The Inevitable Coronavirus Censorship Crisis is Here

[TBoneTX 45,571]

A thoughtful essay from a liberal.  Comments?

Quote

The Inevitable Coronavirus Censorship Crisis is Here

Matt Taibbi

 

As the Covid-19 crisis progresses, censorship programs advance, amid calls for China-style control of the Internet.  [...]

 

Continues here: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/temporary-coronavirus-censorship  

 

[Burnt Reynolds 5,058]

Quote

This interesting take on the First Amendment was the latest in a line of “Let’s rethink that whole democracy thing” pieces that began sprouting up in earnest four years ago. Articles with headlines like “Democracies end when they become too democratic” and “Too much of a good thing: why we need less democracy” became common after two events in particular: Donald Trump’s victory in the the

Republican primary race, and the decision by British voters to opt out of the EU, i.e. “Brexit.”

 

A consistent lament in these pieces was the widespread decline in respect for “experts” among the ignorant masses, better known as the people Trump was talking about when he gushed in February 2016, “I love the poorly educated!”

The Atlantic was at the forefront of the argument that The People is a Great Beast, that cannot be trusted to play responsibly with the toys of freedom. A 2016 piece called “American politics has gone insane” pushed a return of the “smoke-filled room” to help save voters from themselves. Author Jonathan Rauch employed a metaphor that is striking in retrospect, describing America’s oft-vilified intellectual and political elite as society’s immune system:

Quote

Americans have been busy demonizing and disempowering political professionals and parties, which is like spending decades abusing and attacking your own immune system. Eventually, you will get sick.

The new piece by Goldsmith and Woods says we’re there, made literally sick by our refusal to accept the wisdom of experts. The time for asking the (again, literally) unwashed to listen harder to their betters is over. The Chinese system offers a way out. When it comes to speech, don’t ask: tell.

 

These parts were so true.

 

And either people take this threat seriously or they lose their freedoms. Simple as that.

[millefleur 5,047]

Matt Taibbi is an interesting one, he and Whitney Webb are some of the best journalists of alt media.

[Burnt Reynolds 5,058]

1 hour ago, millefleur said:

Matt Taibbi is an interesting one, he and Whitney Webb are some of the best journalists of alt media.

I've long recommended Glenn Greenwald and more recently Michael Tracey. Glenn, especially, has proven himself truly independent and willing to hold people accountable, even those he agrees with. 

[Nature Boy 2.0 8,376]

But what is the answer to a website censorship.  I mean they own the website. I guess they have the right to tailor content.

 

The posts on FB showing the cannine intestinal corona virus vacine, claiming to be for human covid 19 etc. Should fb allow that ? 

[yuna628 9,686]

Websites and other types of providers have rules. Users also pretty much waive all rights to their ''content'' when they sign up and post that content. Don't listen to the rules, then your content is removed and you'll likely be banned. Works the same way anywhere, and after years as a moderator I grew tired of having my life threatened every time I removed the rule-breaking content, with whining of ''my rights'', ''free speech", ''nazis", "lawyers" and such. 

 

TB you take part in ''censorship" every day. And you've likely heard the same whining for years when you do. A thankless job really, but someone has to do it.

[Burnt Reynolds 5,058]

I'm no fan of Candace Owens, but found this relevant..

 

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2020/05/02/twitter-suspends-candace-owens-for-telling-michigan-to-go-to-work/

Quote

 

Twitter Suspends Candace Owens for Telling Michigan to ‘Go to Work’

 

Conservative firebrand and BLEXIT founder Candace Owens was suspended from Twitter on Saturday after tweeting that people in Michigan should open their businesses and “go to work” despite the draconian measures implemented by Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) in response to the Chinese virus.

“Apparently [Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer] believes she is a duly elected dictator of a socialist country,” Owens had tweeted. “The people of Michigan need to stand up to her. Open your businesses. Go to work.”

“The police think she’s crazy too,” she added. “They are not going to arrest 10,000,000 people for going to work.”

 

 

These platforms can't die fast enough, they didn't grow to where they are based on these ridiculous net nanny policies that are extremely one-sided. No mercy to authoritarians.

[TBoneTX 45,571]

10 hours ago, yuna628 said:

TB you take part in ''censorship" every day.

Of a different sort.  The censorship is not of opinions, but rather of posting behavior which, if adopted by all other people, would make civilized communication impossible.

[sl1pstream 551]

2 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

Of a different sort.  The censorship is not of opinions, but rather of posting behavior which, if adopted by all other people, would make civilized communication impossible.

Oh, like what Candace Owens posted on Twitter.

[Dashinka 24,628]

6 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

Of a different sort.  The censorship is not of opinions, but rather of posting behavior which, if adopted by all other people, would make civilized communication impossible.

People used to be able to debate without attacks, in the end respecting other’s opinions.  Websites do have the right to do what they do, but when they censor opinions especially political opinions, they deserve no business which is one of the big reasons I do not use FB, Twitter, or any other social media platform other than this one.

[yuna628 9,686]

12 hours ago, TBoneTX said:

Of a different sort.  The censorship is not of opinions, but rather of posting behavior which, if adopted by all other people, would make civilized communication impossible.

You censor individuals for making statement opinions and expressing language and behavior that can be seen as rude, obnoxious, insulting, and degrading. If you left it there, likely a thread would fall into not being civilized, even though this sometimes still happens despite the best of your efforts. The TOS allows you and anyone in your position to suspend an account or delete content for any reason whatsoever. We have no ownership of our content, and no one should fool themselves into thinking they have complete control over their content and 'speech' when they post on someone else's platform.

 

That being said: the internet is filled with non-censored, vile, false, defaming, misleading, and downright evil content all easily accessible without restrictions usually because the person has full control over their platform. If these individuals complaining about censorship want to take the initiative to do so, they can..

The world is filled with censorship, and has been for a long time. "Decency laws" and ratings board, censorship of content deemed too spicy for certain viewers, bleeps and bloops. There are certain individuals that have no problem with censoring content that offends or angers them until of course they run into the same problem.

[Burnt Reynolds 5,058]

The internet as a communication medium has been around for three decades, give or take several years. This censorship fanaticism (as in, policies) has only started happening since Trump got elected. 

 

Twitter, as an example, began in the mid-late 2000s. Their policies were very non-restrictive. This is what helped grow their platform. If they had these sort of policies in place they have now, a decade ago, their platform would've gone nowhere. The more freedom of discussion people have, the more thick skin they're going to need to have. That's how it's always been -- the internet didn't invent this, it's just a medium designed to be open. People inviting the public, while owed control over their own platform, logically accept that there will be very differing views, and very intolerable people. That's why there are mechanisms to ignore them. The desire to censor is not to protect anyone, or make people be more polite, it's quite simply a cudgel to beat people one disagrees with. Arguing against censorship used to be a thing I had to teach evangelical type conservatives about, but it seems the left are now progressively like them. The evangelicals I bet are fuming at how successful the left's implementation of their repressive ideas has been.

Edited May 3, 2020 by Burnt Reynolds

[yuna628 9,686]

16 hours ago, Burnt Reynolds said:

The internet as a communication medium has been around for three decades, give or take several years. This censorship fanaticism (as in, policies) has only started happening since Trump got elected. 

 

Twitter, as an example, began in the mid-late 2000s. Their policies were very non-restrictive. This is what helped grow their platform. If they had these sort of policies in place they have now, a decade ago, their platform would've gone nowhere. The more freedom of discussion people have, the more thick skin they're going to need to have. That's how it's always been -- the internet didn't invent this, it's just a medium designed to be open. People inviting the public, while owed control over their own platform, logically accept that there will be very differing views, and very intolerable people. That's why there are mechanisms to ignore them. The desire to censor is not to protect anyone, or make people be more polite, it's quite simply a cudgel to beat people one disagrees with. Arguing against censorship used to be a thing I had to teach evangelical type conservatives about, but it seems the left are now progressively like them. The evangelicals I bet are fuming at how successful the left's implementation of their repressive ideas has been.

Sorry but I've been around moderating before social media ever existed in it's current forms. Censorship of all sorts existed back then. I've done it for big companies and small frys. I watched people be censored out of vendettas, overzelaousness, and spite. I've seen people actually try and sue the big boys and finally come to the realization that ''their thoughts and feelings" even including creative works, are not their own. Twitter's existence has always been a literal dumpster fire of disjointed policies (they had policies they were just too cheap to enforce them) hitting up against whatever trash the human mind can create. It's old methods were completely untenable to remain on the scene.

 

If you think it's just a ''trump thing" then you haven't been around long enough and I could tell some very interesting tales involving religious/political pro anarchy tin foil hat censorship, police warrants, lawsuits, hacking revenge, and the destruction of years worth of content.

[Burnt Reynolds 5,058]

9 minutes ago, yuna628 said:

Sorry but I've been around moderating before social media ever existed in it's current forms. Censorship of all sorts existed back then. I've done it for big companies and small frys. I watched people be censored out of vendettas, overzelaousness, and spite. I've seen people actually try and sue the big boys and finally come to the realization that ''their thoughts and feelings" even including creative works, are not their own. Twitter's existence has always been a literal dumpster fire of disjointed policies (they had policies they were just too cheap to enforce them) hitting up against whatever trash the human mind can create. It's old methods were completely untenable to remain on the scene.

 

If you think it's just a ''trump thing" then you haven't been around long enough and I could tell some very interesting tales involving religious/political pro anarchy tin foil hat censorship, police warrants, lawsuits, hacking revenge, and the destruction of years worth of content.

I was there when Newsgroups became popular, Compuserve (Pre-AOL), Arcadium, BBS forums, I'd gladly help out on those, when I felt my contribution merited the position. I've posted here since before your account was made. I was moderating MMO video games in my teens in the 90s called MUDs, of course, they used different names to describe them. Trying to pull out a resume of moderation to me as a substitute for an argument is laughable. It's a Trump thing. The internet has long been open and free, especially on sites open to the public. Before this widespread adoption of censorship, it was extremely limited, and I had the experience of seeing the cesspool those extremely few communities turned into because they decided to pointlessly cater to an outrage mob. Unsurprisingly, social media never catered to them until Trump, and ever since, it's made these platforms all the worse. People like Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg can admit as much, but apparently you're in denial.

[yuna628 9,686]

1 hour ago, Burnt Reynolds said:

I was there when Newsgroups became popular, Compuserve (Pre-AOL), Arcadium, BBS forums, I'd gladly help out on those, when I felt my contribution merited the position. I've posted here since before your account was made. I was moderating MMO video games in my teens in the 90s called MUDs, of course, they used different names to describe them. Trying to pull out a resume of moderation to me as a substitute for an argument is laughable. It's a Trump thing. The internet has long been open and free, especially on sites open to the public. Before this widespread adoption of censorship, it was extremely limited, and I had the experience of seeing the cesspool those extremely few communities turned into because they decided to pointlessly cater to an outrage mob. Unsurprisingly, social media never catered to them until Trump, and ever since, it's made these platforms all the worse. People like Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg can admit as much, but apparently you're in denial.

It's not a Trump thing. If your resume is as you claim you'd very well know it isn't. The only reason you're noticing something more is because the said content removal is on a subject you personally agree with and ease of access has exploded with a whole host of both sane and crazed voices itching for a fight and making content that is against the owner's TOS. It really is simple. Obey the TOS or go make your own site to have full ownership of your voice.

Edited May 4, 2020 by yuna628