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The Consequences of Indecency (techcrunch.com)
Ron Wyden, a senior U.S. Senator from Oregon, argues there should be consequences for internet companies that refuse to remove hate speech from their platforms. An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report Wyden wrote via TechCrunch: I wrote the law that allows sites to be unfettered free speech marketplaces. I wrote that same law, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, to provide vital protections to sites that didn't want to host the most unsavory forms of expression. The goal was to protect the unique ability of the internet to be the proverbial marketplace of ideas while ensuring that mainstream sites could reflect the ethics of society as a whole. In general, this has been a success -- with one glaring exception. I never expected that internet CEOs would fail to understand one simple principle: that an individual endorsing (or denying) the extermination of millions of people, or attacking the victims of horrific crimes or the parents of murdered children, is far more indecent than an individual posting pornography.
Social media cannot exist without the legal protections of Section 230. That protection is not constitutional, it's statutory. Failure by the companies to properly understand the premise of the law is the beginning of the end of the protections it provides. I say this because their failures are making it increasingly difficult for me to protect Section 230 in Congress. Members across the spectrum, including far-right House and Senate leaders, are agitating for government regulation of internet platforms. Even if government doesn't take the dangerous step of regulating speech, just eliminating the 230 protections is enough to have a dramatic, chilling effect on expression across the internet. Were Twitter to lose the protections I wrote into law, within 24 hours its potential liabilities would be many multiples of its assets and its stock would be worthless. The same for Facebook and any other social media site. Boards of directors should have taken action long before now against CEOs who refuse to recognize this threat to their business. In an interview with Recode, Wyden said that platforms should be punished for hosting content that goes against "common decency." "I think what the Alex Jones case shows, we're gonna really be looking at what the consequences are for just leaving common decency in the dust," Wyden told Recode's Kara Swisher. "...What I'm gonna be trying to do in my legislation is to really lay out what the consequences are when somebody who is a bad actor, somebody who really doesn't meet the decency principles that reflect our values, if that bad actor blows by the bounds of common decency, I think you gotta have a way to make sure that stuff is taken down."
Social media cannot exist without the legal protections of Section 230. That protection is not constitutional, it's statutory. Failure by the companies to properly understand the premise of the law is the beginning of the end of the protections it provides. I say this because their failures are making it increasingly difficult for me to protect Section 230 in Congress. Members across the spectrum, including far-right House and Senate leaders, are agitating for government regulation of internet platforms. Even if government doesn't take the dangerous step of regulating speech, just eliminating the 230 protections is enough to have a dramatic, chilling effect on expression across the internet. Were Twitter to lose the protections I wrote into law, within 24 hours its potential liabilities would be many multiples of its assets and its stock would be worthless. The same for Facebook and any other social media site. Boards of directors should have taken action long before now against CEOs who refuse to recognize this threat to their business. In an interview with Recode, Wyden said that platforms should be punished for hosting content that goes against "common decency." "I think what the Alex Jones case shows, we're gonna really be looking at what the consequences are for just leaving common decency in the dust," Wyden told Recode's Kara Swisher. "...What I'm gonna be trying to do in my legislation is to really lay out what the consequences are when somebody who is a bad actor, somebody who really doesn't meet the decency principles that reflect our values, if that bad actor blows by the bounds of common decency, I think you gotta have a way to make sure that stuff is taken down."
Can we talk about the Alex Jones thing on Slashdot now? Or do we have to wait for Russia to get involved or something?
Today is the day that the internet died. :(
go on, define it
Decency.... hate speech .... blah blah blah blah
Everything that Senator Wyden says is the same exact justification that China, North Korea and every other dictatorship uses for suppressing free speech and free expression.
What is "Hate Speech" today?
There is a difference.
Calling someone a n*gger may be hate speech but only if the intent is clear and the subject is the correct target of the term. Calling AC a n*gger doesnt mean much unless AC definitively declared they may be find it offensive and harmful to their life.
The internet allows anonymity and it should be the defacto understanding that everyone that posts is an anonymous internetian unless proved otherwise.
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
...and decides that things like "homosexuality", "pre-marital sex" and "mixed marriages" are "against the common decency" - then it's perfectly ok for any matching content to be removed from the internet, right? RIGHT?
Because THAT'S what this is saying...
that an individual endorsing (or denying) the extermination of millions of people,
Like those who promote abortion?
or attacking the victims of horrific crimes or the parents of murdered children
Like shouting down and branding as racists the parents of those killed by illegal immigrants when they call for common sense immigration reform?
I agree that social media would be much more pleasant if you eliminated those two groups of bad actors.
is far more indecent than an individual posting pornography
That is subjective. In order to have an objective discussion on the matter, you will have to give a precise definition of what pornography is.
...when what is considered indecent is decided by those in power?
--- Reality doesn't care about your opinions, it happens anyway and if you are in the way you'll get squished.
> bad actor blows by the bounds of common decency,
Let's get porn off the internet, NOW!
Let's start with the bad actor Ron Wyden, somebody who really doesn't meet the decency principles that reflect our values. That bad actor blows by the bounds of common decency. Make sure that stuff is taken down.
Your Version of "decency" is what is to be enforced right?
It used to be indecent to do a lot of things, like race mixing, anything more than holding hands in public, women showing too much skin... did you see her ankles? What a fucking slut!!!
Yea yea we get it... we really do get! Free Speech for me, but not for thee!
There should be consequences for promoting government censorship under the guise of "protecting" us. Protect our bodies, not our minds. I want physical safety, not echo chambers. You pathetic, sniveling cowards who have to hide from a purely intellectual contest wonder why you can't convince people when you mistake insults for arguments.
You guys used to argue against censorship. What happened? Wyden should know better. This is highly disappointing.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - from The Friends of Voltaire
This kind of commitment to free speech is a pillar of classical liberalism. Sen. Wyden is interested in the opposite: infringing civil rights.
Hate speech does poorly in a free marketplace of ideas, and brings discredit upon the speaker. There is no need to infringe freedom of speech, one of the most fundamental civil rights.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
If Trolling people at funerals in real life is perfectly legal and without consequences then why the hell should the internet be any different?
Free speech should be left alone and private companies can set whatever community guidelines they want regarding free speech and they should be able to enforce them when someone breaks them. Anyone not liking getting booted for breaking community guidelines can just go rent some web space or dedicated server and start their own stream and say anything they want, oh oh yah there's that thing called the audience. With out YT/Twitter/etc no one would find the Alex Jones types.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Maybe you shouldn't be on the internet if you are unable to handle alternate points of view.
"Free speech only important if it's offensive".
The thing is, the online services have already taken that first step by agreeing together to remove Alex Jones from all the major social media sites.
The fact that Alex Jones is a reprehensible conspiracy-mongering nutburger is beside the point. Of course he is. Anyone with two neurons capable of achieving a synapse can tell that.
But he's far less of an evil than Holocaust deniers and actual Nazis. If they can remove the lesser evil, whey are they hesitating to remove the greater evil?
They've already passed the "That's already been decided; now we're just haggling about the price" point with the Alex Jones thing.
The only way to win this game is to refuse to start playing it in the first place, but that horse left the barn a few weeks ago.
You read it here first!
Social media cannot exist without the legal protections of Section 230. That protection is not constitutional, it's statutory.
The first amendment states the following:
The first amendment is intended to restrain congress from acting against free speech. If revising or removing the Section 230 protections has a chilling effect on free expression, then Congress has abridged free speech, and the act of modifying Section 230 was then unconstitutional. It does not matter that Section 230 did not exist at the time the constitution was made ---- Today we enjoy certain free speech rights, And a law protects platforms who enable us to exercise that free speech right. ANY attempt to curtail that by passing any kind of law or law that says an existing law shall change --- is an abridgement of Free Speech; Once congress passes a law protecting free speech (Such as Section 230) --- which is their authority to do in order to enforce the constitution, The first amendment ensures congress does not have the right to abridge the rights of expression by cancelling that protection.
Who gets to set that "ethics of society" for political speech? One side of US politics for political comments?
Who gets to flag and enforce that "ethics of society" on US domestic politics? Followers of one side of US politics?
The USA saw what "chilling effect on expression" was like under the tyranny of a UK monarchy.
Thats why the USA protects the freedom of speech and freedom after speech.
Why the USA has freedom of the press.
The right to peaceably assemble.
To petition for a governmental redress of grievances.
Self-evident under God. Not the changing partisan politics to "reflect the ethics of society".
US freedoms are protected from governments, not for governments to set limits on.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
If it's not directly inciting violence then no. This is exactly the sort of oppression the far right is hoping and praying for. They'll use this crap to organize themselves. Nothing makes a group band together like an opponent. This is a terrible idea and Wyden should know that. He's better than this.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
IS censorship.
"The goal was to protect the unique ability of the internet to be the proverbial marketplace of ideas while ensuring that mainstream sites could reflect the ethics of society as a whole. In general, this has been a success -- with one glaring exception. I never expected that internet CEOs would fail to understand one simple principle: that an individual endorsing (or denying) the extermination of millions of people, or attacking the victims of horrific crimes or the parents of murdered children, is far more indecent than an individual posting pornography."
Sounds to me what Ron Wyden is saying is that the point of Section 230 was so Ron Wyden could get his porn fix, but he really wanted web sites to ban stuff that Ron Wyden finds indecent. You know what? I entirely agree that almost pornography is most definitely less indecent than holocaust denial or harassing victims of crimes or their parents. But if the whole idea was merely to let pornography be that hollowed line upon which "the proverbial marketplace of ideas" was supposed to rest, perhaps you should have spelled out that "porn good, but only if you ban hateful things".
As it stands, the point of Section 230 is merely to safeguard web sites from being sued or criminally charged because they dare to host content that's not their own. Alone it says nothing about granting editorial control to web site owners, for which the action against Backpage demonstrates will not inherently provide any additional protect to which Section 230 was supposed to provide. To twist a protection of freedom of speech into a call for action to censor is not only offensive, it decries any notion of "marketplace of ideas".
I don't care if there are holocaust deniers. I care if there are those who would threaten to or engage in infringing the life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness of, whether they're nutjob holocaust deniers or nuthub members of Congress. The only way for one to honestly pursue happiness is the possibility to come to the wrong conclusion or otherwise waste one's life in fruitless pursuits. As frightening and indecent as it is to wank to the death of millions in concentration camps during WW2, threats against those who dare dream of those things is more offensive. That person's hands are on themselves. They aren't reaching out to wrap their hands around the necks of others.
Small minded idiots like him should not be running government. Free speech is free speech. You take the good with the bad, that's how it works. He doesn't get it because he has the IQ of a walnut.
would smell as sweet as what Wyden is proposing here.
But if it's forbidden, then you enter the slippery slope of it now being illegal to say anything the-powers-that-be consider "hateful," which leads down a destructive road. Say you hate Nazis? Jail. Find that example silly? How about saying you oppose a specific political party. Hate speech, jailed. Opposed to litigation that gives suppression of speech even more power? You're supporting disruption of the government. Jail. Sorry, but free speech means you have to accept people saying things you don't like. Can hate speech contribute to violence? Certainly. But automobiles also generate a number of accidents and deaths each year. Yet we allow automobiles for the overall net worth to society, just like free speech.
You're being summoned.
When you put certain powers in people's hands, they may do good at first, but within a generation it will change. What you think is hate speech today may very well include things you don't agree with in a decade or two.
By then, you won't have any ability to stop those in power because you gave away your rights to fight some injustice in the past.
Bottom line: don't give away your right to free speech, or free assembly, or religion, or any other guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Because one day there may be no one else to protect them, and when they are gone they are gone for good. And you will regret it. This was a bold experiment in human history. Don't let it end because of fear.
Or some dumbass politician from Oregon.
Ron Wyden is a Democrat. He's not going to use this to beat on anyone but The Bad Guy(tm). Remember when Obama was in office and doing all that government overreach? It all benefitted everyone except the 1%. This is the same thing. None of you pissed and moaned about Obama. What's wrong with you guys, this dude is the same as Obama. Give him the power and he'll show you he only means to do good.
Now Trump on the other hand.... He's The Bad Guy(tm). When he does the same thing as people like Obama, Clinton or Wyden he only does it to do harm. Not that policies change but intent has changed and that's what makes it bad. This is how we determine hate speech from free speech too. You'll see.
No doubt, Wyden imagines that it will be someone like him and not someone like President Trump that gets to decide what constitutes "common decency" and hence what gets banned in practice. But to imagine President Trump making such decisions, requires thought. And members of the Bike Lock Party don't think, they only emote.
And what do they emote about: Who to hit over the head with Bike Locks.
I hope this was offensive enough for you.
How long before Trumps hate speech twitter account is taken down?
"We need to kill all those old white guys and make sure that someone who represents the actual people runs Washington."
Is that hate speech? That's basically the left's rhetoric everywhere for the last 80 years.
please continue that slide down the slippery slope. you 'merkins need to stop your politicians from dictating morality. or not. maybe you like being told what/where/when/why/who because you no longer have individual backbones. "I have mine so fuck you." ain't 'merka great now.
Simply look at the problems global platforms are experiencing with foreign governments currently.
Twitter pressured to remove content because it offends the thin-skinned leader of another country (China, Turkey). I mean really, Winnie the Pooh is offensive? Imagine Trump having the power to ban all pictures and references to Cheetos from the internet because its "offensive" to his supporters!
The bigger problem though is vocal minorities.
Imagine the US Government forcing YouTube to remove Mark Meechan's (Nazi dog guy's) videos because a small group of people with no sense of humor complained.
Imagine Facebook removing a Harry Potter fan page because a group of angry Bible Belt moms complained it was "of the devil" and offensive.
Imagine the knee-jerk reaction to the next mass shooting being to remove whatever imagined influence (Ozzy Osbourne, Iron maiden, D&D, Magic the Gathering, Marilyn Manson, Call of Duty, etc) from the internet "to prevent it happening again".
This isn't a slippery slope. Its a cliff. And we're standing at the edge with one foot over the drop while politicians stand behind us screaming that somehow that step will be good for us.
IS censorship.
Hate speech is speech the Left hates.
There is this constant attempt by the Left to label any position it doesn't like as far right or Nazi. Thus, once labeled, it can be removed. Coincidentally, this is the same philosophy used by the far left regimes of the 20th century. They failed in part because they punished anyone who told the truth and thus could not obtain accurate information about their situation. That's the problem we developed free speech to deal with. It's very worrisome the Left apparently learned nothing from this.
Hagbard Celine's Law: accurate information is only possible in a non-punishing situation.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
So Ron, you want to regulate speech ?
Fuck you, you're wrong, and we have a Constitution that will shut your attempt at censorship down.
End of story.
"Indecency" is the new "corrupting the youth."
Or even "royalism" or being a kulak.
They just want to remove off-Narrative content.
They will use any excuse.
Worrying about "indecency" is the new "think of the children!"
Alternative Right.
facebook, twitter and youtube kicked alex jones off their platforms, they are not violating alex jones civil rights of free speech, they just dont have to provide a patform for alex jones or anyone else for that matter,
personally i think alex jones is a carpetbagging tinfoil asshat,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
The SECOND the Government does something like this they are now in VIOLATION of the 1st Amendment! They are restricting (by law) peoples RIGHT to Free speech!
Hello Mr. Orwell!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
You know how, in defense of people getting fired, harassed, and their lives ruined for practicing free speech, the argument for it was "so what, you have freedom of speech, just not freedom from the consequences".
So this was only inevitable
...but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
-- Abraham Lincoln
The problem isn't "common decency" (which isn't common anyway as politics degenerates into schoolyard name calling), but the current post truth era where we have Orwellian "alternative facts" and "truth isn't truth." We need to have some way to challenge/flag postings like "Obama is a Muslim not born in the USA who runs a pediophile pizza parlor" or "Trump sold Trump-blessed American prayer flags via a televangelist, and has made plans to have the Army close down The Washington Post and use the Army to make him president for life." Fact is fact, and truth is truth, and must be preserved if democracy is to survive. Fact and truth have nothing to do with "common decency" and propriety.
Itâ(TM)s not a question of âoefree speech.â Theyâ(TM)re consistently not honoring and adhering to their own TOS rules. Because theyâ(TM)re always afraid of conservative backlash.
Sorry Davis, but "political freedom, civil liberty, and economic freedom" - Yep, those all overlap under social justice. Classic liberalism espouses social justice and in fact gave semantic birth to the concept in the west, the Constitution et al.
See here's the problem.
The definition of hate speech is a moving target and subject to the whim of those in charge at the time OR pressure from whatever voter demographic yells the loudest.
Today, you can't say anything meaningful without someone claiming to be offended by it.
Once enough folks claim to be offended, ( -waves wand- politico correcto ! ) it magically becomes hate speech.
Just. Like. That.
People don't need the government to protect them from words or ideas. If anything, the government needs to take a good look at itself and realize what a laughing stock shit show it has become.
The first step to fixing a problem is realizing you have one.
I think the best way to deal with these buffoons is to point and laugh. I live in the south and regularly see christian flags flying with confederate ones. The only time I had an opportunity to comment on this to one of these 'people', I pointed out that the message it sends to me is that they are christian losers. Lets face it the confederates lost so it is the loser flag. As a result now they have replaced the confederate flag with a american one. So at least now they are proclaiming to be a christian american. Sort of a step up. The more people try to interfere with their ability to spread their garbage the more likely in some future time the ones doing this will have their opinion stifled by someone who doesn't support their outlook either. Its like the court case where that business refused to make a cake for a same sex couple. The ones who supported their right to do that are now upset its being used to refuse services to these blow hard fake conservatives in charge.
This never fails to bring a smile to my face.
So lies, lying and liars are okay as long as they're our lies and liars.
It's funny how these retarded nazi faggots keep outing themselves like Trump, lol. #Incompetent traitors, bring as much rope as you can find for the gallows
The government is now claiming that triple penetration interracial anal is less damaging to children than critically thinking about historical events from 80 years ago. Blockchains and IPFS to the rescue. Diversity is weakness.
If he was a Republican that sentence would have made that very clear....
Welcome to Liberal Socialist Communist thinking.. China would be proud.
5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
Enjoy mad max millennials. Maybe your grandkids will rediscover real liberal principles. Or Not. At least it's an answer to the Fermi paradox
Wyden is is lying about what the CDA is designed to do.
Social media cannot exist without the legal protections of Section 230. That protection is not constitutional, it's statutory.
Civil libertarians have waiting 20 years for this shoe to drop. Back when the CDA was being debated we predicted that this is *EXACTLY* what would happen. It was never meant to protect freedom of speech. Stop pretending it was. The Communications Decency Act was passed with the goal of protecting minors from online exposure to indecent material.
This law was a legal bait-and-switch setup. Step 1: Pass a law that mirrors something the constitution already guarantees. Step 2: Claim that the protection is statutory not constitutional. Step 3: Remove or amend the law and now you can claim that you can regulate that thing.
I want them to get rid of the CDA because this was never something congress should have had the power to legislate. Twitter, Facebook, Google, Instagram - none of them are liable for what their users post any more than the owner of a building is liable for the graffiti that is placed on it, or the newspaper is liable for the opinions in the letters to the editor. This is a cornerstone of democracy.
You can't reasonably argue that the 1st amendment prevents congress from passing law that inhibits freedom of speech, but also claim that manufacturers of pens are liable for the speech, or manufacturers of loudspeakers are liable for the sounds that come out of them, or web site hosts are responsible for what people post on them, or bulletin boards are responsible for the notes people tack onto them, or that telephone companies liable for the content of calls people make, etc.
Remember that the CDA set the legal stage for the DMCA, which is what makes it possible for the RIAA and MPAA to start using ISPs as copyright police. With the DMCA, these new "statutory protections" that we didn't ever need now had limits. ISPs are now only protected from liability if they cooperate with copyright holders demands, and if they take down "hacking" or circumvention tools.
Wyden is claiming that section 230 is a free-speech clause, but it really isn't. It's called the Commications Decency Act for a reason! They wanted to regulate what is "decent." Section 230 also grants ISPs immunity from liability if they *restrict* someone's free speech. Without section 230, they might be legally liable if they block someone's speech! We are better off without it.
Go ahead, try to stop Americans from cursing online, or posting porn, or posting whatever you want to call "indecent." Does Mr. Wyden really think that is even possible?
I heartily invite you to go and read the first amendment, and then go fuck yourself. You didn't "the law that allows sites to be unfettered free speech marketplaces", you had NO LEGAL POWER to forbid it.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Really struggling to find something substantive in that comment that might have justified the "Insightful" mod. You're sort of in the neighborhood of the Paradox of Tolerance, but not that it shows in your comment.
I think the consequences should be to your personal reputation, and the largest problem of the Internet is that there are too many people who don't care about their personal reputation or who feel no accountability for saying negative and destructive things. In the case of trolls, I'm not sure "people" is a meaningful label, since they can just spawn fresh sock puppets so quickly.
In terms of a constructive solution (which always seems lost and even laughable [a bid for "Funny" mods?] around today's Slashdot), I think the solution is to help the negative folks render themselves invisible. I think karma should be enhanced to be a kind of multidimensional metric of EPR (Earned Public Reputation). You would be able to control what sort of people are visible to you and who therefore can intrude into your attention and consume your time.
Personally speaking, I would like to set my visibility threshold a little above the default value. I think the default should be just slightly positive, which means that newbies would mostly be visible to each other, but they could quickly earn the normal level of visibility, perhaps merely by existing for a few weeks even if they don't earn any favorable mods. However by setting my own bar a little higher I would be able to focus on people who I'm more interested in. For example, I would like to favor people who earn funny mod points, even if a particular comment hasn't been so modded.
Time's up. ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
BeauHD is a communist and would love for this to happen.
Not really. "Social Justice", at least as it is practiced today, appears to be not concerned with equal opportunity but equal OUTCOMES. The only way to make THAT happen is to remove those three aspirations of classical liberalism: political freedom, civil liberty, and economic freedom. It is a belief that somehow everyone is a victim and everyone else owes you something. To to promote it, they foster "identity politics" where people are not individuals, but just parts of either victim or oppressor "groups." And to "rectify it", they seek government and corporate assistance, demonize anyone who disagrees, and seek to shut down any rational conversation in any way possible- like appealing to emotion instead of facts and banning speech. Gone is individual responsibility and gratefulness, replaced with blame, sadness, and outrage. That is the modern social justice warrior, at least as I have observed.
What about the consequences of using the power of government and the state to control what people say? Who gets to decide what constitutes hate speech?
If you do this, then whoever is in government gets to decide this, and that is a far worse situation than having some obnoxious people posting on the internet.
At least if it's spoken freely, if it is really that obnoxious, it is out in the open and can be argued against. If it suppressed, it generates far more resentment and makes problems worse.
Death to all traitors
Interesting how "liberals" seem to have a serious problem with concepts like "freedom of speech"... and "free association"... and "due process".
Why is that? Because they're not liberals. They're illiberals. They don't advocate for freedom but rather against freedom.
They do not idealize freedom but rather are threatened by it.
Real liberals value freedom... liberty... hence "liberal". These people are ideological skinwalkers that ripped the flesh off some classical liberals and have been wearing their rotting skin around as masks ever since.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Prosecute the source of the problem instead of trying to pass the problem off to someone else, grow some balls and go after the people who are the source of the problem material instead.
There are limits to free speech already, hate speech is one of them.
This following site is indecent. It's about a two-faced politician who willfully disregards the oath he pledged to protect the constitution of the United States of America.
https://www.wyden.senate.gov/
Not really. "Social Justice", at least as it is practiced today, appears to be not concerned with equal opportunity but equal OUTCOMES.
No it doesn't.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I would think Ron Wyden would be well known to all the slashdot people I seeresponding, and would know of his long list of dissenting votes and attempts to promote internet and technological freedom.
While I am not sure what lead to this particular stance from him, what he seems to be saying is that if the current law isn['t given teeth then worse people are going to produce worse legislation. Which may not be untrue. Whether he has finally bowed as a corporate/anti-speech shill, or whether this is a last stand against something worse will only be told by time...
As long as it's done in good faith, according to Zuckerberg, who is Jewish.
I don't see anything wrong with the firing decision: if the new guy is prone to losing his cool at the slightest nudge or just because he's unsupervised, then he'll be useless under pressure. What we need in that/those industry are people who're clear-headed, self-control, low-prone to vandalism. Swearing closes doors, not opens them. If you act like a feral animal, don't be surprized that no-one wants to let you in.
Were Twitter to lose the protections I wrote into law, within 24 hours its potential liabilities would be many multiples of its assets and its stock would be worthless. The same for Facebook and any other social media site.
OK. I'd say "Go!". This will definitely make the Internet a better place. May that landslide take Google and Microsoft with it.
Someone should tell that senator that his ability to make laws ends at the borders of the US, the internet doesn't.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Before WWII most people regarded fetuses as people, with the result that abortion could attract very serious punishments as a crime, and struggled to believe Jews were people. Nowadays the fashion has reversed in most countries, although the allegations of anti-semitism on the left in the UK does suggest it's not transitioned completely.
So who was right? There isn't a 'right' answer; it all boils down to your metaphysical beliefs, which may be INFORMED by science (when does the brain stem develop, when is the embryo old enough that an identical twin can no longer happen) but it's always your choice...
Just thinking out loud, for myself, I really need to question whether it might be wrong to be against censoring these sites. Because Wyden knows a lot more about this than me, that's for sure. And he's had some of the most strong positions against mass surveillance, and in favor of net neutrality.
If the possibility of a violent response by the proles to language that does not call for violence is a legitimate reason for limiting free speech, then free speech has ceased to exist, because the fear of being charged with 'incitement' for what was merely strong language will be crippling.
All leftist speech are dog whistles for class hatred, are endorsement of policies which result in famine, and are violence enacted upon my minority body.
This will be my claim when you knock down these protections, and you can't argue against it because you're white and I'm not.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
No, that's just the propaganda. SJ as it is practiced today is concerned with allowing any number of minuscule fragments of the population to broadcast specious complaints in a manner so as to outshout and "reform" the bulk of humanity.
Who votes for unprincipled, opportunistic people like this? Ill-educated, unprincipled voters. Sad.
Clearly we need to move web sites to a protocol which allows Ron Wyden, Chuck Shumer, and Nancy Pelosi to approve all web pages which are hosted on the internet. Require browsers to support httpD. Then we ban all sites that don't tow the party line.
It's already part of the policy that ad hominem is only allowed if it's attacking Mr Trump or anyone he knows.
Shouting down opposing points of view MUST be promoted but only if approved and hosted on an httpD site.
And this is why you don't bother discussing with SJWs. If you encounter one, cut the discussion short by saying "Down with disadvantaged groups! Privilege rulez!"
This ruins all the fun for them; what they want is to discuss and little by little force you to shamefully admit that you're privileged and oppressing the disadvantaged group of the day. So when you start like this, there is nothing left for them to do. You have confessed it all - and with such pride that the shame part is not going to happen.
Not really. "Social Justice", at least as it is practiced today, appears to be not concerned with equal opportunity but equal OUTCOMES.
No it doesn't.
Clearly you live in a different world. A world where "feminism" and "Feminism" are the same, and "social justice" and "Social Justice" are not very different animals.
The main distinction being "concept" vs. "Movement", and all which that entails.
It is just my opinion, but I firmly agree with the concepts of feminism and social justice. I'm old enough to know that "feminism is the radical notion that women are people too", and I've always treated women as people on a regular basis and play-things in certain rare circumstances - not the other way around. However members of the modern "Feminist" movement are simply annoying people to be around. They're just so angry, hateful, and unpleasant to interact with.
The same roughly goes for the concept and movements of social justice. As a concept, (like in Star Trek), everybody gets a fair chance. As a movement, it's much more like punishment for simply being different from others and mostly from factors before your own birth and beyond your control, just because you happen to be in the traditional group(s) they don't like. As in "SJW", those people are even more annoying to be around.
So I think yes, "as practiced" the GP is right and you are wrong. If GP had not said "as practiced", then you would be right.
I think it's more the suitcases of cash from Ceciel Richards in this case. It's pretty obvious what this is really about.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I live in "flyover" country and travel for work to the coasts. I haven't noticed any geographic correlation to racism. People who are racist in the abstract, vs peoples they have never met are more common in places you don't meet those peoples, but people who are racist against peoples they meet everyday seem as evenly distributed as rude drivers.
I work with many former military. Those that were deployed actually seem less racist and sexist than average. Hard to hate people who have your back I would guess. The ones that didn't deploy, or drove drones might have a slight uptick in anti Arab sentiment. Easier to hate people you don't meet but still have to kill maybe?
Anyway my experience is that the simmering cauldron of hatred that is the militaristic midwest is a boogie man. Another form of distrust for people you haven't met many of.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
Ok, decency in US society is passed down from Christian values.
If you're not talking about classic decency, then who decides what's decent?
You've got to realize everyone wanted relative truth, you can't now make your truth THE truth.
No way in hell do you allow some blow hard to control civilization through etiquette laws and moral superiority, humanity has tried that already .
Twitter seems to think so.
How about Sarah Jeong's brazen racist hate speech? Not only is that is okay with social media, it got her a job at the NY Times.
Alex Jones is not the only conservative censored from social media. Far from it. Numerous more moderate conservatives have also been censored.
I think it's fair to say there is a brazen double standard here.
Even the US Supreme Court reaffirmed that hate speech doesn't exist and censoring someone using the term "hate speech" violates the first amendment. You have a freedom of speech, you do NOT have freedom from being offended, see Supreme Court outcome of the Larry Flynt case.
From the US Supreme Court case "Matal vs Tam" aka "the slants case" the Justices verdict:
[The idea that the government may restrict] speech expressing ideas that offend ⦠strikes at the heart of the First Amendment. Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability, or any other similar ground is hateful; but the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express âoethe thought that we hate.â
A law found to discriminate based on viewpoint is an âoeegregious form of content discrimination,â which is âoepresumptively unconstitutional.â ⦠A law that can be directed against speech found offensive to some portion of the public can be turned against minority and dissenting views to the detriment of all. The First Amendment does not entrust that power to the governmentâ(TM)s benevolence. Instead, our reliance must be on the substantial safeguards of free and open discussion in a democratic society.
So it doesn't matter what media says or state morons try to pass laws... Anyone taking it to court would automatically win as the Supreme Court has ruled more than once like over 20 times that there is no such thing as hate speech and any laws enacted would be found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.
I have been taking a look at Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. I am not seeing where it would disallow Infowars content.
Alex Jones may be personally responsible for his false statements. But I cannot see where the carrier is required to censor such content.
I wish the Senator was more specific.
Please, jackass senator looking for payment, I encourage you to repeal 230 and cause millions of Americans to lose trillions in retirement investment, and devastate the Internet and computer industries, where the US is a shining example of growth precisely because we did give safe harbor to sites rather than let them incur immediate liability for posters posting copyright stuff.
Go ahead. Wreck all that for the dishonorable and un-American desire of you to censor.
Un freaking believable.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Well, now that we know the National Enquirer disguised a $100K+ campaign contribution as a purchase of rights to publish a Playboy bunny's story, how about the rest of their 'journalism' throughout the election.
The Rachel Maddow segment linked below lists a bunch of blatantly false cover stories that ran throughout the 2016 election season. Now, even if you hate Maddow, and think she's a 'left-wing version of Fox' (she isn't, but hey...), you can't argue with her interpretation of what was on the covers of these tabloids. Okay, so nobody actually believes tabloid covers, but still - they were published for a reason, and it would be hard to argue that that reason was anything other than to make Trump look good and Clinton look bad (even if it's just by boring the ugliest images they could find of her face deep into your subconscious). So, free speech, right? Well, there are certainly limits. So where would this fall? And does the truth or falsehood (and whether the speaker is aware of that falsehood) relevant?
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-ma...
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
so if you say something like "lawyers are the scum of the earth, they should all be loaded on buses and driven off a cliff" , which is most likely not a real call to action, is hate speech?
The term "hate speech" means nothing if clear and direct expression of hate against any group is not covered by hate speech. The lawyer example is obviously hate speech.
Any time you say "this entire group is scum", any reader anywhere may take that as a call to action; it is inherently provocative.
Which is why you cannot ban hate speech, because it's not the fault of the writer what people do with what they say, and trying to hide what people think only inflames passions in the end.
At least you can mock someone online saying they hate group X, which defuses the potential impact of what they say. Can't do that if they are only saying it t other people out of sight.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I can't wait until indecency is anything that goes against traditionalist values. Don't want to start a family? Hate speech!
Actually uphold the constitution by punishing corrupt politicians actively working to subvert it?
Yep, another blowhard who thinks he has the right to censor anything he doesn't like. Senator, you do not have the right to not be offended. You do have the right to choose what you view, read or listen to. If you don't like a source of media, don't consume that media. You have the right to change the channel. You have the right to avoid a particular website. Companies have the right to determine what content they find acceptable, and what they don't want posted on their websites... and to take action against users who violate their policies. They also have the right to allow whatever content they wish. At no point have you been given the authority to decide for us. As a matter of fact, it's spelled out very plainly in the Constitution that you are forbidden that power. So take your little ball and go home before this gets ugly.
Excellent description of the American Conservative there. You really hit the nail on the head. They are angry that the world is leaving them behind, and they will enforce their control through legislation if they have to. It's too bad America has no real Left wing like the rest of the world, we'd all be so much richer (culturally, societally, and monetarily) that way.
Ironically, you don't see the hypocrisy you display yourself. Please stand by that wall over there and put this blindfold on...
and it stinks to high heaven.
I thought this had been fought out half a century or more ago with the great "Pornography" debates, "I know it when I see it," is not a usable definition. No good definition appeared so the banning attempts sort of er "petered out" over the subsequent decades.
I discussed the same things 20 years ago with regards to spam. What *I* might call spam somebody else might call "information", A definition in that case centered around the word "unsolicited".
Now we are back with a new issue that has no solid definition possible, "Hate Speech." "I don't like it so it must be hate speech," still is not a type of statement that makes sense. I actually like to see people posting hate speech. It can tell me to rate their opinions about as high as what I daily deposit in the toilet. Some things that are hate speech today were normal modes of address in the 40s and 50s, the N-words, the F-words (ending in "t" and "y"), and so forth. If somebody my age uses those words I discount it somewhat - they're simply not bothering to school themselves to new norms because at least some of the terms were not extreme pejoratives. On the other hand I figure somebody much younger doing this as a person I don't want to be around, I close up any business I may have with it and go elsewhere.
Trying to make "hate speech" a banned item violates at the very least the spirit of the 1st amendment (if corporations are guilty) if not the letter (if governments are involved), is a fools game and actually removes valuable information from the table. Hint, what they think is good is worth a very close examination before believing them, even if they say a new smartphone.is good. Regardless, it the same old damn fool idiotic "if I don't like it then it should be banned" crap all over again. After more than 7 decades watching this parade it's time it stopped. But, just because I don't like it, it should not be banned. It should just be ignored.
{^_^}