Big Tech Authoritarianism

Caporegime
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Oh so Twitter censorship was more of a larp would you say? Not ACTUAL censorship? :D

I should have clarified that it is the kind of censorship that is actually troubling (governments shutting down free speech/sharing of ideas etc). A private company enforcing its rules to keep its business viable is completely different.
 
Transmission breaker
Don
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For the record, I am not pro-trump. However... Can someone provide me with a quote/screenshot/evidence of where Trump incited hatred/violence?

I checked the speech (its long!) and only skimmed the 6 pages of this thread, but I found the following in the speech:

I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.

Not sure how this qualifies, i can find no reference to violence, disobedience, or anything other than vague referenced to "fight" on various matters.

The tweets he was "banned" for were:

The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!

To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.

I would have no problem with him being de-platformed, if he had actually done what he is being accused of, but I can find nothing to prove that he did!
 
Associate
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Regardless if it's changing. The point stands, if a landlord asks you not to do something in their property and you do it anyway, why shouldn't the landlord be able to evict you assuming you've singed a contract saying you agree to those points?




Well that would come under discrimination laws, which would make it illegal, wouldn't it? Being a smoker or having pets are not protected characteristics so you can say if you want/do not want those in your house. However faith, gender/sex or race are protected characteristics and you wouldn't be able to discriminate based on those.

So no, it's clearly not ok and not even remotely the same to breaking T&Cs

But that is the discussion,

What constitutes freedom of speech, should companies who are financially invested into a certain political parties be able to sway modern communication to influence the population to benefit the shareholders instead of the population.

They could quite easily make Political views protected. Are religious beliefs that far differing to political ones in regards to Moralistic decision making?
 
Associate
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For the record, I am not pro-trump. However... Can someone provide me with a quote/screenshot/evidence of where Trump incited hatred/violence?

I checked the speech (its long!) and only skimmed the 6 pages of this thread, but I found the following in the speech:



Not sure how this qualifies, i can find no reference to violence, disobedience, or anything other than vague referenced to "fight" on various matters.

The tweets he was "banned" for were:





I would have no problem with him being de-platformed, if he had actually done what he is being accused of, but I can find nothing to prove that he did!

I haven't done the leg work you have but I thought the same.

The way this is carrying on I was expecting explicit direction to storm Capitol Hill. Not some wishy washy (as always) political flim flam appeasing his support.

I would expect the sound Byte played on all media platforms and on all news reels. but nope.
 
Soldato
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But that is the discussion,

What constitutes freedom of speech, should companies who are financially invested into a certain political parties be able to sway modern communication to influence the population to benefit the shareholders instead of the population.

They could quite easily make Political views protected. Are religious beliefs that far differing to political ones in regards to Moralistic decision making?

But he hasn't lost his freedom to speech. He has lost his access to a specific platform who do not wish to host his views. If he wanted to he could call a press meeting at the WH, he can go get a megaphone and stand on a plinth shouting his views. His free speech, or anyone who has been banned from that platform, has not been stripped from them.

I don't really think Political views should be protected. You can change your political affiliation a lot easier than you can pick and change faith, gender and race. Which parties do you protect? Just those at the far left and far right? What about the majority who sit in the middle?

If I went to a club that had a dresscode mentioned on the outside. I say "yeah sure, no problem. I agree to your dress code" and I go inside then change to something they said wasn't allowed that night would you have an issue for them asking me to leave?

Trump still has a mouth, no one is saying what he can and can't say, he can still speak freely. He just can't do it on someone else's platform. He's got enough money in the bank, why doesn't he start a new Trumper service, I'm sure it would be the best ever, everyone will say so, and then he can say whatever he wants without evert worrying about getting banned.
 
Associate
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But he hasn't lost his freedom to speech. He has lost his access to a specific platform who do not wish to host his views. If he wanted to he could call a press meeting at the WH, he can go get a megaphone and stand on a plinth shouting his views. His free speech, or anyone who has been banned from that platform, has not been stripped from them.

I don't really think Political views should be protected. You can change your political affiliation a lot easier than you can pick and change faith, gender and race. Which parties do you protect? Just those at the far left and far right? What about the majority who sit in the middle?

If I went to a club that had a dresscode mentioned on the outside. I say "yeah sure, no problem. I agree to your dress code" and I go inside then change to something they said wasn't allowed that night would you have an issue for them asking me to leave?

Trump still has a mouth, no one is saying what he can and can't say, he can still speak freely. He just can't do it on someone else's platform. He's got enough money in the bank, why doesn't he start a new Trumper service, I'm sure it would be the best ever, everyone will say so, and then he can say whatever he wants without evert worrying about getting banned.

I've heard that argument several times about it being just a platform. It's not. Its an integral method of communicating. It's like saying that somebody can't type in English anymore. Or use Audio Transmission. Social Media for me falls into that level of importance nowadays in much the same way that the written language changed the world, so has social media.

Dresscode: No-Hijab allowed....? No crucifix symbols?

All political views should be protected in much the same way religions are protected. Extremism wont be tolerated.
 
Permabanned
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For the record, I am not pro-trump. However... Can someone provide me with a quote/screenshot/evidence of where Trump incited hatred/violence?

I checked the speech (its long!) and only skimmed the 6 pages of this thread, but I found the following in the speech:



Not sure how this qualifies, i can find no reference to violence, disobedience, or anything other than vague referenced to "fight" on various matters.

The tweets he was "banned" for were:


I would have no problem with him being de-platformed, if he had actually done what he is being accused of, but I can find nothing to prove that he did!

You dont think months of baseless claims the election was stolen, which started long before the votes were even cast, has any impact on these people?
He repeated these claims the day of the riot at length and riled them all up, its all in the transcripts.
He encouraged these "patriots" to "fight like hell" against the "stolen election".
Years of other baseless conspiracy theories added to the narrative and influenced these gullible people.
His angry bullying/cancelling of everyone who didnt agree with him.
Coupled with years of claims about fake news, even when its blatantly true.
His refusal to denounce right wing supremacists the "Proud Boys"....pedo name.....ends up actively encouraging these violent thugs.

Its an endless procession......
 
Soldato
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I've heard that argument several times about it being just a platform. It's not. Its an integral method of communicating. It's like saying that somebody can't type in English anymore. Or use Audio Transmission. Social Media for me falls into that level of importance nowadays in much the same way that the written language changed the world, so has social media.

I disagree wholeheartedly. If you've fallen into the trap that social media is as important as the written language then I don't know what to say to you. You do not need social media to survive or even thrive in the real world. You could cut off all forms of social media today and you'd feel all the better for it.

Dresscode: No-Hijab allowed....? No crucifix symbols?

I was thinking more 'no hats no trainers'.

All political views should be protected in much the same way religions are protected. Extremism wont be tolerated.

Disagree. Why should it be protected? What about a person is definable by their political views - what about those who take no interest in it?
 
Soldato
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Oldham
For the record, I am not pro-trump. However... Can someone provide me with a quote/screenshot/evidence of where Trump incited hatred/violence?

I checked the speech (its long!) and only skimmed the 6 pages of this thread, but I found the following in the speech:

Not sure how this qualifies, i can find no reference to violence, disobedience, or anything other than vague referenced to "fight" on various matters.

The tweets he was "banned" for were:

I would have no problem with him being de-platformed, if he had actually done what he is being accused of, but I can find nothing to prove that he did!

I posted on the thread in Speakers Corner the twitter part in this https://www.overclockers.co.uk/forums/posts/34443399/

https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/suspension.html
 
Caporegime
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I disagree wholeheartedly. If you've fallen into the trap that social media is as important as the written language then I don't know what to say to you. You do not need social media to survive or even thrive in the real world. You could cut off all forms of social media today and you'd feel all the better for it.

Indeed, and the minute I realised I could disable my Facebook account and keep messenger, I did so.
 
Soldato
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Indeed, and the minute I realised I could disable my Facebook account and keep messenger, I did so.

Yeah I cut off my facebook about 8 years ago now. I was spending too much time on it and these days I try and avoid social media as much as I can.

I remember being on holiday in Malaysia and I kept hearing these sort of public service announcements on the radio about social media. They were trying to remind people that social media is not the real world and not to take it seriously. I thought it was really weird that they'd need to say that on the radio to remind people to not compare themselves to it.

Now I don't think it's such a wild idea and maybe we need it over here.
 
Associate
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I disagree wholeheartedly. If you've fallen into the trap that social media is as important as the written language then I don't know what to say to you. You do not need social media to survive or even thrive in the real world. You could cut off all forms of social media today and you'd feel all the better for it.

I'm sure some people thought the same way when books were first becoming a thing. You could stop reading books and just tend to your fields and be much happier sort of thing.

Edit: you also seem to be posting on here... a form of social media. It's not one of the biggies, but it is a form of it.


Disagree. Why should it be protected? What about a person is definable by their political views - what about those who take no interest in it?

So why is religion protected? People are definable by their religion, in exactly the same way.
 
Soldato
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I'm sure some people thought the same way when books were first becoming a thing. You could stop reading books and just tend to your fields and be much happier sort of thing.

What are you even trying to prove? Not being able to post on Twitter is nothing like being told you can't read or write in English. He can still say what he wants to whoever he wants, he just can't expect others to be willing to publish it.

Lets say the older generation of people ~60+ who still hold voting power. Do you think they get all their information from Twitter?

So why is religion protected? People are definable by their religion, in exactly the same way.

As a guess as religion is often how people live their lives if they were brought up in a certain way. If, as it is in a few religions, you grew up saying you weren't supposed to eat pigs you live your life trying to not eat pigs. That is directly affecting how you are able to live you life.

Being a fan/more in line with the Blue or Red team doesn't say what you can and can't do in life so it doesn't govern you the same way a religion does. Do you think someone deciding to support a particular football team should also be a protected characteristic? Because that's basically all political parties are.
 
Soldato
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I don't understand why so many people are shocked a private company doesn't want to have Trump on there.

Twitter, facebook or just social media in general isn't a right. We sign up to their terms of conditions and if we break those, we get banned.

Simple stuff really.

The main issue is not so much the whole TOS bit but rather how big tech has encroached on our lives and more importantly how society functions, given the recent events. We have, in essence, replaced the notion of "public square" with Twitter and Facebook, who are busy scalping our personal data, habits and more for advertising revenue. Then they are busy curating what we see through their feed mechanisms.

Twitter and Facebook are wholly insufficient platforms for any sort of reasoned public debate about important issues and instead they tend to stoke up division and emotion, I think they are quite literally tearing the west apart, we're eating ourselves. It makes me inclined to think that they are antithetical to how we, as human beings, are supposed to interact in communities. On top of this, in the background, we are busy centralising access to computing resources with a few large providers (e.g. AWS, MSFT, Google). Recipe for future disaster since we are so dependent on technology to do things in modern society. If big tech giants control the equivalent of the public square, it's bad. If you then try to build an equivalent community somewhere else, you are booted from the computing providers. Then where do you go?

We must decentralise heavily, break up monopolies and put protections into law (i.e. we have a say via vote, not rely on some unelected tech execs). As an early worker at Google and Amazon, I've long said that the threat is sort of socialist technocracy and it appears we are already there.

For the record, I am not pro-trump. However... Can someone provide me with a quote/screenshot/evidence of where Trump incited hatred/violence? [SNIP]
I would have no problem with him being de-platformed, if he had actually done what he is being accused of, but I can find nothing to prove that he did!

You've pretty much hit on it. Speech itself is violence when coming from the wrong person. Btw, this is also a reason why the impeachment is more theater, I expect it would be very difficult to conduct some sort of legal prosecution.
 
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