Big Tech Taking Advantage of a "Tragedy"

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Although it's never been perfect in the USA, and although Australia is relatively free...in the Commonwealth countries, books can indeed still be banned outright. I don't believe any country other than the USA has ever fully come close to digesting free speech the way we have (even despite its many challenges).

You're saying that if people have political opinions that may vaguely cause others to act crazy, they should be censured. You don't understand free speech, and I don't blame you.

I'm talking about speech on a social platform. Yes, people have lost jobs for having unpopular opinions, mainly at the discretion of the employer. What I'm talking about is highly-trafficked, corporate platforms where competition is squashed and the sole player decides what does and doesn't pass as free speech. By very definition, we're in trouble.

Even if you think it's a "good thing" that "bad" thoughts and "bad" people are censured, do you see no cause for alarm in allowing the corporate giants to decide?

Look, man. We're like 4 pages deep now. I know you can't be bothered reading through them all, and I can't be bothered rehashing all of this crap. So, why are you even posting?? Get back to me if/when you read through all the pages, identify you've done so, and then we'll talk.

As I understand it, you are looking at this in a similar way to:


While to some, silencing a particular group may seem like a "good idea", what happens when they are "silenced"? Being forced out of the public arena won't change their thoughts\beliefs (and may in fact reinforce them - "They silenced us because they are scared of the truth"), instead it will just result in them taking and continuing their thoughts\beliefs in a less "public" network, making it harder for "outsiders" to convince them of the "error" of their belief\thoughts.

And on the other side, once the "Trumpists" have been removed, followed by the "conservatives", will that be the end of the purge, or will those in control then find a new group who "sound" like they support those purged previously, or who support something that those in control decide they don't like...

In America you have people who try to push for banning books in schools that contradict the bible. Excuse me if I take this as a bit of American exceptionalism. I am not familiar of any books that restrict freedom of thought that were banned here.




No, I am saying that there are people who should be able to reasonably see that their rhetoric would cause vulnerable people to do crazy things. You think all those people who stormed the capitol building would have done that without Trump saying things like they should not give up continuing to push the narrative that the election was obviously false. Fox News have for years been really pushing the envelope of just stopping from implying that people should do something serious about things they don't like. All of these right wing terrorists that do things like shooting up that mosque in New Zealand are saying that they are doing it because of things they heard from Ben Shapiro.




There is no evidence that Google and Apple are doing things like not making Parler more available because they think it is a threat. Whoever you are hearing it from are a conspiracy theorist. Parler really is just that toxic.




The governments are more likely to behind the of censorship for political reasons, that is what is happening in places like China. Something like YouTube and Twitter are going to be generally apolitical on things, other than things that would make them more money like less regulation of being held responsible for what people on their platforms say. The right wing are ironically doing literal thing where these platforms would be the ones held responsible for a copyright violation or possible libel laws. As much as right wing likes to say they are for freedom, they really are the ones who act first to restrict it. Suddenly you can't have joke accounts like someone pretending to be the cow of a politician.

I would say the majority of things being censured are things that would themselves try to silence other people, such as those that push harassment. And I don't see how breaking these companies up like you are saying would stop that. Like what would be done in your hypothetical that would be stopping Google from protecting Twitter from competitors? Because I have not seen evidence that there even is a connection. Microsoft just recently tried to make their own version of Twitch, Mixer, which has pretty much failed, but going by your ideas of grand cabal of tech companies you would think that Microsoft would have pulled something to give themselves advantages.

Are we going to talk about the American government banning Tik Tok?

Instead it is starting at silencing the Nazis and confederates, people inciting violence.

These lines of thought usually come in terms of authoritarianism. There needs to be some good explanations for why these companies might be targeting conservatives over progressives for some sort of political reasons, and most of the explanations seem to be that these companies hate conservatives just because. Like the follow the same 'owning the libs' mentality in reverse.

Though I said it wasn't perfect, those were localized attempts. The Federal government of the USA cannot ban printing of the Bible, or ban books that criticize the Bible.


If New Zealand wants to ban Ben Shapiro, I don't really care. No, I think ANYTHING can be labeled "rhetoric" by whomever gets to decide what constitutes "rhetoric." If the government of Australia and New Zealand want to get involved in trying to censor speech in the name of rhetoric, it's meaningless to me. In America, it's disgraceful, both by government and corporate monopolies. And don't rehash the DAMNED US CAPITOL STORMING. I've already said in this thread that that was a verbal, in-person enticement for violence by Trump, NOT comparable to the printed word on the Internet. You're being a damned weasel. Yes, you know damn well you are at this point.



You should ideally be able to decide yourself if it's toxic, not some corporation protecting another corporation. And, YES, there is evidence those corporations are making it unavailable. SEE this link from the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/09/tech ... arler.html

I don't care about right/left, and it's why I've said enough with the Trump cultists and anti-Trump cultists. I don't want a government that bans free speech, nor one that allows corporations to quash competition and, by extension, control speech.



Of course it failed. Even Microsoft, a company known for its software and operating systems, can't compete in this space. It has been monopolized. And no, saying "I don't like X" does NOT equate to silencing someone else. Preventing the expression is a form of silencing.


What's there to discuss, really? You think it's fine for governments and corporations to silence dissent as they seem fit, so the silencing of Tik Tok may as well fall in line with your ideals of censorship. Plus, I'm mainly focused on American companies vs. American government vs. American people. I have no say in Chinese companies or Australian censorship laws.

Though it's not common, it is permissible. When Princess Diana died, a controversial book was authored by a British writer questioning her life and the circumstances of her death. It was initially banned in the UK and the British commonwealth, so many British and Commonwealth reporters had to order an American pressing of the book. The ban was later lifted in the British realm, but it could not be banned from publication in the USA when first authored.

But I stand corrected. Some Australians DO get it...look above to Brictoria's post. Well done Brictoria!

Thank you, Brictoria. Some of you Aussies are all right!

Yeah, that link says that companies finally took notice that Parler was breaking rules like the terms of service of Google, Apple and Amazon, there is no evidence that it was doing so to protect Twitter or Facebook, only people from Parler claiming it. This is just a conspiracy theory, from a platform that has been treated too fairly before now. Thar article even talks about the platform specifically being made to allow the things that are getting it in trouble.

It is not about being a risk of a competitor, I think most people can agree that allowing threats of violence and hate speech are what is meant as being toxic. And still, how would your idea breaking up companies would mean something like Amazon would not cut off Parler?

Companies have a right to say which views they do and don’t host. This is a basic free speech right.

Donald Trump tried to ban a social media company, TikTok, which was disrupting the Facebook/Twitter paradigm. That was a grave assault on freedom of speech but generated much less outrage than companies exercising their own freedom of speech.

This leads me to conclude that the people complaining about freedom of speech are actually not really concerned about freedom of speech. They’re concerned about the promotion of certain types of speech.

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The actual potential threat from Big Tech is the Apple-Google duopoly on smart phone operating systems, and specifically their insistence that apps for their systems are only provided through their proprietary digital stores. This is an anti-competitive, anti-capitalist, anti-choice set-up which actually does grant these two companies huge unwarranted control over a section of the market. It suppressed competitors and innovation. It gives a big advantage to apps and services developed by these companies. It allows them to control much more than just a website.

I generally think “break up tech companies” is populist nonsense that will achieve very little, but in the case of breaking the power of mobile OS app stores, I think the case is very strong.

Twitter banning Trump is not equivalent to the US Government censoring you for saying "Obama is Atheist Muslim who wants to impose Sharia Law, and promote interspecies marriage".

It's equivalent to Utube banning videos that encourage teens to eat Tide pods, or vids that encourage parents of autistic children to cure autism with bleach enemas.

Twitter is a privately owned platform, so the company that owns can do as they please.

And Trump had a long history of spreading misinformation via tweets, and was descending from just dishonest, to the dishonest plus dangerous.

The scariest bit of 1984 is when they had to stop doing Two Minutes Hate because a private company accused Big Brother of inciting violence.

While I tend to share the OP's sense that when things are being loudly and insanely marketed it's probably wise to take a look around and see what else is happening (ie. if it makes no sense it might be a grift in progress) I'd also add something of my own opinion that's probably a bit more incendiary - I think the people who could see nothing but Trump for the last few years have been demonstrating that they're too dim to process the bigger picture and that Trump was really the best proxy they could summon for doing so. IMHO if you don't see Trump as a symptom of something else you're either not following the plot or can't.

That said - Trump went from being obnoxious before the election to behaving in a much more outright scary manner. Trying to shut off the election counting after midnight on the election day. Now having stirred up a group of people on Wednesday to effectively storm the electoral vote, which TBH this went off far more innocuously than it could have - would have been a *golden* opportunity for Russian or Chinese influence to have really done even more damage to our political stability because our country had a knife to its own throat Wednesday, courtesy of Donald.

Where these media platforms bother me is the sneakier stuff. It's seeing the massive orchestrated move that they ran against Carl Benjamin / Sargon of Akkad a few years back where a whole chain of providers and payment processors synchronized their movements at once (my best guess - he's just not important enough, they just wanted to see what they could get away with). Then you have Bret Weinstein getting his Facebook account pulled, and then Jordan Hall getting his Facebook account pulled. For those who haven't heard of Jordan Hall there's a good reason - he's a GameB guy who talks about future models for better civics in the 21st century considering new developments, tech, etc., it's a bit like Facebook trying to ban Jim Rutt or Forrest Landry - it's only stuff that's interesting to people who are really geeked-up about technical ideas and fixes for cultural issues, very niche audience and extremely benign stuff.

While it could be that there's money being piped into places like Facebook or Twitter to at least make targeted attacks on certain forms of speech (to have that much of a choke point on public discourse - who wouldn't!) there's just the broader issue that if these companies have this much of the social commons by dint of convenience turning into ubiquitous use which then becomes necessity - it's run in a cowboy fashion by some nerds in Silicon Valley. It's a role that needs cooler heads and likely far more regulation.

I think as of right now one of our biggest challenges is figuring out how far we're willing to say that private enterprises can do whatever they want (does it stop before they own the roads and park benches as Yanis Varoufakis recently put it)? Do we break up monopolies when it's technically a worse solution with worse service because the infrastructure is modeled to their development? Is there a certain percentage of GDP past which if a company eats up that much bandwidth in the economy that it becomes a national security concern? We're having a really tough time setting any lines in the sand, some of it of course is respectful of the actual complexity of the situation but at the same time I can't help but think that it's in many people's interests not to have any of these distinctions formalized.

A half hour discussion by Better Bachelor on the big tech consequences of Wednesday. This looks like sort of a Patriot Act moment with respect to social media where you're either up for the NSA doing whatever you wants (and needing a Snowden to blow the whistle some years later) or you're stuck watching a rolling catastrophe where people look at how they can use reaction to a bad situation as an excuse to firm up their own power base and market position.



This isn't to say Trump should be allowed to say whatever he wants, just that we really shouldn't sleep on current events around this and where it heads because we're watching a ball in flight in a power-struggle and your next Bond villain, individual or corporate, could be any one of them.

Banning Holocaust denial at places sure didn't stop them, it just silenced them and they created their own websites about it. I am sure such forums exist too. I have even came across a racist forum where all racists hung out and they even used a racist term for their forum.

I wasn't surprised when alt right websites started to be created, Parler being one of them.