The issue of free speech in private and social media.

[Vanoi]

Excuse me but that's not my problem if they can't compete. What we were discussing is that a small number of corporations control all social media. Your own chart shows that's not true. Twitter isn't even as popular as Reddit or Qzone anymore.

[Aexodus]

QZone is chinese.

Fortunately we do have reddit, but it doesn’t seem to be a suitable platform for political campaigns.

[Vanoi]

QZone is chinese.

So?

Fortunately we do have reddit, but it doesn’t seem to be a suitable platform for political campaigns.

I personally wouldn't rely on social media for political campaigns.

[The spartan]

QZone is chinese.

Fortunately we do have reddit, but it doesn’t seem to be a suitable platform for political campaigns.

Reddit has been through several purges already. Why isn't that a problem?

[Aexodus]

So?

Well it’s not relevant to Europe and North America.

I personally wouldn't rely on social media for political campaigns.

Why not. It worked for Donald Trump, and is working for Jeremy Corbyn.

Reddit has been through several purges already. Why isn't that a problem?

I actually have no idea what happens on reddit.

[Vanoi]

Well it’s not relevant to Europe and North America.



Why not. It worked for Donald Trump, and is working for Jeremy Corbyn

Europe and America aren't the only countries with social media.

Trump and Corbyn used social media but they didn't rely on it. They still campaigned in other ways.

[Heathen Hammer]

Which assumes all social media is controlled by a few people which it is not. Social media is more than Facebook and Twitter.

Social media is owned by a small group of corporations which clearly cooperate with each other to suppress more independent grassroots competition. Its not real free market at this point. Like imagine Internet Explorer wouldn't let you download any other browser.

[Vanoi]

Axedous posted the top 15 social media sites. There's more than seven separate corporations that own these sites. So no, it's not a small group of corporations and you have no proof they are cooperating which each other to supress independent movements.

[Aexodus]

Europe and America aren't the only countries with social media.

I don’t really see how Qzone is relevant to you and I. Besides it’s China, where there is a lot of online censorship.

Trump and Corbyn used social media but they didn't rely on it. They still campaigned in other ways.

Can we not at least agree that social media has an inordinate influence in politics, and what people see, especially young people? More and more people are getting their news solely from social media.

I mean, literally 79% of Americans use facebook. That’s mad like

[Vanoi]

I don’t really see how Qzone is relevant to you and I. Besides it’s China, where there is a lot of online censorship.

Hey you're the one who posted the chart with foreign social media. My point was regardless of how popular Facebook is that social media is not controlled by a small group of people nor does it have a monopoly on information.

Can we not at least agree that social media has an inordinate influence in politics, and what people see, especially young people? More and more people are getting their news solely from social media.

I mean, literally 79% of Americans use facebook. That’s mad like

I agree but a large number of people still get their information from other sources.

http://www.journalism.org/2017/09/07...latforms-2017/

Only 20% of Americans said they often got their news from social media.

Another thing is that news often shared on social media still comes from reporters and groups like AP and Reuters

[Love Mountain]

If 1960s Americans don’t want to sell to black people, then that’s just a free market then.

Right-wigners aren't denied service. Their disgusting posts and ideology, which calls for violence and discrimination on the basis of skin color, culture, or nationality. There's a difference. Right-wingers can still post about cat memes.

[Sir Adrian]

I wouldn't be so quick to generalize right-wingers, if you're anything but a Green Party supporter you are one after all. And besides both sides of identity charade are equally as vicious and disgusting, the only difference is in the color and gender they want exterminated/suppressed/etc

There is no difference between what you call the alt-right calling for white supremacy and the other side (the "left") banning any and all white people from university campus or between the former persecuting women and the latter persecuting men. Anybody who engages in identity politics is cut from the same cloth, starting with alt-righters and feminists.

[Aexodus]

Their disgusting posts and ideology, which calls for violence and discrimination on the basis of skin color, culture, or nationality.

That’s not what PragerU’s videos were. In fact you don’t seem to understand conservatism at all.

[Love Mountain]

That’s not what PragerU’s videos were. In fact you don’t seem to understand conservatism at all.

My views are posted on this Forum. I am actually a right winger, and I wasn't talking about PragerU. I don't even know who it is.

I wouldn't be so quick to generalize right-wingers, if you're anything but a Green Party supporter you are one after all. And besides both sides of identity charade are equally as vicious and disgusting, the only difference is in the color and gender they want exterminated/suppressed/etc

There is no difference between what you call the alt-right calling for white supremacy and the other side (the "left") banning any and all white people from university campus or between the former persecuting women and the latter persecuting men. Anybody who engages in identity politics is cut from the same cloth, starting with alt-righters and feminists.

This "both sides the same" is annoying, because they are certainly not. The majority of what we would categorize as "left-wingers" such as myself, will typically vote and follow the ideas of centrist to center-right parties. Right-wingers typically endorse far-right. There is also a stark difference between discrimination based on ethnic and cultural grounds, about which a person can often do nothing about, and discrimination based on ideological grounds, something a person actively chooses. There is a big difference between a zealous feminist who has misguided notions of equality, and a fascist, who does not believe in universal liberal ideas whatsoever.

I also misspoke as well, of course, I was referring strictly to alt-right and radical groups that openly embrace fascism, white supremacy, and many radical forms of nationalism, not right wingers as a whole.

[Sir Adrian]

If you lean center-right to moderate right you are a right-winger, I should know I follow the same ideology. What you think of as right-winger is actually a completely different axis libertarian vs authoritarian, and too much of either is generally bad.

I agree with you but I have to point out that we don't really have any real honest to God politically active fascists in the world today. We do have hate groups, which are usually single issue and not opposed to all modern liberal values (ex: the KKK or Jobbik) and we have nationalist movements which are for modern liberal value, but only for their ethnicity/country. We do have neo-nazi groups, but they're mostly a bunch of weirdos who hang around in basements with no clout or political say at all. Besides, fascism is illegal in a pretty large number of countries. If any actual fascists would spring up the police and general establishment would put them down - like what happened in Austria in the early 2000s.

[fkizz]

My views are posted on this Forum. I am actually a right winger, and I wasn't talking about PragerU. I don't even know who it is.

Well enjoy that "center-right will be viewed as center-right" phase that most people viewed as turbo-fascists have. Give it a few more years and you'll be smeared as a Fascism Apologist by some rabid SJW

Pepe the Frog was labelled as an Extreme-Right symbol by ADL, so yeah, anything is fair game

Which assumes all social media is controlled by a few people which it is not. Social media is more than Facebook and Twitter.

Oligopoly definition still applies if firms in question control most of the market share, as Aeoxdus points.

Now the problem I see with your replies is that you're applying morality to what I'm saying, when Oligopoly is just a definition to "charter" what type of competition is to be expected. In this case we should expect a clash between a few big firms who absorve most of the monetary mass in game for this.

[Love Mountain]

Ah gentlemen, but the trouble here is that the "radical left" that you so often complain about would vote Hillary, Sanders, Corbyn, and such. In other words, mainstream parties that will generally suppress radical SJW madness. On the other hand, the radical right have coalesced under a number of far-right parties that have a number of thugs in their ranks and propose some truly dangerous thought. In America, the far-right has made significant gains, and rather than being quashed by moderate Republicans, the extremists have infiltrated the Republican party instead and moved them closer and closer towards extreme right. Norms, respect, and dignity have rapidly taken a turn for the worse in the highest levels of my government.

So no, I'm not at all worried about gender-neutral bathrooms being introduced in schools nation-wide. White supremacy, 2nd amendment rights, and a normalization of radical thought? Why, that battle is fought in TWC itself on a daily basis. In this very thread we are arguing that Government should enforce private businesses to accept all ideas and speech regardless of how distasteful it is. Why, Reddit should be forced to maintain subreddits that hate on fat people, that promote misogyny, that actively preach discriminating against people on the basis of race. I could push on and ask, "Why stop there?" but I'm pretty sure we can all understand that private business certainly has the right to moderate and control the content being published on their platform. The great thing about the Internet is that it's ultimately an open playground. If there is a demand for a space that's truly open, the market will provide it. I myself enjoyed Encyclopedia Dramatica a few times in my life. I certainly cannot fault Reddit for banning what they deem as toxic, and while we can debate for centuries on a case-by-case basis on whether something should've been banned or not, there is still a high level of free speech on sites like Reddit, Facebook, and so on. Thought why someone would want to actually go and comment in a pit of sycophants like r/Conservative and r/guns is beyond me.

[fkizz]

Ah gentlemen, but the trouble here is that the "radical left" that you so often complain about would vote Hillary, Sanders, Corbyn, and such. In other words, mainstream parties that will generally suppress radical SJW madness. On the other hand, the radical right have coalesced under a number of far-right parties that have a number of thugs in their ranks and propose some truly dangerous thought. In America, the far-right has made significant gains, and rather than being quashed by moderate Republicans, the extremists have infiltrated the Republican party instead and moved them closer and closer towards extreme right. Norms, respect, and dignity have rapidly taken a turn for the worse in the highest levels of my government.

Once every center-right winger gets the accusation of fascism, the number of acused as a fascist is so high that it pays off politically to come off as a fascist empathiser eventually (gives you many extra votes), or at least to pretend to be a fascist on solidarity basis for the wrongly accused (number is quite high, even Dilbert Cartoonist Scott Adams was included in the accused of ""fascism""). Plus poe's law. Also bad history, average left winger does not understand what is Fascism exactly, why it even appeared in first place, nor will know what is an Autarcia/Corporativist economy either.
There was a lot of heroic charging against the windmills done by the Left.

A big lack of "know your enemy" too by Left wing. By Sun Tzu standards, this is a major red flag for the left. Knowing the enemy is "bad" is not enough.

So no, I'm not at all worried about gender-neutral bathrooms being introduced in schools nation-wide. White supremacy, 2nd amendment rights, and a normalization of radical thought? Why, that battle is fought in TWC itself on a daily basis. In this very thread we are arguing that Government should enforce private businesses to accept all ideas and speech regardless of how distasteful it is. Why, Reddit should be forced to maintain subreddits that hate on fat people, that promote misogyny, that actively preach discriminating against people on the basis of race.

See? Your post sounds too emotionally invested in this to see with clarity. If all is seen on other faction is hateful enemies as a generalization, don't expect the average of them to be saints who can endure punishment merely saying "they do not know what they do" to your attack, the sharp majority of them will simply emboldened to give a counter response.

[Aexodus]

My views are posted on this Forum. I am actually a right winger, and I wasn't talking about PragerU. I don't even know who it is.

I was referring to an earlier discussion about neo-conservative pragerU being censored

PragerU just tweeted this out.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Nah nothing to see here.

This is one of the pragerU videos removed by facebook specifically for hate speech.

The issue at heart stems not from Facebook’s actual actions, but from what they do with their immense public influence and media power as a publisher. If a company or group of companies is abusing its monopoly we do something, but seem to have this perception social media is untouchable. Have we forgotten the massive tax breaks and public subsidy they have gotten?

Here is another video censured for ‘hate speech’





Well both Twitter and Facebook have fallen 20% in the market. The censorship debacle probably contributed to that.

If we can regulate Social Media to prohibit hate speech as facebook has done, there’s no reason we can’t regulate in the other direction as well.

Ah gentlemen, but the trouble here is that the "radical left" that you so often complain about would vote Hillary, Sanders, Corbyn, and such.

You can’t just gloss over Corbyn. He IS radically left. The two frontmen of Labour are literal Marxists! Literal marxists. Then there’s diane Abbot, a chairman mao apologist

[Aexodus]

Nigel Farage makes some good points in this Telegraph article. I’ll copy paste the whole thing as it’s a premium one.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

YouTube made me. The vast reach of this video-sharing website ensured my message about the perils of the EU became mainstream and, in turn, helped to secure Brexit. Twitter gave rise to Donald Trump. His eye-catching tweets propelled this unorthodox businessman to the White House, despite him having no serious political experience whatsoever. And Facebook was instrumental in turning the Five Star Movement into Italy’s biggest political party in just a few years.

These three examples of anti-establishment triumph prove the supremacy of digital platforms today. Google is now the preferred gateway to information for most people, with 3.5 billion Google searches made in any 24-hour period. Similarly, almost 1.5 billion people log onto Facebook daily and in the same time frame 500 million tweets are sent.

It’s easy to see why politicians and activists have taken to cyberspace so enthusiastically. Online, they can present ideas quickly and without fear of being edited. Individual viewers and readers can then choose who or what to support without influence from the biased liberal media.

The upshot of this, however, is that power now rests with just a handful of conglomerates. This has had some deeply troubling consequences. Free speech is under threat as never before.

The great irony of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google dominating the information business is that the people who own and run these giant firms, and who facilitated these various recent political upsets, are ultra-liberal in every way. The collective horror they feel at having unleashed Trump or Brexit is palpable.

Consider Google’s 2016 “group hug” video which came to light recently. It showed a private meeting of Google employees in which senior executive Ruth Porat appeared to cry over Trump’s victory and told colleagues to cheer each other up by hugging.

More sinister is the digital censorship first observed in late 2016, straight after Trump’s victory. The vehicles these tech companies created travelled in a direction which unnerved and angered the firms so much they began to tinker with the engines in an effort to alter their course. We know this thanks to the many examples of Twitter “shadow banning” that have surfaced, where a Twitter user’s posts are made invisible to everybody but the account holder, limiting their audience without the user immediately realising it.

Similarly, in February 2018 it was reported that Trump’s Facebook engagement had suddenly declined by 45 per cent. The reason was that, the month before, the site had introduced a new algorithm to its newsfeed. Its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, claimed this was intended to give greater emphasis to posts from friends and family rather than businesses and brands. Yet it is estimated that traffic to certain Right-of-centre sites and commentators driven by Facebook has fallen by 25 per cent or more. Zuckerberg was unperturbed.

Last month every major platform banned the controversial American conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

The terms of trade are clear: if they don’t like you, they will erase you.

Left-wing online troublemakers, however, seem to have been immune from such suppression. I am not aware of any of the hard-Left Labour Party members accused of anti-Semitism having been censored or even investigated by the big tech firms, despite much of their deplorable activity taking place online.

What can be done? There are three options. Facebook calls itself “a platform for all ideas”. It refuses to admit it is a publisher. It could be reclassified as a publisher so it is subject to regulation, just like a newspaper. A second idea would be the break-up of the tech giants to deprive them of their monopolies. Or, a Bill of Rights could be established so that social media providers are forced to abide by guidelines.

I realise this goes against the idea of free market capitalism, but the digital tech firms represent something else altogether: the most extreme kind of global corporatism mankind has ever seen. It is up to America, the home of these tech giants, to take a lead in addressing the situation. Once they do, the rest of the world can follow. Until this happens, I fear for our democratic future. This is the most important threat to free speech we face.

I have great hope that Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, understands the sheer size of the problem and I am increasingly optimistic that, in 2020, freedom of speech and stopping the bias of these big tech giants will become part of the Trump platform.

So a few points-

Youtube, Twitter and Facebook played a role in the success of Brexit, Trump, and Lega Nord.

Just a few social media websites in California effectively dominate the industry. Google too. ”These three examples of anti-establishment triumph prove the supremacy of digital platforms today. Google is now the preferred gateway to information for most people, with 3.5 billion Google searches made in any 24-hour period. Similarly, almost 1.5 billion people log onto Facebook daily and in the same time frame 500 million tweets are sent.”

Social media is the best way to appeal directly to the people, bypassing the press and political machines.

But as Farage points out, it means the power is now in the hands of a few conglomerates. And also, they would be horrified at having helped any of these movements succeed.

And about Alex Jones, if you really think he coincidentally broke the TOS of Spotify, Facebook, and a number of other sites all at the same time... it’s because they didn’t like him. Simple as that. And what’s to stop them ‘shadow banning’, is that not, foreign meddling in European elections?

So the three options open to us are: correctly classifying facebook as a publisher like a newspaper, not a free speech platform as it once claimed to be, breaking up big tech to end their monopolies, or a digital bill of rights.