When do we just give up on democracy completely?
To be clear, I'm not indicating that the framers had the right idea about this. Rather, just mentioning that the risks of under-informed general populace exercising direct democratic election has been under consideration since the nation's founding.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Electoral_Colleg...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventeenth_Amendment_to_the_U...
Even through the progressive era when some of these things changed, parties were more powerful and they definitely filtered popular intent. And that way more than today. We didn't have small 'd' democratic presidential primaries until the 70s and this last one was the first for the Democrats.
EDIT: Although going along with your point, I also remember the framers wanting the electors to be determined at the local level (district) rather than state. That would change things significantly, IMO.
We have new technologies which are being leveraged to intentionally misinform people, in a society that has degraded public education and raised the cost of higher education to levels prohibitive for the majority of the population, and as a result, the society (as a whole) is no longer sufficiently informed.
So, how can democracy function if the citizens are not educated? It can't. We are now seeing the results of the effects mentioned above, and the tech companies in question are starting to realize it, and respond in only way they can, while still maintaining their own wealth and power.
House of Representatives was designed to allow for direct election and therefore allow for the “stupid” (as you call it) common man to influence government. Most of the other branches (e.g. judicial, executive, and the Senate) were appointed by the supposedly “non-stupid” members of legislatures and judicial boards.
The answer to the last question is no one should decide who is ignorant, as the thought of having someone decide this is well ... ignorant.
Coincidentally, there are a certain group of people opposed to public education, ahem, I mean, "indoctrination" - they will continue to be a problem, but hopefully smaller and smaller problem if we have better education.
1. Vastly improved education
2. Smaller governed regions (break up countries more).
I think the first is a given, but the second is because (big surprise) most people don't care to meet the needs of absolutely everyone because it's completely impractical and likely impossible.
Difference of opinion is why countries were formed. I'm amazed borders haven't changed more.
Democracy doesn't need to make people richer, healthier, or safer to function. Oklahoma's population is anti education and this is reflected in their government. Will that damage their children for the future? Likely. But democracy continues to function in Oklahoma anyway.
It cannot function if the losers turn violent and attack the government. At this point, "stop the steal" is almost a rallying cry for militant action as every other possible remedy has been exhausted. That is what makes it distinct.
Winston S Churchill, 11 November 1947
Don't give up on democracy. It is hard. Nonetheless, it will always remain the best form of government we have seen. The United States Constitution is resilient as it has proven time and time again.
Yet they are allowed to drive cars, fly planes, raise children, buy guns and vote but somehow cannot decide for themselves what’s good or bad, and need a higher moral entity like Facebook to babysit them. I find this a weak argument.
>Once power loses its mask, once censoring dissent because it makes a mockery of the government is not just what power is doing, but actually what power says it’s doing, we enter a new stage of history—because serving this power is openly humiliating to the servant. Or at least, to any servant of intelligence, wisdom, conscience and character.
>At this stage, therefore, power is actively recruiting its own counter-elite. There is only one way to produce a regime change that sticks: a circulation of the elites. Therefore, we have taken a genuine step toward history. The gigantic gear has moved one click.
There is nothing wrong with conservatism, but for whatever reason there is a strong correlation between the right (at least in the last few years) and poor education.
I'd say most here can probably figure it out. I'm not saying I never get duped, but I can at least spot a total conman when I see one. It would appear many cannot.
That's an interesting hypothesis, but doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. It's the current administration that's been calling for the repeal of Section 230, which is what would make platforms liable for their user's content.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkeamz/elizabeth-warrens-pla...
I'm sorry, but please justify or rephrase this. People chose to do violent things. Social media may indeed be an accelerant, but someone kept providing fuel and someone was asking "my kingdom for a match!" (or more accurately, "a match for my kingdom!"). And in response, a large number were prepared to provide matches and light fires.
Facebook has even blocked Ron Paul?!? (https://twitter.com/RandPaul/status/1348704640486014982)
FAANG is the bakery, and Trump and everything associated with him is the same-sex wedding cake.
2. Political beliefs are not a protected class like sexual orientation (should they be?)
Given that, this seems like even more of an open and shut case: businesses have a right to decide who they serve.
No, it ended with the conclusion that the particular state panel that rules against the baker did so with impermissible religious animus against his beliefs, and therefore the ruling against him was unconstitutional. “Compelled speech" was what a broad political group wanted the Court to rule on, but it's not what it did rule on, instead issuing a much more limited decision that dodged the broad issue almost entirely.
Just to be clear, I am not blaming them, I am just pointing out the hypocrisy.
The US is de facto converting to the Chinese model for the internet: All communication must be monitored, damaging content must be erased, and in serious cases, those responsible must be punished.
If Parler gets a foreign data center, I expect a "Great Firewall of China" with American characteristics will soon follow.
Facebook 2019 revenue was 71 billion or so, which would put it at number 70 worldwide if it were a country. Maybe we should start to treat it like one.
I'm not implying the US government was behind this.
I'm suggesting that the end results in US and China are similar in some ways, though implemented by different actors.
Why should Facebook and Amazon use their resources to help this cause?
We, as a society, should be allowed to be very critical of our election process. Stifling discussions about the legitimacy of the election actually reduces my confidence in the election process. I’ve listen to their arguments and I didn’t believe them, but I feel good that people are allowed to do openly question election process and I trust the American people to make rational decisions about what constitutes a fair election.
If Parler were to try and get a foreign data center expect Goog, FB and the others to try to bully that country (we will remove offices in your country if you do not shut it down) or pressuring internet providers to block that countries traffic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/07/business/hong-kong-securi...
1. It is individuals and individual companies making these decisions, it is not federally required. (And if it was federally mandated, I’m sure impropriety could be handled by the courts.)
2. Companies are censoring the president, one of the main actors of the federal government.
This is hugely different from the Chinese model, where the Chinese government restricts things which are negative towards the government among other things.
At any rate, I’m sure many of the technical reasons are legitimate. For example, does AWS permit you to host bounty-hunting sites, where you could be paid to kill others? I doubt it, and I imagine many people support that stance, even if they do not support kicking Parler. So we admit that some censorship is ok and even beneficial. Therefore, what’s the line? Is it content which is promoting literal illegal activity? Content that likely will lead to illegal actions?
If that’s the case, then perhaps we should be advocating that these rules ought to be applied more evenly to even more types of sites and content. Or, perhaps the rules are applied evenly, and there have simply not been many other similar cases regarding AWS which have gained popularity.
Or, maybe AWS should enforce no rules whatsoever. Then they could become a haven for criminal sites, thus loosing their brand.
At any rate, this seems very different from China, and I’m yet to be convinced that we have started some sort of slippery slope.
Trump approval remains at 40%, that's more than enough to build counter-platforms for literally everything.
I would like to welcome this as an opportunity to break the power of major tech corporations and move towards open platforms.
Unfortunately, the trend seems to be towards closed platforms that are simply echo chambers of a different persuasion.
Billionaire tech magnate Jack Ma vs. Xi Jinping: who got to censor who?
<lots of American counterparts> vs. Donald Trump: same question...
Seems like the precise opposite.
The term is apparently derogatory in nature, but imo it is an effective political metaphor for socio-political regimes that prominently feature bifurcated societies of ruling elite and voiceless governed masses: the palace and the street/market.
The “word on the street” has currency with the masses and nearly every utterance of the ‘palace’ is mistrusted, scrutinized, and parsed to the n-th degree to glean “the actual truth”. Conversely, the palace considers the word on the street to be irrational, volatile, and destabilizing, and dismisses it in its entirety as misunderstandings of “the common and the ignorant”.
It remains a minor puzzle as to why Soviet “misinformation” beamed via shortwave as Radio Moscow, Radio Peking, and other fellow red states were never, afaik, jammed in the West, yet in 21st century, western heads are deemed extra sensitive to bad information and need to be protected from exposure to content that poses some sort of social and moral hazard.
It is helpful to remember that the only states doing the jamming (“to stop enemy propaganda and misinformation”) were authoritarian regimes, and imho instructive to reflect on why that is the case.
Actions taken by the US info-tech cartel recently will only serve to deepen the national divide, and (per historic patterns) erode the legitimacy of establishment voices and institutions.
[edited]
Or, they just put their thumbs on the scale and make sure your post isn't shown to anyone (or very few people) rather than your typical audience.
If they have 1.73 billion daily users, that's a lot of data to scan. I'm guessing they'll only go after the big fish.
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
Why are people that believe in regulation of the world's largest corporations suddenly laissez-faire libertarians?
If you have opposed the Citizen's United ruling for a decade, don't suddenly act like you care about a corporation's civil liberties, including freedom of association and freedom of expression.
The answer is obvious: both sides want power more than they want to stick to their expressed ideals.
I believe social media should be regulated more tightly. Until then they have the freedom to remove the content according to their TOS.
Just because I’m pointing out that they have the freedom it doesnt mean I believe they should continue to have the freedom.
Government regulations are desperately needed.
Even more so, government enforcement of existing regulations are needed. There’ve been many threats of violence on social media with few being investigated.
I would also argue that there are a lot of folks (myself included) that see the curtailing of speech - regardless of "side", as a real long-term threat to productive and open communication. We need actual discourse and understanding, or all we're going to get is more us-vs-them polarization and ramping up of rhetoric and violence.
I strongly disagree with most of the opinions being voiced on the (far) right, but if they don't happen in the open they will fester into something grotesque and far more dangerous. Just because I'm disgusted by the opinions of a group of people doesn't it's a good idea for me to make the situation worse by silencing them. Not least of all because we will eventually reap what we've sowed once they grab power again.
I still can't help but shake the feeling that there are those with a real vested interest in a continuing and growing divide (and conquering) of the populace, regardless of the (externalized) cost.
I also believe that every association of citizens should have civil liberties. I have no desire or plans to become Facebook, but I want the freedom to make much smaller companies (or collectives, or charitable organizations, or whatever) and have the discretion to associate with whomever I want. If that right is taken away from Facebook, I am harmed.
If the ability to become Facebook-scale is taken away from Facebook, I am not harmed, because I have no interest in doing so. So that's what I advocate.
(If you search through my comment history, you can see this is not a new belief for me, e.g., https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19338090 from two years ago agreeing unironically with Paul Graham's strawman suggestion that Google should not exist, or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24797482 from three months ago arguing in favor of Elizabeth Warren's proposal, and motivation, to break up Big Tech in a specific way following specific principles.)
If your side wants power more than you want to stick to your expressed ideals, go ahead, but don't drag me down to your level. My side's ideals look like an opportunistic and self-contradictory version of laissez-faire libertarianism simply because our position is not laissez-faire libertarianism at all.
¬(A & ¬A) = ¬A | A = True
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That has nothing to do with enjoying watching this chickens come home to roost.
The political scientist and author Frank Wilhoit talked about it in his works:
> Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: there must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
1. These companies have every right to legally censor those they disagree with.
2. By exercising that right they put themselves at risk of being regulated more stringently (as utilities for example) when they demonstrate inelasticity in consumer choice.
3. I'd rather them not be treated as utilities because that hampers competition and thus impedes efficiency.
4. Your statement above is a farcical caricature of conservative ideology. Every product/service deserves a debate on what regulation is appropriate but as a society regulation only exists because bad actors necessitated its creation. No one wants car seats for their 8 year olds - we'd much rather be trusted to do the right thing.
The quote was made by a different Frank Wilhoit on the Crooked Timber blog / community.
Investigative work here: https://twitter.com/Delafina777/status/1183470106816331776
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_M._Wilhoit
The quote you're referring to is from a comment on a web page left in 2018:
https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progre...
The name in the comment links to his site:
He's a music composer.
Because there isn't a free market, but a regulated market and there is a widespread perception (on both the left and the right) that the regulations are tilted in favor of the establishment and oligarchs, and against normal people, workers, consumers, and taxpayers.
Furthermore when there was protests which were marred by violence in 2020 the platforms were supportive of the protestors and continued to permit them to organize.
> what is the rationale for squaring this circle
If we want a free market, lets have a free market. If we want regulations, lets let those regulations reflect perspectives from both sides of the aisle. A regulated market for me, and a free market for thee, is not acceptable.
Any rationalization is post-hoc, done in support of the pre-existing (and pre-determined) goal.
As such, because it's entirely post-hoc, this leads to moving the goalposts, and any respective adjustments in rationalizations.
The primary question one must ask, in these circumstances:
Is my counterpart arguing in good faith?
If the signs point to bad faith (e.g., telltale language, gaslighting or similar methods employed, etc), then rational argument is not their currency.
Edit: My only thought is if people feel these companies are viewed as too critical to be self moderating than maybe these do need anti monopoly action to foster competition in the area. I absolutely do NOT agree with giving them any special statuses which would do the exact opposite of fostering competition.
If you believe in free markets as the most efficient mode of production and the most liberal way of life you will be against anything that undermines the freedom of the markets, be it private monopolization or governmental subjugation.
The question hotly debated is whether the Cabal of Twitter, FB, Reddit, and the like are large enough to distort the playing field through the sheer gravity of their scale. If you agree that they are you have to agree they have undermined the free market, and markets need to be rescued.
In the similar vein - you can argue that the only valid use of violence is to stop unsanctioned use of violence. There is no contradiction in both supporting and opposing use of violence at the same time.
But I do find it strange that people seem to think you can attempt a coup of the worlds most powerful country and face virtually no consequence or blowback? As the Emerson quote goes “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.”
Actually wait, being upset is not something you need permission for.
"Vulgar libertarian apologists for capitalism use the term "free market" in an equivocal sense: they seem to have trouble remembering, from one moment to the next, whether they’re defending actually existing capitalism or free market principles. So we get the standard boilerplate article arguing that the rich can’t get rich at the expense of the poor, because "that’s not how the free market works" — implicitly assuming that this is a free market. When prodded, they’ll grudgingly admit that the present system is not a free market, and that it includes a lot of state intervention on behalf of the rich. But as soon as they think they can get away with it, they go right back to defending the wealth of existing corporations on the basis of "free market principles."" -- Kevin Carson
There's a few ideologies / models going on here. Eg:
- A company is like a person, with all the rights of free expression and self governance. From that perspective, twitter and FB are free to have whatever systems of regulation (or be totally arbitrary and capricious). And its up to the market to replace twitter/FB.
- A monopolistic social media website is part of the public square. So facebook is more like the US federal government than it is like the burger shop down the road. As such, facebook/twitter should be held to the norms of a government, not the norms of a business. They should allow free speech by the participants in that space, in accordance with the laws of the land. The market should be free to work inside twitter/fb.
Both of these stories are internally consistent, and both stories are consistent with the broad ideas of "free speech" and "free markets".
Even with ultra-conservative circles, there has always been some unpopularity with the party line on economic issues. Free trade, education, etc.
but i think we are allowed to be upset and criticize it or call for boycotts and condemn them. that’s our free speech.
just like if twitter banned any support of lgbt rights i’m sure the left would cry and not just dismiss it as “corporations aren’t held to the first amendment”
imo free speech is a human right and corporations shouldn’t oppress it even if they legally can. just like they shouldn’t discriminate even if they legally could
> imo free speech is a human right and corporations shouldn’t oppress it even if they legally can. just like they shouldn’t discriminate even if they legally could
Private people and companies are under no obligation to offer their help and services to people who wish to use those services to organize killings or any other crimes. In fact, it's extremely common for businesses to have (and enforce) policies against such use of their products/services, since it's obviously not in their best interest to be viewed by the public as an accessory to crime.
The "stop the steal" and similar posts now being removed under the policy are intended for recruiting people to an upcoming armed escalation of last week's riot and invasion at the Capitol (using the false pretense of election fraud by Democrat officials). Their purpose is to capture or kill anyone standing in the way of their goal to overturn the election result, at some point before inauguration. This isn't conjecture; the posts and the commentary surrounding them have been out there for everyone to see. This was also noted by Twitter in their recent announcement on the suspension of the outgoing president's account.
My hoped-for solution isn't for the government to step in and fix the problem. ("There oughta be a law!") It's for the company to be replaced by competitors with new and better products. (Or for the company itself to improve under competitive pressure.)
You no longer hear Republicans talk about Medicare or Social Security privatization, Obamacare repeal, Dodd-Frank repeal, etc because they've moderated on the free market idealism.
"Free market" is theory, not reality. There are no 100% free markets, nor are there 100% controlled markets. The free market is an ideal that you strive towards in a capitalistic society.
Also, the question of "why are they allowed to be upset?" is pretty wild. Who are you to disallow someone getting upset about something?
I suspect other countries and their citizens wouldn’t want American corporate interference. Free market forces will certainly cut down these corporate influence to size.
That’s my prediction. We will have to wait and watch. Time will tell.
Because there's a clear government-enforced bias. Can you imagine the shitshow if they banned, let's say, black people?
Obvious lie. The current government is controlled by the group pushing the "stop the steal" propaganda. No reasonable person would believe Trump's own government is compelling Facebook to remove it.
> Can you imagine the shitshow if they banned, let's say, black people?
Sure... And what, pray tell, does that have to do with removing _posts_ containing calls to violence? How are those two things comparable?
I don’t know how to answer your question outside of anology. It’s possible to want one thing and not another.
That is not to say that censorship is evil on its face. Like taxes, it serves an important purpose especially in private discourse. HN would not be as it is without the tireless efforts at moderation and censorship in the name of pruning out low quality discourse. To disallow all voluntary content discrimination or censorship is to lose direction. However, the key distinction is that the vast majority of the censorship on HN is not backstopped by the threat of government censorship to comply. If the calls for censorship stopped at the private sector and did not threaten the intervention of the government if they did not get what they wanted then I would have absolutely no problem with these private companies silencing individuals in much the same way I have no problem with HN banning people.
I suspect somebody will chime in saying that the censorship is now totally voluntary because they have realized just how bad the consequences of their existing policies are with the riots in the capital. To that I say, have you ever seen Zuckerberg talk about free speech [1]? Just look at 4:50 or so. 5:20, is literally a total refutation of the current arguments. At every step along this path he has spoken in favor of free speech and fought the calls for them to censor Facebook. As far as I can tell he is a true believer in the principles of free speech. There is no doubt in my mind that if he truly believed that the government would not intervene that he would not only not censor, he would immediately revert to their policies as of a few years ago with respect to censorship.
Really this argument seems to come from people saying that the 1st Amendment only applies to the government, so private censorship is totally fine. True, but are you really following the spirit of the 1st Amendment if you threaten government censorship? If people really thought the government would not censor, then they would assign zero credibility to the threat and ignore it. That people truly consider the threat is an indication that they feel it might actually be acted upon.
Also, I am not saying that government censorship is bad in all cases. There are cases where unlimited free speech may not be worth the consequences. However, such rules should always be carefully considered and we should not turn a blind eye to the fact that we are, in fact, using the government to stamp down on speech. It is with great regret that we should make such decisions since we can find no other alternative and we should acknowledge that we have engaged in evil to fight an even greater one.
We have too few competitors to Facebook for the market to work right.
For one thing, your argument is reductionist. Just because Republicans complain about how CNN chooses to run its newsroom doesn’t mean they want a government takeover of CNN. You can say that something private actors are doing is bad or risky without there being an implication that the government should stop that bad behavior.
I mean you can flip this around just as easily? Where are all the Fairness Doctrine liberals?
For the other: quite a few Republicans, especially the folks Trump brought in, are economically quite liberal. See: https://ibb.co/mbTycKP Trump took changes to social security and Medicare off the table during his campaign. The laissez-faire economic libertarian wing long held the advantage within the coalition, but a bunch of them have become Democrats over the last couple of decades, especially with the rise of Trump.
It's not a free market when a handful of companies can collude to shut out a competitor as they've done to Parler.
So we're left with 3 potential realities: 1) the tech oligarchs are recklessly ignorant about what they're doing, 2) they're recklessly emotional about the situation and don't care about the fallout, or 3) their decisions are calculated and the push-back from the extremists is desired. All 3 are worrisome.
Similar to the FBI making a press release today about upcoming “protests”.
I haven't seen this, all the bans I have seen are the result of ideological warfare and flamebait.
However you will get downvoted to -4 for questioning the integrity of the election. So don't do that ;)
Politics are off-topic on HN.
Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
In Nazi Germany Sturmabteilung or "Storm Division" was the paramilitary division of the Nazi party until it was replaced by the SS on the Night of Long Knives.
Some Neo-Nazis have kept up the language.
Stormfront is a popular Neo-Nazi website.
The Daily Stormer is another.
I don't follow Neo-Nazism but I am sure there are others.
So calling the riot a "Storming" is suggestive that it is an organized assault by Neo-Nazis.
The root reason for the violent riot at the Capitol last week was that many people have been lied to, and the lies are things that would incite people to fight. If you believed that America's democracy is no longer in place and has been replaced by a deep state dictatorship, you would probably fight against it yourself.
We must fight the beliefs at the source - stop the liars by making them liable for the damage they cause.
We have laws for actual harmful lies, such as falsely shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. But beyond that, it's a grey area, slippery slope, etc.
boy, we've taken quite a turn from where we were just a few years ago with conspiracy theories spreading like wild fire regarding Trump and Russia.
it would probably be better to actively engage believers of "Stop the Steal" with facts about the election vs. removing content that they are creating.
Anyway, why are you mixing up these two things?
- inciting violence at the Capitol
- claims of voter fraud.
He's been claiming voter fraud since before November 8th, and he didn't get banned then, so obviously that has nothing to do with it.
> so obviously that has nothing to do with it
is very much taking it too far. It's clear the voter fraud is the primary motivation he is using to incite the riots, and for many of the rioters it is their moral basis underpinning their actions.
Sure, it's definitely a bit spooky that people are going around saying the election was stolen when, as far as I can tell, there's no hard evidence of widespread cheating. (I'm open to changing my mind given sufficient evidence, I'm just saying that I haven't seen it yet.)
But this is the equivalent of Facebook saying "hmm, looks like there's a fire going on over there, better go and dump a barrel of oil on it to put it out". Of course people are going to notice that their posts are being deleted. And even if they didn't notice, Facebook is loudly and publicly announcing that they are removing those posts. This will naturally result in those people saying, "aha, this confirms that there is a liberal elite conspiracy against folks like me". It will only make them more certain that the election was stolen.
Honestly, I can't say I blame them for suspecting a conspiracy, given we've had similar moves by other tech companies. As a generally left wing person, what am I supposed to say? "Yeah, we know that all these social networks are acting all biased and stuff against people with your opinions, but it's not actually a conspiracy, just a bunch of people without the ability to predict what others will make of their actions all being idiots at the same time due to simple memetic contagion." I think that's actually what's going on, but I can definitely see how from the other side it looks like a conspiracy.
I don’t have any data to support any conclusion, just brainstorming.
http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2...
It is obvious now that big tech companies are deep players in political games.
Maybe in a few years (months if you're optimist), it will be forgotten (because of these kinds of measure?) and the phrase will be allowed again.
Do you think someone prone to conspiracy theories is going to start listening to people who are actively campaigning for the destruction/deletion of information. We need consensus and half of consensus means listening.
Does it mean any group seeking remedy against BigCorp with slogans like “Stop the Stink” to oppose a new dump can be shut down through lawyers if the group cannot prove their allegations?
This doesn't really seem comparable, does it?
Note well: I do not believe that there was in fact a steal. But if Facebook wants to do this, they're going to find out that there are several ways to modify or paraphrase this, and they're going to have to block significantly more than one phrase.
