Brendan Carr Makes It Clear That He's Eager to Be America's Top Censor

38 pointsposted 8 months ago
by coloneltcb

94 Comments

anigbrowl

8 months ago

One of Masnick's best columns in years. As I've said many times before (although most people rejected my message), the phrase 'free speech' is often deployed to shut down discussion rather than open it up. When you inquire into the speech sort of speech thet people claim is being suppressed, it frequently turns out to be about banning pornography, curtailing the organic spread of unwelcome ideas, or proposals for the suppression of people making the unwelcome speech, by means ranging from deportation to elimination.

bediger4000

8 months ago

We saw your observations on the phrase "free speech" in action when Mr Musk purchased Twitter. One of his stated goals as a "free speech absolutist" was to bring "free speech" back to Twitter. Now, Mr Musk boosts his own tweets, sells blue checks to bots, which boosts their tweets. All to virtually "shout down" any opposing opinions

anon291

8 months ago

And yet according to cnns analysis, Mr Musks platform is more representative of the electorate than every other site.

joegibbs

8 months ago

I think this is a kind of falling knife-type thing: the makeup of Twitter was far more liberal than conservative a few years ago and it's currently about equal, but in two more years I predict that the trend will continue and it will be far more conservative than liberal.

anon291

8 months ago

Perhaps, but then we should use twitter as it is today as an example of what is normal.

I see people flee to bluesky because twitter is too right wing, but given the current composition, it's those fleeing that have the wrong calibration.

It's very concerning when a large chunk of people literally believe a representative slice of the country is intolerable

In contrast, right wingers who complained that Twitter was too liberal for years are basically correct. It was disproportionately liberal for many years.

rahimnathwani

8 months ago

[flagged]

orwin

8 months ago

CrimethInc. This was pure and simple censorship. Not saying that Twitter was better with their censorship of Occupy, but crimethInc was probably the one of the last US influencial left wing org on twitter, and didn't last a month. I think John Brown Gun club was also banned, but reinstated, and redneck revolution don't have such an online presence (and is quieter than the gun club about protecting LGBT rights). This calmed down recently, but still.

hn_acker

8 months ago

> It's currently about equal because conservatives are no longer being deplatformed under pressure from the government.

The federal government did not intentionally or unintentionally target conservatives whenever coercing Twitter to remove content (to the extent that the government did any coercing or pressuring, which was very little if at all) [1][2].

[1] Twitter Admits in Court Filing: Elon Musk Is Simply Wrong About Government Interference At Twitter https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/05/twitter-admits-in-court-...

[2] Internal Twitter Video Reveals Twitter Bent Over Backwards To Protect Trump And Pro-Trump Insurrectionists https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/29/internal-twitter-video-r...

user

8 months ago

[deleted]

bediger4000

8 months ago

I thought that we broadly disagreed with mainstream media, and generally viewed it with suspicion. Gell-Mann amnesia, anyone?

anon291

8 months ago

While I think the editorial take of most mainstream media is crap, I'm not sure I believe their data is made up.

rahimnathwani

8 months ago

What about when they quote data from academic studies or think tanks? Do you trust those numbers?

anon291

8 months ago

When it comes to straightforward data such as self reported political affiliations of active Twitter users, yes I usually do, unless I have reason to distrust.

chowchowchow

8 months ago

how credulous of you.

anon291

8 months ago

Believe it or not .. we can all agree on the facts but have different conclusions. Such things make life interesting

bediger4000

8 months ago

With all due respect, I don't think that's true. And when we do agree on facts, one side or the other legislates against collecting the data. The Dickey Amendment has been very effective at eliminating fact based discussion on guns. Project 2025 explicitly advocates against collecting weather data. Lots of state governments, Florida notably, quit collecting COVID mortality data.

anon291

8 months ago

> Lots of state governments, Florida notably, quit collecting COVID mortality data.

And lots of state governments counted deaths with COVID as deaths from COVID... what is the point? As long as the data is presented correctly and represented properly, it remains as it is. In the discussion above, there's no reason to disbelieve the data. The collection and meaning is clear.

bediger4000

8 months ago

We record all rear-ending automobile accidents as the fault of the car behind. We record all auto accidents where someone has blood alcohol above a certain percentage as "drunk driving" or some synonym. The distinction of "from" and "with" here is one of those. The other examples may be better or worse, and the point stands.

anon291

8 months ago

There's nothing wrong with that. I believe that data as presented. I just adjust my conclusion accordingly. You should too

musicale

8 months ago

> Telling internet companies that if they moderate things in a way he doesn’t like, he will use the power of the state to punish them. This includes fact-checking things in a way he dislikes,

I like dang's comment on fact-checking where he noted:

> the question, "what are the facts?" is complex enough to already recreate the entire political and ideological contest.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29597867

cowboylowrez

8 months ago

"complex enough" bah, this is just a white flag. sure wave it all you want, many folks think the "terms of surrender" are reasonable enough etc. Its sort of like the "enshittification" trend applied to philosophy lol its a nice gesture for dang to do the "both sides" thing but I just lump that in with memes like "<candidate> tells it like it is" when in reality what <candidate> says is just crazy talk.

not everything is so unverifiable that the only choice left is to view everything through <candidates> goggles.

dang

8 months ago

I protest! It's not a "both sides" thing. It's an empirical observation, and in my experience quite a reliable one.

There are infinitely many facts, and the choice of which facts to select and how strongly to weigh them is not itself a fact, it's a choice made by humans. When those humans are busy advocating for a political position, you can be sure that this is what's dominating their choice. As I pointed out once before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25973366), it only takes a little self-honesty to notice oneself doing it.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

This doesn't mean there's no truth or that it's impossible to know what the truth is. It might mean that political passion is too strong a force for the truth-finding process not to be perturbed by it.

cowboylowrez

7 months ago

there are infinitely many grains of sand, get one in your eye and sure your values will probably adjust by mere reflex. you aren't necessarily bound by the "infinity of facts" in every case. I won't even disagree that politics is often based on what a constituency values. still, how do you eat the elephant, as always, one bite at a time.

what I see this time around is that the pursuit of fact itself is devalued and under attack. you are certainly welcome to toss this belief of mine on whatever pile of unmanageable infinity that gets you by. society is often choosing to devalue facts in my opinion, and often substituting far dodgier "information" in its place.

To me "infinitely many facts" sounds real close to "who knew it could be this complicated" lol

jauntywundrkind

8 months ago

Also coming to mind is some other recent Techdirt,

> Dear Senators Klobuchar & Lujan: Now Do You See Why Letting HHS Censor “Misinformation” Is A Terrible Idea?

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/11/20/dear-senators-klobuchar-...

Because facts are at best malleable and at worst disinformation, and what seems about to happen with HHS seems like some seriously dangerous alt-facts.

I'm making a leap in domain here, but also alas, Trump is already about facing on any pretense of things like journalistic shield laws. This government seems so intent on pursuing a very specific narrow interpretation of facts, and doing incredibly bad things to people who have ever said otherwise.

https://www.techdirt.com/2024/11/25/trump-orders-republicans...

AlexandrB

8 months ago

Just focusing on this portion:

> Finally, and perhaps most importantly, private companies making editorial decisions about what content they allow on their own private property is not (and cannot be!) taking away First Amendment rights. The First Amendment restricts the government, not private property owners from making their own editorial decisions.

That's really the whole debate when it comes to social media. Is it ok that they are governed like private property where the owners can make whatever moderation decisions they want or is it more like a modern "public square" where it should be possible to say anything you can shout on the street without being moderated for it.

Personally, I don't know if there's a right answer. Perhaps the best approach is encouraging more competition among social media companies so there are alternatives to the dominant platforms - but the network effects of something like Facebook are very strong even if competitors existed.

Treating social media like a private space is the status quo, but it rubs me the wrong way that there's not really an equivalent of public spaces in the online world.

Edit: I find it weird how many people are happy to defend unchecked corporate power when it comes to this issue. The lack of any guardrails on moderation is why YouTube has slowly transformed into a baby-talk version of itself. Now people talk about "unaliving yourself" and "PDF files" instead of using the normal English words for these concepts.

shiroiushi

8 months ago

>I find it weird how many people are happy to defend unchecked corporate power when it comes to this issue. The lack of any guardrails on moderation is why

It's not weird at all. We've already seen some places try to have little or no moderation, and the result isn't pretty: 4chan, and today's Xitter immediately come to mind. Shitty people and trolls take over, driving everyone else out, because who wants to read all that shit constantly?

Leaving the moderation to some corporation might not be ideal (look what happened with Reddit), but it's better than no moderation at all. At least with corporate-run moderation, if we don't like it, we can go somewhere else. What the "free speech absolutionists" are trying to do will just end up ruining ALL online spaces, so we have nowhere to go, except perhaps online spaces entirely operated in foreign countries where they don't subscribe to this idiocy.

terribleperson

8 months ago

I used to be a fan of the idea of places with absolute free speech. The problem is that repeatedly, in practice, these places suck. It is not an idea that scales. Once a place is larger a single friend-group that can ostracize any assholes, the assholes show up and start being assholes. You either moderate them, or everyone else leaves except assholes and people who are highly tolerant of assholes. This isn't something that's happened once, it happens repeatedly.

That doesn't mean that the horrifying sterile nature of youtube is great. There are acceptable in-betweens, it just won't happen while the internet mostly consists of corporate giants that don't want to spend the money for real moderation.

Jensson

8 months ago

> I used to be a fan of the idea of places with absolute free speech. The problem is that repeatedly, in practice, these places suck

So public places sucks? I like being able to talk about whatever I want when I walk around with friends, if someone tells me I have to go home to talk about that it would suck.

Since this works in public I don't see why it couldn't work online. All you need is anti harassment policies etc just like in reality, not anti speech.

foogazi

8 months ago

> Since this works in public I don't see why it couldn't work online.

Have you tried setting up your own blog or do you want to write whatever you want on my blog ?

terribleperson

8 months ago

We're talking about the internet, not physical spaces where different rules apply. For one thing, the ease of access to any given space is much lower off the internet.

red-iron-pine

8 months ago

the meme about the Nazi bar: if you don't kick out the Nazis, the Nazis start hanging out in your bar.

And in a couple months, you become the Nazi bar, and regular folks start to get weary. And you're either okay with that, or not.

foogazi

8 months ago

> it rubs me the wrong way that there's not really an equivalent of public spaces in the online world.

The internet is public by nature.

You can setup your website, blog, mastodon, irc, email newsletter, ftp, news, discord…

Endless possibilities to post whatever you want - why do you want to do it on my blog ?

nothrabannosir

8 months ago

I always thought this scotus case was interesting and relevant to the question of “can a private space count as a public square?”. Clearly in some way it can. Curious what a real lawyer or constitutional scholar has to say about this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R...

hn_acker

8 months ago

I think that this article [1] by Mike Masnick (not a lawyer or professor, but often writes about First Amendment issues) and Brian L. Frye (a law professor) is useful for understanding the nuances of the Pruneyard case. Here's an excerpt (but I recommend reading the entire article):

> That’s fatal to AELP’s argument. According to AELP, the First Amendment allows states to prohibit social media companies from censoring users, because social media websites are “open-access.” But newspapers are also “open-access,” because anyone can buy an advertisement. So, AELP’s argument necessarily implies that the First Amendment also allows states to prohibit newspapers from censoring advertisers.

> Wrong. The Supreme Court explicitly said the opposite in PruneYard itself. And if the First Amendment means anything, it means that the government can’t tell newspapers what to print.

> What’s the real difference between Miami Herald and PruneYard? It’s simple. Newspapers are in the speech business and shopping malls aren’t. The First Amendment says the government can’t force you to share someone else’s speech, but sometimes it can require you to tolerate speech you dislike. And which is social media more like? The business that is in the speech business, or a shopping mall where speech has nothing to do with its business?

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2024/02/22/social-media-isnt-a-shop...

user

8 months ago

[deleted]

archagon

8 months ago

Under Carr and his ilk, social media is not going to become a public square. They don't want fairness or equality: they want attention, regardless of whether people actually want to give it to them.

TheBruceHimself

8 months ago

I like to think of it this way: we all have freedom of speech, but don’t we also have the freedom not to listen to it? People think their freedom of speech is diminished in cases where the reality is the audience doesn’t care for it and removes it from their view. There’s not a single opinion out there you can’t find somewhere online. Freedom of speech is as grand as it’s ever been. The complaint is isn’t some don’t get a say in their piece; it’s that people have signed up to media outlets in which they don’t have to put up with listening to i. It’s not some secret agenda Facebook blocks, say, racist content. They just don’t want it on their feeds and, yeah, honestly, they don’t think their user base being constantly offended and, frankly, bullied is what’s being asked of them to provide. 4Chan is there for those who want that sort of thing. Most people don’t want it.

I’ve never had to read a book I didn’t want to, or watch a movie I didn’t care for, so why is it suddenly every right-wing pundit’s right to have an audience with me? Im sick of being forced to listen to these people

ChicagoDave

8 months ago

At what point will it be universally understood that "free speech" is only legally binding when a person is speaking with the government. The government cannot limit a person from speaking outside of libel and slander. (Note the successful Dominion lawsuits against Fox News, you can't say _anything_ you want if it materially harms a person or a legal entity).

A private corporation like Twitter/X, Facebook, and now Bluesky can implement any moderation policies they want, and it will never violate "free speech" laws. Elon Musk can filter and restrain the speech he doesn't like (mostly liberal speech and external links that he can't monetize) and Zuck can do the same. Bluesky only moderates illegal activity itself like CSAM. All other moderation is done by the community, and each person chooses who to follow, block, or mute who they wish.

The government could enact regulation to limit corporate moderation (debatable, but a given with the current SC) but it would be a very extreme step to restrict the individual from moderating their own timelines on Bluesky.

It's hinted that Carr might try to regulate Bluesky, but the outcome wouldn't match his expectations. You see, Bluesky is an open network. It would be simple for every user to implement their own data server and only communicate on the open network. The government would have no way to control that network outside of radical national firewall filtering like China's Great Firewall.

rahimnathwani

8 months ago

  At what point will it be universally understood that "free speech" is only legally binding when a person is speaking with the government.
Well this isn't the case. I'm writing this comment and directing it at you and other non-governmental actors who use HN. So I am not 'speaking with the government'. But the law protects my speech from interference by the government.

suchire

8 months ago

Given how little the US invests in public education, probably never

shiroiushi

8 months ago

>Given how little the US invests in public education, probably never

While I understand the sentiment, this isn't factually true: from figures I've seen, the US actually spends more per student in pre-college schooling than any other nation.

It's a lot like the US healthcare system: the US spends (much) more per-capita, but gets much worse results overall. The problem isn't the level of funding, but how it's used and who runs it.

Another factor is US education is that the funding is largely from local sources and locally controlled, so if you live in a wealthy county, you might have (relatively) very good schools, while kids in poor counties will have poorly-funded schools. This is mostly a problem unique to the US because it loves keeping power at local levels so much.

Freedom2

8 months ago

'Invests' doesn't necessarily have to mean about money, like you assume.

red-iron-pine

8 months ago

> The problem isn't the level of funding, but how it's used and who runs it

aka rent-seeking behavior from entrenched corporations and interests.

anon291

8 months ago

> private corporation like Twitter/X, Facebook, and now Bluesky can implement any moderation policies they want, and it will never violate "free speech" laws

Simply not true in the state of California where most of these companies are based.

According to the CA supreme Court, you have a right to free speech on private property that is regularly available for public use.

By that metric all of these companies are blatantly violating the constitution of their home state.

hn_acker

8 months ago

> According to the CA supreme Court, you have a right to free speech on private property that is regularly available for public use.

According to both sides of the aisle on the US Supreme Court, a social media site is not a public forum [1].

[1] Supreme Court Signals Loud And Clear That Social Media Sites Are Not Public Forums That Have To Allow All Speech https://www.techdirt.com/2019/06/18/supreme-court-signals-lo...

anon291

8 months ago

This would be the CA Supreme Court. The CA constitution has explicit protections for public speech on private property, per the CA Supreme Court.

hn_acker

8 months ago

How broad is that CA Supreme Court ruling? The CA Constitution can't override the First Amendment rights that social media sites have to decide what user content to remove from their servers [1].

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2024/02/22/social-media-isnt-a-shop...

anon291

8 months ago

Absolutely they can and do. Many malls have been forced to allow demonstrators due to it.

California's constitution would apply to California companies hosting people in their spaces.

It would absolutely apply between California users and Californian companies

hn_acker

7 months ago

> California's constitution would apply to California companies hosting people in their spaces.

> It would absolutely apply between California users and Californian companies

According to the Supremacy Clause, the Constitution of the United States (which includes its own First Amendment) overrides any state constitution.

> Many malls have been forced to allow demonstrators due to it.

The article I linked [1] in my previous comment explains why a shopping mall could be forced to host peaceful demonstrations but a social media site can't be forced to host similar speech:

> As AELP admits, the Supreme Court’s 1974 Miami Herald opinion held that the First Amendment prohibited Florida from requiring a newspaper to print a political candidate’s reply to a critical article. According to AELP, PruneYard distinguished Miami Herald by holding that “open-access laws do not present the same First Amendment concerns as right-to-reply laws.” That is false. The Supreme Court didn’t say anything about open-access laws. It said that Miami Herald “rests on the principle that the State cannot tell a newspaper what it might print.”

> AELP tries to salvage its imaginary distinction between open-access and right-to-reply laws by insisting that “the Miami Herald newspaper did not hold its pages open to all members of the public.” That is also false. Yes, newspapers exercise “editorial discretion” over which articles they print. But newspapers don’t just publish articles, they also publish ads. And they’re generally happy to publish advertisements by anyone willing to pay. AELP insists that “Newspapers are exclusive publications; the public cannot, at any moment, publish their views in the New York Times.” Yes, they can. All they have to do is buy an ad. So, newspapers are, in fact, “open to all members of the public” willing to pay for the privilege. In AELP’s terms, newspapers are and always have been “open-access.”

> That’s fatal to AELP’s argument. According to AELP, the First Amendment allows states to prohibit social media companies from censoring users, because social media websites are “open-access.” But newspapers are also “open-access,” because anyone can buy an advertisement. So, AELP’s argument necessarily implies that the First Amendment also allows states to prohibit newspapers from censoring advertisers.

> Wrong. The Supreme Court explicitly said the opposite in PruneYard itself. And if the First Amendment means anything, it means that the government can’t tell newspapers what to print.

> What’s the real difference between Miami Herald and PruneYard? It’s simple. Newspapers are in the speech business and shopping malls aren’t. The First Amendment says the government can’t force you to share someone else’s speech, but sometimes it can require you to tolerate speech you dislike. And which is social media more like? The business that is in the speech business, or a shopping mall where speech has nothing to do with its business?

[1] https://www.techdirt.com/2024/02/22/social-media-isnt-a-shop...

rahimnathwani

8 months ago

  Bluesky can implement any moderation policies they want, and it will never violate "free speech" laws.
What if Bluesky were to set up a hotline which the federal government can call to have any post censored, and makes it known to government actors that it will act promptly if they want anything removed?

Would that be legal for Bluesky, assuming no coercion from any government actors?

hn_acker

8 months ago

> What if Bluesky were to set up a hotline which the federal government can call to have any post censored, and makes it known to government actors that it will act promptly if they want anything removed?

> Would that be legal for Bluesky, assuming no coercion from any government actors?

Under your assumption of no coercion, yes, it would generally be within Bluesky's First Amendment right of association (by which I mean, association to the content, not to the government) for Bluesky to voluntarily remove content from its servers (or refuse to relay content from other servers) brought to its notice by the federal government for no compensation.

There are other ways for governments to meddle that would make specific instances of "call to have any post censored" unconstitutional. If a government official were to secretly pay or otherwise compensate Bluesky for removing posts, then the benefit to the government official of having the posts removed would violate the Emoluments Clause if the official is a member of Congress, might violate a corruption law, and might violate the oath of office if there was one (but I don't know an oath of office has any legal weight). Also, in practice, such a secret payment scheme would create a power imbalance favoring the government official in a way that would make achieving "no coercion" very difficult if not impossible.

Jensson

8 months ago

> At what point will it be universally understood that "free speech" is only legally binding when a person is speaking with the government

That is not what "free speech" means, that is what current US free speech laws does. Free speech itself include all censorship from big organizations, regardless if it is a government or not, the important part is if you have large organized censoring then its against free speech.

So it is totally valid to say you want to protect free speech by limiting the ability for large corporations to censor people.

ChicagoDave

8 months ago

Free speech is a legal term.

We all know there is a push to invent some new definition that says jerks must be heard, but if you look at the migration out of Twitter, you can see that a lot of people aren't interested in that new definition.

If you come to Bluesky, your actions dictate your following.

user

8 months ago

[deleted]

readthenotes1

8 months ago

"Also, NBC did not violate the equal time rule, because it gave Donald Trump an equivalent amount of free time on its affiliates following a NASCAR race the next day"

Gee, wonder why they did this? (And the NFL commercial)?

anon291

8 months ago

[flagged]

sundaeofshock

8 months ago

Andersen says a lot of things. Who were the political opponents that were “debanked”? I’m looking for names here, along with actual citations.

anon291

8 months ago

Andreesen is a former Democrat donor and endorsed Hillary and a well respected VC. I have no reason to disbelieve him. Supporting trump is not popular (or wasn't) in silicon valley. For them to endorse him would indicate something happened...

rayiner

8 months ago

[flagged]

ethbr1

8 months ago

Can we stop with the {ignore the current issue} + {point at something else} two-step?

I realize partisan news has normalized that method of discourse, but it's a boring and braindead way to argue.

In the real world, the existence of other bad things doesn't make a particular bad thing disappear.

anon291

8 months ago

[flagged]

mrbombastic

8 months ago

It may also just show that he didn’t have the support and team at the time to get away with it, but we shall see if it is all just rhetoric

mikeyouse

8 months ago

Trump repeatedly sent takedown requests to Twitter in his first term … for things as serious as celebrities bad mouthing him. He’s actively suing CBS because he didn’t like their interview with Kamala. He filed a frivolous defamation suit against The NY Times, likewise CNN and some random news station in Wisconsin. why do people pretend like this stuff didn’t happen or is somehow less worthy of mention than whatever Biden did?

https://archive.is/XXn6a

anon291

8 months ago

[flagged]

hn_acker

8 months ago

> We know twitter has an intense liberal bias based on their previous composition.

No, "we" don't [1][2]. Pre-Elon Musk Twitter gave extra leeway to conservatives and didn't target conservative views for removal [3].

[1] Twitter Admits in Court Filing: Elon Musk Is Simply Wrong About Government Interference At Twitter https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/05/twitter-admits-in-court-...

[2] https://www.techdirt.com/2023/06/29/internal-twitter-video-r...

[3] Researchers Confirm: Content Moderation Appears To Target Dangerous Nonsense, Not Political Ideology https://www.techdirt.com/2024/10/04/researchers-confirm-cont...

cowboylowrez

8 months ago

I'd like to read more about the accusations about Biden, especially the debanking allegations but so far I just find stuff from some Andreesen (?) appearance on "joe rogan" which wouldn't count as reliable information in my opinion. Course that could also be because internet search sucks nowadays lol

the best I can find only reinforces my suspicions that if its on "joe rogan" then miss me with that mess haha

https://jabberwocking.com/choke-point-2-0-a-primer-on-the-ri...

rayiner

8 months ago

[flagged]

ethbr1

8 months ago

Absolutely agreed!

The issue I have -- and this seems to be a modern, last-10-years phenomenon -- is that an attack on one party's candidate is responded to by attacking the other party's candidate on a different issue.

That's... not normal. And didn't used to be as common as it is now.

You answer the question/issue, as proposed.

You can append an attack on the other party after the response, but people have gotten in a habit of lazily skipping the first step, and I think the quick-take nature of internet discussion has exacerbated this.

   "Trump did this!"
   "Well, here's something the Democrats did!"

   "Kamala did this!"
   "Well, here's something the Republicans did!"
Neither of those addresses the original point.

mikeyouse

8 months ago

Insinuating that Biden had anything to do with Trumps FBI warning Facebook that Russia was spreading propaganda in 2020 is something..

GenerWork

8 months ago

[flagged]

hn_acker

8 months ago

Unlike what GP claimed, Mark Zuckerberg was putting on a show [1][2][3], pretending that the FBI's FYI suggestions during Trump's first term were threats and pretending that the Biden administration coerced Facebook into removing content.

[1] Zuckerberg’s Spineless Surrender: Rehashing Old News To Enable False GOP Narratives https://www.techdirt.com/2024/08/28/trumps-accidental-admiss...

[2] New Trump Book Threatens To Jail Zuckerberg, Putting Zuck’s Groveling Letter In New Light https://www.techdirt.com/2024/08/30/new-trump-book-threatens...

[3] Zuckerberg Vows To Stop Apologizing To Bad Faith Politicians, Right After Doing Just That https://www.techdirt.com/2024/09/12/zuckerberg-vows-to-stop-...

rayiner

8 months ago

> Unlike what GP claimed, Mark Zuckerberg was putting on a show [1][2][3], pretending that the FBI's FYI suggestions during Trump's first term were threats and pretending that the Biden administration coerced Facebook into removing content.

Wow.

hn_acker

8 months ago

Are you interested in refuting anything I said, or anything the articles I linked said?

If I was wrong to assume that you mistook the Biden administration's voluntary persuasion for coercion, then I apologize. Regardless, I think it was misleading to simply relay the claim that the Biden administration "pressured Meta to censor COVID-19 content", especially given the benefit of hindsight from the Murthy v. Missouri Supreme Court ruling [1].

[1] https://electionlawblog.org/?p=144036

rayiner

8 months ago

You should read Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent” to understand how state censorship works.

carlosdp

8 months ago

There are certainly some good points about some statements Carr has made that seem to be pushing at the limits of what the FCC actually has purview over, but the contention that Carr is "the most direct and sustained threat to the First Amendment and the freedom of the press any of us will ever experience" is on its face absurd to anyone that follows Carr's work.

Even the examples in this article fail to come close to making this case. In each one, he's advocating for more speech, for increased access to publishing platforms. No ordinary person would possibly see that as "censorship." He's not seeking to eliminate "speech he dislikes" by making statements against NewsGuard's heavy involvement in social media "disinformation" moderation, he's making the point that moderation on political speech has been unfairly applied in many cases, and that's largely the fault of activist groups that push social networks to censor speech they don't like (and label "disinformation").

The article starts out by accusing the Trump camp of projection, by lauding Carr as a champion of free speech. It's ironic that the author is guilty of that very thing (projecting) by accusing Carr of being not only pro-censorship, but the biggest threat to free speech in the country? Where have you been for the past 15 years? Come on

beej71

8 months ago

And him saying NBC could lose it's license for giving airtime to Trump's opponents...? Where does that land?

anon291

8 months ago

By the time he pulls NBCs license, it'll probably have been sold to someone else.

At the end of the day, the radio spectrum is limited and the licenses ought to be reserved for the channels most popular with the American people.

Platforms losing viewership would naturally qualify for eviction.

mrbombastic

8 months ago

I don’t understand your argument, because NBC is not popular it is okay to censor them because of a political vendetta?

nickthegreek

8 months ago

NBC doesn’t have a single license. A bunch of smaller entities have those licenses. They aren’t going anywhere regardless of Carrs crying.

infotainment

8 months ago

Remember, no one is actually in favor of free speech. Everyone, and I mean everyone, regardless of their personal political views, wants to silence people they disagree with. I suspect this is some kind of trait inherent to human psychology.

Often, they’ll do so hiding behind complex philosophical rationales, but in the end the result is the same.

anonnon

8 months ago

> Everyone, and I mean everyone, regardless of their personal political views, wants to silence people they disagree with

Pure projection.

infotainment

8 months ago

Can you name anyone who was in ostensibly favor of free speech, and then, when given the opportunity to censor people, didn't seize it?

The obvious example would be Elon, the "free speech absolutist" whose principles only lasted about a week from taking over Twitter. On a smaller scale, you can see this play out with Reddit mods on individual subreddits for just about anyone on the political spectrum.

I suppose you could generalize my statement to "power corrupts", but the idea is the same.

anonnon

8 months ago

Do you remember what the internet was like 20 years ago? Censorship wasn't nearly as bad as it is now, and the push for more of it has predominantly come from one side.

ChicagoDave

8 months ago

Filtering out trolls, passive aggressive jerkoffs, and outright verbal abuse is everyone's right. Musk (and Dorsey) believe those people have a "right" to do those things without being muted.

Right.

lelanthran

8 months ago

> Filtering out trolls, passive aggressive jerkoffs, and outright verbal abuse is everyone's right. Musk (and Dorsey) believe those people have a "right" to do those things without being muted.

> Right.

Okay, when you get 99.999% of the population to agree on the definition of those terms and who they apply to, then sure ... let's take their voices away.

My personal observation over the recent years is that these slurs, and more, are applied to anyone not in a group (which is literally a vocal minority), by that very same group.

What we have now is a very vocal minority that is campaigning as if they have the support of the entire population, and they are calling anyone who doesn't support them some pretty awful names. Those terms of yours (and more, like "nazi") have been so diluted by overuse on the average person that they don't mean anything anymore.

People unsupportive of the current approach to treating gender dysphoria are accused of being awful humans, while those doing the shaming are ignoring that we regard other types of dysphoria as mental issues, not fixable via surgery.

More recently, I've noticed that the L, G and B individuals, that I personally know socially, are actively distancing themselves from the rest of that alphabet soup.

So, yeah, we need some new terms to define what an actual troll is, because now the meaning includes "doesn't support my campaign for $IDEOLOGY".

ChicagoDave

8 months ago

If you don't know what fascism is or what a Nazi is, then I can't help you.

Those words aren't diluted.

Nazi

A member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party, which controlled Germany from 1933 to 1945 under Adolf Hitler. The body of political and economic doctrines held and put into effect by the Nazis in Germany during that period.

Nazism

Nazism is a form of fascism, with disdain for liberal democracy and the parliamentary system. It incorporates a dictatorship, fervent antisemitism, anti-communism, anti-Slavism, anti-Romani sentiment, scientific racism, white supremacy, social Darwinism, homophobia, ableism, and the use of eugenics into its creed.

Fascism

Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy. Opposed to anarchism, democracy, pluralism, egalitarianism, liberalism, socialism, and Marxism, fascism is at the far right of the traditional left–right spectrum.

The election was split by 1.7% and the population is very diverse on most issues, and it swings red because we have states with low populations with over-representation. Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, North and South Dakota provide ten senate seats represented by 6 million people (10% of the population would be 34 million), or less than 2%.

Your "99.999%" statement is patently false.

Bluesky does not block or mute people. The users do.

Twitter/X has filtering mechanisms tweaked by Musk to favor his worldview.

Which one is truly enabling free speech, and which one is just a billionaire's hobbyist misinformation platform?

If you come to Bluesky and you're a jerk, you won't find a community that includes people that don't like jerks. You'll only find a community of people that likes jerks. Still open. Still free. No advertisement. No algorithm. You get out of it what you put in.

Kind of like real life.

lelanthran

8 months ago

> If you don't know what fascism is or what a Nazi is, then I can't help you.

My point is that I already know what those things are; the people calling others "Nazi" or "Fascist" apparently don't know what those terms mean.

> Your "99.999%" statement is patently false.

How so? It wasn't an assertion, it was a request:

>>> Okay, when you get 99.999% of the population to agree on the definition of those terms and who they apply to, then sure ... let's take their voices away.

Let me re-iterate: If almost half the voters who do not agree with the minority are getting called Nazis or Fascists by that minority (probably less than 10%), then those terms are watered down and meaningless.

ChicagoDave

7 months ago

37% didn’t vote. Trump got 32%. Harris got 31%.

There is no silent majority.

You get called a Nazi if you think immigrants or transgenders are the problem and not wealthy billionaires manipulating our national media.

hitekker

7 months ago

You said the word Nazi wasn't diluted, and then you implied the GP is a Nazi.

It seems dishonest and, unfortunately, weakens the power of those labels even more.

lelanthran

7 months ago

> 37% didn’t vote. Trump got 32%. Harris got 31%.

Isn't that in agreement with what I said? What did you think I meant by "half the voters"

> There is no silent majority.

I never said there was. I said there's a very vocal minority, the phrasing of which I thought clearly indicated that it wasn't 100% Harris voters who were that vocal minority.

> You get called a Nazi if you think immigrants or transgenders are the problem

Well, yeah; that's kinda the problem - that's not what the word "Nazi" meant, but now it's so diluted that it gets applied to fully half the voters, by a tiny minority of people who are very very vocal.

I mean, I stepped into this thread saying that the meaning of "Nazi" has been diluted, and in response you say that people who have a problem with illegal immigration are Nazis?

Are you serious?

If people concerned about illegal immigration are actual Nazis, how the fuck are we to describe people running concentration camps, gas chambers and genocide?

ChicagoDave

7 months ago

The entire immigration argument is racist and based on Trump's "Mexican rapists" diatribe from 2015, which he doubled down on this year.

No one remembers that Reagan signed an immigration law that gave 10 million immigrants a path to citizenship.

"Illegal immigration" is never about drugs or crime. It's about brown people "invading" our "white" country. Read anything about Stephen Miller's thoughts and you'll understand he literally wants to "reverse" the trend of minority "growth" in our country ... at ANY cost.

We are a nation of immigrants and undocumented workers have a massive positive impact on our economy. This is a fact.

People come to our country because of what we sell, which is the "land of opportunity" and ruled by laws. And the second someone crosses the border and says, "I'm seeking asylum," they are no longer "illegal". They are simply undocumented.

So, I have serious doubts about anyone saying they're against immigrants and that it's coming from a racist (even minimally) perspective. Racism is a core tenant of Nazism and Fascism.

lelanthran

7 months ago

> So, I have serious doubts about anyone saying they're against immigrants and that it's coming from a racist (even minimally) perspective. Racism is a core tenant of Nazism and Fascism.

Once again, I have to point out that you're equivocating "Racist" and "Nazi". If you're going to use the term "Nazi" for all racists, what word do you propose to use for the genocidal, gas-chamber-loving actual Nazis?

ChicagoDave

7 months ago

They are all Nazis. There is no “level”. The KKK are essentially Nazis. White Christian Nationalism is Nazism.