greg palast has often argued the opposite position, and does so here.
but, the united states has a very long history of electoral fraud, and stuffing ballots is how they do it. jfk, for example, stole the election in 1960 - as bush did in 2000.
trump may only be accidentally half-right, as is so often the case. but, it's the kind of thing that people should actually be taking very seriously, if they're concerned about electoral integrity.
if you want your vote to count you should walk it in.
and, if you don't want the political class rigging elections, you shouldn't hand them the opportunity to - an opportunity they will take, if you give it to them, because they always have.
https://www.gregpalast.com/rush-to-vote-by-mail-could-cost-dems-the-election/
Friday, May 29, 2020
the court ruling is essentially that hypochondria is not a medical condition.
....which is technically actually wrong...:
...even if i kind of like the tone used by the judge.
what i'd like to see around mail-in voting is a better paper trail. i'm not really concerned about voter fraud in the sense of voters voting twice or ineligible voters casting ballots; what i'm concerned about is ballot-stuffing by elected (or not yet-elected) officials, and those concerns are well-grounded, if more so in california than in texas.
twitter is sending a very clear message - it doesn't want to be a public square, and it doesn't care about speech rights.
it wants to be a private club for middle class liberals, and is happy enough to check you at the door if you speak out.
on some level that's fine. but we need a public square, too - even if the elite prefer to avoid it.
it wants to be a private club for middle class liberals, and is happy enough to check you at the door if you speak out.
on some level that's fine. but we need a public square, too - even if the elite prefer to avoid it.
i personally have very little interest in what trump does or does not tweet, and care little about slapping warnings on his posts. i'm a very idealistic free speech advocate, but i ultimately just don't fucking care.
my actual interest is in ensuring that i maintain ownership over my own content - that these companies don't steal my labour from me.
and, independent artists need to be cognizant of what's unfolding and the threat it poses to them, as they give in to their ritualistic two minutes of hate, in a deeply pyrrhic shot to their own face.
my actual interest is in ensuring that i maintain ownership over my own content - that these companies don't steal my labour from me.
and, independent artists need to be cognizant of what's unfolding and the threat it poses to them, as they give in to their ritualistic two minutes of hate, in a deeply pyrrhic shot to their own face.
see, this is why i don't use twitter.
it's not a helpful response.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/may/29/twitter-hides-donald-trump-tweet-glorifying-violence
it's not a helpful response.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/may/29/twitter-hides-donald-trump-tweet-glorifying-violence
we're not going to do the next part in sharpie font. i can't edit html headers on a per-post basis, and the process of converting and cutting is rather time consuming.
so, the order is over here:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/
i'm going directly to the source because i don't trust the capitalist press to report on the capitalist president carrying out what looks like a capitalist power grab. i know they like to make it look like they're in conflict, but the world runs on class divisions, not political partisanism. the republicrats and silicon valley are on the same side, here. so, what are they doing, then?
the news reports were confusing, to say the least. but, reading the order directly isn't helping much. this appears to be a true exercise in trumpian logic, and it's probably going to take a logician to understand the multivalued logic system - and i've had to sit down and write it out to get it, and just concluded that it's incoherent.
so, what does the law say, first?
what it seems to say - and i'm a canadian that has never looked into this before, but does have legal training - is (1) that only the direct author of any content uploaded through any service should be considered to be it's owner and publisher and (2) that no "provider" of an "interactive computer service" should be held liable for any good faith attempt at restricting access to legitimately lewd material. that's clear enough, and i think we take it for granted as obvious.
and, what is trump trying to do?
well, he's arguing that if you edit the post then you should be liable for it. but, what that really means is that he's trying to scratch out the first part, without which no liability could be legally erected. there's no law against aiding and abetting offensive speech; if google or facebook (i don't use twitter...) is to become liable for the content of it's users, that necessarily implies it owns their content, otherwise there would be no basis for liability. that's what the analogy to a publishing house implies, in the end - that these companies will take ownership of the content via copyright. and, i'll get to that in the end.
but, of course, it's ridiculous and incoherent for the president to try and push something like that down. rather, he seems to be trying to threaten twitter into laying off on the censorship. this is where the trumpian logic comes in - he seems to legitimately think that making an absurd threat will create the outcome he wants, and the weakling tech companies will cower in fear of his greater manliness, or some stupidity such as that (or that's at least the surface delusion).
but, what's going to actually happen, of course, is that the lawyers for twitter and facebook and ... are going to look at this and scratch their heads and say "ok. what? this makes no sense.". and, they're not going to cower in fear and comply until they can at least make sense of it. and, at some point, they're going to ask the question "what if we don't comply?".
trumpian logic, which is not rooted in game theory, doesn't seem to allow for dissent or free will, which is why it doesn't ever work out in reality. it's just bully logic - you do what he says, because he says so, because he said so. there's no good reason for it besides dominance and alpha male superiority. which is laughable...
so, what happens if they just shrug it off and don't comply? which is what keeps happening over and over...
well, they may lose liability, but they'll gain ownership. well, in theory anyways. i couldn't imagine them arguing against that particularly loudly, to be entirely honest with you. i might wonder how long they've actually been lobbying for it...
see, trumpian logic is also cartmanian logic in the sense that it tends to skip a lot of steps. there is an endpoint here that seems to make some sense, at least. i've been arguing that we should have public ownership in order to constitutionally protect users (and, in context, the president should be treated like a garden variety user, not like a government entity with special powers), but the other way to bring in constitutional protection would be to have the corporations take copyright over the content. you'd have to break these entities up, so you'd have competing services, but this is the publishing house analogy taken to it's logical conclusion - the services would be liable for defamation, but they'd also have free speech.
so, if twitter ignores the threat, and trump follows through with it, what happens next?
what trump is thinking is something along the lines of "we gave you immunity from defamation, and you're still fucking with my posts. so, i'm going to take away your immunity, and expose you to lawsuits. fuckers.".
twitter is supposed to become fearful and remove the censorship.
but, what they will no doubt actually do is just delete trump's account, because it exposes them to liability.
and, this is why trump always loses - he thinks that he can bully people into submission with these threats, and they usually just laugh at him when he tries.
is any of this going to happen?
well, it's up to congress, really, isn't it?
but, i think he's at least laying down a binary choice and we are going to have to make it at some point. the status quo is not sustainable - we can't have private tyrannies policing speech like this. this has to change. but, will we adopt the model that trump is hinting at, where online companies are treated like publishing houses? or will we take public ownership of the commons?
so, the order is over here:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/
i'm going directly to the source because i don't trust the capitalist press to report on the capitalist president carrying out what looks like a capitalist power grab. i know they like to make it look like they're in conflict, but the world runs on class divisions, not political partisanism. the republicrats and silicon valley are on the same side, here. so, what are they doing, then?
the news reports were confusing, to say the least. but, reading the order directly isn't helping much. this appears to be a true exercise in trumpian logic, and it's probably going to take a logician to understand the multivalued logic system - and i've had to sit down and write it out to get it, and just concluded that it's incoherent.
so, what does the law say, first?
what it seems to say - and i'm a canadian that has never looked into this before, but does have legal training - is (1) that only the direct author of any content uploaded through any service should be considered to be it's owner and publisher and (2) that no "provider" of an "interactive computer service" should be held liable for any good faith attempt at restricting access to legitimately lewd material. that's clear enough, and i think we take it for granted as obvious.
and, what is trump trying to do?
well, he's arguing that if you edit the post then you should be liable for it. but, what that really means is that he's trying to scratch out the first part, without which no liability could be legally erected. there's no law against aiding and abetting offensive speech; if google or facebook (i don't use twitter...) is to become liable for the content of it's users, that necessarily implies it owns their content, otherwise there would be no basis for liability. that's what the analogy to a publishing house implies, in the end - that these companies will take ownership of the content via copyright. and, i'll get to that in the end.
but, of course, it's ridiculous and incoherent for the president to try and push something like that down. rather, he seems to be trying to threaten twitter into laying off on the censorship. this is where the trumpian logic comes in - he seems to legitimately think that making an absurd threat will create the outcome he wants, and the weakling tech companies will cower in fear of his greater manliness, or some stupidity such as that (or that's at least the surface delusion).
but, what's going to actually happen, of course, is that the lawyers for twitter and facebook and ... are going to look at this and scratch their heads and say "ok. what? this makes no sense.". and, they're not going to cower in fear and comply until they can at least make sense of it. and, at some point, they're going to ask the question "what if we don't comply?".
trumpian logic, which is not rooted in game theory, doesn't seem to allow for dissent or free will, which is why it doesn't ever work out in reality. it's just bully logic - you do what he says, because he says so, because he said so. there's no good reason for it besides dominance and alpha male superiority. which is laughable...
so, what happens if they just shrug it off and don't comply? which is what keeps happening over and over...
well, they may lose liability, but they'll gain ownership. well, in theory anyways. i couldn't imagine them arguing against that particularly loudly, to be entirely honest with you. i might wonder how long they've actually been lobbying for it...
see, trumpian logic is also cartmanian logic in the sense that it tends to skip a lot of steps. there is an endpoint here that seems to make some sense, at least. i've been arguing that we should have public ownership in order to constitutionally protect users (and, in context, the president should be treated like a garden variety user, not like a government entity with special powers), but the other way to bring in constitutional protection would be to have the corporations take copyright over the content. you'd have to break these entities up, so you'd have competing services, but this is the publishing house analogy taken to it's logical conclusion - the services would be liable for defamation, but they'd also have free speech.
so, if twitter ignores the threat, and trump follows through with it, what happens next?
what trump is thinking is something along the lines of "we gave you immunity from defamation, and you're still fucking with my posts. so, i'm going to take away your immunity, and expose you to lawsuits. fuckers.".
twitter is supposed to become fearful and remove the censorship.
but, what they will no doubt actually do is just delete trump's account, because it exposes them to liability.
and, this is why trump always loses - he thinks that he can bully people into submission with these threats, and they usually just laugh at him when he tries.
is any of this going to happen?
well, it's up to congress, really, isn't it?
but, i think he's at least laying down a binary choice and we are going to have to make it at some point. the status quo is not sustainable - we can't have private tyrannies policing speech like this. this has to change. but, will we adopt the model that trump is hinting at, where online companies are treated like publishing houses? or will we take public ownership of the commons?
uch-o
and, i'm actually in full agreement with the president up to this point.
this is where he loses me.
if big brother edits my post, does that mean he now owns it? all of a sudden, this seems less like it's about free speech and more like it's actually a power grab by the tech companies.
i must interject - google did not create this content. this is my content. dammit.
ok, i agree with this, entirely.
but, how do we get from this valid concern to the conclusion that google and facebook (and bandcamp?) now own my content?
i'm going to continue this in a new post - but you see what my concern is.
the internet is not like a factory. i'm not an employee of the sites i post to, and i'm not contributing to a product that is being produced by these sites, in the end. i know that americans have a hard time understanding what "socialism" means, but social media doesn't have much to do with socialization in production.
this needs a marxist deconstruction, because it's looking a lot like a 21st century analogue to the appropriation of labour that happened in the industrial revolution, without any of the logic underlying it.
this is still my product. i still made this. and, if google is going to be given property rights (and responsibilities.) over it, that's just an example of how property is theft.
but, this is still capitalism. we had to expect this, right?
section 2 forthcoming.
(executive order here:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-preventing-online-censorship/)
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