Sen J Hawley introduces’Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act
Posted by Dobrien 5 years, 6 months ago to Legislation
With Section 230, tech companies get a sweetheart deal that no other industry enjoys: complete exemption from traditional publisher liability in exchange for providing a forum free of political censorship,” said Senator Hawley. “Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, big tech has failed to hold up its end of the bargain.
“There’s a growing list of evidence that shows big tech companies making editorial decisions to censor viewpoints they disagree with. Even worse, the entire process is shrouded in secrecy because these companies refuse to make their protocols public. This legislation simply states that if the tech giants want to keep their government-granted immunity, they must bring transparency and accountability to their editorial processes and prove that they don’t discriminate.”
“There’s a growing list of evidence that shows big tech companies making editorial decisions to censor viewpoints they disagree with. Even worse, the entire process is shrouded in secrecy because these companies refuse to make their protocols public. This legislation simply states that if the tech giants want to keep their government-granted immunity, they must bring transparency and accountability to their editorial processes and prove that they don’t discriminate.”
In any case, it doesn't matter.
You don't get to decide what these businesses are because you disagree with them politically and want to punish them for this using the state.
Rights do not have limitations like that.
Rights are not subject to opinions on responsibility not to misuse.
P owns a forum. Q wants to put up ideas. P says, not on my forum.
If Q brings in government then this is an attack on the rights of P.
Q can go to another forum or start his own.
Now, if the regressives, leftists, conservatives etc get a regulator to protect Q by forcing P to allow Q's ideas, subject to no-hate-speech and blah-blah, you may be satisfied.
You will have opened a barrel of snakes.
Here it is:
"A right does not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one's own effort" Ayn Rand
Translation into this context-
Q has a right to free speech. (Even when wrong and irresponsible).
Q has no right to force P to put those ideas on P's website. (P - the same)
Too many contributors here allow their distaste of big tech to advocate for more regulations. This would only strengthen the existing players and make it even harder for newcomers.
Existing bigtechs would welcome more restrictions, they can cope, actually it will make life easier for them. Anyone who thinks that regulators would control the existing corporates and be fair, is naive.
The Internet is one of the few positive outcomes from the Stadlers of the world. That is one of the most challenging issues regarding the platform vs. publisher question. Yes, Google, Twitter, and Facebook are platforms, but their dependence on the Internet platform that resulted from DOD research makes it hard for the Googles of the world to create barriers to entry without further government intervention on their behalf, some of which they have already bought.
An assault led by conservatives, as it has been every since Orren Hatch took Microsoft away from Bill Gates in order to start shaking down the tech sector.
Tech companies are just trying to get in front of it.
None of this situation is the fault of the tech companies.
It is almost entirely the fault of the conservative movement.
What exactly do you think Tech companies are protected from?
What is important is that platform owners can provide or not according to their whims. They have no obligation to be fair, balanced, or responsible.
Limits? Calling someone a 'pig' is permissible tho' deplorable, stating the name of an agent of your government who works in a dangerous nation is not as that info is property of the government.
What is also permissible is for other websites, of the type of-
Consumer reports, Product Review, Choice, Which, etc to allow comments that 'DoNoEvil' is hypocritical, biased, unfair, erratic and de-registers users without process.
Not to mention that by doing what they are doing has an adverse effect upon our knowledge of the issues, the content of character of the candidates and ultimately...our elections.
High time for it to happen. My prediction it never will. These companies contribute huge sums to Congress and it'll probably never be approved.
Laws that protect citizens never are.
Big Tech made their mistake by being one-sided in their equivalent of censorship. Google, for instance, has been a globalist company since its founding. That TGIF video, from the Friday after the Election of 2016, said it all: the election of President Trump was "a kick in the gut."
WTH good is election campaign money when, as soon as you try to spend that money on advertising, your very donor restricts you and your followers in your and their messaging?
They are the targets! Senator Hawley knows this. And it's up to at least half of us to tell our own Representatives and Senators. And the President.
Who, I believe, already knows. Hence his "tool" for reporting Big Tech bias.
That "bias tool" is now closed. The President seems to feel that he has Big Tech dead-to-rights from the responses he got.
Will the real!
Ellsworth Monckton Toohey!
Please!
Stand up!
The only adversary worthy of the name in Atlas Shrugged was Floyd Ferris. And the adversary definitely worthy of the name in The Fountainhead was Ellsworth Monckton Toohey. Either man would be right at home in the higher echelons of Google, Facebook, Twitter, or Spotify.
I repeat: I had believed that no person remains in Galt's Gulch by faking reality in any manner whatever. And that includes ignoring it.
Definitely.
Both characters were defined to the most basic details by AR.
Knowing it makes you shudder as you look at Dem "leadership".
Though the real leaders of the Democratic Party today are three freshwomen! AOC, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar. The Triumfeminae. For if they were guys, I'd call them Trium-virs.
At least not in the visible sense. The party would never admit that b/c it would be suicidal.
Deep down, they take cues from these three, and justify their radicalism by smokescreening like Pelosi tried with Omar (thinking that people were fool enough to buy her "Omar does not understand English" crap).
I think the Dem leadership still has its existential instinct to defeat these three if it comes to their own positions.
Imagine how she would be looked at then?
She’d be like a little child in a candy factory full of candy she’s never seen before. She’d be herself.
:)
Also, this was about AOC.
That's the worst aspect of it.
Just as they were voting for Hussein...
It's those attacking the tech industry that share the behaviors of the Toohey's and Ferris'.
This is a myth concocted up by conservatives to justify their leftist assault on free speech and property rights.
This is a perfect description of today's conservatives, as they turn to government in order to attack the rights of tech companies, because they've lost the battle of ideas.
Your liberals want sanctuary cities. Go to hell.
Conservatives want free speech/ you and your liberals want PC speech. Go to hell.
Conservatives are religious and nationalist collectivists.
They are basically the left of the early 20th century.
Conservatives want PC speech just like their secular counterparts in the progressive movement.
You guys are two sides of the same coin.
You have no business on an Objectivist blog.
It’s been said again and again...
Companies don’t censor people, don’t censor ideas, don’t censor viewpoints!
So everyone who says they can or do is wrong!
/s
The results is frequently indistinguishable from censorship but it is not truly such.
It seems to be the exercise of bias at executive level contrary to high flown statements- "do no evil", "stop hate speech", and meaningless supposed contracts with users.
We deal here with several companies abusing some kind of privilege to halt the spread of messages friendly to liberty. What, if not this measure, would you suggest?
You will never be able to sue tech companies for things they are not liable for.
This is the same for every business.
They are not halting the spread of messages friendly to liberty. They have removed some conservative material containing outrageous accusations and conspiracy theories which have nothing to do with advocacy of principles of political liberty. Ironically it is all openly discussed on the internet using the same platforms falsely accused of "censorship".
Much of the observable "bias" in enforcing "guidelines" is a direct result of the current state of the dominant culture and education by the intellectuals. That is not solved by screaming for government controls and open-ended harassment by lawyers -- on top of the same populist conservative collectivists echoing century-old progressive "monopoly" demagoguery against "corporations".
The populist conservative demagogues doing that have the least understanding of the source of the problem and how their own collectivist statism is making the problem much worse.
Elsewhe re on this same page:https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
1. It goes further than Alex Jones. It goes to absolutely everything that opposes an agenda of one-world government.
2. Alex Jones just might be correct in some of the suspicions he entertains.
And what do you call that "exemption" they have, except a special privilege.
Now I ask you again: how do you solve the problem? How do you make sure that an alternative platform can displace Facebook and Google if they're going to continue with their bias, and the vagueries of their guidelines?
And before you ask for evidence, here is a source:
https://www.conservativenewsandviews....
This isn't about a "one-world government" conspiracy and Alex Jones' hysterically sensationalist "suspicions". Please try to discuss the issue in rational terms, related at least in some way to principles and to Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged, not their opposite. Rotely 'downvoting' posts that you do not read or understand is non-responsive and not what this forum is for.
Among the most prominent financiers in the world today, if not the most prominent financier in the world today, is a dead ringer for Ellsworth Monckton Toohey. I refer here to George Soros.
Did he not run a conspiracy?
Just because Atlas Shrugged projected no worthy adversaries for John Galt, on the order of Howard Roark's adversaries, does not mean that no such adversaries exist in real life.
The United Nations is the vehicle for one-world government. Remember who put that together? Alger Hiss. And look again at the United Nations Charter, and its "Universal Declaration of Human Rights."
Now have a look at what Alex Jones is charging. He charges that certain persons are carrying out false-flag pseudo-operations at "gun-free zones" with a view to convincing the people to turning in their privately owned firearms and not tolerating any who retain them.
And for sounding the alarm, he gets de-platformed.
And he is only the first.
In the immortal words of then-Candidate Ronald W. Reagan (1980):
"I am paying for this microphone!"
This interview should be listened to by every American.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmvYYaFZON8
You guys seem more like the religious left (AKA conservatives) than Objectivists.
Every teacher and AMERICAN should hear this interview by a great patriot RIP Norman Dodd.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmvYY...
It is a matter of semantics what it is called, the result is the same.
We see daily that flake companies stop advertising on FOX b/c they are incensed at what Tucker said.
What is it if not censorship? They are using monetary means to clam him up.
In theory, yes.
However, given the extremely biased position of the MSM, and the largest social networks such as FB, Google, etc., plus the brainwashing on campuses, plus the ever radicalized PC culture pervading everything in daily life, that statement lost validity.
Even traditionally conservative outlets such as FOX and WSJ are so much to the left that was unimaginable two decades ago.
Besides, the government relies on laws that enable it to censor. Laws that are very closely resemble the agenda of the left.
Government power to censor usually does mean you can't say something anywhere, but not always. A censor may prevent you from using some kind of outlets, but not other, less public ones. Even military censorship of letters to home can't stop all verbal communication.
But that is mostly a matter of inefficiency and the impossibility of complete totalitarianism without killing everyone. The premise of the power of censorship implies the trend towards totalitarianism. No private business can do that with its own property rights. The moral premise of private property is the opposite of statism and censorship, and so are the results.
Private companies cannot censor.
Those who don't get this are politically illiterate leftists.
Imagine if amazon selectively just trashed certain orders that you placed as a result of some some PC algorithm. So u wait for the product to arrive and it never does.
I'm not familiar with what you being a "producer" here signifies, but this is advertised as an Objectivist forum, which means the stuff ewv is posting should not even be controversial.
It's the most basic stuff.
No they don't because they are not publishers.
Tech companies cannot be sued for things they are not liable for.
Those leading this Marxist assault on the rights of tech companies are themselves the censorious leftists.
Some of the guidelines, such as denying lurid pornography, are uncontroversial because most users don't want to have to see that. The problems arise because they are trying to prevent other kinds of material deemed personally "offensive", which in turn depends on ideological biases they don't know they have because of the state of the culture and their education. Inside Google and the others is a cultural zoo that will not be reformed by punitive government action.
https://thefederalist.com/2018/05/03/...
https://thefederalist.com/2018/01/10/...
When they decided to eliminate what they call "hate speech" they necessarily got into a briar patch of impossible, subjective standards. Once such subjectivism is in place it doesn't take much for particular employees to exacerbate the problem with all kinds of personal agendas.
The "fake news" controversy erupted when organized, deliberately false material began to be systematically inserted for political propaganda in the name of news. This came to a head with the Russian disinformation campaign. Once they tried to block that, their own political biases began to obstruct much more.
They don't know what their own biases are, but they do know they have a genuine problem under the pressure to stop the exploitation of their platforms for all kinds of purposes ranging from deliberately false political propaganda posing as news, to terrorists advocating crime, to (ironically) violations of personal privacy.
The big danger from these companies now is that they are trying to protect themselves from how they deal with these problems by calling for government "guidelines" telling them what to do so as to not be responsible for it. That is mixed in with their own conformist, politically correct ideology in the name of anti "hate speech" and similar slogans.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...
https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rig...
This has resulted in Facebook, Google, and some of the others now actively lobbying for government censorship -- not (yet) full totalitarianism, but they want government power like current European-Canadian censorship banning certain thoughts or motives, applied as "guidelines" to the internet in the name of being anti "extremist".
Populist conservatives demanding their own government action does not help. They want to punish companies in a maze of contradictions that are the opposite of individualism and freedom and will only lead to more government controls and pressure group warfare that individualism will not win.
In particular, the demands like Hawley's for law suit harassment making companies legally liable for what others publish on the their platforms will only lead to less freedom on the internet as property owners cut back further on what they allow in order to protect themselves. It will do nothing to resolve the underlying, cultural problems of increasing collectivism and statism that are the cause of all of it. http://tracinskiletter.com/2018/12/22...
Great post ewv.
CAN YOU SAY PROJECTION. It is a trait of the narcissistic liberals.
"Voting" is intended to be part of the forum; rote emotional 'downvoting' of people as a means of personalized attack is not. This is supposed to be a forum for Ayn Rand's philosophy of reason and individualism, with rational discussion, not emotional populist crusades contradicting it.
There are no "narcissistic liberals" here. That is personal name-calling in a strawman false alternative.
But it's posts from ewv and myself, along with any others explaining basic things from an actual Objectivist point of view, that even manage to go negative.
If I decide not to let you put a sign in my yard, it doesn't mean I'm now in the publishing business.
This is a non-starter.
It's really that simple.
It says a lot about the appalling state of the conservative movement that they don't get this and through sheer ignorance are the ones behaving like the censorious leftists they claim to be opposing.