The Stuff removed / changed / pulled relating to Trump

ObsidianJones

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I just hope that when a smart trump mk2 takes power and does this to people he has political disagreements with we can then agree that private corporations should not be able to cancel you out of existence like this.

No matter who this is done to, doing it to anyone is wrong. This is like a light version of the chinese social credit system, only more free-form and open to arbitrary punishment since each company is doing whatever the hell they want to maintain virtue points and there's not one centralized governmental point system.
Ok, I'll bite.

What's the difference between Cancelling someone who has spurned his followers to cause damage on a massive scale and Removing a weed sellers ability to vote?

Arguably, selling weed is a much tamer offense. Something that was actually decriminalized in many places people are still being arrested for using the drug. But still, that person can not determine the shape he wants to take his country in due to his arrest and conviction.

Social Media is not a right. And more importantly, there's precedent of being forbidden to use things once you commit a crime with them.

Hunt the wrong thing at the wrong time, and you have your hunting license revoked.


Some states have it if that police are called to a scene of Domestic Violence, the guns are taken away.


Some hackers aren't allowed to use a computer.


Are you a drunk driver? You lose your license, because it's not a right.


Hell, if you're found guilty of abusing your children, the government (thankfully) has ways to keep you from them, even though they are your own blood.

And we never had a problem with any of that.

People might have sympathy for him, but he's not losing a basic human right. If it was, our twitter handles would be tied to our Social Security Numbers. Companies are allowed to control who use their platforms as long as they make it free to everyone who follows their rules. Trump did not follow their rules. In fact, he tried to pass legislation to have government dictate what private companies can and can not do in order to circumvent their own rulings.

Which is odd, because I always thought Conservatives believed in Laissez Faire and the Invisible Hand of the Market... The Government telling private companies how to run their business really sounds like the Closed Fist of the State and sounds a lot like those pesky Regulations that Trump hates.

It's wrong to pretend by violating the laws of the company that he wishes to abuse, they are somehow unjust for revoking his privileges.
 

Avnger

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Nothing official as far as I'm aware, which does seem a bit flawed. Here in the UK, the PM's direct messages (such as the ones on coronavirus) go out on the BBC, which is of course a state broadcaster-- it's part of their remit.

Unofficially, US news outlets are pretty much always willing to cover White House press briefings, because refusing would be giving competitors a free advantage in coverage.
The whitehouse.gov website supports livestreaming of events. https://www.whitehouse.gov/live/

Even without that, there's CSPAN which is a dedicated private "non-profit public service" that airs essentially everything to do with the US government including press briefings, live congressional events, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-SPAN

For anything of critical importance, the US government can also requisition airtime on-demand from networks in an emergency.
 

bluegate

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But yeah, the President should probably have an alternate way to communicate with the people without depending on third-parties to carry or host the message.
White House Press Room, the place where Sean Spicer, Troll Under A Bridge-Sanders and Not McEnany Sense spun their lies on television.

Don't behave according to a platform's rules and you get the boot, a rule as old as forums themselves.
 

Houseman

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I think this is what's called a slippery slope fallacy.
"Slippery slope" is not strictly a fallacy.

What makes it a fallacy or not is if there is no relation between the first action and the second, for example:
"If we allow gay marriage, then what's next, people marrying their pets?"

This is distinguished by valid cause and effect:
- "If we implement voter ID, then poor people won't be able to get one!"
- "don't ever do heroin, because you'll get addicted and eventually ruin your life"

You can't just call out "slippery slope" as a thought-terminating cliche.
 
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Dreiko

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Ok, I'll bite.

What's the difference between Cancelling someone who has spurned his followers to cause damage on a massive scale and Removing a weed sellers ability to vote?

Arguably, selling weed is a much tamer offense. Something that was actually decriminalized in many places people are still being arrested for using the drug. But still, that person can not determine the shape he wants to take his country in due to his arrest and conviction.

Social Media is not a right. And more importantly, there's precedent of being forbidden to use things once you commit a crime with them.

Hunt the wrong thing at the wrong time, and you have your hunting license revoked.


Some states have it if that police are called to a scene of Domestic Violence, the guns are taken away.


Some hackers aren't allowed to use a computer.


Are you a drunk driver? You lose your license, because it's not a right.


Hell, if you're found guilty of abusing your children, the government (thankfully) has ways to keep you from them, even though they are your own blood.

And we never had a problem with any of that.

People might have sympathy for him, but he's not losing a basic human right. If it was, our twitter handles would be tied to our Social Security Numbers. Companies are allowed to control who use their platforms as long as they make it free to everyone who follows their rules. Trump did not follow their rules. In fact, he tried to pass legislation to have government dictate what private companies can and can not do in order to circumvent their own rulings.

Which is odd, because I always thought Conservatives believed in Laissez Faire and the Invisible Hand of the Market... The Government telling private companies how to run their business really sounds like the Closed Fist of the State and sounds a lot like those pesky Regulations that Trump hates.

It's wrong to pretend by violating the laws of the company that he wishes to abuse, they are somehow unjust for revoking his privileges.

The difference is that you have an accountable body of independent, impartial judges make that determination that someone actually sold weed and what punishment should fit this crime, ones which are appointed through the democratic process. Not unaccountable corpocrats and oligarchs who are supposed legally to be motivated by maximizing profit and not benefiting society.

This means that if it's profitable for them, they will go the nazi way or the fascist way in half a second, as long as they think they can make enough money doing that. They should not have such power with that being the case.


It's not about the size of the offense or the specific punishment, it's about who gets to decide it. Unaccountable companies shouldn't get to do that. If you had a legal procedure for banning someone off twitter in the same way you can get a restraining order or be banned from accessing the internet if you do hacking, that's fine. If some fuck decides to do it to make a buck off of the virtue that follows an announcement of the ban of Trump, that's not fine. Pretty basic distinction.



This thing is like when colleges don't use the justice system and adjudicate claims of rape themselves through an internal investigation. There's been lots of lawsuits that have shown that they do not have the power to take away things from people based on their paralegal antics and that you have to actually use the legal system to take things away from people on the basis of their conduct because the only way of ACTUALLY establishing conduct is through the legal system. Everything else is just opinions.
 
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Avnger

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"Slippery slope" is not strictly a fallacy.

What makes it a fallacy or not is if there is no relation between the first action and the second, for example:
"If we allow gay marriage, then what's next, people marrying their pets?"

This is distinguished by valid cause and effect:
- "If we implement voter ID, then poor people won't be able to get one!"
- "don't ever do heroin, because you'll get addicted and eventually ruin your life"

You can't just call out "slippery slope" as a thought-terminating cliche.
You didn't show any cause-effect relation though. Just a strawman interpretation of events and a fallacy.
 

Agema

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"Slippery slope" is not strictly a fallacy.
It is what is called an "informal fallacy". Many informal fallacies may be technically valid arguments depending on circumstances, but unpersuasive.

The implicit claim behind that "slippery slope" argument is that the intent is to always ban the most right-wing thing. As this is extraordinarily spurious, it's a fallacy.
 

ObsidianJones

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The difference is that you have an accountable body of independent, impartial judges make that determination that someone actually sold weed and what punishment should fit this crime, ones which are appointed through the democratic process. Not unaccountable corpocrats and oligarchs who are supposed legally to be motivated by maximizing profit and not benefiting society.

This means that if it's profitable for them, they will go the nazi way or the fascist way in half a second, as long as they think they can make enough money doing that. They should not have such power with that being the case.


It's not about the size of the offense or the specific punishment, it's about who gets to decide it. Unaccountable companies shouldn't get to do that. If you had a legal procedure for banning someone off twitter in the same way you can get a restraining order or be banned from accessing the internet if you do hacking, that's fine. If some fuck decides to do it to make a buck off of the virtue that follows an announcement of the ban of Trump, that's not fine. Pretty basic distinction.


This thing is like when colleges don't use the justice system and adjudicate claims of rape themselves through an internal investigation. There's been lots of lawsuits that have shown that they do not have the power to take away things from people based on their paralegal antics and that you have to actually use the legal system to take things away from people on the basis of their conduct because the only way of ACTUALLY establishing conduct is through the legal system. Everything else is just opinions.
So... companies should hire independent judges to make sure that they are following their own EULAs fairly for the consumer?
 

Houseman

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You didn't show any cause-effect relation though.................................................................................................................................................
The picture does. Censoring the "far right" will just create a new "far right", defined as the right-most position on the spectrum.
Then the exact same reasons to justify the first censorship will be used to justify the second. Obviously, this is a prediction. One can not be sure that this will happen, just like one can not be sure that one will try hard drugs a second time.

The implicit claim behind that "slippery slope" argument is that the intent is to always ban the most right-wing thing. As this is extraordinarily spurious, it's a fallacy.
We've seen this happen before. Maybe it won't be "ban the most right leaning thing". Maybe it'll be in the form of "ban 'hateful' speech". But censorship always creeps. That's what it does. Once you make concessions, it becomes easier to make further and further concessions. The Overton window shifts.

How do you think we got from "blacks aren't people" to Obama?

Some countries have made nazi-ism illegal. Then they made holocaust-denial illegal. Then they made swastikas illegal as recently as 2015.
When you draw a line in the sand and say that X must be censored, then you have to be wary about anything adjacent to X, because it could be seen to be as a "gateway" to X. I'm accusing the censors of using the slippery slope.

They sought to ban rock-and-roll for this reason, because they were afraid of what it would lead to. Videogames, because they were afraid of what it would lead to.
People are afraid of conservatism now, today, because they're afraid that it's adjacent to, and will lead to fascism, nazism. We've read such claims here on this forum. I've been called both.

The slippery slope is real and both sides recognize it, and are using it to their advantage.
 
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Dreiko

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So... companies should hire independent judges to make sure that they are following their own EULAs fairly for the consumer?
No, we should pass laws pertaining to the EULAs being followed, that companies will be regulated by, and action taken against users will have to be processed like any other thing that a company can try to do to an individual; through the courts. Anyone hired by the corporation would be biased towards it, it's like cops investigating cops in an internal investigation. The judges need to be independent.

I thought the left was the one who is supposed to be AGAINST big business. When did it become the ancap mecca? I thought regulation of big business to give more rights and power to small people is what we were supposed to want.


If people are pro-socialist, a position of, say, the users voting on the company EULA, if it's a company that gets all its profit form it being used by people, like Twitter, would be the way to go, and I'm not even suggesting something half as extreme.
 
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Exley97

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I think it sets a bad precedent. It's censorship, plain and simple.
I agree that this could lead to a bad precedent, especially since Twitter seems to once again haphazardly applied and updated its own moderation rules. But it is NOT censorship. Please read actual experts on the First Amendment and free speech.

And no, you can't just "make your own", look what happened to Parler, they attacked it from every angle.
It's the big tech monopolies, google, facebook, twitter, amazon, or nothing. They have the reach, and can therefore manipulate, like 90% of the internet's population.
This is SO wrong. First, there are many more large cloud and IaaS providers out there before the "big tech monopolies" you named, including Oracle. Maybe you've heard of Oracle -- the founder and chairman, Larry Ellison, is not only one of the wealthiest people in the world, he's also a big Trump supporter. He and other Oracle executives have donated to Trump's campaigns and hosted fundraisers for him (and in return, Trump arranged the sweethart TikTok deal). The fact that Oracle doesn't want to dip its toes in THIS social media company speaks volumes.

Also, there are plenty of second-tier and regional cloud/colocation providers that are probably eager for business right now, not to mention bullet-proof hosting services overseas. And I doubt even with Parler's (reportedly) 4 million active users, it's not all that heavy a load. It's not that Parler doesn't have options -- they do. It's not that their technical requirements are excessive -- they're not. It's the fact that users were and are openly discussing and even plotting violent acts in an effort to overthrow the government. You shouldn't be surprised by the fact that pretty much every commercial entity wants to avoid being associated with that.
 

ObsidianJones

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No, we should pass laws pertaining to the EULAs being followed, that companies will be regulated by, and action taken against users will have to be processed like any other thing that a company can try to do to an individual; through the courts. Anyone hired by the corporation would be biased towards it, it's like cops investigating cops in an internal investigation. The judges need to be independent.

I thought the left was the one who is supposed to be AGAINST big business. When did it become the ancap mecca? I thought regulation of big business to give more rights and power to small people is what we were supposed to want.
That is the absolute problem. I won't speak for the entire left, but I'm completely confused on the malleability the Right seems to have when these things affects what they hold dear. It's the lack of consistency that sticks in a lot of people's craw when it comes to dealing with situations like this.

"Government shouldn't be interfering with Business. No, wait this new thing affects me or someone I like. Government, get in here."

It is the same flip-flopping that we've seen this entire administration.

From Supreme Court Picks:


From having no problem with Voter Suppression for other groups but feeling upset that their voting voice isn't heard to the level that they wish:


Trump Adds to Debit and Republicans don't care. But can't even think about more Stimulus for Americans because omg the debt is soooo large...




To how to deal with and/or consider Protesters:



All I want is consistency.

We definitely agree on the cops needing an independent investigation that's judges their actions on their merits, and not their comradery.
 
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Houseman

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But it is NOT censorship. Please read actual experts on the First Amendment and free speech.
The word "censorship" has meaning outside of the constitutional context, you know that right?

This is SO wrong. First, there are many more large cloud and IaaS providers out there before the "big tech monopolies" you named, including Oracle. Maybe you've heard of Oracle -- the founder and chairman, Larry Ellison, is not only one of the wealthiest people in the world, he's also a big Trump supporter. He and other Oracle executives have donated to Trump's campaigns and hosted fundraisers for him (and in return, Trump arranged the sweethart TikTok deal). The fact that Oracle doesn't want to dip its toes in THIS social media company speaks volumes.
Oracle, from what I understand, which is little because I almost never hear anything about Oracle, mainly does database stuff. They're a tech giant in a different way, like how Sony is a tech giant in a different way.

It's the fact that users were and are openly discussing and even plotting violent acts in an effort to overthrow the government.
A Facebook user openly streamed the Christchurch massacre on the platform, but, for some reason, 8chan got the blame for it. This is how they attack competitors. They take an example and exaggerate it, and make it seem like the WHOLE PLATFORM is full of unsavory types plotting violence.

With a big enough platform, and with cherry-picked examples, you can paint any narrative you want. Who's going to contradict them and risk being called a nazi as well?
 

Dwarvenhobble

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Yep. If Trump were anyone except the president of the USA, they'd have pulled the plug on his accounts long ago. This is not unfair victimisation of Trump, this is finally removing the advantageous exceptions they've given him for years and putting him on the same level playing field as other users.

They most certainly are getting rid of him now only because he's finished in politics - the Capitol riot just gave them the ability to do it slightly earlier than they were planning.
I dunno there was a Disney star who went on a Doxxing spree before based on just accusations. Sometimes falling for fake info and other times doxxing the wrong people.

Hell there's been rather a trend of people doxxing others on various accusations and not getting banned for it as of late


Aside from Parler getting removed by their hosting company, apparently hackers were able to get a data dump from Parler's servers, including posts, images and videos.

If this is true, I'm assuming we can add a lot of jobs of Americans dumb enough to put their personal information on Parler to this list.
This has been a long running false claim, sorry


Even if you don't believe the info in the video there's a simple way it can be proved to be fake.
If it were true and this info has been out there for months, you can be sure it would have surfaced and have been publicly posted a fair bit by now. I don't see how everyone could or would agree to keep the information hidden on some deep web forum, it would be like the Fappening but 10 times more public.


It's almost like actions have consequences.
Only for some.

I mean Twitter have a problem with ISIS accounts calling for violent action against the USA at one point and has had a bit of a pedophile problem (and I don't mean in some dark shadowy corner I mean out in the open publicly identifying as that and trying to equate themselves with being part of the LGBTQ, which luckily everyone pushed back and on and rejected)


That's kind of the function of the press conferences-- but Trump started excluding outlets he had political disagreements with.
and some started refusing to cover them.

I just hope that when a smart trump mk2 takes power and does this to people he has political disagreements with we can then agree that private corporations should not be able to cancel you out of existence like this.

No matter who this is done to, doing it to anyone is wrong. This is like a light version of the chinese social credit system, only more free-form and open to arbitrary punishment since each company is doing whatever the hell they want to maintain virtue points and there's not one centralized governmental point system.
Glad I'm not the only one seeing things like that. I mean at least with the Chinese Social credit system there's fairly set rules and clear "If you do this this happens" results. Words I never thought I'd say here that the Chinese Social Credit system is better than something really.


Even the media outlets can decide just to not broadcast the President's message. There's nothing forcing them to do so, is there?
For example, I've heard that they cut away from him during his own speeches at rallies and such.



I wonder if the President can just unilaterally declare something to be "wrong", like through an executive order or something. Maybe declare a certain movement as a terrorist organization or something. Or perhaps it would be done more subtly. I think such a President would need the media on their side in order to do such a thing.

Lemme slip into the mindset of an evil genius for a second and theorize how such a thing might be done:
1) Stage an attack and make it seem like it was done in the name of your target's movement/ideology
1a) Alternately, just have the FBI or DoJ or whoever under the President's thumb to merely claim that an attack was carried out by the target movement
2) Use that to justify attacking it/censoring, and everyone sympathetic to it, from every angle.
Pretty much V for Vendetta style actions there.
 

Nick Calandra

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Trump being banned on social media platforms isn't censorship. They're private platforms and until they're made a "public utility" they can do whatever they want, just as we can here. For all intents and purposes, if I don't like what someone is saying on these forums, I can ban them and there's literally nothing you can do about it besides appeal it or complain about it.

He's the President of the United States. If he has something actually important to say, like oh, I don't know, an update on vaccines and when people are going to get it, nobody's going to censor that.

Trump's "communication" was 100% spent on just spreading conspiracy theories, and empty rhetoric to get his base riled up. I think it's completely fine if people want more transparency in the election process, but none of these people seem to have a "plan" or any sort of list of wants when it comes down to it besides screaming Trump's talking points about it being "stolen" or "rigged" or whatever, even though those very same people didn't believe the Russians messed with our elections in 2016.

I live in Missouri and I can't even track if my vote got to where it was supposed to be to be counted...and Missouri is a Republican state so...what states don't have voter transparency again? Oh right, Red states.

The thing is, everyone is focused on banning Parler, when it was Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc that allowed these groups to proliferate and they only started going to Parler when social media companies started slapping wrists.

I have ZERO interest in Parler, but everyone championing its takedown VERY quickly forgot that the platforms we are on at this very moment is what helped these conspiracy theories spread, and none of them are going to take accountability for it. It's beyond annoying to watch.
 

Dwarvenhobble

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I think this is what's called a slippery slope fallacy.
Is it fallacy when before we were told Alex Jones was a special case and this wouldn't start happening to others he was just a case that specifically needed censoring?
 

Dreiko

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That is the absolute problem. I won't speak for the entire left, but I'm completely confused on the malleability the Right seems to have when these things affects what they hold dear. It's the lack of consistency that sticks in a lot of people's craw when it comes to dealing with situations like this.

"Government shouldn't be interfering with Business. No, wait this new thing affects me or someone I like. Government, get in here."

It is the same flip-flopping that we've seen this entire administration.

From Supreme Court Picks:


From having no problem with Voter Suppression for other groups but feeling upset that their voting voice isn't heard to the level that they wish:


Trump Adds to Debit and Republicans don't care. But can't even think about more Stimulus for Americans because omg the debt is soooo large...




To how to deal with and/or consider Protesters:



All I want is consistency.

We definitely agree on the cops needing an independent investigation that's judges their actions on their merits, and not their comradery.

Yep, I'm being totally consistent here. Thing is that to be consistent you will have to sometimes stand against others in your group who are being opportunistic and selective, and then they call you far right for being principled, and that's not very helpful lol. It's best to defang any sort of unprovable accusation, to remove its power from harming you, and to install actual systems for determining things as being one way or another, and to dismiss all other suggestions as mere opinions.
 
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