can’t access Parler through the web.
> I find it somewhat implausible that half the population is dumb, racist and all those other labels. It seems much more likely that I don't fully understand their perspective.
Imagine: a leader calls for a certain racial, ethnic, or religious group to be barred entry to their country.
This is a textbook example of racist policies.
Half the population either
- voted him because of those policies (and so are racist),
- or were unbothered by those policies and voted for him (and so are not non-racist)
In earnest - is there any other conclusion than the above?
>Imagine: a leader calls for a certain racial, ethnic, or religious group to be barred entry to their country.
A religious group is not a race. When China persecuted the Falun Gong, nobody called them racist. You could say it's islamaphobic, but that connotates an irrational fear. It's not completely irrational when the values of many adherents to that religion differ so significantly from secular American values: pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2011/01/18/stoning-adulterers/.
Fundamentally the difference between a religion and a race is that race is not controllable; it's clearly wrong to discriminate against somebody for something entirely outside of their control. But people do have control over their ideology, so much as some people would advocate discriminating against racists for their racist beliefs, people can advocate for discriminating against people who believe the legal system should sentence to death adulterers, apostates (people who leave their religion) and homosexuals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_for_homosex...).
The Pew data seems to refute your point: it highlights opposing views across Muslim nations when it comes to redistributive justice - some nations are along the same lines as mainstream American thought, others aren't i.e. there isn't a universal, shared set of 'Muslim values' that can be said to clash with 'American values'
And fair enough, it's not strictly racist. I believe the semantics here don't alter the spirit of what was said (that is, discriminating against a group of people)
I'm not entirely convinced by the claim that one's religious choice being a choice means that it's not wrong to discriminate against them; what would your stance be on what the Chinese are doing to the Uighurs? (And - dare I ask - what does that then mean about your stance on the Nazi's policies?)
>I'm not entirely convinced by the claim that one's religious choice being a choice means that it's not wrong to discriminate against them; what would your stance be on what the Chinese are doing to the Uighurs? (And - dare I ask - what does that then mean about your stance on the Nazi's policies?)
What the Chinese allegedly did to the Uighurs, or what the Nazis did to the Jews, is categorically wrong regardless of how it was justified; nobody has the right to sterilise or kill innocent people. But it's reasonable to argue that when a bunch of people come together to form a "country", they have a right to decide who's allowed to enter that country. Discriminating based on country of origin is not unpredecented: it's already way harder for an Indian or Chinese to get an American visa, for instance.
I honestly think just splitting the US off might be a better thing than marching blindly into worsening civil divide. We're at a point wherein either side winning the presidency is just riling up the other side. Biden literally represents only his 55% of voters and Trump his 45% and when one side ones the other strictly loses, there's no feeling of compromise anymore. This is going to end in one side subjugating the other, and the right is arguing right now that's exactly what the left is doing to them through the means that you mentioned in your post. I think, eventually they'll respond to their perceived subjugation and the recent riot was just the peak of an iceberg.
They don't want to live a certain way but politics in general has been increasingly moving towards a national level, away from local politics. I can understand the right's belief that big city liberals are forcing left-wing values onto them because the left has expressed the same opinion about the right forcing values onto the left. The sentiment is mutual. And to some degree both sides are correct, there are definitely value systems that are forced from the top down (government), some may be good and some may be bad but that also depends on who you ask. And in the end neither side is happy.
Now obviously, tech companies are in their right to ban whoever they want for whatever they want. That's how the US operates even though I don't like it, and the right was happy to give businesses that power. But at a societal level it's clear we have an America with more than one identity and it's acting like a dysfunctional mental illness because we're forcing people together that don't want to be together. If the middle east is any indication that's a recipe for inevitable conflict.
> The other side keeps deplatforming them. Their legal cases are rejected. The mainstream media refuses to take them seriously. We're not even listening to them, because it's science and they're ists if they disagree. We're not debating anymore. We just assume we're right.
Not really. More like, they voted in 2016 and won and "the other side" raised concerns about manipulation of voters and attempted to go through proper democratic channels to change things--which failed, so they accepted it and moved on until other debacles prompted similar action, and again, "they" accepted the results of those democratic processes, just like the game is supposed to work. The mainstream media has taken "them" seriously since 2016 and hasn't shut up about them since. Their legal cases are rejected because unlike what "the other side" did in 2016, they aren't following the process properly, have no legitimate evidence to present, they are totally incompetent, etc.
> We are slowly squeezing a significant segment of the population out of public debate, and they are powerless to stop it.
The POTUS was their megaphone for 4 years. You are supposed to elect the person you feel best represents you and your interests. If "they" didn't do that, "they" shouldn't be trying to establish him as a monarch. "They" are traitors attempting to rob everyone that voted last year of their voice. Their turn with the microphone is up, but they refuse to yield it. Yes, the figurehead will no longer echo their ridiculous, conspiratorial, world view, so we are "squeezing them out" in a sense, but hey, it's called American democracy and it has worked that way for years.
They've had 4 years to deliver on their promises and win a second term. Guess what. They didn't. You know why? Because instead of delivering they ignored a deadly pandemic and let 369K Americans *die* and the economy crumble. Now is not the time to sympathize and "let the other side be heard" we've been doing it for 4 years and there's nothing worth listening to unless your ears are comforted by the melodious sounds of the collapse of the United States.
You're right, they're not scientists. And to regex away the things they actually believe (ists) instead of science shows that you don't really give the reality of what it actually means to be something like a, for example, racist the full weight it deserves. Being a racist means your beliefs actively lead to the disenfranchisement, or worse, direct violence on others, which also in turn eventually hurts you longer term (fyi).
I think part of the problem with politics in this country is this very tendency toward abstractions, false equivalences, forgetfulness, and tepidness in language. Stop pussyfooting around. Call a spade a spade. If we all stayed grounded and spoke extremely concretely about things, it'd be a lot easier to prevent fringe voices intermixing with moderate voices under the banner of of a single ideology whose elements can differ wildly in their extremities. The fact of the matter is, most people only care about the one or two issues they feel affect them the most in a given moment and rather than compromise and side with the platform that maybe doesn't give them what they want on that one issue but is generally better overall they refuse to do so and will sleep with the devil just to have their one need met, damn everything else. The planet could literally become a flaming ball of molten lava and eliminate all life on earth and certain constituents in the US would not give a damn as long as it meant abortion was illegal.
Here's roughly my theory of how American politics functioned over the past four years for several people in the "center right":
Guy A believes something relatively reasonable, e.g. "I don't want to get taxed too much."
> Party R comes along. Party R says, we really care about guns. We want to make sure everybody can buy a gun, and here's why guns are great. Guy B likes this because he thinks he might need a gun in case he runs into a Jewish person.
Way to reduce the right and need to own arms to be a crazy person's fantasy. It was recognized by the founders the are many legitimate reasons to keep and bear one.
> but he made his decision. Taxes were so important to him that he turned a blind eye to moral issues and decided to double-down when those issues escalated and "be loyal"
Very few issue are absent moral weight and taxes are not one of them.
> We are slowly squeezing a significant segment of the population out of public debate, and they are powerless to stop it. Is it surprising that they are furious about it, and explode in unpredictable ways? Wouldn't you do the same?
Everyone is being subjected to the same standards here. Fundamentally Parler was banned because they wouldn't enforce their own policies.
From Apple's post:
> Your app enables the display of user-generated content but does not have sufficient precautions in place to effectively manage objectionable content present in your app.
All Parler needs to do is not allow people to plot violence on their platform. This is against Parler's policies, it's against Apple's App Store policies, the actual conversations are often against the law.
It isn't as if Apple is banning Parler because people are debating the second amendment. They are literally being banned for allowing people to openly plots against multiple government entities and individuals.
yeah... i would agree if there was actually a "debate" happening. anecdotally i can say the majority of people who are 100% on board his stop the steal stuff are not discussing in good faith. at some point you stop paying attention and if, like in this case, it turns to violence you do what you can to stop it.
I'm not an American and I don't identify with the political sides that have formed up but it is terrifying to me to see about half of the population being silenced.
Being able to voice your opinion without government interference or consequences is your right. However, there is no right to be heard, hosted, given air time, published or even listened to. In the example of conservatives, if you align yourself with the current batch of conservative representatives, most points you want to raise fall flat. Without other context, you’re generally judged by the company you keep. Conduct yourself like an empathic human being and it’s likely (but not guaranteed) that people will listen to you. Scream at them and only people who are already as angry as you are going to listen. That applies to humans in general.
This sort of censorship will backfire badly. I won't be surprised if a real Civil War breaks out in America because of suppression of right wing groups by the Big Tech. This division is very real and scary. I shudder to think what sort of ripple effects it will have on 100+ countries where Big Tech operates! If it can nuke the US President's account what chance do other Presidents/Prime Ministers or Governments have?
Please remember that this is not just an action/reaction issue. It is not that simple. There are Second Order Effects at play. You can't even launch a rival platform without first gaining traction. How would you gain traction if the medium for gaining traction is controlled by Big Tech? How do you promote a Twitter alternative if Google, Facebook, Apple and Twitter ban you from their platforms. Can't advertise on Google, can't put your alternative app on Android Play Store or Apple Play Store, can't promote on Twitter. Literally have no choice but to follow the guidelines set by Big Tech and be at the mercy of Big Tech. We are looking at a Big Tech Cartel controlled by left wing ideology. That's precisely what it is today.
So what should the right wing do? Create a right wing Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple alternative? Are we staring at the balkanization of internet as we know it?
Why is there always this call to treat the less moderate right wing, who are clearly not connected with reality anymore, as though they are simultaneously extremely powerful, and weak little babies who need our help?
When those people hold the reigns of power, they don't stop to think about how we're feeling. Why should we walk ourselves to them, why shouldn't they reflect on their anger and its consequences, and walk themselves to us?
Joe Biden can't personally deradicalise 70+ million people. He's got maybe 2 years to get some stuff done before there is the risk of a mid-term power shift like Obama faced.
I would suggest that his agenda should have three priorities:
1) Get the pandemic under control
2) Do the opposite of the Republican's long agenda of gerrymandering/disenfranchising, to tip the scales back towards a point where a Democrat victory doesn't require exceptionally high turnouts
3) Make big changes that actually, materially, visibly improve the lives of the parts of society that have been suffering the most.
If Democrats can actually hold on to power for a decade, they have the opportunity to do the big, hard things that will improve life for everyone, and people have time to see the effects and appreciate them. As it stands right now, any Democrat victories seem to quickly revert to Republican control and anything they tried to do gets undone before it's finished.
If they were willing to discuss and listen, this wouldn't be a problem.
If people are just talking at you, it's not your fault there isn't a discussion happening. I have tried for years to talk with the type of person that is getting deplatformed here. I'm related to many of them. They don't want to have the discussion. They just want to dominate everyone else.
They are responsible for the consequences of their actions.
I think you might be making the mistake of thinking that all these people are actually arguing in good faith...
They don’t have explainable concerns, they just want the result of the presidential election changed for no other reason than that they prefer Trump over Biden.
Otherwise they would have accepted the outcome of all the legal challenges in court, where all the evidence they are relying on have been rejected.
But they don’t... these people keep reiterating evidence that has already been dismissed by multiple courts.
I absolutely agree that it’s deeply problematic to ignore the views of portions of the population.
But how do you reconcile Trump’s and his supporters vivid fantasy world with reality?
Racism, sexism, belief in science are things that are not going to be negotiated on. The other side are literal intolerant fascists and should be silenced. Let’s the chips fall where they may, even if that’s some sort of civil conflict.
The Paradox of Tolerance applies quite well here...
The segment being squeezed out wasn't willing to debate. There's been a year of debate and tolerance about the merits of masks, science, conspiracy, etc. The segment being deplatformed didn't listen to or learn from it. They were far from powerless during that time.
Not every side or segment has the rule about good faith like HN does.
I say the above as a Canadian, watching that segment spread it's toxic behavior here.
There are only so many times you can “debate” someone who isn’t willing to learn before you start slamming doors in their faces. Along the way you spend a significant amount of effort trying to see things from their perspective, but their perspective is simply that they are right and you are wrong and the facts don’t matter.
Poor education and a reliance on Murdoch/Sinclair or other similar media for their information is the main visible cause of this condition.
That's a fair point, but I think it depends on whether someone is clearly inciting violence. In the case of Trump's Twitter ban I would agree with you - it will enrage Trump supporters and cause them to disengage from constructive debate. And Trump's tweets aren't really examples of 'inciting violence'.
But in this case some Parler users are saying, "They should have burnt down Nanci Pelosi's house with her inside" and "That cop should have been shot and bleed out".
This is clearly encouraging acts of violence, and the costs of giving such people a megaphone outweigh the benefits of engaged debate. So Apple is right to insist that Parler moderate such speech.
I’m not sure I want the media I watch 24x7 talking about snake oil salespersons. If it’s newsworthy - like say one of the snake oil salesperson actually provided an irrefutable or at least a plausible proof of snake oil working.
Thank fucking god. These tech companies were complicit in an incompetent but serious insurrection attempt. Better late than never, but they must have known things were going to get bad.
The right and the associated white supremists have far too much freedom to spread disinformation, racism and hatred.
I'm sure we'll see free speech absolutists in arms about this, but today is a good day for democracy.
what about all the calls for destruction and support of violent "protests" over the past year from the other side, or does that not count because it is the side you agree with?
Please don't copy-paste comments. It lowers signal/noise ratio and makes merging threads a pain. (I'm just about to merge the two threads in question.)
If you or anyone notices a duplicate discussion going on, letting us know at hn@ycombinator.com is super helpful. If you want to refer to something you posted elsewhere, please use a link.
I'm honestly curious - where is the line drawn between a service being used to do "questionable" things and it being removed?
We can all agree, for example, that the internet at large enables many bad things, but I doubt any of us would ban the internet (though in other countries this happens).
What about reddit? A specific subreddit? A specific post? A specific user? A specific post by a specific user at a specific time? Obviously Reddit isn't going to be banned, but is the mere existence of moderation enough? Or is it the outcome of the moderation, aka, certain content never being present, that is what's desired?
I'm curious how nuanced these things are for Apple and other companies. Is there some sort of algorithm that says: if this app has a news feed, if X% of items in the newsfeed in a 24hr period are objectionable then it will be banned? Or perhaps Y number of days that fulfill the previous criteria before it is banned?
Parler is (or was) the #1 downloaded app on the App Store, according to some metrics. You don't need an algorithm to see that. It's a PR nightmare, and this is the common sense thing for any global brand to do
I don't understand - obviously being #1 will not inherently result in being banned, so the implication is that Parler is bad. If that's the case, doesn't it basically just beg the question I posed in the parent post?
You’d be accused of creating a platform for nazis and pedophiles unless you remove that content. And rightly so. Allowing everything isn’t a shield from that accusation, nor should it be. Good faith moderation is.
Since there are platforms without that content, the effect of starting a new platform allowing it is that you get a disproportionate amount of the most extreme content. You become the gab or parler or t_d.win.
Next, if your content has an extremely high ratio of content that must be moderated to be allowed in a “parent service” (App Store, cloud provider, credit card company) then your moderation burden is higher than your competition. Your ad revenue is also likely smaller. So basically, it’s simply very difficult economically to create such a platform.
>You’d be accused of creating a platform for nazis and pedophiles unless you remove that content. And rightly so.
I don't agree with this at all. You realize 70+ million people are not nazis, right? They're normal people like you or me who's voice just happens to not be amplified by the media/movies.
Platform would ideally provide controls for you to hide things you don't want to see. Hide nazis, hide perverts, hide furries, hide gun nuts, hide whatever you want to hide.
This is the future and what we should be aiming for.
> You realize 70+ million people are not nazis, right?
(not the OP) Sure, but that's just a strawman, as nobody is saying they are. Twitter, Facebook, and Apple are specifically trying NOT to deplatform all of the 70 mil "alright" people, but only those few who go against the laws, right? Nobody's banning r/concervative, only the T_D got taken down.
> Platform would ideally provide controls for you to hide things you don't want to see. [...] This is the future and what we should be aiming for.
I like this idea very much! This already happens to some level, by following only certain accounts, being part of certain subreddits, or by switching to certain platforms, but I think a "physical" explicit checkmark to hide specific themes might make people think more about what they're actually doing — closing their eyes and ears and hiding themselves in echo chambers.
With that said, I'm sure we both can agree that most companies wouldn't want to provide a platform for nazis and pedophiles (...to discuss their nazi and pedophile things), even if the other users could hide their posts. Because, why would you do that? F*ck them.
I can't believe this amazing comment was removed, because it's true. Where is the line? No one knows.
"I think a seriously dangerous and underreported factor in these issues is the widespread use of the English language. I think it's time to hold accountable the Oxford English Dictionary company ("Big Word") and their agents, English teachers, for their role in enabling this ghastly event."
The comment was in no way "removed". Please don't feed this sort of perception. People are all too ready to leap to it as it is.
If you're not seeing it in the thread it's probably because the thread has been paginated for performance reasons. In that case you have to click More at the bottom to get to the rest.
Moving the discourse further away from the light won't help cure the divide in this country. We need more discussion, not less. We need to get both sides talking to each other not to themselves about each other.
you're making the incorrect assumption that both sides of the discourse have valid positions.
1. what is a non-racist person supposed to say to a racist person to change their views?
2. why is it the non-racist person's responsibility to talk to the racist person? in the words of office space, "why should I change? he's the one who sucks."
The 1960s and 1970s saw a reckoning in the USA that while not complete, did result in a number of people with substantially incorrect views eventually coming about to a more sensible position.
Similar victories have been achieved with respect to drug legalization and "gay marriage".
None of these victories are or ever will be complete but a combination of discussion and social pressure did make significant social progress possible.
Do we? Most discussions in comment sections between people of different persuasions tend to be toxic and abusive these days. when moderators attempt to impose standards of civility there's a chorus of complaints about 'censorship'. There have to be limits to patience with bad-faith dialog, otherwise you're just enabling trolls and abusive people.
You and I probably have different political views and yet we are able to remain civil.
Everyone in my neighborhood, every single neighbor, speaks different languages, has different cultural origins and most are of different races. We don't support the same candidates or policy positions but we do all support and look out for each other.
I guess my point is, politeness even when there are significant disagreements is possible. We need to analyze the communications that do and don't work, find the similarities and patterns and encourage the beneficial ones while discouraging the negative ones.
> We need more discussion, not less. We need to get both sides talking to each other
Parler heavily moderates away any non-right-wing content. There was never "both sides" on Parler. If it's actively being used to plan and execute acts of violence (arguably terrorism, given the death, bombs, and more that we've seen this week), how does keeping Parler around bring anyone together?
Is there any reasoning for thinking this? Besides that, discussion cannot fix harms created by previous discussion - it can only (maybe) prevent future harms.
"Once we kill all the terrorists, there won't be any more terrorists"
Please put a little more fucking thought into this than "why don't we just get rid of them, then they'll go away".
Completely aside from the morality of it, giving into that urge is exactly how we got here, and exactly how this spirals much, MUCH further out of control.
I mean there's already been lots of politically-motivated mass shootings, murders, and murder attempts in recent years, so it's really just making it official.
This is exactly right. You got them off twitter. Now let them live their lives. What do you think will happen if you take everything away from them? Do you think they will just go live under a bridge and sulk?
Suddenly half the population is realizing the cons of centralized platforms. Curious if this moment sparks renewed interest in decentralized tech of yesteryear ie the good ol world wide web.
I do agree with you, though keep in mind that the previous version of the web worked great when it was run by engineers (that cared about silly things like freedom of speech) and not valueless executives.
I just mean I think we will start seeing more interest/investment in things like progressive web apps that aren’t beholden to centralized platforms but feel like native mobile apps.
The point is these platforms are actively banning apps that appeal to a political party that represents half of America. if Parler is banned from the App Store a PWA is the next best thing.
Do you think decentralisation is the key? I’ve been thinking about it since yesterday and i’m leaning toward profit motive as the difference.
We were pretty centralised around a few locations like slashdot & newsgroups.
Walled gardens were a thing, here in the UK a service called CIX was popular but AOL is the big famous one.
It’s not that we communicated less, group messaging with non-techie friends was done over email - cue flashback to 300-message deep top-posted replies.
It’s not that we were better in any way, the anarchist’s cookbook cost many a high school several new sets of door locks. Back orifice was a thing and was used for real scummy purposes sometimes.
I landed at profit motive as the difference. Just before the era of spyware is where i’m thinking it fell apart but I’m not at all confident in my assessment.
Sure. And then political pressure on CAs to deny certificates will take care of that. Or on ISPs to not transmit data from certain outlets. Or on registrars to delist domains. There's plenty of ways to de-platform.
Sure there will be ISP or registrars that wouldn't support them but there could be other ISP or other registrars to support them. There's plenty of ways to re-platform.
s/half the population/a little less than a third of 70% of the population
Or maybe about 45% of 70% of the population.
Sources: Pew Research says registered voters are about evenly split between R (29%),D (33%), and independent (34%), and also notes that the independents are pretty evenly split between “leans R” and “leans D” for a total of 44/49% here: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/26/what-the-20...
(Feel free to go find stats for 2020 for both of those, I can’t be bothered)
Also as a moderator of a Mastodon instance, I can say that this decentralized tech is quite capable of making people STFU, I sure have defederated with a constantly growing list of fediverse nodes full of the exact same kind of shit featured in these Parler screenshots because I just do not wanna talk to anyone like that.
What good does that do you if the best hardware is locked down and they won't allow decentralized apps, though?
If the web were invented today, there's not a chance in hell Apple would approve a web browser as an app. If you really think about that, I think you'll agree that current app store policies are harmful to innovation and harmful to society as a whole.
At the end of the day, tech can only get you so far. You need to have a broader societal acceptance of a norm of freedom.
The US is trending, quite radically, in the opposite direction.
> there's not a chance in hell Apple would approve a web browser as an app
Thankfully, there is a web browser.
But corporations want us to use apps instead of web browser to restrict this. Like, everything must be an app. Every social network basically forces their app down your throat. "Ew you use a browser, what a loser"
I am very grateful there is a web browser. But whatever is the next web browser can't even be invented today (perhaps), because we no longer have free computing platforms.
Except Parler's app blows. It might as well be a web app. I guess it's hard to find talent when talented people don't want to work with right wing kooks.
Us-versus-them antagonism doesn't often trigger thoughts about centralization, except among specific kinds of people I expect represent themselves disproportionately here on HN.
I'm seeing a lot of talk about standing up competing platforms. I'm seeing a lot of talk about destroying incumbents, as through antitrust. I'm seeing some promotion of specific, arguably decentralized, alternatives. But the more successful of those do a lot to hide "decentralized" as an implementation detail, since so few potential users understand, much less care.
There's an amusing irony in the downvotes in this thread. The champions of free-speech angry that Apple might ban a platform for speech that ultimately led to an attempted insurrection? These champions of free speech seem to be agressively trying to silence anybody happy about this news.
Protestors, armed with guns and pipe bombs carrying zip ties as well. Who were seeking to stop the certification of the electoral college vote. Yes, insurrection.
It's America. People arm themselves. It was far less violent and less of a show of power than taking over a police station and city blocks from the other group.
Just incase you're not trolling, there were people carrying zip tie cuffs and armed with guns in the rotunda. Several doors were barricaded by the Secret Service and defended at gunpoint. At least two IEDs were found (one in the DNC offices, another in the RNC), and 5 people died. Stop making it less than it actually was.
Yes that's what happens when protestors get into buildings. They bring their weapons with them. 5 people dying, mainly protestors themselves, for the amount of people pouring in to a secure building, is fairly minimal.
Elizabeth from Knoxville was there for a revolution. She said so her self. I don't know her views after getting maced. Maybe she's down for talking it out, now?
Let's see. Guns. Handcuffs. Zip ties. Duck tape. A gallows and noose outside. A large part of the chain of leadership in one place. No, just "first amendment rights", I'm sure. No-one was ever intended to be harmed. Those chants of "Hang Mike Pence" were entirely ironic, no doubt.
I think to prescribe irony would mean that the people downvoting simply have conflicting opinions and made a mistake or something. Parler is an app that, regardless of its intentions, is used to promote far right extremism and many of the people on the platform promote terrorism and facism. These people don't care about free speech. Their lives suck and can't conceptualize the fact that its not black people's fault or other's fault for their crappy life. Its the people they vote for and their immediate surroundings (so probably parents) that are at fault.
I'm sure many people on Parler are very concerned about free speech. It is discussed often and very passionately.
Some peoples lives might suck, some seem very happy, in my experience the atmosphere on Parler is generally far less depressed and hostile than on Twitter and it's quite relaxing seeing a lot more civil discourse. There does appear to be a bit more spam compared to Twitter but Twitter does have a 10 year head start.
You're proposing to remove a very large, very alienated group's last public channel to express themselves peacefully. This risks further escalation. This is compounded with the stark contrast to how the protests were handled this summer.
You call the past few years "tolerance"? Just about any and every application that attempts to support a fully free-speech network that isn't literally a web browser has been kicked off every app store out there.
Aside from the fact that this demonstration was limited to the semi-public atrium of the Hart Senate Office Building—historically, a location where many such demonstrations have been held, and all peacefully, to my knowledge—I'm willing to bet you that none of those demonstrators are armed. Nor did they arrive with zip ties to take hostages—didn't you see the footage of those armed thugs sweeping the Senate chamber looking for potential hostages? Nor did they rampage through the building, with the intent of targeting specific politicians for violence.
They didn't damage property, either. Nor did they impede the democratic process which we all put so much stock in. There's just absolutely no equivalence between these two events. I don't know if that was your intent or not, but there's absolutely no comparison.
I just want to make sure I'm understanding you correctly. Are you saying that:
- What the pro-Trump crowd did on 2021-01-06 at the capitol building is essentially the same as what the anti-Kavanaugh crowd did on 2018-10-04 at the Hart Senate Office Building.
- And so, the actions themselves have not escalated; what has escalated is our sensitivity to them in that we no longer deem them as "OK".
? Or am I totally misreading you? Because if I understood you correctly, um, see what 'benmaraschino wrote.
There are a lot of higher steps, just look at US history. For example, the mob could murder someone. In the bad old days of civil rights resistance, the mob would regularly engage in homicide against targets they thought were upsetting their power.
On the other hand, Capitol police killed 4 unarmed citizens. If this were a BLM rally, and those people were black, we would never hear the end of it. We'd have to "say their name," irrespective of the circumstances of their death.
The woman who was killed on video is effectively nameless. She won't receive any encomiums or major press coverage.
I'm not even American and followed the events with idle curiosity, and I already know her name is Babbitt. NPR, The Guardian, NYTimes, etc all have headlines with it.
"""Officer Sicknick was responding to the riots on Wednesday, January 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol and was injured while physically engaging with protesters. He returned to his division office and collapsed. He was taken to a local hospital where he succumbed to his injuries. The death of Officer Sicknick will be investigated by the Metropolitan Police Department’s Homicide Branch, the USCP, and our federal partners."""
Although his death was tragic, it was not an example of the targeted political murders that have occurred in America's past. To put this in context, take a look at some of the other riots that Wikipedians have co-categorized with the 2021 Capitol riot. We should not think of things like the Lincoln assassination as if they are mere founding myths - they happened, were perpetrated by humans with the same nature, and we are all descendants of the people alive at the time.
This is extraordinarily tame in the scheme of American history.
And as someone who lives in one of those areas of the country constantly scorned, belittled, and caricatured, I can say with confidence that you do not want those people to act in kind to Antifa.
There's been a lot of living vicariously through Antifa/BLM lately with portions of society that want to "stand for something." It's the same mentality as people who wear Che Guevara t-shirts but complain when the wifi on their plane isn't available.
On the other side of that is a enormous, peaceful, patriotic section of U.S. society that is heavily armed and competent with those armaments.
If you make this segment of society feel as if they are the enemy of the country they love, it will be a disaster. If there is ever armed conflict between urban areas vs everyone else, "everyone else" in the U.S. will win overwhelmingly.
I'm not saying these people who stormed the Capitol did the right thing. Far from it.
What we're seeing is this being used as a blunt instrument to suppress the non-extremist components of that disagreement.
That "non-extremist" component is patriotic. It is extremely large and also very angry. Treating them as if they are the same as the people who did this is ill-advised.
> “If there is ever armed conflict between urban areas vs everyone else, "everyone else" in the U.S. will win overwhelmingly.”
I remember back in third grade when kids would argue about how their dad would beat the others’. As I grew up, I realized that that’s not how conflicts work, and certainly not how they’re won.
> I realized that that’s not how conflicts work, and certainly not how they’re won.
Please tell that to the Afghanis.
This isn't about some civil war, it's about what would happen if Red State America decided it wanted to behave like Blue City America has been for the last year. People talk about "Proud Boys" as if that's equivalent and I just have to roll my eyes.
There is an immense reservoir of anger within America in people who feel overlooked and the system is stacked against them. If they receive the downsides of civil strife even though they haven't participated in violence, they might decide they want the upsides of civil strife as well. This culture, unlike the sadly tolerated insurrections of Antifa, has the ability to have real power through violence if it ever came to it.
Despite the often exaggerated claims of singular victimhood, I actually do realize that the current right-wing rage does come from real suffering, and sympathize to an extent. What makes me wonder is that extent to which this rage is directed at the new wave of black civil rights movement; they both have roots in economic or cultural marginalization of certain populations, and from what I can tell, they’re not competing for some common resource. Which, in my mind (and many others similarly puzzled), leaves racist hate as a likely candidate.
Point being, if your goal was genuinely to bring awareness to and address some real suffering in your community, you’d just do that; get out on the street, break a few windows, punch a cop, petition for legislation, like BLM does. That’s called civil disobedience. “Insurrection” starts when you try to override and overrule the very fabric of the system, like the federal legislature.
Tolerance? Remember when the left taught America it's okay to use violence if it is for the greater good?
> The elite media class of academics, influencers, celebrities, and journalists who make up the #resistence, spent all summer saying "riots are the language of the unheard," as a way of excusing and justifying violence, vandalism, and riots in the streets
people are straight up calling for murder on that website, it's insane. There's no negotiating. "Let me call for violence on the internet, or I'll go out and actually shoot someone" is nuts. That's not someone you negotiate with, that's a person that belongs into a mental ward. Authority does not need to back down because someone threatens terrorism. And yes before other events are invoked, that goes for all form of violence advocacy no matter from which group.
You know, if these people weren't pushed off the mainstream platforms they may have been de-radicalized by regular people before things got worse. Just look at how QAnon festered underground until it was too late to get rid of.
Are you claiming nobody has ever called for murder on Facebook or Twitter? By your line of reasoning those apps should be taken down too. We know for a fact that Facebook and Twitter have been the direct causes of far more numerous deaths than Parler. How do you reconcile this view?
Because Twitter and Facebook have policies against doing those things, and they enforce them. That's why so many right-wing extremists complain about being "de-platformed" - they're mad that Facebook isn't letting them agitate for martial law, the kidnapping of governors, etc.
The only chance in hell this country has of surviving is if Republicans widely condemn Trump's behavior and make an example of other agitators like Rudy Giuliani and Alex Jones who whipped these people into a frenzy.
If there are no consequences, they'll only get the message that they can do whatever they want and things will only get worse.
It will. Plenty of people in my own family who've been Trump staunch Trump supporters through thick and thin were appalled by what happened on Wednesday. If the Republicans want to heal the country, they have to reassure these people that there is a path to normalcy and it involves rejecting this kind of extremism.
The worst thing Republicans can do is pretend it's all business as usual and force these people to choose between 'the evil Democrats' (who they won't support, ever) or 'our guy who might try a coup here and there but at least is on our side'.
> The only chance in hell this country has of surviving is if Republicans widely condemn Trump's behavior
Trump acted like a clown, but he's hardly the only agitator in this mess. The entirety of 2020 has been a shit show from all sides, and near as I can tell no one is interested in backing down.
I keep hearing this argument, to which I have to answer: at no point, ever, in 2020 or 2021 did the other side - which you are trying to equate with Trump - organize an attack on the United States Congress while the totality of our elected officials were in session.
Trying to equate people rioting on the streets with an organized pseudo-coup-by-proxy is ridiculous and it just sounds like you are trying to give one side an excuse by using whataboutism.
> organize an attack on the United States Congress
Oh spare me the faux sanctimony. No one was "organizing a coup" it was a bunch of dipshits getting in over their heads.There is nothing inherently sacred about the capital buildings.
Buildings? No. Democratic process and elected leaders? Definitely.
You are trying to downplay this as if it was just some goons setting an empty Denny's on fire, but you know exactly what was happening and who was in that building at the time they broke into it.
"How dare you interrupt when the adults were talking" is basically how this comes across to pretty much everyone I've seen reactions from on social media.
If the agitators are not imprisoned for a long time, there will be no chance for peace in this country. And any insurrectionists storming government buildings must be shot on sight next time, as the combatants they are. Wouldn't shed a tear, the alternative is to become another Afghanistan.
The fake Thomas Paines here need to understand that we are at WAR. If you care about this country, this shit has to be put down mercilessly.
It's a trope at this point, but when BLM protested in Washington, there were hundreds of National Guardsmen guarding the entrance. When Trump's supporters broke in, the Capitol Police didn't do anything until one of them got close enough to our elected officials and got shot.
There were thousands of arrests because of the BLM protests. If you were truly in favor of 'treating them equally', you'd be rooting for every single person who broke into the Capitol to be arrested. Are you?
You're going to need to explain exactly how the right is "alienated".
> last public channel
You're going to need to explain what right they have to an audience or for other entities to provide time/effort/money giving them a voice.
> This risks further escalatation
Oh good. "More violence if we don't get our way"? You're literally saying "deplatforming them in response to incitements and planning of violence will lead to further violence" as an argument why we should allow that to continue?
> This compounded with the stark contrast to how the protests were handled this summer.
I'm sure Trump will be pushing for "10 YEARS FEDERAL PRISON" for protests at this federal building, any minute now.
This is a completely flawed premise. The idea that 'if we don't let them talk to each other to organize insurrections, they'll somehow will do something worse' is ridiculous.
May 31, 2020 attempting to breach White House perimeter: "More than 60 Secret Service officers and agents were injured near the White House ... when protesters threw “projectiles such as bricks, rocks, bottles, fireworks and other items,” according to the statement. “Personnel were also directly physically assaulted as they were kicked, punched and exposed to bodily fluids."[1]
July 22, 2020: "As they have for the past 53 days, violent anarchists continue to riot on the streets of Portland as federal law enforcement officers work diligently and honorably to enforce federal law by defending federal property and the lives of their fellow officers.
Attacks on federal personnel and property overnight have included attacks on Law Enforcement officers with commercial grade fireworks, hard projectiles, and lasers – which can cause permanent blindness. Last night violence was even more aggressive than previous nights as rioters once again tried to set fire to the federal courthouse and actively tried to breach the entrance of the courthouse. Rioters are also employing tactics that force federal officers to leave the Hatfield Federal Courthouse, setting them up to be attacked with lasers and projectiles."[2]
Perhaps these do not meet your narrow definition, yet violent attacks on our other branches of federal government seem fairly analogous if not of the same magnitude as Wednesday's assault. Are you suggesting Apple would/should allow apps where users organized violent assaults such as these on the executive and judiciary - just not against the Capitol building as Congress is in session?
They are a minority. You can argue that putting them closer to the general public will normalize them, but there has been no sign of this. In fact quite the opposite. Putting them closer to the general public only simplifies recruiting. I think it is naive to assume their bubble can be forcefully diluted; at best we can take steps to stop promoting it.
Recruiting is simple because many moderate voices are labeled as "nazi" and consequently deplatformed and censored, that creates massive polarization and resentment.
It is really not Apple or any private company's responsibility to make all information accessible. They can use an Android phone, they can use a website, they can create their own Android based platform.
I am an advocate for Apple allowing side loading, but that is a different argument than requiring the App Store to host specific software.
Paradox of tolerance is nonsense. If you are intolerant "only to the intolerant", you are intolerant, period.
If you want to have some moral higher ground, win them over with your virtue. Yes, it's incredibly hard. But it is not a hypocritical bullshit like this 'paradox'.
It’s the opposite, before the Internet groups of nutcases could not organise themselves around fascist ideas as easily as today. We have the president suggesting crazy conspiracy theories that half the US population believe. Half the US population don’t wear masks as a political statement. I think someone made a wise connection between the downward spiral of public education standards and where we are today. These people unfortunately are screwed unless welfare in America helps them... they are going to get poorer and angrier. I wonder if the GOP are starting to realise a lot like tea party playing with the Trump nationalist agenda can create something you won’t necessarily be able to control.
> Half the US population don’t wear masks as a political statement
This is just wrong and a sloppy way to insult "half the US population". This sort of attitude contributes to the tribalism that is creating so much division.
You are right, the comment I made on the Internet late at night was not perfectly formulated. I think there is a better wording here, I was trying to say there is a political aspect to how people view everything nowadays (before an edit I compared to taking a knee on the other side, but again it’s too complicated a point to get across right now). Good night Gwright.
They attempted a coup yesterday. There is no "peaceful protest." They surely would've taken hostages had there been any available to make examples out of...
They're nazi and facist scumbag fuckos using the banner of "free speech" to disguise and hide their intentions. This is far from free speech at this point... They only want to "use it," to take it away from others. Fuck that.
Hitler performed a similar failed coup, where was put in jail for a few months, laughed at publicly, and then got out and we all know how the rest went.
Escalation at this point is the rest of escalating our actions against fascist fuckos by any and all means necessary. Removing their ability to broadcast bullshit is but one of many steps that must immediately be taken.
The hope is that they will go back to watching sports, wrestling, nascar, porn, and whatever else these idiots watch. I feel bad that they got scammed by Trump, but they really should do something other than echo chamber themselves into a deadly mob again.
Who on earth says they need or deserve a "public channel to express themselves"? The world seemed to get by just fine before social media existed, and I have no doubt we'd all be perfectly fine if it were gone tomorrow. If the white supremacists are stuck going back to physically mailing letters around and struggling to organize that's a net win for society...
Where exactly did you come to the conclusion they're expressing themselves peacefully? So far we've had the Capitol stormed, and a thwarted attempt at kidnapping and murdering a state governor. Neither of those two events are anything resembling "peaceful".
> Who on earth says they need or deserve a "public channel to express themselves"?
This is prime "Free Speech for Me - But Not for Thee".
You're making a very easy generalization. Not any significant portion of people expressing themselves contributed to any of the events you are mentioning. It's funny because you can read the exact same thought process from the opposite side, against say the BLM protests.
>This is prime "Free Speech for Me - But Not for Thee".
That was a pretty bold assumption on your part, and couldn't be any further from the truth. I don't participate on Twitter or Facebook, and I'm getting by just fine. Somehow I don't feel my freedom of speech has been in any way limited. So I can tell you with 100% certainty that you can in fact get by just fine without having a "public channel to express yourself".
>You're making a very easy generalization. Not any significant portion of people expressing themselves contributed to any of the events you are mentioning. It's funny because you can read the exact same thought process from the opposite side, against say the BLM protests.
It doesn't actually matter if it was "a significant portion" - they allowed the organization of what became a violent protest and will likely be de-platformed as a result. Freedom of speech doesn't apply to private companies. I have literally no idea what BLM has to do with any of this other than you're making another poor assumption that I'm OK with violent protests if it's by a certain group. You'd be wrong.
I may have made some assumptions about you personally but the points still stand.
You can speak for yourself with regards to your need for social media or platforming of any kind. Just remember that where we're going, there are no limits. Next you're off HN. Next is hosting providers. Then it's the internet (ISPs). So sure, they're all private companies but to ignore that fundamental impact is odd to say the least.
I will assume then, that you also concluded that BLM supporters as a group did not "express themselves peacefully" as there were plenty of linked violence, in aggregate well beyond what we witnessed a few days ago. It would be a breath of fresh air if that was really the case but I struggle to find consistency of principle among people these days and making that comparison is an attempt to highlight that.
I'm sure plenty of Nazis fuckos were very polite before they shot someone. I'm sure that by your standards that would then be fine and acceptable; so long as they said, "please take of your hat" first.
I think Apple has the right to ban the app from the store. They own their whole ecosystem and that's perfectly fine with me. At the same time people have the right to protest to put pressure on Apple not to ban it. In the end Apple should be able to do whatever they please, and if people dislike it enough they'll switch to other ecosystems. It's absurd for regulators to try to run Apple "better" than Apple itself.
For example, I wonder how many violent crimes alcohol ultimately led to. How many violent crimes Facebook ultimately led to. How many violent crimes encryption ultimately led to.
In a court of law, there is a distinction drawn between different events leading up to a crime, with a great deal of thought put into which of those events can be held responsible and which cannot. Now, Apple or others don't have to follow that reasoning, at least absent being involved in any court cases, but there is a great deal of wisdom in that reasoning that it would be dangerous to dismiss when politically convenient.
I'm fine with Parler being banned, but for what it's worth:
I think you can be pro free-speech, and still be happy to use the downvote button. The downvote button is an agreed upon and standard way of expressing disagreement on the site, so is in itself a part of free-speech.
That said downvoting a well-reasoned, but contrary-opinioned comment is clearly against the intention of the button, which weakens my argument a bit.
To preserve liberty there must be no tolerance of intolerant behavior like terrorism, sedition and other criminal acts, and some might even say racism/sexism/etc.
It is incredible that people who have benefited from America's free society are now so ready to give up their commitment to the principles of free speech as soon as they get a taste of power through their monopolistic tech/social media platforms.
This kind of seeming pattern is a gigantic Rohrschach blob in which people notice things based on their preconceived opinions and then backfit stories to them. Other people react based on theirs, and so we get the same exact flamewar as before, just on a meta level. Meta is internet forum crack. Flamewars on crack is bad idea.
We should be careful with sweeping generalizations, especially when in this case, it may rob us of the opportunity to achieve reconciliation via frank discussions with people of opposing views.
Most people that voted for Donald Trump are not Nazis. Most people on Parler are not Nazis. Most of the protests over the past several years were not violent.
Which is why Apple is saying to Parler "Remove the Nazis and you can stay" rather than immediately removing it. If it is removed, it is because Parler felt allowing Nazis to use their platform was important enough to have their app removed.
Turns out that isn't exactly the case. While Nazis were thrown into Soviet concertation camps, it didn't stop there and did not turn out 'kind of fine' for many innocent people who later shared a similar fate.
>A study published by the German government in 1974 estimated the number of German civilian victims of crimes during expulsion of Germans after World War II between 1945 and 1948 to be over 600,000, with about 400,000 deaths in the areas east of Oder and Neisse (ca. 120,000 in acts of direct violence, mostly by Soviet troops but also by Poles, 60,000 in Polish and 40,000 in Soviet concentration camps or prisons mostly from hunger and disease, and 200,000 deaths among civilian deportees to forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union), 130,000 in Czechoslovakia (thereof 100,000 in camps) and 80,000 in Yugoslavia (thereof 15,000 to 20,000 from violence outside of and in camps and 59,000 deaths from hunger and disease in camps).
>Some German prisoners were released soon after the war. Many others, however, remained in the GULAG long after the surrender of Nazi Germany. Among the most famous German POWs to die in Soviet captivity was Captain Wilm Hosenfeld, who died of injuries, sustained possibly under torture, in a concentration camp near Stalingrad in 1952.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Arguably one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. The amendment was bitterly contested, particularly by the states of the defeated Confederacy, which were forced to ratify it in order to regain representation in Congress. The amendment, particularly its first section, is one of the most litigated parts of the Constitution, forming the basis for landmark Supreme Court decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954) regarding racial segregation, Roe v. Wade (1973) regarding abortion, Bush v. Gore (2000) regarding the 2000 presidential election, and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) regarding same-sex marriage. The amendment limits the actions of all state and local officials, and also those acting on behalf of such officials.
I fail to see how Twitter acts on behalf of government officials.
The meaning of it has been "stretched" a bit (at least from the pov of a textualist/originalist) to constitutionally justify civil rights laws applied to individuals/businesses, not just state governments.
So it's "true meaning" is often debated, but as I understand it:
If civil rights laws can be/ are interpreted to apply to individuals and businesses via the 14th (which they are), it's hard to also square that diversity of political opinion is not also protected, given that it's the ultimate civil right and we're a democratic-republic.
From wiki: "nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". It mandates that individuals in similar situations be treated equally by the law.
Ok, I'm not a constitutional attorney but this doesn't make sense to me at all.
Where does Twitter fit in exactly? As a.. 'state'? As 'the law'? As a 'person' (because it's a corporation)?
Also, we're not talking about political diversity here. Unless the diversity involves inciting violence. Nobody wants to censor conservatives. But I would wager that plotting to execute the vice president crosses a line wrt to political diversity. Apple doesn't want the app down because it's full of non-SJWs but to probably avoid liability if they end up using the app to coordinate an attack.
Honestly, it doesn't make much logical sense, especially to someone reading the text of the constitution with the expectation of understanding it...
but they really wanted a way to make civil rights laws happen. 2nd order effects, good case results in bad caselaw, etc.
The net effect is that constitutional protections originally meant only to apply to the federal government have, one at a time, over many years, been ruled as being applicable to both States and private businesses. To the point where it's presumed that most/all federal rights/protections should be applied this way. With guns being a currently battled sort-of exception.
(Similarly, read the text of the 8th amendment, and try to figure out the bridges crossed to result in Roe v Wade)
Twitter fits in as a business, at least in this context, for the sake of this particular argument. (As opposed to those who want to classify it as a utility, or "public square," etc)
Some people get upset at it, but the easy comparison is they're the modern version of the 1960's lunch counter or bus company, but instead of skin color, it's political opinion (or sometimes even religious beliefs, depending on the specific topic of discussion).
The fire in a theatre cliche isn't really true. There isn't really a broad "incitement" exception to freedom of speech / 1A.
It's an out of context/misunderstood quote from an old case. (And I want to say it wasn't even in a majority opinion, or something similar, that made it mostly irrelevant anyway.)
Part of the reason being, no one can agree on what "incite" legally means. Which makes it a political question, in itself.
People hear what they want to hear. I personally don't understand how anyone thinks that speech was inciting violence, unless they presume to think he meant something other than what he said.
That's trying to mind read, not a legal standard.
Basically, I disagree: it is a matter of political diversity.
Even discussing the merits of executing someone, be it deathrow inmates or politicians. But the standards of trying to judge what's a dog whistle is a criminal matter, not a censorship one.
Now, I'm not saying all speech, no matter what, should be left up in all circumstances.
I am saying there needs to be a presumption of good intention, and lacking some form of legal process (a la evictions), platforms should not be able to take pre-emptive actions without meaningful consequences.
2016-2020 is going to leave such a hangover for everyone who abandoned their convictions for free speech and open platforms.
Pre-2016 San Francisco used to be full of people with HUGE distrust of the USA intelligence apparatus, distrust of mainstream news, and strong convictions about free speech and open platforms. And where are they now?
"Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”
> Pre-2016 San Francisco used to be full of people with HUGE distrust of the USA intelligence apparatus,
Moxie, and probably a bunch others that I can't think of in 5 seconds. (Probably look at the staff list at EFF web page.)
> distrust of mainstream news,
I can guarantee you the next mainstream news article critical of adtech here on HN will have its normal share of knee-jerk cranks who justify not reading the article by lazy reference to the Gell-Mann Amnesia Affectation. So don't worry at all about that one.
> and strong convictions about free speech
Yes, those strong convictions have apparently been slipping, but it's across the board and for decades. If anyone has some sources that explain this trend I'd be interested in reading them.
> and open platforms
Oh, those. They're either stuck in the 90s because it's impossible to make them secure after the fact, or they are full of open research problems.
> Yes, those strong convictions have apparently been slipping, but it's across the board and for decades. If anyone has some sources that explain this trend I'd be interested in reading them.
It’s sounds dystopian but I want a complete crackdown of this trump nonsense. I don’t want my kids to grow up with these idiots nor do I want Trumpism ever to be anywhere near my family.
Trump has destroyed America. Ban him from every platform.
I know, its my knee-jerk reaction :( But this is how I feel right now and so many Americans.
Trump is getting banned left and right as we speak. We have freedom of speech, just not for seditious, insurrectionists. No country in the world would tolerate what US has tolerated so far.
I also recognize, fully, this is a slippery slope and there should be a pretty high bar for banning people on social media platforms. I would say Trump and Trumpism, QAnon and all this has crossed the line.
Trump didn't incite violence. As other comments point out, twitter's cited tweets are poor justification. This is a political purge in order to win favor with the biden administration.
No offence but maybe the country that drone-strikes children in middle east, south america, and asia should be destroyed and the one who manages that should be named a hero.
It has become tiresome seeing americans (both left and right) whine all the time about every single thing while they silently ignore that they are bombing civilians.
The bigger social networks at least invest enough in moderation teams to give themselves some legal cover. From what I understand, Parler's community moderation is a tiny team that's wildly understaffed for the task they need to accomplish. The question now will be whether this constitutes negligence on their part. Sounds like Apple thinks it does.
Some of the screenshots seem objectionable, e.g. the one that wanted to burn down Pelosi's house while she was still inside, others seem like opinions, e.g. the one saying the protester shot by police was murdered, but none seem particularly bad, where "particularly bad" means "worse than content I'd find on Twitter".
Seems inconsistent to me to ban Parler and not Twitter. Also seems undesirable for a phone manufacturer to tell me what software I should or shouldn't use.
Twitter only moderates if you have a certain political affiliation. Blue checkmarks made threats and organized violence directly on the platform all summer and Twitter didn’t bat an eye.
> Many of Us will return ... carrying Our weapons. ... We will come in numbers that no standing army or police agency can match. However, the police are NOT our enemy, unless they choose to be!
> I hope the cop gets doxxed and murdered. That would be the only real justice.
> Federal swine most definitely. Dozens of them need to be eliminated.
> > Many of Us will return ... carrying Our weapons. ... We will come in numbers that no standing army or police agency can match. However, the police are NOT our enemy, unless they choose to be!
This is so embarrassing, you'd think people so hard right would remember the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
You can call its implementation a disaster while still agreeing with it. Trump has repeatedly talked about how we just need to go in there and take the oil", and anecdotally or otherwise, you're saying that support for military actions is lower among Trump supporters than liberals? That's going to be a challenge to reconcile or confirm - it doesn't really square.
These are basic calls for violence that twitter checkmarks get away with daily. Twitter doesn’t care if it’s directed at the people that they want dead.
It’s not the content that’s the issue here. It’s whether Apple believes they are actually enforcing their ToS with moderation. Currently they don’t.
The problem is that even if Parler wanted to moderate (I doubt it - they’d lose users) there is no way they could afford it unless they invent something very cost efficient and don’t rely on manual review.
1,208 comments
[ 16.1 ms ] story [ 760 ms ] threadBoth sides!
There's a double standard and it shouldn't be that hard to condemn violence no matter what side it comes from.
Gab used to be federated through to Mastodon (not directly of course, but via a hop or two). For some reason they stopped, but there are other "non-conforming" Mastodon instances out there.
The Gab thing was funny to watch, lots of people behaving as if that service was a literal existential threat to Fediverse, and banning - or advocating to ban - anything related to it up to two degrees of separation. It also revealed an interesting pattern - Mastodon itself may be decentralized and instances are theoretically independent, but there for sure is a community of Fediverse people that's pretty hiveminded. And left-leaning. Gab definitely wasn't welcome, and wouldn't be able to benefit much from federating through Mastodon, even if technically nobody could stop them.
(To be clear: I don't like Gab, never interacted with it, and I don't particularly care about it. It was just weird to see the degree of moral panic on Mastodon happening the moment they said they are considering joining the network.)
Mastodon is therefore an interesting experiment in how the ideal of distributed web - of virtual archipelago[0] - falls to realpolitik. Freedom of curation is limited by your ability to deal with threats of defederation.
In this sense, when you're switching from Twitter to Mastodon, you're switching from a stable tyranny to highly volatile sorta-democracy. Pick your poison, I guess. I stick to Mastodon, and try not to give the admin a reason to get me banned for going against the party line.
--
[0] - https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic...
Parler is political platform.
But Parler is about maintaining the echo chamber, not free speech.
Freedom of speech does not mean that others have to provide access to their communities.
Gab is really scrappy, to say the least. They might hate Silicon Valley but they've most definitely adopted "move fast and break things".
Massive Big Tech conglomerates must be busted through antitrust enforcement and Section 230 must be updated to ban predatory algorithms which have inflamed 7 years of sectarian chaos.
It's not a free speech issue: It's about Too Big To Fail.
Source?
Edit: lol at the downvotes. Anytime someone talks about something obvious regarding society/wealth inequality, all the wannabe Elon Musks come out to demand sources. But infringe on their dear property rights or otherwise critique the current economic system, and oh boy, they have that downvote finger ready. Cheers.
No, everything must be organized, I get that.
> riots and massive property damage last summer?
I'm asking for a source regarding the accusation that they were used to "burn down parts of Minneapolis, Chicago, and LA"
And before you ask, yeah, I take issue with the idea of most of those events being called "riots" - they were almost entirely peaceful protests, with unarmed protesters, that were met by militarized police forces and unnamed federal agents. Furthermore, I take issue with the emphasis on "property damage" as property is fairly meaningless when you fear for your live or live paycheck-to-paycheck.
America has an unhealthy obsession with "property damage" as if it should be the driver for any sort of discussion on societal issues, when in fact, it should not be.
Ah right, so the ends justify the means. It is OK to vandalise and destroy a small business if you feel bad and frustrated, but only if you share the corporate-approved politically correct opinion. Do you not see where this road ends?
Most of the people at the capitol on the 6th were peaceful too. However, those "mostly peaceful" riots this past sumer resulted in billions of dollars in property damage, dozens of deaths, and a massive spike in crime (including violent crime). Many of these rioters were either bailed out by politicians (including the incoming VP) or simply refused to be prosecuted by local DAs.
Now, I have no doubt that there was police brutality against peaceful protesters, which is horrible and inexcusable. I also think there are many legitimate grievances against the police. I even understand (though do not condone) the attacks made against police precincts and federal buildings.
But the suffering inflicted upon innocent civilians by the rioters is completely monstrous and likewise inexcusable. There is no honest moral framework to justify it.
It was also incredibly counterproductive. With the excesses taken by police on behalf many governors during the lockdowns, this past year has possibly been the best time in decades to introduce bi-partisan police reform. The riots effectively killed that because many people would rather support the police (who are at least nominally there to protect them, even if they frequently stood down to the rioters) than they are to support the people threatening to loot and burn their homes and businesses.
> I take issue with the emphasis on "property damage" as property is fairly meaningless when you fear for your live or live paycheck-to-paycheck.
That's pretty obviously not true. If you are living paycheck-to-paycheck and your home (apartment, house, whatever) or the place where you work is destroyed you are going to care a great deal. Even if it is just your car - you might night be able to afford a new car, but without the car you might not be able to get to work and thus lose your job.
> America has an unhealthy obsession with "property damage" as if it should be the driver for any sort of discussion on societal issues, when in fact, it should not be.
"Property damage" isn't some abstract thing. It's the destruction of peoples homes and livelihoods. It is the very means by which we live. Even if we lived in a perfect socialist utopia with no private property, it should be fairly obvious that the destruction of the communal property that houses and supports the community would be a serious offense.
It doesn't matter which way the wind blows, they make money, there's an audience and there's engagement and user-base.
To think these people ever thought about being guardians or Internet ambassadors is foolish and downright ignorant. They are profiteers.
Tom was so smart to take the Myspace Exit and live a excellent life.
Make lying to the public a criminal offence. Without lies these channels are nothing.
Out of sheer curiosity, who decides what's a lie?
America had problems before Social Media dialed it up to 11. Those problems aren’t going away.
They make money when you’re mad and engaged
The only reason Parler is getting banned and Facebook isn't is because Facebook is too big to fail.
Facebook and Twitter have the same amount of questionable content, just better PR and bigger clout.
It's Gab that has no moderation (with all the pros and cons of a pure "free speech" network).
I'm still not exactly sure how Section 230 relates to any of the issues in public discussion. Only that it's good for the platforms, and some folks want to hurt the platforms, so Section 230 must go. I've seen at least one draft of a proposed bill for adding additional conditions to Section 230, but they reminded me, more than anything, of hypothetical First Amendment questions from law school exams. It's by no means clear that platforms, especially new platforms, will simply do whatever you tell them to do in a condition to Section 230.
https://www.inputmag.com/culture/exclusive-email-from-apple-...
The right and the associated white supremists have far too much freedom to spread disinformation, racism and hatred.
I'm sure we'll see free speech absolutists in arms about this, but today is a good day for democracy.
First they came for the nazis, and I didn't say anything because, well, fuck nazis. Then end.
Isn't interesting that last week, an article summarizing the soft sciences' best attempt at determining whether allowing children to play violent video games makes them actually violent later in life was so well received? No one on Hacker News was surprised that shooting people in video games does not correlate to shooting people in real life.
But if someone is permitted to watch Islamic terrorist propaganda, or read white supremacist's flawed logical arguments, that's somehow guaranteed to convert some percentage of people to those ideologies; therefore they should be banned from all platforms.
Compare that to Parler, where you usually join because "hey, those people are conservatives, like me". Neonazis have gotten pretty damn good at slowly steering people to what they want. Hiding your power level and all. Suddenly, in a place where you feel safe, some people start telling you that, say, it's all because of antifas. You might not believe it at first. But through repeated exposure, in a place where you feel safe, slowly but surely it seeps in. There are studies on how much more easily the brain is affected when you feel in a safe place.
Going to Parler for most people isn't to see what the white supremacists are about these days. Just hop on /Pol/ for that, or Stormfront for actual Nazis and you'll see it.
Yeah, I think I'm done with this industry. When did everyone become a fascist all of a sudden?
Edit: Fascism literally means big corporations and governments imposing a moral structure on society. What Apple is doing is fascist. It's also stupidly anticompetitive by not booting Facebook and Twitter off for the same reasons.
Ever since SJW decided that if you weren't with them, you were against them, ie. you were a fascist.
Good for you? If you think getting the alt-right and Q-conspiracy people off easily-accessible platforms is facism, I'm glad you're leaving the industry.
Strong, independent corporations are essentially incompatible with fascism. You can't really have distributed authoritarianism. Corporations imposing a moral structure on the people they choose to do business with is the freedom of association protected by the first amendment.
This isn't, to be clear, me advocating for a corporatocracy. But fascism it ain't.
Who gets to decide what constitutes disinformation, racism or hatred?
If you have someone who decides who can speak and what they are allowed to say, that person holds all the power and is hence a dictator. Having a dictator isn't very democratic.
SJW.
Apple, if it's on their platform. In an alternate universe, the elected representatives of the populace.
>If you have someone who decides who can speak and what they are allowed to say
The U.S. and all countries already do this through the numerous exceptions to free speech rights.
This was not free speech, as has been defined by the US Supreme Court for at least a century, because "fighting words" (speech that may lead to the harm or limitation of rights of others) are not considered free speech.
Talking about racism and other bad ideas is protected, but suggesting sedition and bodily harm is not.
This is good to know in the coming days when the fascists come out of the woodwork.
It’s an attempted justification for the “cleansing” that’s already well underway on Twitter today, and will continue unabated for as long as the majority is silent while the radicals cheer it on.
While a small minority loudly yell ”good riddance” the rest of us wonder what happens next time we write something wrong.
If we are talking about their role as a means of communication, where is the rage at Verizon, ATT, T-Mobile, etc.? The is where the argument of repealing Section 230 because of the insurrection breaks down.
The other side keeps deplatforming them. Their legal cases are rejected. The mainstream media refuses to take them seriously. We're not even listening to them, because it's science and they're *ists if they disagree. We're not debating anymore. We just assume we're right.
We are slowly squeezing a significant segment of the population out of public debate, and they are powerless to stop it. Is it surprising that they are furious about it, and explode in unpredictable ways? Wouldn't you do the same?
E: I accidentally hit submit halfway through my argument. You might be replying to a really different comment
"I don't agree at all with those people storming the capital. This does not represent who we are, but what do you expect when the media claims not a single voter fraud case was won in court when in fact almost all of them never went to trial? They are lying."
Nearly half the nation voted for Trump. I don't believe half the nation is full of hatred and disinformation. No more so do I feel people burning businesses and shooting cops represent the BLM movement.
These people protesting. BLM, Occupy Wallstreet, Tea Party, Voter Fraud. At a certain level, they are all protesting the same thing. They are protesting the system. Cops, Bankers, Regulators, Politicians. The wealth gap is widening and people are getting frustrated. Unfortunately people are easily misled and are resorting to group think instead of recognizing the real problem.
I'm not a republican, but does anyone not feel just a little uncomfortable that the less worse option this year was a career politician with his own sorted history and snake oil salesman smile? Come on man.
At some point I'm not sure if they're really all that, or if I was just conditioned to believe that, and to leave them out of the conversation.
> Their legal cases are rejected. The mainstream media refuses to take them seriously.
> If you deny them the usual channels, is it surprising that they take the other route?
On the other hand, if what they're asserting is crazy and unsupported by fact, what's the alternative? Report it uncritically as part of "both sides"? Listen to them in court and give them relief anyways?
How is this any different from the entirety of human history? America has gotten along quite fine without a central Ministry of Information directing what people should and should not believe is true. It is especially galling to think that some content moderators in the very narrow slice of society in Bay Area tech is qualified to do that job.
We've reached the point where the American left is afraid of the idea of free speech.
The difference is the echo chamber effect and the removal of opposing view points from an individual’s “feed”, while simultaneously facing no social pressure to conform to actual not-on-the-web society.
Edit: spelling & clarity
Debating the merits and demerits of free speech surely has to fall within free speech. From what I've seen, free speech often gets raised as an unquestionable ideal and kills off sometimes uncomfortable discussion.
I agree that information being concentrated in a few platforms is harmful. But are you saying that you are owed having your speech amplified by others?
Remember our founding fathers starting opposing media outfits to slander each other? I don't think they were willing to print each others' stories verbatim.
Not only that, but people like you and me who comment in defense of it are fading from the major platforms. For each of us who grew up with free speech as the cornerstone right in a free and just society, there seem to be many others who did not ever care about this, or actively seek to destroy it for the benefit of their own group.
It's worth remembering just how many warnings that this would happen eventually we have been left historically. Centuries of being reminded that people would come for these rights if we did not defend them. I never thought it was going to have to be our generation, though.
I do think that Twitter and Facebook need to be exceptionally careful and use their powers more sparingly, but there's absolutely no reason that they should have to repeat people literally coordinating and normalizing shooting elected officials, like many threads on Parler are at the moment--- speech that almost everyone agrees is not protected by the First Amendment anyways.
Freedom of speech shouldn’t necessarily be compelled by law to be allowed by online platforms. But freedom of speech is not just a legal principle and individual right, but considered by many of us to be a core American cultural value. It seems reasonable for there to be public outcry and negative response to a company suppressing free speech. Free speech doesn’t include provable lies or inciting imminent violence which unfortunately I believe occurred this week.
Free speech includes being able to -not- utter things of your choice, too. No one will join me in decrying that my local paper will not publish my 30 page treatise on Flat Earth.
Yes-- power concentrating with a few gatekeepers of speech in tech is troublesome. That's what makes their moderation decisions so worrisome: that they're so empowered.
> Free speech doesn’t include provable lies
I think most provable lies are included in free speech, actually.
> or inciting imminent violence
Yup. But we kicked all the people off the mainstream platforms for things that were less than this, so now those platforms have less power to suppress the cries for violence.
And there is no ministry of information. The 1st amendment protects us from governmental interference, not a private party discriminating based on content.
Deplatforming is happening because of cultural pressure and values, people still have the ability to create organizations with different values. The history of 1st amendment lawsuits is filled with examples of speech that was really offensive at the time, lawsuits were won because the government tried to restrict it.
Diversity in beliefs is valuable, but private parties should be able to have standards. I find an argument that companies should be forced allow speech that violates their standards because it is political dangerous.
FWIW, I think alternatives to Twitter, like Parler and Mastodon, are a good idea, but Parler acts like they have a fair takedown process when it's evident that it is not working particularly well.
It's like, before the_donald was banned: at least there was a grownup in the room reining it in some and it could be seen. But if you wholesale kick out the extremists, they make their own happy place where there's nothing to slow them down at all.
(And then, in turn, you end up playing wack-a-mole with those cesspools, asking Apple/Google to deplatform them, etc.)
Sort of like how doomsday cults get more fervent with each incorrectly predicted apocalypse. The cult gets smaller, but those that remain are the true believers.
There's people in my town who are like this. The "oppression" even fuels their narrative.
Better to keep them in the mainstream discussion, respond with ridicule, and use moderation to squash the overtly dangerous stuff, IMO.
And ridicule doesn't work, clearly. Vanity may work for less-devoted people, but when you live in a deeply red state and are surrounded by Trumpers, there's no way you're going to speak up IRL, or break through the power of numbers in that social sphere.
There's enough people believing this that they're guaranteed to come into existence if you deny them access to mainstream platforms.
> but when you live in a deeply red state and are surrounded by Trumpers, there's no way you're going to speak up IRL
You can't interrupt the in-real-life contacts by any means (short of despotic ones).
But there's a certain number of people that will stop polluting an online space if they're being laughed at. But when you force them to create their own echo chamber even the more timid and susceptible to social pressure will be unbothered.
Then you go after the echo chamber.
When the_donald left reddit, it became impossible for them to get their propaganda seen on the front page of reddit and seen by people who might join them. People won't casually stumble into a cesspool of lies and BS. Now they have to know it exists and actively seek it out.
I just googled "the donald" and they aren't even on the first page. Seems like deplatforming kind of worked....
If it worked, why is the same radicalized set of viewpoints seemingly growing in vitality?
Well these last two seem pretty par for the course for illegitimate claims been promoted as legitimate. At a certain point the line of absurdity has been crossed at it is not the duty of society to constantly debunk illegitimate claims.
> The other side keeps deplatforming them
In this particular case, Parler has been host to a number of specific violent threats against the Vice President and members of Congress. Those threats are a crime under Title 18 Section 871 of the United States Code. Threats to others could constitute assault in many jurisdictions.
I really see it as no surprise that platforms hosting Parler entry points are concerned about this. They could be potentially held liable since this type of speech is not protected by the first amendment.
I find it somewhat implausible that half the population is dumb, racist and all those other labels. It seems much more likely that I don't fully understand their perspective.
Censorship has always struck me as a tool that a side which isn't confident in its arguments uses.
Those people are not willing to talk to or listen to anyone who's supposedly on their side but has a different opinion. What makes you think they will listen to the "other side"?
To keep on the previous example: Pence and Fox News never called anyone "idiot Trumper" or anything and they are being attacked by that crowd.
About climate change: Greta Thunberg has been called all kinds of names without equivalent provocation.
And there's a lot of people willing to engage with climate change deniers in the way you're suggesting they should, but a large part of climate change deniers are not willing to accept that those people are acting in good faith. There's lot of accusations that non-deniers are paid shills and stuff like that.
Again, why does every person on one side has to be perfect, but the other side gets a pass? Even the Republicans can't control the Trump crowd.
Yes, there are clearly completely intractable extremists who won’t engage in good faith.
But there are a lot of their people who will.
On the other hand, the same thing should apply to the left! Just because someone on the left has not been using logical arguments and acting in bad faith, it doesn't mean the whole left is doing it. People don't get a free pass on claiming "the left caused it" or (EDIT) "the left not talking to them is the reason they have this opinion".
I agree that this is obvious bullishit.
But it’s also bullshit to say ‘the right caused it’.
How many people are getting a free pass on saying that right now?
I also believe that blaming the whole right for anything is incorrect too, and repeatedly mentioned that some of the right are being shunned by extremists too.
For example, I think things like saying ‘whiteness’ is the problem, is not particularly associated with the extremes and yet very much are part of the cause of the problem. Similarly, calling everyone on the left a snowflake or a communist, is not only the purview of extremists.
I haven't made any black and white division between extremists and anyone else. I always said "large portion of extremists", "a large part of climate change deniers", etc.
What I'm replying to here is the multiple posts (not yours) saying that the problem is that some people on the left have been communicating in a combative/ineffective manner.
While this is true, I don't believe this is the source of the problem. And demanding perfection from one side while absolving the other is not a fair tactic. It's pure bullshit. Why must the left be flawless? In fact, it's a bit condescending to the extremists.
No ‘side’ can claim not to be the cause unless it can curb the behavior. The left cannot curb the right behaving unreasonably, but it might be able to curb unreason on its own side.
However this: “demanding perfection from one side while absolving the other” seems like a straw man. If this is being done, it’s clearly being done by the right and the left.
When the right say the left are causing the problem by doing this, they are correct. You are also correct to say they aren’t the only ones causing it.
However the left cannot improve the situation by pointing fingers at the right and doubling down.
The left doesn’t have to be ‘flawless’, but if it’s not better than the right, then how does it expect to improve anything?
I'm not talking about "the right" here. The right is too varied (as is the left). I'm talking about extremists.
I pointed out that some extremists are not even willing to listen to people on the right itself. Pence and Fox News are definitely not calling people "idiot trumpsters" and are still being attacked by them.
It's not even a matter of the left trying to engage in discussion. People have screamed at me and called me "sheeple" for wearing a mask in the supermarket. How do you engage? I just left. Am I the cause of the problem for not speaking a word before or after the engagement?
The left can't improve the situation by trying to debate with people that's unwilling to debate in the first place, period.
This is true.
However the left can improve the situation by being willing to debate people who are willing to debate, and yet casual dismissals or irrelevances about whiteness and racism stop that dead.
Look at this comment as an example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25698039
By not doing so, they do create the climate for extremism, frankly at both ends.
Extremism is a problem, but it’s a false dichotomy to think of extremism as somehow independent of what everyone else does.
My example of climate change was merely a "for instance" rather than for the topic of the example to become part of the discussion.
Point being, silencing one side doesn't work if the alleged reason is their ideas are so wrong they are too dangerous to be read unless you can properly show what you claim is "right".
What I was objecting here is the theory that people on the right has been radicalised due to the left not wanting to discuss. I'm just demonstrating that not only the left wants to speak to the extremists, but also the right itself wants (Pence and Fox News). But the extremists don't care: they're even attacking both left and right preemptively. There's zero interest from extremists to understand opposing opinions.
This theory that the left is to blame for the radicalisation of those people holds absolutely no water.
And no, discussing studies doesn’t work. See the anti-vax debate. We’ve been pointing out the science on climate change and vaccines, clearly and respectfully, for _decades_ and it has not mattered.
I’ve never seen anyone directly start a persuasive argument with “you’re an idiot Trumper”. It isn’t that common. Your helpless victim attitude is showing.
Trump had every opportunity to win this election rightfully. He is not a victim and neither are you or his supporters. Stop playing one.
More than that:
> Others called for Vice President Mike Pence — who enraged Trump when he acknowledged that he did not have the power to unilaterally throw out electoral college votes — to be tried for treason. One Facebook post, quickly deleted, said Pence, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell should be hanged.
* https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-conspiracy-theories-...
See also:
* https://www.businessinsider.com/nooses-spotted-as-pro-trump-...
A company deplatforming an individual is indeed censorship, but is not government abridgement of free speech.
They can raise the money. I assume there are enough software engineers that will sympathize with them and build one.
Was this Parler that they created?
Looks like the app got shut down today. But I’m sure they can still make a website for it, running JavaScript.
You can’t shut the website down, unless you hijack the DNS.
Would you consider this to be censorship? Does it make a difference who the speaker is?
I think if you sat down with an educated conservative and an open mind you'd have a different point of view.
If your statement was just a blanket statement about people in general, I apologize for mis-categorizing it.
If you want to debate in good faith whether people are too quick to call others racist, maybe you should start the debate by enumerating what kind of speech have sparked those claims? Otherwise you're just being hyperbolic and increasing the political divide.
I get that people are pissed for being called racist, but if they REALLY wanna fix that, the first step is admitting that the other side might be pissed about something too.
I spend most of my mental effort trying to get people on each side to do this, its not easy bro.
? A woman is under arrest for trying to grab what she thought was her phone back from a black kid. It's a national story.
In 2020, getting into an argument with a Black person is 'racist' and 'criminal' if you happen to be wrong.
The woman did 1=2, in that, her actions are wrong.
But because someone is a different colour, she's being destroyed and doxxed on the MSM for the assumption of racism. (Ironically, she could easily pass as a 'person of colour' if she chose to).
This is unfortunately a problem right now in politics and it's perpetuated by the press.
> In 2020, getting into an argument with a Black person is 'racist' and 'criminal' if you happen to be wrong.
Assault isn't a mere argument, and it's a crime regardless of the race of the perpetrators or victim.
> But because someone is a different colour, she's being destroyed and doxxed on the MSM for the assumption of racism.
No, she’s being condemned for the objective fact of assaulting a child.
False accusation and assault should be crimes, period. If she had done the same thing to me you can be damn sure I would want her ass in jail regardless of my skin colour. Her arrest is a good thing. Actions that affect others negatively should have consequences.
Assault is a crime, yes, what she did was wrong - yes, of course - I agree with that.
But what she is being destroyed for is 'racism' - not 'assault and false accusation'.
She was being irrational (1=2) and then because of this, castigated for racism - which is a much more devious charge.
Also - it's shocking that anyone is 'shocked' over such a pedestrian encounter. Have HN readers never been in a fight before? Have folks literally never been in an argument?
This kind of stuff is 'daily' on the streets, at WallMart, etc. It's not very civil obviously, but it's really common for people to get upset over things. We have bouncers at bars for this reason. But we're adults and we move past it.
And - 'false accusation' in this manner is clearly not criminal. The woman had her phone stolen, it's reasonable for her in a hysterical state and just see the first iPhone and possibly think it's hers. Again, not nice at all, but not completely crazy.
The proper response to a hysterical person who had their phone stolen, and who maybe thinks you have it is to 'take the high ground' and calmly demonstrate your ownership. That's all. I don't expect this of a kid, but that could have happend.
That we have a 'national story' with literally Al Sharpton because someone 'grabbed someone's arm' is utterly ridiculous. The kid is 'seeking counselling' because someone 'touched him forcefully'? It's a farce. They've turned this utterly minor incident into a bad SNL parody.
Finally - I'm not implying their couldn't have been racism either, this woman could possibly just as nasty as it gets, it's impossible to tell.
And of course, the whole point of CNN putting this on the news is not that this specific moment is important, but that it could be demonstrative of 'systematic racism in the commons' and they want to make an example out of her - but lacking any possible reference to racial motivation, it's just plain stupid.
In summary - this is an example of certain parts of the media castigating individuals who may be of a certain persuasion (in this case 'White') for no reason, and I can see people getting upset over that.
The riot on capital hill however was not mostly a political movement of general malaise, rather, it was specifically about that certain people feel the election was stolen. It was mostly certainly not stolen, but they believe that because Trump told them so, and that's the primary motivation issue of the violence at this point.
And maybe it's a cultural thing but I've never seen a grown woman tackling a 14 year old kid to the ground like this, and if I ever do you can be sure I will call the police. Just because you've seen it often doesn't mean it should be normalised.
And no, she's not being "destroyed" by the racism accusation. But she might be destroyed if she goes to jail and gets a permanent record. And she had it coming. Actions HAVE consequences.
That is a fascinatingly passive synonym for "struggle session."
Breaking the law has consequences. And the only consequence here is her being prosecuted for assault and battery and potentially going to jail. This has nothing to do with racism accusation, and is nothing compared to the torture you're suggesting.
Nobody is going to jail for grabbing someone's arm.
Even hitting someone - it's not nice, but not a big deal.
What is wrong with the rhetoric here?
This is a 'non incident' - someone was upset over a lost phone, and some minor classroom shenanigans played out.
Nobody was hurt, nothing happened, it doesn't even belong in the courts.
The woman is up for DUI she's a little unhinged, some people are like that, life goes on.
I guess I should have said 'undersandable' when someone is angry.
And yes - she is totally destroyed.
Do you understand the implications of your face being all over TMZ and CNN, publishing your name?
She will have death threats.
She will almost certainly lose her job if she has a normal job.
This will tar her for the rest of her life.
People commit suicide over this kind of stuff.
'Naming and shaming' for such a minor even is vindictive and terrible.
I understand CNN wanting to call attention to casual racism, but they should probably using these as 'lesson events' and probably not using real names.
They also dramatize by giving some back story 'son of a musician' and 'lady with a history of DUI' which is shameful - none of that is relevant.
Given how sensitive these things are they could be really polite about it, talk about what happened objective, talk about how the actors could have acted differently without names and colour commentary.
It's a self-harming myth the left believes in. You don't need to be right to win the argument.
You are correct about that but why are you so set on making other adults think the way you do?
The extreme assumptions and generalizations don't help. There are many of us that don't agree with you but don't exactly line up with Republicans or even Trump supporters at times.
Many Trump supporters are Libertarians that do not agree full with Republican ideals completely, but it's the closest home.
You're setting yourself up for lots of disappointment, in this life. If you truly need complete strangers you haven't met to do pyschological work for you, happiness will always slip away.
It’s how the Scientologist operate. How China operates. It’s where America is/has going.
Next step is going to be a push to gather up all the guns. Wouldn’t want all the free thinkers getting any ideas now.
Why should I believe you this time?
I guess Obama did allow cartels to have guns by continuing Fast & Furious so you're half right.
No there weren't.
> I guess Obama did allow cartels to have guns by continuing Fast & Furious so you're half right.
You're half-right because of this one, the Obama administration circumvented federal law to allow known prohibited persons to buy guns and then let them take the guns across the border. over 1200 guns were lost to known organized crime without even getting Mexican gov't permission.
“Put America on the path to ensuring that 100% of firearms sold in America are smart guns.” - a quote you can check today on Biden’s website.
You just aren't the free thinker you think you are
Wait, has this actually worked before? Ever? Do you have examples? For instance, when they denied "radical Islamist groups" access to popular social media, "radical Islamist groups" just started using less popular social media that is harder to keep tabs on. "Radical Islamist groups" certainly haven't disappeared...
The fact of the matter is that echo chambers encourage extremism and social media is nothing but echo chambers.
Another fact of the matter is human psychology. Humans have a biological tendency to accept as truth the first opinion they hear on a topic. This is a result of evolution. If your tribe member tells you a berry is poisonous, is the first response to argue? Or to just listen. Better to be safe than sorry.
When you combine that bit of psychology with social media, you see people go online to some circle jerk, innocently at first, and then get radicalized.
Now before any counter examples get brought out, just consider that while it doesn't work this way for every person, in every context, it does work this way for some non-trivial amount of people, and that's what we're seeing. A lot of users on parler aren't domestic terrorists, but if it's even 1% who fall victim to basic human psychology, that's enough for what took place on Wednesday.
So yeah - the example is the time before social media.
Also, if you didn't hear racism in USA in the 1980s you've led a very sheltered life.
Ever since the beginning of the Internet webhosting companies have colluded to deplatform the KKK and a few other notorious white supremacist groups. This has been largely successful in curbing the outreach of the KKK in the United States. It's also why YouTube is getting a lot of criticism for embracing white supremacist groups and facilitating thier growing outreach. This is a break from long-running comm business practices.
Daryl Davis has certainly proven otherwise, but I freely admit that no one should have to have the sort of patience or dedication to the cause that he's demonstrated in doing so.
> What I have come to find to be the greatest and most effective and successful weapon that we can use, known to man, to combat such adversaries as ignorance, racism, hatred, violence, is also the least expensive weapon, and the one that is the least used by Americans. That weapon is called communication. [0] [1]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daryl_Davis
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fw0vS0qvYo0&t=34s
It isn’t “censorship” to toss your ass off Twitter for violating their TOS. It is censorship for the government to demand Twitter shut ya down
See the distinction?
This is a misnomer. It's certainly censorship to "toss your ass off Twitter", even if somebody's arbitrary interpretation of a TOS concludes in the finding of a violation.
The concept of free speech doesn't just restrict the government via the First Amendment... it is a tradition and a founding principle (as documented in the Federalist Papers) of the United States of America, as well as a social contract.
I would argue that companies are obligated to abide by the principles of free speech, not from a legal perspective, but from a social perspective, lest they face the consequence of controversy Twitter is currently facing for banning the account of a sitting US President.
Ultimately, silencing people you disagree with is a no-win path to go down.
In spite of this, they keep offering. As soon as they do anything except bend-over-backwards to accomodate the right, they are met with “so much for the tolerant left”. Is it any surprise that people get fed up when this is all they’re ever met with. If you can’t come to the table and behave like an adult, don’t be surprised when you get relegated to the kids table.
What is any sort of reasoned debate about policy going to look like when one of the participants is coming into it with a set of beliefs as divergent from reality as QAnon?
You take one step forward, he takes one step back.
"Meet in the middle" says the man in bad faith.
Absolutely true.
Also true:
“every single time the right agrees to sit down and have a conversation with “reason and logical arguments” they get met with bad-fair arguments“
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/lindsey-graham-called-trait...
I’m reminded of Qaddafi’s last video. If only he had used logic and reason...
These are people who are nominally on his side, angry that he's no longer carrying water for Trump.
The left is succeeding because it has abandoned argument in favor of the raw pursuit and exercise of power, including their incessant moralizing, which is of course how a priestly caste expresses power.
Why would they go back to debating?
They censor because its playing field they're winning on.
The profit motive to keep trump on is gone, so he's gone
There's also Frank Lunz's observation that many people form opinions based solely on the emotive content of the words (Russell conjugation [2]) they're presented with, regardless of the facts. [3]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_perseverance [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luntz#Use_of_language
They feel that the deck is rigged against them, debating reinforces the current oppressive system, that all disagreement is illegitimate, and that anyone with power who isn't dismantling the current system is evil.
[0] https://newdiscourses.com/2020/07/woke-wont-debate-you-heres...
It's (thankfully) not half the population. The vast majority of trump voters would be just as disgusted with the nastier parts of parler as you and I are, just like most Biden voters are honestly pretty disgusted with some of what happened under the cover of the BLM protests.
And to semi-agree with your paean to understanding, there are people whose actions I deplore and whom I know well enough to glimpse thru their eyes, and the combination of constant emotional disregulation and self-centered ness means one can try quite hard to be good and be nothing be a source of evil actions. Understanding this emotional reality has helped me to stay clear headed when confronted with the maelstrom, but has not lessened my determination to oppose the actions.
My optimistic hope is that with a few years of widespread governance by the Democratic party, we may see some wide-reaching assistance reach these people. Get education reformed, get police reformed. Teach these people that hating black people actually causes their own outcomes to get worse. Support their businesses that they have had to scrape together. Pass widespread healthcare reform so healthcare is accessible to all, not just the rich. Build up people, don't tear them down. And, most importantly in the short term, vaccinate the whole country to get past this COVID-19 pandemic so the economy can get back to full strength. I think once that happens, and the Trumpers have some time to grieve from the loss of their former leader, these people will come back to the fold and see that hate isn't a useful method of getting what they need.
Aren't there areas in the US that have been governed by Democrats continuously for decades, yet also don't have the programs you list above?
Trump is a fighter. For many he fights for them.
He has been attacked mercilessly for years. To an absurd level.
Every republican has been attacked constantly. Until now, they have all been wimps. Bushes barely pushed on any issues.
The next republican is going to have 95% negative Media coverage. The actual reasons will be figured out later
Maybe because he is a lying blowhard grifter. This is not new, he has been this way for fifty years. You can go back to his interviews in the 70s and 80s, and see the same behavior.
The rise of online platforms unquestionable explains part of why large hordes of conspiracy addled red hats have taken to the streets. But I am very pessimistic about the potential for deplatforming to solve this problem. Clinton famously said that the Chinese censoring the Internet would be like, "nailing jello to a wall," basically impossible. It turns out, for the most part, the Chinese have been able to hammer down dissent online. But they were able to write almost any laws they wanted, create a massive censorship apparatus, and exert control over every aspect of society. Even with all these advantages they barely managed it. Western society will never be willing to exert the control necessary to effectively manage online speech. There are simply too many members of the alt right, creating too much demand, for them to be effectively cut off from communication platforms. Trying will likely be counterproductive. It will balkanize the internet into more ideologically extreme and insular networks where "responsible adults" have less influence. It will feed a sense of paranoia and persecution. Over time it will lead them to harden their platforms and improve their tactics of evasion making it more difficult to monitor them and exert any kind of control.
We also have the very significant problem of where to draw the line. Now that the big tech platforms have decided to remove political speech that they believe is dangerous, there will be a lot of pressure on them to keep going. "If you removed $X for $I why are you now giving a platform to $Y to say $J?" There is going to be a lot of discussion in the coming months about what kind of opinions should lead to deplatforming, not all of it is going to be productive.
There is no easy solution and deplatforming is probably part of the answer. I believe a larger part will (or at least should) be finding more effective ways to reach out and influence opinions when possible. The Capitol police being caught so unprepared shows the urgent need for effective intelligence and responsive protection strategies. If deplatforming is used in an excessive or capricious manner it is likely to make any kind of effective action much more difficult.
We'll see if it's different this time, but I bet this time will end up like all the other times it has felt like "the end of civilized society". Society just keeps putting along.
- what if “society just keeps putting along” only until it stops? I heard somewhere that complex empires historically have a life expectancy of ca. 300 years.
- I also heard somewhere that the Arab Srping revolutions took off in full only when the panicked government shut down social media. True or not, it’s an insteresting “what if”. The “panem et circenses” government should maybe think twice about turning off Twitter (in practice) for these subjects, no?
- life looks to be getting less comfy, with COVID. A year ago I would feel more at home in the comfy prosperity argument but today that rings hollow
Yup, that's the worry.
> - I also heard somewhere that the Arab Srping revolutions took off in full only when the panicked government shut down social media. True or not, it’s an insteresting “what if”. The “panem et circenses” government should maybe think twice about turning off Twitter (in practice) for these subjects, no?
I had not heard that. I think it's a bit unfair to compare people being oppressed by an actual dictator in a relatively poor country to people who live in one of the richest countries in the world. All these people had the means to pay for transport across this massive country and pay for lodging. If you're really struggling can you afford to buy a round trip plane ticket and a hotel?
Also Twitter hasn't been turned off for the people, just for the leaders and presumably instigators. They're still all gonna be able to freely talk shit about Biden and libtards, they just won't be getting orders from the top.
> - life looks to be getting less comfy, with COVID. A year ago I would feel more at home in the comfy prosperity argument but today that rings hollow
True, COVID has caused a decrease in the QOL. But on a macro level, there is still enough food, shelter, healthcare, and Call of duty to go around. I think it's enough to keep a large chunk of the population from seriously considering taking up arms.
Much of my opinions on this topic come from this video, I highly recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs.
Trump has no ideology, he used Twitter, FB and mass media to lie to the masses, and a certain group believed him.
Once he has less power, he'll have less influence.
FoxNews commenters became rabidly in favour of he $2K stimulus checks when Trump announced it.
It was pretty funny watching thousands of Fox commenters, normally screaming at the hint of 'Socialism' - backing up Trump's $2K checque claims and how 'people are having a hard time these days, they need the money'.
It's really sad how they will flip ideologies to be consistent with whatever he says.
Once Trump has moved on, then there will be other priorities.
Not even getting into the fallacy of attributing more than can be to participants of a binary choice dilemma, the American Republic presidential elections are not "1 person 1 vote" like most other democratic Republics.
I don't think you've met enough people. Most people I've met are gullible idiots who are looking for excuses to believe nonsense.
All day long was bashing, talking about how evil/ stupid they are.
Most bigoted hateful people I’ve ever seen. All convinced they shit gold.
Why do you think this?
Racism was the absolute norm in the US until ~not that long ago. It’s literally written into the constitution and it took literal bloodshed to change that. And then when we did, there was massive pushback in the form of Jim Crow laws.
Statistically you’d expect half of people to be dumber than average. Our (non-higher) education system in the US is nothing to be proud of and wildly inconsistent at best.
Add in politician deliberately lying (e.g. republicans ignoring climate change, republicans denying covid while adjusting their portfolios to take advantage) and stupidity is clearly the norm.
edit: look I know it's bad form on here to complain about being downvoted, but I was asking an honest question. Chill, people.
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.
The Three-fifths Compromise was a compromise reached among state delegates during the 1787 United States Constitutional Convention. Delegates disputed whether and how slaves would be counted when determining a state's total population, as this number would determine a state's number of seats in the House of Representatives and how much it would pay in taxes. The compromise counted three out of every five slaves as people...
In the US Constitution, the Three-fifths Compromise is part of Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3:
> The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.
Is the complaint that we haven’t erased the slavery related stuff from the record?
What has this got to do with people being racist now?
A Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964.
Civil Rights Acts were also passed in 1866, 1871, 1875, 1957, 1960, 1968, and 1991.
But the passage of a Civil Rights Act is not, in and of itself, an indication of the end of systemic racism.
Systemic racism is rampant in every country I have lived in, the US included.
But you are changing the subject.
The question is about why it matters that it was once part of the constitution if it is no longer?
I guess I am conflating the history of slavery in the US with racism.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_United_States
At the time of writing the constitution, slavery was expressly racist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamestown_Polish_craftsmen#Str...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1619_Jamestown_craftsmen_strik...
The Jamestown craftsmen's strike of 1619 took place in the settlement of Jamestown in the Virginia colony.[1] It was the first documented strike in North America.[2] Skilled craftsmen were sent by the Virginia Company to Jamestown to produce pitch, tar, and turpentine used for shipbuilding.[3] When the colony held its first election in 1619, many settlers were not allowed to vote on the grounds that they were not of English descent, and they went on strike.[2] Due to the importance of the skilled workers in producing valuable naval stores for the colony, company leaders bowed to labor pressure and gave full voting rights to continental workers.[1]
I wonder if you could tell us, GP, which states wanted that number to be one and which wanted it to be zero?
Of course slaves weren’t allowed to vote, and 3/5ths meant that the South would get more representation as recognition of the economic strength they were bringing to the union.
It’s not like the Northern vs Southern states were arguing about whether a slave’s vote was worth 0, 3/5, or 1. This was about ascribing more (or less) power to slave owners.
The south wanted 1, the north wanted 0.
The 3/5 compromise was one of the forces that eventually brought about the end of slavery. It didn’t increase the south’s representation, it decreased it.
What I’m saying is that it “increased” the representation versus 0. Which is equivalent to your formulation that it “decreased” the representation from 1. In other words, 3/5 is more than zero and less than 1. No disagreement here.
My point is that it wasn’t about giving rights to black people, it was an argument about how much representation slave owners would have.
> Our (non-higher) education system in the US is nothing to be proud of and wildly inconsistent at best.
There are plenty of brilliant people who hold conservative values. Their idea of "success" may not follow the path of others who have moved from their hometown to a coast working in IT. Or the path of those who were "enlightened" with advanced degrees where the sophisticated choice is obviously to be a democrat. It's different strokes for different folks, and there are many ways to live in the United States.
A vote for Trump isn't necessarily a vote for Trump - It can be a vote for "Not Democrat." Whether or not you believe that voting "Not Democrat" is appropriate, it's a far reach to say that all, or most, of those people, are idiots with racist views. This approach discounts legitimate differences that should be open to debate and should be discussed. We can't expect the United States to last or be successful if we assume everyone in the middle of the country is an uncultured idiot who should be censored. Or assume that those who don't share the same views must be racists who just can't be reasoned with.
If Democrats somehow lost control of the primary to a less ideal celebrity candidate (and this is possible: https://www.london.edu/think/why-most-elections-are-ineffici...), there would be many democrats who choose to vote for that person because it is "Not Republican." It wouldn't matter who is on the ticket as long as it is "Not Republican" because a republican choice would be dumb, racist, and unsophisticated.
I grew up in the rust belt, I've lived in the most diverse city in the country (Houston, TX), and I've lived in Cambridge, MA. People are largely the same all over the country - they care about being left alone with the right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. How they define those things differs (e.g., is a fetus "alive"?), but as long as people have those rights protected, then it's all good.
But we need laws where these rights come into conflict: if someone's pursuit of happiness involves owning slaves, this is in direct conflict with another's right to life and liberty. And they are ordered in importance - life > liberty > pursuit of happiness. So obviously, slavery should be outlawed. But other things aren't that clear. Federal legislation doesn't impact everyone evenly, and those who are impacted should have a voice. Assuming every "Not Democrat" (or "Not Republican" or "Not X") voice is a racist, dumb person who should be silenced or ignored is a fast path to division and the collapse of a functioning Democracy.
I don't love labels, but I don't think "conservatives" are simply any of those things.
This isn't an original thought, but I think they are mostly afraid of losing their community if they change their mind.
Fear of disconnection is innate and biological. When my trump supporting friends say "I believe it" to somebody suggesting that the Capitol Hill rioters were antifa pretending to be trump supporters, their lack of interest in challenging their own beliefs stems from the risk incurred with disagreeing with their friends and loved ones.
This effect is so strong that our brains give hits of dopamine whenever our beliefs are confirmed. We are not weird to change our minds.
So no. "Conservatives" aren't dumb. Just like the rest of us, they biologically afraid of social disconnection. And all that shouting across the isle makes it harder for them to see "progressives" accepting them.
Republican candidates are more likely to vote on issues I care about in a way that aligns with my values. That alignment is far from perfect, but it's a lot better than it would be with a Democrat, especially a progressive Democrat.
That's why I typically vote Republican, sometimes begrudgingly. Has nothing to do with belonging to a community. In fact, the communities I am a part of rarely discuss politics. We discuss values that inform our politics, but the politics themselves are secondary.
I have absolutely no fear of social disconnection due to my political views. If I was to suddenly start voting democratic, no one in my closest circles would even need to know.
And I care nothing about whether progressives accept me. I simply have very different values and don't believe where they want our culture and country to move is healthy. So, I don't support them in elections. How they feel about me is irrelevant.
1. What are important issues for you that republicans vote the right way on?
2. What are the top issues for you that republicans vote the wrong way on?
1. Abortion is simply the legally sanctioned killing of helpless human beings. I know _many_ single issue voters who begrudgingly voted for trump because of this.
2. Climate change denialism is pretty much anti common sense. Anyone who completely ignores the issue stinks of corruption.
A person can be a staunch supporter of women's rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness but draw the line at a woman's right to end another's life. The "all-or-nothing" approach pushes people into one of two camps that each holds extreme opposing views, and it's happening across the different issues we face today.
Women should not have to walk into a rest stop restroom at night during a road trip, see a man, and then think about whether or not he should be there. And a man should not have the right to be there because he "identifies" as a woman when he really doesn't and is just a pervert in a rest stop bathroom. But with a new law, it then has to go through the court to prove whether he had the right to be there. The damage is done way before that day shows up.
The polarization and simplification meant that democrats couldn't vote against this because it became associated with transphobia. A vote to keep separate bathrooms would mean being canceled and losing their seat. The republicans were villainized, but they have a fairly decent point. Obviously, no one should feel uncomfortable using the restroom, but what unintended consequences come with the law? You can say perverts in bathrooms is an edge case, but I'd argue a trans person being denied a restroom is also an edge case.
Starbucks arguably came up with the best answer with gender-indifferent restrooms that are single occupancy, but this isn't always scalable. There are single occupancy family restrooms in many places, so if someone truly feels unsafe to use a restroom, they could use those. These were options that were put into place without laws.
It's not "right or wrong" or "black and white" on nearly any issue we face today. It's complex, and federal laws, given they impact 330 million Americans, have more unintended consequences than laws enacted at the local or state level. And that's what the republican, conservative party wants - less "big laws" with fewer unintended consequences in favor of state laws that allow people to govern themselves at the local level. It's also why any vote to undermine a State's right to certify its election results flies in the face of conservatism.
But people become who they hang around. So if they are in a vacuum and they only hear that the election was stolen, anything else is fake news, and the president is telling them this, they may seriously believe that democracy is under siege.
Amp it up with technology echo chambers and reinforcing behaviors and you wind up with extreme situations where a group of people storms the capitol.
It's when people don't believe they can end up with similarly distorted views on a topic that they are susceptible to this themselves. This is along the lines of the Lucifer Effect.
The racists during the time of slavery and Jim Crow made no attempt to deny their racism. The large majority of Republicans, including Trump, denounce racism.
The news will find every schmuck with a confederate flag and put them on the TV, but that doesn't explain why a Republican majority Senate passed criminal justice reform and Trump signed it.
> Statistically you’d expect half of people to be dumber than average.
The implication being that one major political party constitutes the entire lower half of the distribution?
This seems to be common when you take the conservative "side" even if it's not really a partisan position you take, simply disagreeing with implications that the entire right are dumb racists.
downvotes are the voice of the unheard.
> This seems to be common when you take the conservative "side" even if it's not really a partisan position you take, simply disagreeing with implications that the entire right are dumb racists.
its common on both sides because its part of the human condition. However hn is one of the few places on the internet where it is even possible to achieve this, despite the downvotes.
I do agree that downvoting (especially on political threads) is not working very well.
I don't even want to be doing this. Trump supports coal. Ajit Pai. He's a pathological liar. Trump sucks.
But a lot of the things he gets wrong actually help him in swing states. There is a lot of coal in Pennsylvania. So lazy opponents can't easily use those things to attack him because it would only get him more votes in places that matter.
And then we end up in a situation where the majority of people hate Trump for reasons that are actually lies, because the truth translates inconveniently to the electoral map and too many people care more about winning no matter the cost.
As a long-time Black Sabbath fan, the RNC's actions in recent days remind me of the lyrics of this song: https://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/black+sabbath/too+late_2001932...
EDIT: It occurs to me that the DNC has done this _to an extent_ with people of colour. However I do believe there is a qualitative difference. Think Bolsonaro vs Ardern.
That's you're theory? Really?
1. Most people on the right are against abortion for the reason that it is against their particular religion, which declares it as murder and murder is wrong. But, the others don't care at all about a woman's right to choose, they just don't want their tax dollars paying for that choice instead of other things they want. It really is that simple. As far as the court goes, that is completely different. The saying goes "you can indict a ham sandwich ", and that is largely true. Courts all over the nation entertain frivolous actions on a daily basis, people love this (Judge Judy), but when cases are preliminary dismissed without the "day in court" faith in the court will be quickly lost by those who believed win or lose, it should have been heard. Each person reading this was raised in a time when they were taught every vote counts, your opinion matters, and to stand up for what you believe in while respecting the opinions of others. The opinion of one side is no longer even listened to, let alone respected. How many of you have ever genuinely tried to explain to someone with a different opinion why you disagree with them? I don't see that much anymore. Not everyone with a different opinion is set in their beliefs. Some may welcome your perspective and shift their viewpoint to yours. It's worth a try, right? Apparently not for most. Instead, the right is vilified, insulted, and they believe they are treated differently and unfairly from the left. Their voices are being systematically taken away through deplatforming. They are being stereotyped and lumped into a single category along with extremists. So, the logical conclusion is that if you isolate, disparage, and discourage someone enough, they will become you've now convinced them they are. Multiply that by 70 million. Instead, try talking to people with the goal of explaining your point of view and why you feel that way. It certainly can't hurt more than what's happening now.
At a certain point, just take the hit. I’m sorry, but one side has more moral politics than the other. I don’t see how this is a debate at this point, and I’m honestly frustrated that people like you keep asking us to have the debate. If anything, it’s the right that keeps crying that they’ve been deplatformed when they’re doing it to themselves by having horrific opinions.
AND the right doesn’t even argue in good faith! Like they just make stuff up. For instance, about ANTIFA being behind the attempted coup on Wednesday. You want us to argue with that?
> about ANTIFA being behind the attempted coup on Wednesday
You want to provide a source for the claim that the entire republican party (or even a significant fraction of it) either (1) supports this claim in particular or (2) makes up these things on a regular basis, as opposed to a tiny (but extreme) faction, identical to the same distribution on the left?
I've seen people on HN make claims that the Antifa violence during the 2020 riots was just a false-flag operation by the feds - so we know that there are people from the other political party who do exactly the same thing. Where's your evidence that there isn't more of them than people in the first party?
Many on the right use critical thinking, however they seem to believe that numbers and “science” can be spun into any narrative the gatekeepers want (whoever they may be).
Most of the schism really seems to be based on trust. Left trusts by default, the right does not. The left trusts that the government knows best, the right does not. The right believes in personal responsibility for running your life (not trusting it to any other party), the left does not, requiring collectivism and social programs.
There's a difference in what and who to trust, but both trust a plenty
I don't agree. The media, as a whole, leans left. Except for comparatively far fewer right leaning news outlets. I don't think I can name a single newspaper that doesn't have a left slant. LA Times, NY Times, WashPo are the giants, plus any of your local city newspapers. People on the right are not likely to trust any of those entities.
For news stations there's CNN, NBC, ABC, which all lean left. For the right, there's Fox and a couple a low-key bum ones like OANN and NewsMax. Again, right leaning people are likely to view most of tv media sources as untrustworthy.
I've seen some of the links shared in right wing forums (I used to frequent one a few years ago), and the sources they link scream "bullshit" to me, and not because I disagree with what they say. It's just that life experience of identifying what is BS and what is not necessarily BS. Some people just will not believe authority, but will believe the first thing they see that goes against mainstream.
PR agencies send their love
Meanwhile people who are informed on the state of actual science say "50% of published research is false."
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jo...
> Second, most research questions are addressed by many teams, and it is misleading to emphasize the statistically significant findings of any single team. What matters is the totality of the evidence.
I think few people would refute this.
If half of the evidence contradicts the other half would it be fair to conclude that we don’t know much about the things we have researched?
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.0039...
Regardless, the argument against discrimination is that one has no CHOICE what race they are born with. Because there is no choice, race does not reflect their invididual merits or lack thereof, and one should not be awarded or punished based on that factor alone. There is also significant variation within a race with regard to IQ or otherwise, that exceeds the difference of the mean value between races
LOL. Only 4 percent of the nonreligious people who participated in the 2017 Baylor Religion Survey voted for Trump. 4 fucking percent.
https://www.baylor.edu/baylorreligionsurvey/index.php?id=942...
Maybe your definition of conservative is not the same as most conservatives, but that’s just how it is.
Sorry to be blunt but this just goes to show how often your "feelings" diverge from objective reality.
That isn't nearly as clear as it seems, because of the incentives the electoral college creates.
Republicans could pick up a lot more votes in places like California or New York if they had any reason to try, but none of those votes help them if they can't flip the state. Spending resources campaigning in California so that it goes to the Democrats by 54 to 46 instead 65 to 35 is a losing strategy, so they don't.
But then that's why the popular vote numbers come out the way they do. If you actually abolished the electoral college, suddenly the foregone conclusion states would matter, everybody's campaign strategy would change and so would all the numbers.
The people the electoral college actually underrepresents are the people of California and Massachusetts. But also Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, etc. The people it overrepresents are the people of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, etc. The swing states. Because they're the only people whose vote can plausibly change the outcome, so they're the only people whose concerns politicians care to address.
Which means you can pretty easily end up in a situation where people from deep red states feel underrepresented, because in practice they are. The same as the people from deep blue states.
With respect to your argument that the EC actually overrepresents swing states, you may be correct. However, the EC bias clearly favors Republicans over Democrats. In 2020, that bias was 3.9% in favor of Republicans, although it varies from election to election[0]. When the size of the bias exceeds the margin of victory for the winner of the popular vote, the popular vote loser takes the EC, as in 2016.
Furthermore, you didn't actually address the most antidemocratic institution of all: the Senate. The Senate is heavily biased towards small states; California (pop 39m) and Wyoming (pop < 1m) each have two senators. The average state is currently much more Republican than the average American, amounting to 6.6% bias[1]. That is to say, Democrats could win by five points nationally (a huge victory given current polarization levels) and still not control the Senate.
Finally, I'm sure that you can end up with a situation wherein conservatives "feel" underrepresented; my whole point is that they objectively are not, so this whole persecution complex evinced by some is completely ridiculous. People are entitled to their feelings; they should also be willing to look at facts and adjust their reactions accordingly.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-11-22/republ...
[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-senates-rural-skew-...
Absent the EC, both parties would have to recalibrate their platforms in order to remain competitive. It would completely upturn the map. You would see Republicans campaigning in New York and Democrats in Texas. Wall St. and Big Oil and Hollywood would gain influence, retirees in Florida and auto workers in the rust belt would lose it. It would redraw all the lines and fundamentally change both of the parties.
I think that's really where you're going wrong. Treating the members of each party as two different species, as though every voter for a given party has uniform shared interests with all the others. There is no such thing as "Republicans" being over-represented. Pennsylvanians are over-represented, which influences the party platforms of both the Republicans and the Democrats. Which allows them both to ignore California and Texas and New York, but also the entire dozen odd little deep red states that are supposed to be the most "over-represented" despite not being competitive at all and consequently being totally ignored by both parties.
> The average state is currently much more Republican than the average American, amounting to 6.6% bias
The obvious flaw in the party-based analysis being that we're currently going into a legislative session in which the Democrats control the Senate, which they do approximately half of the time. Because they adjust their policies to the map.
Also, the purpose of the Senate is to be this way, in the same way that Justices of the Supreme Court are not elected. Senators were not originally elected, they were appointed by the state legislatures. It's by design as a check on the populist tendencies of the House, and causing Senators to be directly elected has only made everything worse by depriving the states of their voice in the federal government and the destroying the restraint on federal power that once implied.
For the reasons I've outlined above, Republicans are overrepresented. To reiterate, it takes more Democratic votes to achieve a majority than it does Republican votes. This is a matter of fact.
> The obvious flaw in the party-based analysis being that we're currently going into a legislative session in which the Democrats control the Senate, which they do approximately half of the time.
But Republicans have controlled the Senate even when Democratic Senators have gotten more votes and represent more people. So Democrats are forced to adjust their policies while Republicans are under much less pressure to do so.
> Also, the purpose of the Senate is to be this way, in the same way that Justices of the Supreme Court are not elected.
When the Senate was created, the difference in population between the largest and smallest states was 12x. Today it is 68x. If you still think this is a feature rather than a bug, you and I have fundamentally different ideas about what democracy should be.
This will be my final comment as all those who keep telling me that it's my duty as a liberal to engage in dialog with the other side also seem to downvote my comments to oblivion when I try. Ciao.
Half the population is dumber than average.
Statistics aren't always reliable, but somewhere around 1/3 of American adults believe that climate change is a hoax, and evolution is a lie.
What will happen next? We feel that "the other side" seems to be all around, almost half the population. Example: many who oppose abortion probably also believe Black Lives Matter.
What does that have to do with what most people believe or whether most people are dumb or not?
They have been discouraged from making threats, being racist, etc. If that is their two cents, it's not worth two cents. If they can't have a civil discussion without threats, racism, bigotry, etc, again, it's not worth two cents. This is they key, they KEEP coming back with vile speech. No one deplatforms them for simply having DIFFERENT opinions, they're deplatformed for having violent, racist, bigoted opinions. You can't equate silencing dissent from not tolerating hate speech.
There's plenty of left-wing conspiracy theories. The current ones seem to be that the Capitol Police were allowing it to happen (not just through incompetence). This is given a huge amount of credence, but I'm willing to bet that it will mostly be proven to be conspiracy thinking and hysteria.
It's actually a bit exhausting.
It's not at all clear that the police are "opening gates" on that one shakey zoom shot (hundreds of people, but it's just one zoom shot that shows it, hmmm). It looks to me like an officer has their hand forced aside as a large number of protesters push the barrier, which looks a bit like they are "opening the gate" (it's not a gate). And they do abandon the post once they're outnumbered and no longer have a barrier, so what? If there's a shot from another angle that makes the police look better, I expect very few people on the left will want to share it.
I don't expect any real thanks for pointing this out. Rather, like hysterical conspiracy theorists, I expect people will then say "Yeah, well ... how about the selfie?" (You mean, the cop who was encouraging criminals to post evidence of their crime?). That's what conspiracy theorists do, they don't stop and critically reassess their position when they're shown that a piece of evidence is weak. They don't realise that they're caught in a bubble where poor evidence is amplified as long as it supports their position, they just assume that the debunker is a bad guy and reach for a new piece of evidence to use as a weapon.
Having said that, the blame for that in my view lies with the right - where else is the critique going to come from?
The far left doesn’t seem to get an easy ride when it comes to the street: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polices-tepid-respo...
The reality is that most Trump supporters are focused on economics and governmental overreach, not race. They are angry that businesses are shut down, and people are unemployed. They are angry that, over the past several decades, production in this country has dropped to near-nonexistence. They are angry that the lockdowns have made it impossible, even in small towns and other places without significant Covid problems, to simply work and live their lives semi-normally.
Then, the straw that I believe broke the camel's back, is the way most conservatives view taxes and the "stimulus"
In short, the conservative view is that the US government took $2700 from every citizen (much more if you look at the long-tail economic effects) and 'gave back' $600. At the same time, even a cursory read of the omnibus spending would be enough to make anyone's blood boil, let alone someone who feels like they, or people they care about, have lost (or are losing) everything. It's easy to see how the phrase 'Taxation is theft' is picking up so much steam right now.
The entire time they are dealing with this, people call them a Nazi or White Supremacist. They get banned on Social Media for sharing (now verified by left-of-center Media) stories about Hunter Biden, or concerns about the election. To them, it feels like they are being silenced and oppressed. When the media/social media censors stories and information (and even raw footage) it increases tensions. 'Over the target' has become a phrase in common use for when someone is banned or a story gets censored that seems to go against the mainstream narrative.
The Hunter Biden story is one such example. When that story launched it was discredited and called fake news, today the same institutions who called it a lie are publishing that there is an FBI investigation into Hunter Biden. Many saw that story, saw the leaked photos (many of which are extremely unsettling), and then saw the story getting silenced and discredited.
Looking at comments on HN, a site where the average commenter has far above average education and income, it is easy to find people openly commenting that they do not care about the opinions of these people. They openly comment that 'anyone who would storm the capital is an idiot' or that these people are racist.
Finally, after all is said and done, the reaction from the left in Washington isn't to reduce tensions and try to reach peace. Nor is it to address the concerns of the people publicly. Instead, they are ramping up the tensions and saying that people are guilty of treason - a crime punishable by death. You have elected officials calling everyone who was there, whether they were violent offenders (criminals) or not, terrorists. Now, they're calling this riot 'as bad as 9/11' where thousands of Americans were killed.
Just to be clear - I don’t think the capitol rioters views were legitimate, but I do think the views of a lot of people on the right are, and the rioters thought they were acting with their support.
The stimulus component was roughly 900B, of which each American (there's roughly 330M of us) will only receive $600. Of course, this is all accomplished by [0]printing obscene amounts of USD and saddling Americans with a debt that will likely never be repayable. [1]At present, the debt to GDP ratio exceeds 130%.
[0] https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/money/2020/05/12/coronavir...
[1] https://www.usdebtclock.org/
I think two things are going on here: 1.) There is a radicalized minority of conservatives that believe in Q, storm the capital, etc etc. I think this minority is growing in size, as their publicity alone is lending them credence. It's easier to get someone to believe what they want to believe, than the truth if it goes against their world view, etc etc.
2.) The large majority of R voters are not off the wagon lunatics, and many claim they liked trump the least of all the R cannidates in 2016. But I think huge portions (*of both sides*) are so conditioned to whatever group of beliefs they hold, that they will never switch or compromise. So now we have a bat shit crazy president, because he out primaried several indistinguishable moderate opponents in 2016, and the whole R side (that is not stark raving mad) went with him, purely because they couldnt even start to entertain the thought of ever voting for a D. And now some of them are becoming radicalized, and it's kinda scary when people you know to be rational are asking you about election fraud... remember, its easy to believe what you want to believe... Below is something I posted some time ago, where I tried to outline how I thought many trump voters rationalized voting for him.
>>. What I fail to understand, as a foreigner, is how someone can vote for a president who is an outright liar. Look no further than his last tweets as of right now.
I don't fully understand it myself, but as it's been explained to me by trump supporters is: "don't listen to what he says, look at all the good policy, look at how hard he is on China, look at how many jobs there were pre covid, etc etc". Whether or not you see his policy as good, some people do, and they are willing to overlook his madness because they think he is achieving good things. (actions speak louder than words, etc) Some of his supports do bring up his appointing of tons of federal judges, and this what I would probably consider the most valid reason for voting for him (if one is aligned to a more conservative viewpoint), as his judges are more likely to enforce (or not) the laws that align with "traditional" republican political ideals, and that's the what matters to the voters.
Or also because they've always voted R, and Biden= socialism (which is worse than satan worship according to some people's moral codes..), or Biden= Let our cites get burnt down by rioters. This goes back to the, it's easier to vote against someone than for someone. And now that I put this all in words, this second justification is probably what I heard the most during trumps 4 years, some peoples defense of trump always came down to, "but hillary would be way worse". Some level of cognitive dissonance definitely plays into it.
Also having some subset of the population support a populist, pathologically lying sociopath is not necessarily a new or uniquely American problem. It's just that the problems seem to be amplified when they are American, cuz everyone is watching.
No - they aren't.
The answer is very easy: They believe Donald Trump.
Trump has credibility in their minds, and when he repeats the lie, over and over - that 'the election was stolen' - they believe it.
On election night - he literally came out and said 'If you count the fake votes, Biden won' - declaring mass fraud, without any evidence.
His followers believe him.
Contemplate the implications of that.
These people do not watch CNN, they watch Fox, OAN, Breitbart etc. where the falsehoods are propagated, or at least never debunked.
They are simply misinformed.
On CNN they were interviewing quite a number of protesters and unanimously 'they believed the election was stolen'.
A close observer will have noticed that the court cases were thrown out, that Homeland Security and the DoJ cleared it etc. - but that truthful information is not passed on to people in the Trump Bubble.
Trump's base don't get their news from sources that will explicitly and clearly debunk the conspiracies.
It's important to contemplate what this means: it's almost entirely not a political divide - it's mostly a divide based on what the facts are.
Consider the corollary: Trump won the election, but there was point-blank, irrefutable evidence that he rigged it. The DoJ, Homeland Security - everyone - points out his fraud.
Trump could merely deny the allegations, declare that he is 'under attack' and rally people to his cause on Twitter and Facebook.
His followers would believe him.
Meanwhile - how would you feel? Literally the election was stolen by Trump. Point-blank evidence.
Would you hit the streets in protest?
Would you 'occupy DC'?
Millions would be enraged, we'd see protests like we've never seen before.
So just contemplate that a considerable number of Americans are completely misinformed and deeply believe the election was stolen and that the Republic is being usurped.
From that perspective, their actions seem more rational.
I've been watching the right-wing media carefully - and while Fox mostly doesn't openly support Trump's claims, they don't spend a lot of time debunking, and they 'go along with it' in a sneaky way by saying 'Millions feel there was fraud and their voices must be heard' - essentially avoiding taking the position that Fox agrees there was fraud, but rather sympathizing with the angry masses who they darn well know are misinformed.
FYI it's actually considerably easier to 'cast doubt' on elections where there is always some small degree of fraud whereupon the tiniest case can be used as 'evidence'.
This insurrection is not about racism or any of that (these things overlap obviously) it's an election based on Fake News.
I know that HN is pretty serious about 'Free Speech' - but folks - Twitter is Trump's primary tool of misinformation - it's his daily dose of koolaid and falsehoods to quite a few million who absolutely take his word for it.
And finally - the opposite is also true: these followers assume that CNN, NBC, NPR etc. are entirely made up of lies. Nothing on those channels has any credibility in their eyes.
This is a revolution based on Fake Information.
e.g. "I was there, and it was antifa dressed as Trump supporters that broke into the Capitol. We believe in law and order and would never do anything like this ..." followed by statements saying that they are going to take over buildings in DC again on January 19th.
There's something deeper here, among many of them, than simply consuming different media.
There are 1000 random people at an event, there's no doubt that there were a few ANTIFA interlopers there, but that doesn't really mean anything.
A single cop 'opening a gate' doesn't mean much either.
Neither does the Republican guy who tried to prove electoral fraud by himself, committing a single act of voter fraud.
Most of the mainstream media is highly credible. Biased - but credible.
The fact that a few individuals maybe planned on doing something 'really crazy' doesn't actually mean there's a larger movement there either.
That's why we depend on the press to try to get a generally factual and broad view of the situation. Watching a mix of CNN, PBS, Fox, NBC etc. will give most people a rounded purview of the situation, even if there is a lot of bias.
Watching Fox since the election has been a very interesting experience because they cannot support Trump's false claims they have to have 'integrity'. But what some of them are doing (Ted Cruze as well) is saying 'people feel the election was stolen and they have a right to be heard' - basically they've taken the line of sympathizing with people who are angry, though they full well know the anger is based on absolute falsehood. Fox has been losing viewers to OAN where they take a 'hardcore Pro-Trump' position no matter the facts, which is what many want to hear.
On many Fox articles, the comments are split 50/50 with many hating on Trump, many supporting him. OAN and Breibart however, it's full on Trump. The language is scary, many calling for violence against Pence etc. as a 'traitor' for literally not committing Sedition and overturning the election on behalf of Trump.
So 'the truth' is going to be a real problem for the next little while.
The others, NPR, NBC, etc, I think you'd be surprised how many Republicans watch them for a differing point of view. There are many republicans who are more libertarian, classical liberal, or independent leaning than classically conservative leaning.
That's part of the problem though with this argument, is that the "right" or "conservative" or "republican" can actually be very different things. It seems that most people on hacker news lump them all into the same category.
Also, not every conservative is an over-the-top Trump supporter. I'm definitely not. It doesn't mean I don't like some of the things he did, but he's got a lot of issues and was FAR from my ideal candidate.
We're not talking about 'Conservatives' or 'Republicans' because Trump is none of that, this has nothing to do with ideology.
Trump is neither a Conservative nor a Republican really.
Hardcore Trump fans are Trump fans, not ideological fans.
It's a cult of personality.
His words are the source of Truth to most supporters and that's that.
They believe him when he cast doubt on the election, and enough of them believe him completely.
That's not a 'left/right' or ideological issue.
I have highly conservative economic policy views, and they are the result of both education and personal experience.
I grew up in increasing poverty as a kid, culminating in facing homelessness in the 2008 housing crisis. I saw the effects first hand of several policies sold by "progressive" politicians to me and my family as instruments of change that would expand the welfare of the nation to us, and for several years hoped they actually would.
Yet each policy meant to help us, only ever seemed to do the opposite. I drove a car that I was lucky if I could get started each day to go to college and to work, yet the liberal "cash for clunkers" program meant to give people an opportunity to buy a new vehicle meant that not only could I not afford a new car even after the additional "cash", but now the used car parts market was so expensive because of the sudden destruction of "clunkers", it also made keeping my car running nearly impossible.
A healthcare bill that I hoped would fund my parent's healthcare needs ended up giving us a choice - pay for a plan we couldn't afford with deductibles so high we would never be able to use it, or take our chances that the IRS would never collect on the individual mandate.
Each step of the way, liberal politicians would pass something on the notion that it was to help people like me, only for it to hurt me, but even worse, I was now "racist" and "dumb" for opposing them.
I reached a point where I no longer wanted government to help me be "equal", I just wanted them to leave me alone and stop making it harder than it already was. Yet I kept being told this elitist group of leaders in Washington knew better than me, even as with each "experiment" they were left completely unaffected by the consequences that I was left with.
After 4 years of college towards a computer science degree, I'm incredibly grateful for my education, and I have since been able to do incredible things for my family with my income from a career I love.
I now have the freedom to advocate for the same liberal policies my co-workers advocate for, knowing that whether they work or not, I will be wholly unaffected. This way, I could be easily accepted and free to voice my political opinion along everyone else, without fear of being called a bigot.
But my experience growing up is exactly why I believe what I believe, and I can promise anyone willing to listen that, for as strongly as you believe you are representing the welfare of the poor, or of minorities, so do I. Not out of racism or ill intent, but precisely the opposite - my own experience, and my desire to help others with what helped me.
My education served to expand my mind to be open to everyone's perspective in a way that I feel gave me empathy. Empathy to see that, while my experience drives me to conservative fiscal policy and socially libertarian policy, I would never want to judge someone else's motives based solely on their political persuasion. Others likely had different life experiences that I would do well to learn from.
To me, the goal of an education is the ability to have empathy for multiple, potentially conflicting views at once, and make decisions based on that. I really struggle with the notion that many seem to have that, instead, being educated seems to mean "empathize with a single viewpoint, and make decisions for everyone based on that, with the assumption that I must be more correct in my assertion than the people for whom I'm deciding, because I'm educated and ...
They might not literally be banned from Twitter, but I have seen many people attempt to make reasoned comments like this be effectively deplatformed, shunned, and shamed for making such comments.
The GOP is only 29% of the electorate by party ID, 31% by share of eligible population voting for their 2020 Presidential nominee. Not “half of the population”.
But whether the members of the GOP are “dumb, racist, and all those other labels” kind of has nothing to do with what you quoted, which is about whether lawsuits filed by a narrow segment of the party in this cycle are overwhelmingly legally without merit or are somehow being systematically reject by rampant conspiracy or bias against the President in both state and federal judiciaries, which in the relevant states and the Federal system lean significantly Republican, and where many of the specific decisions have been handed down by Republican judges (some appointed by this Administration.)
That's not a question about whether the GOP membership as a whole racist, stupid, or whatever else, but whether a present President and his allies are filing lawsuits in bad faith as part of propaganda campaign to publicly discredit their defeat in the election.
Have you met people? How would credit card companies, casinos and multi level marketing have a business model if that was not the case?
I.e from Dictatorship > One party > Two party > De-facto Two party (first past the post Parliamentary) > Coalition government with proportional representation.
The huge advantage of coalition government being that unless you have extreme views, your politicians are always at the table so your views are never completely ignored for 4 or 8 years. So yes I’m arguing that the US is actually quite undemocratic compared to other first world countries, and the U.K. where I am is not much better.
A man was shot and killed by the police in a town not far from me. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/man-shot-by-newton-poli...
So of course the circus shows up https://patch.com/massachusetts/newton/newton-residents-prot...
There were certainly failures that led to this man's death, but all of the failures happened before he picked up the knife and went downstairs to the candy shop. I don't see how protesting the police helps.
Also the MSM seems intent on telling me the only acceptable thought is that Bruce Jenner is a proud, strong, beautiful woman. I don't think I want them as the arbiters of reality.
This is weird, because while I’ve seen this specific complaint with alight variation in wording enough to think it must be a potent right-wing meme (in the Dawkins replicating unit to of behavior) sense endemic among a certain segment of the right, I've never actually encountered anything in the MSM approximating what it describes, and, despite that segment of thr right’s frequent use of it to paint the media as allies with the Left, also don't find that it describes the Left, either, which while it tends to accept that Caitlyn Jenner is a woman, isn't particularly inclined to agree with any of the other descriptors. (And is, in fact, attacked by a different segment of the Right for that, since Jenner is politically conservative Republican Christian trans woman.)
So how exactly can you say "illegitimate claims been promoted as legitimate"?
Thousands of dead people, illegals, underage voters, poll watchers getting kicked out etc and they still want people to believe everything is normal?
Here's an entire list of dead voters from Michigan alone and their obituaries:
https://justpaste.it/8zt04
Can easily be verified here:
https://mvic.sos.state.mi.us/Voter/Index/#yourclerk
--------
EDIT:
It seems like HN has banned me from commenting replies to the reply to this comment.
They have deleted the evidence now. 1 month ago when I tested this, it worked and it specifically gave me this:
CATHERINE,KELLY,1915,48708
Month: April
and it worked:
Absentee ballot Election date 11/3/2020
Application received 10/6/2020
Ballot sent 10/6/2020
Ballot received 10/13/2020
Here's the obituary:
https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/catherine-kelly-obitu...
It sounds like MI has now purged the data to hide evidence. Here's the data which was even retrieved using a script.
https://pastebin.com/XEi5Uy6t
I even have saved messages of me showing this to multiple friends of mine.
No, the two dead voters you mentioned is firstly NOT from Michigan, it's from Georgia. Also that two dead voters is also wrong. It's thousands in Georgia but the SOS (who is a Trump hater) refused to even give the list of voters. So they expect the public to just take their word without showing the actual voter rolls. "Trust me, everything's fine, nothing to see here, move along".
There were two people who had obituaries that showed up in the voter rolls...twice. In both cases, a quick lookup in the phone book suggests that two people with the same name (but different initials) live in the state.
So, thanks for the example that the Michigan election rolls are correct?
Texas followed the protocol, which included filing a motion for leave to file a bill of complaint in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court, however denied the motion.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/do...
https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/121120zr_p86...
155, ORIG. TEXAS V. PENNSYLVANIA, ET AL.
The State of Texas's motion for leave to file a bill of complaint is denied for lack of standing under Article III of the Constitution. Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections. All other pending motions are dismissed as moot.
Statement of Justice Alito, with whom Justice Thomas joins: In my view, we do not have discretion to deny the filing of a bill of complaint in a case that falls within our original jurisdiction. See Arizona v. California, 589 U. S. ___ (Feb. 24, 2020) (Thomas, J., dissenting). I would therefore grant the motion to file the bill of complaint but would not grant other relief, and I express no view on any other issue.
Example: The Texas motion to the Supreme Court to bring a case against Pennsylvania and other battleground states did not include Trump or his campaign as a plaintiff. Trump did, however, seek permission to join the lawsuit. That was doubly odd, considering the reason the states thought they could go directly to the top court was its "original jurisdiction" for suits between states.
Either way, does the defeat of the states' petition to the Supreme Court count toward the number of suits lost?
I believe the source for "more than fifty lawsuits" is Marc Elias, an admittedly left-leaning lawyer who's been keeping track. You might prefer to cast off his conclusion based on who he bats for. But you could also search for him and find his list.
They seem to forget that many on the left fought tooth and nail historically for things we now consider for granted but society wasn't on board for in the past.
And maybe some ideas just aren't that appealing and they'd do better to pull other ones to advocate for.
And yet Parlor is being de-platformed specifically because it refuses to police the portion of the conservative conversation that is so. It's not because they believe in smaller government or lower taxes.
Conservatism plays this game where it uses this violent rhetoric casually and then acts all surprised when its own members act on that rhetoric. They tell each other that anyone who disagrees with them is an anti-american who want to make this a communist/socialist/fascist state. That voter fraud is rampant and that they will need to overthrow the government with violence. They do this is, in much more graphic detail than I'm using here.
Then, when something violent occurs, we're all just supposed to sit here and pretend like it's just some happenstance and we shouldn't judge them by their own inaction in stamping out the rhetoric from their midst.
It is clear many people struggle with adult life and can’t handle an open platform to share whatever is on thwir mind.
On top of which, the decision process for secession was (shockingly, I know!) not democratic in the least. The Union didn't need a "Home Guard" to enforce conscription, but the South did.
And it is really easy to see they are a minority. Most of alternative platforms like Parler have a small number of users and attract a very narrow audience which talks only about politics. Usually these sites have bad user experience which means there's not a lot of designers who would want to work for them, they are really bad in technical execution meaning there's not really many programmers who want to work for them. They don't advertise meaning there's not a lot of marketing experts wanting to work for them. There's not a lot of investors willing to invest in those platforms, no one wants to advertise on their sites. All this can lead to a conclusion that the users affected by deplatforming and censorship on mainstream social media is a really small group of people. They believe they are half of the voter base, while in reality the majority of society, from conservatives to liberals, rejects their world views and this is why they are marginalized.
If it was really half of the voter base they wouldn't have any issues. There would be some viable, popular alternative social media platforms used by that half of voter base. Among that half you'd have no issue with finding anything you need to have a widespead, catch-all platform - you'd find investors, you'd find companies willing to advertise, the user base would have diverse interests so that you can discuss anything on those platforms like on mainstream social media, and not just politics, conspiracy theories and memes. The fact that they constantly can't find support means that they are a fringe movement.
It's simply not possible that all investors, programmers, designers, hosting companies, payment processors, advertisers, etc. are all run by the left half of the voter base. That is simply statistically unlikely.
Then there would be no need to ban them.
"Society at large" isn't doing any of this - a few billionaires in silicon valley are - that's the issue. Who is this, "them" you speak of? The false, binary left/right paradigm is a contrived illusion used to fool and manipulate simple people. What speech isn't okay? What's the standard used to silence people from the public square forever? There is none. Its an ever-evolving, subjective imposition of censorship. What "bad" speech results in your erasure? Many are suggesting its, "violent behavior". Others say, "incitement to violence". Many on capitol hill are saying, "aiding and abetting" those who would incite violence. Anyone who is informed and aware of what the phrase, "aiding and abetting" has been construed to mean since 9/11 knows just how amorphous that phrase is and how wide a net it can cast. If you defend the principle of unfettered free speech (as I do), can that be considered, "aiding and abetting" violence? Nobody has accused Parler of engaging in violence, but merely offering a platform for people to engage in free discussion is good enough to have them erased from the public square in a coordinated effort by tech oligarchs. This is exactly the concept of "prior-restraint" that our founders warned against. Silencing people because of what they might say. Watching sitting politicians openly calling for a, "domestic war on terror" should absolutely terrify anyone who has been paying attention to the results of our original, ongoing, "war on terror". Anyone who doesn't fully understand that any deviation from the official narrative on any issue will be silenced and considered, "domestic terrorism" has their head buried deep in the sand. How long until a comment like this is considered, "aiding and abetting domestic terrorism"? How long until Hacker News will be forced to ban me and censor comments like this in order to protect themselves from being silenced ala Parler? Even worse, how bad will the self-censorship be by people and platforms who are terrified of being erased, or put on a no-fly list, or have their bank accounts closed, or being subject to government sanctions and criminal charges, for saying the wrong thing?
Hunter S. Thompson made a prophetic quote after the towers fell on 9/11 that is very poignant in light of what we are seeing today:
The towers are gone now, reduced to bloody rubble, along with all hopes for Peace in Our Time, in the United States or any other country. Make no mistake about it: We are At War now — with somebody — and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.
If we lived in a country with a functional government these monopolies would have been broken up long ago and the internet would be regulated as the public utility that it is.
A persuasive argument can be made that coordinated efforts by tech giants to block rivals such as Parler is in fact illegal. In many ways it reminds me of the (ultimately successful) 1998 anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft which ironically allowed the rise of Google, Twitter, and Facebook who are today engaging in similar behavior. Although perhaps if the Microsoft lawsuit were brought today, Microsoft could simply argue that they were afraid of the "hate speech" that might occur on these new platforms and were therefore justified in using their massive market share to stifle all competition.
They are being deplatformed because their speech is violent and damaging—in many cases it’s literal incitement to violence. Their legal cases are being rejected because they have no legal merit. The mainstream media refuse to take them seriously because they have again and again shown themselves to be bad faith actors, peddlers of unsubstantiated conspiracy, outright liars, and so on. I don’t need anybody to tell me any of the above secondhand—they themselves, via Twitter accounts and so on, are primary sources.
All things are not equal. Order and chaos are not equivalent. If a rabid cougar gets loose in a shopping mall, it does not earn the right to be there just by being there (de facto) and being really, really mad. It’s going to hurt people if we let it do its thing, and we take whatever measures we have to to get rid of it for the greater good of society.
Convince me I'm wrong...
Aren't you, in this comment, doing the same exact thing for which those people are getting deplatformed?
I read that as a "if they get killed that's a win for society".
Would you feel comfortable if somebody said the same thing about other categories of people?
However, when you are on the receiving end of “societal net gain,” it is a much tougher pill to swallow.
In other words, personal sacrifice by choice is laudable; mandatory personal sacrifice is the opposite.
The expression has never been “What’s good for the gander is good for the goose”
Glenn Greenwald, who I respect a lot and was instrumental in breaking the mass surveillance in US by intelligence agencies recently spoke about these very issue:
" My insistence that we look at the other side of the ledger — the costs and dangers not only from such attacks but also the “solutions” implemented in the name of the stopping them — did not come from indifference towards those deaths or a naive views of those responsible for them. It was instead driven by my simultaneous recognition of the dangers from rights-eroding, authoritarian reactions imposed by the state, particularly in the immediate aftermath of a traumatic event. "
and then this:
"
It has long been clear that, in the post-Trump era, media outlets looking to keep viewers hooked, and government officials looking to increase their power, will do everything possible to center and inflate the threat posed by right-wing factions. I’ve said this more times than I can count over the last year at least.
Like all inflated threats, this one has a kernel of truth. As is true of every faction, there are right-wing activists filled with rage and who are willing to do violence. Some of them are dangerous (just as some Muslims in the post-9/11 era, and some Antifa nihilists, were and are genuinely violent and dangerous). But as was true of the Cold War and the War on Terror and so many other crisis-spurred reactions, the other side of the ledger — the draconian state powers clearly being planned and urged and prepared in the name of stopping them — carry its own extremely formidable dangers.
Refusing to consider those dangers for fear of standing accused of downplaying the threat is the most common tactic authoritarian advocates of state power use. Less than twenty-four hours after the Capitol breach, one sees this tactic being wielded with great flamboyance and potency, and it is sure to continue long after January 20. "
We have to do our best. The fact that it’s a hard problem to solve without going too far doesn’t give us license to throw up our hands, cast off from reality, and inhabit a dreamland where there is no difference between a truth and a falsehood.
"They" are literally the ones attacking and threatening the seat of American government. This isn't a thought experiment at this point.
"in defense of looting"
And while I'm at it - why isn't China being deplatformed?
They literally just posted on their embassy twitter account saying they fixed minority women who were "baby-making machines."
One can only guess they mean sterilization.
It's obvious who's allowed to be inhumane and who isn't.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/chinese-embassy-tweet-u...
Justifying around the "greater good" is so obviously fraught and subjective.
And since the workers in tech are overwhelmingly liberal, they will undoubtedly bias policies of mass communication platforms to disallow opposition.
Oddly enough people so concerned with minority representation will steam-roll minorities when they make blind "greater good" majoritarianism the norm.
And nowadays the definition of "harm" has been trivialized so far that really practically anything is a target.
Ok so I guess economic circumstances can never be oppressive.
So if a thieve steals all your stuff and you starve...that's not violence!
* saying that economic circumstances are "oppressive," then trying to draw this to "violence"
* a claim that if a thief steals all of your stuff, you "starve" -- please give an example of one person who "starved" because BLM looters stole their stuff
* implying that being in a situation where you are "starving" is the same as actually being violently attacked, i.e. shot, stabbed, bludgeoned, etc.
You are 100% sure that nobody who lost a job because his place of work was destroyed in riots is not starving? Not everybody is so privileged to have enough savings to support himself after loosing a job.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kristallnacht
Surely the more apt analogy is the systemic violence our state inflicts on Black people, rather than the protests that arose in response to it.
Unless I misunderstood it this statement implies that a window smashing person would as well attack another humane being. It's not true. These acts are different, require different motivations and a different mentality/personality traits to follow through.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[1] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
...if you attempt to stop them from smashing said window it is likely, yes. This happened a few times in USA in the past few months.
The acts are obviously different, if they were the same we would not have this discussion.
Have you ever seen Antifa in action?
It's a bad faith argument you're arguing against, which I'm sure you see, just want to call it out.
Why should anyone engage with your arguments when they are easily debunked both on principle, and with evidence widely available online? Why should anyone engage with your arguments when they are made in bad faith?
More to the point, can you demonstrate that you aren't trolling?
Only if you read it in the least charitable way possible and in the context of unverified claims from fringe figures like Adrian Zenz. It's a bad tweet, but the literal reading is that due to "emancipation" they are no longer only "baby making machines". Not even CCP propagandists are clumsy enough to admit to forced sterilization in a public forum.
Their "Crown Prince" assassinates a dissident journalist by placing a plastic bag over his head to suffocate him while his fiance waits outside the embassy in her car.
And leaders like president Rafael Reif at MIT invite this brutal dictator onto the MIT campus in order to thank him for his donation to the Media Lab in a photo op covered by the newspapers, presumably as a form of reputation laundering and because Rafael Reif cares about human rights about as much as he cares about the sexual abuse of 12 year-old girls.
Why is the Crown Prince's violence "more legitimate" than folks who perhaps mistakenly think the election was stolen from them and feel the need to break a few windows in order to protest the ballot count?
I agree that revolutions are real, that many have happened in the past, and presumably more will in the future.
I see nothing done except “use tribalism to decide.”
I disagree. You don't need tribalism, for instance, to see that somebody spreading lies and conspiracy theories in a transparent attempt to undermine confidence in our elections is going to do an immense amount of damage to the institutions of our democracy if he isn't muzzled.
We have to remember that truth is real, that people can act in good faith, and simply do the best we can. Perfect is the enemy of good enough.
For instance, if you tell me that two plus two equals five, I can count out two sets of two coins, then put them all together, count them again, and see that the answer is 4. So in that case I will be confident in calling you a liar.
You could, of course, say I'm wrong.
Have you defined the term “two”? You didn’t here.
“But everybody knows what ‘two’ is! You’re being facetious.”
No, not really. Most of the ranting here comes from
1. not precisely defining, and agreeing to, the terms that are being used in discussion, or
2. misinterpreting, intentionally or not, how others are using a term (so easy because the term was not defined properly by the poster in the first place)...
This provides the opportunity to reincarnate a long-neglected topic of study, closely connected to San Francisco, known as General Semantics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_semantics
If this “discussion” occurred among US intellectuals 70 years ago, someone would have already made my observation about defining terms.
A basic tenet: If nobody is defining and gaining an acceptance by others of the terms used in a discussion, you will get intellectually nowhere in your discussion and you will come to no agreement...or...each of you will think an agreement means something different. Dead waste of photons...
Soviet communists hated the idea at the time. “How can you rile up the masses if they objectively and rationally discussed things” seemed to be the concern. Ironic, because if the German people had used the basic techniques in the Nazi 1930s, there would have been 50% more young Russian men alive in the 1950s. Which is why it was so popular among the young intellectuals in the US after WWII who really didn’t want another war.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/42573948?seq=1
It is particularly appropriate for a Bay Area group since one of the leading proponents was S.I. Hayakawa who was President of San Francisco State University and former US Senator for California. His book, Language in Thought and Action, was a popular explanation of General Semantics for normal people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_in_Thought_and_Action
It was a Book-of-the-Month club selection.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_the_Month
Sold a million copies and was his ticket to politics. An easy and pleasant read even today.
If you pursue General Semantics further, skip the esoterica by the founder Korzybski. It is sort of Eselen-culty without any nudity, so, what’s the point?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esalen_Institute
In some contexts, I might love to talk for hours about what ‘2’ really is, but in this particular context the absurdity of following that rabbit hole is kind of the whole point: you can surely dissemble for hours if I press you on the ‘2’ issue, but what that amounts to here is you (the general you) retreating into intellectual masturbation to avoid admitting that there’s a difference between a truth and a lie (or directly arguing otherwise, though I think the same pitfalls apply there). I write comments like the one you replied to because I like to test what level of mental gymnastics these people are willing to resort to to avoid admitting that we can make any sort of factual statement about the world.
Often, as in this case, I don’t hear back.
BLM leaders who explicitly called for violence, arson and looting were never "fact-checked". Not until they started openly talking about murdering whites.
Face it - this is because the Twitter CEO actively dislikes Trump and has little to do with any sort of violent speech.
Go ahead, I'll wait. You won't find anyone, because it didn't happen.
OTOH, the Proud Boys did explicitly call for violence, arson, and looting during the BLM rights, and their leader admitted as much in a live television interview.
https://twitter.com/MarinaMedvin/status/1299930096472657920
https://nypost.com/2020/06/25/blm-leader-if-change-doesnt-ha...
https://therightscoop.com/portland-black-lives-matter-leader...
Regarding whites should be "wiped out" https://www.dailywire.com/news/blm-leader-says-whites-sub-hu...
Black Lives Matter leader justifies rioting in interview with Tomi Lahren: https://www.foxnews.com/media/black-lives-matter-president-r...
“When the fires were burning, and people were chanting, I just felt liberated for a brief moment, and I felt for one of the only times in my life that the government had no control over me," said Newsome.
Now replace Newsome by a Trump supporter. Suddenly it needs "suppression".
Similarly, there is no "video" in which BLM speakers advocate killing cops. The video does not exist; the transcript was made up in its entirety by right-wing extremist Paul Watson, a British neo-Nazi.
And the twitter quote you lead off with: was made up by the poster, along with her other tweets, which are easily debunked by visiting the posts she links to as evidence.
Next time you might want to actually do some follow-up evidence before you blindly swallow right-wing extremist lies.
Given how closely aligned your links are with neo-Nazi extremists, I'm not going to engage further.
Did not downvote you. But your reply just fascinates me. How do you even compare "burning down the system" as a metaphor for voting ? Do you even truly recognise your own bias here where Trumps tweets are taken as a "incitement to violence" whereas any statement made by a BLM leader is played down as peaceful ?
What is being made up here precisely ? Here is another BLM protester https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/blm-protester-caught...
Ridiculously justifying Looting as "Reparations" https://nypost.com/2020/08/13/blm-organizer-who-called-looti... (This even came up in the Chicago Tribune btw not just your "neo-nazi-news")
How much more evidence will you need ?
He cited it. You're refusing to acknowledge it.
> The guy saying we are going to "burn down the system" did not actual want people to burn down the system. If you had read the entire quote, you would have seen that it was a metaphor for voting.
False. If you had read the article, you would have seen what he said next: "All right? And I could be speaking figuratively. I could be speaking literally. It’s a matter of interpretation"
That's literally as close as you can get to inciting violence without getting in legal trouble. This is a BLM leader inciting violence, full stop.
> neo-Nazi
> neo-Nazi
> neo-Nazi
All labels, no arguments. This is called "anti-intellectualism" as well as "ad-hominem". The fact that you refuse to acknowledge the valid example GP presented to your challenge, in addition to your absence of any sort of logic whatsover, show pretty conclusively that you're not actually interested in holding a debate - just slandering those who don't agree with you.
Why is this so hard for people?
Double standard much?
5 people died. 50 officers were wounded, some seriously enough that they are still in the hospital.
Multiple protestors had zip ties and other means of restraint on them, knives, and guns, and on their social media profiles were promoting violence against legislators.
This wasn't protesting. It was terrorism. And these terrorist attacks were organized and coordinated on Parler and other social media.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/capitol-rio...
[1] https://www.insider.com/multiple-people-shot-dead-kentucky-i...
It makes a fairly big difference surely? It's odd that nobody seems to mention that aspect when they bring this up.
The puppet account didn't even bother to read his source; he simply posted it based on the title.
Objectively false - you didn't read the article again. It says "In Louisville, Kentucky, early Monday, a man was shot dead during a protest against the death of Breonna Taylor." right in the middle.
Other HN commenters who are acting in good faith: I invite you to click the article and C-f for that text. Yes, not all of the deaths were at the protests - my apologies for not reading carefully - but the claim that none of them are is factually incorrect.
> puppet
You've been continually resorting to ad-hominems and content-less fallacies, labels, and accusations. This is anti-intellectual.
You are not acting in good faith by deliberating leaving out the most important part of the paragraph, or the article, which repeatedly points out that none of the actual shootings were related to the protests.
One thing I don't see mentioned is scale of death vs. scale of demonstration. There was a relatively small number of people in Washington, and in one day, much damage was done. 5 killed, O(100) injured, and the capitol overrun.
The demonstrations this past summer were on another level. It's estimated that 20 million [0] people were involved. Yes there was violence and people acting in bad faith. But as a percentage of total protests it is _far_ less. I believe this says something about the intent of both demonstrations.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Lives_Matter
The article is in fact explicit on that point.
I am not idiotically following democratic ideology and am willingly letting anyone get their shot, i’ll listen all sides sides. The problem with these radical people is that they are not making much sense, they seem confused and alienated. If you ask them what they want you don’t get a well shaped idea. Banning them from the table doesn’t seem like a good idea, but what’s the alternative, start believing the parallel reality the live in? It is contagious and dangerous, I lost some elders in my family to this nonesense, it is absolutely saddening and we have to do something about it. Otherwise a large part of humanity is going mad, do we want that? What is your soluion to stopping this mess? Be honest, do you not think at all that Trump stoked chaos during his reign?
I’d like for all of us to take one month off electronic information and start taking informaion directly from our own small envitonment and tune in with nature whenever possible. A break like that would reset things in part. The other part is that we have to put a hand and build the future however we want
Because right now, people accused of terrorism can be held in Guantanamo without habeas corpus. They are also subject to inclusion on government "kill lists"[1] with no opportunity for judicial review. The executive branch is claiming powers it has not had since the time of absolute monarchy. We should carefully consider any proposal to expand the meaning of the word "terrorism".
I'm outraged too, but I think these criminals should be afforded full due process rights. At both the investigatory stage and the trial stage.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-issues/us-invokes...
One could argue "terrorists" as you're defining re Gitmo should as well, but that's a different topic.
I think that due process rights of despicable people should be protected precisely because I want them to be available to disfavored affinity groups like religious minorities, labor movements, and pacifists.
This is not an action.
Non-state foreign terrorists are held at Guantanamo.
Who is the "they" that should be deplatformed for the actions you describe? Were there particular BLM organizers / leaders that were calling for destruction of property, violence against people, and the overthrowing of legally elected governments?
Certainly there were folks that took advantage of the crowds to do nefarious things, and I don't doubt some actual BLM folks committed acts.
There were also documented false flag operations against BLM:
* https://www.wsls.com/news/virginia/2020/07/27/police-richmon...
But were the BLM demonstrations purposefully organized to do these things?
> We just assume we're right.
And you follow up by proving just how right he is. First you dehumanize your political opponents--"If a rabid cougar gets loose..."--then you tell us what we need to do--"we take whatever measures we have to to get rid of it for the greater good of society."
And you claim it's the other side's speech that "is violent and damaging"?
P.S. At the time of this reply, it's not the current POTUS calling a sitting US Senator a "Goebbels". Care to guess where this is going?
I'm sorry if that wasn't clear.
I'm curious, though—would you just let the cougar do its thing? Like, if that literally happened, and you were the guy at animal control who got the call?
I challenge you to provide any concrete evidence for this claim - in particular, that (1) the majority of their speech specifically consists of calls to violence (not just "violent" because that term has been twisted recently to mean a wide range of things that a certain political party disagrees with) (2) that the behavior of the tens of millions of people in this political party are at all correlated with the several hundred people who stormed the capitol and (3) that this was significantly worse than the Antifa and BLM riots that we had throughout the entirety of 2020.
We're on a path with this kind of thinking. If history is any guide, it doesn't end well.
And just think, we celebrate that one every July 4!
Sometimes working toward "the greater good of society" requires violence.
Therefore the real issue here is not the violence but rather the "misinformation" ... both in the form of dubious claims about election fraud as well as the attempt by powerful technology elites to silence the misinformed by de-platforming them instead of "federating" the flow of information through technologies like Mastodon that respect their users' freedom.
Not-an-American here. When their cases seek to disenfranchise large swathes of voters based on zero evidence, what’s the alternative?
First, the position of the plaintiffs of those cases is that the actions of the “other half” have effectively disenfranchised them. If disenfranchisement is the issue at hand, it follows that one should investigate when someone claims to have been disenfranchised.
Second, every case that I’ve followed up on has been denied on the grounds of standing. My understanding is that this means that either the court believes that there was no harm or that the court believes that there is no reasonable way the outcome of the case could provide relief for harm that may have taken place. Either way, to my knowledge, none of the court cases have actually been heard. No evidence has been presented and no arguments have been made.
You’ve heard of this report, correct? Or the paper written by John Lott of the DOJ?
There is evidence, but it sounds like you’ve only heard contradictions (not rebuttals) and rhetoric designed to avoid factual debate, as evidenced by your comments in this thread.
Also laches.
One I followed because it was in my state and I know a lawyer involved was out right dismissed, but the judge was extremely forthcoming that this just wasn't appropriate for their court and issued an immediate appellate number and got that process going. Later in the media, I read how "Another Trump Fraud Case Tossed Out Of Court" which was at best disingenuous and at worst something else.
I still have no idea if the case had any merit! Probably not of course it was denied later a appeal, but that's the point. If you thought there was wrongdoing, from your point of view this doesn't help. I don't agree of course, but I get the perspective.
When other groups have been marginalized systemically by public infrastructure, violence and a lopsided legal system, they advocate personal responsibility as a solution for systemic problems.
A corrective upvote would have sufficed. Notice that the comment you're talking about is no longer in a downvoted state.
And they're still enfranchised: they can still vote, and still post to the internet, and still talk to people outside.
They simply no longer get a free internet loud speaker to envangelize to others.
The lesson here is to condemn all rioting, set expectations that are equally applied to all segments of society. Listen to those feeling alienated and see what can be reasonably done to promote inclusiveness. It's hard to take advocates of inclusiveness seriously when they eagerly cancel, disenfranchise, and deplatform people that disagree with them even remotely (and yes, there are plenty of examples of rational criticism being deplatformed).
Claims of fraud would be far, far, far easier to dismiss if a better control structure was in place. Maybe a national certification (a la NIST) that would be optional for states to adopt, but would at least would provide a framework for transparent state and local alignment (or misalignment) with best practice.
Trump lost by what, 8 million votes?
Does dirty shit happen? Absolutely. Was it in this election? Yep. Was it enough to sway the outcome? No freaking way.
The cheating only really needs to occur in a handful of key urban counties to sway a national election, so it doesn’t actually need to be wide spread.
You may have faith that everything is okay, but that does little to satisfy those with experience of fraud or hearing stories of fraud. One can see a local example and easily (and not irrationally) imagine that the systems work similarly in the neighboring city, county, or state.
Whether your intention or not, it’s easy for your attitude to come across as accepting of deficiency - and an endorsement that may run out when the tables turn (and in American politics, they always do). The unending cycle of dismissal by each side to the other’s sincerely held concerns is getting us nowhere but a bad place.
The system will never be perfect but nobody is. Holding it to a 100% standard and saying it isn't a good system if it fails in a few points is not acting in good faith.
I have yet to see any real evidence of election fraud. The Trump lawyers have been shutdown by bipartisan courts across the country. Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell, lifelong republicans, agreed.
It's time to move on.
For conversation a, we would disagree in principle - regardless of whether we’re talking about the integrity of the corporate books, the management of systems access, or the integrity of the voting process, to the degree the control structure weakens it is introducing increasing amounts of risk not only in the reliability of the reporting but into the faith held by the stakeholders.
Now you ask, how much risk is appropriate and sustainable, to which I (quick on the repartee) would say storming the federal capital is a benchmark of failure, a growing (not ebbing) concern over election integrity over decades is a bad trend getting worse not better.
Even via the most cynical outlook about one side imagining problems that aren’t there, what happens in sports when one team believes fouls against them aren’t being called? Or in a company when rumors are commonplace that the books are being cooked? It doesn’t make things better, is my point - things get worse. And that’s where turning a blind eye to the very real concerns of others only continues the destabilization.
> extended the dates after Election Day for which ballots may be received,
Yea maybe it was because there was a global pandemic and the president deliberately weakened the postal service to help himself. I don't see how legal ballots sent in being counted is a weakening of integrity.
None of this is evidence. These are things that happened - but you have not provided any evidence that this weakened the integrity of the election.
Imagine it like a problem in GAAP or in NIST 800. It’s not about whether _you_ can or cannot see fraud, it’s about whether the community at large (let’s just use Pareto’s 80%) has faith that there are sufficient controls to make fraud unlikely.
Here’s an easy example: your company doesn’t require dual signatures on wire transfers over $250k. One person can make a decision on moving material amounts of cash out the door. You say, we’ve not seen any evidence of large scale wire fraud so we don’t need stronger controls to prevent it. To your auditors and investment community this is a ticking time bomb for several reasons, the least of which may be questionable confidence in your specific ability to detect instances of fraud thus far.
This type of problem is encountered frequently in the regulatory world and I’m not sure why the voting process is so special that we can’t apply similar solution sets. That is, look to sensible, auditable control structures that can be demonstrated to be effective.
The control structure around voting is getting looser, not tighter, and this has been a trend predating the prior four presidential election cycles at least. Looking at the anecdata, many operations are a clown show where if not being abused are clearly ripe for abuse.
I’m not sure how to put it more simply: the debate about the degree and type of fraud that _you_ are aware of is immaterial. The question before the country is how to react when some 40% of the country is losing confidence in the system. Not just in a joking way but shifting to where the fringes are just done with it and parts of the non-fringe are increasingly finding sympathy for them.
My OP was about how the US needs to be prioritizing a fix for the confidence problem. Solutions such as more censorship are a poison pill.
Your comment reflects your self interest in the outcome of the last election, rather than the national interest for the next election. You can tell people to go pound sand, but I don’t think that solution has longevity. This is the first time in my lifetime I can remember the Capitol being stormed, and I’m aware that the confidence issue has been percolating for many years. Ballot harvesting, loose validation checks, willfully bad voter roles, etc., have been making the problem worse not better, again from a confidence level. This year in California the Republicans got in on the ballot harvesting.
Again, what happens in sports when one team thinks the fouls aren’t being called? Does it matter whether you, on the other team, hold a different opinion about the state of refereeing? The whole thing turns into a clown show.
I don’t think an endorsement of continuing down this same path is a good prescription for this country. In terms of the Four Boxes of Liberty, I worry that two of them are increasingly perceived as being locked out for one of our large political factions. Not good.
If the goal was to truly add trust they would not have stormed the capitol at the behest of Trump and his allies. This immediately proves the goal is not trust - it is power.
Now you must prove to me why I should trust these challenges - as they are filled with lies and conspiracy theories. The trust problem is with the insurrectionists. You have not dealt with this or have proven the system has no integrity. You are using ambiguity, like a flat-earther. It won't work here, sorry.
Sadly, that decision may have led to this state of affairs. When people think they have no voice, violence comes soon after.
( If you act in bad faith in court, you can lose your license. I should look up the detail again)
I'm a Pennsylvanian. Texas should have no right to tell our legislature and government how to run its elections. The Supreme Court rightfully agreed:
> "Texas has not demonstrated a judicially cognizable interest in the manner in which another State conducts its elections," the court wrote in an unsigned ruling Friday evening.
But again, you aren't arguing in good faith. I can't wait til Jan 20.
People saying there "has to be" something, and "anyone who doesn't see it is a moron".
While offering nothing even resembling proof.
It's just, at best, being charitable, "a hunch".
There was also hours upon hours of witness testimony given to state legislatures.
The media didn’t really cover any of this material, instead just repeated ad homs and contradictions (not rebuttals) and touted all the tossed court cases, all of which were for procedural reasons like standing and laches so evidence was never considered.
I would say there’s actually a significant amount of evidence, but nobody wants to hear it because it implicates players on both sides of the aisle.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/24/controversial-gun-a...
If your sources for "proof" are from anyone that is pro-Trump and repeatedly tears into Trumps opposition, you might want to start with the assumption that motivated reasoning is in play. You can be well-educated, and still have a bias and be inclined to argue for your side to win.
yes, this is the human condition and applies equally to both sides of this debate.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/18/this-migh...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/04/us/politics/trump-georgia...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/04/us/politics/georgia-voter...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/technology/dead-voters-fa...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/14/there-is-...
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/nevada/articles/2020...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/17/two-weeks...
Now, if you buy the conspiracy theory that the above news agencies are all on the take and not a single one of them has a whistleblower that would blow the case wide open for a few bucks, then you can argue all these prove nothing. On the other hand, it's really easy to argue that people that publicly support Trump and criticize his opponents have motivation to put out readily debunked documents hoping that enough people will accept them without doing due diligence to determine if they are legitimate.
It is easily abused, conservatives are only mad when they lose:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/17/us/some-republicans-ackno...
> A senior vice president of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Chamber of Commerce, Steve Baas, had a thought. “Do we need to start messaging ‘widespread reports of election fraud’ so we are positively set up for the recount regardless of the final number?” he wrote in an email on April 6 to conservative strategists. “I obviously think we should.”
> Scott Jensen, a Republican political tactician and former speaker of the State Assembly, responded within minutes. “Yes. Anything fishy should be highlighted,” he wrote. “Stories should be solicited by talk radio hosts.”
From 2016. Weird how familiar it sounds.
We have? You mean the police response, thousands of arrests, riot gear, national guard deployments across the US was "tacitly approving rioting?"
Here's an example of protestors still being prosecuted: https://triblive.com/local/allegheny-co-das-office-refiles-c...
“Recently, at the direction of Mayor [Bill] Peduto, the Pittsburgh Police presented to my office tangible evidence for the refiling of these failure-to-disperse charges in the form of body camera footage, as well as surveillance video and more comprehensive investigations,” Zappala said in a statement on Friday. “The demonstrative evidence shows that the individuals being charged were repetitively directed by the police and given ample opportunity to disperse, often over an extended period, and failed to heed these notices.”
Again, I disagree. There is no tacit acceptance. That is just false.
Philly: https://www.radio.com/kywnewsradio/articles/news/charges-aga...
Just google the term by each major city or location where buildings were lit up. I’m certainly not claiming that prosecutions didn’t happen, but when a city declines to prosecute a great many arrests and national organizations are paying bail money for those arrested, along with police stand down orders, it sends a message.
Most of the felonies would be tried with proper evidence. Just because a crime is reported doesn't mean a conviction can occur. This is basic stuff.
it is known as a fact that only those that are supported by the local government are deemed as successful, regardless of the validity or support for that cause. The police are just the pawns.
We see the same for both BLM protests as well as the Capitol Hill protest.
I can't agree with this more. Through this event and what happened last year I can see how incredibly bias the media is when portraying protests and riots. During BLM, there's barely any coverage on the looting and destruction caused by "protesters" on mainstream media. There was a very clear attempt to downplay the severity of these actions.
If you don't see the incredibly stark contrast in how the authorities handled and prepared for the Capitol insurrection (yes, the insurrection plans were public and known weeks in advance) compared to BLM protests, I don't understand how there can even be a debate about this because we are clearly operating in two different realities.
>Several fires have been set near the courthouse, which federal officials have said could spread to the building and harm the agents inside.
If you think this is on the same level as the mob of violent insurrectionists who invaded (and planned to take hostages) inside the highest legislature in the land simply because "their guy" didn't win the election, I don't think there is anything I can tell you that would convince you otherwise. The Portland protestors were both less violent and actually had legitimate grievances (decades of police brutality and state violence against people of color).
Walking over to a patrol car and shoot the officer inside - execution style.
Beating people from the other side to the ground.
Shooting and killing at least one protestor.
Burning down multiple buildings, stores as well as homes.
All well documented.
What happened on Capitol Hill is insane and should be an embarrassment forever.
As should the "riots" last fall.
For BLM protests, the cause is partly real police violence that lots of people have experienced. Lots of people have this firsthand, negative experience with the police, and are frustrated that they cannot feel safe in the hands of people meant to protect them.
For the voter fraud protests, the cause is a propaganda and disinformation campaign. For months and even years, Trump has been saying that things are stollen from him, that the election would be stolen from him, etc. He really incensed this narrative of voter fraud with a lot of lies. The cause is not people’s firsthand experience of voter fraud: republicans were not turned away from the polls nor were their votes discarded. It’s that they were told by Trump and other republicans that if they loose elections, then it must be fraud.
The response, then, is totally different. In the one case, addressing the cause means to reform the police. In the other case, addressing the cause means... what? I would say it is addressing the propaganda campaign. This is what news orgs and social media sites have tried to do.
No matter how secure this election was, or how many policies got implemented, the election fraud claim would persist because the cause is propaganda, not evidence. People (even republicans) who know way more elections than I do say that this election was one of the most secure ever. The few instances of fraud that occur — and always occur in events of this scale — are hardly proof of a sinister campaign.
While I’ll agree to make voting as secure as possible (I’d support voter ID if it didn’t take 5 hours at the DMV just to be eligible to vote), that’s not really the narrative voter fraud protests are about. That’s why we push back when people try to say that the election was fraudulent: these folks are really trying to say that they should have won. They are not (primarily) trying to say that we should fix the handful of fraud instances that happened even though it wouldn’t change the result.
If I said “you’re right to be angry here,” I would be heard as saying, “you actually should have won.” Therefore, I must be honest and say “you’re wrong to be angry about this. The evidence of fraud will not address your anger about this loss.”
And let me be clear: I support trump folks right to protest because of their anger over loosing. But I cannot agree that it ought to be addressed as they say it should be.
I don't hear a lot of excuses for those trump fans for their sins because of lack of education, money, opportunities. They get lumped in with privileged white people posting here from Silicon Valley, that's what they obviously feel.
Why didn't the so called paradox of intolerance imply to a case where someone is doing an armed home invasion and why are people surprised when political and protest violence was long normalized and tolerated? It doesn't make any sense looking it over the ocean.
The machines are not hacked, and the voter rolls are legitimate.
There is zero evidence of systematic fraud, therefore, there is no 'disenfranchisement'.
To suggest that 'maybe one day, someone could mess with our election' is not 'disenfranchisement'.
"You may have been told by the media" - Rudy Giuilani and the President clearly failed to make a case or provide any evidence - moreover, they lied, lied and lied through the process and have no credibility.
The election was fine - Trump's claims of fraud are completely fabricated.
> The election was fine - Trump's claims of fraud are completely fabricated.
Their capacity to claim fraud is _because_ of these weaknesses that make such a claim possible. Regardless of what the truth is, there are millions of people who think the election was rigged. If we don't placate those people and fix the issues, it could continue to escalate.
We don't investigate innocent people for murder to placate an angry mob.
What we do is implement a communications strategy to get the mob to realize the random person is not guilty of murder.
The President is using the authority of his position to lie and misrepresent the issue, so we'll have to stop that somehow and get the proper message out.
There are no fundamental weaknesses in the system to the point wherein any organized attempt could flip the election - other than in the known grey areas which we fight about in public such as 'voter rolls' and how we purge them etc. There is ambiguity there.
But the voting itself is actually really credible. The 'voting machines' and ballot counting is probably the most impossible to defeat system.
Russians wanting to throw the election would have far more effect using Twitter and FB to incite crowds and to divide Americans, which is exactly what they have shown to be doing.
"This study applies Benford’s law to detect anomalies in county-level vote data for the 2020 US presidential election. Most prominent distribution violations are observed with Republican vote counts in blue states, all vote counts in states won by the Democratic candidate, and Democratic vote counts in swing states. Distributions are anomalous in swing states won by the Democratic nominee and not anomalous in swing states won by the Republican nominee." - https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3728626
In the meantime it’s not the vote counting system that is the problem so much as the single candidate seats, winner takes all style representation along with the electoral college.
The people who actually are underrepresented would be far better off with multiple electorates being merged and represented by multiple representatives, and switching to something like Hare-Clarke voting (single transferable vote).
The left is mad that they're getting shot in the head by cops for peacefully protesting. The right is mad that they can't tweet insurrectionist rhetoric. I don't buy the "civil disorder" argument, the USA hasn't been "civilized" for a long time.
The mainstream media gave them a platform for 5 years. When Trump announced that he was running for president, every media platform was reporting on it. We've been seeing and listening about this administration and it's supporters more than any other administration in the past. They've had a very loud voice that this week culminated on the invasion of the US Capitol. The were not squeezed out of public debate, they've had a huge platform but their arguments as of late have become violent and dangerous.
I’ve not seen one. Every one I’ve seen was dismissed procedurally before evidence was ever heard.
For example, see section F starting on page 22 of this ruling https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.azd.1255923...
The legal arguments being so bad that they failed procedural is not a defense for the Trump side, it's a demonstration of how badly they are failing to make a case at all. The easiest part of an allegation of fraud is to not fail on procedural grounds.
Edit: I mean - actually - easier than that is not being so aware that your evidence is lacking that you try and claim a case is and isn't about fraud in the same oral argument - but that's just a particularly special brand of incompetence and flailing that I've never heard of outside of the Trump campaign lawsuits... https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/hear-it-for-yourself-r...
They didn't exist in the public debate to begin with. Social media opened that up. We're realizing just how negatively impactful a village idiot with a megaphone the size of a city block can be.
My point being maybe you think 95% of MAGA-hats are off their rocker, and Trumpism taken as a whole is grossly misguided. I don't really disagree. But is it possible that there's some core nugget of wisdom to take away. Something, perhaps that your current worldview is glossing over.
Instead of just writing off the political beliefs of literally half the people in America, maybe we should really be super certain that we make a genuine attempt to understand where they're coming from.
At worst, we've wasted some time talking to idiots. But my guess is if we make a good-faith and honest attempt to find the best and brightest Trumpists out there (instead of just smugly dunking on the dumbest trolls on the Internet), that maybe, just maybe there may be a kernel of truth underlying their ideology.
The reason? I don't think that sort of person voted for Trump because of the idea of Trump or a cult of personality. They simply got duped and there are better solutions to their problems.
The folks that stormed D.C. are too far gone at this point.
Depends how you define supporter. He’s received support from some smart, cynical and extremely nasty people; he serves their agenda, one way or another. But they’re not fans; they’re probably privately pretty contemptuous of him. The Mercers would be an obvious example.
If by supporter you mean the people who believe him about the election being stolen and so on, there are no smart people in that category. There are smart sociopaths who don’t believe him but go along with the idea, of course.
Public debate is fine, but we are watching a huge population of people absurdly follow this man in his birthday suit. People so easily "persuaded" deserve the (non violent) pushback they get.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emperor%27s_New_Clothes
It takes a child to point it out, because everyone else is bought in to assuming the king couldn't be so foolish, so they must be mistaken.
What these disastrous last 5 years have proven is that people will refuse to acknowledge the obvious truth as long as there's a plausible lie they prefer.
Now the parties, or at least their supporters, can't agree on the past and present truth of what's happening in the country.
When there's no common agreement on what basic truth is, you can't expect agree on policy to address the problems we face.
https://waitbutwhy.com/2019/09/american-brain.html
I wonder if you spent the summer complaining about police militarization?
Fact-based reality... IDK man. How would you ever know? The number of upvotes you get on your post?
One of the logical fallacies from pro-free-speech defenders of these people is the assumption that these ideas were organically developed. But I can assure you there is propaganda and foreign and domestic special interests that are intentionally shaping the thoughts and ideas from these people. I know in the Chinese community that interests like Falun Gong (an organization that believes extra-terrestrial Aliens are manipulating humans to intermix racially in order to subjugate us as well as other less-than-progressive beliefs like homophobia) have been heavily pro-Trump because of his anti-China policies, and they've been putting out a lot of toxic content aimed at Chinese-Americans [1] [2]. This is a disinformation war and taking actions like this is a part of war, otherwise services like Twitter are just complicit in aiding misinformation campaigns by one side.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/01/07/trump-qanon-... - Falun Gong organized "Stop the Steal" protests in Taiwan
[2] http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14013938 - Same Falun Gong protests in Japan
Isn't the exact opposite true as well then? If one side is siloed, by definition the other side must be in an opposite silo. You've taken it upon yourself to define that your side is in the "public debate" and therefore somehow isn't just "talking amongst themselves". Don't you see the issue here? Left Twitter/Reddit/Facebook absolutely exists, and they are not meaningfully conversing with the other side.
And, if anything, having a sitting president on your side should by definition mean that you are "part of the public debate", since everyone at least hears the president's words (and especially Trump's).
You're right. And no offense specifically to anyone here, but he's trying to make his point somewhere with a specifically curated silo.
Propaganda is in the very nature of communication and because of the internet it has allowed special interests to capture the attention of potentially millions and instill extremist ideas. For free speech to work propaganda must be employed and countermeasures must be employed. Free speech doesn't mean giving equal weight to all ideas, just like equality of opportunity doesn't mean making everyone equal all the time.
Are against open borders? Then you’re a racist.
Are against abortion? Then you’re a misogynist.
Are for a pro worker visa policy and tariffs on imports? Then you’re a nationalist (which isn’t even a bad word but they make it sound like one)
Are for the right to bear arms? Then you’re an uneducated hillbilly.
Are for churches and other religious institutions to decide for themselves if they remain open? Then you’re a religious nut job who thinks the world is flat.
Find me one Democrat with actual power advocating for open borders.
And it's not as if the speech used by xenophobes is free of racial overtones and dogwhistles, either.
> Are against abortion? Then you’re a misogynist.
If you are against a woman's right to do what they please to their own body, you have to give compelling evidence for why. There is no such evidence.
> (which isn’t even a bad word but they make it sound like one)
Because it is a word that historically was used by people who started a lot of wars and were fixated on who/what was _truly_ part of their nation.
The "they" in "they've been shifting" is a strong majority of the people around you who now value racial inclusion and self-autonomy far more highly than ever before. This is a problem of values and pretending that all of them are created equal.
That's us. USA starts lots of wars. We've still got, what, seven going right now? Maybe it's down to six? (Ummm... Iraq Afghanistan Syria Yemen Korea Palestine Iran well that's at least seven but I'm probably missing multiple wars in Africa...)
An infinitesimal part of the population and debate around border/immigration policy favors open borders. The framing of anything remotely mainstream as “open borders” definitely strikes me as a likely sign of racism.
> Are against abortion? Then you’re a misogynist.
Yes. This is correct.
> Are for a pro worker visa policy and tariffs on imports? Then you’re a nationalist (which isn’t even a bad word but they make it sound like one)
Pro-worker? Or pro-worker-with-citizenship? And last I checked the objection to tariffs is that they’re harmful to all the people they’d ostensibly benefit.
> Are for the right to bear arms? Then you’re an uneducated hillbilly.
Not sure what uneducated hillbilly has to do with any Overton Window but the debate right now is over limiting access to certain kinds of arms, not eliminating the right to bear arms totally.
> Are for churches and other religious institutions to decide for themselves if they remain open? Then you’re a religious nut job who thinks the world is flat.
I don’t think the judgment has anything to do with religion, it has to do with allowing exemptions to gatherings being a public danger. You’re still a superspreader if you’re a superspreader with a good healthy positive religious faith.
Have you looked at the data of how many women are pro-life? Do you think half of women are misogynists?
https://news.gallup.com/poll/244709/pro-choice-pro-life-2018...
Why don’t you actually go talk to pro-life people and really listen to what they have to say? You might discover a better line of argument than just saying “stop being a woman hater”.
I’ll ask you again: isn’t forcing a woman to use her uterus to host another life against her will misogynist? You don’t have to be one of the women who share that view to agree that the women who don’t (and the large number of women who do but get abortions anyway) don’t deserve to be forced to be living fetus nurseries.
It damages our ability to have a constructive conversation with people who have opposing views, because it implies that they carry some unreasonable inner hatred of women within them, and that they can never be persuaded, only defeated and disempowered politically.
The youngest foetus to survive premature birth was around 24 weeks old, so does that mean you oppose abortion of foetuses older than that, as they could survive outside of the womb?
For what it’s worth I’m much closer to an open border advocate than the vast majority of the liberal-left spectrum, and it’s frankly absurd that the right’s take on this is “trump’s bigger detention camps and more aggressive policy means all the others literally didn’t exist even if they were basically his prototype”, when what he effectively did was add malice and lack of humanity to existing policy.
I think that's what GP is saying - talking about (for instance) NATO members contributing their contractually agreed funding to the organization and aligning with our own contractual commitment seems like a sane position, but when it's called "nationalist" either the word isn't bad anymore or the level of hyperbole is so off the charts that the accusation doesn't mean anything. Many other examples of the "nationalism" criticism that have been pretty hyperbolic in the last four years.
> Are against open borders? Then you’re a racist.
It's immediately obvious you are arguing in bad faith. Literally no elected official says this.
Edit: instead of downvoting, please find a counterexample and I'll gladly eat my words.
Not the same thing, but this level of discourse is laughable.
The same can be done the other way around.
For medical for all? You're a communist
For benefits and worker protections, like unions? You're a snowflake and don't want to work
This is a meaningless exercise.
We have multiple levels of government, we have a courts system, a legislature, and an executive branch, all directly or indirectly elected by the people. I'm not going to make any excuses for anyone for threatening the foundation of everyone's way of life here.
Sometimes your guy loses, fair and square.
1.) Everyone not in your bucket is NOT in the other bucket
2.) Everyone not in the other bucket is NOT in your bucket
Your arguments just appear to be a bunch of straw men to me. I can't identify a single one of those as mainstream viewpoints. Nobody I know who voted against Trump holds them. I'm personally a "liberal" that owns guns and am against bans an buybacks.
People, please, be warry of people trying to convince you there is a binary set of beliefs and it's all-or-nothing.
What do you expect when Fox News and many other right-wing outlets are just lying all the time? When lawyers for DJT go into court and admit there is no fraud and then go out to the steps of the courthouse and give a press conference saying there is fraud and it must stop.
Fox News, et al are talking about this non-stop since the election. Just think of all the people that have listened to this and believe it. What on earth do we expect them to do?
Consistent enforcement of the rules (which Apple is not good at, I will say) would have avoided this becoming such a problem. Parler has been a cesspit for its whole existence, as far as I know, and approximately nobody would have cared if Apple never let them on the App Store. And fewer people would blindly believe that the earth is flat.
That’s just it, though: we assume we’re wrong. We audit ourselves. Watch any of the press conferences where the Georgia election officials detailed the extra work they did.
It is that we assume we are wrong for the important things, and double check, triple check, that separates our viewpoints from those being deplatformed.
I’ve been disillusioned about this e.g. in trying to have conversations about religion with believers. No matter how much better I think my case is, they will think their case is just as much superior to mine. For every time I double check my books, they double check theirs.
Philosophically, I don’t think that’s a “solution” to the puzzle.
But then how do I decide whether to recycle or not, vis-à-vis global warming?
And I would agree that political science is largely concerned with philosophy, but let’s not mistake any old politicized belief as fitting under the umbrella of “political science”: that e.g. a manual recount renders any conspiracies about an automatic ballot-counting machine irrelevant to a final vote tally is a matter of common sense, not profound debate—and yet this has proved a controversial point these last few weeks.
Then the internet. And their ideas were able to find purchase where they hadn’t, and to grow like a hateful tumor. Even then they were at least nominally a minority view. And then they found a path to power, and public vocal support became mainstream.
Perhaps there was such widespread support for violence and hatred and malice before, but it was so shunned it couldn’t find its voice. That’s a pretty grim possibility but I accept it’s a real one.
Or perhaps the attitude that all ideas are welcome combined with their amplification has expanded the base of people it could attract.
In either case, I’m less concerned about whether a hateful viewpoint has easy access to eyes and ears, regardless of the size of the population holding those views, than the impact it has on those they hate.
If (hypothetically) 35% of the population were literal nazis literally trying to get a genocide going, and the mainstream were trying their best with available measures to limit that possibility by excluding their views from most outlets commonly accessed by the remaining 65%, I’d say that’s a welcome relief for the most vulnerable among their targets.
I don’t know how society benefits from the presence of hate in the public debate. Sure, the people who espouse hate are left out and pity for them. But what does their view contribute that we don’t already know? Are we actually better off with their views being a part of shaping our future?
Americans have been politely deplatforming each other for a long while. It’s only become an issue now, and attracted a nice term for it.
I’ll skip the issue that one side isn’t really there for a conversation in the first place.
Instead I’ll demonstrate that the cable news era already built its own filter bubbles and significantly reduced the ability for one side (the left) to Influence the other (the right).
I clearly remember that climate frauds were given air time on Fox. When that air time resulted in politicians pushing anti climate views, actual climate scientists came to FOX to make their case. Instead they were faced with ridicule, in the same way that throwing people to lions was a fun spectacle for the audience.
This ability to divide reality kept evolving till America showed the world that its possible to undo science. Remember Creationism? An anti science argument, designed to confuse children and adults with the goal of disproving evolution!
“Teach the debate”, that most fraudulent of arguments, implying that scientific debates on evolution meant that evolution itself was not a solid idea.
And it worked!
When the right filter bubble avoids reporting things in a manner that allow for a fair middle ground to be reached, then what?
I’ll tell you now, you need to remove money from the news, which even to me sounds like an insane idea.
I would heartily recommend that people stop worrying about deplatforming. It’s worked great for the American Right. While people here may decry Trump, he managed to snag 2 SC seats, unknown numbers of other judges, defunded everything, fought China, and even today has a 42% approval rating!
MORE people came out to vote for Trump this election than they did when he ran against Hillary.
Worry instead that deplatforming works.
And then realize that while this will go on to be a massive comment thread, there are entire countries under the thumbs of despots or regions ruled by local leaders who never get heard about, and who will never get deplatformed, because it will never get the attention of the people running Twitter/FB.
A demagogue came along and used mass media platforms to destabilize the norms of civil society and give a large platform to previously marginalized views. Being able to air those views on mainstream outlets perpetuates the problem and shifts norms.
We need to at least try to put this genie back in the bottle. Most people will revert back to previous mainstream views. The significant segment needs to go back to an insignificant segment. That insignificant segment will be angry that they didn't win, and likely some of them will be violent. But they've always been that way anyway.
Do you see how rediculous that is?
I know it is hard to swallow, but you are on the wrong side of history here. Just admit you made a mistake and try to move on.
You aren't alone, he lied to the entire world and at least 74 million people in the the US bought it.
And, probably, you were "on the wrong side of history" in 1930s Germany.
In other words, it's a poor argument for anything and only interesting when used ironically.
Two years of lots of shouting and no accomplishments by Democrats, with more covid deaths in 2021 than in 2020, is going to powerfully depress their turnout in 2022. Also there is a new thing called "Movement for a People's Party" [0] that will take more votes from Democrats than from Republicans. Don't be discouraged about Republican political prospects!
[0] https://peoplesparty.org/
Americans have not worn masks, for ten months during which it was clear wearing masks would save many lives and shorten the economic downturn as well. Now the anti-liberal and anti-vax and anti-thought camps have joined forces (some would say the latter two camps have been at least associated for some time) to decline vaccines. Millions of doses are expiring in their very-cold freezers. Morons like Gov Cuomo are scheming to make it more rather than less difficult to receive vaccines. Also people still aren't wearing masks, which (when pressed) experts will admit are and have been actually more effective at preventing infection than vaccines. High-quality masks are still more difficult to obtain than they should be.
All of that is to say that the "effective reproduction number" (R) still far exceeds one, and will for the foreseeable future. Since that hasn't changed, the salient difference between 2020 and 2021 is that on 2020-1-1 there were very few infected and contagious Americans. On 2021-1-1 there were millions. My prediction is simple arithmetic, though it's not allowed on all-wishful-thinking-all-the-time TV news.
Of course R could be changed dramatically by dramatic action. Other nations such as Taiwan opted for that early last year. I really do hope we do that. We could make masks mandatory for all public interaction. We could pay people enough money ($1000 a week might do it?) to stay home. We could make covid vaccination mandatory in the same way that e.g. measles vaccination is. We could actually make enough high-quality masks (currently, massive government/corporate/whosever failure to do so is hidden behind the fact that lots of easily duped people have been persuaded not to wear masks). We could actually make enough vaccines (ditto).
Surely I don't have to finish the argument? No currently-conceivable USA government, whether controlled by Democrats or Republicans, is going to take one of the eminently reasonable steps I've suggested above, while invalidating my prediction will require several of them.
Also, you're completely wrong about 2009. Allowing firms to die is "capitalism" as it's always inaccurately presented. Allowing humans to die is inhumane.
Anyway, demagogues are products of their respective times. To focus on them and their personalities and their rhetoric is to completely miss the forest.
Edit: In fact, that approach is part of what gives them their power. And it certainly makes avoiding their ascent nearly impossible.
I agree with you about demagogues being products of their times. In this case it seems the forest being missed is social media platforms allowing intolerant content and the organization of domestic terrorism.
If that is your point, then I agree. Social media companies need to do more to fight against the pressures that allow demagogues rise to power. Deplatforming them seems like a good place to start.
Frankly, it doesn't matter "who is right in their own point of view." We have to be able to stipulate to a basic set of facts that are supported by objective evidence. You can't just make shit up and expect everyone else to cater to it.
Today’s news: Joe Biden condemned the rioters who stormed the Capitol as “a bunch of thugs,” “domestic terrorists” and “white supremacists.” The president-elect specifically called out the rioters who wore shirts saying “6MWE.” “6MWE” is an anti-Semitic phrase that stands for “Six million wasn’t enough,” referring to the six million Jewish people who were murdered during the Holocaust.
If you feel like we are where we are because we’re not listening to these people than you can count me out. I have absolutely nothing to learn from a white supremacist or someone inciting violence. And likewise, they have absolutely nothing to contribute to political discourse.
The media reports on facts, with proof, because their reputation sort of hinges on it. Retractions don't make them look good. These people don't live in the realm of facts. So the best that can be done for them is to print their opinion with the actual evidence next to it. It's not the medias fault if that evidence totally disproves whatever they thought.
De-platforming extremists is not the same as limiting dialogue or public debate.
I think of it like this - the crazy person on the street corner yelling at everyone that the world is going to end for years on end is not taken seriously be anyone. They could be right, sure, but that's not really a conversation worth engaging in.
These sites are full of users who are shouting crazy conspiracy theories and promoting them like crazy. The worst of them are grifting, and lots of them are victims of human psychology and circumstance.
I haven't seen any reasonable take from one of these communities be discarded or ignored. A lot of the issue comes down to how the reasonable ideas are mixed with the toxic ones.
At some point it's just toxic, though. How many lawsuits are required to show the election was legitimate? There have been so many already. How many claims of voter fraud have to be investigated, when each new claim isn't real? How many times does congress need to investigate Hillary's emails?
For the people in these communities it seems as though the only outcome they will except is the one they have predetermined. Along the way they will kill people, commit acts of sedition and treason, send bombs to democratically elected officials, and more.
There is no reason to continue debating with them. The debates on those issues are over. When a petulant child argues with you about the color of the sky, how long do you entertain their claim that it's red, not blue?
Furthermore, there are plenty of outlets for civil discourse all over the internet and other mediums. Why should we be upset when these private companies remove these toxic groups from their platforms? It's not like the platforms want less users. They want a stable country of laws, which the groups on these platforms are trying (intentionally or otherwise) to undermine.
At some point the adults in the room need to say "enough." That's what is happening now.
When you start to think about it that way the perspective you’ve outlined doesn’t make a lot of sense. Should these people have legally nonsensical court cases heard simply because they’re a minority group and we need to ensure diversity in plaintiffs or something?
Overall, the argument only makes sense if there is some innate “right to be heard” that these people are being deprived of. There isn’t. There have been fringe movements that weren’t indulged by society at large for thousands of years, I’m not sure why any obligation would have changed.
If you go on Parler and call Donald Trump a malignant narcissist, you will get banned. If you say too many political things on Hacker News, you get warned and banned.
None of these places are public venues. They are not the thing you seem to think they are. Maybe they aren't even what they have purported to be up until now.
What did African-Americans do when they were marginalized for a century until the Civil Rights era of the 1960s? (And still are in many ways.)
The folks you are referring to can say whatever they want: they have Fox, OANN, and Newsmax. They can set up phpBB to have online discussions. Mastodon and IRC are open source and distributed. They can rent a hall and have meetings and sign up as candidates for various political offices and put forward their platforms on Wordpress-powered sites.
They can say whatever they want on myriad of platforms. But that doesn't mean anyone else has to listen.
Anyway, I'm not sure what your point is. Mine was that a lot happened before the 1960s, and much of it wasn't pretty.
Maybe this is just inherent to a conservative viewpoint, I don't know. If progressives are pushing for more freedom, more tolerance, then to oppose it you have to, by definition, advocate for less of those.
I like a spirited discussion, but I believe that intolerance is the one single thing we cannot tolerate. It destroys everything else.
I personally put the blame for his firing more on the blatantly distorted and sometimes even outright counterfactual coverage of his message. The number of mainstream and well respected outlets that falsely claimed he wrote that women are biologically less capable engineers, rather than that they lower predilection to enter the field , was disturbing. After his memo Google announced that they wouldn't set quotas for groups beyond the demographic's representation in the field. The people I know at Google felt that the reaction was overblown.
This is so tone deaf.
Why is it that conservatives consider intolerance to be their right above everyone else?
https://boingboing.net/2020/08/21/citing-violence-facebook.h...
I'm very disappointed that the rhetoric has devolved into "but they all deserved it so it's ok"...
your filter bubble is showing.
I defined it. Intolerance is not a legitimate viewpoint. It is not the expression of an idea, but the suppression of someone else's. I think I was pretty clear, I consider intolerance the one viewpoint we cannot tolerate. Everything else is fair game.
> If progressives are pushing for more freedom, more tolerance, then to oppose it you have to, by definition, advocate for less of those.
The framing of this is not correct. The problem is that not all "progressives" are pushing for that, which then undermines the assumption that opposition is therefor automatically intolerant and therefor automatically bannable/deplatformable. Some of the real progressives I follow such as Graham Elwood and Jimmy Dore have frequently had issues with their platforms giving them a hard time (demonteizing, etc) just because their positions or even topics of conversation are controversial, and many of them frequently mention they wouldn't be surprised to be deplatformed for said reason.
To me, the real crux of your position, is that by completely bucking the standard of free speech in which we have legal definitions for speech that isn't tolerable, positions like yours seem to want to expand those definitions (libel, defamation, imminent incitement to violence, etc) to a point that you must now designate some non-legal entitiy as the moral arbiter of what is intolerant/tolerable, and that is indeed a most slippery slope.
I think I have rewatched these two videos of Christopher Hitchens on the topic a good half dozen times each in the last year, and I keep thinking about their content. [1,2] From [2], I will link the timestamp of what I am about to quote [3]: "Whose going to decide? ... Who will you appoint? Who will be the one who says, "I know exactly where the limit should be, I know how far you can go, and I know when you've gone too far, and I'll decide that" Who do you think, Who do you know, who have you heard of, who have you read about in history who you would give that job?... Not for you, but for the people you are listening to and the peoples whose comments you hope to hear in return, for your own education, for your own elightenment, and for your own elucidation, as Mr. Paine says, commenting on Milton, one of the vices of those who would repress the opinions of others is they make themselves prisoners of their own opinions, because they deprive themselves of the means of changing them."
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z2uzEM0ugY
2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tjhj9Hn8oQw
3. https://youtu.be/Tjhj9Hn8oQw?t=2590
I've witnessed all 3 of these claims asserted in real life. And note that the latter two are directly contradictory. Just saying, "tolerate all except the intolerant" is an answer devoid of actual meaning. Genuine tolerance is refusing to ostracize or expel people even when you feel that their views are intolerant. Because I guarantee you: there are plenty of people out there who would find at least some of your views intolerant. And it also allows people to use allegations of intolerance as a tool to shut down debate.
Effective codes of conduct focus on specific behaviors or actions, not abstract ideas like tolerance.
Right now, I'm thinking an occasional bomb planting here and there is better than normalizing the idea that "Famous Jew (((Bernie Sanders))) wants to eat your young" or whatever kooky shit they've come up with.
Yeah, I think I'll take the unpredictable exploding for the moment. It's really not that bad.
Because their claims are held up to the law and don't pass muster.
> The mainstream media refuses to take them seriously.
Some particular popular outlets are allied with them, the rest of the major media takes them quite seriously (it often investigated their claims and finds them unsupported, but that's not failing to take them seriously.)
> We're not even listening to them, because it's science and they're ists if they disagree.
No, we’re listening to them. The rest of us aren’t agreeing* with them. (On the other hand, this is more literally true in the opposite direction.)
> We're not debating anymore.
You can only debate from a certain degree of shared basis, which does not exist.
> We just assume we're right.
On the issues of objective, verifiable fact, this is a conclusion not an assumption. On the matters of fundamental moral values, beliefs on those issues have a fundamentally axiomatic nature: there is no debating them.
On the other hand, this claim is, again, more true in reverse (especially on the issues of verifiable objective fact.)
> We are slowly squeezing a significant segment of the population out of public debate,
Or they are excluding the rest of society from their debate.
> and they are powerless to stop it.
They are not powerless to stop disengaging or engaging only in bad faith. Well, I mean many of them individually probably psychologically are powerless to do so, especially while those they take their cues from are doing so, but as a collective group they are not.
> Is it surprising that they are furious about it, and explode in unpredictable ways?
What unpredictable ways? Most of their explosions are publicly telegraphed quite specifically, and have a direction that has been publicly requested by the public figures that they overtly venerate.
It's not chaotic, unpredictable explosions of impotent rage of the factually disenfranchised, it's strategic, directed action at the behest of some of the most privileged segments of society, with the masses directed using mechanisms that are textbook features of cults.
I mean, if you are talking about the Tes Party/Trump/Q/alt-right/etc. group.
If you are talking about the people considered about the lack of accountability for murder of people of their race, actually, barring a partial shift that happened well into the paroxysm of protest over the last year, yeah, you are mostly exactly correct (though the nondisputable nature of fundamental moral principals is an issue there, too.)
I’m a strong social and fiscal conservative who never voted for nor liked Trump. I’m religious and that informs my opinions on a lot of social issues. I would be in strange company on Parler, but this still bothers me.
My family are all strong Trump supporters to the point that leaves me shaking my head. Working in technology, I also have a lot of progressive friends and coworkers.
As a racial minority, I think I can say this. There’s a real analogue to the general sentiment that LGBT, POC, or female Americans experience and worry about social or professional consequences to voicing their experiences and opinions and the general sentiment conservatives experience from voicing theirs.
Before you castigate me and say it’s false equivalence, take the good advice of the anti-racism movement and “just listen” to why I feel that way.
This is my personal experience as a POC and as a religious conservative working in tech. Even as a more moderate conservative (e.g., I believe climate change is anthropogenic and the state needs to correct for market failures), I genuinely feel like my voice is being suppressed—that is, my opinions are becoming less tolerable by the mainstream. For example, I have very traditional views about LGBT issues and abortion, but those views are becoming labeled as violent (I don’t believe in any kind of violence, BTW, but just believing that doesn’t accord with mainstream beliefs is considered hurtful and violent), in spite of how I support legislation and personally demonstrate fairness and tolerance for my LGBT friends and am sympathetic to women’s health issues.
There are a lot of people on the right who would do well to listen to BLM and those who feel like their voices are being suppressed. There are a lot of people on the left who would do well to listen to conservatives who feel like their voices are being suppressed. Let’s just have more humility about these things. If you feel like you’re in a morally/intellectually/factually superior position, quit treating people who aren’t as enlightened as the enemy. Treat them with some decency and compassion and listen so you might persuade them instead of berating them about their wrongness.
I think it’s hubris to be so confident in our own positions as to preclude accepting people’s lived experiences (like mine) as meaningful anecdata.
As I continue to feel the shift to fewer and fewer outlets for my voice, I genuinely worry. I blame the extremists on the right, absolutely, but I also blame extremists on the left. At the core I blame the tendency to not listen.
I think the problem comes in when your neighbour has views and beliefs that are not based in reality and just can't see the other side. I don't have a problem with "preppers", as I can see that it's entirely possible that society might collapse and it's good to be prepared.
On the other hand, how do you deal with those that believe that the Earth is flat? Even when they discover that the facts don't align with their beliefs, they still can't accept it. If you can't agree on literal "facts" then it's hard to find any common ground on which to stand.
No, if every educated person, scientist, lawyer, and generally decent person starts treating me like I'm radioactive at some point I'd probably start pondering if they're right rather than putting on a Viking outfit and storming the capitol in the name of Q. I actually lack the imagination to conceive of what goes on in the mind of someone who stands in a crowd of people who look like a mix of dollar-store militia and medieval role-playing convention and not ask themselves where they went wrong
Or maybe just a loud segment of the population.
~22% of the US population voted for Trump (75M out of 330M).
How many voted because they love Trump and his dangerous brand of politics? How many voted for him as an FU to liberals? And how many voted for Trump because they want conservative judges, lower taxes, a ban on abortion, etc. and are willing to hold their nose and vote for him?
Trump rallies were dwarfed by Obama’s crowds. Trump marches were dwarfed by BLM, climate and women’s marches. But the media loved every non-traditional thing he did and America was happy to watch the train wreck.
It’s an emotional time right now, but my neighbors with Trump flags are still nice people and are a far cry from the few hundred (or thousand) lunatics that are drumming up trouble.
If we can give folks direct representation or at least something other than winner take all voting, we might start getting the politicians we deserve.
Don’t forget, Trump had the lowest % primary vote share of a presidential candidate. He simply won because so many other candidates were splitting the vote. Put him head to head against other politicians and he loses. Give republicans ranked voice voting and I doubt he ever gets nominated.
This too shall pass, but I doubt it gets as big as the civil war some fear. A Republican will step up to fill the political void and reprint the party in their own image and voters will fall in line.
At the end of a sports contest, one side my be very unhappy with the result. Perhaps even violently so. But it doesn't change the outcome. This was contested and decided, even if there are people who still disagree
They had 60+ chances to make a case, and couldn't...
>> We're not even listening to them
>> We're not debating anymore.
I'm not listening anymore because there IS no debate. 'Debate' is an exchange of ideas. This is basically a 'harangue' - and personally, I'm tired of it. No one has a 'right' to force people to listen to them.
>> We just assume we're right.
No, I assume they're wrong as the logic doesn't hold up. There is a difference. Personally, I think the election basically boiled down to 'rural' vs 'urban', but I'm sure there are other views. I can't force people to believe my views 'cuz I said so!' anymore then Trump can force me to believe him, 'cuz he said so!'
>> Wouldn't you do the same?
I don't recall doing the same when Bernie was written off by DNC, and there actually WAS evidence the DNC tilted things against him.
edit: fix formatting
Their legal cases are being rejected because they are filing bogus claims without evidence...totally made up crap..not quite the victimization you make it out to be...
It’s not that they’re being deplatformed; it’s that Parler violated the App Store TOS. Specifically Review Guidelines Section 1.1 - Objectionable Content.
And Donald Trump violated the Twitter TOS.
No one is being deplatformed, and it isn’t a left vs right thing. It’s reasonable that these companies enforce their TOS as they would against you or me.
There’s no Apple TOS for websites viewed in Safari. And Apple has not made it so you can’t access Parler through the web.
Imagine: a leader calls for a certain racial, ethnic, or religious group to be barred entry to their country.
This is a textbook example of racist policies.
Half the population either
- voted him because of those policies (and so are racist),
- or were unbothered by those policies and voted for him (and so are not non-racist)
In earnest - is there any other conclusion than the above?
A religious group is not a race. When China persecuted the Falun Gong, nobody called them racist. You could say it's islamaphobic, but that connotates an irrational fear. It's not completely irrational when the values of many adherents to that religion differ so significantly from secular American values: pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2011/01/18/stoning-adulterers/.
Fundamentally the difference between a religion and a race is that race is not controllable; it's clearly wrong to discriminate against somebody for something entirely outside of their control. But people do have control over their ideology, so much as some people would advocate discriminating against racists for their racist beliefs, people can advocate for discriminating against people who believe the legal system should sentence to death adulterers, apostates (people who leave their religion) and homosexuals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_for_homosex...).
And fair enough, it's not strictly racist. I believe the semantics here don't alter the spirit of what was said (that is, discriminating against a group of people)
I'm not entirely convinced by the claim that one's religious choice being a choice means that it's not wrong to discriminate against them; what would your stance be on what the Chinese are doing to the Uighurs? (And - dare I ask - what does that then mean about your stance on the Nazi's policies?)
What the Chinese allegedly did to the Uighurs, or what the Nazis did to the Jews, is categorically wrong regardless of how it was justified; nobody has the right to sterilise or kill innocent people. But it's reasonable to argue that when a bunch of people come together to form a "country", they have a right to decide who's allowed to enter that country. Discriminating based on country of origin is not unpredecented: it's already way harder for an Indian or Chinese to get an American visa, for instance.
Appeasement is a failing strategy when it comes to fascists
They don't want to live a certain way but politics in general has been increasingly moving towards a national level, away from local politics. I can understand the right's belief that big city liberals are forcing left-wing values onto them because the left has expressed the same opinion about the right forcing values onto the left. The sentiment is mutual. And to some degree both sides are correct, there are definitely value systems that are forced from the top down (government), some may be good and some may be bad but that also depends on who you ask. And in the end neither side is happy.
Now obviously, tech companies are in their right to ban whoever they want for whatever they want. That's how the US operates even though I don't like it, and the right was happy to give businesses that power. But at a societal level it's clear we have an America with more than one identity and it's acting like a dysfunctional mental illness because we're forcing people together that don't want to be together. If the middle east is any indication that's a recipe for inevitable conflict.
Not really. More like, they voted in 2016 and won and "the other side" raised concerns about manipulation of voters and attempted to go through proper democratic channels to change things--which failed, so they accepted it and moved on until other debacles prompted similar action, and again, "they" accepted the results of those democratic processes, just like the game is supposed to work. The mainstream media has taken "them" seriously since 2016 and hasn't shut up about them since. Their legal cases are rejected because unlike what "the other side" did in 2016, they aren't following the process properly, have no legitimate evidence to present, they are totally incompetent, etc.
> We are slowly squeezing a significant segment of the population out of public debate, and they are powerless to stop it.
The POTUS was their megaphone for 4 years. You are supposed to elect the person you feel best represents you and your interests. If "they" didn't do that, "they" shouldn't be trying to establish him as a monarch. "They" are traitors attempting to rob everyone that voted last year of their voice. Their turn with the microphone is up, but they refuse to yield it. Yes, the figurehead will no longer echo their ridiculous, conspiratorial, world view, so we are "squeezing them out" in a sense, but hey, it's called American democracy and it has worked that way for years.
They've had 4 years to deliver on their promises and win a second term. Guess what. They didn't. You know why? Because instead of delivering they ignored a deadly pandemic and let 369K Americans *die* and the economy crumble. Now is not the time to sympathize and "let the other side be heard" we've been doing it for 4 years and there's nothing worth listening to unless your ears are comforted by the melodious sounds of the collapse of the United States.
You're right, they're not scientists. And to regex away the things they actually believe (ists) instead of science shows that you don't really give the reality of what it actually means to be something like a, for example, racist the full weight it deserves. Being a racist means your beliefs actively lead to the disenfranchisement, or worse, direct violence on others, which also in turn eventually hurts you longer term (fyi).
I think part of the problem with politics in this country is this very tendency toward abstractions, false equivalences, forgetfulness, and tepidness in language. Stop pussyfooting around. Call a spade a spade. If we all stayed grounded and spoke extremely concretely about things, it'd be a lot easier to prevent fringe voices intermixing with moderate voices under the banner of of a single ideology whose elements can differ wildly in their extremities. The fact of the matter is, most people only care about the one or two issues they feel affect them the most in a given moment and rather than compromise and side with the platform that maybe doesn't give them what they want on that one issue but is generally better overall they refuse to do so and will sleep with the devil just to have their one need met, damn everything else. The planet could literally become a flaming ball of molten lava and eliminate all life on earth and certain constituents in the US would not give a damn as long as it meant abortion was illegal.
Here's roughly my theory of how American politics functioned over the past four years for several people in the "center right":
Guy A believes something relatively reasonable, e.g. "I don't want to get taxed too much."
Par...
Way to reduce the right and need to own arms to be a crazy person's fantasy. It was recognized by the founders the are many legitimate reasons to keep and bear one.
> but he made his decision. Taxes were so important to him that he turned a blind eye to moral issues and decided to double-down when those issues escalated and "be loyal"
Very few issue are absent moral weight and taxes are not one of them.
Everyone is being subjected to the same standards here. Fundamentally Parler was banned because they wouldn't enforce their own policies.
From Apple's post:
> Your app enables the display of user-generated content but does not have sufficient precautions in place to effectively manage objectionable content present in your app.
All Parler needs to do is not allow people to plot violence on their platform. This is against Parler's policies, it's against Apple's App Store policies, the actual conversations are often against the law.
It isn't as if Apple is banning Parler because people are debating the second amendment. They are literally being banned for allowing people to openly plots against multiple government entities and individuals.
They are not debating. They are yelling and screaming mindlessly.
I literally said the same thing yesterday to another comment in another post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25672161
This sort of censorship will backfire badly. I won't be surprised if a real Civil War breaks out in America because of suppression of right wing groups by the Big Tech. This division is very real and scary. I shudder to think what sort of ripple effects it will have on 100+ countries where Big Tech operates! If it can nuke the US President's account what chance do other Presidents/Prime Ministers or Governments have?
Please remember that this is not just an action/reaction issue. It is not that simple. There are Second Order Effects at play. You can't even launch a rival platform without first gaining traction. How would you gain traction if the medium for gaining traction is controlled by Big Tech? How do you promote a Twitter alternative if Google, Facebook, Apple and Twitter ban you from their platforms. Can't advertise on Google, can't put your alternative app on Android Play Store or Apple Play Store, can't promote on Twitter. Literally have no choice but to follow the guidelines set by Big Tech and be at the mercy of Big Tech. We are looking at a Big Tech Cartel controlled by left wing ideology. That's precisely what it is today.
So what should the right wing do? Create a right wing Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple alternative? Are we staring at the balkanization of internet as we know it?
Technocracy is the natural way of things. Democracy is just an illusion to keep people happy.
When those people hold the reigns of power, they don't stop to think about how we're feeling. Why should we walk ourselves to them, why shouldn't they reflect on their anger and its consequences, and walk themselves to us?
I would suggest that his agenda should have three priorities:
1) Get the pandemic under control 2) Do the opposite of the Republican's long agenda of gerrymandering/disenfranchising, to tip the scales back towards a point where a Democrat victory doesn't require exceptionally high turnouts 3) Make big changes that actually, materially, visibly improve the lives of the parts of society that have been suffering the most.
If Democrats can actually hold on to power for a decade, they have the opportunity to do the big, hard things that will improve life for everyone, and people have time to see the effects and appreciate them. As it stands right now, any Democrat victories seem to quickly revert to Republican control and anything they tried to do gets undone before it's finished.
If people are just talking at you, it's not your fault there isn't a discussion happening. I have tried for years to talk with the type of person that is getting deplatformed here. I'm related to many of them. They don't want to have the discussion. They just want to dominate everyone else.
They are responsible for the consequences of their actions.
They don’t have explainable concerns, they just want the result of the presidential election changed for no other reason than that they prefer Trump over Biden.
Otherwise they would have accepted the outcome of all the legal challenges in court, where all the evidence they are relying on have been rejected.
But they don’t... these people keep reiterating evidence that has already been dismissed by multiple courts.
I absolutely agree that it’s deeply problematic to ignore the views of portions of the population.
But how do you reconcile Trump’s and his supporters vivid fantasy world with reality?
Then why are California schools still closed? The left is just as guilty are the right in not following science.
The segment being squeezed out wasn't willing to debate. There's been a year of debate and tolerance about the merits of masks, science, conspiracy, etc. The segment being deplatformed didn't listen to or learn from it. They were far from powerless during that time.
Not every side or segment has the rule about good faith like HN does.
I say the above as a Canadian, watching that segment spread it's toxic behavior here.
Poor education and a reliance on Murdoch/Sinclair or other similar media for their information is the main visible cause of this condition.
But in this case some Parler users are saying, "They should have burnt down Nanci Pelosi's house with her inside" and "That cop should have been shot and bleed out". This is clearly encouraging acts of violence, and the costs of giving such people a megaphone outweigh the benefits of engaged debate. So Apple is right to insist that Parler moderate such speech.
Thank fucking god. These tech companies were complicit in an incompetent but serious insurrection attempt. Better late than never, but they must have known things were going to get bad.
The right and the associated white supremists have far too much freedom to spread disinformation, racism and hatred.
I'm sure we'll see free speech absolutists in arms about this, but today is a good day for democracy.
If you or anyone notices a duplicate discussion going on, letting us know at hn@ycombinator.com is super helpful. If you want to refer to something you posted elsewhere, please use a link.
We can all agree, for example, that the internet at large enables many bad things, but I doubt any of us would ban the internet (though in other countries this happens).
What about reddit? A specific subreddit? A specific post? A specific user? A specific post by a specific user at a specific time? Obviously Reddit isn't going to be banned, but is the mere existence of moderation enough? Or is it the outcome of the moderation, aka, certain content never being present, that is what's desired?
I'm curious how nuanced these things are for Apple and other companies. Is there some sort of algorithm that says: if this app has a news feed, if X% of items in the newsfeed in a 24hr period are objectionable then it will be banned? Or perhaps Y number of days that fulfill the previous criteria before it is banned?
Whether or not it's "right leaning".
1. Be deplatformed
2. called a racist
3. called a pedophile
4. have my life threatened
that's the state of politics in this country. Thank you Media.
We need something decentralized and bullet-proof. Enough of these charlatans.
Since there are platforms without that content, the effect of starting a new platform allowing it is that you get a disproportionate amount of the most extreme content. You become the gab or parler or t_d.win.
Next, if your content has an extremely high ratio of content that must be moderated to be allowed in a “parent service” (App Store, cloud provider, credit card company) then your moderation burden is higher than your competition. Your ad revenue is also likely smaller. So basically, it’s simply very difficult economically to create such a platform.
I don't agree with this at all. You realize 70+ million people are not nazis, right? They're normal people like you or me who's voice just happens to not be amplified by the media/movies.
Platform would ideally provide controls for you to hide things you don't want to see. Hide nazis, hide perverts, hide furries, hide gun nuts, hide whatever you want to hide.
This is the future and what we should be aiming for.
(not the OP) Sure, but that's just a strawman, as nobody is saying they are. Twitter, Facebook, and Apple are specifically trying NOT to deplatform all of the 70 mil "alright" people, but only those few who go against the laws, right? Nobody's banning r/concervative, only the T_D got taken down.
> Platform would ideally provide controls for you to hide things you don't want to see. [...] This is the future and what we should be aiming for.
I like this idea very much! This already happens to some level, by following only certain accounts, being part of certain subreddits, or by switching to certain platforms, but I think a "physical" explicit checkmark to hide specific themes might make people think more about what they're actually doing — closing their eyes and ears and hiding themselves in echo chambers.
With that said, I'm sure we both can agree that most companies wouldn't want to provide a platform for nazis and pedophiles (...to discuss their nazi and pedophile things), even if the other users could hide their posts. Because, why would you do that? F*ck them.
"I think a seriously dangerous and underreported factor in these issues is the widespread use of the English language. I think it's time to hold accountable the Oxford English Dictionary company ("Big Word") and their agents, English teachers, for their role in enabling this ghastly event."
If you're not seeing it in the thread it's probably because the thread has been paginated for performance reasons. In that case you have to click More at the bottom to get to the rest.
Your username is 10 off of 1488, a nazi number (look it up)
5) democracy
6) fascism Or Socialism Or communism
7) Totalinarianism Or genocide
I’m now kind of depressed it wasn’t.
1. what is a non-racist person supposed to say to a racist person to change their views?
2. why is it the non-racist person's responsibility to talk to the racist person? in the words of office space, "why should I change? he's the one who sucks."
Similar victories have been achieved with respect to drug legalization and "gay marriage".
None of these victories are or ever will be complete but a combination of discussion and social pressure did make significant social progress possible.
Racists do exist in considerable numbers and post prolifically online, so what should non-racists say to people like that?
Everyone in my neighborhood, every single neighbor, speaks different languages, has different cultural origins and most are of different races. We don't support the same candidates or policy positions but we do all support and look out for each other.
I guess my point is, politeness even when there are significant disagreements is possible. We need to analyze the communications that do and don't work, find the similarities and patterns and encourage the beneficial ones while discouraging the negative ones.
Parler heavily moderates away any non-right-wing content. There was never "both sides" on Parler. If it's actively being used to plan and execute acts of violence (arguably terrorism, given the death, bombs, and more that we've seen this week), how does keeping Parler around bring anyone together?
That's because no one has heard from the fucker since he got booted.
Is there any reasoning for thinking this? Besides that, discussion cannot fix harms created by previous discussion - it can only (maybe) prevent future harms.
Please put a little more fucking thought into this than "why don't we just get rid of them, then they'll go away".
Completely aside from the morality of it, giving into that urge is exactly how we got here, and exactly how this spirals much, MUCH further out of control.
They made a new platform, leave it alone.
We were pretty centralised around a few locations like slashdot & newsgroups.
Walled gardens were a thing, here in the UK a service called CIX was popular but AOL is the big famous one.
It’s not that we communicated less, group messaging with non-techie friends was done over email - cue flashback to 300-message deep top-posted replies.
It’s not that we were better in any way, the anarchist’s cookbook cost many a high school several new sets of door locks. Back orifice was a thing and was used for real scummy purposes sometimes.
I landed at profit motive as the difference. Just before the era of spyware is where i’m thinking it fell apart but I’m not at all confident in my assessment.
Scale begets financial interest, btw.
Or maybe about 45% of 70% of the population.
Sources: Pew Research says registered voters are about evenly split between R (29%),D (33%), and independent (34%), and also notes that the independents are pretty evenly split between “leans R” and “leans D” for a total of 44/49% here: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/26/what-the-20...
And the Census bureau says about 70% of the population is registered to vote, with about 60% voting in 2016 here: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/stories/election-day.html
(Feel free to go find stats for 2020 for both of those, I can’t be bothered)
Also as a moderator of a Mastodon instance, I can say that this decentralized tech is quite capable of making people STFU, I sure have defederated with a constantly growing list of fediverse nodes full of the exact same kind of shit featured in these Parler screenshots because I just do not wanna talk to anyone like that.
And yup, I noticed I'm not even on firefox right now.
If the web were invented today, there's not a chance in hell Apple would approve a web browser as an app. If you really think about that, I think you'll agree that current app store policies are harmful to innovation and harmful to society as a whole.
At the end of the day, tech can only get you so far. You need to have a broader societal acceptance of a norm of freedom.
The US is trending, quite radically, in the opposite direction.
Thankfully, there is a web browser.
But corporations want us to use apps instead of web browser to restrict this. Like, everything must be an app. Every social network basically forces their app down your throat. "Ew you use a browser, what a loser"
I'm seeing a lot of talk about standing up competing platforms. I'm seeing a lot of talk about destroying incumbents, as through antitrust. I'm seeing some promotion of specific, arguably decentralized, alternatives. But the more successful of those do a lot to hide "decentralized" as an implementation detail, since so few potential users understand, much less care.
It shows men with baseball bats feet from members of congress.
The media and this whole generation has gone ape shit.
I'm sure many people on Parler are very concerned about free speech. It is discussed often and very passionately.
Some peoples lives might suck, some seem very happy, in my experience the atmosphere on Parler is generally far less depressed and hostile than on Twitter and it's quite relaxing seeing a lot more civil discourse. There does appear to be a bit more spam compared to Twitter but Twitter does have a 10 year head start.
They didn't damage property, either. Nor did they impede the democratic process which we all put so much stock in. There's just absolutely no equivalence between these two events. I don't know if that was your intent or not, but there's absolutely no comparison.
- What the pro-Trump crowd did on 2021-01-06 at the capitol building is essentially the same as what the anti-Kavanaugh crowd did on 2018-10-04 at the Hart Senate Office Building.
- And so, the actions themselves have not escalated; what has escalated is our sensitivity to them in that we no longer deem them as "OK".
? Or am I totally misreading you? Because if I understood you correctly, um, see what 'benmaraschino wrote.
On the other hand, Capitol police killed 4 unarmed citizens. If this were a BLM rally, and those people were black, we would never hear the end of it. We'd have to "say their name," irrespective of the circumstances of their death.
The woman who was killed on video is effectively nameless. She won't receive any encomiums or major press coverage.
- https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/loss-uscp-c...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:White_American_riots_...
And as someone who lives in one of those areas of the country constantly scorned, belittled, and caricatured, I can say with confidence that you do not want those people to act in kind to Antifa.
There's been a lot of living vicariously through Antifa/BLM lately with portions of society that want to "stand for something." It's the same mentality as people who wear Che Guevara t-shirts but complain when the wifi on their plane isn't available.
On the other side of that is a enormous, peaceful, patriotic section of U.S. society that is heavily armed and competent with those armaments.
If you make this segment of society feel as if they are the enemy of the country they love, it will be a disaster. If there is ever armed conflict between urban areas vs everyone else, "everyone else" in the U.S. will win overwhelmingly.
These people demand Constitutional rights while trampling all over that very document.
They are not “patriots,” they are traitors.
What we're seeing is this being used as a blunt instrument to suppress the non-extremist components of that disagreement.
That "non-extremist" component is patriotic. It is extremely large and also very angry. Treating them as if they are the same as the people who did this is ill-advised.
I remember back in third grade when kids would argue about how their dad would beat the others’. As I grew up, I realized that that’s not how conflicts work, and certainly not how they’re won.
Please tell that to the Afghanis.
This isn't about some civil war, it's about what would happen if Red State America decided it wanted to behave like Blue City America has been for the last year. People talk about "Proud Boys" as if that's equivalent and I just have to roll my eyes.
There is an immense reservoir of anger within America in people who feel overlooked and the system is stacked against them. If they receive the downsides of civil strife even though they haven't participated in violence, they might decide they want the upsides of civil strife as well. This culture, unlike the sadly tolerated insurrections of Antifa, has the ability to have real power through violence if it ever came to it.
Point being, if your goal was genuinely to bring awareness to and address some real suffering in your community, you’d just do that; get out on the street, break a few windows, punch a cop, petition for legislation, like BLM does. That’s called civil disobedience. “Insurrection” starts when you try to override and overrule the very fabric of the system, like the federal legislature.
> The elite media class of academics, influencers, celebrities, and journalists who make up the #resistence, spent all summer saying "riots are the language of the unheard," as a way of excusing and justifying violence, vandalism, and riots in the streets
This thread will help you remember: https://twitter.com/wokal_distance/status/134693785297048371...
2020 - https://foxsportsradio.iheart.com/content/2020-11-23-nfl-pla...
2012 - https://www.nfl.com/news/david-akers-closes-twitter-account-...
Still up: https://cdn.cnsnews.com/styles/article_big/s3/2021-01/Arthur...
> UPDATE: The calls for violence over on Parler are getting much, much worse.
> There are now open calls for the murder of police officers and planning for violence on January 20th
> This obviously severely violates the law, much less the @AppStore and @GooglePlay rules.
If there are no consequences, they'll only get the message that they can do whatever they want and things will only get worse.
It won't change a single thing, at best, those elected official will be considered traitors / pussies.
The worst thing Republicans can do is pretend it's all business as usual and force these people to choose between 'the evil Democrats' (who they won't support, ever) or 'our guy who might try a coup here and there but at least is on our side'.
Really just planning to excuse myself from politics for the next few years.
It's not "extremism" if, from the point of view of History, you're on the winning side, in that case, it's "heroism".
Trump acted like a clown, but he's hardly the only agitator in this mess. The entirety of 2020 has been a shit show from all sides, and near as I can tell no one is interested in backing down.
Trying to equate people rioting on the streets with an organized pseudo-coup-by-proxy is ridiculous and it just sounds like you are trying to give one side an excuse by using whataboutism.
Oh spare me the faux sanctimony. No one was "organizing a coup" it was a bunch of dipshits getting in over their heads.There is nothing inherently sacred about the capital buildings.
You are trying to downplay this as if it was just some goons setting an empty Denny's on fire, but you know exactly what was happening and who was in that building at the time they broke into it.
The fake Thomas Paines here need to understand that we are at WAR. If you care about this country, this shit has to be put down mercilessly.
Just like all the BLM / Antifa shit this summer? Or is it only when it's the other side causing trouble that people need shot on sight?
There were thousands of arrests because of the BLM protests. If you were truly in favor of 'treating them equally', you'd be rooting for every single person who broke into the Capitol to be arrested. Are you?
You're going to need to explain exactly how the right is "alienated".
> last public channel
You're going to need to explain what right they have to an audience or for other entities to provide time/effort/money giving them a voice.
> This risks further escalatation
Oh good. "More violence if we don't get our way"? You're literally saying "deplatforming them in response to incitements and planning of violence will lead to further violence" as an argument why we should allow that to continue?
> This compounded with the stark contrast to how the protests were handled this summer.
I'm sure Trump will be pushing for "10 YEARS FEDERAL PRISON" for protests at this federal building, any minute now.
I thought not.
Also, Antifa was planning an attack on the white house after election day.
July 22, 2020: "As they have for the past 53 days, violent anarchists continue to riot on the streets of Portland as federal law enforcement officers work diligently and honorably to enforce federal law by defending federal property and the lives of their fellow officers.
Attacks on federal personnel and property overnight have included attacks on Law Enforcement officers with commercial grade fireworks, hard projectiles, and lasers – which can cause permanent blindness. Last night violence was even more aggressive than previous nights as rioters once again tried to set fire to the federal courthouse and actively tried to breach the entrance of the courthouse. Rioters are also employing tactics that force federal officers to leave the Hatfield Federal Courthouse, setting them up to be attacked with lasers and projectiles."[2]
Perhaps these do not meet your narrow definition, yet violent attacks on our other branches of federal government seem fairly analogous if not of the same magnitude as Wednesday's assault. Are you suggesting Apple would/should allow apps where users organized violent assaults such as these on the executive and judiciary - just not against the Capitol building as Congress is in session?
[1] https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/george-floyd-protests-05-31...
[2] https://www.dhs.gov/news/2020/07/22/portland-riots-read-out-...
I am an advocate for Apple allowing side loading, but that is a different argument than requiring the App Store to host specific software.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
* 5 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24082241
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%...
If you want to have some moral higher ground, win them over with your virtue. Yes, it's incredibly hard. But it is not a hypocritical bullshit like this 'paradox'.
This is just wrong and a sloppy way to insult "half the US population". This sort of attitude contributes to the tribalism that is creating so much division.
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20201022/mask-use-by-america...
They're nazi and facist scumbag fuckos using the banner of "free speech" to disguise and hide their intentions. This is far from free speech at this point... They only want to "use it," to take it away from others. Fuck that.
Hitler performed a similar failed coup, where was put in jail for a few months, laughed at publicly, and then got out and we all know how the rest went.
Escalation at this point is the rest of escalating our actions against fascist fuckos by any and all means necessary. Removing their ability to broadcast bullshit is but one of many steps that must immediately be taken.
Who on earth says they need or deserve a "public channel to express themselves"? The world seemed to get by just fine before social media existed, and I have no doubt we'd all be perfectly fine if it were gone tomorrow. If the white supremacists are stuck going back to physically mailing letters around and struggling to organize that's a net win for society...
Where exactly did you come to the conclusion they're expressing themselves peacefully? So far we've had the Capitol stormed, and a thwarted attempt at kidnapping and murdering a state governor. Neither of those two events are anything resembling "peaceful".
This is prime "Free Speech for Me - But Not for Thee".
You're making a very easy generalization. Not any significant portion of people expressing themselves contributed to any of the events you are mentioning. It's funny because you can read the exact same thought process from the opposite side, against say the BLM protests.
That was a pretty bold assumption on your part, and couldn't be any further from the truth. I don't participate on Twitter or Facebook, and I'm getting by just fine. Somehow I don't feel my freedom of speech has been in any way limited. So I can tell you with 100% certainty that you can in fact get by just fine without having a "public channel to express yourself".
>You're making a very easy generalization. Not any significant portion of people expressing themselves contributed to any of the events you are mentioning. It's funny because you can read the exact same thought process from the opposite side, against say the BLM protests.
It doesn't actually matter if it was "a significant portion" - they allowed the organization of what became a violent protest and will likely be de-platformed as a result. Freedom of speech doesn't apply to private companies. I have literally no idea what BLM has to do with any of this other than you're making another poor assumption that I'm OK with violent protests if it's by a certain group. You'd be wrong.
You can speak for yourself with regards to your need for social media or platforming of any kind. Just remember that where we're going, there are no limits. Next you're off HN. Next is hosting providers. Then it's the internet (ISPs). So sure, they're all private companies but to ignore that fundamental impact is odd to say the least.
I will assume then, that you also concluded that BLM supporters as a group did not "express themselves peacefully" as there were plenty of linked violence, in aggregate well beyond what we witnessed a few days ago. It would be a breath of fresh air if that was really the case but I struggle to find consistency of principle among people these days and making that comparison is an attempt to highlight that.
But the crowd outside was chanting “Who’s house? Our house!” and just celebrating. Then almost everyone left and did not defy the curfew.
I'm sure plenty of Nazis fuckos were very polite before they shot someone. I'm sure that by your standards that would then be fine and acceptable; so long as they said, "please take of your hat" first.
Yeah it's a private platform they can do what they want but they're basically a monopoly too.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
This seems a very dangerous line of reasoning.
For example, I wonder how many violent crimes alcohol ultimately led to. How many violent crimes Facebook ultimately led to. How many violent crimes encryption ultimately led to.
In a court of law, there is a distinction drawn between different events leading up to a crime, with a great deal of thought put into which of those events can be held responsible and which cannot. Now, Apple or others don't have to follow that reasoning, at least absent being involved in any court cases, but there is a great deal of wisdom in that reasoning that it would be dangerous to dismiss when politically convenient.
I think you can be pro free-speech, and still be happy to use the downvote button. The downvote button is an agreed upon and standard way of expressing disagreement on the site, so is in itself a part of free-speech.
That said downvoting a well-reasoned, but contrary-opinioned comment is clearly against the intention of the button, which weakens my argument a bit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
It is incredible that people who have benefited from America's free society are now so ready to give up their commitment to the principles of free speech as soon as they get a taste of power through their monopolistic tech/social media platforms.
This kind of seeming pattern is a gigantic Rohrschach blob in which people notice things based on their preconceived opinions and then backfit stories to them. Other people react based on theirs, and so we get the same exact flamewar as before, just on a meta level. Meta is internet forum crack. Flamewars on crack is bad idea.
I read about you and came home to find my mother
Staring deep into the dark, dark web
She started begging me
Not to give my social security number to anybody else
There goes the sound of the freeway
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Then… it turned out kind of fine.
Most people that voted for Donald Trump are not Nazis. Most people on Parler are not Nazis. Most of the protests over the past several years were not violent.
>A study published by the German government in 1974 estimated the number of German civilian victims of crimes during expulsion of Germans after World War II between 1945 and 1948 to be over 600,000, with about 400,000 deaths in the areas east of Oder and Neisse (ca. 120,000 in acts of direct violence, mostly by Soviet troops but also by Poles, 60,000 in Polish and 40,000 in Soviet concentration camps or prisons mostly from hunger and disease, and 200,000 deaths among civilian deportees to forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union), 130,000 in Czechoslovakia (thereof 100,000 in camps) and 80,000 in Yugoslavia (thereof 15,000 to 20,000 from violence outside of and in camps and 59,000 deaths from hunger and disease in camps).
>Some German prisoners were released soon after the war. Many others, however, remained in the GULAG long after the surrender of Nazi Germany. Among the most famous German POWs to die in Soviet captivity was Captain Wilm Hosenfeld, who died of injuries, sustained possibly under torture, in a concentration camp near Stalingrad in 1952.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_war_crimes
Edit: Removed some grammar that was too redundant on review.
Along with the actual text from the constition:
AMENDMENT I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Perhaps it should when those platforms develop monopoly levels of control over distribution.
The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. Arguably one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law and was proposed in response to issues related to former slaves following the American Civil War. The amendment was bitterly contested, particularly by the states of the defeated Confederacy, which were forced to ratify it in order to regain representation in Congress. The amendment, particularly its first section, is one of the most litigated parts of the Constitution, forming the basis for landmark Supreme Court decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education (1954) regarding racial segregation, Roe v. Wade (1973) regarding abortion, Bush v. Gore (2000) regarding the 2000 presidential election, and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) regarding same-sex marriage. The amendment limits the actions of all state and local officials, and also those acting on behalf of such officials.
I fail to see how Twitter acts on behalf of government officials.
The meaning of it has been "stretched" a bit (at least from the pov of a textualist/originalist) to constitutionally justify civil rights laws applied to individuals/businesses, not just state governments.
So it's "true meaning" is often debated, but as I understand it:
If civil rights laws can be/ are interpreted to apply to individuals and businesses via the 14th (which they are), it's hard to also square that diversity of political opinion is not also protected, given that it's the ultimate civil right and we're a democratic-republic.
From wiki: "nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws". It mandates that individuals in similar situations be treated equally by the law.
Where does Twitter fit in exactly? As a.. 'state'? As 'the law'? As a 'person' (because it's a corporation)?
Also, we're not talking about political diversity here. Unless the diversity involves inciting violence. Nobody wants to censor conservatives. But I would wager that plotting to execute the vice president crosses a line wrt to political diversity. Apple doesn't want the app down because it's full of non-SJWs but to probably avoid liability if they end up using the app to coordinate an attack.
Honestly, it doesn't make much logical sense, especially to someone reading the text of the constitution with the expectation of understanding it...
but they really wanted a way to make civil rights laws happen. 2nd order effects, good case results in bad caselaw, etc.
The net effect is that constitutional protections originally meant only to apply to the federal government have, one at a time, over many years, been ruled as being applicable to both States and private businesses. To the point where it's presumed that most/all federal rights/protections should be applied this way. With guns being a currently battled sort-of exception.
(Similarly, read the text of the 8th amendment, and try to figure out the bridges crossed to result in Roe v Wade)
Twitter fits in as a business, at least in this context, for the sake of this particular argument. (As opposed to those who want to classify it as a utility, or "public square," etc)
Some people get upset at it, but the easy comparison is they're the modern version of the 1960's lunch counter or bus company, but instead of skin color, it's political opinion (or sometimes even religious beliefs, depending on the specific topic of discussion).
The fire in a theatre cliche isn't really true. There isn't really a broad "incitement" exception to freedom of speech / 1A.
It's an out of context/misunderstood quote from an old case. (And I want to say it wasn't even in a majority opinion, or something similar, that made it mostly irrelevant anyway.)
Part of the reason being, no one can agree on what "incite" legally means. Which makes it a political question, in itself.
People hear what they want to hear. I personally don't understand how anyone thinks that speech was inciting violence, unless they presume to think he meant something other than what he said.
That's trying to mind read, not a legal standard.
Basically, I disagree: it is a matter of political diversity.
Even discussing the merits of executing someone, be it deathrow inmates or politicians. But the standards of trying to judge what's a dog whistle is a criminal matter, not a censorship one.
Now, I'm not saying all speech, no matter what, should be left up in all circumstances.
I am saying there needs to be a presumption of good intention, and lacking some form of legal process (a la evictions), platforms should not be able to take pre-emptive actions without meaningful consequences.
Pre-2016 San Francisco used to be full of people with HUGE distrust of the USA intelligence apparatus, distrust of mainstream news, and strong convictions about free speech and open platforms. And where are they now?
"Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”
Moxie, and probably a bunch others that I can't think of in 5 seconds. (Probably look at the staff list at EFF web page.)
> distrust of mainstream news,
I can guarantee you the next mainstream news article critical of adtech here on HN will have its normal share of knee-jerk cranks who justify not reading the article by lazy reference to the Gell-Mann Amnesia Affectation. So don't worry at all about that one.
> and strong convictions about free speech
Yes, those strong convictions have apparently been slipping, but it's across the board and for decades. If anyone has some sources that explain this trend I'd be interested in reading them.
> and open platforms
Oh, those. They're either stuck in the 90s because it's impossible to make them secure after the fact, or they are full of open research problems.
Counterexamples welcome.
https://www.amazon.com/Coddling-American-Mind-Intentions-Gen...
Trump has destroyed America. Ban him from every platform.
Trump is getting banned left and right as we speak. We have freedom of speech, just not for seditious, insurrectionists. No country in the world would tolerate what US has tolerated so far.
I also recognize, fully, this is a slippery slope and there should be a pretty high bar for banning people on social media platforms. I would say Trump and Trumpism, QAnon and all this has crossed the line.
It has become tiresome seeing americans (both left and right) whine all the time about every single thing while they silently ignore that they are bombing civilians.
If anything has it’s people becoming less tolerant of those with political opinions that differ from their own.
Jk constant advertising will gaslight the Truth.
Seems inconsistent to me to ban Parler and not Twitter. Also seems undesirable for a phone manufacturer to tell me what software I should or shouldn't use.
> Many of Us will return ... carrying Our weapons. ... We will come in numbers that no standing army or police agency can match. However, the police are NOT our enemy, unless they choose to be!
> I hope the cop gets doxxed and murdered. That would be the only real justice.
> Federal swine most definitely. Dozens of them need to be eliminated.
>> All
This is so embarrassing, you'd think people so hard right would remember the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Technology lols at their "numbers."
The problem is that even if Parler wanted to moderate (I doubt it - they’d lose users) there is no way they could afford it unless they invent something very cost efficient and don’t rely on manual review.