Some Schmo wrote:It's so strange to me that there are people who think their social life would end without Facebook. What the hell did people do in the 90's?
I use Facebook to say happy birthday to relatives that I don't want to call. That's the extent of my Facebook use. I wonder if my password is going to still work every time I log in, given how long it's been since the last time. My life would barely change if Facebook was wiped from the Earth, and any changes would be an improvement (I'm tired of people telling me to go like things).
Apparently, faux ‘conservatives’ can’t live without it because they can’t spread their conspiratorial bullshyte nearly as efficiently by phone.
Seriously, Facebook is one of the problems of modern-day tech, helping to degrade modern society into increased dumbass tribalism and ignorance. It didn’t have to be that way, but too many people let their baser instincts and selfishness rule their actions on that platform. We even get an example of the outcome from repeated exposure here in this thread.
canpakes wrote:And your dysfunctional dependence on Facebook still doesn’t compel it to make Infowars crap available to your feed. Learn to use a browser to get your daily fill of BS instead of expecting some other source to drop it off in your lap free of effort. It’s the least you can do.
Lets see, WD has shown he is: Entitled, wants govt to step in to regulate private businesses, doesn't have a basic understanding of economics or laissez faire capitalism, doesn't understand constitutionally protected "free speech", wants to be spoon fed whatever he feels he is entitled to, looks to a populist wannabe tyrant for leadership, etc. Sheesh, Trumpism doesn't reflect traditional conservatism in any way.
"your reasoning that children should be experimented upon to justify a political agenda..is tantamount to the Nazi justification for experimenting on human beings."-SUBgenius on gay parents "I've stated over and over again on this forum and fully accept that I'm a bigot..." - ldsfaqs
What Tech Giants’ Alex Jones Ban Got Wrong By BEN SHAPIRO
Rather than articulate a clear standard by which the conspiracy theorist could be banned, Facebook and its competitors cited vague prohibitions on ‘hate.’ Alex Jones is a full-fledged kook.
This is a man who called Special Counsel Robert Mueller a “monster” controlling an unnamed pedophilic gang, and then added, “Politically, you’re going to get it, or I’m going to die trying, bi**h. Get ready. We’re going to bang heads.” This is a man who suggested that the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre never occurred, and then claimed that victims were “child actors.” This is a fellow who says that vaccines give your children autism, who says that a Syrian chemical-weapons attack was a “false flag,” that Stoneman Douglas survivor David Hogg was a “crisis actor,” that the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria was actually a pedophilic headquarters, and that the Chobani yogurt company had contributed to a rise in tuberculosis.
This week, he was banned from Facebook, Apple, and YouTube . . . for none of the above reasons.
Apple announced that it “does not tolerate hate speech,” and thus Jones had to go. Facebook announced that it had removed Jones’s pages for “glorifying violence, which violates our graphic violence policy, and using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants, which violates our hate speech policies.” YouTube also cited “hate speech and harassment” as the rationale for knocking down Jones’s videos.
Now, I dislike Jones more than the average human. I’ve been a longtime critic, a status that resulted in Jones personally threatening my company a few months back, calling me a “parasite” and an “atheist” while screaming, “Get behind me, Satan!” I think Jones is a disgrace, and that supposed conservatives who have embraced him and Infowars have done a serious disservice to the conservative cause.
But I’m far more concerned with social-media arbiters suddenly deciding that vague “hate speech” standards ought to govern our common spaces than I am with the daily dose of detritus distributed by this delirious dunce. Social-media giants had a choice here. If they wanted Jones gone, they could simply have defined a standard limit on the number of debunked conspiracy theories one could peddle on the site before being banned, or they could have created a standard prohibiting public threats.
Instead, they chose the most politically correct way of booting Jones: They claimed he’d violated undefined standards regarding “hate.” That’s why so many on the right are rushing to Jones’s defense — not because they like Jones or anything he stands for, but because the Left is happy to apply double standards under the rubric of “anti-hate measures.”
To see how, we only need to examine the last week of news. Sarah Jeong, the newest member of the New York Times editorial board, has tweeted dozens of times, in racist fashion, about white people. The Left defended Jeong, not on the grounds that the New York Times ought to ignore social-media mobbing, but on the grounds that people of color can’t be racist. Were Jeong white, the Left dutifully explained, she would justifiably be fired; but since she is an Asian-American graduate of Berkeley and Harvard Law School, she’s a victim of the white patriarchy, and thus fully entitled to use racist slurs to target those with less melanin in their skin. “Hate speech,” it seems, only runs one way.
And it only applies to particular viewpoints, too. Suggest that Caitlyn Jenner is a man, and you might be violating crucial social-media “hate speech” taboos; suggest that the Jews are bloodsucking demons, as Louis Farrakhan does, and the leaders of the Women’s March will still hobnob with you.
Is it any wonder, then, that conservatives don’t trust social-media hall monitors to apply their alleged rules with equal vigilance? It’s demonstrative of the echo chamber that is Silicon Valley that rather than going after Jones on some semblance of an objective standard, they went directly for the buzzwords that will be most popular among those who love Sarah Jeong.
Unfortunately, the informal implementation of left-wing “hate speech” standards will likely be only a precursor to far more devastating culture wars to come. That’s because the Left does not operate in good faith. People of rational mind agree that Jones is a never-ending font of silly garbage. But the Left won’t leave it at Jones, which is why the social-media giants didn’t craft an objective standard to apply.
It is both baffling and unfortunate that these companies act as though they are applying a standard they have been consistent in upholding when we know that isn't true. And, it isn't true. People were happy to make money off of Alex Jones until he became too much of a liability. OK, he definitely went too far in threatening civil war and implying he would attack Mueller. So, maybe that threat of political and personal violence should be the reason?
I am sick of imprecise or specious applications of the word hate as a sort of coverall to take care of sticky problems. Yes, if you invoke terrorism or hate, then you can escape scrutiny. It is like asking the question "What about the children?" Or, "Don't you support our troops?" There are no good answers to this that don't involve paying lip service to the alleged value being invoked. I hear you, Ceeboo. It is troubling. I am not a fan of Jeong. Of course, I am a white male, so my views on the matter are both invalid at the outset and my willingness to say anything reveals that I am wrongheaded.
All very, very frustrating. You see, we didn't used to listen to women, so now we don't have to listen to people like me. And that is fair, right? And there will be no blowback, surely. One of the legitimately frustrating things about the Left is that everything is about power in Leftist discourse. White men have power, and so they are responsible for everything that is wrong. Others do not have power, so they should be given power in order to fix everything.
Obviously this is an obscene oversimplification on my part, but the way things play out it often seems like the calculus is just that simple. I don't buy the defenses of Jeong's behavior, but then my opinions no longer matter. I believe that there are things other than power that matter. And I believe that the real problems we have boil down to human weaknesses and foibles, not the gender and race of the person making the mistakes.
Call me crazy.
I suppose we can learn that by watching non-white, non-male people make the mistakes now. Unless it turns out that it really was the fact that the people with power were white and male that was ruining everything, just as Jeong once claimed. (But she was joking, I'm sure.) Then we can settle in to the new utopia.
"Petition wasn’t meant to start a witch hunt as I’ve said 6000 times." ~ Hanna Seariac, LDS apologist
Jones banned himself in a false flag operation. I found evidence of thermite that proves it.
"We have taken up arms in defense of our liberty, our property, our wives, and our children; we are determined to preserve them, or die." - Captain Moroni - 'Address to the Inhabitants of Canada' 1775
Yeah, I admit that I don't care for the cited reasons for the ban being "hate speech." "Spreading BS" would have been a much more valid and objectively perceptible standard.
God belief is for people who don't want to live life on the universe's terms.
schreech wrote:Dude, you really want to be right here and I don't have any illusion that anyone will change your mind even though reality, the law and common sense are all against you at this point. You are wrong and no amount of false equivalency is going to change that. What I find humorous at this point is watching someone who claims to be conservative (I get that trumpets are RHINO's, at best) argue that the govt should step in and regulate a private business instead of letting the free market manage the content that Facebook chooses, as a private business, to allow. Alas, self professed conservatives only seem to care about deregulation and a free and open marketplace when it doesn't negatively affect the side that they blindly choose to follow. For instance:
https://www.bustle.com/p/this-anti-trump-tax-plan-commercial-wont-be-aired-by-fox-news-but-you-can-still-watch-it-6739407 - fox news has a monopoly on conservative viewership and is the #1 primetime news network, so why arent you bitching about them not allowing this (and other left leaning commercials) to be aired? Could it be that you are a hypocrite? Fox news is a channel that actually claims to be news, not just a social media company, that refuses to allow the other side any voice but you don't seem to care because, and Im guessing here, your arbitrary use of the word "monopoly" doesn't cover this situation.
I still thinks its hilarious that you continue to act like Facebook fits the criteria of a monopoly (and that alex jones is a conservative - lol). The fact that they are dwarfed by google in ad revenues, people have and use dozens of other choices for social media, people have and use dozens of other options for connecting with their friends, Facebook is a SOCIAL media company which is free to use and, much like television, I can switch to another social media channel any time I choose. Nothing Facebook has done has limited competition, ability to do business and nothing they have done limits anyone's constitutionally protected freedom of speech. Again, just because you have chosen to believe something, doesn't make it true.
Clearly this merry-go-round will just keep spinning, so I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. You disagree, that's nice, and it's not that I really want to be right, but that your argument is weak. It does not appear that you comprehend my argument. All you have done is name call and present out of context comparisons. It's subjective either way. You disagree, that's fine.
Fox is a channel on a network which consists of many channels. Apples to oranges. Google has more ad revenue, you point out. What does this have to do with the price of tea in china? They are a completely different business. If there is a comparison to be made with Google, it's their Google+ social network, which tried to compete with Facebook and was a total failure. They couldn't get anywhere with it even with their vast resources and having several feet already in the door. Why? Because Facebook is a monopoly. Oh, there are other "social media" sites you point out? Again, apples to oranges. What is your point? This is like saying there are other computer networks beside the internet. Lots of private networks that people can remotely connect to. But only one of them is called the "internet." It is a monopoly. Facebook has ZERO, literally ZERO, competitors. What is there? LinkedIn? That's not a Facebook competitor, it's a jobs website. Twitter? LOL. There is nobody who competes with the type of social interactions and discourse that Facebook caters to.
The answer to the question of whether Facebook is a monopoly or not is subjective. It depends on how influence is defined and measured and likewise how the market is being defined and measured and the extent of their penetration and control over said market. You argue Facebook can never be a monopoly so long as any other website exists. This is a weak argument, one which completely fails to address the question.