***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[Cashflow]

 

[osh kosh bosh]

@aepps20 our brotha Shameik Moore (voices Miles Morales) is out here doing GREAT! work....

Victim blaming....


Rosa Parks was causing trouble, she had other options....


The grand finale, black people can avoid racism if they carry themselves differently...


I believe he has shown the right Mentality! to be considered for membership into Coal Gang.

YIIIIIIIIKES fam,

im embarrased for the kid's family.



did i really hear ol boy tryna rationalize ROSA PARKS.


Like Rush Limbaugh wouldn't even do that.


like if i white dude went on fox dude and said "well you know there were black owned busses, so i really don't know why we talkin bout rosa parks"

They would fire him immediately right?

 

[junglejim]

Which scandal are we on again? I'm kinda losing track? Did they really just release this transcript so we can move on from the Rona and the protests?

 

[stuntman mike]

Stop lying to yourself Kevin.

In the same tone I have heard fathers speak to their 7-year old sons in: that’s very disappointing...you can do better.

I legit didn't know which one he was sighing at

 

[Methodical Management]

To your first question, I don't think the supreme court will roll back civil rights measures related to black people.

The direction in which conservative jurists would like to move on these issues is clear:

Supreme Court says Voting Rights Act of 1965 is no longer relevant

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that states no longer can be judged by voting discrimination that went on decades ago, a decision that argues the country has fundamentally changed since the racially motivated laws of the civil rights era.

www.washingtontimes.com

Harvard students of color: Removing affirmative action would be a loss for everyone

“Every applicant has a different story to tell, and race can be a part of that story. Students deserve the opportunity to be recognized for it,” a graduating Asian American Harvard student told NBC News.

www.nbcnews.com

Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007)

Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1: Achieving racially balanced school districts does not amount to a compelling government interest that satisfies strict scrutiny.

supreme.justia.com

Could this EO have an effect on NT as a platform?

Methodical Management

If you read the actual text, you'll see that it's nothing but a whiny polemic. It opens by bemoaning the paucity of choices available to Internet users seeking to express themselves online, but the remedy for that is antitrust enforcement and competition, not conflating ISPs and UGC platforms as "utilities", or, conversely, failing to legally differentiate between online service providers and the content creators who use them.


In general, attempts to undermine Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act threaten our ability to responsibly permit real-time posting on our platform.
I've briefly discussed Section 230 of the CDA as it relates to NikeTalk before, perhaps most recently with respect to SESTA: https://niketalk.com/threads/a-new-...ernet-platforms-sesta-is-the-new-sopa.665946/

Although I don't have time to delve into the minutiae of this, it's essentially moot in this instance given the likelihood of this EO ultimately amounting to anything other than another apoplectic spasm from a fatally disorganized and inept administration.

It's culture war chaff. For decades, conservatives have attempted to "work the refs" by appealing to the media's sense of fairness with allegations of bias, even as their own nakedly partisan outlets actively promote misinformation.
While most formal attempts fall flat (see: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...in-appeal-over-alleged-anti-conservative-bias ), it takes little convincing for libertarian-leaning tech executives to sit on their thumbs while their platforms are used to monetize hate speech, much to their own gain.

Ultimately, the goal sought by this order is self-sabotaging. If Twitter lost its liability protection, how could it publish potentially libelous conspiracy theories about Joe Scarborough, Hillary Clinton, or Bill Gates? If Donald Trump retweets one of those conspiracy theories, does that then make him a publisher?

Consider the internal logic at play here: we currently extend liability protection to service providers who perform good faith efforts to prevent the abuse of their services... but they'll lose that protection unless they abandon efforts to prevent the abuse of their services?

The administration's claims are akin to arguing that the Utah Jazz violated the "free speech rights" of the bigoted fan they recently banned from their arena for shouting a vile comment at Russell Westbrook. This demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the First Amendment. Freedom of speech involves freedom from criminal prosecution, not freedom from personal consequences. Google has the right to fire James Damore for his grotesque misogyny. Franklin Templeton has the right to fire Amy Cooper for treating 911 like Seamless for lynching. Trump certainly believes that sports teams have the right to fire anyone who kneels on a playing field rather than a Black man's spine.

It is interesting, then, that the same people who believe that a bakery should be permitted to discriminate against same sex couples now believe that Youtube has no right to refuse service to someone on the basis of their statements, no matter how misleading or offensive they may be.


Even if he could force service providers to make such an accommodation, he couldn't force advertisers to support them and, thus, keep them in business. While Mark Zuckerberg has no qualms with selling ads to Nazis, mainstream companies are far less eager to have their ads associated with hate speech. Advertiser backlash forced Google to pursue a demonetization strategy with Youtube. Recently, Google announced that they won’t run their ads on pages related to 5G conspiracy theories.

Donald Trump needs Facebook and Twitter more than they need him. He needs their reach and has depended upon their cynical, amoral apathy to enable his chronic violations of whatever “standards” they’ve set for ordinary users and advertisers. Facebook recently eschewed its own internal recommendations to make the platform less divisive. Zuckerberg et al. appear to care only for the expansion and defense of their own empires. Aiding the likes of Donald Trump does not conflict with those goals. Forcing them to switch to a business model that could reduce their pool of sponsors to LifeLock, MyPillow, Liberty Mutual, and various hokum cures for male insecurity, on the other hand, would be even more disastrous than the quarantine haircut all ad-dependent businesses are already experiencing due to this administration's negligent mishandling of COVID-19.

Trump doesn't want to change the status quo with these platforms. He wants to maintain it. He also wants to give his sputtering campaign a jolt by tossing red meat to his rabid base.

The EO is an empty threat that will not change our practices one whit.

Don't take the bait.

I get the censorship part, but what Cruz is arguing about baffles me.



Like I dont even see how these two are comparable. He is basically stating that Twitter and Facebook are going to have to filter everything that potentially subjects them to a lawsuit like the NYT does. I don't see how that makes things more free.

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964)

New York Times Co. v. Sullivan: To sustain a claim of defamation or libel, the First Amendment requires that the plaintiff show that the defendant knew that a statement was false or was reckless in deciding to publish the information without investigating whether it was accurate.

supreme.justia.com

 

[storm2006]

YIIIIIIIIKES fam,

im embarrased for the kid's family.



did i really hear ol boy tryna rationalize ROSA PARKS.


Like Rush Limbaugh wouldn't even do that.


like if i white dude went on fox dude and said "well you know there were black owned busses, so i really don't know why we talkin bout rosa parks"

They would fire him immediately right?

Even a black dude in FOX News is getting fired for that because he would have instantaneously lost credibility as a token black pundit.

The last tweet was revealing. Any time someone starts of a statement, tweet, whatever with “No one asked for my opinion but...” you KNOW they’re about to be on some bull****.

 

[anomolie]

 

[dwalk31]

While I don't think that the EO's reach would extend to sites such as NT (due to their size and scope), I do think that Methodical Management is categorically incorrect as to where the tide is shifting in treating platforms like Facebook and Twitter as traditional public forum's for first amendment analysis.

The analogy of the Utah Jazz's arena or a bakery simply do not fit when compared to Facebook and Twitter. Again, due to the size and scope.

I have posted this article before from the American Bar Association, and it goes into greater detail of the legal argument I am making:

In the Age of Social Media, Expand the Reach of the First Amendment

In the Age of Social Media, Expand the Reach of the First Amendment

The time has come for the First Amendment to be extended to cover powerful private social media entities such as Facebook and Twitter that can limit, control, and censor speech.

www.americanbar.org

 

[JPS]

What argument are you making again?

 

[dwalk31]

What argument are you making again?

Not only that platforms like facebook and twitter should be treated like traditional public forums (for the purposes of a first amendment analysis), but also that the tide is shifting that way.

 

[AZwildcats]

But they are private companies, you don’t have a fundamental right to be able to post whatever you want on their platforms.

 

[whywesteppin]

I don't buy it. The big draw of a social media site is that they curate what you see. If you didn't care, you would just use email or text message.

These companies, if smart, are constantly refining how they curate things to match what their user base wants.

 

[Methodical Management]

The analogy of the Utah Jazz's arena or a bakery simply do not fit when compared to Facebook and Twitter. Again, due to the size and scope.

It is for that very reason that Section 230 protections are required to permit real time communication on Internet platforms. How many moderators would be needed to review every single Youtube video for copyright violations, slander, incitement, and misinformation?
Uploading a video would be like burying a time capsule.

On the other hand, if you want to treat them like utilities and say that Facebook has as much right to decide what appears on their service as the power company does to decide which customers are allowed to use electricity and for what purpose, or for the phone company to censor customers' speech, then you're forcing online service providers - regardless of size - to abandon even the barest QA or protective measures to safeguard users - including minors - from hate speech and other disturbing content. That is lunacy.

The only reason Facebook is even in position to feign concern over acting as the "arbiter of truth" is due to their ambition to monopolize online communication.

Through this stance, you are normalizing and presuming monopolistic control over online speech.


Unlike a town square that can only accommodate so many shopping facilities and restaurants, there is no practical limit on the number of communication platforms available to Internet users. Even now, in the grips of corporate concentration, Americans still have access to an entire nebula of possibilities ranging from forums like ours, to real-time chat rooms like Discord or IRC, to the contemporary descendants of USENET groups, to fledgling social media alternatives - including alt-right cesspools like Gab. The vast majority of these online communities are far smaller than "Vivint Smart Home Arena."

What right do you have to speech online? More rights to free speech - by far - than you have in print, television, or radio.

Where does it end? Should you be prohibited from kicking out a racist Zoom bomber from your chat, lest you inhibit his right to "free speech" in your private forum?


This is ill-conceived, reactionary nonsense, which ironically pays short shrift to the rights of business owners, with which conservatives are otherwise so preoccupied.

I have the right to prevent racist speech from appearing on our privately held forum to differentiate and protect the quality of our experience. And you're free to choose another platform.


Ironically, the Jazz example you find so frivolous is actually a stronger one, because the NBA acts as a government-sanctioned cartel. How many other nearby professional basketball arenas were there where Shane Keisel could "express himself" after his ban?
And how many other platforms will you have to choose from if you get banned from Twitter?

What's next: a campaign against "no shirt, no shoes, no service" signs?



Your President is making overtly racist posts on Twitter, and for that, you can but muster a resigned, meek little sigh.
The prospect of an evil business prohibiting a poor, oppressed millionaire making said posts on their platform suddenly gets you talkative again.

I suppose you think the revolution needs people like you to defend Donald Trump's rights while he threatens those protesting actual injustice with death.

 

[Belgium]

The Flynn-Kislyak call transcripts have been declassified by newly appointed DNI Ratcliffe. The extent of the discussion show that Flynn unequivocally lied to the FBI, unless he suffered from dementia. In the motion to dismiss Flynn's case, Barr's DOJ not only argued that Flynn's statements to the FBI were immaterial but also questioned whether his statements were even lies in the first place.
https://www.grassley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2020-05-29 ODNI to CEG RHJ (Flynn Transcripts).pdf

This following reference appears to be what the Mueller report described as "some evidence" that Trump was aware of Flynn's discussions about sanctions with Kislyak.
In late February 2017, Trump offered Deputy NatSec Adviser K.T. McFarland an ambassador position and subsequently directed her to create an internal memorandum that had to state Trump didn't direct Flynn's calls with Kislyak.
McFarland refused to write the memo because she was not confident that it was the truth. After consulting with WH lawyer Eisenberg, who advisered her to refuse Trump's directive, McFarland was also concerned that the directive shortly after the job offer would look like a quid pro quo.

Edit: Trump's sworn written testimony on the Flynn calls. He refused to provide any answers on all of the questions below.
Questions:

 

[Nike Jordan]

Libertarians everywhere have been mighty silent the last 4 years. Seems like they are pretty cool with record spending and deficits and government overreach as long as its a republican doing it

The majority of "libertarians" are just Republicans that like to smoke weed.

 

[rexanglorum]

I'm not super invested in any one particular position on if and how to regulate social media platforms. However, this discourse highlights a few truths that rarely get explicitly mentioned in mainstream/corporate media.

- Freedom is a multifaceted thing and sometimes one type of freedom clashes with another type of freedom. In this case, Trump is making the left's argument that unlimited freedom for private property suppresses the freedom of the individual.

- Dovetailing off of the first point, who elected Mark Zuckerberg? With Trump fighting Zuckerberg we see the deficiencies of our political democracy (Trump won with a minority share of votes) and our deficiency of economic democracy. It is most visible when we look at these big, monopolistic silicon valley players but its the case with every private firm. Unless you work for a true worker co cop, your boss was not elected and meaningful decisions are not made at the workplace by the majority of workers, that's autocracy.

 

[everysingletime]

Ppl already talk more freely on social media than they do in real life. Half the stuff they be spitting on social media, most would not even think about saying in person.

 

[rexanglorum]

The majority of "libertarians" are just Republicans that like to smoke weed.

There are two outcomes for libertarians, you either end up a leftist or a fascist.

When you realize that the freedom of private property and contract conflicts with individual freedom, you have to choose. You either swing left because individual freedom is more important and the freedom of private property and contract must be subordinated. From there, you may become a social democrat or a even a communist because people being forced to work on pain of death and deprivation is an enormous deprivation of individual freedom.

That or you believe that freedom of property and contract takes precedent over everything else and that patriarchy, white supremacy and imperialism, surveillance, mass incarceration are all prices to be paid in order to privilege property rights. Moreover, you become fine with statism because you know that the state and a heavy handed one is needed to preserve you property rights amid increasing levels of inequality. Furthermore, you fear political democracy because the masses could vote away some or even all of your private property so you seek to subvert popular sovereignty by not having elections or limiting the franchise to very few people.

The third path is stay a libertarian but its pretty small and mostly confined to academia and think tank land.

 

[Deleted member 42060]

Again, why are y'all entertaining a guy that trolls and has never posted in any other thread on NT ever!

I've seen him in the Supreme thread and other general threads. Iirc, he was in the sb thread.

 

[Nike Jordan]

@aepps20 our brotha Shameik Moore (voices Miles Morales) is out here doing GREAT! work....

Victim blaming....


Rosa Parks was causing trouble, she had other options....


The grand finale, black people can avoid racism if they carry themselves differently...


I believe he has shown the right Mentality! to be considered for membership into Coal Gang.

You would think that a Black man named SHAMIEK would know better.

 

[AZwildcats]

Libertarians that i work with are just Republicans that don't like being called that.

 

[junglejim]

dwalk31 waiting for that invite to the revolution

 

[elpablo21]

The biggest crowds

 

[whywesteppin]

My thoughts exactly! Is Nancy Pelosi going to tell us why she murdered an innocent black man in Minnesota???

 

[Benny Hinn]