Big Tech Assault on Free Speech

[OldBrownsFan]

"They don't claim to be neutral. They claim to ban things violating their ToS. Nothing more, nothing less."

Zuckerberg says he wants Facebook to be seen as neutral..

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/09/the-false-dream-of-a-neutral-facebook/541404/

[OldBrownsFan]

30 minutes ago, MLD Woody said:

"The homosexual lifestyle is evil and they're all sinners!"

"All Muslims are terrorists!"

"Everyone that follows me go attack this liberal!"

"Sandy Hook was a false flag!'

 

Tweets / accounts removed

 

 

"Big Tech is censoring conservative free speech!!!"

 

 

Bunch of dumb snowflakes

"Sandy Hook was a false flag!'

Let's take that one statement. Because of that statement I personally never go to Infowars or even want to listen to Alex Jones. I self censor him but that doesn't mean I think he should be censored on FB. I am surprised so many liberals who used to believe in protection of speech they didn't like but on principle defended it  have so easily given up their ideals. More speech is better. Let people like Jones speak and let those who oppose him speak. Banning of speech should not be done so easily.

[OldBrownsFan]

 

[Clevfan4life]

obf can u right now go to nunes's twitter feed and see everything? yes or no

[MLD Woody]

35 minutes ago, OldBrownsFan said:

"Sandy Hook was a false flag!'

Let's take that one statement. Because of that statement I personally never go to Infowars or even want to listen to Alex Jones. I self censor him but that doesn't mean I think he should be censored on FB. I am surprised so many liberals who used to believe in protection of speech they didn't like but on principle defended it  have so easily given up their ideals. More speech is better. Let people like Jones speak and let those who oppose him speak. Banning of speech should not be done so easily.

sigh

I'm always amazed how there is just a continued misunderstanding of what Free Speech actually is...

 

As myself, and many others have said on here many other times, in regards to situations like this (and what retailers can and can't do, etc) a private company has their own terms of service and can do as they please. Facebook could ban all Michigan fans from making accounts and it wouldn't be an attach on Free Speech. 

Don't talk to me about "ideals" when the thing you base your life around, the bible, was thrown in the garbage when you voted for Trump.

[OldBrownsFan]

2 minutes ago, Clevfan4life said:

obf can u right now go to nunes's twitter feed and see everything? yes or no

Yes but has that always been the case?  The problem with Nunes lawsuit is even if shadow banning were proven it is still not illegal but I am glad to see him file the suit if nothing else but to have tech companies like Twitter coming under scrutiny for their discriminatory practices against conservatives. I have no doubt conservative voices are being discriminated against by FB, Google and Twitter by censoring conservative voices. Some voices on the left are being censored too but the evidence is clear much more of the censoring is against conservative voices.

[OldBrownsFan]

4 minutes ago, MLD Woody said:

sigh

I'm always amazed how there is just a continued misunderstanding of what Free Speech actually is...

 

As myself, and many others have said on here many other times, in regards to situations like this (and what retailers can and can't do, etc) a private company has their own terms of service and can do as they please. Facebook could ban all Michigan fans from making accounts and it wouldn't be an attach on Free Speech. 

Don't talk to me about "ideals" when the thing you base your life around, the bible, was thrown in the garbage when you voted for Trump.

I got my lesson on free speech many years ago when I wrote a letter to the editor and the editor edited half my letter to the point I felt like it was no longer my letter but the editors. I complained to the newspaper about free speech and learned that as a private company they set the rules however they liked. The only consolation I got was they agreed they at least should put a disclaimer on an edited letter that it had been edited by the editor. So I know these big tech companies are private and can set their own rules but if they are discriminating against conservative voices that needs to be brought to light. 

I voted for president and not a pastor. When I felt I had a better choice with Cruz I voted for Cruz in the primary. In the general election Trump was the better candidate than Clinton and I have never regretted my decision to vote for Trump as he has been a great friend to Israel as well as being the most pro life president since Roe and defending religious liberties.

[Clevfan4life]

33 minutes ago, OldBrownsFan said:

Yes but.....

stop right there, thread topic over. No "buts". 

[Clevfan4life]

[LogicIsForSquares]

6 hours ago, OldBrownsFan said:

"They don't claim to be neutral. They claim to ban things violating their ToS. Nothing more, nothing less."

Zuckerberg says he wants Facebook to be seen as neutral..

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/09/the-false-dream-of-a-neutral-facebook/541404/

Fox also says they are fair and balanced . Sometimes people embellish. Both entities, Facebook and Fox, are private companies who can run it however they want.

[Westside Steve]

49 minutes ago, LogicIsForSquares said:

Fox also says they are fair and balanced . Sometimes people embellish. Both entities, Facebook and Fox, are private companies who can run it however they want.

For what it's worth Fox quit using the catch phrase fair and balanced a while ago. But pointing out that Fox obviously leans right doesn't mean the other news outlets don't lean left.

WSS

[OldBrownsFan]

1 hour ago, LogicIsForSquares said:

Fox also says they are fair and balanced . Sometimes people embellish. Both entities, Facebook and Fox, are private companies who can run it however they want.

Comparing Fox and the monopoly of Big Tech is not an apples to apples comparison except being private companies. Fox does not have the stranglehold over the news and wields the power of big tech. 

"every big tech company has shown a tendency to discriminate against conservatives. 

Twitter has shadow banned prominent Republicans and conservative pundits.  Facebook branded Trump supporters Diamond and Silk as “Unsafe for the Community” and Google recently labeled the pro-life movie Unplanned “propaganda” in its search results....

The conservative bias is unfair, and it is wrong, but it pales in comparison to big tech’s ultimate goal: to force all advertising on the internet to run through their platforms.  A move that would force conservative news sites to begin sharing their ad revenue with the very companies that are biased against them.

Google and Facebook—the Duopoly—control 63% of all digital ad spending in the US according to the State of Digital Media. Next 5 are also massive tech companies (Amazon, Microsoft, Oath, Twitter, and Snap) and they control another 12%.

Everyone outside these digital goliaths only has 25% of digital ad revenue in the U.S., a share that is shrinking because Google and Facebook account for 90% of all new digital ad revenue

Big Tech companies have already ravaged the print media business.  Newspapers across the United States are closing their doors entirely or moving to online only distribution. News publishers have lost tens of billions in revenue and tens of thousands of journalists have lost their jobs while Google and Facebook have padded their wallets and enriched their founders.  

Now online publishing is under threat from big tech.  Google could begin blocking third party cookies.  Third party cookies are nothing more than small anonymized data files that allow digital publishers serve advertisements to website visitors. 

Third party cookies are an essential part of the digital media value chain.  They enable highly relevant advertising to consumers, which in turn provides the necessary revenue for digital publishers to offer relevant content for free on the internet.

If Google has its way, instead of being able to sell their own advertising conservative news sites could be forced to sell their advertising inventory through Google and Facebook’s ad platforms.  Such a change would be nice for big tech’s profit margins, but it would force digital publishers to share an increasingly larger share of their revenues with Google, and only Google. 

Google will try to convince legislators that this change is in the interest of ‘privacy’ but we all know better.  Google’s privacy argument is nothing but a strawman intended to district for their real interest, market domination. "

Read Newsmax: Big Tech Bias Could Get Much Worse For Conservative News | Newsmax.com 

 

[OldBrownsFan]

Interesting:

Justice Brett Kavanaugh is Deciding Vote on Landmark Anti-Trust Case Against Big Tech

Kavanaugh bucked the so-called free market in a SCOTUS decision against Apple that bolsters consumer rights.

"Kavanaugh may be guilty of heresy to market orthodoxy for his ruling, but it shows that Big Tech is on his radar as monolithic social media corporations inflict Orwellian censorship against right-wing dissidents. It’s looking like Trump made the correct decision standing with Kavanaugh during last year’s witch hunt hearings."

https://bigleaguepolitics.com/

 

[OldBrownsFan]

President Trump’s Tough Talk on Big Tech Must Be Followed with Substantive Action

Strong rhetoric isn’t enough to stop Big Tech’s Orwellian, anti-American censorship measures.

 

Trump at least innately understands the power of the anti-establishment message, and social media dissidents were certainly thrilled that the President used his tremendous bully pulpit to amplify the message of the censored voices.

However, we cannot take for granted that Trump will follow through on his strong rhetoric. There have been times where Trump has stated that he would be “observing” important issues only to follow his declarations with total inaction.

Trump once claimed that he was intending to end birthright citizenship via executive order shortly before the 2018 mid-terms, but following the elections, no action was taken on this front, and it was quickly forgotten.

President Trump performs the best when he is being pressured by his base. When his supporters lose themselves in the euphoria of Trump’s constant ownage of the libs, he can veer extensively from his electoral mandate.

We are seeing it right now with on the crucial issue of immigration where foreign labor is being imported to the U.S. for low and high wage jobs to boost corporate profit margins at the expense of native workers.

Lawyers in the Trump administration should be considering all of the options at their disposal from using anti-trust laws to amending enforcement of the Communications Decency Act to classifying tech giants as public utilities. In fact, they should have been at this for quite some time already.

The time has passed for bromides about conservative principles and waxing poetic about the free market. Conservatism has conserved nothing except corporate power. The free market is a misnomer, as powerful multinationals dictate modern capitalism through government privilege.

It’s past time to shake off Chamber of Koch influence like a bad case of fleas, and proceed toward defeating hostile tech giants who are as rabid as AOC in their leftist activist push to destroy our bedrock freedoms.

We must keep the fire burning, with campaigns on problematic social media platforms as well as phone campaigns and other forms of agitation. This life-or-death struggle for freedom of speech cannot go down the memory hole. We owe it to our posterity to defeat the greatest evil of our times, Big Brother.

https://bigleaguepolitics.com/president-trumps-tough-talk-on-big-tech-must-be-followed-with-substantive-action/

 

[LogicIsForSquares]

1 hour ago, Westside Steve said:

For what it's worth Fox quit using the catch phrase fair and balanced a while ago. But pointing out that Fox obviously leans right doesn't mean the other news outlets don't lean left.

WSS

As is their right to do so with their own privately owned company.

[Westside Steve]

Just now, LogicIsForSquares said:

As is their right to do so with their own privately owned company.

Sure it is but who remembers the fairness Doctrine and its supporters?

WSS

[LogicIsForSquares]

So are we for breaking up companies we dislike now? Conservatives are free to start their own companies and social media outlets. 

[LogicIsForSquares]

Just now, Westside Steve said:

Sure it is but who remembers the fairness Doctrine and its supporters?

WSS

That whole thing is silly. 

[OldBrownsFan]

4 minutes ago, LogicIsForSquares said:

So are we for breaking up companies we dislike now? Conservatives are free to start their own companies and social media outlets. 

The Conservative Case for Breaking Up Monopolies Such as Google and Facebook

How do you take on monopolies with this sort of dominance and almost infinite levels of cash to buy out any rising competitor? That’s the question conservatives keep asking, and the answer is that realistically, you don’t.

 

As an individual, you can leave the platforms if you like — but because of their power and control of the national conversation, you are essentially de-platforming yourself by not using them. A message that doesn’t show up on social media might as well be written in a diary.

 

 

Could their eventual failings or a technology that sidesteps them somehow make them irrelevant? Sure, but that could take decades if it happens at all.

What about Congress regulating these businesses? They could certainly do that, but given the power and influence of these companies, it’s entirely possible that new regulations might be written to benefit Google and Facebook by making it even tougher for other businesses to compete with them.

However, there is another option to deal with this situation that would reduce the power of these companies and serve the public interest. That is breaking these monopolies up into smaller, more focused entities.

 

 

This is something with a long historical pedigree in the United States, including for Republicans. Teddy Roosevelt was responsible for breaking up the Northern Securities Company. William Howard Taft helped bring down Standard Oil Company. Even Ronald Reagan broke up Ma Bell.

Admittedly, breaking up a tech platform is a tricky proposition; people want to use Facebook because other people use Facebook, for example, so the government would probably have little success and win few friends if it tried to force users to divide into Facebook 1 and Facebook 2. What the government can do, however, is separate the core platform from the other products and services these companies provide, thus limiting the amount of power concentrated in a single company’s hands. If Google and Facebook were broken up into multiple companies this way, there would be more competitors in the marketplace, and the companies would be less able to leverage their dominance in one product to give themselves an unfair advantage for others.

As former Google employee Tristan Harris has said, “A handful of people, working at a handful of technology companies, through their choices will steer what a billion people are thinking today. I don’t know a more urgent problem than this. It’s changing our democracy, and it’s changing our ability to have the conversations and relationships that we want with each other.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/05/breaking-up-tech-giants-conservative-case/

[LogicIsForSquares]

That article reads that something is so good that they must not try to create their own start ups. If conservatives are that concerned, they will migrate to their new homes and will generate revenue. 

[Clevfan4life]

classifying socisl media as ?"puboic utilities"? u basic communists. Bernie is ayn rand next tonu guys. Stake out ur positions on this now or i brand all of just reg communists but communists "with proof".

i know where obf obviously stands so obf....understand i will refer to u as a communist till this board shuts down. And im not going to argue with u over it. You'll accept my snarky commie remarks and just move on. Cause ur a bolshevik fag......☕😁

[OldBrownsFan]

42 minutes ago, Clevfan4life said:

classifying socisl media as ?"puboic utilities"? u basic communists. Bernie is ayn rand next tonu guys. Stake out ur positions on this now or i brand all of just reg communists but communists "with proof".

i know where obf obviously stands so obf....understand i will refer to u as a communist till this board shuts down. And im not going to argue with u over it. You'll accept my snarky commie remarks and just move on. Cause ur a bolshevik fag......☕😁

I'm not locked into ideology. I am pragmatic. If socialism actually worked I would support it. The early first century churches actually were socialistic in they believed in spreading the wealth around from churches that had to churches who were in need. That worked well in the early church but it does not work in the world with selfish people. It makes the few the rulers over the masses as we have seen in many communist countries. 

This might surprise you (Komrad) but  I think AOC was right about the New York Amazon deal: 

https://thefederalist.com/2019/02/18/aoc-right-amazons-jobs-arent-worth-3-billion-corporate-welfare/

 

[calfoxwc]

19 hours ago, tiamat63 said:

LOL.  What a fucking dweeb.

This is equivalent to being trolled and insulted on here, then suing TBB.  

Tiam, that is not equivalent at all. It is more like here, they would delete/not show conservative opinions, but they would show

lefties' opinions without fail. Except, it's a private board, so that isn't even true.

   As a public? forum? An entire political movement, nationally, is being fostered, deliberately, by biased constructed algorithms to favor one side of the politics, the left side. This is nationally dangerous - a national publicly used medium is being slanted to control the next presidential election, having lost the last presidential election. Any attack on any conservative, anywhere, is an accepted attack, and any defense is not accepted.

    Total controlling bias, on the encouragements by prominent leftwing politicians all the way up to former "president" ObaMao

Nothing to do with anything that goes on on the Brownsboard.

[tiamat63]

2 hours ago, calfoxwc said:

Tiam, that is not equivalent at all. It is more like here, they would delete/not show conservative opinions, but they would show

lefties' opinions without fail. Except, it's a private board, so that isn't even true.

   As a public? forum? An entire political movement, nationally, is being fostered, deliberately, by biased constructed algorithms to favor one side of the politics, the left side. This is nationally dangerous - a national publicly used medium is being slanted to control the next presidential election, having lost the last presidential election. Any attack on any conservative, anywhere, is an accepted attack, and any defense is not accepted.

    Total controlling bias, on the encouragements by prominent leftwing politicians all the way up to former "president" ObaMao

Nothing to do with anything that goes on on the Brownsboard.

While this board is privately owned, it is publicly accessible to all with limitations on what content may be posted per the owner/mods.

Twitter is no different.     Again, I don't necessarily agree with it.   Zuckerberg might say he wants facebook to "look" more neutral, but I'm well aware of what I see when I read between the lines on comments like that - as are you.  

 

[calfoxwc]

12 minutes ago, tiamat63 said:

While this board is privately owned, it is publicly accessible to all with limitations on what content may be posted per the owner/mods.

Twitter is no different.     Again, I don't necessarily agree with it.   Zuckerberg might say he wants facebook to "look" more neutral, but I'm well aware of what I see when I read between the lines on comments like that - as are you. 

   Sure, but the Brownsboard is privately owned, and not a public entity. Generally speaking - it is a forum for an exclusive group - Browns fans...for the most part, granted.

   But twitter is a national public entity - privately owned or not. At least unofficially, across the board. The difference is, twitter is a privately-owned social forum on a grand national/international? scale. It is used by government officials, to express information/opinions on a national scale. I'm probably not explaining it correctly, I "ain't no lawyer"

Fox example:

https://blogs.findlaw.com/technologist/2017/08/is-twitter-a-public-forum.html

But, nevertheless, the very nature of governmental use of social media lends itself to being the most public of public forums. When government officials use social media channels to make official communications, there is a developing line of cases that establish these channels as limited public forums. Essentially when a government entity or official creates a social media channel for official communications, it converts the channel from a private forum, to a limited public forum, which entails not-so-limited First Amendment protections for those who participate in the forum.

   I should explain, that we don't twit, face, or link. Well, I used to link back in the pro working days, but no more.

 

 

[tiamat63]

4 minutes ago, calfoxwc said:

   Sure, but the Brownsboard is privately owned, and not a public entity. Generally speaking - it is a forum for an exclusive group - Browns fans...for the most part, granted.

   But twitter is a national public entity - privately owned or not. At least unofficially, across the board. The difference is, twitter is a privately-owned social forum on a grand national/international? scale. It is used by government officials, to express information/opinions on a national scale. I'm probably not explaining it correctly, I "ain't no lawyer"

Fox example:

https://blogs.findlaw.com/technologist/2017/08/is-twitter-a-public-forum.html

But, nevertheless, the very nature of governmental use of social media lends itself to being the most public of public forums. When government officials use social media channels to make official communications, there is a developing line of cases that establish these channels as limited public forums. Essentially when a government entity or official creates a social media channel for official communications, it converts the channel from a private forum, to a limited public forum, which entails not-so-limited First Amendment protections for those who participate in the forum.

   I should explain, that we don't twit, face, or link. Well, I used to link back in the pro working days, but no more.

 

 

 

This harkens back to the "are they too big of a company" argument.   Sure, they offer a social platform open to all - but again, you're bound by their ToS. 

I just consider it a dangerous precedent to declare a private companies labor as a public utility when it isn't what any would call a necessity.

[calfoxwc]

 I get your point - I say this - with freedom comes responsbility - when a social media, my opinion, gets national and virtually used by most? people in all states, something like that - the media's ability to deliberately undermine a legit election via extreme bias, under handed reporting, deliberate political hacking, etc...

    then the effect is national and public. It's a problem regardless of political persuasion. I'm hard pressed to name even one example on the conservative side.

   Having said that, if I were a judge to rule in court based on all sides' evidence, I'd shake my head, rub my forehead and ask "why me?"

[LogicIsForSquares]

I am uncomfortable anytime we are talking about getting the government involved to regulate what is in essence a luxury. My grandpa avoids social media like it is dick cancer. He must be missing out on this necessity.

[DieHardBrownsFan]

I never obsessed about dick cancer, just sayin............

[LogicIsForSquares]

4 minutes ago, DieHardBrownsFan said:

I never obsessed about dick cancer, just sayin............

RIP DHBF