It got less media play but the founder of the Hind Foundation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hind_Rajab_Foundation) that is going after IDF soldiers for war crimes that happened in Gaza got his Instagram account taking down at the same time, but it wasn't restored:
It seems that there are repeated waves of account deletions affecting those not in power and only if you raise a huge stink is it undone but only on a per-account basis. And each of these waves slowly erodes those voices. It sort of feels like a strategy.
Erasure from the internet (suppression) of free speech and 'unwelcome' perspectives is just going to get wider and more subtle considering the same people/motives that are vested in Social Media are having their sticky fingers now also in "AI" chatbots.
That's why it's paramount that we as somewhat privileged, informed people now chose truly open and distributed platforms (mastodon, etc) instead of keep on posting x and other zucker-SM network links that keep users in their walled zoo.
> The current platforms are overrun by them but seemingly only by choice. A truly open platform would be a bot playground.
You seem to be assuming two things. First, that there is an "easy" solution to this which is available as a result of centralization, and second that there isn't a decentralized one.
The first one is pretty hard for a service which is trying to use a gamable algorithm to show you posts from total randos, regardless of centralization.
As an example of the second one, suppose that your feed shows entirely or heavily disproportionately posts/reposts from people you follow and the people they follow, and you can turn off the second one for specific people. Then if you don't follow bots, you don't see bots. Replies show up if either the reader or the original poster follow the reply poster, and by default for the poster of what it's a reply to or if they choose to make it visible to everyone who follows them.
Now bots can show up to post replies, but only one person will see them and they'll be at the end of the list and marked as someone they have no connection with. On top of that, the user's client can do any kind of algorithmic bot detection they want.
If a platform was open then we could spin up blocklists for known or suspected bots. We created blocklists for bittorrent. We create and manage blocklists for ads. If we had direct control over our social media feeds we would create blocklists for bots too.
I organized a peaceful protest in Sun Valley Idaho in 2021 on Reddit, and within 10 days my account was suspended, all my 15 years of posts and comments deleted. This was done in parallel with an operation conducted by an army of psyop bots that would try to scare people about it, claiming I was a terrorist, crazy, etc.
I was surveilled and harassed by the FBI during this time as well.
The post is so vague that it isn't clear what this is about. I would suggest just creating a new reddit account under a different email? Are not the main limits to reddit accounts is 3 months age and 1000 Karma? That is super easy to achieve, no need to wait years to restore your old account. Just make a new one. You are also allowed to have multiple reddit accounts, just do not double vote on things.
Meet Jordana Cutler, Meta's Public Policy Director for Israel and the Jewish Diaspora [1], previously a senior adviser reporting to Benjamin Netanyahu, the chief of staff at the Israeli embassy in the US and party chairman of the Likud Party, who has bragged about suppressing any pro-Palestinian content [2].
At least you didn’t organize on BlueSky, where nobody would show up but you’d be villainized by 100 people for some minor transgression they found in your post.
Brad Lander is posting on BlueSky about him and a bunch of other American Jews and Israelis who were assisting with a olive harvest and essentially acting as human shields against settlers.
IDF detained the Americans but let him go because he's a public figure. The rabbis are still detained. Go figure.
I haven't either. I don't use any of the general algorithmic feeds, only my following feed and algorithmic feeds for particular technical topics of interest. The ability to do that is exactly why I'm using BlueSky rather than LinkedIn or Twitter for this sort of information.
On Twitter, you can't get away from some random offensive racism, e.g. against Indian students at football games, or whatever the 2 minutes hate is ranting about on a certain day. In BlueSky, I get all signal and pretty much zero noise.
BlueSky also has far better tools for stopping dogpiling than Twitter, by stopping the quote-tweet phenomenon. All around a much much healthier place if one chooses the healthy direction.
Amazingly, the top replies to their post about targeted harassment are from accounts trying to redirect anger at several accounts that are common targets for dogpiling. It's deeply baked into the BlueSky culture and I don't know how it came to be like that.
I've tried to prune my feed to keep it out, but now the problem is that journalists I follow eventually find themselves targeted by a BlueSky dogpiling campaign and leave the platform.
EDIT: A lot of responses are trying to blame the dogpiling victims are saying the problem doesn't exist. Let me give you one recent example, where Rick Brewster made a proof of concept of Paint.NET running on Wine and got dogpiled so hard that he deleted the post and backed out: https://bsky.app/profile/rickbrew.bsky.social/post/3muiv4phe...
It was really jut the people least agreeable to Twitter's new ownership. Whether you view like or dislike of Elon as toxic is more down to personal taste. I find the culture there perfectly pleasant.
A lot of the dogpiling is from people who come out and say some dumb shit and demand respect. When they get ridicule for their ridiculous take, they play the victim.
That being said, there's also the tumblr->twitter->bluesky contingent who have always loved dogpiling and they're mostly there because the site doesn't have musk boosting nazi posters.
> A lot of the dogpiling is from people who come out and say some dumb shit and demand respect. When they get ridicule for their ridiculous take, they play the victim.
Literally victim blaming.
The recent high profile example was a person who made a proof of concept of Paint.net on Wine and got dragged across the website so hard he felt he had to delete it, apologize, and abandon the project:
> A lot of the dogpiling is from people who come out and say some dumb shit and demand respect. When they get ridicule for their ridiculous take, they play the victim.
Literally victim blaming.
---
If you say something outrageous in the 'public square' and you get mocked for it by the public, how are you a victim?
I don't know why that would happen to someone trying to make a paint.NET clone, but that's also certainly not the type of post the person you replied to was talking about.
> I don't know why that would happen to someone trying to make a paint.NET clone, but that's also certainly not the type of post the person you replied to was talking about
You’re not seeing it. Everyone who dogpiled the Paint.NET on Wine guy also thought they were doing legitimate mocking of a guy who said the wrong thing in a public square. The people who didn’t like AI thought it was valid to create a harassment campaign against him for using AI as part of his process. The people who thought all things Microsoft must be opposed thought it was valid to create a harassment campaign for making a Microsoft product work in more places.
Everyone in each of these campaigns thought their crusade was valid and the victim brought it upon themself. That you can see it being invalid in some cases is getting close to realizing why it’s a problem. Not everyone agrees on what’s right or wrong, but these public shaming campaigns serve to try to force everyone who disagrees out of the platform to strengthen the echo chamber.
You’re already noticing that you’re outside of the acceptable echo chamber thoughts because you don’t understand why the Paint.NET project would attract harassment. If you supported that guy and your post got traction, you too could get dogpiled. Do you think you would have said anything “outrageous” in the public square by questioning why anyone would criticize that guy?
On Bluesky even the most centrist, moderate views are often dogpiled as "something outrageous". I got dragged into a flame war because I posted something to the effect of "I dont think communism would magically solve all our current problems"
It's intrinsic to the medium. The Twitter-like format is inherently toxic and irredeemable. It can't be fixed.
The microblogging format with likes and reposts selects for short highly viral stuff that pokes at the brain stem. Rage bait, trolling, lynch mobs, and stupid brain rot stuff are all ideal forms of content for this medium. Nuanced and genuinely insightful ideas are too long.
I think short form content in general is bad. Short form video seems to be less actively toxic but more brainless and attention-destroying. Short form content is the refined sugar (or in some cases the crack or the fentanyl) of discourse.
Reddit-style sites (like this one) are better but still suffer from these problems. HN avoids the worst of it by having a culture and mod policy of downvoting trolling and low-effort crap.
I think one reason why HN is somewhat saner, is that computer nerds are one of the few demographics today who still largely post from a real computer and keyboard. Smartphones with their small screens and keyboards discourage longform text no matter how much people claim to be proficient writers on them, but people on HN don't have the same obstacle to typing a couple of substantial paragraphs with actual depth and nuance.
I am reminded about the effort and patience it required to have long-form conversations on fidonet with people 2-3 states away due to the bbs hop delay. While the topics weren't necessarily particularly serious, the effort required to have any communication at all meant both sides spent time and effort.
I often think back to this early networked communication as stark contrast to the ease and rapidity we communicate today and how that same easy and rapidity has driven the quality into the ground.
Someone dubbed "the running of Will Stancil" which I think describes a particular phenomenon of anti-engagement. I think there are some of anti- derangements about.
But generally these things cluster very strongly around specific people.
Alas Journalists I think are high value targets. Ideally they'd use tools like blocklists to help each other defend against dog piling. Ideally we'd have more automated response systems to detect and manage problems, which we could build, because of how Bluesky data is (so far, "spaces" incoming which change the gane) all public data. Blocking posts etc. The ability to handle this problems is much higher on Bluesky than elsewhere.
This can happen on Bluesky. It sucks. But for most people it's not an issue at all. It does unfortunately drive off some higher profile people though.
HN sure seems desperate to believe BlueSky is the bad spot. I suspect other networks too have metrically built up this defense systems for themselves, to justify their continued use. x spectacle of posts to sing the propaganda song that this is the bad place over here, it's too left, it's too woke, it's too activist, it's too digpiley. It seems unmoored, completely unhinged to me.
It would be interesting to figure out if these that do the dogpiling are real users or not. It does not reflect my experience on BlueSky. But I am just a single datapoint.
Without the discussion getting crazy, as a participant, do you think No Kings is poorly named? For an outsider like myself, it seems like a confusing movement. I mean the guy was elected, so obviously not a king. And couldn't even change the name of the art center, so not that powerful. So the king thing seems misplaced? And when they ask the people at the protest, they can't seem to articulate what the point is, except they don't like the guy's policies and conduct.
Kings disregard democracy and do what they want. This is precisely what this elected official continues to attempt to do. No kings is a reminder that he and all other elected officials are not kings.
"No kings is a reminder that he and all other elected officials are not kings."
It would be great if the "other elected officials" part turns out to be true, but my in my experience I don't see that happening. Have there been any policy proposals out of No Kings that would create better oversight and accountability?
Agreed. A No Executive Orders protest would be more clear and would be one I could get behind. It does seem like it would be good to limit the scope of Executive orders. Like, many were asking, how can he just close down the department of education with an exacutive order? Oh, it's because the department of education was formed by an excutive order of an earlier president in the first place.
The scope of Executive Orders is already limited by the Constitution. What additional limitations are you asking for?
In some cases Presidents have issued orders that exceeded their legal authority. The effects of those are eventually blocked by the judicial system, although that necessarily takes some time.
Do you think making things up and attributing them to other people is more or less constructive than replying to what they actually said? Do you usually get a great response when you go for cute X clapbacks, or... what?
DHS literally telling federal court judges that they are going to continue extraditing someone in face of a court order not to, that they are not going to turn a plane around.
ICE refusing to make officers available to law enforcement for investigation of issues.
A lot more happening than "making executive orders", though kudos to Trump for trying to sign executive orders that even his own DOJ are not just illegal, but unconstitutional.
I can't vote anyone out alone, so groups/ideas like No Kings seek to collect people around some general organizing principle. Involved people are more likely to vote and it's possible that you highlight the issues for people who aren't aware or energized enough to vote.
Plus, protests can influence other people in government, outside of elections.
Keep an eye on the Texas Senate race and what happens if Talarico wins. Paxton has granted himself the ability to investigate election fraud as the sitting AG.
Let's see if the will of the people is honored, or if the king steps in too.
He's not attempting he's fucking doing it. Which to me signals deeper problems with our supposed "system of checks and balances" that we're taught since grade school. The system was specifically designed to prevent this, and yet it's happened. Whether Trump is impeached or imprisoned or whatever is secondary to plugging the holes he used to do this in the first place.
The No Kings protesters seem to want to disregard democracy because they don't like the current president. Repeatedly claimling the sky will fall given an election result seems to be undemocratic. Which certainly goes both ways, but right now it is the democrats who have fallen into this line of thinking. What has he done that is any more undemocratic than previous presidents?
I don't think any other president promoted anything like January 6, and doesn't recognize an election of a president to this day - undermining democracy, the same democratic system that elected him twice.
Just that alone is enough I think.
But you can also see his disgust to western democracies, and his fascination with autocracies, the vast majority of them are extremely incompetent - thank God for that at least.
Here are some things Obama did that were unprecedented or very concerning regarding the press:
* Obama extensively used the Espionage Act to uncover government sources used by the press and also against the press directly
* Obama secretly subpoenaed the phone calls of AP reporters
* Obama didn't allow or severely restricted photojournalists
I don't think that it is good to ban the media from the White House, and I do think the much of the criticism is fair, but to then claim that this is undemocratic is wrong.
Both parties, the oligarchy, are the problem. Power continues to concentrate in the President, Congress does nothing. SCOTUS polls marginally better, the Press has ceased fulfilling their role. Wealth inequality reached an all time high in America. We The People are furious for varied and valid reasons.
I do think there's a problem. I also do think we probably have it better than most other countries. So, perhaps we can deal with the oligarchy and fraud within our system. I do think that is what led many to vote for Trump, in that they feel failed by both parties and Trump was an outsider, similar to Bernie's ascendance.
The executive (1/3rd of the government) being capricious with the press is _undoubtedly_ embarrassing and unamerican, but is so far away from the behavior of a true monarch that the name "no kings" is still farcical at best.
That's one example, there are daily reminders to why "NoKings" has staying power as a movement, compared to the Indivisible brand. I suggest watching a full segment from the oval office, listen to the things that preoccupy his mind.
I do agree there is a ton of hyperbolics in NoKings / Indivisible / the left. I work within these organizations, enduring it, to temper their messages and opinions. Minds are moved in real life while biases are reinforced online. It's hard to forget there is another human with different experiences when you sit face to face.
Oh my parents and their partners go to all the no kings rallies. I can see the size of the movement dwindling over time. I'm very happy someone is attempting to temper though, because, as I've said for a decade now, the hyperbolics drive way more support for your opponents than they do for your cause.
He tried to overturn an election, his destruction of executive agencies is both unprecedented in scope and illegal in manner, he breaks the law constantly to enrich himself, and he repeatedly ignores the will of the legislature. It isn't "I don't like his tax rates, he's a king". His conduct is anti-democratic.
The Project 2025 agenda (only that latest in a long series of Heritidge Foundation plots), to destroy thr federal government to shatter universities, to generally keep the government from functioning, in a desire to pull people towards libertarianism, towards disbelieving in government, was terrifying to America during the election. Terrifying. No one wanted it.
Today though, this plan to destroy the government is in full effect. It's had remarkable success with the quadfecta of GOapnhouse & Senate doing nothing, allowing the president to seize the power of the purse, enact recisions, whatever. And the partisan hack joke of Florida election recount denier "justices" enabling him at every turn, using shadow docket rulings at an unheard of rate to step in to deny the regular courts their normal motion of things, to forward dear leader along. Executive power we have no belief they will continue to espouse when it's a Democrat in a hopefully less gilded tacky ass White House. Project 2025's progress undoing America & governance has been a horror. https://www.project2025.observer/en
A bunch of European countries (including all of Scandinavia) are constitutional monarchies, and they don't devolve into the sort of anti-democratic behaviour we're all seeing from Trump. As a UK resident, I would prefer if the UK were a republic on general principle, but I fail to see the monarchy causing any real large-scale harm to society (individuals like Andrew notwithstanding).
The real point they should be making is "no more despots". Some despots are kings, but some are styled presidents, such as Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un.
Also, legitimately elected or appointed officials become despots all the time. Hitler had a plurality (but not outright majority) of votes in 1932. Salazar was an MP and minister of finance, and actually legitimately tried to resign from that role several times over many years before he was eventually nominated to the role of prime minister. Ferdinand Marcos won the Philippine presidential election in 1965 with some amount of intimidation, and the Philippines only formally became a military dictatorship under his rule in 1971.
In many ways, that's the scariest scenario — people who legitimately get elected to power, and then use that power to solidify their illegitimate rule.
Most political movements (and arguments) in the US use hyperbole. No Kings is hyperbolic to show disapproval of Trump's actions. This single-sided bias on a conceptual is also a hall mark of most political movements in the US. It's fine if someone takes a similar action that I see as good, but it's bad if I think it's bad.
Before I get hated out of existence, please note that I don't like either party or political tactics in general because they've devolved into politically commercialized populism without any empathy or critical thought. Just as an example, deportations under Trump are roughly on trend with Obama, Trump targeting activities are similar to Obama targeting conservative groups with the IRS, Obama lied in the SoTU about the gender wage gap, Obama was hard on journalists (highest prosecutions?) Like Trump has been, and Obama ignored court orders such as issuing immigration permits in violations of a order similar to Trump ignoring orders. I could sit here and hope that any of these abuses results in better oversight, but that would be naive based on the history.
Edit: if you're going to disagree, at least contribute to the discussion.
No Kings is a catchall for no tyrants or authoritarians. It's what the founding fathers were worried bout when setting up the US representative democracy with checks and balances and a constitution. They didn't want a president to act like a tyrant or a king.
And somehow the federalist society folks stick their head in the mud and make up some nonsensical interpretation, violating the clear and obvious interpretation, to justify further eroding rights and democracy. A party of greedy and traitorous fools taking down the country they pretend to love, enriching themselves at every step.
They were describing their experience dealing with kings and people who want to be kings. King is a personality type, not only a role. In more clinical settings they’re called narcissistic sociopaths, which is what Trump has proven himself to be, so that’s why we call him a king. Sometimes their title is “dictator”, sometimes it’s “emperor” or “fuhrer” or “chairman” or in this case “president”.
I just watched Trump talk for 5 minutes sitting at the desk in the oval office about how he gets to choose what he likes and the blathering about a seriously good question being 'fake news'. The president acting like a petulant toddler makes me feel like the name couldn't be more appropriate.
One of the first AI slop nonsense coming out of the White House was Trump wearing a crown on a mock Time magazine cover with "Long Live The King" printed on it.
NoKings has name recognition. I volunteer with my local Indivisible, but people know this name far less.
Trump acts like a king, even if he was elected. He gets tributes and requires deference, clearly visible from the foreign and corporate donations, and behavior of the Republican Party. Or take the "super intelligence" thing, him dictating what a technology shall be called, lest you become an ENEMY OF AMERICA. Or the repeated attempts to silence the media. If we consider the Kennedy Center you brought up, Trump's name was on there, then removed by court order. His response was to close it in spite. The Kennedy Center remains closed to this day, until he gets his way.
Trump has tried to violate most of the Bill of Rights. There are reasons people see every day for why NoKings sticks and resonates.
I do agree NoKings (and broadly the far left) have really bad messaging, a product of echo chambers (imo). I suspect the Democrats will learn the wrong lessons from the midterms... sigh.
You and others are not able to say anything of substance other than repeating the claim that he acts like a king without saying what actions are making you think that. Do you think Obama was a king, given his control and adverserial relationship with the press?
It's also incredibly ironic that the claim that democracy was on the line during the last presidential election given that the democrats first fielded a candidate whose health concerns were downplayed and then a candidate who was not elected in the primary.
Right, so what I am seeing is that someone goes, "Hey, holding up the money that congress appropriated is overstepping what has historically been the legislative branches power and usurping it to be an excecutive branch power" and then I look at the specific instances they mention and come to the same or a similar conclusion, I am performing confirmation bias, but you reading their example and equating it to "they don't like Trump" is pure analysis.
From the other perspective, they think they have the legal right to do so and that they are wanting to limit wasteful spending. This is still very much inline with working within the constitution. How do you think this is king-like behavior?
The Obama comparison is a great one to bring up to destroy your point. Obama made frustrated comments, but he never revoked their press badges or used government powers to stifle their ability to report on him, which Trump has done. There is a huge gulf between simply making a comment and actually using your official powers to force a change. Trump crossed that gulf, Obama did not.
Obama certainly did his part in strengthening executive power and your attention to the role that Democrats played in this is well deserved. This whataboutism, however, does not absolve the Republicans who are pushing the Unitary Executive theory -- of which a monarchy is the ultimate expression. Therefore, the name "no kings" -- a catchy title that captures the undeniable thrust of the founding of the USA and warns of the end of the slope our country is accelerating down.
I don't necessarily see this about whataboutism if the people making claims support another person or party that has the same faults that they are claiming.
That is a rather misguided and hyperbolic view of unitary executive theory. The president would still be elected and bounded by the constitution.
That’s a rather naive view of unitary executive theory if you look at how it’s actually been used. The people pushing it say they are not bound by the Constitution, because part of the theory, which was advanced during a Trump’s first impeachment trial, is that if the President does it, it can’t be a crime. He was acquitted under that theory. Moreover, he argued the proper venue for accountability is the courts. But in court, he argued the proper venue for accountability was impeachment. SCOTUS essentially agreed with that.
So when you say “bound by the Constitution” what you really mean is bound by being able to sway 10 senators from his own party. So… not exactly bound is it, considering he’s already shown he’s willing to arrest his political opponents (and under unitary executive theory it’s within his power to do so)
I can't take it seriously when someone compares Obama's comments about, say, Fox, vs. how Trump behaves.
The scope and the shamelessness of his behavior is unprecedented. Nothing any other president has done compares to what Trump has done, with the negative impact to the country, with such explicit opposition to American interests.
Off the top of my head: Illegal tariffs, sicking ICE on society with brutality, trying to overturn elections, constantly lying about election security to sow doubt in our democracy, declaring that any election he or the GOP loses is illegitimate, declaring that anyone who criticizes him is an enemy of the state, enriching himself and his friends with bribes and insider deals 10x what anyone could possibly claim any other politician in the US has done, selling pardons and stopping DOJ investigations for money, destroying the independent agencies that serve the country, threatening to invade allied territories, mocking our allies and reliable trading/military partners, betraying Ukraine for the benefit of his friends and Russia.
I cannot think of a way in which a determined deep Russian asset would behave differently than how Trump operates. If he isn't one, he's putting on a perfect impression.
You have the option to learn more about Obama's relationship with the press. It wasn't just Fox or conservative media.
I appreciate you listing a few things, but many of these are vague claims, and I will take on some of them.
Regarding ICE, the number of illegal aliens that entered the country during the previous administration caused significant issues. ICE has existed before, and uncooperative jurisdictions has made their job all the more difficult.
What election did he try to overturn? Is that similar to the Russian hoax?
Election fraud should be important to someone who cares about democracy, so I think your disregard is only warranted if you don't care about democracy.
How has Ukraine been betrayed, and you want to fuel an never ending war?
You should probably think a bit more deeply about these things. Surely, you can not like him and find many things you disagree with, but you seem to be repeating half baked thoughts.
You also have the option to learn more about these things, there was a whole violent insurrection you missed. Are you American? It was a big deal here…
> I mean the guy was elected, so obviously not a king.
The point of the protest is to prevent him from making himself a king.
> And couldn't even change the name of the art center, so not that powerful.
This is really weak cherry picking. He has successfully removed medical care from millions of Americans, started foreign wars of aggression, destabilised several countries, probably tanked US international reputation for a generation... he is incredibly powerful.
Like first of all I would call a person who tries to pass the checks and balances of a democracy, even if they fail, the target of the ideals or “no kings”
And while we can disagree with the extent to which any one act or bribe elevates someone to dictator, and whether or not all the accusations are true, can you not understand why someone caught up in the narrative ecosystem happening over the past few years may develop the perspective that Trump is trying to consolidate power?
Also “no folks who incrementally Test the limits of power and fail” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
"Network effects" is just "the emperor with no clothes": People believe it matters because people say so.
There's no reason why Emperor Zuck's court can't be disrupted by some monkey king yet to appear.
We're at the dawn of the Third Age of the Internet.
Someone has to be the Frodo to take Facebook & Twitter's rings into Mount MySpace and melt them down into the same puddle of lava as the legacy media that came before them :)
It’s absolutely a real thing. The people in my life use WhatsApp because that’s what everyone else they know uses.
I don’t use WhatsApp, which just means I’m not on the group chat. Nobody uses my preferred option because nobody but me is on it, which means not much actual chatting is happening.
Don’t worry No Kings day is a joke organized by a Never Trumper and with the goal of making sure nobody protests like France and instead protest in a way where it’s just a humiliation ritual.
To each their own, but I would not like to be in France during those riots. (Also, does the outburst of violence actually result in more changes being done? If no, then what’s the point; if yes, then the most violent organiser policy wins; does not seem like a winning strategy)
I think I understand why people make this connection but I don't actually think there is one. Freedom of speech is possibly the #1 thing people get confused over, due to the similarities between "I don't like your speech" and "I want your speech to stop" and "I want the government to stop your speech."
What I'm seeing is an argument for, "I don't like Facebook's speech. I think you shouldn't like it either. So I think we should all walk away."
"Freedom of speech" is used as shorthand for both the general culture of open listening to disagreeable views, and for a series of laws related to the first amendment.
98% of the time people are talking about the former, and the only ones confused are the people assuming they're talking about the latter and linking the face-palm-worthy "showing them the door" XKCD.
There's also a blurring of private/public in certain instances. There were cases in the 1980's regarding free speech rights in a shopping mall. Privately owned, but a public space (defacto public square).
> 98% of the time people are talking about the former
I'd say damn near 100% of those 98% will still cite the constitution, sometimes even crying "1st amendment!" in lieu of "free speech," so I'd say your overall point is wrong. They are basically saying both at the same time, with intent, while still not understanding it.
Sure, some people are talking about the former but are genuinely mixed up about the latter.
What do you feel would be the good-faith way to respond to such people?
Surely it's not by sidetracking into pedantry about the law, which at the end of the day both they and you know that's not what they're really fired up about.
I think that any reasonable person who is just misinformed is going to understand, possibly after some time if they are the sort who find it hard to admit they are wrong. Otherwise, if they are going to try and claim that "No, constitutional 'free speech' means I can say whatever I want without consequence from ANYbody" then I don't think there is a good-faith way to argue that.
An informed and educated populace is essential to the function of any universal democracy. The regulation of capital is essential to maintain efficient markets. It follows that the regulation of capital with respect to communications is necessary to maintain democracy and efficient markets under a notionally capitalist system.
There's clear moral valence to this issue. The popular (mis)understanding of freedom of speech as applied to corporations is in direct contradiction to the notional principles of western sociopolitical ideology. Resolving this conflict is only difficult because of our conditioning.
That is true. I remember the second of the two inventors on the early mRNA patents had some concerns, and suddenly his interviews got taken down. And everyone seemed happy about it. The first inventor was all in, and had many interviews posted.
Yeah but what GP is commenting on is that you can't make the argument "deplatforming is okay because free speech doesn't apply to companies" and then complain about deplatforming in this instance.
I agree with GP that the arguments one makes should reflect one's actual reasoning, e.g. "I believe it's wrong to say thing X and therefore I support deplatforming in that instace".
But because "I support deplatforming in every instace" sounds stronger many people falsely claimed that to be their reasoning.
And now they're forced to deal with the consequences, i.e. being called hypocrites.
I think the main reaction (at least in tech circles) is that companies like Meta have the power, the legal protection, the political cover, and the indifference to shut down anyone on their platform. So making them the sole provider for your tech and communication is a huge risk.
And this incident (negligent takedown of a community on an important day) demonstrates the point perfectly.
Not everyone thinks we should be free to spread hate. Germany has good historical reasons to ban holocaust denial. Rawanda has good reasons to ban genocidal speech. No more going on the radio to say, "Cut down the tall trees".
The reason to not platform hate speech is the same reason you're not allowed to yell fire in a theater or bomb in an airport without their being one. Or say you're going to kill the president. Even the US has limits on what can be said, including liability laws. You can't just defame your neighbor and not face legal repercussions if they take you to court.
One can imagine this argument during the Salem Witch trials. "She's a witch" wasn't just a joke back then. It could get someone burned at the stake.
The US has good historical reasons to ban the promotion of socialist/communist ideology, yet I don't think many people on the left would be down with that.
You've erected a strawman. The argument was not "free speech doesn't apply to companies", it was the exact opposite, i.e. a company's prerogative to control speech on their platform comes downstream of their own free speech rights. This remains true today and the article does not argue otherwise.
No, the argument is definitely "you have no expectation of free speech if you're using e.g. facebook to deliver that speech". Which is certainly an opinion to have, but in my view a silly one. You might as well say that if you chose to send mail using a "private company", it's that's company's "free speech right" to inspect your mail and throw it away if they don't agree with the contents.
It is very delicious poetic justice. Some liberals warned repeatedly that deplatforming would backfire but were shouted down and ridiculed by illiberal activists hellbent on silencing their foes.
I think there is still consistency between these two things.
Freedom of speech doesn't mean that I have to tolerate a business platforming hate speech. Any platform that stands behind the "free speech" of neo-nazi groups, white supremacists, and violent nationalists deserves criticism for turning a blind eye to what they are enabling. The First Amendment wasn't built to protect citizens' speech from each other; it was built to protect us from government censorship. Facebook doesn't have a legal responsibility to protect that, and I as a consumer can expect them to take an ethical stand against things like ethnic cleansing.
And that is exactly the point the author here is making. Facebook, X (Twitter), even places like Fediverse instances and Bluesky/AtProto sites are privately run spaces with no obligation to respect your freedom of speech.
If you choose these spaces to organize your political cause, you put your movement into another person's hands. Stop doing that. Host your own infrastructure, make it easy to recover and migrate, and start organizing outside of corporate-controlled areas.
Turning to Facebook for political organizing "because everyone is there" is like doing your town-hall meetings at Walmart "because everyone shops there", and then wondering why small businesses don't feel represented in your town anymore.
It's easy to blame big tech, but you can also ask your local bar why they only advertise events through Mark Zuckerberg, and ask why their website is mostly just links to Mark Zuckerberg's websites. Ask them if they have considered that Mark Zuckerberg might not a good obligatory middleman between them and their customers. The core problem is that people have accepted the lie that these corporate-controlled spaces are "the public square", when they are the exact opposite.
You might as well be hosting your own infrastructure by posting a sign in your living room for all the reach you will have. If you want to talk to yourself you don’t need infrastructure.
No. "They" cheered when it was used to deplatform hate speech.
Deplatforming people organizing a peaceful protest is very different. If you cannot understand how that is different, then I worry about your critical thinking skills.
was peaceful dissent about certain policies of 2020-2022 also "hate speech"? because, if I recall correctly, it was being suppressed with unprecedented zeal on every single platform. again, with applause.
These conversations often end up in some weird motte and bailey where you argue that you care about free speech, but it turns out that you actually just thought COVID was not real/not significant/not dangerous/not an emergency. So your issue ends up not being that they made a decision on it (free speech concern), but that you feel it was the wrong decision (content-specific concern).
So before we go back and forth on the intricacies of content moderation, can you briefly describe your beliefs on COVID?
Well I wasn’t the one who said “it’s hate speech.” There are a number of things that get content-moderated.
Hate speech, porn, bullying, doxxing, disinformation, Islamist propaganda, violent imagery, revenge porn, animal abuse imagery, incitements to violence, criminal planning, drug dealing, arms dealing, gambling, fraud, etc
As a free speech maximalist, are you willing to defend all of those with the same vigor as the COVID case? Or do you too actually draw a content-based line somewhere (while pretending you don’t?)
Both groups of people seem to harbor a lot of hatred, and they seem to want to express it a lot, so your distinction between what is and is not hate speech kind of seems to be based on whether you agree with it or not.
If you find this interpretation to be uncharitable, would you care to clarify what truths this interpretation overlooks?
Ultimately the platform, and yes there are huge grey areas. I don’t think this instance lands in one of them and that’s why Facebook isn’t even claiming it does.
It seems like you’re trying to avoid dealing with the substance of the issue for some reason.
Usually local police if they are on the scene. If they start seeing violence, they start telling people to disperse, followed by tear gas and then rubber bullets.
Personally I find censoring all links to the New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story a couple weeks before a presidential election to be much, much more egregious.
(To be perfectly clear disrupting protests is also very bad!)
My argument is that the principle of election non-interference applied to this specific situation can reasonably yield “we should suppress sharing while we figure out what’s going on.”
It was absolutely reasonable to suspect (in the early hours) that a salacious, bombshell story involving stolen documents published on NYPost without a listed author could potentially have been an actual disinformation attack.
Under that set of facts, the “we should try to limit interference in the election” can reasonably yield the behavior that it did yield.
Most people haven’t spent any time moderating online communities, so they don’t have to test their beliefs against reality. This is fine, frankly you saved yourself being stuck in a fractal hell scape.
However holding to this idea that the “opposition” was deplatformed, is superstition.
I’ve seen communities start with 0 moderation, and become wastelands filled with hate speech, misogyny and harassment. Which then forces moderation to be introduced.
This happens so often, that this happened to the hate groups who were kicked off of Reddit.
Communities have celebrated the introduction of moderation, and celebrated the imposition of rules that mean you can’t be harassed, attacked and targeted.
part of the challenge is that like the car, social media has reorganized societal "infrastructure" itself, such that just a reflexive "the old fashion way" leans on a social organization that doesn't exist anymore
I don’t buy that. The old way still exists, it’s just way less convenient. It reminds me of punk rock bands that self published and followed the DIY approach versus bands that sold out the record label approach. It’s hard to DIY but you can do it if you really want to.
Which is one of many reasons why social media, along with the internet in general, ought to be treated as a public utility rather than a private for-profit business.
People are convinced that the only way to get attention is by participating in the technofeudal social networks. The problem is that "attention" is not that useful for making change. Until we realize that more intimacy and some level of friction is a feature when it comes to actual power building and organizing, we're going to keep seeing both the lack of control over access to the social networks as well as the continual 'people share and nothing happens' effects of using ad-driven platforms for organizing.
The term "platform" implies a level of neutrality that doesn't exist in modern social media. The algorithm is making heavy decisions about what messages to amplify and which messages to suppress, on top of the possibility of a human putting their thumb on the scale.
This isn't a new problem. We've always had a few gatekeepers that steer the public narrative. This is a problem that the internet provides a clear opportunity to help solve, but has seemed to fall short. It's a clear blow to all of us techo-optimists.
I want to agree with you—but I think, post-2016, we can now all fully agree that (sadly) there is no such thing as a neutral platform, such that “platform [on the Web]” no longer necessarily implies “neutral platform.”
This is a real problem but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with Zuckerberg or Meta in particular. The article admits it's unlikely that this hour-long ban was a top-down decision. People get banned with no recourse on all the big platforms.
But yes, a solution is for people to host their own content/sites. Or "protocols not platforms"
>a solution is for people to host their own content/sites.
In a perfect world yes. In the reality we live in no.
Why is this the case?
1. Any site that is politically active and capable of upsetting people WILL BE ATTACKED. Can you afford a terabyte of data a second coming your way? Probably not. So you put it behind CF, but now you're vulnerable to their policies closing you down.
2. Any site that is politically active and capable of upsetting people WILL BE ATTACKED. What are you going to do against floods of child porn or death threats posted by users pretending to be on your side, but actually working for the opposition?
3. Any site that is politically active and capable of upsetting people WILL BE ATTACKED. You are now in charge of your website security. Are you any good at it? How are you going to pay for it to be secured? How do you trust the people doing the security?
4. Any site that is politically active and capable of upsetting people WILL BE ATTACKED. How do you plan on getting people to come to your site? If it's upsetting enough to the powers that be any messages containing links to your site will disappear from Meta/X/Google. You are going to have to find neat an interesting, and probably expensive ways to get your message out.
We have consolidated the internet down to a point where it is very very easy for a few small groups to control the general discussion, especially across large diverse groups of people.
Most of this is mitigated completely by making everything read-only except for a small number of users you know personally. That doesn't actually preclude most kinds of political work (e.g. noticeboards for protest organising). It does preclude social media, obviously.
See, the problem here is you've already been put on the footing of the group that loses.
You have to hide like a little mouse in the shadows. Meanwhile the cat gets to track your every move. The cat gets, not only to defend itself where ever it wants, it can say anything it wants about you without you with you having no way to defend yourself.
Can if the cat is both evil and particularly smart it will set up things like its own No Kings forums where every person is tracked and manipulators either block or allow messages based on how much they can control the audience into reaching the opposite goal they actually want.
When someone goes looking for you, who are they going to find? With the modern net, probably not who you want them to find.
I don't use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or TikTok. I feel like people at least need to go on strike once in a while. Stop using those shitty services for a few days or a week so the landlords will make them slightly less shitty.
I miss out on all the big and little announcements. Sometimes, a family member will forward information to me about a death or a graduation. I find out about these things when I find out about them, just like we used to before the internet.
I dropped Facebook when I realized that their app was snooping on who I called and who called me.
I usually find out much later, and possibly never. This is how things were before the internet. We didn't know everything going on in everyone's life.
In the case of major events, my brother usually lets me know, for example the death of an aunt. Everyone close to me knows I don't use FB, so if they want me to be aware of something in particular, they can text or call me.
>How does that work? People post on FB or IG, AND THEN phone you / write a letter? doubtful...
why is this doubtful?
i am also disconnected from fb/ig/etc. and that is exactly what happens. family or close friends make a post for something important, and i get a call or text. for smaller stuff i get caught up at some point whenever we next talk on the phone for a regular catch up.
That's what it started out as, for sure. However, is it really "staying in touch" these days or is it simply reacting to and maybe adding a response to whatever status or content was placed in your feed.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not some anti-Facebook snob looking down on everyone else. But I have greatly reduced my use of the platform and only really use it for some groups I'm part of. While I do interact with family and friends, saying I use Facebook to "stay in touch" these days is a bit of a reach in most cases.
I think a lot of people feel like social media scratches the social itch they are feeling.
I think that is simply an illusion though. I have high social needs, and no amount of social media ever fed them in a healthy way.
Just because you are hungry, doesn't mean you should immediately reach for the bag of chips. It's important to reflect how often you do so, and whether that is getting you where you want to be in life. It's hard but really really important.
A lot of people say they are very lonely despite spending all their time on social media. They then change nothing.
Hey metabagel! It's me, Mark Zuckerberg, please come back! Our Q4 earnings report will be due before you know it and our board will have my feet to the literal FIRE if you're not on our platform(s). Please reconsider!
In what sense are they shitty? They are actually usable by normal people. This is a big reason they are popular.
I don't like (most of) the content on those sites. This is not surprising. The content is aimed at people who can't use Signal. Such a person is different from me in many ways.
Facebook is cluttered with ads and distracting posts (not from your friends and family). If you use it often enough, you probably stop seeing how terrible it is. Try looking at it with fresh eyes sometime.
Twitter boosts Elon Musk and the things he is interested in.
Widespread algorithmic control and corporate spam spreads architecture?
>They are actually usable by normal people.
Usability is just one dimension. If your site is perfectly usable, yet steals your credit card number and sells it to the highest bidder, it is still a shitty site, just not in usability.
>This is a big reason they are popular.
Really FB/Meta became popular long before they were at their current level of shittiness. Really FB wrote the modern book on new levels of shittiness like selling social graphs and tracking people along with connecting all kinds of other data and stealing information from your phone with overly huge permissions and data gathering.
This is a solution looking for a problem. Right now, Meta products are the most efficient way for people to organize a protest, even when it's not reliable, so that's what people will use. If it's no longer a reliable way to organize, people will naturally move to something else without much convincing like they do in places like Hong Kong. It's good to have a backup, but it does not make sense to expect them to avoid the largest social media platforms.
> But there is a better solution: build tools that are open, decentralized, and user controlled. And then actually use them instead of just giving more power to Mark Zuckerberg to shut down a protest organization’s account in the middle of one of its big protests.
The problem with that is people are "lazy": they're typically not going to expend extra effort that's not needed to solve the problem in front of them. It's pervasive, and it's one of the big reasons "friction" reducing technology can be really problematic: it turns necessary behaviors into issues of self-discipline (e.g. exercise becomes forcing yourself to haul yourself to the gym regularly in your spare time, instead just walking everywhere because you have to in order to go about your day).
So, IMHO, if you want people to use "open, decentralized, and user controlled" tools in 2026, you have to ban the centralized alternatives. Otherwise you're yelling at clouds, as most people will default to the lowest friction alternative they have access to.
I tried to get a family member to use Signal, and she eventually gave up on it, because she couldn't handle switching back and forth between Messages and Signal. It's very difficult to get people to migrate to better platforms when they have that mindset.
That's why we need to separate the protocol from the UI. There is absolutely no good reason why the different platforms should disallow communication with each other.
I used to use a multiprotocol client, Pidgin, to chat with people on a couple of different platforms. But of course now a lot of chat is on things like Facebook and Google Chat which are supported only by plugins.
But even that is still not enough because I will have to have an account on each of the platforms.
Chat really needs to be like email or SMS; you ought not to need an account with the provider of the person you are sending messages to.
Think about how long it took to get email spam under control (and even so it remains a problem). Think about the ongoing problems with spam phone calls. Now pretend you are someone with no technical background, someone who only sees the UI and does not really understand what happens behind it -- you are not seeing spam on closed systems, you are seeing spam on open systems, what are you going to choose? Also keep in mind that there are worse forms of abuse than spam.
But seriously, there's zero incentive for the folks building these clients to make them interoperable. In fact there may even be disincentive, since the more folks they have on their platform, the more valuable the platform is.
The EU forced Apple to use USB-C on iPhones, because it was stupid and wasteful for people to have two different types of chargers in their home for their small electronic rechargeable devices. Government does have the power to regulate things like this. They would need to be educated to understand the importance and benefit of it.
The EU was actually on the path to forcing everyone to use micro-USB. Thankfully Apple (and others) pioneered USB-C (bringing what it learnt from developing the lightning connector) in the time it took the EU to go from making all of the phone makers sign a Memorandum of Understanding to making it legislation. Now the EU is frozen in time, stuck on USB-C for the forseeable future. The economics to make a device dual port (USB-C and something new) aren't there, so we're not likely to ever see an improvement on USB-C... in an alternative timeline, we could have been stuck on the even worse micro-USB.
Bringing it back to the topic on hand, this is very much an area I wouldn't want to see a heavy handed EU legislate something that just further cements the incumbants and makes everything worse forever... just like mandatory micro-USB would have been. I can totally see the EU legislating something like a mandatory Meta communication protocol with compulsory attestation from Meta servers.
Apple changed to USB-C after Lightning was ten years old, exactly as they promised ten years before. The EU regulation didn’t force Apple to do anything, its deadline was a couple years after Apple switched, and Apple assisted in the creation of USB-C and after they had already switched their laptops.
> If you want people to adopt your thing, it's got to make their life easier, right now, full stop.
But somewhat counterintuitively, you can do that by making their life a little harder first.
For example: leave Facebook/WhatsApp, refuse to communicate over SMS. Have good reasons for each, so you don't come off as unnecessarily difficult. Explain that Signal is far more secure and private than either and just as easy to use. Then using Signal is making it easier to communicate with you. It worked for me.
I left the whole Facebook ecosystem about 10 years ago, but never deleted my account. I left it up as a tombstone that makes it very clear I'm not there and tells people how to contact me.
I don't understand why having more than one chat app is too much for some people. I use signal, whatsapp, discord, irc, google chat, email and messenger without complaint. I can't force people to use my platform of choice so I have to compromise and use what they do with little to no notice on my end. Sure, I am not happy with this situation but I accept it and move on while keeping an eye out for alternatives.
Consider the opposite direction: what if you want to message someone? What if you haven't messaged them in a while? Imagine you have seven messaging apps installed, some of the names you've forgotten ("Discord", is that obviously a messaging app?). Imagine you know that they're reachable somewhere just not exactly where.
I honestly have never had this issue. It's really about focus and effort. If the person is important enough, I will most likely remember how to contact them. I also mostly use email for all important communications so that remains searchable. The other chat apps are all for casual friends and acquaintances that if lost, well so be it.
None of my older relatives use email. They can text however (or iMessage, since it is transparent). Not everyone cares so little for friends and acquaintances.
And what if you want to contact someone? Are they on signal or WhatsApp or telegram? Or is it discord? Which server? How can I find that thing someone sent? Let me just open all those apps and start searching
I think you underestimate how little tolerance the average person has for this kind of friction. These huge platforms win because everyone is on them and it all just works.
You are speaking as someone who gives a shit about technology. Many people don't. "Just another account" is a big ask for many, as lots of people don't have password managers. There are a whole shit ton of people who want to use as few apps as they can. Even lots of tech-savvy people, myself included, feel this way.
> After that you forget it exists until someone messages you.
Until you get a random notification asking you to take steps to keep your account active or whatever. You may not care about this, but many people get stressed out about this kind of thing.
Every app you add to your phone is another potential vulnerability. I'm not installing a random discord or irc app just because that's someone's preferred platform. In fact I haven't installed any chat/message apps at all, I use the Messages app from Apple.
The network effect is powerful. But we also need to be honest with ourselves. Signal is an objectively worse client than Messages, especially when the average person does not value privacy.
The problem is not that people are lazy; the problem with open systems is that they are much harder to moderate and people want effective moderation. Usenet was open, decentralized, and wound up dying because there were too many problems with moderation and white supremacists etc. would show up and flood NGs with their nonsense.
There are also legal issues that kill decentralized/user-controlled systems. Copyright and child abuse are the most prominent, along with terrorism and drug trafficking. Who gets sued or prosecuted when the system is open, decentralized, and user-controlled? The users, and that's why peer-to-peer filesharing died, why so few people are willing to host a Tor exit node, etc. Before talking about banning centralized systems we need to talk about updating the legal system so that it does not force centralization, which is a much bigger project and much harder to get right.
The moderation problem wouldn't have been hard to solve on USENET, it's just that nobody wanted to do it. It could work exactly like moderation does on Mastodon, where each admin is responsible for the content on their server(s). There isn't a technical reason why you couldn't do that, and even give individuals moderation rights on specific lists. Of course, this only affects your particular news server, but it lets the white supremacist post their insane ramblings over on Giganews, while you and I read less toxic version of the thread over on Cozy News. If you don't like the moderation on your server, go find another one.
> that's why peer-to-peer filesharing died
p2p file sharing is still huge, though. Most people just put their seedboxes behind a VPN to avoid getting DMCA notices.
Apparently, activists need something that is "open, decentralized, and user controlled". Those activists choose to use facebook. That tells me they are at least one of two things:
1. Too stupid to make a plan that could possibly work
2. Too lazy to execute on a plan that could possibly work
Knowing this is a useful signal. It tells me their judgment is terrible, and I should not listen to them ;)
> Apparently, activists need something that is "open, decentralized, and user controlled". Those activists choose to use facebook. That tells me they are at least one of two things:
> 1. Too stupid to make a plan that could possibly work
> 2. Too lazy to execute on a plan that could possibly work
Your comment is a pretty good example of what not to do: society/technology makes good choices harder, so flog individuals about their lack of self-discipline when they don't do yet-another hard thing. People only have so much time and self-discipline, have some empathy.
The only thing the flogging does is give the flogger the chance to feel unjustifiably superior.
> Knowing this is a useful signal. It tells me their judgment is terrible, and I should not listen to them ;)
What you're doing is a generalized method to dismiss anything and anyone:
1. Find a thing.
2. Search for some aspect that isn't perfect. Viciously criticize that aspect.
3. Dismiss the whole thing on account of that aspect.
The only thing that using Instagram tells me about these activists is that they weren't setting out to solve some ideological communication technology problem. They had other priorities.
I would consider myself an activist, but not the Blue MAGA variety. Too much of the issue is people still think they can change minds online. In reality you are just chanting to the base, a negative feedback cycle for bad ideas that do not resonate with those outside your group.
Instead, go to where people all are, real life in the real world. I go out and talk to people all the time. I listen to them before telling them. I'm more interested in getting people talking than I am in changing their minds (right now) and providing them with ideas they are unlikely to hear online. I see my "sapphire gals" (retired nokingers) becoming less extreme, not repeating the shallow talking points. I hear them asking new questions.
Talking and working with others in person is 100x better.
We were able to organize large groups of loosely connected people before social media. Women's sufferage and the Civil Rights movement are two notable examples. Speedrunning the moon landing after Sputnik and Kennedy's assasination another.
And you are expecting countries to play by the rules when their existence in under threat. The EU will get people off Google, off Facebook, off fucking Pinterest even if it means moving back to Teletext.
Idk who you’re talking to or what you’re talking about.
I certainly don’t “expect” (in the normative sense) countries to continue relying on these services. Breaking network effects is hard, but I wouldn’t blame a country for trying and I’d probably be happy with them succeeding (to the extent they facilitate free expression of their people).
This is overly harsh; it starts with the (flawed IMO) perspective that people are dedicated "professional" activists rather than amateurs from many different backgrounds who come together around something they care about and grow/evolve/deppen over time. It makes complete sense that they use tools in front of them AND don't necessarily get -what are quite subtle angles to most - all the issues with their use. It doesn't make them lazy or stupid, but if you have the skills & talents to help with this yet do nothing you might be projecting...
More likely these activists chose the most convenient platform for getting their message out. IG is popular and that makes it an obvious choice. Also keep in mind that activists will generally use what they are already familiar with, and Facebook runs three of the most popular platforms i.e. platforms that activists were probably already using before they became activists.
The only reason activists would switch to something else is if Facebook gives them a reason to do so. I doubt this one incident is enough of a reason.
They need to reach people where they are, so basically all the platforms where people hang out. It's not the activists who are lazy - it's people in general, who continue to use FB even though it is cluttered with ads and other distractions.
It's because the corporations were all banding together to censor their opponents a few years ago, so they got used to the idea that large corporations are your friends. The left took an opportunistic stance on this instead of a principled one, despite the fact that they're the side that on paper is supposedly opposed to letting corporations turn into pseudo-governments.
> So, IMHO, if you want people to use "open, decentralized, and user controlled" tools in 2026, you have to ban the centralized alternatives. Otherwise you're yelling at clouds, as most people will default to the lowest friction alternative they have access to.
I disagree. You don't have to ban the centralized alternatives (which is problematic) -- but you do have to make the alternative as frictionless as possible.
Repeal section 230. If they want to shape speech for their own agenda then they should be liable.
Right now they have it both ways. They have the users, money, and data and they speak through their moderation decisions while being legally immune from consequences.
I've thought about this a lot. Section 230 essentially differentiates content sites into two categories, which I refer to as:
1. Publishers. Think CNN, NYT, WaPo, etc. These are first-party sites;
2. Platforms. Think any social media site. They host user generated content ("UGC").
Section 230 doesn't use this exact language. But what it does is remove the strict liability from UGC for (2). So if I post something defamatory on Facebook, Meta isn't liable as long as they satisfy their obligations for moderation, takedowns, etc.
My opinion is that social media sites are essentially cheating. They're now a third category. They enjoy the benefits of being a platform while acting like a publisher.
Think about it this way: let's say a group of users make 1000 posts supporting Ukraine and 1000 posts supporting Russia in the current war. Posts from some of each might make defamatory of erroneous or intentionally false claims. But I, as the platform, use algorithms to surface certain posts and suppress others through a newsfeed, a recommendation panel or whatever. I can tweak that algorithm to surface the pro-Ukrainian posts or the pro-Russian posts. I am essentially taking a position and acting like a first-party publisher but I don't have strict liability issues.
So I don't think we need to repeal Section 230. I think we need to treat content suppression and promotion as being a publisher because that's what you are.
Well said, I concur. There is so much different information being posted that the platform can "say" anything it wants via moderation knobs without liability.
And they literally exercise more editorial control and reach than any magazine or newspaper editorial board ever did.
Section 230 was a Trojan Horse.
If they want to be treated like an innocent carrier (i.e., telco), they must kill their algorithms.
No news media company writes or says the reports of the journalists they publish or broadcast, but they are nevertheless responsible for that content.
If social media wants to control the algorithmic feed for profit, they must be like any media, "fully responsible for their content", and must be held accountable for it.
I've never had a phone company disconnect a phone call because they didn't like what I was saying
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54552101
Twitter was stopping people from tweeting or sending direct messages containing links to the New York Post article about Hunter Bidens Laptop in October of 2020. They put their thumb on the scale.
We need something different than "repeal 230" because this is largely believed to be something that will chill speech. Platforms will take down speech out of an abundance of caution.
I'm not exactly sure what the answer is, but we can place two constraints
1. Anyone can say anything online, free speech for individuals
2. Algorithms that act as "editors" are not free speech and should be regulated.
Perhaps the answer is to say that social media algorithms can only be chronological and M0% from your direct network.
Reposts and quotes seem to be one of the core features that enable virality and dog piling. We need to "slow the spread" - to borrow a phase from one of our least favorite times.
Another thing we need is a privacy preserving method for proving humanism online.
Banning targeted advertising is higher on my list of priorities. That business line is one of the most toxic for humanity. Let's go back to placement advertising.
Unfortunately the truth is, way too.many people use Facebook and Instagram way too much, and oftentimes you need to cast a wide net so you can reach people where they are.
It's a combination of ignorance and indifference. One of my social groups is around a sport, no necessity for knowledge around technology, and they will never ever leave Facebook. Those roots got laid down 15+ years ago and I would guess about 40% use FB as their sole social media, and another 50% use 1-2 other sites e.g. Instagram or Tiktok, types that are well known. The rest are aware of the existence of other sites and can explore more widely.
For the record, the account was suspended because it tripped an automated rate limiter. They then had to get in touch with a human to restore the account.
That's pretty boring, platform agnostic, and not particularly inciteful though I suppose.
If Facebook is really a "utility" then it should not arbitrarily pull the plug on accounts with no recourse. Other utilities have due process for cutting off access: written notice with a clear reason, a chance to dispute, etc. That's because utilities are regulated.
What Facebook has is an opaque process run by AI with no way for most people to appeal.
>Unfortunately, most of the “solutions” to this problem that people are suggesting are some form of “force Mark Zuckerberg to be better and not shut off the account we like.” But that’s no way to build a better world. It is, also, the exact same response that MAGA folks had when Donald Trump was banned from social media in the wake of the January 6th insurrection. Their response was to try to force platforms to host the content of people MAGA supported. That cannot be a workable solution, because as political fortunes shift, forcing platforms to host the worst people’s accounts is unworkable for basically everyone.
The bit about "the worst people's accounts" just sounds like a refutation of everything else in the article. The problem was always that it was up to interpretation who "the worst people" are.
IDK why so many people want to die on this hill of not forcing social media companies to extend free-speech rights to their userbase. Facebook didn't accidentally wind up in this position where their TOS can effectively censor entire political movements on the Zuck's whim. They spent decades purposefully angling for this by acquiring competitors and encouraging people to use their platform for any and all communication. They own the audience.
>But there is a better solution: build tools that are open, decentralized, and user controlled. And then actually use them instead of just giving more power to Mark Zuckerberg to shut down a protest organization’s account in the middle of one of its big protests.
Not happening LOL. The decentralized platforms have been there for 10-20 years, hardly anybody uses them.
Back when the shoe was on the other foot, the right tried to make *several* alternative platforms and there was widespread collusion amongst all levels of infrastructure providers to push them off the internet. The same will happen to any platform which seeks to effect political change and attains enough critical mass that it could plausibly do so.
> Back when the shoe was on the other foot, the right tried to make several alternative platforms and there was widespread collusion amongst all levels of infrastructure providers to push them off the internet.
Wow, what spin.
There was no collusion. If we look at Gab, Stripe and PayPal had had numerous issues for a long time leading up to them not accepting payments. I love how you ignore -why- providers cut ties with them: The Pittsburgh synagogue shooter planned and coordinated his efforts on Gab, and when Gab was repeatedly warned about it, refused to do anything. Similarly, though this administration made a lot of it moot, many of the Jan 6 riots were coordinated actively there, same thing (and yes, riots - it was shown in evidence that these were the people who were planning to hurt politicians, staff, law enforcement, and see if they could "capture" Mike Pence to stop his role in certification).
And they were offline for less than a week.
Parler? AWS said that they'd reported over 100 posts to Parler that were active and specific plans for violence and incitement, and been ignored. Following the FBI investigating Parler for its role in coordinating violence on Jan 6, AWS pulled the plug.
It's on the App Store, on Play, now.
But categorizing that as some kind of disagreement on ideology is a hilariously bad take that ignores active coordination of crimes and violence on those platforms.
That is the main issue. I am on mastodon but following someone on another instance of mastodon is not easy for "regular people". Until that is solved people will stick to items like twitter and meta.
AFAIK, most people on Bluesky are on the "main" instance, so that tends to end up being a centralized community which can suffer from the same issues.
Mastodon has a serious discovery problem. IIRC, searches are only within your own instance, except for hashtag searches. This appears to have been an intentional design decision to prevent brigading / pile-ons.
For me, I found it too difficult to locate "my peeps" on other instances, so I switched to Bluesky.
Stupidity is when I bulk post my back catalogue of TikToks. Malice is when a protest that attracted 9 million Americans last time they organized one gets taken down. Notable accounts get special treatment.
"Kings" as such aren't the problem as much as "CEOs" as such are any problem. There are good kings who cared about their country and bad kings who didn't. Before Henry VIII there were rules in place to restrict the obedience to kings only as long as the kings obey the rules. In 1570, Pope Pius V then told people that the English government is a lost cause and they were free to disobey Queen Elizabeth I (he actually commanded them to disobey, talk about anarchism!).
Then later in history you had Robbespierre who campaigned on "democracy" and "we must overthrow the monarchy, then things will be great" ... only to installed himself as a dictator, because only he knew the true morality that people should obide by ("terror is a virtue"). No kings... and then what? No CEOs... and then what? Then we just get a different king / CEO / whatever. Their true shackles are in the people themselves, in their own behaviour, in whom they give attention to. Don't give attention to Facebook and Zuck will have no power.
Friendly PSA, hopefully unnecessary: If you attend one of these 'No Kings' gatherings, or any similar gathering, please coordinate with your friends/associates beforehand and leave your phone at home. Or, turn-off your phone or, at the very least, disable all the radios (airplane mode). Also, try to cover your face - Covid mask or big hat and sunglasses, and don't wear any identifying clothing, like the name of your employer. All that might sound paranoid - that's what all my friends tell me. That might be true, but I'm confident DHS also attends these gatherings to collect data. And that data is used to create named lists, the ones you don't wanna be on.
I test a lot of mobile apps, and for various testing purposes I have shielded bags for phones. It's an easy way to have an extra layer of protection because it's physical and tactile, and likely to work even if you messed up some of the other protections you should be using.
Bsky and HN manipulate social network effects too with their discourse controls
None of the faceless legal corporate entities should be trusted; many explicitly argued against common carrier to preserve power over discourse that benefits them
Got suspended on Bsky for pointing out they too rely on data centers; free speech is not possible online.
Not even talking about toxic political speech, just physical fucking truth that might impact the bottom line for a small team of tech bros.
There will be no doubting the genius of the SV PhD crowd never mind they too, a minority of the global population, are temporary and deluded self selecting meat suits with no ability to ensure the future cares about their effort; it's all so clearly just selfish laziness
Am raising my kids to be prepared to denigrate and marginalize Millennials as Millennials hit their glazed over elder phase so my kids generation can be free of the same thought policing and social conservatism
I think people in the West have little experience living under totalitarian regime.
Typical ways of overcoming censorship is creating own lingo, so that it goes past censors or distribution of physical leaflets, underground press and organising resistance offline.
When people want moderation they cry at Zuck, when people get moderated they cry at Zuck. When people are given free and open systems they cry that it’s icky and weird.
If you really want to be in charge of your digital life and rights, you need to get off the proprietary plantation. Facebook/Meta, Microsoft, Google/Alphabet, Apple, Discord, TikTok, Twitter/X, Reddit - all of it.
You don't need to do this all at once, you shouldn't let "perfect" be the enemy of "progress" - every single proprietary platform you migrate away from is a win: you gain more freedom and more ownership over your digital life every time you do it.
Decentralized platforms, federated platforms, self-hostable platforms are where you want to be. Think bluesky, signal (warning: bluesky and signal are still effectively centralized), fediverse, matrix, nostr, peertube, briar, simplex, mastodon, lemmy, loops, stoat, zulip, xmpp, irc, pixelfed, Mail-in-a-Box, nextcloud, cryptpad, linux, lineageos, grapheneos, etc.
even if they were despicable, kiwifarms is case study for this, you can't give yourself a platform, they were DDOSed into oblivion when cloudflare dropped them, donations were blocked by payments processors, etc.
can't even take this shit seriously anymore. for years when the left controlled twitter they ruled with an iron fist. twitter, meta (then FB), instagram, youtube, would somehow "completely randomly" come to the same conclusions to deplatform people all at once. even now, britain arrests people for wrong think social media posts. people like james damore lost his job for saying the most innocuous milk toast shit you could imagine. and everyone was fine with it, so long as they were the ones calling the shots.
all the bullshitting about complaining about centralization, third party this and that, freedom of speech, can't take that shit seriously. somehow they uniquely find only violations of these from people in the "other" side of the aisle. it's just so exhausting and obviously bad faith engagement. and the right isn't really any better, they do the same thing, just flipped. i think it's about time we mostly just admit: libertarians are fools (that used to be me LOL), and nobody in western culture genuinely cares about "free speech". everything they support is free speech, everything they dislike is "hate speech" (notice how the narrative changed). it's all so obvious to anyone who zooms out and looks at the larger trends. just get over it and embrace authoritarianism. just be honest about who you are.
A strong culture of free speech is the clear solution to the problem you're describing. I.e. when both political factions censor, the only solution is a strong preference for free speech regardless of who is in power.
that's like saying the solution is for everything to just be perfect. well of course. the problem is, that's not a realistic solution. the whole "No kings" movement in itself is an example of this. trump isn't a king nor is he trying to be, and most of the shit he does is rather milk toast. yet where were the "no kings" protestors when we were discussing forced vaccines? oh that's right, most supported it. where were the "my body my choice" people when we were discussing forced vaccines or else you can't work and feed your family? or yeah as it turns out in that case, it's not really your choice (in any realistic sense).
if the No Kings people truly want to be taken seriously, the best thing they can do is just admit they are wrong about their whole schtick. unfortunately the chances of that happening are exactly zero % since pride stands in the way.
watch and observe. literally nobody believes in free speech. people believe in policies and agendas, and "freedom" is just a tool used to push it. the right wing does this, especially in economics, all the time, where they want the rich to be "free" to fuck the poor. take a step back, observe the trends, and be honest with yourself, and it will be quite obvious that freedom itself is just a tool used in politics, nobody actually believes in it as an end to aspire to. this isn't 1980 anymore. milton friedman is long gone.
The fascinating thing about the obvious skew in social and traditional media, such as towards the genocide in Gaza, is that US companies are acting like megaphones for the state. They're doing exactly what China hawks accuse the CCP of doing.
I know as someone who expresses views contrary to the State Department position online on various platforms and sites that I get held to a much higher standard. Throttling, shadow banning, comments and content being put in review, suppression, accusations of violating ToS for doing something as inocuous as describing someone's argument as "utter nonsense" and so on. All while the establishment view can post with impunity. I get held to a much higher standard.
If you want to see how the state treats anyone who protests, look no further than Renee Good and Alex Pretti, murdered in broad daylight by untrained Brownshirts under the color of law. The First Amendment is becoming increasingly theoretical.
It’s funny how political parties either endorse or reject Zuckerberg (he doesn’t like “Zuck”) depending on the season. In 2020 when he was shilling for Biden, and censoring conservatives (and anti lockdown movements , coincidentally), the left loved him . Now, he’s featuring Hitler reels on IG, and apparently censoring No Kings (?), the Right seems to have warmed to him, and the left scorns him.
The media is mostly MAGA owned. Here's a short list:
- TikTok is controlled by Larry Ellison
- CBS news is controlled by Ellison's son
- The Ellisons will soon own CNN as well
- Twitter is controlled by Musk
- Facebook, Instagram and Threads are under Zuck
- WaPo and Amazon Prime by Bezos
- Old time favourites like Fox and WSJ owned by Murdoch
The owners of this media are also very explicitly involved in pro-Trump editorial content. In short, the playing field is wildly lopsided and unreliable and no tech (decentralized social media, lol) solution will work. Ultimately people will have to elect politicians to explicitly break up and clamp down on this hive of scum and villainy, but people aren't there yet, mentally. Such a solution seems wildly inappropriate today, but my guess is that another 10 years of the last two years will change a lot of minds.
These individuals are all sucking up to the president, but to call them "MAGA owned" is a stretch. They'll kiss whichever ass - democrat or republican - next fills the president's chair, it's just with this emperor-magpie it's very straightforward and easy: shiny & bright == good.
It's the Right wing politicians too. Look at Texas and pornography laws or the IRL book bans. We live in a politics of Win At All Costs, Dominate Those Who Think Differently, i.e utterly broken and anti-democratic.
The problem is the Oligarchy, the are thick from money, power, and hubris
The internet has always had moderation, WTH are you talking about?
It was the right who wanted to repeal Section 230 and have the government take over all social media platforms and regulate them, and make it illegal to ban their speech. The left never wanted anything of the sort.
eh, shit's always off the rails for leftists. it's a huge grift that they have to keep going. that's why places like france, which have implemented many, many of the changes that leftists in America want, still protest non stop. protesting is the grift. you can have government spending at like 50% of GDP (france was 57% recently) funding an endless welfare state with free education, worker protections, unfettered illegal immigration, every leftist wet dream you can realistically think of, and they still protest.
the grift works though, in part because the changes they protest for usually take a toll on the system over time, until the system soft or hard collapses. then you get social unrest. that's exactly you're seeing in france now. i dont even feel bad for france.
I don’t really know or care about what’s going on in France.
But characterizing opposition to Trump as “just leftists perma-complaining,” is incorrect. He’s the least popular POTUS in American history.
This administration has been repeatedly found in court to be violating the law and the US Constitution. It is not a partisan expectation or leftist complaint that the government must follow the law.
Protests worked in Hungary and Poland to help gain widespread support and eventually vote the authoritarians out of office. You want everyone to know there are many people resisting the leadership abusing power.
Oh how the tables have turned! "It's a private platform, they can ban whomever they want" leftists chanted ad nauseam! "I never thought leopards would eat MY face," sobs leftist who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.
seems like you either didn't read the article, or didn't understand it
the premise was _not_ to force platforms to keep accounts open, but rather that protest organizers should use _decentralized_ platforms so that their voices can't be shut down by one company
https://www.instagram.com/Aboujahjah/
They also removed the account of slain Palestinian journalists, this time including Pulitzer winning Al Jazeera's Anas Al-Sharif - although it seems it is back now: https://www.youtube.com/post/Ugkx0kN5mUZDFsw7OgRiY3ElLx9DgjM...
It seems that there are repeated waves of account deletions affecting those not in power and only if you raise a huge stink is it undone but only on a per-account basis. And each of these waves slowly erodes those voices. It sort of feels like a strategy.
That's why it's paramount that we as somewhat privileged, informed people now chose truly open and distributed platforms (mastodon, etc) instead of keep on posting x and other zucker-SM network links that keep users in their walled zoo.
You seem to be assuming two things. First, that there is an "easy" solution to this which is available as a result of centralization, and second that there isn't a decentralized one.
The first one is pretty hard for a service which is trying to use a gamable algorithm to show you posts from total randos, regardless of centralization.
As an example of the second one, suppose that your feed shows entirely or heavily disproportionately posts/reposts from people you follow and the people they follow, and you can turn off the second one for specific people. Then if you don't follow bots, you don't see bots. Replies show up if either the reader or the original poster follow the reply poster, and by default for the poster of what it's a reply to or if they choose to make it visible to everyone who follows them.
Now bots can show up to post replies, but only one person will see them and they'll be at the end of the list and marked as someone they have no connection with. On top of that, the user's client can do any kind of algorithmic bot detection they want.
I was surveilled and harassed by the FBI during this time as well.
I've put some of this online on substack
https://webdoodle.substack.com
Can't have that on Reddit. Honestly, getting your account deleted is them doing you a favour.
[1]: https://www.972mag.com/social-media-ukraine-palestinians-met...
[2]: https://archive.ph/pcbSA
IDF detained the Americans but let him go because he's a public figure. The rabbis are still detained. Go figure.
On Twitter, you can't get away from some random offensive racism, e.g. against Indian students at football games, or whatever the 2 minutes hate is ranting about on a certain day. In BlueSky, I get all signal and pretty much zero noise.
BlueSky also has far better tools for stopping dogpiling than Twitter, by stopping the quote-tweet phenomenon. All around a much much healthier place if one chooses the healthy direction.
https://bsky.app/profile/safety.bsky.app/post/3mukm26duos2c
Amazingly, the top replies to their post about targeted harassment are from accounts trying to redirect anger at several accounts that are common targets for dogpiling. It's deeply baked into the BlueSky culture and I don't know how it came to be like that.
I've tried to prune my feed to keep it out, but now the problem is that journalists I follow eventually find themselves targeted by a BlueSky dogpiling campaign and leave the platform.
EDIT: A lot of responses are trying to blame the dogpiling victims are saying the problem doesn't exist. Let me give you one recent example, where Rick Brewster made a proof of concept of Paint.NET running on Wine and got dogpiled so hard that he deleted the post and backed out: https://bsky.app/profile/rickbrew.bsky.social/post/3muiv4phe...
The earliest bluesky users tended to be the most toxic users of old Twitter, it's not too surprising
That being said, there's also the tumblr->twitter->bluesky contingent who have always loved dogpiling and they're mostly there because the site doesn't have musk boosting nazi posters.
Literally victim blaming.
The recent high profile example was a person who made a proof of concept of Paint.net on Wine and got dragged across the website so hard he felt he had to delete it, apologize, and abandon the project:
https://bsky.app/profile/rickbrew.bsky.social/post/3muiv4phe...
Literally victim blaming.
---
If you say something outrageous in the 'public square' and you get mocked for it by the public, how are you a victim?
I don't know why that would happen to someone trying to make a paint.NET clone, but that's also certainly not the type of post the person you replied to was talking about.
You’re not seeing it. Everyone who dogpiled the Paint.NET on Wine guy also thought they were doing legitimate mocking of a guy who said the wrong thing in a public square. The people who didn’t like AI thought it was valid to create a harassment campaign against him for using AI as part of his process. The people who thought all things Microsoft must be opposed thought it was valid to create a harassment campaign for making a Microsoft product work in more places.
Everyone in each of these campaigns thought their crusade was valid and the victim brought it upon themself. That you can see it being invalid in some cases is getting close to realizing why it’s a problem. Not everyone agrees on what’s right or wrong, but these public shaming campaigns serve to try to force everyone who disagrees out of the platform to strengthen the echo chamber.
You’re already noticing that you’re outside of the acceptable echo chamber thoughts because you don’t understand why the Paint.NET project would attract harassment. If you supported that guy and your post got traction, you too could get dogpiled. Do you think you would have said anything “outrageous” in the public square by questioning why anyone would criticize that guy?
It's intrinsic to the medium. The Twitter-like format is inherently toxic and irredeemable. It can't be fixed.
The microblogging format with likes and reposts selects for short highly viral stuff that pokes at the brain stem. Rage bait, trolling, lynch mobs, and stupid brain rot stuff are all ideal forms of content for this medium. Nuanced and genuinely insightful ideas are too long.
I think short form content in general is bad. Short form video seems to be less actively toxic but more brainless and attention-destroying. Short form content is the refined sugar (or in some cases the crack or the fentanyl) of discourse.
Reddit-style sites (like this one) are better but still suffer from these problems. HN avoids the worst of it by having a culture and mod policy of downvoting trolling and low-effort crap.
I often think back to this early networked communication as stark contrast to the ease and rapidity we communicate today and how that same easy and rapidity has driven the quality into the ground.
But generally these things cluster very strongly around specific people.
Alas Journalists I think are high value targets. Ideally they'd use tools like blocklists to help each other defend against dog piling. Ideally we'd have more automated response systems to detect and manage problems, which we could build, because of how Bluesky data is (so far, "spaces" incoming which change the gane) all public data. Blocking posts etc. The ability to handle this problems is much higher on Bluesky than elsewhere.
This can happen on Bluesky. It sucks. But for most people it's not an issue at all. It does unfortunately drive off some higher profile people though.
HN sure seems desperate to believe BlueSky is the bad spot. I suspect other networks too have metrically built up this defense systems for themselves, to justify their continued use. x spectacle of posts to sing the propaganda song that this is the bad place over here, it's too left, it's too woke, it's too activist, it's too digpiley. It seems unmoored, completely unhinged to me.
Also a reminder that Mastodon isn't one place. It's a network of instances. Bluesky is one and only one.
It would be great if the "other elected officials" part turns out to be true, but my in my experience I don't see that happening. Have there been any policy proposals out of No Kings that would create better oversight and accountability?
In some cases Presidents have issued orders that exceeded their legal authority. The effects of those are eventually blocked by the judicial system, although that necessarily takes some time.
ICE refusing to make officers available to law enforcement for investigation of issues.
A lot more happening than "making executive orders", though kudos to Trump for trying to sign executive orders that even his own DOJ are not just illegal, but unconstitutional.
Plus, protests can influence other people in government, outside of elections.
Let's see if the will of the people is honored, or if the king steps in too.
What, specifically, do you think this means? Do you think they're trying to install a new government without a vote?
Or is "disregard democracy" just word salad nonsense that you're repeating for some reason?
I am very concerned with much of the rhetoric on the left. I used to be more concerned with the right.
Just that alone is enough I think.
But you can also see his disgust to western democracies, and his fascination with autocracies, the vast majority of them are extremely incompetent - thank God for that at least.
What about the repeated attempts by left wing fanatics and the rhetoric that supports such actions, like claims of being a king or a fascist?
Can you recall any other instance where FoxNews boycotted the White House press pool in support of left wing media outlets?
That is unprecedented as far as I know. What did Trump do that inspired FoxNews to make this choice?
* Obama extensively used the Espionage Act to uncover government sources used by the press and also against the press directly
* Obama secretly subpoenaed the phone calls of AP reporters
* Obama didn't allow or severely restricted photojournalists
I don't think that it is good to ban the media from the White House, and I do think the much of the criticism is fair, but to then claim that this is undemocratic is wrong.
Occupy Oligarchy, we are the 99%
I do agree there is a ton of hyperbolics in NoKings / Indivisible / the left. I work within these organizations, enduring it, to temper their messages and opinions. Minds are moved in real life while biases are reinforced online. It's hard to forget there is another human with different experiences when you sit face to face.
Occupy Oligarchy, we are the 99%
why tho? it's No King_s_
you can have one
But Trump disavowed it, said that's not what he was running on. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/29/us/politics/trump-project...
Today though, this plan to destroy the government is in full effect. It's had remarkable success with the quadfecta of GOapnhouse & Senate doing nothing, allowing the president to seize the power of the purse, enact recisions, whatever. And the partisan hack joke of Florida election recount denier "justices" enabling him at every turn, using shadow docket rulings at an unheard of rate to step in to deny the regular courts their normal motion of things, to forward dear leader along. Executive power we have no belief they will continue to espouse when it's a Democrat in a hopefully less gilded tacky ass White House. Project 2025's progress undoing America & governance has been a horror. https://www.project2025.observer/en
If you can't separate your personal opinion from a factual statement like this, you're not someone worth listening to.
A bunch of European countries (including all of Scandinavia) are constitutional monarchies, and they don't devolve into the sort of anti-democratic behaviour we're all seeing from Trump. As a UK resident, I would prefer if the UK were a republic on general principle, but I fail to see the monarchy causing any real large-scale harm to society (individuals like Andrew notwithstanding).
The real point they should be making is "no more despots". Some despots are kings, but some are styled presidents, such as Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un.
Also, legitimately elected or appointed officials become despots all the time. Hitler had a plurality (but not outright majority) of votes in 1932. Salazar was an MP and minister of finance, and actually legitimately tried to resign from that role several times over many years before he was eventually nominated to the role of prime minister. Ferdinand Marcos won the Philippine presidential election in 1965 with some amount of intimidation, and the Philippines only formally became a military dictatorship under his rule in 1971.
In many ways, that's the scariest scenario — people who legitimately get elected to power, and then use that power to solidify their illegitimate rule.
Before I get hated out of existence, please note that I don't like either party or political tactics in general because they've devolved into politically commercialized populism without any empathy or critical thought. Just as an example, deportations under Trump are roughly on trend with Obama, Trump targeting activities are similar to Obama targeting conservative groups with the IRS, Obama lied in the SoTU about the gender wage gap, Obama was hard on journalists (highest prosecutions?) Like Trump has been, and Obama ignored court orders such as issuing immigration permits in violations of a order similar to Trump ignoring orders. I could sit here and hope that any of these abuses results in better oversight, but that would be naive based on the history.
Edit: if you're going to disagree, at least contribute to the discussion.
I do believe you read a blog post where someone told you there were passages which "describe Trump to a T".
This one, probably: https://archive.thinkprogress.org/how-hamilton-warned-in-the...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/29/the-slopagan...
Trump acts like a king, even if he was elected. He gets tributes and requires deference, clearly visible from the foreign and corporate donations, and behavior of the Republican Party. Or take the "super intelligence" thing, him dictating what a technology shall be called, lest you become an ENEMY OF AMERICA. Or the repeated attempts to silence the media. If we consider the Kennedy Center you brought up, Trump's name was on there, then removed by court order. His response was to close it in spite. The Kennedy Center remains closed to this day, until he gets his way.
Trump has tried to violate most of the Bill of Rights. There are reasons people see every day for why NoKings sticks and resonates.
I do agree NoKings (and broadly the far left) have really bad messaging, a product of echo chambers (imo). I suspect the Democrats will learn the wrong lessons from the midterms... sigh.
It's also incredibly ironic that the claim that democracy was on the line during the last presidential election given that the democrats first fielded a candidate whose health concerns were downplayed and then a candidate who was not elected in the primary.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory
That is a rather misguided and hyperbolic view of unitary executive theory. The president would still be elected and bounded by the constitution.
So when you say “bound by the Constitution” what you really mean is bound by being able to sway 10 senators from his own party. So… not exactly bound is it, considering he’s already shown he’s willing to arrest his political opponents (and under unitary executive theory it’s within his power to do so)
The scope and the shamelessness of his behavior is unprecedented. Nothing any other president has done compares to what Trump has done, with the negative impact to the country, with such explicit opposition to American interests.
Off the top of my head: Illegal tariffs, sicking ICE on society with brutality, trying to overturn elections, constantly lying about election security to sow doubt in our democracy, declaring that any election he or the GOP loses is illegitimate, declaring that anyone who criticizes him is an enemy of the state, enriching himself and his friends with bribes and insider deals 10x what anyone could possibly claim any other politician in the US has done, selling pardons and stopping DOJ investigations for money, destroying the independent agencies that serve the country, threatening to invade allied territories, mocking our allies and reliable trading/military partners, betraying Ukraine for the benefit of his friends and Russia.
I cannot think of a way in which a determined deep Russian asset would behave differently than how Trump operates. If he isn't one, he's putting on a perfect impression.
I appreciate you listing a few things, but many of these are vague claims, and I will take on some of them.
Regarding ICE, the number of illegal aliens that entered the country during the previous administration caused significant issues. ICE has existed before, and uncooperative jurisdictions has made their job all the more difficult.
What election did he try to overturn? Is that similar to the Russian hoax?
Election fraud should be important to someone who cares about democracy, so I think your disregard is only warranted if you don't care about democracy.
How has Ukraine been betrayed, and you want to fuel an never ending war?
You should probably think a bit more deeply about these things. Surely, you can not like him and find many things you disagree with, but you seem to be repeating half baked thoughts.
Try out some Michael Sandel content, see if it speaks to you more than your preferred wing of the Oligarchs.
The point of the protest is to prevent him from making himself a king.
> And couldn't even change the name of the art center, so not that powerful.
This is really weak cherry picking. He has successfully removed medical care from millions of Americans, started foreign wars of aggression, destabilised several countries, probably tanked US international reputation for a generation... he is incredibly powerful.
Like first of all I would call a person who tries to pass the checks and balances of a democracy, even if they fail, the target of the ideals or “no kings”
And while we can disagree with the extent to which any one act or bribe elevates someone to dictator, and whether or not all the accusations are true, can you not understand why someone caught up in the narrative ecosystem happening over the past few years may develop the perspective that Trump is trying to consolidate power?
Also “no folks who incrementally Test the limits of power and fail” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.
There's no reason why Emperor Zuck's court can't be disrupted by some monkey king yet to appear.
We're at the dawn of the Third Age of the Internet.
Someone has to be the Frodo to take Facebook & Twitter's rings into Mount MySpace and melt them down into the same puddle of lava as the legacy media that came before them :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitio...
Which is to say that it matters very much? The dollar only has value because people say so as well.
I thought it was mostly because the IRS only takes dollars, and they have guns [metaphorically].
I don’t use WhatsApp, which just means I’m not on the group chat. Nobody uses my preferred option because nobody but me is on it, which means not much actual chatting is happening.
It's urging/educating people to rely on Facebook as little as possible, since it is not committed to being a neutral platform.
If you support free speech, you should support facebook's right to express their own political views.
But that does not mean you have to support facebook's political views, or the way they exercise them!
When I see comments like this, I despair at how poorly people understand the basic concept of free speech. Hopefully you're just trolling.
Facebook is not a person. Facebook should not have "rights" nor "political views".
The silly idea of treating companies like persons and giving them any "rights" at all is what got us into this mess in the first place.
What I'm seeing is an argument for, "I don't like Facebook's speech. I think you shouldn't like it either. So I think we should all walk away."
98% of the time people are talking about the former, and the only ones confused are the people assuming they're talking about the latter and linking the face-palm-worthy "showing them the door" XKCD.
I'd say damn near 100% of those 98% will still cite the constitution, sometimes even crying "1st amendment!" in lieu of "free speech," so I'd say your overall point is wrong. They are basically saying both at the same time, with intent, while still not understanding it.
What do you feel would be the good-faith way to respond to such people?
Surely it's not by sidetracking into pedantry about the law, which at the end of the day both they and you know that's not what they're really fired up about.
Suppression of misinformation during one era is suppression of protests in another era.
You're right that the reality of the current day is what TFA is about - but GP is mentioning that we built this reality.
There's clear moral valence to this issue. The popular (mis)understanding of freedom of speech as applied to corporations is in direct contradiction to the notional principles of western sociopolitical ideology. Resolving this conflict is only difficult because of our conditioning.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18764523
I agree with GP that the arguments one makes should reflect one's actual reasoning, e.g. "I believe it's wrong to say thing X and therefore I support deplatforming in that instace". But because "I support deplatforming in every instace" sounds stronger many people falsely claimed that to be their reasoning. And now they're forced to deal with the consequences, i.e. being called hypocrites.
And this incident (negligent takedown of a community on an important day) demonstrates the point perfectly.
The reason to not platform hate speech is the same reason you're not allowed to yell fire in a theater or bomb in an airport without their being one. Or say you're going to kill the president. Even the US has limits on what can be said, including liability laws. You can't just defame your neighbor and not face legal repercussions if they take you to court.
One can imagine this argument during the Salem Witch trials. "She's a witch" wasn't just a joke back then. It could get someone burned at the stake.
(I dislike Musk for many reasons but you cannot tell me there were 'no problems' with old Twitter or that every criticism was a 'nothingburger')
Freedom of speech doesn't mean that I have to tolerate a business platforming hate speech. Any platform that stands behind the "free speech" of neo-nazi groups, white supremacists, and violent nationalists deserves criticism for turning a blind eye to what they are enabling. The First Amendment wasn't built to protect citizens' speech from each other; it was built to protect us from government censorship. Facebook doesn't have a legal responsibility to protect that, and I as a consumer can expect them to take an ethical stand against things like ethnic cleansing.
And that is exactly the point the author here is making. Facebook, X (Twitter), even places like Fediverse instances and Bluesky/AtProto sites are privately run spaces with no obligation to respect your freedom of speech.
If you choose these spaces to organize your political cause, you put your movement into another person's hands. Stop doing that. Host your own infrastructure, make it easy to recover and migrate, and start organizing outside of corporate-controlled areas.
Turning to Facebook for political organizing "because everyone is there" is like doing your town-hall meetings at Walmart "because everyone shops there", and then wondering why small businesses don't feel represented in your town anymore.
It's easy to blame big tech, but you can also ask your local bar why they only advertise events through Mark Zuckerberg, and ask why their website is mostly just links to Mark Zuckerberg's websites. Ask them if they have considered that Mark Zuckerberg might not a good obligatory middleman between them and their customers. The core problem is that people have accepted the lie that these corporate-controlled spaces are "the public square", when they are the exact opposite.
Deplatforming people organizing a peaceful protest is very different. If you cannot understand how that is different, then I worry about your critical thinking skills.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
These conversations often end up in some weird motte and bailey where you argue that you care about free speech, but it turns out that you actually just thought COVID was not real/not significant/not dangerous/not an emergency. So your issue ends up not being that they made a decision on it (free speech concern), but that you feel it was the wrong decision (content-specific concern).
So before we go back and forth on the intricacies of content moderation, can you briefly describe your beliefs on COVID?
Hate speech, porn, bullying, doxxing, disinformation, Islamist propaganda, violent imagery, revenge porn, animal abuse imagery, incitements to violence, criminal planning, drug dealing, arms dealing, gambling, fraud, etc
As a free speech maximalist, are you willing to defend all of those with the same vigor as the COVID case? Or do you too actually draw a content-based line somewhere (while pretending you don’t?)
If you find this interpretation to be uncharitable, would you care to clarify what truths this interpretation overlooks?
It seems like you’re trying to avoid dealing with the substance of the issue for some reason.
The boundaries around vanilla are certainly blurry, but I don’t think No Kings comes even remotely close to any of those blurry boundaries.
(To be perfectly clear disrupting protests is also very bad!)
I agree this would be even more egregious if it was thought to be a real story, but even the tabloid that published it didn’t think so.
Pretty sure the link suppression was turned off within like a day, right?
It was absolutely reasonable to suspect (in the early hours) that a salacious, bombshell story involving stolen documents published on NYPost without a listed author could potentially have been an actual disinformation attack.
Under that set of facts, the “we should try to limit interference in the election” can reasonably yield the behavior that it did yield.
Most people haven’t spent any time moderating online communities, so they don’t have to test their beliefs against reality. This is fine, frankly you saved yourself being stuck in a fractal hell scape.
However holding to this idea that the “opposition” was deplatformed, is superstition.
I’ve seen communities start with 0 moderation, and become wastelands filled with hate speech, misogyny and harassment. Which then forces moderation to be introduced.
This happens so often, that this happened to the hate groups who were kicked off of Reddit.
Communities have celebrated the introduction of moderation, and celebrated the imposition of rules that mean you can’t be harassed, attacked and targeted.
This isn't a new problem. We've always had a few gatekeepers that steer the public narrative. This is a problem that the internet provides a clear opportunity to help solve, but has seemed to fall short. It's a clear blow to all of us techo-optimists.
But yes, a solution is for people to host their own content/sites. Or "protocols not platforms"
In a perfect world yes. In the reality we live in no.
Why is this the case?
1. Any site that is politically active and capable of upsetting people WILL BE ATTACKED. Can you afford a terabyte of data a second coming your way? Probably not. So you put it behind CF, but now you're vulnerable to their policies closing you down.
2. Any site that is politically active and capable of upsetting people WILL BE ATTACKED. What are you going to do against floods of child porn or death threats posted by users pretending to be on your side, but actually working for the opposition?
3. Any site that is politically active and capable of upsetting people WILL BE ATTACKED. You are now in charge of your website security. Are you any good at it? How are you going to pay for it to be secured? How do you trust the people doing the security?
4. Any site that is politically active and capable of upsetting people WILL BE ATTACKED. How do you plan on getting people to come to your site? If it's upsetting enough to the powers that be any messages containing links to your site will disappear from Meta/X/Google. You are going to have to find neat an interesting, and probably expensive ways to get your message out.
We have consolidated the internet down to a point where it is very very easy for a few small groups to control the general discussion, especially across large diverse groups of people.
You have to hide like a little mouse in the shadows. Meanwhile the cat gets to track your every move. The cat gets, not only to defend itself where ever it wants, it can say anything it wants about you without you with you having no way to defend yourself.
Can if the cat is both evil and particularly smart it will set up things like its own No Kings forums where every person is tracked and manipulators either block or allow messages based on how much they can control the audience into reaching the opposite goal they actually want.
When someone goes looking for you, who are they going to find? With the modern net, probably not who you want them to find.
I dropped Facebook when I realized that their app was snooping on who I called and who called me.
How does that work? People post on FB or IG, AND THEN phone you / write a letter? doubtful...
In the case of major events, my brother usually lets me know, for example the death of an aunt. Everyone close to me knows I don't use FB, so if they want me to be aware of something in particular, they can text or call me.
why is this doubtful?
i am also disconnected from fb/ig/etc. and that is exactly what happens. family or close friends make a post for something important, and i get a call or text. for smaller stuff i get caught up at some point whenever we next talk on the phone for a regular catch up.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not some anti-Facebook snob looking down on everyone else. But I have greatly reduced my use of the platform and only really use it for some groups I'm part of. While I do interact with family and friends, saying I use Facebook to "stay in touch" these days is a bit of a reach in most cases.
I think that is simply an illusion though. I have high social needs, and no amount of social media ever fed them in a healthy way.
Just because you are hungry, doesn't mean you should immediately reach for the bag of chips. It's important to reflect how often you do so, and whether that is getting you where you want to be in life. It's hard but really really important.
A lot of people say they are very lonely despite spending all their time on social media. They then change nothing.
It doesn't work
I don't like (most of) the content on those sites. This is not surprising. The content is aimed at people who can't use Signal. Such a person is different from me in many ways.
Twitter boosts Elon Musk and the things he is interested in.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/15/elon-musk...
I don't have specific complaints about Instagram or TikTok, other than the algorithm is controlled by oligarchs.
Widespread algorithmic control and corporate spam spreads architecture?
>They are actually usable by normal people.
Usability is just one dimension. If your site is perfectly usable, yet steals your credit card number and sells it to the highest bidder, it is still a shitty site, just not in usability.
>This is a big reason they are popular.
Really FB/Meta became popular long before they were at their current level of shittiness. Really FB wrote the modern book on new levels of shittiness like selling social graphs and tracking people along with connecting all kinds of other data and stealing information from your phone with overly huge permissions and data gathering.
The problem with that is people are "lazy": they're typically not going to expend extra effort that's not needed to solve the problem in front of them. It's pervasive, and it's one of the big reasons "friction" reducing technology can be really problematic: it turns necessary behaviors into issues of self-discipline (e.g. exercise becomes forcing yourself to haul yourself to the gym regularly in your spare time, instead just walking everywhere because you have to in order to go about your day).
So, IMHO, if you want people to use "open, decentralized, and user controlled" tools in 2026, you have to ban the centralized alternatives. Otherwise you're yelling at clouds, as most people will default to the lowest friction alternative they have access to.
I used to use a multiprotocol client, Pidgin, to chat with people on a couple of different platforms. But of course now a lot of chat is on things like Facebook and Google Chat which are supported only by plugins. But even that is still not enough because I will have to have an account on each of the platforms.
Chat really needs to be like email or SMS; you ought not to need an account with the provider of the person you are sending messages to.
Think about how long it took to get email spam under control (and even so it remains a problem). Think about the ongoing problems with spam phone calls. Now pretend you are someone with no technical background, someone who only sees the UI and does not really understand what happens behind it -- you are not seeing spam on closed systems, you are seeing spam on open systems, what are you going to choose? Also keep in mind that there are worse forms of abuse than spam.
But seriously, there's zero incentive for the folks building these clients to make them interoperable. In fact there may even be disincentive, since the more folks they have on their platform, the more valuable the platform is.
Bringing it back to the topic on hand, this is very much an area I wouldn't want to see a heavy handed EU legislate something that just further cements the incumbants and makes everything worse forever... just like mandatory micro-USB would have been. I can totally see the EU legislating something like a mandatory Meta communication protocol with compulsory attestation from Meta servers.
Maybe aside from the increased attack surface and trust issues...
If you want people to adopt your thing, it's got to make their life easier, right now, full stop.
But somewhat counterintuitively, you can do that by making their life a little harder first.
For example: leave Facebook/WhatsApp, refuse to communicate over SMS. Have good reasons for each, so you don't come off as unnecessarily difficult. Explain that Signal is far more secure and private than either and just as easy to use. Then using Signal is making it easier to communicate with you. It worked for me.
I left the whole Facebook ecosystem about 10 years ago, but never deleted my account. I left it up as a tombstone that makes it very clear I'm not there and tells people how to contact me.
There are certainly parts of my life that would be more optimized if that weren't a constraint.
I think you underestimate how little tolerance the average person has for this kind of friction. These huge platforms win because everyone is on them and it all just works.
> After that you forget it exists until someone messages you.
Until you get a random notification asking you to take steps to keep your account active or whatever. You may not care about this, but many people get stressed out about this kind of thing.
There are also legal issues that kill decentralized/user-controlled systems. Copyright and child abuse are the most prominent, along with terrorism and drug trafficking. Who gets sued or prosecuted when the system is open, decentralized, and user-controlled? The users, and that's why peer-to-peer filesharing died, why so few people are willing to host a Tor exit node, etc. Before talking about banning centralized systems we need to talk about updating the legal system so that it does not force centralization, which is a much bigger project and much harder to get right.
> that's why peer-to-peer filesharing died
p2p file sharing is still huge, though. Most people just put their seedboxes behind a VPN to avoid getting DMCA notices.
1. Too stupid to make a plan that could possibly work
2. Too lazy to execute on a plan that could possibly work
Knowing this is a useful signal. It tells me their judgment is terrible, and I should not listen to them ;)
> 1. Too stupid to make a plan that could possibly work
> 2. Too lazy to execute on a plan that could possibly work
Your comment is a pretty good example of what not to do: society/technology makes good choices harder, so flog individuals about their lack of self-discipline when they don't do yet-another hard thing. People only have so much time and self-discipline, have some empathy.
The only thing the flogging does is give the flogger the chance to feel unjustifiably superior.
> Knowing this is a useful signal. It tells me their judgment is terrible, and I should not listen to them ;)
What you're doing is a generalized method to dismiss anything and anyone:
1. Find a thing.
2. Search for some aspect that isn't perfect. Viciously criticize that aspect.
3. Dismiss the whole thing on account of that aspect.
The only thing that using Instagram tells me about these activists is that they weren't setting out to solve some ideological communication technology problem. They had other priorities.
TFA (and you) are just discounting the power of network effects. Tells me that your judgment is poor and I should not listen to you ;)
Instead, go to where people all are, real life in the real world. I go out and talk to people all the time. I listen to them before telling them. I'm more interested in getting people talking than I am in changing their minds (right now) and providing them with ideas they are unlikely to hear online. I see my "sapphire gals" (retired nokingers) becoming less extreme, not repeating the shallow talking points. I hear them asking new questions.
Talking and working with others in person is 100x better.
(yes, there were "irc channels" on telext)
I certainly don’t “expect” (in the normative sense) countries to continue relying on these services. Breaking network effects is hard, but I wouldn’t blame a country for trying and I’d probably be happy with them succeeding (to the extent they facilitate free expression of their people).
The only reason activists would switch to something else is if Facebook gives them a reason to do so. I doubt this one incident is enough of a reason.
Amazing.
I disagree. You don't have to ban the centralized alternatives (which is problematic) -- but you do have to make the alternative as frictionless as possible.
Right now they have it both ways. They have the users, money, and data and they speak through their moderation decisions while being legally immune from consequences.
1. Publishers. Think CNN, NYT, WaPo, etc. These are first-party sites;
2. Platforms. Think any social media site. They host user generated content ("UGC").
Section 230 doesn't use this exact language. But what it does is remove the strict liability from UGC for (2). So if I post something defamatory on Facebook, Meta isn't liable as long as they satisfy their obligations for moderation, takedowns, etc.
My opinion is that social media sites are essentially cheating. They're now a third category. They enjoy the benefits of being a platform while acting like a publisher.
Think about it this way: let's say a group of users make 1000 posts supporting Ukraine and 1000 posts supporting Russia in the current war. Posts from some of each might make defamatory of erroneous or intentionally false claims. But I, as the platform, use algorithms to surface certain posts and suppress others through a newsfeed, a recommendation panel or whatever. I can tweak that algorithm to surface the pro-Ukrainian posts or the pro-Russian posts. I am essentially taking a position and acting like a first-party publisher but I don't have strict liability issues.
So I don't think we need to repeal Section 230. I think we need to treat content suppression and promotion as being a publisher because that's what you are.
Section 230 was a Trojan Horse.
If they want to be treated like an innocent carrier (i.e., telco), they must kill their algorithms.
No news media company writes or says the reports of the journalists they publish or broadcast, but they are nevertheless responsible for that content.
If social media wants to control the algorithmic feed for profit, they must be like any media, "fully responsible for their content", and must be held accountable for it.
I'm not exactly sure what the answer is, but we can place two constraints
1. Anyone can say anything online, free speech for individuals
2. Algorithms that act as "editors" are not free speech and should be regulated.
Perhaps the answer is to say that social media algorithms can only be chronological and M0% from your direct network.
Reposts and quotes seem to be one of the core features that enable virality and dog piling. We need to "slow the spread" - to borrow a phase from one of our least favorite times.
Another thing we need is a privacy preserving method for proving humanism online.
You do realize that will accomplish the exact opposite of what you're trying to achieve right?
That's pretty boring, platform agnostic, and not particularly inciteful though I suppose.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
What Facebook has is an opaque process run by AI with no way for most people to appeal.
The bit about "the worst people's accounts" just sounds like a refutation of everything else in the article. The problem was always that it was up to interpretation who "the worst people" are.
IDK why so many people want to die on this hill of not forcing social media companies to extend free-speech rights to their userbase. Facebook didn't accidentally wind up in this position where their TOS can effectively censor entire political movements on the Zuck's whim. They spent decades purposefully angling for this by acquiring competitors and encouraging people to use their platform for any and all communication. They own the audience.
>But there is a better solution: build tools that are open, decentralized, and user controlled. And then actually use them instead of just giving more power to Mark Zuckerberg to shut down a protest organization’s account in the middle of one of its big protests.
Not happening LOL. The decentralized platforms have been there for 10-20 years, hardly anybody uses them.
Back when the shoe was on the other foot, the right tried to make *several* alternative platforms and there was widespread collusion amongst all levels of infrastructure providers to push them off the internet. The same will happen to any platform which seeks to effect political change and attains enough critical mass that it could plausibly do so.
Wow, what spin.
There was no collusion. If we look at Gab, Stripe and PayPal had had numerous issues for a long time leading up to them not accepting payments. I love how you ignore -why- providers cut ties with them: The Pittsburgh synagogue shooter planned and coordinated his efforts on Gab, and when Gab was repeatedly warned about it, refused to do anything. Similarly, though this administration made a lot of it moot, many of the Jan 6 riots were coordinated actively there, same thing (and yes, riots - it was shown in evidence that these were the people who were planning to hurt politicians, staff, law enforcement, and see if they could "capture" Mike Pence to stop his role in certification).
And they were offline for less than a week.
Parler? AWS said that they'd reported over 100 posts to Parler that were active and specific plans for violence and incitement, and been ignored. Following the FBI investigating Parler for its role in coordinating violence on Jan 6, AWS pulled the plug.
It's on the App Store, on Play, now.
But categorizing that as some kind of disagreement on ideology is a hilariously bad take that ignores active coordination of crimes and violence on those platforms.
That is the main issue. I am on mastodon but following someone on another instance of mastodon is not easy for "regular people". Until that is solved people will stick to items like twitter and meta.
AFAIK, most people on Bluesky are on the "main" instance, so that tends to end up being a centralized community which can suffer from the same issues.
For me, I found it too difficult to locate "my peeps" on other instances, so I switched to Bluesky.
Then later in history you had Robbespierre who campaigned on "democracy" and "we must overthrow the monarchy, then things will be great" ... only to installed himself as a dictator, because only he knew the true morality that people should obide by ("terror is a virtue"). No kings... and then what? No CEOs... and then what? Then we just get a different king / CEO / whatever. Their true shackles are in the people themselves, in their own behaviour, in whom they give attention to. Don't give attention to Facebook and Zuck will have no power.
even OAI and Ant are better options
None of the faceless legal corporate entities should be trusted; many explicitly argued against common carrier to preserve power over discourse that benefits them
Got suspended on Bsky for pointing out they too rely on data centers; free speech is not possible online.
Not even talking about toxic political speech, just physical fucking truth that might impact the bottom line for a small team of tech bros.
There will be no doubting the genius of the SV PhD crowd never mind they too, a minority of the global population, are temporary and deluded self selecting meat suits with no ability to ensure the future cares about their effort; it's all so clearly just selfish laziness
Am raising my kids to be prepared to denigrate and marginalize Millennials as Millennials hit their glazed over elder phase so my kids generation can be free of the same thought policing and social conservatism
Typical ways of overcoming censorship is creating own lingo, so that it goes past censors or distribution of physical leaflets, underground press and organising resistance offline.
You don't need to do this all at once, you shouldn't let "perfect" be the enemy of "progress" - every single proprietary platform you migrate away from is a win: you gain more freedom and more ownership over your digital life every time you do it.
Decentralized platforms, federated platforms, self-hostable platforms are where you want to be. Think bluesky, signal (warning: bluesky and signal are still effectively centralized), fediverse, matrix, nostr, peertube, briar, simplex, mastodon, lemmy, loops, stoat, zulip, xmpp, irc, pixelfed, Mail-in-a-Box, nextcloud, cryptpad, linux, lineageos, grapheneos, etc.
Meta Takes Down No Kings Instagram During Protest Day
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50136881
Kind of hurts/helps the point, but yeah generally, you should run your own website? Is this the return of the old web?
https://www.nokings.org
all the bullshitting about complaining about centralization, third party this and that, freedom of speech, can't take that shit seriously. somehow they uniquely find only violations of these from people in the "other" side of the aisle. it's just so exhausting and obviously bad faith engagement. and the right isn't really any better, they do the same thing, just flipped. i think it's about time we mostly just admit: libertarians are fools (that used to be me LOL), and nobody in western culture genuinely cares about "free speech". everything they support is free speech, everything they dislike is "hate speech" (notice how the narrative changed). it's all so obvious to anyone who zooms out and looks at the larger trends. just get over it and embrace authoritarianism. just be honest about who you are.
if the No Kings people truly want to be taken seriously, the best thing they can do is just admit they are wrong about their whole schtick. unfortunately the chances of that happening are exactly zero % since pride stands in the way.
watch and observe. literally nobody believes in free speech. people believe in policies and agendas, and "freedom" is just a tool used to push it. the right wing does this, especially in economics, all the time, where they want the rich to be "free" to fuck the poor. take a step back, observe the trends, and be honest with yourself, and it will be quite obvious that freedom itself is just a tool used in politics, nobody actually believes in it as an end to aspire to. this isn't 1980 anymore. milton friedman is long gone.
I know as someone who expresses views contrary to the State Department position online on various platforms and sites that I get held to a much higher standard. Throttling, shadow banning, comments and content being put in review, suppression, accusations of violating ToS for doing something as inocuous as describing someone's argument as "utter nonsense" and so on. All while the establishment view can post with impunity. I get held to a much higher standard.
If you want to see how the state treats anyone who protests, look no further than Renee Good and Alex Pretti, murdered in broad daylight by untrained Brownshirts under the color of law. The First Amendment is becoming increasingly theoretical.
To his credit, he’s an adaptable Machiavellian .
- TikTok is controlled by Larry Ellison
- CBS news is controlled by Ellison's son
- The Ellisons will soon own CNN as well
- Twitter is controlled by Musk
- Facebook, Instagram and Threads are under Zuck
- WaPo and Amazon Prime by Bezos
- Old time favourites like Fox and WSJ owned by Murdoch
The owners of this media are also very explicitly involved in pro-Trump editorial content. In short, the playing field is wildly lopsided and unreliable and no tech (decentralized social media, lol) solution will work. Ultimately people will have to elect politicians to explicitly break up and clamp down on this hive of scum and villainy, but people aren't there yet, mentally. Such a solution seems wildly inappropriate today, but my guess is that another 10 years of the last two years will change a lot of minds.
We got Internet moderation.
Watch out what you wish for.
It's the Right wing politicians too. Look at Texas and pornography laws or the IRL book bans. We live in a politics of Win At All Costs, Dominate Those Who Think Differently, i.e utterly broken and anti-democratic.
The problem is the Oligarchy, the are thick from money, power, and hubris
It was the right who wanted to repeal Section 230 and have the government take over all social media platforms and regulate them, and make it illegal to ban their speech. The left never wanted anything of the sort.
There’s a reason autocrats hate protests. It’s because they’d much rather that opposition become doubtful of whether other opposition exist out there.
the grift works though, in part because the changes they protest for usually take a toll on the system over time, until the system soft or hard collapses. then you get social unrest. that's exactly you're seeing in france now. i dont even feel bad for france.
But characterizing opposition to Trump as “just leftists perma-complaining,” is incorrect. He’s the least popular POTUS in American history.
This administration has been repeatedly found in court to be violating the law and the US Constitution. It is not a partisan expectation or leftist complaint that the government must follow the law.
the premise was _not_ to force platforms to keep accounts open, but rather that protest organizers should use _decentralized_ platforms so that their voices can't be shut down by one company