Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

Ok. I actually wanted Trump to be as embarrassing as possible in these last weeks to lessen his future influence. But, good grief, I never imagined it would come to yesterday's debacle. my bet was that his party would slowly distance themselves. slowly. looks like that might be happening in one day now.

Brit Patriotism is pretty low key. We don't much wave flags and we suffer, rather than love our governmental institutions (even if we do occasionally claim to have parented democracy: mother of parliaments and all that). But I don't think we can fail to feel for America seeing what happened yesterday. And for all our cool, don't think we would welcome our parliament Being trashed. Even though we too elect people that do.

Taking on my British birth heritage here, even though I've lived in another country for fifteen years. And yes, my adopted country has its problems too.

I always keep owl hours. Last night I expected to be following our weather situation, which has been a bit extreme. I got glued to American news instead and watched until 6am

 

Facebook and Twitter are private advertising platforms that use social media functionality as their way to draw in the business. They are certainly not public utilities. BTW, SBAF (and all forums) are social media too, just on a smaller scale.

 

Phone companies aren't public utilities either, but nobody expects them to take measures to censor or whatever the equivalent might be for real time communication. And in fact, I suspect there would have been great outrage had they tried to do that. Now I'm not so sure as the free speech support seems to be eroding.

 

But phones are private communication (also like email and USPS mail). Social media is public communication more similar to radio, television or newspaper.

 

Yeah that's the tricky part. Social media is a hybrid. It's privately generated but publicly shared. But following someone is optional so it should be incumbent on users to unfollow people they dont like, not on the platforms to de-platform them.

 

It obviously is not because of section 230 that exempts them from any editorial liability for the content.
So they are whatever they like to be on any given day.

So it goes like that:

1. Lets give almost complete monopoly to three private companies on the flow of information, ideas, public discourse in the country. Because "they are just like SBAF". Let's call them moderators shall we?
2. They will know what is permissible: what information, what ideas, what kind of language. Not only what but when: in April they will allow posts saying that masks are not very useful, in July they will ban posts saying masks are not very useful, and, as good moderators, they will remove the April posts.
   In 2017 they will allow posts that the elections were stolen by Russia (voting machines were hacked) , and the president is illegitimate, in 2020 they ban all the posts about possible election fraud (voting machines could not possibly be hacked).
   
3. They will make us better people, and our country a better place, by making sure that we say only the right things at the right time.
4. This way we will continue as a healthy and thriving democracy and we will all prosper.
   Aman and Awoman.

EDIT: I wonder what they are drinking right now in the Forbidden City? But it must cost at least 1 BTC per bottle or more.

 

And you are still not required to use Twitter. I keep saying this point since I don't think you realize that the social media is a service that someone volunteers to use. No one points a gun in your head and said sign up on Twitter and be a SJW or a MAGA fan.

I know plenty of people who do not get any information from the social media networks locally.

Also, here's a food for thought: Lets repeal Section 230. This also means anyone who runs a forum is responsible for any contact posted on their forum. Amir can be a cunt and sue Marv if he has a strong case under "Slander" due to our research into his crazyness. Either the stuff gets removed from SBAF or to protect himself Marv could shut down SBAF. Not saying this would happen, but people are crazy and repealing Section 230 opens any forum owner to that risk.

Sen McConnell said this best after the Dems did the nuclear option to stop filibustering lower court nominations: “You’ll regret this, and you may regret this a lot sooner than you think.”

Remember, it is always about the long term effects of things. This is why IMO McConnell is one of the few guys in Congress who knows what the game is all about.

 

that would be horrible.
In much "better" world Amir would not have to do it. The only thing he needs to do is to monopolize the search engine so every time 92.27% of people search for headphones they only get entries from Amir's forum, and when you search for SBAF you see only the posts from Amir shitting on SBAF. Much better that suing Marv.

Every argument taken to the extreme becomes absurd and with "Google is just a private company, you do not need to use it" we reached this point long ago.
That obviously comes from the fallacy that "Facebook is just like SBAF" and therefore has to be under the same legal framework.

 

If I may ask, why do you care so much about what type of search engine people use @wormcycle? You are so concerned about a few companies "controlling" information yet your viewpoint remained the same without these few companies "telling you how to think."

Also, did you even use the other search engines? Except for DuckDuckGo which is good on privacy, the other search engines except for Google sucks. If the other search engines want to get more of a market share, they need to make a better product.

Anyhoo, this game of ping pong is getting old. If Section 230 gets repealed (and Biden is open to it) and some of your favorite news political sites gets shut down thanks to lawsuits over "slander," I can't say that I didn't warn ya.

 

Here's one reason someone might care:

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-andre-damon

 

This is true, but in a narrow sense and is missing something important. That something is that we are not all idealized self sufficient individuals, who walk in the world performing isolated social contract "transactions" with other self sufficient individuals. Yes, we are individuals with some measure of freedom and will, but just as important is the reality that we are at the same time communal beings organically linked (like organs in our body are related to the whole) such that we are utterly dependent on each other, even defined/composed by the state, health, and actions of the everyone else. Your nothing without everybody else - you would not even survive more than a few days. In other words, free-will individuals don't even exist (let alone act) apart from a culture. Too philosophical? How about an example:

Your not required to use the transportation network, no one puts a gun to your head and tells you to get into a car, board a bus/train/plane. What if a coalition of private, private/government, or government who controlled transportation decided that your beliefs/speech did not fit with their ends. You could go out and perhaps convince enough property owners and re-invent a parallel transportation network in a heroic and hideously difficult/expensive way, but the original would be what 99% use and realistically you would not have a job, or even be able to eat, without you acquiescing to their expectations.

The reality is that in our culture political information is coming to most (not all, but most) through a handful of "platforms". This means that they are an organic part of the culture, and an idealized social contract relationship does not capture their power over the whole political "atmosphere" that a culture breaths so that it can function.

Recognition of this reality does not necessarily support this or that policy of regulation/oversight. That said it is important to rightfully frame their place and not pretend they or less (or more) than what they are.

 

Sorry bud, but I have to politely disagree with your perspective. The issue once again come down to people's freewill to use/entertain these platforms. Then again, I focus more on the individual over the collective. This part right here is going to be the big debate the GOP will need to have going forward. Go back to the old meaning of conservative or continue with the libertarian viewpoint of individualism.

If your solution is the repeal of Section 230 as a way to monitor these platforms, then answer this question for me: When did government did something right to monitor something digital with their over regulation? We already know how much the federal government sucks on online matters, why get them more involve to screw it up? I am 100% confident that is Section 230 is repealed then the GOP/Dems are going to have a field day shutting down any platform/forums/news with comments that is against their viewpoint. Talking about the GOP trying to do something on Section 230 is like them supporting the FCC Fairness Doctrine on radio. Remember, it was the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine that allowed talk radio to be huge. .

 

Ah, but notice I did not say the correct policy is the specific repeal of Section 230, a revival of 'FCC Fairness Doctrine', or any other specific policy. What I am pointing out is that any debate on policy has to be about reality and not particular idealism(s) that are in fact just caricature's of reality. As a conservative I generally side with limited government. Limited however is not no government. What's the reality? A handful of platforms are monopolizing political information (so a government by another name/form) and thus the cultural air we all breath (rather right or left, libertarian or conservative, religious or not, etc.). What do we do with this fact? The left have no moral/principled qualms whatsoever with regulation, and since they now control both the government and all major institutions (i.e. media, universities, corp. board rooms, etc.) they will step in. What's "our" response from our own principals and as a reaction to the left's certain forth coming action?

 

I do not look at it as a matter with regards to controlling political information. I look at this more as what is the role of the Federal Government in a commerce debate like this one.

Some might want them to do something about these platforms. I am on the other end of the debate and say these are private companies and government getting involved is not a good idea due to long term ramifications and how much of the boxing match our two major political parties are. Furthermore, the official political information comes from our .gov sites from all of our Reps/Senators/C-SPAN, etc.. It is just we Americans are too damn lazy and prefer click bait and 150 word "tweets." If that is what the public wants, then that is what the public gets. Don't get government involve in a private business matter IMO unless they want to be more like Xi in China.

Give up their free market principals and stop saying they are for limited government. Call it a culture war, Trump did a great job on that front. Make Sen Cotton the president and see all those guys burn.

This also means I will no longer vote GOP on state level and above. They been off the mark IMO for decades from the ideals of Goldwater.

 

Yeah, government shouldn’t get involved in private business matters. That’s why I’m for repealing child labor laws, renter protections, OSHA requirements, etc etc.

The argument needs to be more nuanced than “government bad, business good.” What responsibility for businesses have to the common good? Right now that doesn’t seem like a concern of the social media giants.

 

I think I can safely speak for a lot of people outside the USA when I say we are going to be very happy for you to have a normal person in charge again. I'm not particularly caring whether your president is Dem or GOP, just that whoever is in charge is sane and acts like an adult, well grounded in reality. Whoever thought that would not just be the default?

 

Trump has something on Cruz. Something really bad. Like child torture dungeon in an old bomb shelter bad.

 

Twitter and FB have given Trump the permaban.

Shumer calling for Impeachment and the 25th.