I remember when the big issue was about whether Twitter could censor the writers who used it. Twitter was a private company, it was urged, so it wasn't bound by the First Amendment, and that made it almost impossible for its users to claim a legal right to free speech. Back in the day, I got into arguments — notably, this one — about whether "free speech" has any meaning other than as a right against what the government might do.
Now, Elon Musk is making Twitter even more private, the possession of one man, and he's doing it ostensibly to provide the people with more freedom of speech. Now, the argument shifts from saying there's nothing you can do about the speech-freedom choices of a private entity — too bad, government is helpless! — to saying that government ought to step up and constrain Musk and his free-speech agenda.
Remember when lefties were all about free speech? When did that change? Why did that change? Perhaps the answer is: Free speech was only ever a means to an end. When they got their free speech, made their arguments, and failed to win over the American people, and when in fact the speech from their opponents seemed too successful, they switched to the repression of speech, because the end was never freedom.
By the way, the New Yorker article is by John Cassidy. His bio says he grew up in Leeds, West Yorkshire and graduated from Oxford, so the lack of appreciation for American free-speech values is less disturbing. But what is the European answer he's vaunting?
Under the E.U.’s Digital Services Act, European governments now have the power to ask Web platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to remove any content that promotes terrorism, hate speech, child sexual abuse, or commercial scams. The platforms will also be obliged to prevent the “manipulation of services having an impact on democratic processes and public security.”...If the European authorities see a surge of online disinformation during a crisis, such as the ongoing war in Ukraine, they will be able to order social-media companies to take “proportionate and effective measures” to counter the threat. Although the new E.U. agreement stops short of treating online platforms the same as traditional publishers (which may be legally liable for intentionally false content about specific individuals and companies), it will force them to provide users with “an easy and effective way” to flag harmful content, so that it can be removed.The platforms will also be subject to annual audits by European regulators on their efforts to counter disinformation and other abuses.
Who will decide what is "hate speech," "disinformation," and "manipulation of services having an impact on
democratic processes and public security"? Americans should embrace government audits assessing "efforts to counter disinformation and other abuses"? Save us from this European hellscape!
Cassidy enthuses about fines of "billions of dollars" and even excluding the platform from doing business at all. He concludes:
Freedom of speech shouldn't depend on one man either, and it's tragic that we reached the point where it did. But the new stage of this tragedy is the effort to mobilize government against Musk's free-speech agenda. How can the American government have that power? It's for "the health of the Internet." Health beats freedom these days, don't you know? And "democracy." Democracy means shackling the side that's not supposed to win.Musk would surely object to the U.S. adopting a regulatory system like the one that the Europeans are drawing up, but that’s too bad. The health of the Internet—and, most important, democracy—is too significant to leave to one man, no matter how rich he is.
Posts
126 comments:
Get the government out of the way. THEY Are the problem with MOST things in America. They should stick to protecting our borders and keeping us safe. That's it. Enough with the woke crap and the division.
"Vaunting"? Isn't that an adjective? For some reason when used as a verb it sounds like something medieval knights would do in the tilt-yard.
Since Cassidy is British, this is acceptable.
Who will decide what is "hate speech," "disinformation," and "manipulation of services having an impact on democratic processes and public security"?
Why The Government; of Course!
isn't THAT what "free speech" means? You are FREE to say ANYTHING the Government wants you to say
Is "vote the bums out!" 'hate speech'? It Sure Sounds hateful!
You KNOW what isn't 'hate speech'.. Long Live Big Brother !!
You are FREE, to PRAISE the Government; just as much as you want!
BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU
"the argument shifts from saying there's nothing you can do about the speech-freedom choices of a private entity"
The prog argument.
"Perhaps the answer is: Free speech was only ever a means to an end."
For progs, yes.
As predicted/postdicted by the Universal Theory of Progressive Instrumentalism. The application of which can still save Althouse time and effort diagnosing the latest how-could-they prog outrage.
If nothing else, Musk has ripped the mask off these totalitarians.
“Who will decide what is "hate speech," "disinformation," and "manipulation of services having an impact on democratic processes and public security"? ”
Who decides? The Twitter lawyer who made $16m last year and cried during the all-hands meeting at Twitter.
’But the new stage of this tragedy is the effort to mobilize government against Musk's free-speech agenda.’
The left doesn’t believe in free speech. It believes in power and control.
Free speech is saying only what I vaunt.
Machiavellians will be Machiavellians. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Those currently in power often climbed over the backs of many people who they stabbed on their way to the top. This is as old as nature, and can be seen in how birds steal from each other...millions and millions of years of evolution. The Cuckoo is one of the most grotesque: they lay their eggs in another species nest, their chicks hatch first, they babies push the other eggs out of the nest, and the hapless parents feed the wrong baby bird. Cuckoos are a successful and sustainable evolutionary adaptation!
Nature literally wrote the plots for horror films. Humans are no different.
There's an old finding that human cheaters are those most interested in enforcing anti-cheating rules. This is because they have long cheated and believe their methods cannot be detected, but don't want others to have a competitive edge.
From the left-wing Huffington Post before wokemania:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/us-olympic-team-cheating-russia_n_5a2aca81e4b073789f695a21
Be aware and respond effectively or be dead.
What I find interesting is the absolute confidence of people on the left that the decisions about what is allowed or not allowed speech are decisions that will be made by people who agree with the ideas of the left. Imagine a gov't speech regulatory agency populated by Trump supporters. I'm not sure why this absolute confidence exists. Is it (1) a belief that gov't regulatory bureaucrats will of necessity support big government and other ideas of the left; (2) a belief that people who disagree with ideas of the left would never seek or hold a government regulatory job; (3) just short-sighted stupidity?
A vaunting Briton. I catch the reference. Third verse.
Can Europeans, or anyone else other than the US, regulate a US company?
I suppose they can if the company has a nexus in the country. But suppose Twitter closes down all servers in a country or region. Suppose they say "France is imposing egregious censorship laws, No Twitter for you!" and block all French ISPs.
This will be interesting battle. I think I am going to bet on Elon. Assuming he really means his claims of free speech over profit.
John LGKTQ Henry
Note that the Twitter acquisition by Musk is hardly a “done deal”. His financing is heavily reliant upon banks lending against his Tesla stock as collateral. Tesla stock that fell over 10% yesterday. Both that collateral value volatility, and the risk of drawing scrutiny from Democrats in Congress will make banks very wary of lending the necessary capital. 35% chance the deal falls apart.
"Who will decide what is "hate speech," "disinformation," and "manipulation of services having an impact on democratic processes and public security"?
Well, yes. You asked the crucial question. And who is going to protect us from our 'protectors'? My God, they have been protecting us so hard over the last 20 years I no longer even recognize our country.
When it comes to the idea of individual liberty I tend not to look to the Europeans for guidance. They are, as a whole, a great continent of people, and have given the world so much. But their inclination has always been to look to a central leader, a monarch, a central government, a central controlling board in some fashion or another. Their inclination is toward the State, not the individual. Ours- as its most basic is about limiting the rights of the State and protecting the rights of the individual. We continue to fail at that for years now and with each passing year, more sections of our country start to fall into the thought trap of Europeans: the thinking that it's too hard to leave it to ourselves, us individuals. Best to leave it to the 'experts', those who work for the State. They'll make it right.
New Yorkers, Northeasterners, West Coasters for the most part have accepted the statist/collectivist mindset. And you see it in all topics now when it comes to allowing for the individual, or the individual family to decide for themselves what is best for them, or leaving it to the State because the common good outweighs individual rights. Except that it doesn't and any move in that direction is another move toward tyranny.
This is lost on those at the New Yorker, The Times, WaPo, and virtually every television network we have. The sheer terror they show at Musk buying Twitter and threatening to open it up for more free speech tells you just how statist/collectivist they have become. But it's not that they want less speech. They just want less of your speech. That is the Soviet idea of free speech. The CCP version of it. How they do not see that tells you how far gone they are today.
"Hate speech," like it's ideological sibling "hate crime," is just an attempt to put a palatable label on the concept of thought crime. Bugger that.
Musk, last year, suggested that, in a few years he would relocate to Mars and run Starlink satellite network from there.
Musk's idea came to light when a user asked if Starlink will be deployed between Earth and Mars to strengthen communication for Starship. Starship is SpaceX's ambitious project that is being touted as the vehicle that will ferry cargo and crew to the red planet and back in the coming years. In response to the user's tweet, Musk amplified the excitement with one word, "yeah".
https://www.republicworld.com/technology-news/science/spacexs-starlink-to-provide-services-to-mars-for-starship-confirms-elon-musk.html
Musk has previously stressed Starlink’s flexibility of Starlink in providing internet service. In September,
Musk talked about how the company would use links between the satellites to create a network that could provide service even in countries that prohibit SpaceX from installing ground infrastructure for distribution.
As for government regulators who want to block Starlink from using that capability, Musk had a simple answer.
“They can shake their fist at the sky,” Musk said.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/28/ukraine-updates-starlink-satellite-dishes.html
John LGKTQ Henry
'...they switched to the repression of speech, because the end was never freedom.'
They switched to lawfare, using the courts to establish rules outside of the legislative process.
One obscure, lefty Hawaiian judge can mess up a lot of things...
Just f all these wannabe control freaks.
Ann: because hate crime laws were always intended to destroy facts and control speech using government force. See, for example, Canada, the EU, Britain.
Political correctness, the precursor of “wokeness”, dates back to at least the early 90s. It was always about squelching dissent on issues where the left wanted more “tolerance”. So the left has been openly opposing free speech for at least 30 years. There has always been an authoritarian element on the left. But the I Know What’s Best For You, Shut Up And Take Your Medicine mindset has dominated “liberals” since at least early 90s / late 80s.
In response to a question about Musk, Jen Psaki immediately reiterated Biden's old comments about "reforming" section 230 protection (and the press immediately covered for her).
The simple answer to complaints that disinformation pollutes platforms: Don't believe everything you read. Including this.
Money Manger- If the financial institutions kill the Musk/Twitter deal it will be because of pressure from the federal govt to kill the deal and not for spreadsheet reasons. That, in many ways, will be more chilling than anything that Twitter under previous ownership had done.
On a related topic, wait for CNN to start firing people like Seltzer, Don Lemon, etc. and replace them with actual journalists in the field and neutral-ish anchors. That should happen within 3 months. The wailing will intensify.
"The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire." -- Robt. A. Heinlein
The mostly Left-leaning, college-credentialed Twitter users must be protected from scams and misinformation that might require discipline of intellect, regulation of emotions and established principles to read without losing ones temper or self confidence, a well as, the receiver to stop and think.
“Everyone is in favor of free speech. Hardly a day passes without its being extolled, but some people's idea of it is that they are free to say what they like, but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.”
― Winston Churchill
Congress shall make no law ... how does the rest of that go? Everyone seems to have a memory loss.
Temujin said...
Great post. You nailed it.
War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength
Musk and Twitter is 2 (along with the whole parents rights fight from the left)
Maybe Ukraine and FJB turns into 1
Everything coming from the MSM and the left (BIRM) is 3
All hail Big Brother!
But it's not that they want less speech. They just want less of your speech. That is the Soviet idea of free speech. The CCP version of it.
While that does apply to the CCP and Soviets, it is hardly unique to them. It is pretty universal even in countries that we think of as "democratic". Europe has long had, and continues to have, policies of banning any speech the govt does not like.
Even England, the much touted birthplace of democracy, has pretty draconian restrictions on speech. Saying that a man cannot become a woman, for example, is a criminal offense punishable by jail.
We, the US, are really the only believers in fairly absolute free speech. We are the only ones who have a constitution guaranteeing it. At least on the govt side.
We have seen that belief in free speech eroding fairly rapidly over the past few decades.
If nothing else, Musk's purchase of Twitter has shown the danger we are in and exposed some of the loons in our society causing the danger.
John LGKTQ Henry
Some of us (liberals) were and are still for free speech. I do confess that the American nazis march in Skokie was especially problematic for me. But free speech prevailed and it was the right thing. Nevertheless, you are right - "progressives" only used "free speech" as a tool to achieve what they wanted - they never believed in it and still don't. While I disagree with many conservatives, they are not the enemy; progressives are.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face--forever."
George Orwell wrote that as the thought of the Ingsoc Party in his book, "1984". We aren't there yet, but read the toxic waste deposited by those on the Left--starting with John Cassidy of The New Yorker.
This is the essence of their dream: comply or suffer. You will learn to love Big Brother. It is for the good of humanity.
It will be interesting to see the mainstream media's coordinated full on assault on Elon Musk in the next few weeks. As Ned Beatty said in Network, "You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and you will atone!"
Roy Jacobsen 08:10 - I just watched David Mamet on Adam Corrolla. He made a very good point that what they try to frighten you with is what they fear. For the Left that is "exclusion". They need these "thought crimes" to generate the exclusion/banishment of those they dislike. No one on the Left, or until Musk's purchase, Twitter, dare call out the truth lest they be excluded. In this way the create a common situation that none dare stand up for the weak because revealing the truth will destroy it all.
https://youtu.be/ncpRrBRM95I?t=5194
All this leads me to wonder . . . .
I'm a long term finance guy. I've structured capital in all kinds of ways. Never for tech companies though. From what little I can see (and hardly understand), Twitter has never made any money and nobody can really see how they will.
How can the struggle for Twitter's ownership and capitalization make any sense at all?
Anybody in this world have a clue?
Just want to point out that the 1st Amendment generally guarantees the right to spread "disinformation." There's very little speech it doesn't protect. The government (U.S.) cannot enact laws compelling twitter to ban speech it regards as "disinformation" "hate speech," "racist," etc.
I had this discussion with a friend of mine whose is on the left side of the spectrum politically I think he has an essentially technocratic view of government. If we get the right people in charge then things will run smoothly and the correct outcomes will result. My side of the argument was that all people are motivated by self-interest and that all politicians lie about everything to everyone. Getting to the truth requires a robust marketplace of ideas. Democracy is a messy business and optimum outcomes are not the target, just something that works well enough and that the majority can live with without impinging on the rights of minorities. He also brought up that someone, don't know who, was posing the thought experiment in regards to books being objected to in schools as inappropriate, if that's the case then shouldn't we restrict access to the Bible as well? Its full of incest, violence, theft, and adultery. I think he thought that was going to shock us. It was a Bible study group. Pointed out, we already do this. We teach 3rd graders about Daniel in the Lion's Den and Samson's deeds. We don't teach them about the woman getting raped to death and then getting cut up into little pieces or the woman hammering a tent spike through a guy's temple while he is sleeping until they are a little older.
"...Health beats freedom these days, don't you know?..." Yes: health and SAFETY How do you think the authoritarians held us all in thrall for the past two years? It was for our own good. You simply can't be too careful! The precautionary principle requires us to do nothing without prior study and approval by experts!
That's stasis and a (not so) slow death for civilization.
I do hope Elon pulls off the deal --and carries through on his stated goals. As for the EU stepping on his game? It would be such fun to see the EU authorities --who (so I'm told) are human beings susceptible to pain-- answer their furious citizens when their social media goes dark after they try their Stasi tactics on him.
Pass the popcorn.
From what little I can see (and hardly understand), Twitter has never made any money and nobody can really see how they will.
How can the struggle for Twitter's ownership and capitalization make any sense at all?
I always assumed they're financed surreptitiously through the US government to facilitate the spying on everyone. Same with all the social media companies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZfQymnABxQ
Brown Hornet--
It goes back way before the 80s/90s. Read 1984. Read Atlas Shrugged. Read Dostoyevsky's Demons. Read about the Russian Revolution. Read about the French Revolution. None of them embrace the idea of free speech, except for approved speech.
The government (U.S.) cannot enact laws compelling twitter to ban speech it regards as "disinformation" "hate speech," "racist," etc.
Yes it can. Whether of not those laws survive the inevitable review by USSC depends on the sitting justices.
dis-information = info critical of the left.
Harmful content = Anyone who is critical of the left.
Brown Hornet said...
Political correctness, the precursor of “wokeness”, dates back to at least the early 90s.
Actually, it dates back much further. Lenin used it frequently, though he did not feel the need for the "politically" modifier.
For example, speaking about mass starvation in the early 20's he said (quoting from memory) "it is not correct to say that people are starving" He went on to say that saying that fact would turn people against the revolution. There was no question in anyone's mind, including Lenin's, that people were starving. Just that it was not permissible "Correct" to say so.
I first heard the term "Politically correct" in San Francisco in January 67. As in, it is "not politically correct" to talk about something that is factually correct.
I've been hearing it ever since.
John LGKTQ Henry
@Ron Winkleheimer wrote: "I think he has an essentially technocratic view of government. If we get the right people in charge then things will run smoothly and the correct outcomes will result."
Yes, we are living in a late phase of technocratic government right now. Trust CDC/Fauci. Trust teacher's unions rather than those inane parents. Trust some random professor who's never worked outside a university to run a country they've never visited and hate.
The problem is that technocrats must always double down on mistakes to preserve their credibility and "authority." This became the norm during the Obama administration's efforts to legislate through the back door, but that scab was ripped away by Trump.
The problem now is that the entire world is run by a mix of technocrats, bureaucrats, and autocrats, and they are all being exposed as mediocre nothings or frauds in unison. They can either admit this and reform themselves or literally destroy the world. They surely have the power to destroy.
It’s a lie to say that in order for speech to be free it must also be true.
"because the end was never freedom"
True when AA wrote that. True today.
The nature of the left is FORCE. Not persuasion, but force.
Remember when lefties were all about free speech? When did that change? Why did that change? Perhaps the answer is: Free speech was only ever a means to an end. When they got their free speech, made their arguments, and failed to win over the American people, and when in fact the speech from their opponents seemed too successful, they switched to the repression of speech, because the end was never freedom.
That was what many conservatives said about John Stuart Mill. Mill wanted to shake society loose from religious, traditional, authoritarian, and hierarchical constraints. Once society had been shaken lose one could use science to reorder society.
For over a century, some liberals took Mill at what they assumed was his word -- free speech for all, always and about everything. Mill's critics believed that JSM's belief in freedom of speech, like his advocacy of economic freedom, was conditional.
Just as Mill believed that at some point capitalism would have developed to the point where a new system could be developed, so he believed that at some point we would be free enough to regulate and limit public expression.
That at least is the theory or interpretation. I can't say whether it's valid or not.
New Yorkers, Northeasterners, West Coasters for the most part have accepted the statist/collectivist mindset. And you see it in all topics now when it comes to allowing for the individual, or the individual family to decide for themselves what is best for them, or leaving it to the State because the common good outweighs individual rights.
That's true of New York Times, New Yorker, and Atlantic readers, and I guess it's true in general that people in New Jersey or Massachusetts or Vermont do want to be controlled more than people in Wyoming or North Dakota or Kentucky, but the Bush-Kerry era Bad America versus Good America rhetoric is off-putting.
The country is more mixed and mixed up now than in the past and the people who rail against one part of the country don't make many friends there. So while there's some truth in that view, I run into too many people online who are convinced that all good always resided in their section and all evil in the other to not raise an objection or qualification.
@ Václav Patrik Šulik, 8:36 AM
Exactly. Progs are not liberal.
It's amazing how many people now supporting censorship don't even remember they were all for free speech just a few years ago.
I guess they figure, because they're willing to censor themselves, they are entitled to censor anyone who won't do the same.
"Blogger Jay Vogt said...
All this leads me to wonder . . . .
How can the struggle for Twitter's ownership and capitalization make any sense at all?"
Synergy, man.
When you stop laughing, consider that he's going to own a worldwide communication platform in Twitter and a worldwide data delivery service in Starlink. It's purely speculation on my part, but I think he intends to leverage Twitter into a more robust communications platform that uses Starlink.
Whatever he's got planned, you won't go wrong betting it will be disruptive.
A vague law that would deputize private actors to enforce a speech code. Sounds Constitutional to me.
Fen's Law is iron.
"Vaunting"? Isn't that an adjective?
Could be, but no. To vaunt is just a regular English verb that forms its present continuous like other regulars. Vaunt, a lovely word too seldom seen meaning vainglorious boasting, as in Joe Biden is wont to vaunt his prowess at fisticuffs.
The left's reaction to their loss of power is entertaining. It's like the reaction in der Bunker to the news of Obergruppenführer Steiner's non-arrival.
rant-bluster-threaten Musk wird in seinem eigenen Blut ertrinken!!! moan-morn-weep.
We can look forward gleefully to the muffled BANG! long before November when we expected it. This is how the really momentous victories happen -- suddenly.
The left are using their fake concern about things like terror and child porn to cover for the fact they demand to control speech.
They don't give a crap about extremist leftist white antifa terror. or skinheads who rape children and commit arson.
Here’s what Elon Musk has to say on this issue (that’s one hell of a therefore):
By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law.
I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.
If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.
Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.
Herr Cassidy should go back to where he came from.
STop supporting the concept of "hate speech", its a trap. Once you agree that "hate speech" should be banned, all the lib/left has to do is expand the definiton of "Hate". And before you know it, every conservative position is "hate".
People don't talk about it, but the liberal/left spent years trying to drive Limbaugh off the air by pressuring his advertisers. They want so far as to write a facebook twitter program that would send thousands of tweets/posts to various local advertisers demanding they pull "Limbaugh hate speech" off the air.
They tried to drive Tucker off the air with pressuring the advertisers and also threats of physical violence/intimidation by Antifa. Lets see what happens with Elon Musk. I hope he has a strong security team watching his back.
Free speech is just like free markets. It is very much in essence an economic concept. The point of free speech - and men like Jefferson and Adams (not so much Hamilton) understood this very well - was to create an environment where strong arguments/strong ideas prevailed and weak arguments/weak ideas did not. They understood this well because economically they were all too familiar with colonial and British economic concepts of privileged birth and ambition checked by social station. If we were going to have a country where the 'cream could rise', regardless of station, we were going to have to have a country where ideas could rise too, regardless of origination.
The evidence of an idea's strength or weakness was extremely simple and at the same time highly recognizable to us today - how viral is it. How well do people adapt to it? How many people adopt it? The manipulation of this simple litmus test over the last 20 years has been so widespread and so obvious it's grotesque.
Liberal ideas, the liberal ethos, its economic concepts and its failed promises, on the rise since the end of WWII are coming to an end. They were weak long before we got to this point, but they have been working overtime to hide the unpopularity of their ideas for just as long.
hmmmm-
Twitter lawyer Jim Baker, when general counsel of the FBI, personally arranged a meeting between the FBI and Michael Sussmann. In this meeting, Sussmann presented fabricated evidence in the Alfa bank matter.
@elonmusk
, this is who is inside Twitter.
He facilitated fraud.
oh no! we now see why the collective universal left want to cancel Elon.
COVID
That is at the center of this. The Government got a chance to flex their authoritarianism, and they liked it! But that power rested on SCIENCE! (as selected by the government)
Gun control, Anthropomorphic, Catastrophic, Global, Climate Change,(climate change) the next big SCIENCE subjects in line to be the impetus to strip individual rights.
COVID worked worked great, because the govt took power (rather, citizens ceded power) to strip perfectly healthy people of their rights, something never before done with a viral outbreak.
The CDC has been calling guns a health problem for decades. For the very reason, unelected agencies could set policies that would never get out of committee in congress.
But COVID would not have worked near as well, if competing SCIENCE was allowed to be debated, in public. Hydroxy and ivermectrin maybe aren't good therapeutics, but they have a long and safe history, and with free debate, and use, in a few months, all would have sorted out. Instead, not a person believes the CDC because they keep lying to hold onto power.
As most have pointed out, Speech is power. Government, and leftist hate power in the hands of the people. That's Why the DoJ is busy spying on parents in school board meetings.
Gravel said, Whatever he's got planned, you won't go wrong betting it will be disruptive"
Ha! That reminded me of a line I heard last night on Better Call Saul,"Whatever happens next, it's not gonna go down the way you think it is"
"I do not agree with what you have to tweet, but I'll defend to the death your right to tweet it."
- not Voltaire
Quaestor said...
"Vaunting"? Isn't that an adjective?
Could be, but no. To vaunt is just a regular English verb that forms its present continuous like other regulars. Vaunt, a lovely word too seldom seen meaning vainglorious boasting, as in Joe Biden is wont to vaunt his prowess at fisticuffs.
Or as Lugosi said, "I vaunt to drink your blood!"
Government and those who push for more and more of it are blood-sucking leeches.
In the UK the government as a 'Official Secrets Act'.
Try to print something the UK government thinks is harmful to the security of the UK (read security of the government) then you get a 'D' notice to not print it. Yes the government over there reads print before it is printed and gets to tell you what you can print or not.
Hence, kind of like Russia, you have no idea if any stats coming from the UK government are true or not. Murder/crime rates, government finances, embarrassing facts, etc...
So I can see where Cassidy comes from... he views everyone as a 'Subject' and not a 'Citizen'.
The 1st Amendment is our most valuable right... and the 2nd Amendment is to guarantee the 1st.
I look at the marketplace of ideas very much the same way as I look at a bodacious babe in a skimpy string bikini - maybe you've got good ideas, or maybe you've just 'got the goods', but if you've got it, vaunt it!
I hope we find out what the heck was going on with the Hunter Biden laptop story. It does seem like very powerful people and organizations wanted the Hunter Biden story suppressed and were covertly plotting to get Joe Biden elected president. Perhaps we can reflect on how different the world looks to the very powerful and wealthy and why they desperately hated Trump?
Fauci declares COVID is over. Hail Fauci.
“In response to a question about Musk, Jen Psaki immediately reiterated Biden's old comments about "reforming" section 230 protection (and the press immediately covered for her).”
Psaki again shows her ignorance, and that of her boss. § 230 of the CDA provides a safe harbor against tort claims if an on line transmitter of information is acting like a common carrier, and not as a publisher. The latter requires some editing or screening of the information. And that is precisely what these big tech companies have been doing in terms of banning or silencing of “misinformation”. As the law stands right now, these big tech companies should probably be liable for publishing a lot of the defamation that is at the core of their publishing businesses.
Here is an example. Susan calls Bill a racist on Twitter, Bill loses his job because of this, and Bill sues Susan and Twitter for defamation. Or maybe she calls Bill a vaccine denialist, and he tries to respond with articles showing that the vaccines are dangerous, and is banned for it until he retracts his post. Or, they just delete his offending posts. Twitter is included in the suit because they have deep pockets, and Susan doesn’t have enough to make suing her economically feasible. But Twitter respond that they fall into the § 230 Safe Harbor, and should be dropped from the suit. Should they get away with this? After all, they are editing content. I think not, but Eugene Volokh, an expert in this area of the law, and a much smarter lawyer than I, says maybe so. My, view is that these big tech Internet companies keep getting further and further out over their skis here, with their censoring and therefore editing, of the content produced, becoming ever more blatant. How can they say that they aren’t adding editorial content when they mark what someone says as “misinformation” or just plain deletes it with that justification?
There is a real debate here, but the role of the Executive branch here is less clear. We are essentially talking Judicial Branch determinations of a duly enacted law. The President and his subordinates in the Executive Branch can determine how they can interact with the public, but what is their role when two private parties are litigating in the Judiciary? Maybe the DOJ can try to sue Twitter under the Antitrust laws in order to force them to resume their censoring of content, but that is going to be expensive and take a long time.
But the big problem here is that what is panicking the left right now about Twitter is the chance that, under new management, they may be moving back onto their skis, back into territory that can maybe be justified as being that of a common carrier, and not a publisher. And this may make obvious that the so far unrepentant actions of its competitors, like FB, Google, etc, really are egregiously outside the § 230 Safe Harbor.
This issue does need to be resolved, but really requires Congressional action, which is unlikely to occur this late into an election year, and esp since the Dems, in token control of both Houses of Congress, would naturally want to strengthen the § 230 Safe Harbor provisions in favor of these big tech publishers, that spent significant resources (likely illegally) giving that party the Presidency and control of Congress. It’s a can of worms that they all know would work against them this election year.
"Elon made it clear in public that a large part of the reason he bought the platform was because of our moderation policies and disagreements with how we deal with health. This puts Twitter service and trust and safety, as well as anyone who cares about health on the platform in a very difficult position
This question from the Twitter all employee meeting yesterday perfectly illustrates the worldview of the progressives running not only this place but most of our institutions. They've locked into "health" as the all purpose magic word to intone to silence their opponents.
We're talking about the written word here, not some red faced spittle flecked tirade while nose to nose on some street corner. Don't mistake this focus on "health" to mean verbal threats of violence, bullying, and criminal activity. Elon has been very specific about his intentions in that area.
No, we're talking about mere differences of opinion. We're talking about "feelings being hurt" as being the equivalent to physical harm to progressives. There used to be this concept that everyone understood with regard to speech that inoffensive and mundane speech isn't the speech that needs the protection of a Constitutional Amendment. Harsh and offensive speech that you disagree with needs protection to prevent the mere pronouncement of offense being taken to silence others. The founders well understood that any standard subject to the personal opinion of the listener could be gamed by bad actors.
That's where we are today. It's all about emotions. Weaponized protestations of imminent mental harm caused by your unacceptable opinions or insufficient affirmations of agreement with my life choices. How can I be expected to go through the best version of my life knowing that there are people out there who don't approve of me, my decisions, my politics??? Clearly the only rational response is to silence you, to remove the health threat to me.
Alex Berenson, who is suing Twitter in California state court system, points out that, so far, the company has refused to invoke as a defense section 230. His theory is that Twitter and other tech social media platforms don't want a case dismissed in state court based on a federal statute as that might lead much more quickly to a SCOTUS hearing on the issue.
These people exclusively talk about the speech of others being restricted. The concept of their own speech being restricted is an impossibility.
That tells you all you need to know.
Europe is increasingly trying to flex a muscle it no longer has. Every year it becomes less important on the world stage. I have to wonder about how some of this is being characterized:
Under the E.U.’s Digital Services Act, European governments now have the power to ask Web platforms.... The platforms will also be obliged to prevent...European authorities...will be able to order social-media companies...
Is all this fine-tuning of authority really in the legislation?
Stories not typically found in Children's Bibles.
Judges 19:11-30
Judges 4:21
On reason TRump never got Section 230 repeal passed is because Kevin mccarthy actually LIKES twittern/Facebook banning Republicans. Per Newsweek:
"Carlson then discusses the reports first made by The New York Times that McCarthy asked a group of leading Republicans if tech companies could suspend the social media profile of GOP lawmakers who supported Donald Trump"
"Can't they take their Twitter accounts away, too?" McCarthy asked on January 10, 2021, two days after Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter for disagreeing with the Democrats and MSM.
It seems to me there's an epic book to be written from the archives of Twitter -- the memos, the algorithms, the training material, the meeting minutes -- it will be an adventure on the scale of the KGB archive exposure, only more immediate and moving to American readers in that they were the victims of Dorsey's gulag and not just some unfamiliar Muscovite apparatchiks. Maybe the new owner will open the vaunts, the oubliettes, and the hidden caches to an obscure conservative Solzhenitsyn. Come on, Elon, show us the bones.
This comment from Ann in the linked thread seems prescient:
"So if Google or Facebook, private corporations, took steps to squelch free speech that would just not even make sense to you as a concept because they can't affect free speech since they are not the government? If people organized and regularly showed up at events to shout down speakers they disapproved of, it would be incoherent to urge them to respect free speech."
I like how everyone has some motivated reasons for prediction of how the MuskTwiteers are going to change the platforum.
I'm excited to see what happens. Can Elon tame the Babylon Bee fanbois? Will the wokesters flee in fear? All this... and more. Enquiring mines want to know.
The hardest thing for me is to see and hear some of my friends act and talk like these tyrants. It boggles my mind how they don’t see the inequity of their stance, or the pure bullying nature of it. I have a theory that families have lost an ability to debate political topics passionately within, without someone losing their mind with rage and lashing out or walking away. Agree to disagree, acknowledge the fair points, own up to having bad info, etc. — effective conversational skills need to be learned and practiced just as much as reading, writing and basic math.
"Get the government out of the way. THEY Are the problem with MOST things in America. They should stick to protecting our borders and keeping us safe. That's it."
Nope! The Constitution lays out the ways that government is responsible for much more than just "protecting our borders and keeping us safe."
The problem is government to the extent that it serves masters other than the American public, and it does: it serves the wealthy individuals and corporate entities who have replaced the American people as the constituency of Congress, the White House, and the Supreme Court.
Get the oligarchs out of government and a great deal of its problems serving the people will be erased. (Of course, I'm prescribing a solution that will never occur.)
Hopefully, Elon will disclose how much of Twitter's Covid "misinformation" banning was done at behest of the government.
" Can Elon tame the Babylon Bee fanbois?"
Do they need taming? What a bizarre thing to say.
Free speech needs taming. After-all, the Bee Men mock the left non-stop. They need taming.
Here is a peek into regulation of AM radio broadcasters -- a dying breed. Likely coming soon to those who currently enjoy the freedom of the internet.
From The Broadcast Law Blog
1. The Commission first adopted rules requiring broadcast stations to maintain public files
documenting requests for political advertising time more than 80 years ago,1 and political file obligations have been embodied in section 315(e) of the Act since 2002.2
Section 315(e)(1) requires radio station licensees, among other regulatees, to maintain and make available for public inspection information about each request for the purchase of broadcast time that is made:
(a) by or on behalf of a legally qualified candidate for public office, 3 or (b) by an issue advertiser whose advertisement communicates a message relating to a political matter of national importance.4
Section 315(e)(3) of the Act requires stations to upload information about such requests to their online political files “as soon as possible.”5 Section 73.1943(a) of the Commission’s Rules requires stations to maintain and make available for public inspection information about all requests for broadcast time made by or on behalf of candidates for public office,6 and section 73.1943(c) requires stations to upload such information to their online political files “as soon as possible,” meaning “immediately absent unusual circumstances.”7
Again -the bottom line is the left are terrified of being mocked, ridiculed, exposed, and criticized...
They cannot handle it.
They hide behind their corrupt oligarchs - Biden and Hillary, Pelosi, Brennan and Clapper, lying hacks in the corrupt press etc...
Cyrano de Bergerac opens with the shutting down of a play on opening night, by threat of violence against its star actor, because he once dared glance at Cyrano's secret love, Roxane.
The audience is mollified when they get to see a duel to the death between Cyrano and a noble, with ex tempore poetry. The theater owner is satisfied when the costs of ticket refunds is paid him by Cyrano. Cyrano's friend is delighted when he finds out this all happened because Cyrano is in love with his distant cousin, Roxane.
There used to be a rather more full understanding of the proper way to censor, regarding the costs and obligations involved. Perhaps we can return to such methods, even in this degraded age of classless entertainments like Twitter.
The European Union is not constrained by the First Amendment. They’re hardly a model for the US.
Bruce Hayden: Thanks for an informative comment. You're correct, of course (as usual), but for the mission-creep of the Executive-Branch DOJ. I know I beat this horse to death weekly, but if you look at the original DOJ guidelines for "training the states," specifically police and prosecutors, from the Clinton-era "hate crime" enforcement regime headed up by Eric Holder, that's where vast bureaucracies were invented to control speech through the threat of both state and federal prosecution. Invented entirely out of thin air -- as the state and federal legislation in no way resembles the ways these laws are deployed.
Worse still, the police and prosecutor trainings were turned over to non-elected, non-transparent, entirely left-wing nonprofits. When I tried to obtain the training materials, I was cheerfully told by one soon-to-be disciplined, true believer trainer that, when it came to controversial subjects associated with hate laws, they "didn't put that (the touchy parts of the training) in writing." Her supervisor soon called to warn me that I did not have permission to repeat what I was told. This was the Simon Weisenthal Center, an otherwise admirable institution, but certainly not one with police powers over me or what I write. Maybe. It's been decades, and my FOIA disclosure requests still haven't arrived.
When Obama re-appointed Holder to the DOJ, the two amped up the DOJ and the DOE's involvement in punitive investigation of even minor so-called hate crimes, sending in "response teams" of DOJ agents to "investigate" graffiti and misdemeanor simple (sometimes merely verbal) assault.
State Departments of Justice, which liaison with the DOJ, do the same, bolstered by vast federal grants.
You don't need to actually prosecute someone (and risk losing) when you can simply use a show of force to threaten people and get them fired from their jobs or rendered unemployable, or added to mysterious "bias" lists kept by nonprofits officially empowered by the DOJ to monitor dissent -- which are the same nonprofits inventing the rules used by social media giants to ban people. I am on one of those lists -- a nonprofit higher-up apparently endowed with access to these lists, dumbly revealed this to me years ago.
To speak badly of the recently dead, Orren Hatch was instrumental in all of this, along with Ted Kennedy, which may explain why serial predators of random biological, heterosexual women are never prosecuted for hate crime. The Senate hearings on the HCSA would never be discussed in a public forum today.
So in practice, as opposed to legislation, these laws have done more damage to the separation of powers and freedom of speech than any other government activity of the last quarter century -- at least as corrosive and far more widespread than the Patriot Act. They normalized empowering private, partisan nonprofits to monitor and threaten every area of our life involving speech. The DOE, DOJ, and FBI ceded currently unknown amounts of power to politicized nonprofits and changed the culture and purpose of their agencies too. This is nearly all extra-legal and entirely extra-legislative behavior, and there is rarely a need to actually prosecute someone in order to remind everyone that this can happen to them, too. When it comes to lawsuits and prosecutions, the hate crime industrial complex often loses (including in a recent, shockingly egregious case), so they usually stick with just threatening and scapegoating. But in terms of free speech, these laws are the sleeper cells laboring to destroy the First Amendment. Europe has the EU doing this: we have the DOJ and all its nonprofit snitches, cough, partners.
Should Congress Prevent The New Yorker and the NYT from Continuing to Be Unfettered Disinformation Machines?
No.
A free society votes with money.
Althouse’s Marxist feminism is incompatible with free speech. And, yes, all feminism is Marxism.
The prof’s obsession with identity politics, both gay worship and feminism, cannot be squared with free speech. Both led inevitably to demands for quota systems, which ultimately favored rich white women and rich white guys who claimed to be gay.
Althouse’s best contribution to her own devotion to free speech is to renounce her gay worship and Marxist feminism.
The argument of liberals reduced to it’s briefest form is: “If you are a bigot, you deserve to be censored.”
Althouse piggy backed onto the black civil rights movement. This was a mistake that she won’t admit.
Sorry, but you can’t have free speech and embrace the corrupt gay worship and Marxist feminism. The proof is in what actually happened in human experience over the past 50 years. Althouse’s ideals about what should happen are negated by this reality.
And "democracy." Democracy means shackling the side that's not supposed to win.
Impressive. You somehow managed to make "Democracy Dies in Darkness" seem like a good thing.
Got banned from r/censorship over this very argument over the difference between government censorship and private censorship.
My point was that if r censorship was going to limit posts to just government censorship it should say so in the name of the sub; r/governmentcensorship. Instead of the broad blanket r/censorship. I must’ve been winning the argument because when he threatened to ban me, I said it would be consistent with the now eagerly censorious private sector.
I haven't waded through all the comments here, but I have always opposed laws against "hate crimes," which are nothing but punishment for one's ideas. If I punch someone in the face because I dislike him, or because I want to rob him, or because I deplore his race or sexual orientation or religion, etc., the offense and injury is the same in each instance. However, if I receive "enhanced" punishment" because my assault was motivated by my hateful biases, (my beliefs), this is a de facto punishment of my beliefs.
As we have seen, this validates the idea that banning or punishing speech and thought is fine and dandy if the speech and thoughts are "bad," "ugly," "hateful." This is not protection of free speech at all, but a mandated "right think" and "right speech." As the notions of what is "acceptable" thought and speech change over time, such mandated "right think" and "right speech" will shift and change, becoming ever more restrictive.
These are all ideas reinforced in me by "left" writers, most specifically Nat Hentoff, but others, as well. It is erroneous and self-serving to blame one side of the political divide as supporters of suppressing speech, while holding up the other side as champions of free speech. The truth is BOTH sides will tend to oppose speech and beliefs they find offensive, and it is a minority of people on either side (or along the spectrum of political belief) who will stand up for truly free speech and thought.
So you’re saying the vaunted European answer won’t garner the freedom we Americans should fancy.
His fondness for EU regulations makes me think he would have liked this act (which hasn't been approved yet) to have been in place to keep people from talking favorably about Brexit.
Can Of Cheese for Hunter said...
Again -the bottom line is the left are terrified of being mocked, ridiculed, exposed, and criticized...
They cannot handle it.
***********************
I submit that one huge reason they are terrified of being mocked, ridiculed etc is that they were never taught how to engage in debate and critical thinking in school, at any level. Nor do they know how to marshal facts and supporting reasoning when their positions are challenged: they just "feel" that you must be wrong, and are downright evil to hold contrary positions. Your reasoning is to them a threat.
Just look at schools today. No tests requiring essay answers, mostly just multiple choice.
No English courses concentrating on really understanding the classics----now its dreck filled with themes of racial wrongs and victimhood.
* Math is "hard", they say---precisely because it requires rigorous reasoning. Can't have that----it's raaaacccissst!
* No history courses taught in terms of understanding clashes of forces, be they economic, social, religious or territorial---or a combination of all those. Now it's all "woke" bullshit and cardboard cutout villains.
So it's no wonder at all the products of such a shitty education can do is censor, cover their ears and scream "Neener, neener, neener"!
And that's just fine with the teachers' unions, all the way up to that Randi Weingarten harridan.
I agree with Cook. It must be Wednesday.
I disagree about the suppression of speech being equal on "both sides." There are more then two sides in American politics right now.
The First Amendment, especially the clause referencing freedom of speech, had a huge target painted on it before the ink was even dry. Along with the right to vote on our leaders, it is a profound threat to power. As such, it always is and always has been and always will be under threat.
Very important we always stand strong against that threat, even when the temptation arises, as it has and will, for conservatives to want to suppress speech we consider "bad".
john cassidy has a nearly unmatched record of category error, it used to be merely economics, but he's branched out, into other aspects of domestic and foreign policy,
Money Manger said...
Note that the Twitter acquisition by Musk is hardly a “done deal”.
Trust his advice. He knows what he is talking about. After all he is a money “manger”!
Another day, another troll.
Jay Voight said, "How can the struggle for Twitter's ownership and capitalization make any sense at all?"
Soon to be paywalled at www.seekingalpha.com (an investing website you might know)
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4501979-is-the-end-near-for-musk-and-tesla
Critical of Tesla as an investment, the writer says Musk tends to "live by the stunt, die by the stunt." Musk certainly has done his share of stunts at Tesla: the famous "funding secured" tweet, robotaxis, the $35,000 model 3, Solar City, and so on.
With all the hype over Musk restoring "free speech" to Twitter, I'm a little suspicious this takeover might just be one more Musk stunt, purpose and outcome yet to be determined.
Blogger rcocean said...
On reason TRump never got Section 230 repeal passed is because Kevin mccarthy actually LIKES twittern/Facebook banning Republicans. Per Newsweek:
McCarthy is a weasel. Liz Cheney scored an "own goal" by taping his conversation.
I just wish Nunez was there to be Speaker.
These are all ideas reinforced in me by "left" writers, most specifically Nat Hentoff, but others, as well. It is erroneous and self-serving to blame one side of the political divide as supporters of suppressing speech, while holding up the other side as champions of free speech. The truth is BOTH sides will tend to oppose speech and beliefs they find offensive ...
Although I agree with you (and with Nat Hentoff), I am unable to look into the hearts and minds of people on different ends of the political spectrum. However, I can look into their actions and I find that people on the Left have been engaged in speech suppression for the last two decades. They control the universities and most of the media, so if those on the Right wanted to act in kind, it would be much more difficult.
Cook, you will not become a traitor to your cause if you admit that many of the people on your side have become modern fascists. Historically, it is the true liberals (on the right and the left) who keep us free.
"Cook, you will not become a traitor to your cause if you admit that many of the people on your side have become modern fascists."
I said as much in my prior comment.
In the US, free speech rights are "[p]remised on a distrust of governmental power" -- "[s]peech is an essential mechanism of democracy, for it is the means to hold officials accountable to the people." Citizens United v. FEC, 130 S.Ct. 876, 898 (2010). In contrast, the Europeans distrust the public, meaning essentially the little people, who must be forced to heed the wisdom of their betters running the government. Given recent history, it's a weird inversion -- so much went wrong in Europe by trusting the government in Germany, USSR and so many other places, where speech questioning the exercise of governmental power was stifled. Same today, in China, Russia and lots of other places, even on ostensibly non-ideological issues like the response to the pandemic (anyone at the NYer eager to sign on for the Shanghai treatment? didn't think so).
When writers at the NYer talk about the urgency of stifling 'disinformation,' they usually mean bad-thought about climate change (an existential crisis!), race/gender received wisdom (stop the haters!), Trumpist populism (the deplorables!), and the like. All of that is becoming a hard sell even in Europe, where the unfolding disaster in Ukraine is calling into question so much that, just yesterday, was unquestionable in polite company. But it's hard for the would-be censors to let go of the imagined power of their credentialed expertise and the class-based privileges that go with it.
I agree with Cook at 11:24.
I also agree with much of what he wrote at 10:40 but would only add that Term Limits is an idea whose time has come. Want to eliminate the people being bought and sold for 30 years? Make it a revolving door in Washington. Two Senate terms or four House terms. That's it. If you cannot get some work done in 12 or 8 years, you should probably be let go anyway. You would be anywhere else in America except the education industry or the Detroit Lions.
That would not prevent all politicians and their staffs from growing roots, but it might prevent some of them, while making some of the others less attractive. If you knew Nancy Pelosi would have been gone 27 years ago, would you have kept filling her coffers with hundreds of thousands of dollars and risking jail time by giving her and her husband insider information?
(World famous lurker says....)
Hello everyone! Where have I been? Lurking of course! Isn't Howard pretty lame?
On the other hand, Robert Cook is not lame. Although I think he is very often wrong, his comments at 11:24am are right on the money. There, I said it.
Bravo Robert!
---Another day, another troll.
Is that right, Richard? Funny, I know I've read other comments from Money Manger. He makes a good point, which explains the sizable discount on TWTR shares in the stock market on this acquisition.
How does free speech fit Risk Evaluation? General McChrystal offers This...
https://youtu.be/bPk1tuIBj18
So it will be illegal to question the current Bucha narrative, even though there has been no independent investigation done, illegal to question the election even as new evidence comes to light? That's the dream of the Democrats, and most Republicans too.
My big wake-up on the complete cognitive dissonance required to be a progressive came when Ted Kennedy died. The unabashedly transparent 180's between "the people's seat" vs the legal ability for the governer to pick an interim replacement was startling. So this Twitter pretzeling doesn't surprise me at all.
Look...when your entire worldview is propped up by the wholesale removal of accountability and judgement, waffling back and forth doesn't require a great deal of effort.
“This is just sad — or maybe it's funny — "How Congress Can Prevent Elon Musk from Turning Twitter Back Into an Unfettered Disinformation Machine/A new European Union law is a road map for how to put the onus on social-media companies to monitor and remove harmful content, and hit them with big fines if they don’t."”
Agree with AA 100% here. He is bemoaning the possibility that Twitter may no longer censure often accurate information that the left finds inconvenient. That is what monitoring and removing “harmful content” is all about. Does our federal government have that power? In the end, I don’t think that the 1st Amdt allows that. And I question whether the FJB/Garland DOJ has the statutory tools to do it (and if they did - their attempt would likely infringe the 1st Amdt (an as applied, versus facial, challenge to whatever statute they may try to use)).
Yes, the 1st Amdt doesn’t directly prevent companies like Twitter, FB, Google, etc from censuring “misinformation” on their own (except to maybe the extent that that takes them out of the § 230 Safe Harbor). But we are talking the opposite here - federal government actions to force these companies to prevent specified speech. And those government actions are what would violate the 1st Amdt. Plenty of case law saying that if they can’t do something directly, they can’t force third parties to do it indirectly.
I too agree with Dr K about agreeing with Cook. It’s why I defend him even when I disagree with him (which is often).
Canada is introducing a license to be a "journalist." This is after the Liberal Party there gave $60 million dollars to be spread among favored journalists, and Rebel Media has already been denied a journalism license, I believe, so while Trump is supposed to be the "authoritarian" It turns out it is Trudeau. They are also introduction speech regulations for blogs.
Very nice post Professor Althouse.
Under the E.U.’s Digital Services Act, European governments now have the power to ask Web platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to remove any content that promotes terrorism, hate speech, child sexual abuse, or commercial scams.
"Ask", or "demand".
I find it amusing that he can't even honestly describe what he's supporting.
And those restrictions are not a problem, because there's no such thing as "hate speech", they're just speech you don't like. And so long as you define "promotes terrorism" tightly enough (celebrating a terrorist attack promotes terrorism. Say that you don't like what a country did does NOT support terrorism), that's not a problem either.
Banning speech that "promotes child sexual abuse"? Damn, the Left is going to hate that one.
"The platforms will also be obliged to prevent the “manipulation of services having an impact on democratic processes and public security.”...
Oh, good, so no one will be allowed to ban articles about Hunter Biden's laptop in the month before the election!
If the European authorities see a surge of online disinformation during a crisis, such as the ongoing war in Ukraine, they will be able to order social-media companies to take “proportionate and effective measures” to counter the threat.
So we've gone from "ask " to "order".
And w/ Musk's Twitter, they'll be forced to make that order public, and defend it
The biggest problem for the banners of "misinformation" and "disinformation" is that honest public debate blows up their political games. Which is why Musk buying Twitter is such a threat to them.
"You must ban this claim as misinformation!" "Why, there are these things supporting the claim" "But the SPLC claims that's misinformation!" "Well, the SPLC also claimed that Y was misinformation, and it clearly is true. So we don't trust the SPLC's rankings"
The information suppression game falls apart once there's one honest player
it will force them to provide users with “an easy and effective way” to flag harmful content, so that it can be removed.
No problem. That sends posts to a group of moderators, at least 1/2 of whom are conservative.
And when someone "flags" something that is legit, THEY get put on suspension
Musk would surely object to the U.S. adopting a regulatory system like the one that the Europeans are drawing up, but that’s too bad. The health of the Internet—and, most important, democracy—is too significant to leave to one man, no matter how rich he is.
Given that Matel v Tam was decided 8-0, and 5 (6 until June) of the people who voted for it are still on SCOTUS, the chance of the US getting something like this past SCOTUS is pretty much Nil
Freedom of speech shouldn't depend on one man either, and it's tragic that we reached the point where it did. But the new stage of this tragedy is the effort to mobilize government against Musk's free-speech agenda. How can the American government have that power? It's for "the health of the Internet." Health beats freedom these days, don't you know? And "democracy." Democracy means shackling the side that's not supposed to win.
Well said
It's nice that Howard finally came out and said that only a fool doesn't ignore his comments. I saw his avatar, so it saved me reading it.
"Get the oligarchs out of government and a great deal of its problems serving the people will be erased. (Of course, I'm prescribing a solution that will never occur.)"
That's because the government has too much power. Reduce government power and the oligarchs will leave of their own accord.
It's the only way, Robert, and the way the founders (smart people that they were) intended.
@tim in vermont,
Howard says something along those lines every once in awhile. First time I noticed, it changed my opinion of him.
I'll bet he's a pretty fun guy to have a beer with, assuming he drinks at all. He's a troll with a sense of humor.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2022/04/27/busted-how-a-covid-frontline-doctor-was-exposed-as-a-total-fraud-n2606421?utm_campaign=rightrailsticky1
So, it turns out that a "overworked Pediatrician on the front lines of Covid" is actually a school pediatrician who mostly worked remotely, and while she was beating the drum for the rest of us to wear masks, she herself posted lots of pictures of herself maskless with friends, on Instagram
Let me know when the EU is ready to ban her kind of "misinformation".
Until then?
It's all BS
"Perhaps the answer is: Free speech was only ever a means to an end."
Exactly. The Left/liberals (I was/am a liberal) climbed up onto the platform of Free Speech where everyone could see and hear them. From there they accomplished important civil rights victories. Beginning in the 1990's, having no more popular causes to advance, they began to push their true radical agenda---and pulled the ladder up behind them so that no one to the right of Stalin was allowed up on the platform anymore.
There are people who are very committed to the idea that "experts" should instruct other people what to think. It never occurs to them that the expert selected by the powers that be to run their life might be someone with whom they fundamentally disagree. If it did they would be more cautious about recommending such as system.
"I'll bet he's a pretty fun guy to have a beer with, "
I used to think that, but he has shown a nasty streak.
"Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one."
Something like that used to be a cynical rejoinder to talk of freedom of the press.
Now it seems like it's being advanced as an ideal.
People who claim to be most agitated about Citizens United and big money in politics also for some reason want the oligarchs to control and censor free expression.
The thought that an oligarch might want free expression does scare them though.
On the topic of censorship, the image that comes to mind is the Speaker of the House of Representatives tearing up the speech of the President of the United States, who was standing at the podium, the place where speech happens. The tearing up was provocative, planned (I figure), and unprecedented in my lifetime. It symbolizes well where our culture is now and how fragile decorum has become. So many respond to speech they don't like now not by defending the speaker's right to speak but instead by tearing up the speech, so to speak.
The issue of the differences between the laws of libel and the issue of regulation of new digital platforms are mixed together. In England, you can't damage someone's reputation by statements - that's libel. The truth is no defense. They say: "The greater the truth, the greater the libel." In the US the truth is a defense against libel due to the First Amendment. So whose standard do you use in an international platform like Twitter? I ran up against this when I was researching and publishing on eugenics in England. First they told me they'd fine me. I said: make it a lot for publicity purposes but I have no money so whaddaya think? Then they said they'd go for the printer which scared the printer. So then I published on the internet which was very new then but I saw the possibilities. They couldn't counter that - where was I publishing? under what laws? Now eugenics is illegal under the European Constitution so you'd think it was all sunny for exposing eugenics. But the eugenic societies claim that they are not supporting eugenics any more. Suppose I say they are and a struggle ensues over just what has changed aside from the name? Might we both end up in jail - them for being eugenicists and me for proving it/ - "the greater the truth, the greater the libel", you know. And what is true about eugenics is true about hundreds of terms these days - Nazi, Communist, fascist, white, black, man, woman, mother. I belong to the group saying that only free speech can resolve the issues caused by speech among free citizens.
Shouting Thomas wrote: The argument of liberals reduced to it’s briefest form is: “If you are a bigot, you deserve to be censored.”
No. Wrong. The argument of today's liberals reduced to its briefest form is: "Obey or die."
And "democracy." Democracy means shackling the side that's not supposed to win.
The democratic/dictatorial duality.
You somehow managed to make "Democracy Dies in Darkness" seem like a good thing.
Majority. Minority. Diversity of individuals, minority of one. Principles matter.
Demos-cracy is aborted at the Twilight Fringe (e.g. emanations from penumbras) is to be avoided.
No. Wrong. The argument of today's liberals reduced to its briefest form is: "Obey or die."
Take a knee, beg, good boy, girl, whatever.
“If you are a bigot, you deserve to be censored.”
Sanctimonious hypocrite? Past, present, and progressive (e.g. forward-looking).
If you're politically incongruent, you are eligible to be judged, labeled, and aborted... cancelled under diversity [dogma], inequity, and exclusion of the Pro-Choice "ethical" religion.
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