******Official politics thread ******

[JurisDictum]

good article on Alex Jones and the rise of corporate censorship

In essence, so-called liberals and sections of the political class now want corporations to do their dirty work for them. They want the capitalist elites to do what it has become somewhat unfashionable for the state to do: ban controversial political speech. What an extraordinary folly this is. To empower global capitalism to act as judge, jury and executioner on what may be said on social-media platforms, in the new public square, is to sign the death warrant of freedom of speech. What if these bosses decide next that Marxist speech is unacceptable? Or that Zionist speech is dangerous? In green-lighting the censorship of Jones, we grant corporate suits the moral authority to censor pretty much anything else, too.

People on both the liberal left and the libertarian right argue that what has been done to Jones is acceptable because this is simply a case of businesses deciding freely who they should associate with or provide platforms to. This is disingenuous. This was not a clean, independent business decision – it was a rash act of silencing carried out under pressure from a moralised mob that insisted Jones’ words are too wicked for public life. This isn’t the free market in action – it’s the bending of capitalist power to the end of enforcing moral controls on speech. There is one very interesting thing that will spring from this incident: we will witness the severe limitations of right-wing libertarianism. Libertarians’ obsession with the state, their belief that things are only bad if the state does them, means they are incapable of arguing against capitalist authoritarianism, and in fact even support it on the basis that this is the free market being the free market (even though it isn’t). Libertarianism is devastatingly ill-prepared for the new authoritarianism, for tackling the rise of outsourced censorship and informal intolerance.

The problem is only lawyers seem to have any understanding of the importance of precedent. There is a precedent now that offensive language or political ideas outside the mainstream can be banned from social media.

Social media is the modern public square...It is not the same as providing a platform for a hosted talk. When over half the country gets their news from social media -- its censorship is more relevant than just any privately-owned business.

We just got out of the stranglehold of information that existed since the dawn of T.V. -- and now we are letting a new wave of gatekeepers take their place.

[clevergirl]

Originally Posted by Cecily [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Suffice it to say, I think there’s a point where death is the only humane solution and dragging out endless suffering is cruel beyond comprehension. Suicide is not a solution I’m in favor of anyone choosing, but I respect anyone’s rational choice to do so. This isn’t the case in situations like depression and those suicides stemming from depression, the vast majority I’d imagine, are always tragic because they could be prevented. That’s the population I want to work with to help stop it.

I pretty much agree and I also think we should always give people lots of room and rehabilitation if we can. Safely, for others.

[AzzarTheGod]

Originally Posted by clevergirl [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I think homicide is ok. Even necessary.

Life dies. Some before it's time. Some well after it's time. Humans have no more right to life than anything or anyone else. It's foolish to believe ones life more important than that of another or that of the worlds life.

Ya'll are killing mother earth and each-other over extremely petty shit, and I do not like that.

I'll admit I'm kind of sick of American-Global oligarchs raping and pillaging places like Malaysia and Indonesia.

I'm kind of sick of oligarchs in capitalism in general.

[Ahldagor]

Originally Posted by JurisDictum [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

good article on Alex Jones and the rise of corporate censorship



The problem is only lawyers seem to have any understanding of the importance of precedent. There is a precedent now that offensive language or political ideas outside the mainstream can be banned from social media.

Social media is the modern public square...It is not the same as providing a platform for a hosted talk. When over half the country gets their news from social media -- its censorship is more relevant than just any privately-owned business.

We just got out of the stranglehold of information that existed since the dawn of T.V. -- and now we are letting a new wave of gatekeepers take their place.

Get off your high horse. That precedent has been a practice for over a century. The press, media, or whatever label you wish to apply has cooperated or not with government entities based on what they perceive to be in their best interest. FDR asked the Holocaust to be suppressed in order to stymie entry into WW2, the US wasn't ready early on. Spanish-American War was propagated by Hurst because we needed oil, Carribean, and Pacific territory (The Phillipines). Learn some fucking history, ya moran. Corporate censorship is nothing new. Hell, Little Richard wasn't the voice on his early recordings because you couldn't have a black man riling up white kids to move their hips in suggestive ways. Again, learn some history. You're dumber than Mick with this bullshit.

[JurisDictum]

Originally Posted by Ahldagor [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Get off your high horse. That precedent has been a practice for over a century. The press, media, or whatever label you wish to apply has cooperated or not with government entities based on what they perceive to be in their best interest. FDR asked the Holocaust to be suppressed in order to stymie entry into WW2, the US wasn't ready early on. Spanish-American War was propagated by Hurst because we needed oil, Carribean, and Pacific territory (The Phillipines). Learn some fucking history, ya moran. Corporate censorship is nothing new. Hell, Little Richard wasn't the voice on his early recordings because you couldn't have a black man riling up white kids to move their hips in suggestive ways. Again, learn some history. You're dumber than Mick with this bullshit.

You seem to be rather unaware that the when people started going to the internet for their news -- these gate keepers were ineffectual at controlling the information people were exposed to (compared with the previous newspaper and TV eras your talking about). This development coincides very well with things like Trump, Sanders, War weariness, and the Tea Party.

As you pointed out -- there is a long history of media companies being shills for the government and their corporate donors. It has gotten better with the internet -- but that is before a handful of corporations decided to attempt to monopolize the internet.

There is 1 of 2 things going on here.

1) People think it was great when a handful of guys controlled the national news and want it to return that way.

2) People are too fuckin stupid to look past Alex Jones personally and look at the precedent being set.

It's definitely number 2.

[Patriam1066]

3). Unemployed

[mickmoranis]

Originally Posted by Ahldagor [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Get off your high horse. That precedent has been a practice for over a century. The press, media, or whatever label you wish to apply has cooperated or not with government entities based on what they perceive to be in their best interest. FDR asked the Holocaust to be suppressed in order to stymie entry into WW2, the US wasn't ready early on. Spanish-American War was propagated by Hurst because we needed oil, Carribean, and Pacific territory (The Phillipines). Learn some fucking history, ya moran. Corporate censorship is nothing new. Hell, Little Richard wasn't the voice on his early recordings because you couldn't have a black man riling up white kids to move their hips in suggestive ways. Again, learn some history. You're dumber than Mick with this bullshit.

Corporate censorship is not new, what you have people asking is TODAY, do we as a society want them to STOP doing it?

Like, in the past you had barrier of entry to get on the TV, now anyone can (because the internet is now the TV) and we're seeing more rampant examples of corporate censorship, because there are moe people with access to post on "television" from their bedrooms.

We are also changing the conversation today, vs in the 1960s, because now corporate censorship is hitting something that up until the last 10 years, has been a FREE place where there WAS no censorship, beyond people getting arrested if they posted kid porn on the internet.

But yea, its the fact that this area WAS free of corporate censorship, and now the corporations have taken it over and the censorship hits people more directly.

NOW

nobody who has half a brain and says, "its wrong that alex jones was shut down off youtube" is saying that the 1st amendment should protect him from that! or that it does in any way shape or form.

WHAT they are saying is, SHOULD we be OK with corperations doing this?

SHOULD we want corperations to make decisions about what is in our best interest? DO we want to tell them to STOP?

We have seen the decline in the press, we have seen the decline in the news paper, we have seen the decline in access to geninuine news, and we have seen an increase in free news.

The results, bother people sure, but the problem is, the media DUMBED itself down, to compete with the free media... and now because they couldnt compete, they are SHUTTING the free media down, so they can have control of it again.

ITS PERFECTLY acceptable to ask society, DO WE WANT people to be silenced because we disagree with them?

DO WE WANT society as a whole, philosophicallyl TO SHUT DOWN the speech of people we disagree with?

THERE IS NOTHING constitutionally that protects you from a private person shutting down your speech on their private platform. HOWEVER its perfectly acceptable for us to ask society, philisophically, ARE WE FAILING to protect our OWN rights to free speech?

When someone says, the first amendment! when theyre talking about this shit, theyre saying "IF OUR GOD DAMN COUNTRY wanted the right to free speech, shouldnt WE AS INDIVIDUALS support it in our day to day life, instead of fight against it?!"

its a simple philisophical question, that you should ask yourself.

ANd if you think that they SHOULD be shut down...

WELL.. then you have to accept that innocent people are going to get shut down with them hence INCEST-PEDOgate.. So far James Gunn lost his job because of society not accepting speech from people they dont like, it just turns out in this case it was comedy.

Alex

jones

IS

COMEDY

It's just comedy for people you libtards dont like, so you think it shouldnt exist.

If he is shut down, so should the Daily Show and John Oliver.

[JurisDictum]

This is my synopsis of Vanity Fair's Bezos article. (“Everybody Immediately Knew That It Was for Amazon”: Has Bezos Become More Powerful in D.C. Than Trump?)

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[Nexii]

Well I will be boycotting GOTG3. PC thoughtcontrol run amok. It's one thing to fire people for current discourse but going back many years into someones history is ridiculous. We as a society should believe people can improve. The concept of rehabilitation seems lost on this young zealous generation..

That being said some censorship is okay. I don't agree with disfactual information being acceptable. Example, anti-vaccers. There will always be paranoid/schizoid types who takes this stuff to heart and it doesn't end well.

On the other hand, it's not bad that people are standing up to corporations. 1960s vs today isn't that comparable. Most corps then had Americas sole interest at mind. Now they're all globalized and take a far larger share off the top for themselves.

[mickmoranis]

What I think is funny is the left normally was against corporate control of anything, until suddenly it's Alex Jones and they're like, "sure you can control our political dialogue, it's okay!"