Especially the Elites. Oh, and a really great hot take
.@CharlotteAlter: “Freedom of speech” has become a paramount concern of the techno-moral universe.
But “free speech” in the 21st century means something very different than it did in the 18th, when the Founders enshrined it in the Constitution https://t.co/UKjEfuWiJg
— TIME (@TIME) April 29, 2022
OK, let’s do it this way: Freedom of the Press in the 21st century is different than in 1791. Press outlets like Time would be fine with reigning in their 1st Amendment Rights, right? From the “article”
They say that something is worth what someone will pay for it.
If that’s true, then protecting “free speech,” which Elon Musk has cited as a central reason he agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion this week, may be worth twice as much as solving America’s homelessness problem, and seven times as much as solving world hunger. It’s worth more (to him, at least) than educating every child in nearly 50 countries, more than the GDP of Serbia, Jordan, or Paraguay.
A: he can do what he wants with HIS money. It’s not Charlotte’s to dictate how it’s spent. B: gotta love the quotes around free speech.
In the days since Musk agreed to terms on a deal to take Twitter private, nearly all of Musk’s tweets have been about freedom and censorship on the platform. Like: “By ‘free speech,’ I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.” Or: “Truth Social (terrible name) exists because Twitter censored free speech.” And: “the extreme antibody reaction from those who fear free speech says it all.”
And who decides the law on what is censorship? See it’s not the law, it’s the 1st Amendment. Charlotte would be fine with some laws on how Time operates and what Charlotte can write, right?
But “free speech” in the 21st century means something very different than it did in the 18th, when the Founders enshrined it in the Constitution. The right to say what you want without being imprisoned is not the same as the right to broadcast disinformation to millions of people on a corporate platform. This nuance seems to be lost on some techno-wizards who see any restriction as the enemy of innovation.
No, it’s the same. There was surely some disinformation about the British government and King George before we won our independence. It’s not for the government to decide per that pesky 1st. It was about the right to criticize the government without fear of reprisal. If you don’t like the speech, well, tough shit. Ignore it. Debunk it.
Jason Goldman, who was on the founding team at Twitter and served on the company’s board from 2007 to 2010 before joining the Obama Administration, says the tech rhetoric around free speech has become an obsession of the mostly white, male members of the tech elite, who made their billions in the decades before a rapidly diversifying workforce changed the culture at many of the biggest companies in Silicon Valley.
So, women, blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, Orientals, etc, aren’t concerned with free speech? Really, it’s about hardcore Leftist wanting people they Disagree with from having their say. Anything they consider Wrongthink is disinformation in their world. News for them: we won’t stop with Free Speech, and even standard liberals are getting the picture about your hardcores.
NuCon local and state politicians are banning books. Some politicians have advocated burning books! In America!
Teach-ers, Teach-er unions, Black and LGBTQ kids are easy and obvious political targets for American right-wing politicians – politicians who understand their base political voter bloc intimately.
If reactionary politicians feel that school books and Teach-ers are groooming children to be gay and trans they should take a look at social media – tweeter, facebook, emails, texts, tiktok, etc, etc, etc.
Censorship is a political act whereby a government body limits the free expression of speech, sort of like if and when local and state government ban books and words and ideas. Private businesses practicing editorial discretion is not censorship. The Gateway Pudendum publishes lies every day. Teach (aka bRandon) publishes lies, but not every day. If the government limited their ability to spread misinformation, that would be censoring. That they decide which lies to publish is THEIR choice, just as it should be. bRandon chooses to not limit what commenters say.
Private businesses acting at the behest or coercion of government are agents of the government and are just as constrained by the First Amendment as any government entity.
If the government by use of either force or favors either encourages or rewards media or social media for supporting a government approved point of view that is not free speech. If the major social media outlets, i. e. the modern day “soap box” is censoring The President of The United States during an election from accessing the American people on the public square that is censorship and election fraud.
If you can’t see that the constant cover ups of the lefts failures and the repetitive din that any speech not leftist speech is “misinformation” then you are part of the problem.
The left, including you QdOwd, spent three years screaming “Russia, Russia, Russia” and when the truth came out you chose to ignore it, refused to apologize and walked away like nothing happened. That’s censorship and it was done by the media, the government and you until the stench was so high you all couldn’t ignore it any longer.
You’ve done the same thing with the election steal of 2020, the Hunter laptop and the Covid debacle that ruined our economy.
Hating President Trump is no reason to lie, obfuscate and censor. We realize in you tiny leftist minds anything not specifically endorsed by the leftist big shots is all “disinformation or misinformation” but it really isn’t. It’s just a competing opinion and since your views can’t compete in the market place of ideas you opt for closing out free speech and any dissent.
Truth has been your enemy since Clinton and it will remain a cancer in your brain until you understand that just because we don’t agree does not mean we are mis or dis informed. It means we trust other sources. And we are entitled to have our voices heard and our rights supported. This is still a Constitutional Republic is it not?
Or should 80 million Americans who disagree with the left and QdOwd be banned from media because of some phony misinformation meme? That’s why we think you’re Nazis. Well, that and your willingness to murder 80 million unborn American citizens.
FJB and his murderous minions.
In my humble opinion, the “Soap Box” is probably the most important of the 3 boxes preserving our freedoms.
LGB!
QdOwd: “Censorship is a political act whereby a government body limits the free expression of speech”
To you it is. You seem to thing private corporations have the right to deprive American citizens of their rights. Censorship is an act of denying the human rights of people to speak freely by anyone anywhere. Not just government. Any other definition is leftist propaganda trying to allow censorship of their political enemies.
FJB and his Nazi censors in both government and business.
Lying Groooomer Brandon doesn’t understand that private corporations DO have the right to deprive Americans of their rights.
Let’s imagine that Lying Grooomer worked in the private sector, rather than suckling at the teat of government. Further imagine that Lying Grooomer sends a letter to the local newspaper calling the CEO a dishonest moron. In response, the CEO fires Lying Grooomer for insubordination. Would Lying Grooomer have a case that his constitutional rights were violated? Good luck with that suit.
In addition, bRandon here, the Gateway Pudendum, the NYTimes, WaPO, tweeter, FOX, CNN, World Net Daily are NOT obligated to publish every piece they receive. Duh.
Should the U.S. nationalize tweeter, making it a government organ? Should the U.S. Congress also pass laws removing defamation as a crime?
Fuck Lying Grooomer and his fascist government censors that want to burn books.
The distinguished Mr dOwd wrote:
No, some conservative politicians have decided that certain books cannot be purchased or held by public libraries the school systems, cities or states provide. They have not, and cannot, ban the public from buying or owning such books, nor prohibit private booksellers from selling them.
If the esteemed Mr dOwd wishes to buy a copy of Heather Has Two Mommies, he can buy a copy, or a hundred copies, or a thousand copies on Amazon, and read them all, color in between the lines, or resell or even give them away, and it’s all perfectly legal.
Of course, the incredible Mr dOwd already knew that, yet he typed:
Yet the very liberal Mr dOwd wrote something, without any qualification, that he knew to be false, and I have to ask: why did he do that? He’s not stupid; he knew perfectly well that other commenters on this fine site would pick up what he wrote and expose its falsehood.
We stand by our comment that the Gateway Pudendum lies every day and bRandon lies, but not every day.
By all means prove us wrong.
No proof necessary. Your lies speak for themselves as usual.
The seemingly outraged Mr dOwd wrote:
Sadly, the teachers and their unions have been taken over by leftists. They would not be political targets if they were just teaching reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic.
“LGBTQ kids”? When it comes to the prepubescent grades, there are no homosexual kids; these issues are simply not part of their maturity level. Some may think that they are somehow ‘different,’ and I suppose some are, but it should not be the public education system which somehow guides them into or reinforces the the idea that this is perfectly normal. There have been a few mentally ill children who think that they are the sex opposite from what they are, and some few parents — who ought to be arrested and jailed for child abuse — who’ve gone along with such, and even profited by it, but they’ve helped lead their children into years, if not a lifetime, of suffering.
A case can be made — not that I would agree with it — that children need some sort of education about
deviantnon-standard sexual orientations as puberty advances, but if we tell the truth, we all knew about those at junior high and high school ages well before sex education in the schools became a thing. I was in junior high and beginning high school in the 1960s, and I had already heard what [insert archaic word for a bundle of sticks here] were, and boys already challenged others to “(Fellate) my (penis)!” as an insult to their masculinity. We knew what copulation was, and very much longed to be doing so, despite, alas! the girls rather limiting those opportunities to do so.I suppose some are, but that’s where the First Amendment comes in: those things can’t be legally limited. Emails and texts, in particular, would require a warrant, and such things only apply when adults try to entice minors into sex.
Dear Elwood:
“If reactionary politicians feel that school books and Teach-ers are groooming children to be gay and trans they should take a look at social media – tweeter, facebook, emails, texts, tiktok, etc, etc, etc”
But it is the government who is acting as the publisher/purveyor of the disputed information while demanding that the child be exposed to it by an authoritarian figure and that the child’s progress in accepting the claims be judged. All the others are voluntary.
The government is not limiting what can by typed into tweeter.
It will be interesting to see how the notoriously mercurial and famously thin-skinned Musk responds to critical twits. LOL.
Pointing to the $44 BILLION spent for tweeter was not to question the world’s richest person’s rights but to show what this society values. Musk’s current wealth derives from his ownership of Tesla stock, where he is CEO.
Maybe Musk can pay tRump $1000 for Truth Social. First move? Fire Devoid Nunes.
The .38 Police Special loaded with blanks Mr dOwd wrote:
Mr Musk has challenged his opponents to stay on Twitter and continue their criticism of him. How long he retains that policy is something unknowable at this time.
Right now, Twitter has approved Mr Musk’s offer to purchase, but he does not yet own it; there will be weeks, if not months, of paperwork that has to be completed.
And we value Freedom of Speech very, very highly! Americans have fought, and died, for our rights. We are very fortunate to have two very wide oceans protecting our nation, and have engaged in a policy of ‘forward defense’ for over a hundred years now, but in fighting some of our foreign wars, we were also fighting for the rights we hold dear for other people, for the democratic Europeans, for the Japanese, for Koreans and Vietnamese and Iraqis and Afghanis. Sadly, we failed in some instances, but those have been our values.
Blanks says the libertarian from Lexington…
Mx Dana seems to disapprove of businesses using editorial discretion. Are they really proposing that twitter publish obvious disinformation/propaganda from Russia, China, Republicans and Democrats?
Does Mx Dana approve of the government banning books?
The socialist but not Socialist from St Louis wrote:
While I did live in Kentucky’s second-largest city from 1971 through 1984, I didn’t grow up there and don’t live there now.
Editorial discretion is obvious for every publisher; I object to the government getting involved, as it has under the befuddled Mr Biden.
As you well know, from a comment I previously posted, on this very thread, I have specified the difference between the government choosing not to buy and maintain in libraries and the government “banning books,” which has not been the case, and which I specified that the government cannot do.
Every American library other than the Library of Congress is limited on what it can purchase and house; those are decisions taken by those who own and run the libraries. It is certainly within the discretion of legislatures which fund those libraries not to buy or maintain inappropriate material.
That isn’t “banning books”, as you well know. But I suspect that you’ll continue to use a claim that you know is not true.
The Klansman from Kentucky seems upset. We do not live in St Louis, and in fact only lived in St Louis for a few months in 1975.
‘Banning Books’ is a shorthand, much like ‘Ministry of Truth’. But we suspect that you’ll use a claim that you know is not true. Of course, we would expect no more.
We do not read all the comments, so our apologies.
Methinks Charlotte is a 20-something intern, given the low quality of thinking and lack of logic in her writiing.
Most excellent deduction, sir.
But another billionaire buying the Washington Post, well, that’s ok. If it weren’t for double standards…..
Did Bezos change the editorial positions of WaPo?
Qdowd: “Did Bezos change the editorial positions of WaPo?”
Yes he did. Just he being the boss changes everything. Why do you care if Elon makes Twitter fairer? Is free speech still a problem with you?
Funny-no, because they were already suppressing conservative viewpoints, as the brown shirt mentality was already ingrained at the Post. Or I forget-is it the Washington Compost?
Or as I saw-the party that thinks men can get pregnant wants to control “misinformation” on the internet
Is “pregnant man” a platform position of the Dems? Republicans feel that DonJon tRump actually won the 2020 election!
The DHS misinformation program is to attack FOREIGN misinformation – Russian, Chinese, recruitment of migrants etc. Do you oppose that??
The completely non-catholic Mr dOwd wrote:
As we have already seen, the sweeping in of information on “FOREIGN” suspects has led to the data capture of information on American citizens. Facebook and Twitter, both American companies, not only censored posts they claimed were ‘misinformation,’ but “White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday the Biden administration is identifying “problematic” posts for Facebook to censor because they contain “misinformation” about COVID-19.”
This will not remain limited to foreigners, and already has not been.
If the Biden Administration can set up its
Ministry of Truth“Disinformation Governance Board” under President Biden, to flag and push against what the left consider to be false, then the same can be done under President DeSantis come 2025. We know how you would have howled had President Trump done this in 2017!Dear Elwood:
“The DHS misinformation program is to attack FOREIGN misinformation – Russian, Chinese, recruitment of migrants etc. Do you oppose that”
Who will watch the watchers?
Yes, I oppose the Ministry of Truth deciding what’s misinformation or not misinformation.
bRandon posts Musk’s false meme/pic regarding the American left and right. LOL.
Anyone with even a soupcon of sense recognizes that the American right has become even more reactionary. Never bring facts to a meme fight. The American right is normalizing book burning. The American right is normalizing lying. The American right is normalizing authoritarianism. The American right opposes democracy.
Celebrating 100 years of women’s suffrage.
Is “pregnant man” a platform position of the Dems? Republicans feel that DonJon tRump actually won the 2020 election!
The DHS misinformation program is to attack FOREIGN misinformation – Russian, Chinese, recruitment of migrants etc. Do you oppose that??
QdOwd: “The DHS misinformation program is to attack FOREIGN misinformation – Russian, Chinese, recruitment of migrants etc. Do you oppose that??”
No it’s not and we all know it. This constant and continuous lying by your side is why no one believes anything you say. If it was to attack FOREIGN misinformation it would be called The National Agency for Foreign Misinformation. You leftists will use any word salad to justify your nefarious deeds against any American with whom you disagree.
FJB and the fake ministry of truth.
Dearest Elwood:
“Is “pregnant man” a platform position of the Dems? Republicans feel that DonJon tRump actually won the 2020 election!”
Things I learned as a child:
You are what you eat.
You are known by who you associate with.
If all your friends jumped off the roof would you?
Better to keep quiet and thought a fool than speak and prove it.
There are several things being ignored by many when free speech and censorship comes up.
The First Amendment protects the individual’s right to criticize the government. Not each other.
Dangerous speech can result in people being arrested…. You can’t scream fire in a crowded theater.
Individuals and businesses can be sued for libel and slander.
The telephone companies can’t be sued for content because they don’t censor. Newspapers and book publishers can because they can (edit). The newspapers seek to get away from this by having “editorial pages.”
But in a rush to regulate the Internet…” 47 U.S.C. § 230, a Provision of the Communication Decency Act…. “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider” (47 U.S.C. § 230). In other words, online intermediaries that host or republish speech are protected against a range of laws that might otherwise be used to hold them legally responsible for what others say and do. The protected intermediaries include not only regular Internet Service Providers (ISPs), but also a range of “interactive computer service providers,” including basically any online service that publishes third-party content. Though there are important exceptions for certain criminal and intellectual property-based claims, CDA 230 creates a broad protection that has allowed innovation and free speech online to flourish….”
The Left has used this for years to censor/shut off/deplatform, etc.etc. The Right has cried bitter tears and demanded that 230 be changed.
Now the worm has turned.
Dear Lefties. You have what you wanted. Enjoy.
https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230
Mr Lewis wrote:
Huh?
The First Amendment certainly does protect the individual’s right to criticize other individuals, or corporations, or politicians, or anybody or anything. If you libel or slander someone, you can be sued for damages, but your right to criticize remains intact.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Note that it is Congress that is restrained/forbidden, not the individual.
“protect” means
Verb – “keep safe from harm or injury”
Individuals may be sued by other individuals, or charged with certain defined words or phrases.
https://nypost.com/2022/04/30/elon-musk-tells-aoc-to-stop-hitting-on-me/
#LGBFJB
#LosingTheNarrative
Bwaha! Lolgf