U.S. Politics- This Is Us, Basically Fascists

[Darth Richard II]

Hasn't he already done impeachable shit on twitter?

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

And the board moderator model is not without its problems. But in small communities like ours, it's largely adequate. But on platforms with millions of content creators and billions of users something else is needed.

Something in the middle. An independent body (non-governmental) that reviews complaints (including copyright and fair use issues) about content across all social media platforms that sign up to it. Lots of media industries have independent complaint and content boards / authorities that are arms length from the corporations who produce the content. It's time for social media companies to create arms length complaint boards regarding the content they host. There's no problem with platforms having content standards, but enforcement of those standards should be in more independent hands.

Tying some threads together:

This suggestion sounds perfectly sensible to me, except for two things:

1. How does all of these companies effectively outsourcing their content moderation to a third party solve any particular problem and what problem is it supposed to solve?

2. What's to stop any of these platforms from acting regardless of this independent moderation board?

3. Are you replacing an existing flawed model with yet another flawed model with even less accountability?

In your previous post you mentioned the possibility of tit-for-tat retaliation or "James Gunning" other content creators.  I don't dismiss this this but I'm not concerned about it because of the Alex Jones example in particular.  I also don't think James Gunn's recent troubles are a good analogy.  The Alex Jones "event", didn't come out of the blue or happen in a vacuum.

This isn't someone who made a few offensive off-hand comments, this is someone with a definite, lengthy, track record.  Someone who is apparently indifferent to the material harm his commentary is doing to people.  When he points to grieving parents of murdered children and calls them "Crisis Actors" and his listeners start harassing these people, there may not be a clear cut legal responsibility but there sure as hell is and ethical one.

 I have no idea what content got him into trouble.  I also have no idea what kinds of complaints or warnings he's gotten in the past. Given his current legal situation, I wouldn't be surprised if one or more of these platforms did this in order to fend off possible litigation in the future.  

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

46 minutes ago, Serious Callers Only said:

 

Speaking of temporally embarrassed millionaires, Alex Jones is asking Trump for 'help' supporting his abhorrent verbal diarrhea now that he was banned from the main internet platforms.

 

Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Please, Donald, pick up the phone.

7 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Hasn't he already done impeachable shit on twitter?

He's done plenty of impeachable shit.  Meth fueled Twitter spasms are his way of broadcasting them to the world.

Did I say "Meth"? *cough* cocaine *cough*

[Jace, Extat]

13 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Hasn't he already done impeachable shit on twitter?

He can't be impeached. Only democrats can be impeached.

[The Anti-Targ]

3 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Tying some threads together:

This suggestion sounds perfectly sensible to me, except for two things:

1. How does all of these companies effectively outsourcing their content moderation to a third party solve any particular problem and what problem is it supposed to solve?

2. What's to stop any of these platforms from acting regardless of this independent moderation board?

3. Are you replacing an existing flawed model with yet another flawed model with even less accountability?

 

That's 3 things.

1. The problem it solves is corporate control of speech, fair use and copyright, on ostensibly open platforms.

2. Contracts and memorandums of understanding. It would be an opt-in situation, not forced by legislation.

3. Every model of content moderation is flawed. The idea is for it to be less flawed. The constitution, terms of reference and funding model for an independent body would determine the transparency and accountability.

Not sure how it is in the USA, but in other countries there are independent broadcasting standards bodies and advertising standards bodies for traditional media, and these seem to function with reasonable transparency and accountability. A social media content moderation body could be set up along similar lines.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

 

1 hour ago, Serious Callers Only said:

Speaking of temporally embarrassed millionaires, Alex Jones is asking Trump for 'help' supporting his abhorrent verbal diarrhea now that he was banned from the main internet platforms.

Hold on.  The video embedded in that Huffpo article mentions "The Real News with David Knight" as being the only infowars program left on iTunes. But the graphic shown is for The Real News network; a pretty good independent news outlet that is like, the farthest thing in the universe from Alex Jones.  Fix it. Fix it now, Arianna.

[Darth Richard II]

Anyway fuck nazis, punch them in the face.

*puts on Rocketeer soundtrack*

[Jace, Extat]

8 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Anyway fuck nazis, punch them in the face.

*puts on Rocketeer soundtrack*

That movie has a liberal bias.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

That's 3 things.

1. The problem it solves is corporate control of speech, fair use and copyright, on ostensibly open platforms.

2. Contracts and memorandums of understanding. It would be an opt-in situation, not forced by legislation.

3. Every model of content moderation is flawed. The idea is for it to be less flawed. The constitution, terms of reference and funding model for an independent body would determine the transparency and accountability.

Not sure how it is in the USA, but in other countries there are independent broadcasting standards bodies and advertising standards bodies for traditional media, and these seem to function with reasonable transparency and accountability. A social media content moderation body could be set up along similar lines.

In the inuied states you have the FCC, but I suspect cash flows from advertisers and public pressure has more to do with what gets on traditional media, for good or ill.

It sounds interesting, I'm just not sure I know enough about the subject to comment further.

Oh, and Jones has commented on this de-platforming.  Globalist cabal are up to it apparently.  Not the best rhetoric to use if he wants to get his channels back.  He also wasted no time in ordering his minions to purchase more supplements.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

27 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Anyway fuck nazis, punch them in the face.

*puts on Rocketeer soundtrack*

In Trumps America, The Rocketeer soundtrack plays you.

[Serious Callers Only]

Well, now after his favorite gay frog party killed net neutrality after a false flag of a DDS attack.

 

Quote

They didn't just defaud the public. They stole a shit ton of American's identities and then used them to fill out official government complaints.

Quote

So the FCC made false statements using Real American Identities. I will repeat the FCC stole people's identities and then used them as justification to repeal Net Neutrality.

(The FCC or 'someone' with access to the FCC servers)

 

Anyway the point is that after this Alex Fucking Jones wants 'anti-trust' rules for google, apple, youtube etc, and wants, i shit you not, a Internet Bill of Rights.

Jimmies definitely rustled. Maybe he wants to be minister of minitrue on the eternal administration.

[DMC]

2 hours ago, Altherion said:

Sure, there are empirical facts of the sort that you describe, but the overwhelming majority of them simply aren't interesting or important. What fraction of the country do you think even knows who Sekulow is? There have been so many Trump flunkies accused of various things that it's hard to keep track. And then you have facts like Trump making false statements which are important, but not new -- there were numerous instances of the same before the election and people voted for him anyway.

K...so you eventually got around to my point at end of this graph - there are empirical facts that are important (the Sekulow example was just the news of the day).  If you agree with that, I don't see how you can logically maintain the overall position you're taking.

2 hours ago, Altherion said:

My point was that even for something relatively simple, it is beyond the means and abilities of the average citizen to verify such a study (I don't just mean the methodology, but starting with collection of the raw data).

Of course people rely on cues - for a whole host of things in terms of political information.  Problem is your premise seems to be it doesn't matter if those cues come from flagrantly and even nakedly insidious false sources because, shrug, there are no facts.  And that's a bunch of bullshit.

2 hours ago, Altherion said:

Sort of, but not really: Kunh is concerned mainly with people who are working in good faith, but get trapped by a paradigm whereas the distrust for institutions is mainly due to suspicions that the latter are not working in good faith, but instead to further some agenda.

Oh I strongly disagree, reread your Kuhn.  His problem was institutions tended to perpetuate the paradigm (and consequently its "agenda") - and that's how researchers get ensconced.  Sure, they're working in good faith, but that's the only difference from his argument to your own.  Interesting - are you admitting the right is not acting in good faith here?

2 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

The last thing you want is to ban Trump from Twitter. That's the only platform where he's likely to admit to impeachable actions, without even realising it and before anyone with half a brain in his administration can stop him.

Totally agreed.  Ask any lawyer and they'll tell you Trump's tweets are a goldmine for the prosecution.

[karaddin]

 

6 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

God forbid anyone get their hands on the reigns of Youtube who thinks much of the criticism of Trump is malicious harassment and starts banning his critics from the platform.

Let me introduce you to twitters moderation practices where open nazis threatening Jewish people go weeks to months before any action is taken, but saying something unkind to the actual nazi friend of the CEO (Mike Cernovich and Jack respectively) can get your account suspended within a minute.

I'm sympathetic to your concern in the big picture, but unfortunately we're past the point where we can worry about fighting by peace time rules. Anything that shuts down this shit and stops it from perpetuating itself is necessary and we can get back to setting good rules once the nazis resurgence has been put down.

[Serious Callers Only]

Speaking of the net neutrality fraud and the administration shitbird that enabled it, this comment chain is gold. People whose names and addresses were used in this fraud, tried to post others documenting their real opinion, deleted etc.

I'm actually pretty certain that the party of treason has no intention of leaving peacefully because of actions like these. They're absolutely preparing a coup and the usa will be lucky to avoid the second civil war, or unlucky as the case may be.

Considering that the latest models of global warming say things are even worse than expected, and that will make the 'south' of america exceedingly unpopular. Inhabitable even, not to mention mexico.

this too : https://www.gravwell.io/blog/discovering-truth-through-lies-on-the-internet-fcc-comments-analyzed

 

 

 

 

 

[DMC]

11 hours ago, butterbumps! said:

Confronting them with facts makes them even less willing to engage; defending Trump becomes a sacred cause.  I mean, I'm fairly skeptical about how much of this shit they truly believe, versus how much they consciously post-rationalize to keep regressive systems of power in place.

The interesting thing about Zaller's RAS model is it expects those with both low and high political awareness will reject conflicting information (thereby resolving their dissonance).  It's only the mid-levels of political awareness in which respondents will be persuaded by new information.  I'm not a huge fan - in part because he ripped the theory off - but I tend to agree.  Low information respondents either don't vote or will vote dogmatically on cues.  High information voters will be equipped enough to, as you say, "post-rationalize" any conflicting information away.  But those "mid level" respondents tends to populate a lot of the Independents, or the 15% that both does not approve of Trump but also doesn't habitually vote with either party.  Electorally, they're pretty essential to persuade.  Particularly in midterms.

[OldGimletEye]

On 8/5/2018 at 9:51 PM, Altherion said:

Third, there seem to be a lot more people than before who feel that they're being screwed by society and who feel so rather intensely. There are always people with such feelings -- sometimes almost certainly justified, sometimes almost certainly frivolous -- but there usually aren't this many of them. In a nutshell, if people don't think that their children will be better off than they were, they're more likely to rock the boat.

Which group or groups are we talking about here?
Are we talking about white people, and particularly male white people, that feel they are being screwed as they are losing status relative to other groups? Its hard to have a lot of sympathy with this one.
Or we talking about the average Joe and Jane that feel like they have gotten a raw deal over the last 30 or 40 years? This one is pretty much true and needs to be addressed.

On 8/5/2018 at 11:56 PM, Altherion said:

That is actually really, really hard to prove. There are valid philosophical positions (e.g. solipsism) where it is actually not the case. However, even if we stick to the more common materialist worldview, it still doesn't help our institutions. That is, suppose that there really are facts out there which are well and truly true and independent of what you think of them. In this case, how do you know what they are? You can get at a bunch which are close to you using your senses and instruments and use a simple version of the scientific method to convince yourself that, for example, it takes an average of roughly 15 minutes to walk from your house to your favorite store, but the extent of facts which can be learned this way is quite limited and, in any case, this kind of facts are not worthy of institutional attention.

Hmm. Sounds like the rise of the Post Modernist conservative. That this sort of thing has taken hold on the right really ought not to be too surprising in hindsight.

To be honest, some on the left bear responsibility for this epistemological mess. I've never had much regard for the likes of Derrida, or Doritos, Tacos, or Nachos or whatever the hell his name was.  I'd like to "deconstruct" Doritos.

On 8/6/2018 at 1:15 AM, DMC said:

Well, first of all, they obviously don't get it exactly right.  That's why monthly numbers are double and triple checked (and revised accordingly) the subsequent two months.  But the BLS is as transparent as possible about their methodology.  If you have a substantive criticism of that I'm all ears, but you don't, and It's quite apparent neither do the vast majority of individuals that dogmatically don't trust government and institutions.

Yeah try reading their methodology and drop the conspiracy theorizing for just a minute.

[Jo498]

It is rather disingenious to describe Kuhnian normal science as "trapped" in a paradigm. Sure, it is limited and guided by the paradigm but there is nothing blameworthy or dysfunctional about it. On the contrary, the restriction by the paradigm is necessary for the specialized puzzle-solving to emerge and to discover more and more anomalies that point beyond the paradigm and eventually lead to a revolution and a new paradigm.

But the dependence on institutions for reliable information about science and other specialized topics is far more general than any quasi-Kuhnian models of the growth (or rather not really growth) of knowledge and hard to deny. I don't know about the US but in Germany the "official" unemployment numbers are about a million lower than the "unofficial" ones because many de facto unemployed are not counted. This information about this difference is available in principle but one will usually not become aware of it by watching daily news, reading tabloids etc. Some newspapers would point out the caveats but one would typically have to read a longer article and/or a more substantive paper/magazine. There will be far more frequent headlines, comments and editorials ignoring this problem and patting themselves on the back for low figures etc.

[Martell Spy]

Report: Wilbur Ross Accused of Stealing Over $120 Million

https://www.thedailybeast.com/report-wilbur-ross-accused-of-grifting-over-dollar120-million?ref=home

Quote

Wilbur Ross could be “among the biggest grifters in American history,” according to Forbes magazine, amid new allegations that he may have wrongly siphoned off more than $120 million from business associates. An investigation, citing 21 people who have worked with the man who is now President Trump’s commerce secretary, claims Ross stole “a few million here and a few million there” from various companies. Forbes reports: “All told, these allegations—which sparked lawsuits, reimbursements and an SEC fine—come to more than $120 million.” 

 

[DMC]

3 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

I've never had much regard for the likes of Derrida, or Doritos, Tacos, or Nachos or whatever the hell his name was.  I'd like to "deconstruct" Doritos.

I'm pretty sure if you try to deconstruct Doritos you'll be liable to a lawsuit on proprietary grounds.

17 minutes ago, Jo498 said:

It is rather disingenious to describe Kuhnian normal science as "trapped" in a paradigm. Sure, it is limited and guided by the paradigm but there is nothing blameworthy or dysfunctional about it. On the contrary, the restriction by the paradigm is necessary for the specialized puzzle-solving to emerge and to discover more and more anomalies that point beyond the paradigm and eventually lead to a revolution and a new paradigm.

Indeed. 

What I would say if I subscribed to Kuhnian thought (which I don't) is in terms of American politics we're certainly at one of his "transitional phases."  Altherion is undeniably right that consensus no longer even remotely exists, which if I recall correctly means we're in the "crises" phase that leads to a paradigm shift.  People have a tendency to hyperbolize the dramatic nature of their times, but I think it's warranted now.

[Serious Callers Only]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/now-trump-administration-wants-limit-citizenship-legal-immigrants-n897931?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma