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It's sad to see how servile about censorship so many hn readers are. Yes, we all know the baseline retorts about private companies, but there is a general climate that is extremely worrying for those of us who are paying attention.
The retort about "private companies" is usually a dishonest one, because whenever I drill into the views of the people making that retort I find that they are leftists (even far leftists) who only pretend to care about private companies when it's convenient to do so. The aim is clearly censorship at all levels of information distribution. We must end the trend now before it is too late.
If their views were the ones these companies were shutting down, they'd be up at arms about it. The evidence is in the response to Coinbase recently instituting a No Politics policy. Plenty on the left construed that as being censorship, ironically enough.
This isn't a phenomenon specific to the left. The number of people on the right that refuse to wear masks in private establishments that request is revealing.
To the right liberal judges are "activist judges". To the left conservative judges are "activist judges".
As a "liberal" (I'm not sure what that even means anymore) in his mid 40s I've been appalled at the portion of the left turning their back on the idea of free speech.
The hypocrisy, lack of critical thinking and myopia runs in both directions. And, unfortunately, it runs deep.
It does run in both directions, but notice which side has the predominant position and representation at the top tech companies that are doing the information policing. It's certainly happening in conservative communities, but the established information channels are almost all controlled or dominated by the left. And they never call out their own. When was the last time you saw reddit for example shut down propaganda, say, on r/sino? Or prevent it from affecting other subreddits? It's blatantly obvious that pro far left astroturfing and gaslighting are the norm on most of the popular social media.
The 10 top-performing link posts by U.S. Facebook pages are almost always right to far-right. Whoever is behind this liberal conspiracy must be really bad at their job.
https://twitter.com/facebookstop10
Or they're spending their money on the "front page of the internet" like Reddit. See the links I shared in my other post for examples of clear nation-state activity linked to Reddit and Twitter. Facebook certainly does skew more to the right, but note that it's popular verified personalities like Franklin Graham or Trump himself who are getting those likes/hits. Whereas with these other sources you never know who is behind the accounts (is it Russia? China?). This being said I will not excuse this behavior from the right or from Facebook.
I mean didn’t Reddit literally ban ChapoTrapHouse during the same wave they purged /r/TheDonald?
Meanwhile r/politics and r/worldnews are completely one-sided, with far-left brigading being the norm and questionable accounts/gilding spreading garbage all the time. I'm pretty left by American standards but it's still garbage.
There's a big difference between r/politics and people downvoting and r/conservative which insta bans you and has turned into the new Donald.
The purpose of /r/conservative is for conservatives to talk about conservatism. If somebody is not conservative then /r/conservative is not the best place for them.
I don't disagree with your assessment, but I don't know enough about it to take a strong position on it. That said, I'm concerned about the idea of policing information. On the other hand the amount of manipulation I see via media, on both the right and the left, has me concerned too.
If it were so "blatantly obvious" then it should be easy for someone to provide statistical evidence of such behavior. Why don't you provide any references to support your claims?
This really would require these sources to be more transparent about where accounts are coming from and who is spending money on their platforms, and why would they be if they agree with what is happening? But at least we know how many accounts they delete.
https://www.cnet.com/news/twitter-removed-130-accounts-linke...
https://www.technologyreview.com/2017/01/20/154481/cybersecu...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jun/12/twitter-d...
https://www.thedailybeast.com/twitter-shuts-down-200000-chin...
You can find many more sources like these. They do also delete accounts from far right troll farms, but the amount of astroturfing and gaslighting with the intention of pushing civil unrest, especially during this election, is palpable. Right now I'm looking at Reddit where garbage posts are somehow getting massively upvoted and gilded (with real money), pushing encouragement for civil unrest and paranoia about our democratic processes and whether or not they work.
It's state-sponsored. I don't have the keys to Reddit's back-end so I can't prove it, but there are plenty of sources on nation states trying to spread this type of garbage. Proceed to Google to find further sources beyond the ones I already gave.
That does nothing to support your narrative of "It's blatantly obvious that pro far left astroturfing and gaslighting are the norm on most of the popular social media."
I see a lot of people calling censorship a "left" thing and I really don't see it. Like, all the "protect the children" anti-encryption laws for example are being pushed by "the right" / "conservatives". We see a lot of "left-wing" "censorship" in tech because most of the companies have younger, more liberal CEOs. At the same time, information is entirely controlled by mainly conservatives in government and traditional media.
Doing the math: the "side" that holds power in a certain sector is the one wanting to control information. The best conclusion from that has to be "those in power want to control information to keep themselves in power", which makes a lot more sense than trying to attribute something as simple as "controlling information" to any particular political leaning.
Sadly it's because a lot of us have lost faith in people in general over the past 5/6 years. Initially when the internet came along we though "great, now we can share ideas and knowledge with total freedom and not worry about governments or the media". Without realizing what that freedom allowed for abject the checks and balances that were traditionally applied (editorial/peer review etc) and the sheer amount of exposure this gave to bad actors.
The past 5 years have shown us that as a society we have lost our common basis in fact (alternative facts, fake news etc.) and the whole thing worries me. It worries me even more that i can't see a way out of it other than censorship. Short of a massive change in education to focus on critical thinking and evaluating received information, but that takes years and the problems we have now are destroying western democracy.
The assumption here is, the censors have the ability to "critically think" and others do not. I'm not sure that is very honest.
You're making the mistaken assumption that the people who need to think critically have all of the information or even the right information to do so. Most people are making judgements and coming to conclusions based on less than whole data. They don't have time to exhaustively investigate everything about every topic and make sure that all of their sources are flawless. You're asking for perfection. It's impossible.
This is not reasoning for censorship by the way, its reasoning for systemizing trustable sources of information. Someone will care enough to get it right and fair so we should promote them and ignore the others.
Are you able name name one "trustable source of information"? I can't.
My eyes; my ears. This is why the Social Cooling effect is so scary to me: people become afraid to share any observation of the world not deemed publicly-acceptable at the moment, leading other people who would agree with that observation to instead doubt their own senses.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24627363
_It worries me even more that i can't see a way out of it other than censorship._
It also worries me that so many people have been so pickled in today's ubiquitous leftist policing of what must and can't be said, what mustn't be reported, what must be publicly proclaimed (or you're a "literal nazi") that they literally can no longer understand the arguments of old fashioned leftists like Noam Chomsky about how silencing opposing opinions, regardless of what justification you claim, is utterly corrupt.
A debate where one party gets to decide what both parties get to say is a sham. Whatever it pretends to be about, it's not about trying to determine actual facts.
> Sadly it's because a lot of us have lost faith in people in general over the past 5/6 years.
This seems to be the goal of any divide-and-conquer strategy.
> It worries me even more that i can't see a way out of it other than censorship
Please rest assured that there's nothing you can do about it and that is a beautiful thing.
A monopoly corporation is just a branch of your government that you don't have representation in.
Can you elaborate on how a "monopoly corporation" is like a branch of government? I don't understand your analogy, or what is special about a monopoly versus any other corporation with significant power, cultural or otherwise.
I don't think mailchimp is a monopoly
Well I consider myself very fortunate then, to not have made that claim.
Not sure if you came up with this or heard it elsewhere, but that statement really resonates with me.
Mailchimp is not a monopoly.
Blocking malicious psychological manipulation seems perfectly reasonable to me. Not all speech is protected free speech.
If you don't weed your online garden it will fester and turn into a sh*thole that nobody else wants to be in. If you didn't have strong moderation here on HN, you probably wouldn't be posting here.
I don't need companies to moderate for me. Give me tools to moderate my own content, thank you.
As I've said elsewhere:
Personally, if [company] wants to filter or censor, go for it if and only if a) they disclose it and b) I can turn it off.
We have a model for this already, it's called "safe search"
When you filter without disclosing, you're stealing my agency and creating a situation for near-undetectable abuse.
I can turn off safe search but that doesn't reinstate all the pages/sites that have been delisted entirely.
You're welcome to find a platform that does that. Perhaps unfortunately for you, I, like most users, prefer the platform to handle it for me, because I don't want to sift through garbage.
> We have a model for this already, it's called "safe search"
An interesting position, keep in mind that many people consider the act of ordering to be a form of censorship. That is, it is "censorship" if a site is pushed to the second page of the Google search results. You can't opt-out of that.
I'm in perfect agreement, but you'll need to break up Twitter and Facebook first and get the babies onboard with a decentralized system.
_Give me tools to moderate my own content, thank you._
Yep. In the old days you had a killfile in your newsreader (NNTP client), problem solved.
I agree with this take, but in a positive way instead of a negative way: If I find a community's norms distasteful I am empowered to leave :)
MailChimp isn't a community is it? You can't read other people's mail if you're not on their address list. Recipients probably don't even know their emails came from MailChimp, let alone go there to participate in anything. With this rule, MailChimp is just poking their finger into organizations' private relationships with their subscribers.
Imagine a church emailing its members before Easter saying that Jesus rose from the dead. Since that's impossible, it's a clear violation of this misinformation rule. But I doubt MailChimp will ban it because their "sole discretion" is obviously going to be biased political opinion, not anything objective.
Because leftists, just like rightists, are authoritarians. Neither side has principles or real values. Just agenda.
One side will say a small bakery is a private business who can serve whomever they want. The other side will say it's a violation of people's rights for a small private bakery to deny service to [insert whatever minority group they are currently using to further their agenda].
You flip the situation and now it's the leftists defending private companies to deny service... The same people commenting here defending "private companies" were the same ones screaming bloody murder about a small private bakery.
It's hypocrisy, it's a human trait. It's like how assange was a hero when he exposed bush, but now...
The exact same ones who claim big tech is evil when they vociferously defend big tech's censorship here. It's almost like they have journalist's logic/agenda.
@disown - There's so much truth in your comment. I see a lot of people calling out big tech trying to root their stance in the Constitution, when the Constitution was a chain designed specifically to restrain government -- not individuals.
As much as I hate what tech companies are doing in the free speech arena, my position is this: Legally, they can censor whomever they like; as perverse as that is, they're in their right. But to them I say, don't, and I repeat, don't, say you stand for freedom of expression when you have appointed yourself the arbiter of truth.
I am a work in progress when it comes to removing my own bias. I've had to confront and remove so much tribalistic, hypocritical bias from my own life; but today, a large segment of our society is pretending to actually have integrity in their analysis of current events.
But what do I know. I'm anti-censorship, so I guess that makes me a Nazi-sympathizing, white supremacist (#immexicanbro), right winger.
Edit: the #immexicanbro refers to the fact that I'm Mexican-American, _por si no lo sabias_.
> don't, say you stand for freedom of expression when you have appointed yourself the arbiter of truth
This is a great point. I always thought of the big tech companies as upholding classically liberal ideals; however, now that they’ve grown up they’re much more interested in stability that keeps the profit machine running (which we all benefit from in the short term). In a way they’re not so naive about the world anymore, nor should we be about them.
Denying someone a cake based on their unchangeable sexuality is not the same as denying someone a place to email unproven allegations about the son of a politician with an eye to unduly influence an election.
You can choose whether to be a QAnon'er. You can't choose to be straight.
> Denying someone a cake
It wasn't about denying someone a cake. The shop had many premade cakes available for purchase. It was about being forced to create a custom LGBT themed cake that the gay couple wanted baked.
If you believe they should have been forced to do that you are an authoritarian.
It wasn't about designing and LGBT-themed cake. They didn't discuss the design of the cake at all [1]. It was about making a cake that would be used by gays at their wedding.
[1]
https://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/16-111...
From your linked court document: "In July 2012, Craig and Mullins visited Masterpiece, a bakery in Lakewood, Colorado, and requested that Phillips design and create a cake to celebrate their same-sex wedding."
"LGBT-themed" I suppose is too strong a description so I will grant you that given that they never got into design discussions.
No, they did not want a "custom LGBT themed cake", they requested a cake that happened to be for gay people getting married.
> _If you believe they should have been forced to do that you are an authoritarian._
It's about as authoritarian as saying that businesses had to integrate and serve interracial couples despite business owners claiming that their religions forbid race mixing, which is exactly what they claimed several decades ago.
> they requested a cake that happened to be for gay people getting married.
From the court filing: "In July 2012, Craig and Mullins visited Masterpiece, a bakery in Lakewood, Colorado, and requested that Phillips design and create a cake to celebrate their same-sex wedding."
They requested that the bakers design the cake for their gay wedding yes. You can't make people design things for you if they don't want to. If you believe that people should be able to compel this sort of work then you are an authoritarian.
I'm not sure where you're getting "a custom LGBT themed cake" from "create a cake to celebrate their same-sex wedding".
The first claim elicits images of rainbows and positive affirmations of gay marriage, and the second is just a cake that's for two people getting married who happen to be gay.
> _If you believe that people should be able to compel this sort of work then you are an authoritarian._
On a scale of 1 to 10, how authoritarian was it when the government forced wedding planners, wedding reception venues, photographers, dessert shops etc to plan and serve custom wedding plans and events for interracial couples despite business owners claiming that their religions forbid race mixing?
I retract my use of the term "LGBT themed", that was too strong a description. However at the very least common sense tells us it would have had some reference to the homosexual nature of the marriage (e.g. "Adam & Steve" written in icing)
> On a scale of 1 to 10, how authoritarian was it when the government forced wedding planners, wedding reception venues, photographers, dessert shops etc to plan and serve custom wedding plans and events for interracial couples despite business owners claiming that their religions forbid race mixing?
Do you have an actual example of this happening?
I'm on my phone, but here is a quote from the ACLU[1]:
> _Instances of institutions and individuals claiming a right to discriminate in the name of religion are not new. In the 1960s, we saw objections to laws requiring integration in restaurants because of sincerely held beliefs that God wanted the races to be separate. We saw religiously affiliated universities refuse to admit students who engaged in interracial dating. In those cases, we recognized that requiring integration was not about violating religious liberty; it was about ensuring fairness. It is no different today._
This is a good write up about religion and _Loving v. Virginia_[2].
[1]
https://www.aclu.org/issues/religious-liberty/using-religion...
[2]
https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=55...
I am aware we have these civil rights laws. I am asking if you can find a scenario where someone was forced to engage in creative work for someone under these laws.
For example, someone forced to be a wedding photographer of an interracial wedding when they didn't want to.
If you replace gay with white/black/christian/jewish, does that still make you an authoritarian?
Yes. Just based on definitions. Are you trying to prove him right?
Yes and for the record I'm Jewish.
You can choose whether to be a muslim. Does that mean discriminating against muslims is ok?
>unproven allegations
This entire thread concerns Mailchimp specifically. Not sure there is a clearer definition of advertising than "unproven allegations".
> Denying someone a cake based on their unchangeable sexuality
What happened to fluidity and spectrum. Aren't you actually spouting hate speech right now? You were so quick to virtue signal that you resorted "hate speech".
> is not the same as denying someone a place to email unproven allegations about the son of a politician with an eye to unduly influence an election.
You are right. Cake is superficial nonsense. Free speech is actually important. Imagine if the story about being denied the cake was censored. Imagine if the cake story was censored for being disinformation - which it turned out it was.
I'd rather be denied a cake than to be denied the ability to speak about being denied the cake. I'm sure you'd agree if you weren't clouded by orthodoxy and agenda.
I could at least hope this means they will also censor dishonest marketing and advertising.
I'll believe it when I see it and in the meantime this is just political posturing.
>It's sad to see how servile about censorship so many hn readers are.
most of us have corporate jobs that pay well compare to the majority of the people around. That isn't a recipe for fermenting rebeliosness , it is more of a way for complacency and being content, at least deep inside, with the things they are.
Shortly after the 2016 election the WaPo added a black banner proclaiming "Democracy dies in darkness." I have always thought that that was more of a rallying cry for them - hoisting their pirate flag as they took on Trump - rather than something they feared. HN readers, you are witnessing the dark curtain of totalitarianism falling on us. I hope you will not be acquiescent. I won't be.
Nothing is stopping you from creating your own libre alternative to these solutions, just as if you want to walk into a place without a shirt or shoes you can, as long as you own it.
Why do we constantly see this comment popping up here, as well as the "vote with your wallet" one? Yes, market forces can drive change, but they don't at all guarantee ethical behaviour of corporations. That's what we need regulation for, by a government that was elected by a population where everyone has an equal vote. Unlike in a "vote with your wallet" or "just start your own competitor" mindset where rich actors have more weight than poorer ones. Market forces are by definition undemocratic and therefore unsuitable for the task of enforcing ethics. And sure, democracy isn't a perfect guarantee for it neither, but at least it is designed for this purpose, and has been proven.
Because this is how the First Amendment works (in the physical world as well as digital) and how Section 230 works. Section 230 has some exceptions, but those exceptions are very limited at this time.
Section 230 was implemented to ALLOW for moderation, not to prevent it.
I have no problem with moderation that's not editorial control in hiding.
If platform published their content rules and publicly demonstrated how they apply them equally I doubt we would be having any of these discussions.
Instead we have "moderation" that always favors one political line of thought. That's not moderation, that's editorial control and at that point I think it's more than reasonable to argue you have crossed the threshold from platform to publisher.
Usenet survived for decades and still does without some central bureaucracy lording over it. Have an issue with them? Plonk!
Freaking snowflakes. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and this is the slipperiest road yet. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. Remember when that used to be a catch phrase of the left? What a bizzaro time we live in.
> If platform published their content rules and publicly demonstrated how they apply them equally I doubt we would be having any of these discussions.
They do (or at least the publishing part). Who decides whether or not they apply them "equally"? The government? Like you want the Trump administration to have decision making power over whether or not Twitter is fairly moderating content?
> Instead we have "moderation" that always favors one political line of thought.
This is certainly a claim made. I view things differently: right-wing media and pundits have been treated with kid gloves for decades now. The shift to treating them "fairly" is viewed as discrimination, much the same way as certain groups on the far right have viewed every other example of "objective" fair treatment as discrimination, since they ultimately feel as though they've lost some privilege.
You may view things differently, but you're clearly biased (and perhaps, so am I). So why should I trust you to make objective decisions here?
I don't think that's the issue here. If you run a business that relies on these services, you now have to consider an operational risk which never existed before. Namely, that the employees of many tech companies seem to have bought into a weird sort of paternalism (or even authoritarianism), and may one day use that to cut you off. The fact that it's legal is irrelevant to the impact.
So are you saying that we should force a private company to carry speech and eliminate their ability to set standards for what they carry/publish? In this case it is particularly interesting since the reputation of a mailer is dealt with in the aggregate- a few “bad apples” (I will use UCE - unsolicited commercial email as the example here) can ruin the reputation of all the mail received from that source.
Either way it is a slippery slope.
I have no problem if people set standards.
It's when they are vague and applied unevenly that the line between platform and publisher gets crossed.
For example, I find it fascinating that Twitter doesn't put warnings on the leader of Iran's racist tweets (or even bans him for clear TOS violations) but peppers the US presidents tweets with warnings. With a straight face you are going to tell me that politics has nothing to do with it?
Legally, there is no line between platform and publisher. I’m not sure a line could actually be drawn that is consistent with the first amendment.
As Jeff Kosseff, a US Naval Academy professor who actually wrote a book about Section 230, put it in an interview last year:
“There has been an increased amount of criticism of the platforms. But it’s not accurate. There’s a First Amendment distinction between publishers and distributors. But since Section 230’s been in place, that’s not really been an issue for the internet.”
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/21/18700605/section-230-inte...
Everyone says this then lobbies to have banks, payment companies, registrars and hosting companies to shut them down.
As long as you can keep your DNS provider and hosting company from pulling the plug when pressured.
And bank and payment processor.
I'm waiting for people to go after someone's electric company.
DNS providers, hosting companies, banks and payment processors all have the freedom to associate with and do business with whomever they choose.
There's a little something called "network effects" you should read up on
If you get banned from a mall for making a disturbance, you lose access to the stores within that mall, despite the fact that those stores may be valuable to you.
Just because there are network effects at play does not for a second mean that a private business loses the right to regulate who it has as a customer.
Why should the social class of people who work in Silicon Valley or choose to go into the relevant industries control the information that gets to all Americans? One of law’s great functions is to prevent such groups from capturing society.
Now do discrimination laws. I assume you’re for repealing all of those too?
No, because those are laws, and those regulations exist for a reason. Sometimes the rule of law exists to create a norm. What is being argued for here is the removal of a norm—the ability of a private business to be associated with speech it doesn’t support—just because of the differences between the internet and the physical world.
> No, because those are laws, and those regulations exist for a reason.
Therefore you wouldn't see any problem with regulations or laws that restrict the rights of companies to enact this sort of policy that Mailchimp is.
No, because it’s an email provider and as someone who sends email, I know that if someone posts something spammy or offensive on their platform, I know it could negatively impact other customers, because email is based on an open, reputation-driven protocol.
In other words, someone posting dangerous content could threaten my deliverability, even though I didn’t do anything. Therefore, if I purchase services from an email provider, I will want them to moderate it.
You can make the same argument in favor of allowing racial segregation. In fact, those exact arguments were made. We decided that having an open society was worth it.
You also solve the coordination problem by making _all_ businesses accept minority customers. Southern racists couldn’t boycott all businesses. Likewise, left wing activists can’t boycott you for allowing conservative speech if all of your competitors also have to allow it.
Conservatives currently dominate talk radio, cable TV news ratings, Facebook’s top 10 list of most read articles every week, the White House, and an entire chamber of Congress.
Stop comparing conservative speech to people who were actually oppressed because a large number of people want to use services that have someone moderating the content. It’s offensive.
In their terms they already exclude a lot of content. Adding disinformation (I realize that's not an exact term and every story has two sides) isn't a far stretch to their current policies
https://mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use
Mailers need to make sure nobody uses their service for spam and even then it is a gray area. Most put their customers through some extra scrutiny.
That said, I don't think it is a good idea. What prompted this change? I would guess PR since that is their business.
They wanted to ban SGTReport and Press for Truth, so they came up with a new reason.
I don't know the level of scrutiny at mailchimp but I do know a few business that use mailchimp that are sending lots of emails in industries on the second list. They all pay for it and mailchimp either doesn't care or isn't looking too closely.
Mailers can’t risk getting blocked. Misinformation often looks like spam and needs to spread quickly in order to work. The people behind this type of media don’t care if they get blocked after the messages go out, they’ve already done their damage and can move on to the next service.
I wonder if someone who wants to peddle "Bill Gates installed 5G antennaes to spread Covid" idiocy can get away with it when they add at the top "Mailchimp does not allow disinformation. In light of that, please note that this newsletter is satire and not to be taken seriously.", with the wink being implied but not written...
You can't really 'hack' a ToS on technicalities. Mailchimp's ToS, like most, are evaluated in their "sole discretion". Businesses in the US can generally choose who they want to do business with for any reason other than membership in a protected class.
Ah, the Tucker Carlson / Alex Jones "no reasonable person would take this show seriously" legal defense?
I'm not aware Tucker Carlson ever made that defense.
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/29/917747123/you-literally-cant-...
+ Rachel Maddow
Has she used that as a legal defense?
> Maddow lawyer Theodore J. “Ted” Boutrous Jr. argued that the liberal host was clearly offering up her “own unique expression” of her views to capture what she saw as the “ridiculous” nature of the undisputed facts.
> “Her comment, therefore, is a quintessential statement ‘of rhetorical hyperbole, incapable of being proved true or false,’” he said.
https://timesofsandiego.com/business/2019/12/02/rachel-maddo...
Judge ruled in her favor:
> “The context of Maddow’s statement shows reasonable viewers would consider the contested statement to be her opinion. A reasonable viewer would not actually think OAN is paid Russian propaganda, instead, he or she would follow the facts of the Daily Beast article; that OAN and Sputnik share a reporter and both pay this reporter to write articles. Anything beyond this is Maddow’s opinion or her exaggeration of the facts,” the judge decided.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2020/may/23/judge-tosse...
Maybe only if it is "actually satirical in tone" as opposed to the "being sincere and pretending it is a joke" style. And maybe because moderation at scale often misses legitimage nuance because it is unthinking by definition.
Suggest using the microchips to make Microsoft muscle in on psychopharmaceutical market and VR if they actually did have the chips and it is jabbing at the logic of the conspiracy theory. Actually taking the absurd premise and using with more logic is clearly taking the piss like showing up to a crystal healing group and suggesting rolling paraplegics down stairs into piles of gemstones or throwing bleeding out soldiers onto them - you will likely be thrown out as a troll.
You don't have a firm grasp on censorship and total control over social discourse. Forbidden means precisely that.
Back in my old country, before I foolishly immigrated to the land of "the free" (drum drum), political commentary was first turned into satire and then that was embedded in children's stories, and you had that interesting phenomena of adults passing around children's stories. Good times.
All authoritarian system are fundamentally psychological in nature. Brute force is theraputical. The ultimate objective is acceptance of authoritative narrative. The content matter is entirely irrelevant. Recall in 1984, Winston is being asked "how many fingers?" and "what does 2+2 equal?". Outside of fiction, recall the Church of Rome asserting it's authority by modifying commandments. Rationality, authenticity, applicability, or heaven help us, veracity, are not even variables in the equation of Authoritarian Control Over Information and Social Discourse.
What happened to our god given right to consume whatever we please?
The universal subjective human experience is that of interacting with other human beings, not all of whom are assumed to be "truth tellers". Discerning and dealing with falsehood or half-truths is the daily bread of a functioning mind.
Since when are we no longer to be trusted with discerning truth from lies?
Do you know what Velayateh Faqih, the theocratic doctrine of Ruhollah Khomeini and Iran's "Islamic Republic", means? It means 'guardianship of the learned'. According to Mr. Khomeini, your average adult Iranian is technically a "minor" that requires the "guardianship" of an "adult".
Are you a child or are you a citizen of a nation which had enshrined Free Speech as a fundamental instrument of its constitution and essence?
Your freedom of speech does not require me or Mailchimp to carry, propagate, or amplify your speech, whether for free or for pay.
But it does when an entity becomes a common carrier.
Mailchimp doesn't have that status. Perhaps it should. Perhaps all companies listed on the stockmarket should fall under this status. It would have pitfalls but overall it might strike the right balance.
I am interested in your thoughts on, say, Google refusing to send an email because the content is deemed objectionable by Alphabet Inc.
Not sokoloff, but that would be a reason to move to another mail provider. If Twitter is censoring speech then the correct option is to move to another service or host your own speech. People talk about social media monopolizing the discourse but the only barriers here are network effects, and people can move to other forums (I, for example, do not use Twitter or Facebook and still manage to have online discourse). This is different than if it were censorship at the ISP level, where there are physical and legal barriers of entry which make switching a difficult or impossible option.
Separate, but equal?
There’s a distinction between one-to-one messaging and one-to-many messaging that needs to be considered. But in general, Google doesn’t control the email protocol so I don’t see a problem with them refusing to send an email they deem objectionable.
This is why private email services and roll your own exist.
This is all fine until that is what the "Postal Service" starts saying ..
But you are right. Mailchimp and all these corporations which have clearly shown they have no regard for the civil liberties that are fundamental to the American Social Contract need to find robust competitors, post haste.
The USPS is an agency of the federal government and _is_ subject to constitutional law.
Likewise, if we want to talk about social norms -- private publishers have long enjoyed editorial authority in the US. Only in very few specific instances have we forced private publishers to publish against their will.
Perhaps the government should start building digital infrastructure. As they did with roads, telecoms, etc.
What is the difference between a "private publisher" and a "common carrier?" Is Mailchimp guaranteeing the accuracy of everything they choose to send rather than block?
I haven't bothered to read up on the origin history of this company, but would not be a surprise if they started out as spammers.
> guaranteeing the accuracy
The entire construct of "disinformation" is a strawman. There is ample historic evidence that the populations of societies subject to lying government organs (c.f Pravda in USSR) learn to discern deception.
If "disinformation" was so potent and deadly, none of the authoritarian societies that heavily relied on disinformation and lies would have needed to apply secret police tactics to control the population. They had both and they all still collapsed.
"We need to control disinformation" is double speak for "we control what you are permitted to know".
"Propaganda doesn't work, so we should let the government spread propaganda and not worry about it" is certainly a new one.
With a key difference:
"Your freedom of speech does not require me or your ISP to carry, propagate, or amplify your speech, whether for free or for pay."
Start to see the problem here, yet?
No problem. ISPs have as much of a right to voluntary association as you, me, or Mailchimp.
They actually don't. They are forbidden from acting with other ips in regards to aliging prices/services.
Plus they have common carrier status meaning they cannot offer/not offer service based on the content they carry for you. They must remain neutral.
You don't have to be. Neither does mailchimp.
> They actually don't. They are forbidden from acting with other ips in regards to aliging prices/services.
I am certainly also subject to anti-collusion legislation.
> Plus they have common carrier status meaning they cannot offer/not offer service based on the content they carry for you.
Not since 2017.
I would agree normally, but what ISP is not taking public money to hopefully expand their network.
But you can still consume it?
> What they've added is a rule to shut out QAnon.
This is true, but it overlooks the fact that it can be used to shut out a lot more than QAnon.
> Which is the responsible thing to do.
That is a matter of opinion, not fact. What QAnon "is", is a matter of opinion, and each individual opinion is based on what the individual knows about QAnon. Based on my experiences, most people's perception of QAnon is derived from reading stories _about_ QAnon in the media, and most every story I've ever read in the media seems far more like propaganda [1] than reporting well researched evidence. This might not be so bad if people realized that this is the case, but from what I read on forums, most people seem to believe that these stories are ~purely factual (I imagine this is what they believe because it _seems_ that way, because each new story is _cognitively evaluated within the context of current knowledge_, which is of course based on the prior consumption of such stories).
[1] Example: QAnon "is" [X], "QAnoners" "believe(!)" [X, Y, Z, etc], etc. These are estimates, _at best_, due to the fundamental of the organization/phenomenon (actually, such statements are _always_ estimates, it's just particularly difficult with things like QAnon, conspiracy theorists, supporters of a political party, etc - and also, there is _psychological motive_ (often not even consciously realized) for _framing reality_ in a certain way). What QAnon/QAnoners is/are, _precisely/comprehensively_, is _not known_. The human mind often seems to not willingly accept the notion of unknowness, particular on certain classes of topics [2], which makes this sort of propaganda particularly potent.
[2] Replace QAnon in the above with "Jews" or "Black people", and observe whether your mind processes the examples differently. I find thought experiments like this to be quite an effective tool for checking whether one is biased when reading the news - I would think that if politicians and the media _really_ cared about "fake news" as much as they breathlessly proclaim, we would have seen some organized public initiative for _actually teaching_ the critical thinking skills we're constantly told are needed. But what we actually see is _the notion of critical thinking_ being used as a psychological talking point in the overall, unseen meme war. But then, has this not always been more or less the case throughout history?
> is a matter of opinion, and each individual opinion is based on what the individual knows about [X]
While true, this technicality can be applied to almost anything. This type of statement tends to shut down discussion instead of encouraging it. We should be striving to come to a consensus on topics and to share perspectives - not to just throw our hands up because we might not have perfect knowledge.
Regarding QAnon, while media stories might be sensationalist, QAnon itself is a disturbing trend. QAnon originated in conspiracy theories (on 4chan) and is still promoting some pretty fringe theories.
In my opinion, the real danger of QAnon is their use of social media to take people further and further into their theories. I was disturbed when the "save the children" campaign was in full force on Facebook/Twitter. I did not need a media story to tell me about QAnon in these moments, I could personally click on stories and follow the rabbit hole back to QAnon. They led to conspiracy theories about politicians trafficking children, the "deep state," etc. These were not hidden - they were only a couple clicks away from the "save the children" posts that were trending. These types of conspiracy theories do not contribute to any sort of rational discourse - they only push people farther into the QAnon group.
I believe Facebook (and Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, etc) has the responsibility to not allow these "rabbit holes" that feed conspiracy theories. Otherwise, anyone with enough influence to generate these echo chambers can use them to influence large swaths of the public into believing things that have no basis in reality.
> This type of statement tends to shut down discussion instead of encouraging it.
...
You... do realize TFA is about censorship, that is, a attempt to actively and deliberately shut down discussion, right?
> They led to conspiracy theories about politicians trafficking children, the "deep state," etc.
Oh no. The horror. Lets shut everything down. Won't you think of the poor politicians? We must do everything possible to protect the reputation of politicians? Are you a journalist because you sound like one. So what about all the nasty things said about putin, xi, erdogan, etc? Should we also censor those? Or are you just talking about protecting politicians of your preferred political party?
> Otherwise, anyone with enough influence to generate these echo chambers can use them to influence large swaths of the public into believing things that have no basis in reality.
So should facebook, youtube, twitter, instagram, etc also shutdown every news organization on their site? For all the talk about "Qanon", the biggest conspiracies peddled are by traditional media. And why stop at social media? Should telephone companies, ISPs, Office Depot, CDNs, etc censor "disinformation"?
It's amazing to shallow logic of authoritarian types. Just because they think "big tech" is on their side.
> While true, this technicality can be applied to almost anything.
Exactly, and the reason for this is fundamental: reality is largely unknown. Whether we choose to acknowledge that is up to each of us, but it doesn't change the underlying fact.
> We should be striving to come to a consensus on topics
Not me, not if we are lying to ourselves in the process. If something is literally unknown, it should be acknowledged thusly. We're not comfortable relying on pure intuition in science or programming, why do it in the rest of life if it isn't necessary? Shall we think logically and scientifically, as we're told, or shall we not? Pick a side.
> and to share perspectives
Yes, but as it, perspectives are often misperceived (and in turn, mass-broadcast) _as facts_ (distorting the perceptions of reality of unknow numbers of other people). I imagine you can see the harm in the case of conspiracy theories, but can you see the possible harm of it _outside of that sphere_? Does your thinking methodology change, depending on the scenario? Have you ever spent any serious time thinking about such things?
I suspect people here would prefer that conspiracy theorists tighten up their epistemology levels - but if we refuse to do the same, who are we to be lecturing others?
> not to just throw our hands up because we might not have perfect knowledge.
I've never understood this style of thinking - just because one acknowledges reality as it is, you have to throw up your hands and give up? Why? You can still make decisions, _just be honest about the fact that they are based on speculation_.
> Regarding QAnon, while media stories might be sensationalist, QAnon itself is a disturbing trend. QAnon originated in conspiracy theories (on 4chan) and is still promoting some pretty fringe theories.
95% agree, except for the origin. There is a plausible theory that QAnon is actually a state sponsored psy op. You have to admit, the QAnon story (and coverage in the media) has been incredibly effective in _shaping widespread public opinion_ on the epistemic validity of not just QAnon, but conspiracy theories in general. The effects of this can be observed right here on HN, a community with far above average critical thinking skills. Surely you realize that propaganda has always existed, right? Is it impossible(!) that this is a new, more sophisticated form of propaganda? (Here is an example of where not lying to ourselves might be a good idea - or at least, trying to.)
> In my opinion, the real danger of QAnon is their use of social media to take people further and further into their theories.
This will eventually materialize into a (currently unknowable) harm of magnitude X.
The QAnon phenomenon is also being used as a justification for censorship, which will eventually materialize into a harm of magnitude Y.
Which is higher, X or Y? Do we know? _Do we care_? Or, will we instead assert as "fact" that such concerns are "gish-galloping* (ie: choosing to lie to ourselves, and broadcasting those lies into the minds of others)?
> I was disturbed when the "save the children" campaign was in full force on Facebook/Twitter. I did not need a media story to tell me about QAnon in these moments, I could personally click on stories and follow the rabbit hole back to QAnon. They led to conspiracy theories about politicians trafficking children, the "deep state," etc. These were not hidden - they were only a couple clicks away from the "save the children" posts that were trending. These types of conspiracy theories do not contribute to any sort of rational discourse - they only push people farther into the QAnon group.
I'm disturbed by the percentage of the population that is more concerned about conspiracy theories (with no concern for the actual magnitude of harm such theories cause [1]) _about children_, than they are about the possibility that children _are actually being sexually abused_.
Do you believe the whole Epstein thing is a nothingburger? Totally made up by QAnon? Do you perceive that your mind contains the sum total knowledge of all that occurs on planet Earth with respect to the abuse of children? Of course, _it seems that way_, but if you stop and think, are you able to realize that you are only aware of the subset of knowledge that you have consumed? Maybe you can when thinking directly and abstractly about the notion...but what about _when you don't_ stop and think, and are just going about your day....are you consciously aware _at all times_ that you only have access to a small portion of reality, or do you actually accept as fact _that it seems like_ you have access to the entirety of reality? Have you ever considered in depth the potential consequences of this phenomenon, and how it can be (and historically _has been_) exploited?
> I believe Facebook (and Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, etc) has the responsibility to not allow these "rabbit holes" that feed conspiracy theories. Otherwise, anyone with enough influence to generate these echo chambers can use them to influence large swaths of the public into believing things that have no basis in reality.
You're not wrong, but don't forget that _you are guessing_ at what the right thing to so is, and that the X vs Y comparison above is very much in play - Mother Nature does not require our agreement when setting the state of reality.
[1] ...in cases where the accusation has had a conspiracy theory label attached to it.
EDIT: I reckon I've hit my comment cap for the day so may not be able to respond to criticism in a timely manner, but I enthusiastically encourage any you may have. These are complicated topics, and I certainly don't have all the answers.
> We're not comfortable relying on pure intuition in science
I stated that we should come to a consensus on topics - not rely on intuition. Science is a great example of a field that relies on critical thinking and debunking theories, but also in our ability to build consensus about how the world works. Disagreeing with the consensus should be encouraged, but it needs to be done with the facts (experimental results) - not just stating that something is unknown (a statement that can be applied to 99.9% of science if taken at face value).
> Yes, but as it, perspectives are often misperceived as facts
Agreed.
> You can still make decisions, just be honest about the fact that they are based on speculation
In complicated topics, this should be a given. But agreed in general.
> There is a plausible theory that QAnon is actually a state sponsored psy op
I have heard that, but my point was that QAnon is not a "typical" political group. Regardless of its founders (foreign actors, bored kids, whatever), there should be a heavy dose of skepticism when looking at their theories, especially when many of their theories have been debunked but are continued to be peddled.
> The QAnon phenomenon is also being used as a justification for censorship
It is, and that is a bad thing. Unfortunately, we need to do _something_ to correct the amplification problem of social media. Now we can disagree on the extent of the role that private companies should play in this policing, but it should be illegal to yell "fire" in a crowded theory - even virtually.
> I'm disturbed by the percentage of the population that is more concerned about conspiracy theories ... about children, than they are about the possibility that children are actually being sexually abused
The beauty of "save the children" is that it is impossible to call it out as coordinated propaganda without being accused of not caring about children. Of course I care about children. But I am also concerned that the upswell of social media was not natural.
> don't forget that you are guessing at what the right thing to so is
I am, but we as a society have always faced these dilemmas. Before social media, there were libel and slander laws that discouraged outright lies. With social media, however, there is almost nothing to gain from going after someone who posts slander. There is a fundamental problem when any random person can write whatever they dream of as fact and then _amplify_ it to millions of people through social media.
I don't have all the right answers. But I think we need to agree that _something_ should be done to prevent this amplification of propaganda. And then let's figure out how to fix it together.
> These are complicated topics, and I certainly don't have all the answers.
Same. This site is one of the only places where these topics can still be discussed without devolving into flame wars. So thank you for that.
> I stated that we should come to a consensus on topics - not rely on intuition.
You did indeed, and I responded:
>> We should be striving to come to a consensus on topics
> Not me, not if we are lying to ourselves in the process. If something is literally unknown, it should be acknowledged thusly. We're not comfortable relying on pure intuition in science or programming, why do it in the rest of life if it isn't necessary? Shall we think logically and scientifically, as we're told, or shall we not? Pick a side.
> Disagreeing with the consensus should be encouraged, but it needs to be done with the facts (experimental results) - not just stating that something is unknown (a statement that can be applied to 99.9% of science if taken at face value).
Oh? Things that _have had_(!) a "conspiracy theory" label attached (by the media, the experts, etc) are regularly asserted to be False, here and elsewhere, _with absolutely no requirement for facts or evidence_. But asserting that something is unknown, _which is the actual state of affairs_, needs to be done with facts (which are not known, _hence the epistemic status of unknown_)?
> I have heard that, but my point was that QAnon is not a "typical" political group. Regardless of its founders (foreign actors, bored kids, whatever), there should be a heavy dose of skepticism when looking at their theories, especially when many of their theories have been debunked but are continued to be peddled.
I agree 100% _with skepticism_ - but that's not my complaint. My complaint is that skepticism towards those who say (without evidence) that it "is X", or "its followers believe Y" seems to be ~not allowed, that they are accepted _enthusiastically_ as False, just because they have had a label attached. This seems not too unlike how members of ethnic minority classes were described in the media in the not too distant past, also without appropriate accompanying evidence.
> It is, and that is a bad thing. Unfortunately, we need to do something to correct the amplification problem of social media. Now we can disagree on the extent of the role that private companies should play in this policing, but it should be illegal to yell "fire" in a crowded theory - even virtually.
Agreed. But what do you think about two adjacent ideas:
1. Does it seem optimal that journalists seem to have an odd lack of interest in certain stories?
2. If "fake news" is _really_ such a massive societal risk, does it seem at all odd that there is no initiative whatsoever to investigate some of the more pervasive stories and _prove_(!) then False, once and for all? Or, that there is no bi-partisan effort (or even discussion of such a thing in the mainstream) to develop a plan for teaching critical thinking and epistemology skills to the public? If this problem is _genuinely_ so dangerous, why do we do nothing about it other than censorship (which can be used for both good and evil, which is not true of the other approaches)?
> The beauty of "save the children" is that it is impossible to call it out as coordinated propaganda without being accused of not caring about children. Of course I care about children. But I am also concerned that the upswell of social media was not natural.
The degree to which the public _truly_ cares about children _compared to_ how much they care about implementing broad censorship, _and fast_, seems a bit misbalanced to me. I suspect that there may actually be the possibility that the general public _doesn't even think about such philosophical ideas_, similar to how they don't seem to think much about other things like quantum mechanics, yak-herding, or 18th century art.
Does this seem possible?
> I am, but we as a society have always faced these dilemmas. Before social media, there were libel and slander laws that discouraged outright lies. With social media, however, there is almost nothing to gain from going after someone who posts slander. There is a fundamental problem when any random person can write whatever they dream of as fact and then amplify it to millions of people through social media.
Agreed. And it seems like the general consensus (in the general public and here on HN) of what we should do about this problem has arrived at _censorship, as much as is required_. And this consensus has been reached with no serious/honest debate, here or elsewhere. Each to his own, but I am very much "not cool" with this. But then perhaps I put too much faith in wisdom from times past - maybe censorship of non-sanctioned ideas, with no reasoned public debate, really is the optimum approach. I mean, who am I to disagree, right? Who do I even think I am!
> This site is one of the only places where these topics can still be discussed without devolving into flame wars. So thank you for that.
Likewise...a willingness to engage in dialogue on such matters is quite rare, so I do appreciate your efforts despite our (likely minor) differences, which is probably not at all reflected in my tone.
Despite usually being on the side of free speech, I have much less of a problem with this. There's a significant difference between preventing individuals from expressing their opinion, right or wrong, and preventing an organization with enough money to pay for third party e-mailing services from sending out content in bulk.
It's basically an extension of the "it's not censorship as its a private company doing it" standpoint to include "...particularly as they have other choices".
From my point of view, its not just about whether the company is private but also how easy it is to substitute the service. Twitter and Facebook are not close to the only means of publishing information. I don't think that people deserve any particular audience for their speech, so the ability to substitute other publishing methods alleviates concerns about censorship on my part.
On the other hand, its much more difficult to switch ISPs, so I would be very concerned about censorship at that level. Things like search engines which are substitute-able but held by few hands and difficult to replicate privately are more of a grey area in my opinion.
I'm sorry but I'm not in favor of that argument. I'm not saying you're saying this but other people who have expressed that often, in my opinion, have a hidden implication that "other choices" really means no reputable choice would take their material, so they have to pick a disreputable choice, at which point people point to them and say "See, they have to go to a disreputable choice; they must be disreputable too."
Going back to my original post, note that I didn't say I'm entirely okay with it. My argument is more along the lines is that a grassroots expression of opinion by individuals to other individuals who voluntarily want to receive it is okay but content being pushed by a source with money behind it can reasonably be treated with more suspicion because it raises questions about who exactly the money comes from and whether or not they have ulterior motives.
> have a hidden implication that "other choices" really means no reputable choice would take their material,
I don't know if it's...super hidden. Isn't that the entire point of the marketplace of ideas?
You're free to espouse anything, free from government intervention. But if all reputable members of society decide not to associate with an idea...it's losing in the marketplace.
Free speech _isn't_ the right to have everyone listen to every idea. It's the freedom to enter the idea into the marketplace of ideas. But the marketplace of ideas is as cutthroat a business as any other marketplace.
I _can_ understand the complaint from an anti-monopoly point of view: arguing that Facebook and Twitter have too strong a hold on that marketplace, and their influence over it should be reduced. But that strikes me more as an anti-monopoly stance that should be directed at particular actors.
> "_Free speech isn't the right to have everyone listen to every idea._"
Entirely true and I 100% agree but that's not what the "other choices" argument is about. There are groups attempting to force expression of certain opinions to only be through "other choices" and preventing third parties from interfering with communication between a speaker and people who _voluntarily_ want to listen to that idea, no matter how good the intentions of the third party are, _is_ very much a matter of freedom of speech. For example, note the "seek, receive, and impart" part of Article 19 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights.[0] That's why the "other choices" argument isn't persuasive; its underlying intent is often interference with voluntary communication in order to cut it off.
[0] "_Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers._" from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech
> But if all reputable members of society decide not to associate with an idea...it's losing in the marketplace.
This seems to highly misrepresent the situation. Actually, the reality is all "reputable members of society" _who control a major publishing platform_. So that takes the pool of people deciding from hundreds of millions (in the USA) down to like 3 or 4 individuals (depending on how final decision making power is distributed).
> Free speech isn't the right to have everyone listen to every idea. It's the freedom to enter the idea into the marketplace of ideas. But the marketplace of ideas is as cutthroat a business as any other marketplace.
An example of this is getting deplatformed from the few major "marketplace of ideas" platforms. Yes, one "can" "just" move to another platform, or roll your own, but framing this in a manner that overlooks the fact that _all other things are not equal_ seems rather disingenuous, and this occurs extremely frequently on social & mainstream media, which is quite concerning.
> So that takes the pool of people deciding from hundreds of millions (in the USA) down to like 3 or 4 individuals (depending on how final decision making power is distributed).
I would argue that the number of gatekeepers to nationwide mainstream dialog is much higher than 3 or 4 individuals. I think the number is too small, but 3 or 4 seems to me to be an incredibly hyperbolic number of individuals to name as gatekeepers to the entire marketplace of ideas.
If you think only 3 or 4 people control the entire marketplace of ideas for "reputable members of society", then you should be able to exhaustively name them. Who are these 3 or 4 people that control all of reputable society?
> An example of this is getting deplatformed from the few major "marketplace of ideas" platforms
It's almost like there's a monopoly concern I raised, and that the power is concentrated in too few hands. I did advocate for treating this as an anti-monopoly issue instead of a free speech issue after all!
> I would argue that the number of gatekeepers to nationwide mainstream dialog is much higher than 3 or 4 individuals. I think the number is too small, but 3 or 4 seems to me to be an incredibly hyperbolic number of individuals to name as gatekeepers to the entire marketplace of ideas. If you think only 3 or 4 people control the entire marketplace of ideas for "reputable members of society", then you should be able to exhaustively name them. Who are these 3 or 4 people that control all of reputable society?
Hence the italicized portion from my prior comment: "So that takes the pool of people deciding from hundreds of millions (in the USA) down to like 3 or 4 individuals (_depending on how final decision making power is distributed_)"
Let's try to minimize not acknowledging uncertainty qualifiers that are literally written within comments please.
Since we seem to be now in the mode of hyper-dissection of assertions, hyperbole, etc, and I _may have_ committed the sin of being off by a couple hundred people, what would this same level of scrutiny come up with when taken to your claim:
>> But if _all reputable members of society_ decide not to associate with an idea...it's losing in the marketplace.
Which of these two numbers would be larger in your estimation?
([All members of society] - [People who control a major publishing platform])
([People who control a major publishing platform] - [4])
...where [All adult members of society - USA] = ~250 million
...where [Twitter Users - USA] = ~68 million
...where [Facebook Users - USA] = ~235 million
...where [YouTube Users - USA] = ~126 million
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/242606/number-of-active-...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/408971/number-of-us-face...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/296227/us-youtube-reach-...
> It's almost like there's a monopoly concern I raised, and that the power is concentrated in too few hands.
I would say it's exactly that, and also other things. I don't consider myself in disagreement on that point.
> I did advocate for treating this as an anti-monopoly issue instead of a free speech issue after all!
It is literally both, so I think we should treat it as both.
I wonder though...might the problem be not so much my math, but more so that I happen to hold an unacceptable opinion on the matter of censorship, in general? Based on voting patterns on anti-censorship comments (most of which contain no mathematics), I'm leaning towards the latter. Considering the way the wind is blowing on such matters, maybe people like me should start toeing the party line around here, lest the very topic of conversation pays a personal visit to our doorstep.
>I'm sorry but I'm not in favor of that argument. I'm not saying you're saying this but other people who have expressed that often, in my opinion, have a hidden implication that "other choices" really means no reputable choice would take their material, so they have to pick a disreputable choice, at which point people point to them and say "See, they have to go to a disreputable choice; they must be disreputable too."
And that's fine, right? How is this any different than not being able to publish in the most prestigious science journals because you're a crank?
I don't think that's a good example. The science crank has repeatable and falsifiable evidence against their opinion. For political opinions, well, remember that MLK was widely disliked at the time of his death (
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-martin-luther-kin...
). Should his opinions have been kept out of the press?
Believe me, after the last few years, I'm all for keeping cranks out of power but not at the cost of creating a mechanism that can be used to suppress grassroots movements, regardless of stripe. That's dangerous; "what goes around, comes around" eventually.
Depends on what kept out of the press means. If that means the government should forbid the press from publishing opinions no, the government should not do that. But if it means not having the government force the press to carry his opinions then yes.
You are trying to draw a bright line that doesn't exist. Individuals can (and do) use mailchimp to expand their reach to a broader audience, and moneyed interests can (and do) use platforms like twitter to push their message. There is no policy you can write that takes into account the ulterior motives of platform usage. The motive is always "reach an audience".
That is freedom of assocition essentially for better or worse - the lack of it isn't stable and is effectively unavoidable as people will still have their own definitions of "disreputable" and apply them the best they can. I liken it to a school with actual gangs in tbe area (as opposed to suburban hysteria) trying to make low level organized crime go away with school uniforms alone.
So what? Those that wish to may form their own private company and use it to tell lies. Mailchimp doesn't want any part of it though, and I'm glad.
Are you saying that a company doesn't have to bake the cake?
Are you saying the lunch counter can refuse service for any reason?
We have very particular protections for certain kinds of people, to make sure that you aren't discriminated against for _who you are_. "Holding an opinion I disagree with" is not a protected class.
So I should be able to refuse to send an email on your behalf no matter your race, if the content of the email is uninteresting to me.
How is the content of someone's brain distinguishable from _who they are_?
Is membership in a "protected class" a license to email anything you want?
If the KKK comes in and asks for cake to celebrate their latest burning, they should be able to say no.
It can’t be black and white; the line has to be drawn somewhere. The grey is what makes things so complicated. Ask 1000 people about 100 different edge cases, no one will give the same answer to all of them.
The problem arises when major communication channels are monopolised by large corporations. There is a similar issue with media/news organisations too.
> Despite usually being on the side of free speech, I have much less of a problem with this.
"First they came for the…"?
"...does not allow the distribution of content that is, in our sole discretion, materially false, inaccurate, or misleading, in a way that could deceive or confuse others about important events, topics, or circumstances."
Does this make Mailchimp a publisher now? Since they are effectively editing what can and cannot be shared via their service? Wouldn't that place them under much stronger legal scrutiny?
Maybe I'm reading too much into it. I understand a business can refuse to do business with anyone they please. That's already the case though. Why a change like this to the TOS?
Either way, I'm all for businesses being able to pick and choose their customers. I would never use Mailchimp based on a change like this, but they are free to change their service however they'd like.
No, you do not understand Section 230 of the CDA. It simply states that all interactive computer services are not liable for content their users create. It says nothing about editing, moderating or curation. It just waives liability for all interactive computer services.
is it just me or that entire site is like a dog whistle for conservative leanings. i mean all the words like being against "cancel culture", etc. talking about how the new york post wouldn't be able to release the biden story.. like okay... i can forgive a few of them, but when the whole article and site reads like that i can't take it seriously.
I would even go further and put it in the category of conservative victimhood porn. Their narrative is that the Mailchimp "arbiters of truth" are going to come and censor your conservative viewpoint which is already "continuously targeted." It annoys me that this tabloid style content consistently filters to the top of HN, especially with the number of self described "free thinkers" here that think they are immune from political bias.
Ironically 'dog whistle' is the liberal word of the moment.
Maybe we are all affected and should try to just judge things on their own merit, without looking for which side they belong to to..
I don't think dog whistle is the correct term for this; the language isn't coded. Virtue signaling might be a better term for what you're describing.
"Shibboleth" might be the better term. It's a word or phrase used to signal membership in a group.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shibboleth
imo, the "dog whistle" concept is very damaging to a persons perception of reality.
The implication is that there does not exist a gradient between (or even orthogonality to) left and right. If something is just a little bit short of left, it's considered a "dog whistle", implicative that it's all the way to the right now.
I know a lot of people who have voted blue their entire lives that are against cancel culture btw.
The problem with "cancel culture" is that it's so ill-defined, it's intended to match with whatever people have in their heads that they don't like. _Opposing_ cancel culture is even less well defined. Are you saying that people shouldn't be allowed to boycott things they don't like?
The funniest part about "cancel culture" is that the same people who scream it's the worst and shouldn't be okay are the people who wanted to boycott the NFL when colin kaepernick kneeled to protest black violence.
The truth is, it's only "Cancel Culture" if it's against something they like
Or the argument that it’s somehow a new thing - like evangelical Christians weren’t taking issue with Monty Python sketches or sex and violence going back to the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
> Are you saying that people shouldn't be allowed to boycott things they don't like?
No, people should be allowed to do as they please (assuming they aren't abusing the earth or other living beings), and boycotts are a useful tool for change.
But it's becoming the first tool people reach for, and that's not healthy. Kind of how force is sometimes necessary, but should be avoided as much as possible. Someone who jumps to force immediately is a scary person to empower.
Also, there is a noteworthy difference between boycotting something you don't like and boycotting whichever power is capable of cancelling the thing you don't like. It's definitely necessary at times, but it's not a great means to an end.
My mother read me this book as a child (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Butter_Battle_Book
) and the fact that overt force will be met with greater overt force until someone hits a limit (and nobody really wins) has stuck and has been very consistently reinforced in my life. I see cancel culture as pretty obvious show of force and no matter how much people might inflate its victories and minimize its short-comings, I see it netting out to roughly zero. It really just enables worse behavior on both sides.
If the alternative to boycotts is actual use of force, I’ll take the boycotts every time.
That isn't what dog whistles are at all. Dog whistles are espousing a stance whose plain meaning is innocous or absent which references a more sinister agenda behind the face value. "Family values" is a meaninglessly broad term taken literally but is used as a mask for homophobia or "fourteen words" or "replacement as a coded references to Neo-nazi codes and then when informed of why people are upset refuse to apologize like someone who was unaware of the obscure connection as it would disavow those they were reaching out to but pretending not to and act like the people being upset about a reference to neo nazis are the "crazy" ones.
To claim it implies a lack of a gradient is a bit of a slip given the absense of left wing practice of it and looks a lot like projective assumptions "everyone steals" from a serial thief to claim it is unfair they are the only one arrested for stealing.
Yes. That's what tabloid writing sounds like - trying a bit too hard to arouse emotion in the reader. The left-wing tabloid articles have it too but with their own unique language.
What New York Post story?
People love to bitch and moan about free speech, but at the end of the day, companies get scolded by politicians for allowing information warfare to occur, and at the same time for disallowing information warfare when it doesn't suit a specific party in power.
When the government fails to protect its population from information warfare, because it engages in it, it's time the businesses stepped up.
This is the new digital battlefield. Wars will be fought by trying to destabilize and influence people's opinions through information consuming mediums.
Social media is a cancer, because it allows external parties, through ads, to fight for and steal your attention and time, and in the process influence your decisions and perspective of specific topics and issues to suit their agenda.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24930317
This feels different from censorship on Twitter and Facebook to me. I guess the business model of Mailchimp is more transparent and I can appreciate that a company may choose who to do business with.
Emotionally I feel like I'm fully on mailchimp's side here, but I don't think I understand the difference you're seeing in Twitter/Facebook's censorship, vs. this - unless there's specific instances I'm not remembering?
Twitter and Facebook are in monopolistic positions. Mailchimp isn't. There are many things that normal companies are allowed to do but monopolies aren't.
Twitter/Facebook may or may not be legal monopolies and this type of behaviour may or may not be one of those protected activities, but both pieces can be made from a moral position if not a legal one.
The monopolistic aspect is why this feels more acceptable for Mailchimp than for Twitter/Facebook.
I volunteer for a youth sports club and we use mail chimp. I'll be donating some of my time to switch to an alternative this weekend.
I feel the same way about mailchimp doing this that I do about Facebook or Twitter doing this: I agree that they have the right to do this as a private company, but the fact that they are doing it so casually discourages me.
But why should they? What good is served by allowing mailchimp to even just make it slightly harder for people they disagree with to express themselves?
What good is served by forcing mailchimp to serve customers who would adversely affect the reputation of mailchimp?
If there was a common cultural idea generated of "blame the person, not the place that serves the content" then that would solve that issue. Personally, I see that we're currently heading away from that, and while we've never had it fully it still appears to be going towards the "blame the service provider" route.
ESPs live and die by their delivery stats. Get enough people clicking “this is spam” (whether or not technically spam) and mailchimp is harmed.
The question of “will google deliver my mail to a gmail inbox?” is the key one, not whether someone, given enough time to study the matter carefully, can intellectually determine that mailchimp acted ok.
The good served by forcing mailchimp to serve all customers (except spammers) is precisely that then serving those customers would not adversely affect their reputation, anymore than it affects AT&T's reputation that their service is used by horrible people.
Two differences I see:
> At least Mailchimp, a US email and marketing automation service – doesn’t even try to pretend there is some objective, consensus-based way in determining what’s false and what’s true. Instead, they’re saying what many others in the tech industry are thinking and doing: “misinformation” is simply what we decide it is, because we can.
Mailchimp is outright acknowledging that epistemically-sound, conclusive Truth is not a deciding factor, whereas Twitter, Facebook, etc (and much media reporting) hint/imply that conclusive Truth is a deciding factor.
Secondly, if one is deplatformed from Mailchimp, one can move to another provider with little loss, particularly as it comes to the most important aspect: _attention_. The commonly repeated meme that deplatforming or filtering are not(!) _in any way_ free speech issues "because you can "just" move to a new platform (or build your own)" completely overlooks this aspect of the debate.
https://www.wired.com/story/free-speech-issue-tech-turmoil-n...
>> Here's how this golden age of speech actually works: In the 21st century, the capacity to spread ideas and reach an audience is no longer limited by access to expensive, centralized broadcasting infrastructure. It’s limited instead by one’s ability to garner and distribute _attention_. And right now, the flow of the world’s attention is structured, to a vast and overwhelming degree, by just a few digital platforms: Facebook, Google (which owns YouTube), and, to a lesser extent, Twitter.
>> These tactics usually don’t break any laws or set off any First Amendment alarm bells. But they all serve the same purpose that the old forms of censorship did: They are the best available tools _to stop ideas from spreading and gaining purchase_.
>> Even when the big platforms themselves suspend or boot someone off their networks for violating “community standards”—an act that does look to many people like old-fashioned censorship—it’s not technically an infringement on free speech [1], even if it is a display of immense platform power. Anyone in the world can still read what the far-right troll Tim “Baked Alaska” Gionet has to say on the internet. What Twitter has denied him, by kicking him off, is attention.
[1] Here the author actually falls victim to conflating free speech (the general principle) with The First Amendment, but makes up for it well enough.
Another good article (with a John Stuart Mill basis):
https://felipec.substack.com/p/the-fatal-freedom-of-speech-f...
>> In 2020 the concept of cancel culture is rampant. The common argument is that the right to freedom speech doesn’t imply that people must listen to you, or that you cannot get canceled, or that you should be free from the consequences of your speech.
>> This is correct. But did you spot the fallacy? The [right] to freedom of speech is not the same as the freedom of speech [argument]. That is an equivocation fallacy.
EDIT: It seems these ideas are unpopular - I would appreciate hearing any opposing ideas so that I can improve my stance.
It "feels" different - perhaps a hint that the whole notion of Monopoly in Big Tech is essentially a "big lie" repeated so incessantly that others start repeating it thoughtlessly because it "feels right"?
A single standard has all three equally right with private property administration.
I think you're avoiding the alternative option, that there can be different levels of regulation based on size and power of a company.
There's a rather large difference between Twitter, which has a _lot_ of people using it every day for information, and that of smaller companies. A company like Twitter can influence the fabric of society for good and bad by a large amount, but a smaller company has far less effect.
A single standard is a simple approach, but that doesn't make it the best option.
My guess is France-based SendInBlue will begin acquiring even more MailChimp defectors; Amazon SES as well.[1][2]
[1]
https://www.sendinblue.com/mailchimp/
[2]
https://aws.amazon.com/ses/pricing/
There's a great npm package that lets you send emails without an SMTP server:
https://www.npmjs.com/package/sendmail
Sending mail and having that mail arrive in a human’s inbox are pretty far from 1:1 at this point due to incessant spammers.
The value of mailchimp and other ESPs is not that the email transaction is technically difficult, but rather that managing delivery rates is hard.
There's also a great Unix command called "mail". But as everyone else pointed out, that's not really the technical problem here.
This is the equivalent of running your own SMTP server. That means you have to deal with all the associated deliverability problems.
If you actually try using this to send mass emails like mailing lists, you will immediately be blacklisted by the spam filters of every major email provider.
Isn't that just an SMTP client?
You still need an SMTP server somewhere to connect to.
I'd rather they ban customers for three cases of subscribing email addresses without verification, but how many customers would they have left?
The majority of mailchimp-sent mail is spam.
Unfortunately these things only lead to two different internet(s), one that is uncensored, free and the other approved and big brother. Why aren't we striving for improving the critical thinking of average people, instead of banning thought that is "inaccurate".
Because then most people would recognize the current anti-social system of enslavement (Statism) for what it is. Governments don't want their slaves thinking too much.
It’s a private business, not the federal government. It should have the right to regulate its services to protect both its users and the quality of its network.
The fact that sites like Reclaim the Net willfully misunderstand this to drum up anger hurts the cause of digital freedom, rather than helping it.
> _The fact that sites like Reclaim the Net willfully misunderstand this to drum up anger hurts the cause of digital freedom, rather than helping it._
Not only that, but the proposed solution of repealing Section 230 of the CDA would make hosting free speech impossible for anyone other than trillion dollar corporations that can throw billions at making sure users never use their services to upload illegal content.
So to get this straight, free speech laws only apply online to open public forums that are not using private platforms?
We're in quite a situation then. Let's look at the options for forums with protected speech.
* If only publicly funded communication channels have protections of freedom of speech. Can you tell me where I can find a public social network with free speech protections?
* Private media doesn't owe anyone almost anything lately. They publish whatever they want and will not talk about what's not convenient for the stories they tell. We've seen too much of it this year.
* Even if there was this great publicly-funded unbiased media source. Public funded usually means government. Twitter, Facebook, and others are now explicitly marking all the government-funded media and sources, as a way of implying bias. Essentially, bit by bit discrediting these platforms.
* All the private social platform don't owe you anything and will kick you out at will without any need for explanation.
If we agree that free speech is a critically important value of a civil, prosperous, modern civilization, then we're in big trouble. Most if not all the discourse these days is happening online and all the communication channels that people use belong either to:
* private corporations that are not bound by free speech laws
* non-profits overrun by often biased volunteers
* privately owned media companies pushing their agenda without any boundaries or common sense
* biased government sources pushing their propaganda
So where is the avenue for free speech in the 21st century? Shouting on the street outside?
People always trot out that line. And it’s always the same people who have plenty of disdain for the rights of private businesses in every other context. Do you think that private businesses should be allowed to discriminate on racial grounds, religious grounds, sexual grounds? Do you think businesses have the right to run their workplace however they want, including encouraging sexist and racist jokes? Be consistent.
This is such a low effort take, such obviously motivated reasoning, that wouldn’t deserve response but for being so prevalent as a way for otherwise thoughtful people to stop thinking and not confront the hypocrisy of supporting mass corporate censorship because it supports their favorite political party.
Which is not to say there’s not a nuanced argument to be had, but your one-dimensional argument isn’t that.
People trot out this line … because it’s literally how it works in the real world, buddy. If you create a disturbance inside of a coffee shop, you will be kicked out, because the owner has the right to do so as the owner of private property. But if you do it outside, you’re fine.
Sometimes it’s not a low-effort take … but simply reflective of the way legal precedent works.
I’m not your “buddy” and you didn’t respond to anything I said except with an irrelevant analogy. Like I point out, society imposes plenty of restrictions on private businesses. You don’t actually control who gets to sit at your restaurant’s lunch counter.
Physical world regulations match the digital world unless laws state otherwise.
That’s what this whole argument is about, what the law should be.
You have an uphill battle facing you if you think you’re going to strip businesses of the right to manage how they serve their own customers.
Instead of focusing on trying to prevent social networks from moderating their platforms so that they’re safe, you should instead work to strengthen open protocols so that they work better and offer better alternatives to what already exists.
I think the reason there’s always resistance to these complaints is because when it comes down to it, people want to be able to experience the internet in a safe environment, and preventing networks from moderating that experience limits that possibility.
Where does Reclaim the Net claim Mailchimp is the federal government, or does not have a right to make these decisions? Nowhere: that appears to be a strawman.
It is perfectly legitimate to be angry when companies start restricting their services to political allies, or arbitrarily blocking communication for people who disagree on who to vote for. Freedom of speech is a value encoded in the constitution because it is important, and because societies have learned over and over what happens when it's lost. It's the first thing dictatorships get rid of for a reason.
RTN's focus on freedom of speech while condemning Mailchimp's actions is absolutely meant as an equivocation that tries to apply Constitutional protections in an argument where they don't apply.
And your comment does the exact same thing only more explicitly. The First Amendment has absolutely nothing to do with this issue. And it's very telling that people would prefer to focus on platforms regulating their content and "cancel culture" than addressing the very real and consistent attacks on the First Amendment by the current administration.
If you start screaming at the top of your lungs inside of a Walmart, they will kick you out because you are on private property. But you can still scream outside.
After one watches enough of the "censorship!" crowd wring their hands, it starts to become obvious that the agitation is not for the freedom and the liberty _to speak_, but for the freedom and the liberty to _require your attention_.
I think back to this article a lot:
https://www.salon.com/2012/07/01/southern_values_revived/
FYI a self-hosted copy of Mailtrain is a fine replacement for MailChimp.
Good luck getting through spam filters! Anyone who has set up their own email server in the last 5 years can tell you that if you want consistent delivery, you either need to go with a big commercial provider or spend countless hours to get to at most 80% of what you'd get through them.
Most adults have the ability to discriminate between dumb stuff and smart stuff, or fake and real, don't you think? Taking away the public's opportunity to discriminate is in essence, removing our power to exercise that discrimination.
Who in our society is rewarded by undiscriminating consumers, or an undiscriminating electorate?
If people do not like Twitter or FB policies, they are free to quit. I have quit Twitter and FB for exactly this reason - I do not like their policies of censoring the posts. This is that simple. If you see a turd on the ground - you don't have to step into it and then complain about the smell. Many censored entities do not have even Telegram account, where there is zero censorship where people could follow them. This means they do not care so much about reaching out to readers. They would rather complain but cling to Twitter.
This is only a mail sending service which doesn't have the lock-in or monopoly of Facebook or Twitter. If you get banned, you can just go to MailJetGun or something else. So I think it's fine for them to impose whatever stupid rules they like. The free market actually exists here.
I hope they share their secret epistemology machine with us, it would be of such great benefit to the human race!
Amazed that most of the comments seem to believe this is not as bad as Facebook or Twitter blocking disinfo. In my mind it could be worse.
Emails are private communication. It's not a public forum. Censorship in the private arena is an order of magnitude more intrusive. It's not just free speech at this point, it's peaceful assembly. The "monopoly vs many choices" argument notwithstanding.
If you could choose between five or more cell providers, yet T-Mobile started dropping your calls (to your mom, or your business contacts, or whoever) every time you mentioned a watchword like "Trump,"* how would that make you feel?
https://twitter.com/fleccas/status/1321999369680334848?s=19
That tweet you referred to literally says that Instagram, not Twitter, are censoring the hashtag.
And even Instagram isn't censoring this particular hashtag; the restrictions the tweet describes are being applied to _all_ hashtags. (
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/29/instagram-disables-recent-ha...
)
Did I lie?
If so, call @dang to delete my comment. An anonymous high level official said it "smells like" Russian disinfo.
Two different things.
On the note of twitter, they should have just banned Trump and told him "it's a free country" years ago. The fact they are censoring #trump while not banning him comes off as extremely weak. It's exactly the kind of move that makes liberals seem hairless and under-handed.
MailChimp on the other hand is primarily a ad/spam tool. They do have transactional email abilities, but any email that isn't transactional is (IMO) ad/spam. The whole point of ad/spam is to manipulate people... it's not a conversation. Limiting what type of mass manipulation they allow is very different from not letting people talk about whatever they want.
Instagram is a Facebook property; it does not belong to Twitter. Further, Instagram is not censoring #trump. They are temporary hiding recent posts from all hashtags. The text made this clear, saying "all hashtags." You can confirm this by searching for an arbitrary hashtag; the same message is displayed.
Also, Mailchimp is not primarily an ad/spam tool, and any nontransactional email is not necessarily ad/spam. Emails about outages to a service you use are not transactional (others also use it), advertising or spam. Emails about changes to a product or service are not transactional (others use it), advertising, or spam. Community newsletters are not transactional, and not necessarily advertising. Some of these emails could be or contain advertising, but that doesn't equate to spam, and many people want these emails. In fact, Mailchimp has policies against using their platform to send any unsolicited email, regardless of content, even if it is legal. You must have consent from each recipient. See Prohibited Actions at [1].
[1]:
https://mailchimp.com/legal/acceptable_use/
You have a cynical take on MailChimp emails. Many emails sent through their service are DOUBLE OPT-IN, meaning the recipient raised their hand twice saying they want to receive the info. And now MailChimp is saying, no, we are stepping in, you don't get to see that.
This is not correct. Mailchimp does not require double opt-in. They used to recommend it strongly; now they just give you information about the differences [1]. Also, this only applies to a Mailchimp sign-up form. You can also add contacts manually, via import, or via the API; opt-in is assumed, even if you enable double opt-in.
[1]:
https://mailchimp.com/help/single-opt-in-vs-double-opt-in/
That double opt-in rule is loosely enforced. They'll happily let you import bulk e-mail lists. You have to check a box saying "yes everyone opted in" and that's about it. Your account _might_ get flagged later if enough people report your stuff to MailChimp as spam.
Very interesting ethical debate. What is the balance between:
- A persons right to opt-in to (as an extreme) ego-centric mass manipulation in which they sell their very being for the sake of feeling smarter/better than other people.
- A corporations right to not enable anything they see as manipulating a narrative in ways they dislike.
Obvs both are extremes, but it implies that somewhere in-between is a sweet spot.
I'm no longer proud of Silicon Valley. I don't want any part of developing tools for censors (thought police). And if you advocate for this, it will explode in your face when they come for your ideas.
Not cool
Another way to look at it. When you were a child did you ever imagine you would become an advocate for censorship?
When all the social media platforms started censoring people years ago, most sites started to urge users to subscribe to mailinglists. Looks like now they have come for your mailinglists too. What's next?
Good question! I was thinking about this in the shower. I think the next step is email delivery. Google could easily flag and delete "disinformation" from email boxes.
Scary times we are living in.
Since 95% of ads delivered by mailchimp are overstating and overhyping their product doesn't that mean that they are sending "innacurate" info & that mailchimp just put themselves out of business :)
Mail chimp.. Censurating like Google.. Avoid this company
Liberals are so scared of the truth always that their first instinct is to censor information. That is what scares me.
– seems like another site for Far-right and conspiracy theory folks why are annoyed that they can't use technology to lie to folks.
While the Article4 are definitly highly opinionated, I don't see this as presenting any conspiracy theories. The website does a poor job of posting any sources or links to their sources beyond some screenshots. Of the articles I clicked through, I've seen the same less opinionated information reported elsewhere,and was able to verify the information being reported.
They are not saying that the site is propagating conspiracy theories. They are saying that the site is pandering to conspiracy theorists who would be upset about a company like Mailchimp deciding to not propagate their emails.
Are you disputing the veracity of the facts in the article? Otherwise I’m not sure why this is a relevant objection.
Don't be obtuse. It's a partisan tabloid spouting off an emotionally worded narrative.
So because their platform is being worried about Big Tech abusing their monopoly power to arbitrarily silence entities, they're now "right-wing"??
What the fuck happened to this place?
It's not really a "this place" thing. There's been a legitimate political realignment on this topic. I think most Americans would identify the site's slogans
> Defend free speech and individual liberty online. Push back against big tech and media gatekeepers.
as right-wing in the modern context. (I don't think "far right" and "conspiracy theory" are fair labels, though.)
This seems clearly true and I can't imagine why you're being downvoted.
You could go further and say "Defend individual liberty" is a neutral description of rightist policy. Out of time, it shouldn't be inflammatory at all.
> You could go further and say "Defend individual liberty" is a neutral description of rightist policy.
Tell that to arch-conservative Anthony Comstock:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comstock_laws
> The Comstock Laws were a set of federal acts passed by the United States Congress under the Grant administration along with related state laws.[1] The "parent" act (Sect. 211) was passed on March 3, 1873, as the Act for the "Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use".
Similarly, all of the other religious arguments for censorship, such as the Roman Catholic Church's list of banned books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_Librorum_Prohibitorum
The Papist Church is definitely quite conservative.
The Roman Catholic Church (is "Papist" some kind of dogwhistle slur these days?) would often be thought of as economically leftist. Give large amounts of your money to the ruling institution, they spend it on helping the less fortunate.
Sure, it has corruption problems and much of the wealth doesn't make it to the needy. Same with many institutions on the left or right.
It's obviously also socially conservative.
Not much dogwhistling in "Papist", I don't think?! - I'd always interpret that as negative...
> The Roman Catholic Church (is "Papist" some kind of dogwhistle slur these days?) would often be thought of as economically leftist.
It isn't leftist, it's anti-leftist, given that it has a decree against Communism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_against_Communism
Also, "Papist" is a traditional Conservative term, as per the very Conservative Protestants and Anglicans. I didn't realize a Conservative word would cause offense.
I think it’s an extension of “name people what they want to be named”. If Roman Catholics would think it’s offensive, then it is.
It's fairer to say that Marxism has a decree against religion. Regardless, hating one leftist institution doesn't put you on the right. Tito hated Stalin who hated Mao - which one of them do you think was on the right wing?
Plenty of leftists don't like communism.
A debate climate where sane things are labeled extremist due to association is quite worrysome. But ye if you worry about de facto free speech on the interwebs your probably some brand of nazi ... oh swing the banhammer Twitter and friends.
The same thing that happened to west.
I hear an echo in here...
Everyone knows this policy can’t be neutrally applied, and won’t be. The ideological beliefs of the censor will influence what is censored and what is ignored.
Are there any good alternatives to Mailchimp which aren’t headquartered in the USA?
The US software industry seems to be gradually abandoning whatever libertarian roots it once had, in favour of a weird kind of paternalism.
Although I suspect people around here hate the word "privilege," I've always thought that the ability to complain about "censoring" deliberate misinformation campaigns that affect the lives of millions of people is _pretty_ high up there on the privilege ladder. I've seen countless tweets and comments from hackers and neckbeards smugly whining from an ivory (emphasis on ivory) tower about "cancel culture," which I guess is just what they call it when previously marginalized groups take power away from the powerful. It's so easy to be ideologically pure when you and your family are not directly impacted by political results.
Priveledge is hated here because it isn't an argument but an often immutable ad-homenum to shield against arguments that are disliked. To give an example of why it isn't held highly "Pfft only those priveledged enough to not have to worry about starvation can care about democracy".
It also a hypercritically in calling them emphasis on "ivory" tower and "neckbeards" - implying both ugliness and not getting out much and then deridding them for being priveledged socially when they are already below the baseline and then dismissing concerns about a /social standing/ issue for double irony. "What do those ugly nerds know about being an outcast?"
Section 230 needs to be amended to, at minimum, forbid editorializing. Mailchimp should not be allowed to forbid content they don’t like.
As soon as you editorialize you become a publisher. You’re now liable for what you’ve published.
If you disagree, then go stand with the bakers who refuse to bake cakes for gay couples.