Tech Censorship

[_ajax18]

Marsha Blackburn: We Are Looking at Antitrust Laws and Section 230 on Tech Censorship

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) described the world’s largest technology companies — naming Google, Facebook, and Twitter — as “monopolies,” adding that she and her colleagues are considering the use of antitrust laws and reevaluation of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) to address their shared political censorship and shaping of information access.

Section 230 of the CDA and antitrust laws “is where our attention is going to have to be turned,” said Blackburn, offering her remarks on Thursday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.

The Justice Department is preparing proposals to roll back legal immunities enjoyed by large technology companies under Section 230 of the CDA in measures that will be announced as early as Wednesday, according to sources to the Wall Street Journal. The immunities shield the companies against lawsuits arising from user-generated content.

Marlow asked about Google’s threat to demonetize the Federalist and ZeroHedge on the basis of the two websites’ comment sections running afoul of Google’s arbitrarily-applied standards.

Blackburn replied, “[This] was part of a continuum with big tech and how they are choosing to censor and restrict conservative speech.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee “is looking at these issues of prioritization and censorship and data mining,” added Blackburn, noting big technology companies’ politicization of algorithms to “lean left” and “restrict right.”

Google — which owns YouTube — claims immunity to defamation lawsuits based on content hosted on its platforms by refusing to acknowledge its role as a publisher of information. It simultaneously demands that the Federalist and ZeroHedge police their comment sections in order to continue monetizing traffic via Google Ads.

Blackburn described Google’s demand of Federalist and ZeroHedge as “an unequal application the law,” given the company’s rejection of liability for content on its platforms, including the comment sections on YouTube.

Google — which owns YouTube — claims immunity to defamation lawsuits based on content hosted on its platforms by refusing to acknowledge its role as a publisher of information. It simultaneously demands that the Federalist and ZeroHedge police their comment sections in order to continue monetizing traffic via Google Ads.

Blackburn described Google’s demand of Federalist and ZeroHedge as “an unequal application the law,” given the company’s rejection of liability for content on its platforms, including the comment sections on YouTube.

https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2020/06 ... ensorship/

[_honorentheos]

If I were Dr. Peterson, I'd use the fact the board automatically changes the abbreviation for senator ( S e n) to Sen as evidence of the infatuation with him he claims. Because...it is. It's one thing for a Mormon-themed board to autocorrect B. Om to Book of Mormon. When it automatically applies the same rules to associations with Dr. Peterson, I think there is a valid claim to be made the board is at least to some degree about him as well.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

Did you know cum gutters can refer to a dude’s washboard abs? I just saw that on Rick and Morty, which is currently in a commercial break.

- Doc

[_EAllusion]

The GOP threatening large tech media companies with legal action to work them into being more favorable conduits for right wing propaganda, ala Facebook, is a major ongoing story buried in other major ongoing stories. It's easy to respond to these arguments on the level of their utterly broken understanding of the law, but I think that skirts the deeper problem going on.

[_honorentheos]

Did you know cum gutters can refer to a dude’s washboard abs? I just saw that on Rick and Morty, which is currently in a commercial break.

- Doc

Ugh. Worst season ever which, after last season, is saying something. And most meta-sucky trying-to-suck-its-own-dick episode of the season. Other episodes are also sucky. But not for the same self-important reasons. I'll give the last episode a pass. It may seem better than it actually is because of how bad the rest of the season turned out to be.

[_Doctor CamNC4Me]

I can’t put my finger on it, but the writing seemed to get fucky last season, and has continued through this one. Then again, as with all good things, it’s hard to keep the magic going (I’m lookin’ at you GoT seasons 7 and 8).

- Doc

[_honorentheos]

I blame the show becoming Flanderized.

In the first two seasons, Rick screwed things up. He contemplated suicide. He was...interesting. He had issues and power that mixed together in interesting ways. He could mix a legit love potion, know why it would backfire, but screw up the cure and then bail on an entire reality as if it were no big deal. He'd give Jerry a smarter dog, knowing why it would backfire, or the family a Meeseeks box as wish fulfillment knowing that it was a monkeys paw gift...but also throw himself into self destructive situations like he had a death wish he just couldn't quite commit to following through on intentionally. Now, he's immortal and takes on entire galactic empires by himself.

Jerry was weak, but his lack of awareness of it kept him interesting. Making him spineless to the point everyone knows and explicitly treats him as the butt of the joke ruined a valuable dynamic from the earlier seasons.

The relationship between Jerry and Beth was fraught, teetering on an edge, but not completely broken.

Summer was good as the "normal" person. Season three she became teen Rick.

Morty...he was the vehicle through whom the viewer experienced the universe of the show. Now he's jaded and locked in as a sidekick. He's a bitter version of Robin to Rick's douchier OP Batman which isn't who either of them were in the first two seasons. Well, maybe Rick was always douche Batman...

It was always a low brow show with a high fart joke quota. But that made the odd insights it built those jokes on different and better than your average dude-bro tv. Now it's just dude bro tv with a reputation it uses as a crutch so gimmicks like Pickle Rick can seem meaningful to people who assume the show isn't low brow so Rick's fourth wall breaking Deux Ex Machina role gets a pass as "smart".

[_Some Schmo]

So if they rollback 230 and tech companies have to worry about the accuracy of the things posted on their sites, how the f-uck is that going to help the GOP? All they do is peddle lies. Where will that take place if not on Twitter and Facebook?

I agree these companies should be far more stringently regulated. I'm surprised the GOP wants that too.

[_honorentheos]

I don't think that's the issue here. The article isn't arguing for more policing. It's arguing the large platforms that are starting to crack down on problematic content are monopolies controlled by liberal friendly corps. They want them broken up so the internet is balkanized. The real issue is "conservative speech" is used to describe deliberately anti-democratic (small "d") and belligerently false propoganda. Which, in turn, functions like cheerleading encouragment for the comment section equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theater just to get a kick out of watching people trample one another.

Just because someone hates liberals doesn't make their own position "conservative". Politically conservative speech is not being oppressed. The body snatching ghoul that is masquerading as conservative speech is where the problem lies.

[_EAllusion]

The specific issue being referenced is actually demonetization being described. It's that google doesn't have ads run on the pages of certain websites when the content of comments crosses over into their internal algorithms for what content they'll run ads for with some level of overt bigotry crossing the line. The Federalist itself isn't being demonetized so much as specific pages within. It's a bad policy because it just encourages people to bomb the comments sections of sites, but it's politically neutral. The "publisher" distinction is pure legal nonsense coming from people who ought to and probably do know better, and isn't even relevant here anyway.

The motivation here is just to pressure big tech companies to do more to aid conservative groups in disseminating propaganda in exchange for favorable regulation. It's working the refs. Facebook took that deal. It's social policy is run entirely by Republican operatives that in turn have encouraged the platform to become a machine for spreading conservative propaganda. I think there's a naïve assumption that other tech companies - Twitter, google, etc. won't ever take that deal, because in the future they might. They don't want balkanization. They want to capture large media platforms.