Trump did not say anything to incite the Capitol riots. It appears Capitol staff and antifa were involved in the breach of the building and breaking the window.
The left burned our cities for 2 months and did nothing about it.
Basically no chance of this. The crazy thing is people have been yelling about deplatforming since the very beginning of his presidency, and he used his position to...do absolutely nothing.
The ironic thing is that despite all of the hysteria about him as the "orange hitler," he was completely toothless as president. It was bizarre to watch him tweet complaining about people and things that he himself could change, as though he were not president, but just some dude on twitter.
They don't care and don't want that. But the government could host their announcements, comments and videos.
Using twitter/youtube is the same as stating that we will put all information for our citizens in <SomeRandomNewspaper>.
Of course then it's unclear why some elected official couldn't have their own private account anywhere on the web, and it's really hard to tell what's job related and what is not for somebody who is ranking high enough.
One way or another, as it's been for ages, money rules the world and with quick technological advances corporations are ending up with more of it than governments. I just can't quite figure out China in that viewpoint of mine.
You learned well from the 20th century,a time when mass communications were invented and when they were almost exclusively operated by the politicians in charge. The politicians knew what was good for their dumb populace and the populace listened attentively. And acted accordingly.
Problems with this approach were taught to 6th graders in the United States. Now the wisdom of it is taught instead. All for one and one for all.
Lol, the classic "why don't we debate the Nazis instead of punching them" line. Impressive that people are still able to convince themselves that this is ok.
The conversation probably needs to pivot to the members of congress. Many members are describing receiving death threats from other members of congress. Some are yelling (without masks) at the capitol police because they're being screened at metal detectors and unable to carry their guns into the Congressional halls/chambers. It might help to read that a few times...it's as if one of your coworkers had circulated a literal "kill list" with your name on it and been stopped attempting to bring guns to work. This is not acceptable behavior and egregiously illegal.
Perhaps also back on the Capitol Police again? If I loudly refused to go through a metal detector at my local government building and tried to walk around it, I would (and should) be promptly arrested.
You aren't a member of government. It's actually illegal to arrest a member of Congress on their way to the congressional floor.
Hypothetically, if they shoot someone dead on the steps, and then disarm themselves so they aren't a threat anymore, then the police must still allow them to go into Congress to finish their debate. Congress itself can self police, but it's immune to being controlled by the executive branch (i.e. the police).
If you could just arrest Congressmen on their way to the chambers, then you would see in a close vote that some Congressmen will never make it to the chambers because the police "found" something on them (or a police dog smelled weed on them).
It’s legal for these congress men and women to carry firearms. In many states you can carry a firearm anywhere, openly. That’s because there are not federal laws baring that.
These Congress men and woman were legally able to do this. It was and is illegal to stop an elected Congress person from entering chambers.
I also am unaware of any clear and present danger from the representatives, did I miss something? Do you have a link to the threats? (Not a polarized story, but the real threats)
"The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place."[1]
“Breach of the peace “ is very obviously what the radical representatives are violating from definition. Note also that while they may not be arrested by the executive, the legislative branch absolutely does police itself. It’s one of those corner cases the last several years pointed out as a pain point.
Edit-there’s talk of making it a 5,000$ fine per incidence on the news.
Like technical debt, this will come back with full force one day and these corporations will have to deal with the consequences of their lack of forethought.
Bans happened only after the power shifted and continued based on the bandwagon effect.
The way i personally see it from afar, no side was innocent and definitely no one scored a win. But social networks messed up the most and will pay the most. Even European leaders expressed more concern with the powers and lack of control over social networks than with a bunch of whatever-you-call-them that took advantage of the laughably weak security force of Capitol (especially considering the event of the day).
What do you think those consequences will be? Other than depriving white supremacists and domestic terrorists of a platform? There seems to be this fantasy of ideological purity that all speech is created equal and "we"—meaning, say, people who receive death threats on a daily basis and not the people conceiving of this "censorship"-free paradise—just have to "live with it."
Nope. We don't have to live with violent insurrections. We don't have to live with sieges of government buildings. All speech is not created equal: there is such a thing as hate speech and speech that inspires violence, and that is distinct from a youtube channel about legos or makeup or video games. They are different things, and people and platforms can decide to say no.
I'm seeing this pattern of hysterical hand-wringing that deplatforming or "canceling" terrorists is somehow a bad thing because it means that—what? now a platform can do what they want with their platform in accordance with their own terms of service? There's this nonsensical and baseless extrapolation that now that platform will just suddenly decide to "censor"—what? who? What exactly are you worried about?
People have been "censoring" and "canceling" each other for as long as there have been human cultures, because there are limits to what a culture will accept, and few cultures are so ideologically pure that they'll accept angry armed mobs storming capitols because "we should debate them". People who are flipping out about YouTube/Twitter/FB/etc limiting the speech of violence-inducing criminals live in a fantasy world where they've never come close to being the target of that speech, and know they never will: they can sit comfortably at home in front of their computers and blithely evangelize about how America is doomed and now America is China and wah wah wah wah because it's trying to do what it's always done, and what it exists for, which is protect its own citzens.
Nobody deprived anyone of a platform. Platforms spawn like mushrooms and the closure of one will only radicalize its members further more, not to mention that will force more to take a stance. No problems have been fixed.
Your concern with violence is fake, as that and the platforms that it lived on, existed way before 6th of January. Parlor was allowed to thrive for years, nobody had problems with it before that. But magically, Amazon is a saint now.
The general problem is that everyone thinks that the ban button and "cancellation" fixes problems. It doesn't. What transpired with these platforms is purely based on political interest and nothing else. This political interest can and will change with next elections and the platforms will follow suit - are you OK with that?
YouTube bears a lot of responsibility for the existence of this whole movement. Their recommendation engine is a brainwashing engine, probably as a side effect of the fact that rabbit-holing people keeps them on the site. It doesn't just filter bubble you. It subjects you to what seems like an escalating indoctrination ramp... again probably as a side effect of just studying what keeps people on the site longest.
Agree. It'd be great if YouTube were actually undertaking to counteract their algos effects. Maybe something as simple as suggesting factually vetted documentaries into the queues.
So, do people think Trump is going to be a one-off, or is it going to become a regular occurrence that politicians that are deemed to be beyond the pale get digitally annihilated?
And if the latter, only losing politicians, or politicians still actively running for office?
Not having access to social networks would obviously be a huge disadvantage for a candidate. Arguably this precedent could in practice give the big tech co's something like a soft-veto on any political candidate.
I think this is a minimization of the harmful nature of statements made by Donald Trump. We're not talking about not liking his political views. No, we're talking about dangerous encouragement of violence.
It's not just that YouTube and Twitter think Trump is mean.
Trump could just create his own YouTube platform though right?
Oh no wait, it would be taken down by the hosting company.
But he could just host his own servers and build his own infrastructure?
But it would be banned by his domain provider.
But he could register with ICANN and become a registrar?
Perhaps, but he still wouldn't be able to monetize the platform because Visa / MasterCard would ban him from accepting payments.
But he could build his own payment infrastructure?
Maybe there's a slim chance if you're fortunate enough to be Donald Trump, but even that would be challenging now banks are refusing to do business with him too.
-----
I'm not a fan of Trump but anyone still giving the "it's only Alex Jones" defence is being extremely naive at this point. If you own a company today and have the wrong political opinions you should be aware that these companies can and will crush you. This isn't about Trump or what he said, this is about whether or not it should be practically impossible to run a business if your politics doesn't align with a handful of monopolies in the US.
Does an individual or company need Twitter / Facebook / YouTube, probably not. Should someone have a right to critical web services? Maybe... It's kind of hard to start a business without them in 2021. Should someone have a right to take card payments in 2021? Yeah, personally I think there is no question here.
When someone high profile like Trump gets deplatformed I often see people say, "well they could always use [x] service instead", but has been proven by Parler to be a ban argument. It's basically impossible to create a successful alt platform when you can't accept payments or find a hosting company. The conversation we're having about Twitter and YouTube is just a distraction from the real problem which is a lack of competition. If there was competition companies like Twitter wouldn't be so quick to kick people from their platform when they see platforms like Parler rapidly growing in response to Twitter's censorship. But the free market clearly isn't working here and regulation is needed. We have no choice and so these companies can force us to stay within their lines or face insurmountable consequences. And there is no forgiveness. Once you're gone, you're gone. One mistake and you're out.
I don’t know if you’ve watched what happen to Gab. They have been banned from everything.
They built their own browser, media, host their own servers, working on a phone, etc
My concern is when IPs or DNS is blocked. There are distributed DNS solutions, but they aren’t there yet.
I personally bought a pinephone this last week and plan to try and stabilize it enough to hand to family members. Possibly I’ll even start selling tech support for it.
I’m not by any means a supporter of either political establishment either. But I believe we can’t have a two tiered system. If corporations are going to exert power over the population, it can be combated.
My concern, is what happens when they get in government. Remember, Trump banned lobbying his administration.
Biden’s adding them to his staff now. That could be a good thing (know the industry, etc). But it could also be used as a governmental hammer on alternatives.
I'm no Trump fan, but how do we fix the decentralization everyone brings up? For example, Lbry/Odysee and ilk are often touted as alternatives. I watched a video from someone pretty big on that platform where they had shifted to say maybe Linux Gaming isn't doing too well long term. He's being "cancelled" right now over there because of the current audience of these platforms. He was already dealing with tons of "why are you still posting on youtube as well" comments. I find a lot of people seem to use these alternatives not so much for their superiority, but because they hate big tech.
I guess ultimately his videos are still there, and that's the real point of decentralization. But perhaps the main issue isn't so much about using Youtube/Twitter, but exclusively using them. I can understand "going where the people are" to bring a message, but don't only post there.
44 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] threadThe left burned our cities for 2 months and did nothing about it.
Those are the facts.
The ironic thing is that despite all of the hysteria about him as the "orange hitler," he was completely toothless as president. It was bizarre to watch him tweet complaining about people and things that he himself could change, as though he were not president, but just some dude on twitter.
Now he's not even that.
Literally inciting an insurrection and siege of the Capitol is absolutely nothing?
Using twitter/youtube is the same as stating that we will put all information for our citizens in <SomeRandomNewspaper>.
Of course then it's unclear why some elected official couldn't have their own private account anywhere on the web, and it's really hard to tell what's job related and what is not for somebody who is ranking high enough.
One way or another, as it's been for ages, money rules the world and with quick technological advances corporations are ending up with more of it than governments. I just can't quite figure out China in that viewpoint of mine.
For everyone else, yes, sending them into oblivion is precisely the right thing to do in the 21st century.
Problems with this approach were taught to 6th graders in the United States. Now the wisdom of it is taught instead. All for one and one for all.
Hypothetically, if they shoot someone dead on the steps, and then disarm themselves so they aren't a threat anymore, then the police must still allow them to go into Congress to finish their debate. Congress itself can self police, but it's immune to being controlled by the executive branch (i.e. the police).
If you could just arrest Congressmen on their way to the chambers, then you would see in a close vote that some Congressmen will never make it to the chambers because the police "found" something on them (or a police dog smelled weed on them).
These Congress men and woman were legally able to do this. It was and is illegal to stop an elected Congress person from entering chambers.
I also am unaware of any clear and present danger from the representatives, did I miss something? Do you have a link to the threats? (Not a polarized story, but the real threats)
I can't find any such law?
> I also am unaware of any clear and present danger from the representatives, did I miss something
Yeah you've been missing something all right
"The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place."[1]
[1] https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcri...
Edit-there’s talk of making it a 5,000$ fine per incidence on the news.
The way i personally see it from afar, no side was innocent and definitely no one scored a win. But social networks messed up the most and will pay the most. Even European leaders expressed more concern with the powers and lack of control over social networks than with a bunch of whatever-you-call-them that took advantage of the laughably weak security force of Capitol (especially considering the event of the day).
Nope. We don't have to live with violent insurrections. We don't have to live with sieges of government buildings. All speech is not created equal: there is such a thing as hate speech and speech that inspires violence, and that is distinct from a youtube channel about legos or makeup or video games. They are different things, and people and platforms can decide to say no.
I'm seeing this pattern of hysterical hand-wringing that deplatforming or "canceling" terrorists is somehow a bad thing because it means that—what? now a platform can do what they want with their platform in accordance with their own terms of service? There's this nonsensical and baseless extrapolation that now that platform will just suddenly decide to "censor"—what? who? What exactly are you worried about?
People have been "censoring" and "canceling" each other for as long as there have been human cultures, because there are limits to what a culture will accept, and few cultures are so ideologically pure that they'll accept angry armed mobs storming capitols because "we should debate them". People who are flipping out about YouTube/Twitter/FB/etc limiting the speech of violence-inducing criminals live in a fantasy world where they've never come close to being the target of that speech, and know they never will: they can sit comfortably at home in front of their computers and blithely evangelize about how America is doomed and now America is China and wah wah wah wah because it's trying to do what it's always done, and what it exists for, which is protect its own citzens.
Your concern with violence is fake, as that and the platforms that it lived on, existed way before 6th of January. Parlor was allowed to thrive for years, nobody had problems with it before that. But magically, Amazon is a saint now.
The general problem is that everyone thinks that the ban button and "cancellation" fixes problems. It doesn't. What transpired with these platforms is purely based on political interest and nothing else. This political interest can and will change with next elections and the platforms will follow suit - are you OK with that?
And if the latter, only losing politicians, or politicians still actively running for office?
Not having access to social networks would obviously be a huge disadvantage for a candidate. Arguably this precedent could in practice give the big tech co's something like a soft-veto on any political candidate.
It's not just that YouTube and Twitter think Trump is mean.
Personally I doubt it; I think in things like this, the slopes really are slippery.
Time will tell.
It's interesting to consider the perspective of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny:
> We have seen many examples in Russian and China of private companies becoming the state's best friends and the enablers when it comes to censorship.
(He was talking about the Twitter ban specifically there, but it holds as a general principle.)
https://twitter.com/navalny/status/1347969772177264644
Now either the Democrats+Tech cabal decide to tilt all the way to make America another China, or they loose their hold completely.
In either case, America is lost. Now there is no going back.
Back home the receding snow will most likely spring a war. With America lost, India will fight alone.
The stage for the third decade is set. America has chosen to step back. India will not have an option.
Oh no wait, it would be taken down by the hosting company.
But he could just host his own servers and build his own infrastructure?
But it would be banned by his domain provider.
But he could register with ICANN and become a registrar?
Perhaps, but he still wouldn't be able to monetize the platform because Visa / MasterCard would ban him from accepting payments.
But he could build his own payment infrastructure?
Maybe there's a slim chance if you're fortunate enough to be Donald Trump, but even that would be challenging now banks are refusing to do business with him too.
-----
I'm not a fan of Trump but anyone still giving the "it's only Alex Jones" defence is being extremely naive at this point. If you own a company today and have the wrong political opinions you should be aware that these companies can and will crush you. This isn't about Trump or what he said, this is about whether or not it should be practically impossible to run a business if your politics doesn't align with a handful of monopolies in the US.
Does an individual or company need Twitter / Facebook / YouTube, probably not. Should someone have a right to critical web services? Maybe... It's kind of hard to start a business without them in 2021. Should someone have a right to take card payments in 2021? Yeah, personally I think there is no question here.
When someone high profile like Trump gets deplatformed I often see people say, "well they could always use [x] service instead", but has been proven by Parler to be a ban argument. It's basically impossible to create a successful alt platform when you can't accept payments or find a hosting company. The conversation we're having about Twitter and YouTube is just a distraction from the real problem which is a lack of competition. If there was competition companies like Twitter wouldn't be so quick to kick people from their platform when they see platforms like Parler rapidly growing in response to Twitter's censorship. But the free market clearly isn't working here and regulation is needed. We have no choice and so these companies can force us to stay within their lines or face insurmountable consequences. And there is no forgiveness. Once you're gone, you're gone. One mistake and you're out.
They built their own browser, media, host their own servers, working on a phone, etc
My concern is when IPs or DNS is blocked. There are distributed DNS solutions, but they aren’t there yet.
I personally bought a pinephone this last week and plan to try and stabilize it enough to hand to family members. Possibly I’ll even start selling tech support for it.
I’m not by any means a supporter of either political establishment either. But I believe we can’t have a two tiered system. If corporations are going to exert power over the population, it can be combated.
My concern, is what happens when they get in government. Remember, Trump banned lobbying his administration.
https://time.com/4652703/president-trump-lobbying-ban/
Biden’s adding them to his staff now. That could be a good thing (know the industry, etc). But it could also be used as a governmental hammer on alternatives.
At that point you have fascism.
It is like car manufacturers or oil companies sabotaging alternative energy companies.
I guess ultimately his videos are still there, and that's the real point of decentralization. But perhaps the main issue isn't so much about using Youtube/Twitter, but exclusively using them. I can understand "going where the people are" to bring a message, but don't only post there.