Right Wing Grifters

KyussB

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

doesn't sound very arbitrary to me. you break one of the rules you agreed to when you sign up and they ding you for it.

So they deactivate you claiming you broke a rule, but don't tell you what rule you broke - or misattribute you as breaking a rule (i.e. taking a satirical statement literally) - and that isn't arbitrary?

ohnonotgmail

KyussB wrote: »

So they deactivate you claiming you broke a rule - but don't tell you what rule you broke - and that isn't arbitrary?

do you expect personal service from an organisation that has millions of posts a day? do you expect a conversation with a mod where you discuss what you posted and why it deserved an infraction? I'm not saying they always get it right but i am also not convinced that there is some organised attempt at silencing people.

Tony EH

KyussB wrote: »

And their T&C's have to abide by the law as well, yes...what is your point, exactly?

The point is in the post you just quoted. It's the point I've been saying since page 55.

KyussB

Tony EH wrote: »

The point is in the post you just quoted. It's the point I've been saying since page 55.

What you've pointed out doesn't present an impediment to the change in law I proposed.

KyussB

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

do you expect personal service from an organisation that has millions of posts a day? do you expect a conversation with a mod where you discuss what you posted and why it deserved an infraction? I'm not saying they always get it right but i am also not convinced that there is some organised attempt at silencing people.

Basically what you are saying is to trust them - that 'sometimes they might get it wrong' - but just trust them.

I disagree - if people have legal recourse to challenge the censorship of political views - then the companies lawyers can handle it - they don't need overburdened moderators to handle it.

Tony EH

KyussB wrote: »

What you've pointed out doesn't present an impediment to the change in law I proposed.

No. Reality does.

KyussB

Tony EH wrote: »

No. Reality does.

What argument have you got left, other than your opinion that people/politicians wouldn't vote for such a law?

As I said - I think if enough people were aware of the problems and the dangers, that such a law would be passed.

ohnonotgmail

KyussB wrote: »

Basically what you are saying is to trust them - that 'sometimes they might get it wrong' - but just trust them.

I disagree - if people have legal recourse to challenge the censorship of political views - then the companies lawyers can handle it - they don't need overburdened moderators to handle it.

so you want the law changed so that people can sue companies if they ban them? Presumably you would expect these people to lodge sufficient money in court to cover the companies legal expenses in case they lose? Otherwise you would have people just constantly suing these companies if there is no cost to do so.

Tony EH

KyussB wrote: »

What argument have you got left, other than your opinion that people/politicians wouldn't vote for such a law?

As I said - I think if enough people were aware of the problems and the dangers, that such a law would be passed.

You think a law (by whom) that forces private companies to allow any user to say what they damn well please on privately owned services will be passed?

You do realise that this is a pure fantasy right?

ohnonotgmail

KyussB wrote: »

What argument have you got left, other than your opinion that people/politicians wouldn't vote for such a law?

As I said - I think if enough people were aware of the problems and the dangers, that such a law would be passed.

you haven't told us what law you want us to vote for.

marieholmfan

Are you for real
That is literally newstalk!


By the way OMM 0000 go to a run and don't stay up late reading rubbish and watching porn on the internet.

And buy a PAPER newspaper and read it.

OMM 0000 wrote: »

You don't understand the problem.

Let me give an analogy.

RTE gets a new CEO. He's a radical right winger. He bans any coverage of Sinn Fein and the Green Party.

This would be very troubling as the viewers would now only get a biased view on things. It would influence elections, and more.

That's basically what's happening with Twitter.

The fact you are only able to process this as "who cares, rules are rules" is a problem, for you. It just tells us you aren't able to think things through.

I already know your response is going to be "but RTE isn't a private company". Again, that just tells me you can't think things through.

marieholmfan

KyussB wrote: »

So they deactivate you claiming you broke a rule, but don't tell you what rule you broke - or misattribute you as breaking a rule (i.e. taking a satirical statement literally) - and that isn't arbitrary?

Sh t happens.

OMM 0000

marieholmfan wrote: »

Are you for real
That is literally newstalk!

By the way OMM 0000 go to a run and don't stay up late reading rubbish and watching porn on the internet.

And buy a PAPER newspaper and read it.

marieholmfan

OMM 0000 wrote: »

Unless you are physically incapable of exercise (in which case please forgive me for my extraordinary insensitivity) . Running is the best cure for this obsession with things that do not matter to you!

there is no free speech in this country Sinn Fein were literally banned from.THE for 25 years!

Don't worry about America

Worry about your own life

OMM 0000

marieholmfan wrote: »

Unless you are physically incapable of exercise (in which case please forgive me for my extraordinary insensitivity) . Running is the best cure for this obsession with things that do not matter to you!

there is no free speech in this country Sinn Fein were literally banned from.THE for 25 years!

Don't worry about America

Worry about your own life

You know literally nothing about me, yet you're advising I start running, stop staying up late looking at porn, start reading physical newspapers, and stop being obsessed.

I'm clearly not the one with the issues here. Welcome to my ignore list.

marieholmfan

OMM 0000 wrote: »

You know literally nothing about me, yet you're advising I start running, stop staying up late looking at porn, start reading physical newspapers, and stop being obsessed.

I'm clearly not the one with the issues here. Welcome to my ignore list.

I know that you didn't know Sinn Fein were banned from RTE for 25 years.

KyussB

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

so you want the law changed so that people can sue companies if they ban them? Presumably you would expect these people to lodge sufficient money in court to cover the companies legal expenses in case they lose? Otherwise you would have people just constantly suing these companies if there is no cost to do so.

No - only companies that have grown large enough to be an antitrust concern, where there platform is so large, that they can be considered among a small number of companies who have effectively privatized a large part of the digital 'town square'.

It'd be like any other court case - and we could have a regulator like for GDPR (hell, we could even bring the existing GDPR regulator in on this), to handle small cases - with full litigation being a last resort.

KyussB

Tony EH wrote: »

You think a law (by whom) that forces private companies to allow any user to say what they damn well please on privately owned services will be passed?

You do realise that this is a pure fantasy right?

It's a law against political censorship - not in favour of letting people say whatever they please.

It's not a fantasy at all - it's simple civil liberties, extended/modernized to the online world - we already did that with GDPR.

ohnonotgmail

KyussB wrote: »

It's a law against political censorship - not in favour of letting people say whatever they please.

It's not a fantasy at all - it's simple civil liberties, extended/modernized to the online world - we already did that with GDPR.

I cant say i've seen any political censorship. I've seen arsehole censorship. do you have any examples of political censorship?

KyussB

The journalist Yasha Levine was censored off of twitter lately for a parody/sarcastic post, Craig Murray is another journalist who got banned off Facebook for criticizing Israel, and was later flagged as a 'Russian Bot' and had all his posts deleted - finance news website The Automatic Earth had its FB account deleted with no explanation - these are only a small handful of things found offhand.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and partner projects have written about the issues with social media a fair bit over the years:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/content-moderation-broken-let-us-count-ways
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/dont-force-web-platforms-silence-innocent-people
https://onlinecensorship.org/content/infographics

It's real - and it's about time the major platforms had this taken out of their hands, and made culpable for political censorship.

marieholmfan

There's no freedom of speech in Ireland .

How historically illiterate are you?

KyussB wrote: »

The journalist Yasha Levine was censored off of twitter lately for a parody/sarcastic post, Craig Murray is another journalist who got banned off Facebook for criticizing Israel, and was later flagged as a 'Russian Bot' and had all his posts deleted - finance news website The Automatic Earth had its FB account deleted with no explanation - these are only a small handful of things found offhand.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and partner projects have written about the issues with social media a fair bit over the years:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/content-moderation-broken-let-us-count-ways
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/dont-force-web-platforms-silence-innocent-people
https://onlinecensorship.org/content/infographics

It's real - and it's about time the major platforms had this taken out of their hands, and made culpable for political censorship.

Tony EH

KyussB wrote: »

It's a law against political censorship - not in favour of letting people say whatever they please.

It's not a fantasy at all - it's simple civil liberties, extended/modernized to the online world - we already did that with GDPR.

Nope. Still nothing but a fantasy.

And if you think that the EU, the body that spent years and a lot money coming up with the GPDR (which basically amounts to a cookie blocker for most sites) and have legislation against online "hate speech" are going to magically come up with a plan to fashion discussion forums into a form which pleases you personally or cranks that have already managed to get themselves thrown off of Twitter, you're on a hiding to nothing.

So, I circle back to what I said to you earlier. Whatever you're waiting for, you're going to end up disappointed and left wanting.

The Nal

KyussB wrote: »

It's real - and it's about time the major platforms had this taken out of their hands, and made culpable for political censorship.

Its about time private companies were taken over and controlled by the state?

KyussB

Tony EH wrote: »

Nope. Still nothing but a fantasy.

And if you think that the EU, the body that spent years and a lot money coming up with the GPDR (which basically amounts to a cookie blocker for most sites) and have legislation against online "hate speech" are going to magically come up with a plan to fashion discussion forums into a form which pleases you personally or cranks that have already managed to get themselves thrown off of Twitter, you're on a hiding to nothing.

So, I circle back to what I said to you earlier. Whatever you're waiting for, you're going to end up disappointed and left wanting.

So lets be clear: Your only argument against it is you think the legislation wouldn't pass.

It's a law in favour of anyone interested in basic civil liberties - and enactable at a national level, not requiring the EU. I believe with enough public awareness and political pressure, it would pass easily.

So anyone who is thrown off these sites is automatically a crank? All of the journalists I cite above, included? Well, please show what makes them 'cranks' worthy of censorship, so...

That seems to be the crux of it, here - you seem to be in favour of widescale censorship, and withholding of basic civil liberties - and you don't have any arguments supporting that, just condescending shite as a method of argument.

The Nal

KyussB wrote: »

you seem to be in favour of widescale censorship, and withholding of basic civil liberties

As do you. if you believe governments should have the right to interject their brand of free speech into private companies.

A private company (an app, a website, a restaurant, an office) have basic civil liberties which include what they deem acceptable. This is a basic human right. To be able to control your business.

Tony EH

KyussB wrote: »

So lets be clear: Your only argument against it is you think the legislation wouldn't pass.

It's a law in favour of anyone interested in basic civil liberties - and enactable at a national level, not requiring the EU. I believe with enough public awareness and political pressure, it would pass easily.

So anyone who is thrown off these sites is automatically a crank? All of the journalists I cite above, included? Well, please show what makes them 'cranks' worthy of censorship, so...

That seems to be the crux of it, here - you seem to be in favour of widescale censorship, and withholding of basic civil liberties - and you don't have any arguments supporting that, just condescending ****e as a method of argument.

And with that we're done here, because it's clear you haven't been listening and are interested in only talking shite.

Good luck with your fantasy. :rolleyes:

KyussB

Gee - thanks for wasting several page dragging us through that garbage, so...

At the conclusion:
The size of many of the most frequent social media websites, has led to them (together/combined) hosting a significant share of online public discussion - these companies can be considered an antitrust concern due to their combined market share (no arguments left against this).

Due to the share of online public discourse these platforms dominate, and if you consider the space of online discussion to make up a digital 'town square' (analogous to a real life town square where people can discuss freely) - these platforms can be considered as dominating a significant portion of this digital 'town square' (again, no arguments left against this).

This can be considered a 'privatization' of sorts, of the digital 'town square' - where these private companies can and do impose their own rules on what can/can't be discussed, rules that get applied in an often arbitrary fashion, rules which make up a system which can be exploited not just by the hosting platform, but by third parties (e.g. through abuse of reporting facilities), to target particular people or views for censure - and there are lots of documented cases of this happening (again, no arguments left against this).

This privatization of the digital 'town square', and imposition of arbitrary private rules that leads to censorship, is a threat to peoples civil liberties - especially given how important discussion in the digital 'town square' is becoming, to the course of politics etc. (again, no arguments left against this).

This requires a bolstering/modernization of laws upholding our civil liberties, which prevents the privatization of parts of the digital 'town square' from impacting our civil liberties (only argument against this, is the unlikely claim that such laws wouldn't pass).

One possible effective method of implementing this in law, is combining laws which target companies that are an antitrust concern (i.e. companies that have grown big enough to make up a notable share of the digital 'town square'), and laws which exist to uphold our civil liberties online (GDPR is one such area - there are others too), to impose an obligation on these companies to uphold freedom of expression, and in particular to prevent them from censoring political discussion - and to give citizens legal recourse, when their (newly modernized) rights are breached, here (again, the only argument against this, is the unlikely claim that such laws wouldn't pass).

ohnonotgmail

KyussB wrote: »

Gee - thanks for wasting several page dragging us through that garbage, so...

At the conclusion:
The size of many of the most frequent social media websites, has led to them (together/combined) hosting a significant share of online public discussion - these companies can be considered an antitrust concern due to their combined market share (no arguments left against this).

Nice of you to assume this. As they are competing businesses and there is nothing to suggest they are working in concert (or even a reason why they would) i cannot see why you consider antithrust legislation relevant. I did ask you this earlier in the thread by you ignored it.

KyussB

Facebook is at the fore of a huge antitrust investigation at the moment. The bar to meet for these laws, since their purpose isn't explicitly an antitrust issue, is simply to establish that a company makes up a significant share of the digital 'town square'.

Companies like Facebook/Twitter easily meet this bar - among a wide swathe of others.

ohnonotgmail

KyussB wrote: »

Facebook is at the fore of a huge antitrust investigation at the moment. The bar to meet for these laws, since their purpose isn't explicitly an antitrust issue, is simply to establish that a company makes up a significant share of the digital 'town square'.

Companies like Facebook/Twitter easily meet this bar - among a wide swathe of others.

you said together/combined. make your mind up.