Freedom of speech // Is the West falling behind?

[Atheris]

Freedom of speech is ingrained in Western society. Russia, Poland, and especially not China are not more free in any regard than the West.

[Maluhiaa]

..and these are the words of a teenage temper tantrum that comes shortly before slamming the bedroom door closed shouting 'you can't tell me what to do!'

I think you hit the nail on the head there.. not even worth arguing with people like that.

[Albrenia]

It's rather inane to suggest Trump had nothing to do with the events turning violent on the 6th. Tweeting "Be there on the 6th of Jan, will be wild" is not only an annoyingly poorly constructed sentence, but implies big things are going to happen. Then he and his cronies whip up the crowd talking about 'fighting like hell' and bringing back 'trail by combat' and then instructing them to go marching down towards the Capitol and he'll be 'right there with them'.

I don't know if he was just too stupid to know that riling up a crowd and unleashing them towards a group who have been (without proof) accused of stealing an election and being child-eating cannibals would maybe end in violence, but the facts are, as they say, what they are.

Trump was banned with good reason.

[Nejii]

..and these are the words of a teenage temper tantrum that comes shortly before slamming the bedroom door closed shouting 'you can't tell me what to do!'

I think you hit the nail on the head there.. not even worth arguing with people like that.

Honestly I thought they (TURTLESHROOM II) were being sarcastic...

[Kexholm Karelia]

It’s reactions like this that make me think most people just assume ’free speech’ is merely another way of saying ’speech I agree with’. If you truly want a free society, you have to be prepared to tolerate the intolerant. Anything else would be censorship which is, by definition, incompatible with the concept of free speech.

Are you familiar with the paradox of intolerance? Perhaps not a truly "free" society... but a truly tolerant one.

Most of the "intolerance" is just opinions Jack Dorsey doesn’t agree with lmao

[Cordel One]

As for the Twitter, I agreed with the "private company private rules" spiel until I watched the Parler get purged by Amazon and read about the Times Magazine confessing there was indeed a massive conspiracy and cabal to destroy Trump. (You can read the original confession here.)

Trust-busting and opposition to monopolization are not anti-capitalist. Only a natural monopoly (such as Google) can exist without government intervention, and even then, the natural monopoly uses Regulatory Capture to secure itself. Adam Smith himself believed that breaking monopolies was true to the spirit of competition, which is the bedrock of capitalism.

On one hand, the tech monopolies do need to be broken up. As things currently are, the industry's dominated by a few companies that aggressively stomp out unions and competition (as is standard under capitalism) and intrude on people's privacy. It's parasitism and their powerful influence will make them extremely difficult to break up.

On the other, we shouldn't have the right to be racist and spread stuff like qanon on the internet. If the racists form their own site, that should be taken down too. Parler should die, and such influences need to be removed from the internet. Similarly, if ISIS recruiters that got banned from social media made their own website that should be taken down as well.

A telephone cannot disconnect you from using their service just because you happened to say the N-word over their lines. Public utilities are such because their existence is so universal, and so vital to the public discourse, that failing to prevent them from denying service to everyone and everything would cause such great isolation and harm that it is just that, literally an utility.

Only social media is not a right, and people shouln't have the right to say whatever they want wherever they want.

There are nine companies that own almost all communications in America, a whopping ninety percent.

Of these, eight are leftist: General Electric (Comcast/NBC/MSNBC/Universal Studios), Disney (ABC/ESPN), Viacom, Time Warner (CNN/HBO/Time Magazine/Warner Brothers), CBS, Amazon, Google, and the Facebook.

Only one is rightist: little (by comparison) News Corporation, the master of Fox and Wall Street Journal, as well as irrelevant radio firms. Who listens to Rush Limbaugh anyway?

Okay, hold your horses. First of all, none of these companies are leftist. Leftism is fundamentally about opposition to hierarchies, and capitalism is regressive. The bourgeoisie and bourgeois-controlled entities are by organization fundamentally not leftist. All these entities are rightist, some are just more tied to the status quo and others to more explicit regressiveness.

The Facebook, the Twitter, and Google, combined, own all widespread social media and mass media platforms on the Internet, including everything from Youtube to Instagram, and the flagship services themselves.

Funny you mention YouTube, considering it's infamous for promoting conspiracy theory videos and rightist astroturfing. Oh, and the comments. Have you ever been into a YouTube comment section, turtleshroom? They're some of the most toxic places on the internet because of their lax moderation.

Bit Chute and AOL? LOL, who?

One hundred percent of the major Internet social media platforms are extremely left-leaning and have consistently, and demonstrably, suppressed right-wing thought of all stripes.

There are exactly 0 lefist bourgeois entities on the face of the earth.

This means that one political idelogy controls nearly all institutional power in corporate America. This ideology has confessed to its total control over American communications and culture and its successful attempt to organize and destroy the American right, manifested the most in Donald Trump.

In this case they're doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. They make weak attempts to stop the mot regressive parts of their userbase from getting too big because it's not good for their business.

Google and friends have used their power to manipulate elections. A poll asking about this stated that a whopping five percent of Biden voters would have not voted Biden (but not necessarily Trump) if they knew about Biden's various scandals. Up to a third of those surveyed hadn't even heard them mentioned.

No way, swing voters are a thing??

It's also worth noting that many rightist groups and the Russian government have been confirmed to have tried to manipulate the election in their favor through Google and friends. You're trying to portray internet rightists as an innocent actor in this scenario, but that's just not true.

Five percent may not sound like much, but if those five percent all voted Trump, he would have won in an Electoral College landslide. Again, those five percent said they would not vote Biden if given that information, as opposed to voting Trump, so Trump could still have lost.

A good amount of this "censorship" you talk about are efforts to remove organized misinformation campaigns intended to manipulate people through social media. The article you cited ("newsbusters", seriously? Get some better sources) also conviently forgets to pay any attention whatsoever to the people who have been manipulated into supporting Trump over these same channels.

This trend needs to stop,a nd every leftist that says it's okay would never say the same if it was in reverse.

Not all ideologies are morally equivalent.

Like telephone lines, social media are public utilities and should be regulated as such.

Again, no.

* = Sadly, this also leads to situations where Russians will commit acts of violence against innocent people afflicted with mental illnesses, such as Gender Identity Disorder, or deviant sexual behaviors. Physical violence against such people is both a sin and an abomination.

Passive-aggressively talking about "gender idenity disorder" is an abomination of an argument as well. It is not a disorder.

[Cordel One]

*list of fraud claims*

All of these have been thoroughly debunked. The fact you continue to spout them kind of reduces your credibility to speak on the subject.

Funnily enough, this stuff Turtleshroom's ranting about is exactly the sort of misinformation that needs to be clamped down on harder.

[Nilokeras]

then old ladies are not visited or fined by the police for offensive facebook posts concerning trans people either...

A new entry alongside the 'atheist professor' memes in the 'fake stories your uncle sends you on facebook with a heavily pixelated cartoon of a crying police officer attached' pantheon.

[Kexholm Karelia]

I mean... Parler being taken down was a bit of a cheap shot. Granted JM painted a target on his platform’s back for not enacting stricter moderation. They all hated Twitter so they jumped on Parler, Parler then got took offline. I can understand that the moderate right might feel like their first amendment rights are being spit on. I mean you already had Facebook deleting peoples accounts and their posts and labeling them as “misinformation” when some of it was as simple as sharing other’s posts or in other cases it wasn’t false information.

That said, the US and the west overall is still going strong on first amendment rights.

The left: "Private property should be abolished!"

Also the left: "It’s a private company deal with it lol"

[Nilokeras]

I mean... Parler being taken down was a bit of a cheap shot. Granted JM painted a target on his platform’s back for not enacting stricter moderation. They all hated Twitter so they jumped on Parler, Parler then got took offline. I can understand that the moderate right might feel like their first amendment rights are being spit on. I mean you already had Facebook deleting peoples accounts and their posts and labeling them as “misinformation” when some of it was as simple as sharing other’s posts or in other cases it wasn’t false information.

That said, the US and the west overall is still going strong on first amendment rights.

The left: "Private property should be abolished!"

Also the left: "It’s a private company deal with it lol"

I don't want to be too harsh since this might be a linguistic barrier between Icelandic and English, but there is an important distinction to be made between 'liberalism' and 'leftism' that I think you're failing to grasp.

[Cordel One]

I mean... Parler being taken down was a bit of a cheap shot. Granted JM painted a target on his platform’s back for not enacting stricter moderation. They all hated Twitter so they jumped on Parler, Parler then got took offline. I can understand that the moderate right might feel like their first amendment rights are being spit on. I mean you already had Facebook deleting peoples accounts and their posts and labeling them as “misinformation” when some of it was as simple as sharing other’s posts or in other cases it wasn’t false information.

That said, the US and the west overall is still going strong on first amendment rights.

The left: "Private property should be abolished!"

Also the left: "It’s a private company deal with it lol"

You're conflating two separate ideologies here.

[Borderlands of Rojava]

>Poland
>The West

[Borderlands of Rojava]

Sure it was, Trump invited everyone over for the 6th long in advance having fuelled hysteria over a stolen election for two months.. it didn't just occur out of context.

Donald Trump is accused of intentionally commanding them to attack the Capitol or having caused the attack indirectly on that day. The unconstitutional Bill of Attainder trial (NOT EVEN PRESIDED OVER BY THE CHIEF JUSTICE) in the Senate is accusing him of exactly that.

If the attack was planned- and it was -then Trump cannot possibly have ordered it to happen. The bombs were placed the day before.

As for the electoral fraud: the governors of several states magically waved away state laws to allow for a flood of ballots without security checks. They did this without the consent of the state legislatures (either because the law allowed them to or the law never said they couldn't), which is unconstitutional.

Furthermore, Dominion and Smartmatic in particular were recipients of a letter by ELIZABETH WARREN[B] (found here) that accused them of cutting corners in terms of the securing of the voting machine tabulation software from vulnerabilities, like hacking and incorrect registring of votes.

Smartmatic assisted the Chavez regime in its voting tabulation, where mass fraud was conducted.

Lastly, in my home state of Georgia, people pretended that a water main break occurred in the Forsyth ballot counting centers in the Falcons Stadium, but it was actually a cracked pipe that didn't even need a plumber's invoice.

During that period, we have [b]time-stamped video evidence of ballot counting continuing in the building. Poll workers, during the period the water main was supposedly stopping the counting, continued counting ballots the entire time.

Couple that with the literal stoppage of ballot counts in Pennsylvania and several other states around 1:00 AM on Election Day, which I personally witnessed for two hours before hitting the sack in sadness, and you have reasonable doubt that the ballots were counted without issue.

Does that mean Trump was cheated out of an election? I can't prove that. -but I can show that Biden's win was not beyond a reasonable doubt.

Even if there wasn't enough fraud to flip it, the governors changing state law with a flip of the wrist is a terminal threat to our democratic republic and eliminates the necessary safeguards designed to prevent these issues from happening to begin with.

Are you really still making those damn fraud claims? The fraud was so widespread that even pro Trump judges said trump's lawsuits were bullshit so are u saying even the pro Trump judges are part of the "rigging of the vote?" Face it, Donald Trump lost cause he sucks at being a leader and is an embarrassment to the US, and 48% of people decided the United States hadn't suffered enough for four years and wanted four more. In what universe does an election have to be rigged for the idiot who thinks windmill noises cause cancer to lose? Bullshit mountain? You can't prove Trump had the election stolen cause he didn't. It's just that a bunch of big babies won't just admit he lost and concede cause they think Biden of all people is a communist and think Donald Trump, a guy who was friends with child molesters and may be one himself, is part of some grand plot to bring down the Satan worshipping pedophile elite.

[Kexholm Karelia]

The left: "Private property should be abolished!"

Also the left: "It’s a private company deal with it lol"

You're conflating two separate ideologies here.

So far most people online who pull the "private company" card seem to be leftists, it might be a smug jab though

[Bombadil]

You're conflating two separate ideologies here.

So far most people online who pull the "private company" card seem to be leftists, it might be a smug jab though

Gosh, could it be that we're not that far apart ideologically and all this partisan bullshit is concocted for ratings and fuelled by populists. The Left are not communists much as the Right aren't all fascists, despite their recent shift.

[Infected Mushroom]

National security is more important than free speech. It has always been. Free speech isn’t as important as security.

[Picairn]

National security is more important than free speech. It has always been. Free speech isn’t as important as security.

Said every dictatorship ever.

[Albrenia]

You're conflating two separate ideologies here.

So far most people online who pull the "private company" card seem to be leftists, it might be a smug jab though

Well, I mean, like it or not we do live under capitalism. They are a private company and people do agree to a Terms of Service to use the platform.

Would I prefer a truly neutral public-run social media platform? Yes. Is Twitter that? No.

[Nilokeras]

You're conflating two separate ideologies here.

So far most people online who pull the "private company" card seem to be leftists, it might be a smug jab though

Liberals and and left-of-center people being smug about conservatives freaking out about the all consuming power of private companies in shaping our lives?

Yeah doesn't seem likely, you're right.

[Engadine Mcdonalds 1997]

rEEEEE YOURE TAKING AWAY MY RIGHT TO SAY THE N-WORD!!!!111!!!!!11! REEEEEEEE

In all seriousness, freedom of speech isn't about being able to say whatever the fuck you want, it's mostly about the ability to criticise the State and Government. This does NOT extend to private corporations banning people for, quite frankly, the most vile views on a given topic that deserve to be buried with modern history's most notorious "conservatives", buried with people like George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill, Franz von Pauper and Robert Menzies. So please, learn about what "Freedom of Speech" is before you spout of nonsense because Der Fuhrer was kicked off the internet.

[Eahland]

Forcing a publisher to publish things they don't want to is as much a violation of their freedom as preventing them from publishing what they do want to.

You have the right to say pretty much whatever you want to. You do not have the right to force someone else to provide you a platform to say it.

So stop whining because, after five years of getting a free pass from Twitter because he was bringing millions of eyes to their shitty-ass platform, your boy finally did something so egregiously toxic that they finally decided he was a liability and actually enforced their terms of service.

[Arthenius]

The problem is the hypocritical double standard. A certain group of people, usually "progressives" feel that Trump or anybody else they disagree with can be banned from platforms they run, and that lumping potentially more people than necessary as "domestic terrorists" is justified, but if it were done by the right back toward the left they would scream "traitor". It is all social and political bunkum.

[Albrenia]

The problem is the hypocritical double standard. A certain group of people, usually "progressives" feel that Trump or anybody else they disagree with can be banned from platforms they run, and that lumping potentially more people than necessary as "domestic terrorists" is justified, but if it were done by the right back toward the left they would scream "traitor". It is all social and political bunkum.

Well, people don't just 'feel' Trump can be banned from platforms, it's actually a pretty standard feature of almost all social media platforms. Notice the idiot wasn't banned until he managed to whip a crowd into committing a literal terrorist attack though.

Stop whining about a just ban. He wasn't banned for saying things people disagree with, or else he'd have been banned years ago. He was banned for inciting a fucking terrorist attack.

[Nilokeras]

but if it were done by the right back toward the left they would scream "traitor". It is all social and political bunkum.

Have you actually talked to a real leftist? They get banned from platforms like Twitter all the time for much more spurious reasons.

[The Lone Alliance]

In reality Free Speech only means "The freedom to say anything as long as it doesn't threaten the existing political status quo."

Of course that's how it's always been ultimately. In the past when people said things that were considered unpopular, while they were allowed Freedom of Speech on principle, in truth they were often censored, because the political status quo always acts to preserve it's own power.