Companies Censoring Speech

Show me a church that agrees with another church and I will find your point.

Races? Racism is epitome of identity.

Nations? Explain the confederate flag in the south.

Parties? Well, there are two choices… what are you expecting?

The civil war was about nationalism vs globalism foremost and the war is being revived today because it is indeed neverending. The south stood for state’s rights while the north wanted confluence or the collective. The idea underpinning the formation of the US was that states should stand independently together and what would impede progression to dictatorial powers in government was the very fact that states were independent and could leave the union. The war still rages today between those who believe we should suck the collective tit or stand independently with a sense of identity outside of being a cog in a machine or brick in the proverbial wall.

So what you’re advocating for is the downfall of independence and return to the condition that prompted the formation of the US in the first place. Of course, it is inevitable since the rise and fall of empires is cyclic and prosperity breeds weakness as generations lose sight of why traditions existed until the point is reached that the very thing that guaranteed success in evolution is demonized, ensuring the collapse and eventual rebirth from the ashes of utopian aspirations.

Ah, I’d forgotten about Marsh v. Alabama, excellent point. It looks like the reasoning is pretty narrow, specific to “company towns”, and it’s apparently been rejected as applied to email (and to non-company-town malls; that NYT article says the case there was decided on the free speech clause in the NJ constitution, not the one in the US Constitution).

I do think there’s some difference from the current situation. The case in Marsh was such that certain speech could be effectively precluded unless it was allowed on private property. That’s not true when GoDaddy or Google deny your domain registration, since that market is pretty competitive, and even for .com domain there are dozens of registrars (if Tucows or ICANN itself blacklisted a domain it would be different). It isn’t clear that anything short of ICANN is really sufficient to effectively preclude internet speech.

Serendipper, do you have an idea of where we might draw the line? Surely a small site could ban people, so how big would a user base have to be before it would be subject to constitutional restriction? Obviously it will be fact-specific, but wondering what your thoughts are on factors that might apply.

I have no respect or sympathy for white Europeans traitors as they’re just as much the enemy also. Interracial relationships is way of effectively breeding out the weak gene pool and the minority of preservationist white Europeans left will be the future to rebuild European society.

Traitors can destroy their genetic own inheritance with their mulatto children for all I care, the faster they destroy themselves and usher in the rebellion all the better. The cities will eventually be taken over by foreigners of all kinds after the white liberal communist globalization traitors have allowed themselves to be breeded out of existence entirely overtime, we’ll fight from the rural countryside where all the food production resides that goes into the large urban areas.

What you say makes no difference at all and means nothing. I also notice you don’t defend your support of globalization here either because deep down inside you know it is indefensible.

I see public nudity in a similar vein. Such restrictions “should be” in the hands of jurisprudence, not private insanity. Such allows for higher and lower courts, including Congress, to contemplate the degree of restriction and restraint most suitable for the nation as a whole as well as more local situations.

The internet is a different form of countryside with its own version of estates and congregations. Just as with a physical nation, the more generalized the law (socialistically dictated), the worse suited. But on the other hand, anarchy of law (arbitrary private choice) demands conflict, political and insidious competition, and upheaval.

The internet has special considerations in almost every other sense. It only makes sense, that “internet-regional” (not physical-regional) jurisdiction and jurisprudence be enforced. Such would allow for “Iregions” to elect representatives for their situations and live by their democratically chosen standards. Putting media pressure on private companies to force hidden mind control agendas is worse than just letting the Pope make the decisions.

These globalists are all about getting rid of racial, cultural, ideological, social, and political diversity. That is their end game. Their end game is global uniformity and conformity by obliterating all opposition or dissenters, this is their long game going into the future.

They want to rule the world in a singular entity style fashion and never use the word diversity sincerely.

Two classes; Chosen humans (with their androids) and animal (the Unchosen).

I don’t consider the “elite” as one pole of the developing split in (perhaps mostly western only) humanity. The elites are a side effect and not a cause. The real split is between people who want to think (engage honestly with reality) and those who do not.

I believe in near absolute free speech, but much as how a free market requires basic level regulation of laws to enforce an equal playing field of opportunities (not outcomes), opportunities you can work for based on your individual skills and effort, and to prevent fraud and theft, so too does free speech require rules against speech that fundamentally undermines the very condition and purpose of free speech itself. Examples include laws against speech inciting violence and crime, speech that is slanderous that causes harm based on lies, and speech that deliberately drowns out the speech of others in a significant way.

You can’t go to a public space (under protection of the first amendment) and use a megaphone to shout down everyone else around you, because that isn’t speech so much as the blocking of speech. Similarly online forums should restrict or ban trolling. And that is up to the managers/owners of the online fora. This is why private ownership is important. A proper society will have many competing platforms and avenues of speech, as well as a basic minimum standard of guaranteed right to speech that others cannot violate (such as shutting you up with their trolling). The purpose of free speech is to encourage and allow discourse.

The problem today is that under radical social justice paradigms you have many easily triggered people who actually interpret the opinions of others as “violence” against themselves. These people are so weak that they actually cannot stand up for their own speech and ideas in the face of the speech and ideas of others. Part of the right of free speech is the right to walk away and not talk whenever you feel like it would be purposeless to continue… modern leftists have forgotten this.

Yup Marsh was probably the first case you studied and it’s easy to forget our roots :wink: The AOL case (regarding email) was in 1996 before even I got online in earnest… and it was about spam being covered under the 1st amendment which is effectively hijacking AOL servers for capital gain and not really about free speech. Yeah I knew it was state constitution but only cited it to reflect my opinion on the matter.

All that ICANN stuff is greek to me. I just want to join political discussions without having to earn a degree in web design and shellout money for what should be public space or, alternatively, walk on eggshells about what I say for fear of being banned from the “mainstreet” controlled by privateers. I feel I have a right to any speech I want to read yet corporatocracy seems to think it has a right to decide what I can consume.

I don’t know… how big does a company have to be before it cannot refuse service to people on the basis of color, religion, etc?

It seems to me if an establishment is open to the public meaning there are no barriers to entry in the form of a key or membership card that would indicate the place is private and not open to the public, then I don’t see why constitutional protection shouldn’t follow the public inside. Where in the constitution does it indicate anything about a right to censor the public on private property if the private property is open to the public?

Enter the TOS agreement. I remember inquiring if I could compel people to sign a document swearing not to sue me if they have an accident on my property and was sternly informed that people cannot sign their rights away and that I would still be subject to suit regardless of the document. So if I cannot have a TOS agreement for people riding recreational vehicles on my property that protects me from the stupid mistakes someone else may make, then what gives the power to websites to remove rights from people? I’m getting screwed on both ends here. I can be compelled to have my rights taken, but can’t compel others?

What it effectively boils down to is cyberspace claim-holders want their right to free speech online but also want the right to censor dissenting opinion and that is asking for the right to dictate virtue by virtue of the luck in selecting a cool name like twitter and lucky enough to take advantage of the fed-money-printing inflating the stock market to grow into a tyrannical dictator of social justice.

At the end of the day, my view isn’t whether the ground is public, but whether the person standing there is considered a public or a private guest. Am I here because of an invitation or did I stumble in because the owner had an “open to the public” sign? Wherever I go as a representative of the public, I should have the protection of the constitution.

This site, for instance, shows on google search (I assume; haven’t checked, but let’s assume). That means I am someone who is addressing the public because my conversations are not hidden from them under lock n key. Because I am addressing the public, I cannot be censored. Also, I freely walked in here. There were no barriers to entry other than the signing of my rights away at the door. By all rights, I am public who is speaking to the public and should not be censored in any way (except in violations of law or soliciting and reasonable things like that). I mean, I can’t claim the 1st in order to hijack the site to peddle my own products (AOL case). I also shouldn’t be allowed to disrupt (subjective, I know). There are reasonable exceptions, but free speech should contingent on the state of the person and not of the property.

What do you think? I’m not a lawyer, but have read some cases and think, depending who the judges are and what side of the bed they woke on and how the stars align, they may agree with me.

Today, judges tow their political party line, so while your description of private vs. public justice may seem legally reasonable, don’t expect judicial decisions to be.

I’ve been struggling for some time in deciding if it’s a conspiracy and I just can’t tell. It’s like trying to decide if the sun on the back of George Washington’s armchair is rising or setting.

Some folks, I think, are just misguided. All we can do is provide education as best we can then hope for the best.

The civil war, for instance, was not about slavery.

loc.gov/teachers/newsevents … nFirst.pdf

[i]First Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln
MONDAY, MARCH 4, 1861

I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have
no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to “preserve, protect, and defend it.” [/i]

Plus:

Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1857), also known simply as the Dred Scott case, was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court on US labor law and constitutional law. It held that “a negro, whose ancestors were imported into [the U.S.], and sold as slaves”,[2][3] whether enslaved or free, could not be an American citizen and therefore had no standing to sue in federal court,[4][5] and that the federal government had no power to regulate slavery in the federal territories acquired after the creation of the United States.

So the South had Lincoln’s word plus the Courts decision and therefore had no grounds to attack based on any perceived threat to slavery. The notion is ridiculous.

But they did anyway on April 12th 1861 at Ft Sumter in an effort to kick the US Army off of southern ground. Why?

archive.org/stream/TheMoneyMast … s_djvu.txt (keyword search ‘tariffs’ to find it)

[i]So what was the Civil War all about? There were many factors at play. Northern industrialists had used protective tariffs to
prevent their southern states from buying cheaper European goods. Europe retaliated by stopping cotton imports from the
South. The Southern states were in a financial bind. They were forced to pay more for most of the necessities of life while
their income from cotton exports plummeted. The South grew increasingly angry.

But there were other factors at work. The Money Changers were still stung by America’s withdrawal from their control 25
years earlier. Since then, America’s wildcat economy, despite the presence of fractional reserve banking with its attendant
booms and busts, had made the nation rich - a bad example for the rest the world.

The central bankers now saw an opportunity to use the North/South divisions to split the rich new nation - to divide and
conquer by war. Was this just some sort of wild conspiracy theory? Well, let’s look at what a well placed observer of the scene
had to say at time.

This was Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of Germany, the man who united the German states in 1871. A few years later, in
1876, he is quoted as saying:

“It is not to be doubted, I know of absolute certainty,” Bismarck declared, "that the division of the United States into two
federations of equal power was decided long before the Civil War by the high financial powers of Europe. These bankers were
afraid that the United States, if they remained as one block and were to develop as one nation, would attain economic and
financial independence, which would upset the capitalist domination of Europe over the world. "

Within months after the first shots were fired at Fort Sumter, the central bankers loaned Napoleon III of France (the nephew
of the Waterloo Napoleon) 210 million francs to seize Mexico and station troops along the southern border of the U.S., taking
advantage of the Civil War to violate the Monroe Doctrine and return Mexico to colonial rule.

No matter what the outcome of the Civil War, it was hoped that a war-weakened America, heavily indebted to the Money
Changers, would open up Central and South America once again to European colonization and domination - the very thing
America’s Monroe Doctrine had forbade in 1823. [/i]

What the statues being torn down really represent is not slavery, but independence, individuality, identity. The whole thing has been perverted by a veil of slavery to provoke people into giving up their liberties. Is it conspiracy? Could be or it could be a combination of that and ignorance because, for a long time, I thought the war was about slavery too. That’s what they teach in school.

Private vs public justice is an irreducible categorical divide. The best that can be achieved is a continuous negotiation between the two, that evolves positively over time. Absolute private or absolute public are both unacceptable tyrannies.

That’s true.

So, would a liberal judge side with private business or public interest? That’s a tough call because on one hand they may want the power to censor hate speech, but on the other they generally hate unregulated private business.

Conservatives would rule for private business because because.

The Fairness Doctrine is a good example: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine

The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was — in the Commission’s view — honest, equitable, and balanced. The FCC, which was believed to have been under pressure from then President Ronald Reagan, eliminated the Doctrine in 1987.

Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. FCC en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Lion_ … Co._v._FCC

[i]Red Lion Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Commission, 395 U.S. 367 (1969), while strongly suggesting that broadcast radio stations (and by logical extension, television stations) are First Amendment speakers whose editorial speech is protected, upheld the equal time provisions of the Fairness Doctrine ruling that it was "the right of the public to receive suitable access to social, political, esthetic, moral, and other ideas and experiences which is crucial here."

The FCC by administrative rulemaking had required that discussion of public issues be presented on broadcast stations, and that each side of those issues must be given fair coverage. 395 U.S. 367, 369. As a result, the FCC added an “equal time rule” and a “response to personal attack” rule. Red Lion Broadcasting Co. challenged these rules as unconstitutionally infringing on the speech of the station’s editorial judgment. Justice Byron White, writing for the majority explained, the FCC has included among the conditions of the Red Lion license itself the requirement that operation of the station be carried out in the public interest.

He stated that "without government control, the medium would be of little use because of the cacophony of competing voices, none of which could be clearly and predictably heard."

Justice White also explains that it is the rights of the viewers and listeners that is the most important, not the rights of the broadcasters.The Court did not see how the Fairness Doctrine went against the First Amendments goal of creating an informed public.[/i]

Reagan apparently didn’t care for that. Wasn’t good for business.

Serendipper I would say conspiracy because there are groups in the west trying to merge all western nations under one authority. They eventually want to set up this stage for all other nations across the planet as well.

Are they doing it for some nefarious purpose or because they believe that is what is best for humanity? In other words, do they know what they are doing is wrong and are doing it anyway for their own selfish gain or do they believe what they are doing is right?

For instance the climate change agenda could be known to be crap but is driven anyway, in spite of the negatives, for the purpose of developing alternate technologies, ultimately for the good of humanity, that otherwise would not be economically viable. Solar panels for example, without the gov, no one would invest in their development because they cannot compete with fossil fuels economically. Coal has found its lower bound in electricity price because we’re finding it and burning it as efficiently as we can, but solar has no lower bound and could conceivably be a next-to-free source of energy one day, so the good of humanity seems the ultimate goal if you consider what free energy + robots can do… so the question is are they smart enough to see that or is it an unintended consequence of ignorance? Probably the latter but sometimes I wonder because the case against the climate change narrative is pretty strong.

It just goes to show how things can seem like conspiracy, but could be just an illusion. Objectively, I can’t tell if “they” are colluding or independently coming to the same conclusion. Peter Schiff is a rich jewish ‘banker’ and argues vehemently for the free market. Some fit the narrative and some don’t.

Ron Paul argues for a gold standard. Why does he do that? People argue over the national debt. Why? If we paid down the debt, we wouldn’t have a dollar to spend because debt is money. Both notions are silly and seem to be metaphorical red herrings thrown to the public so they have something to sink their teeth into and stay out of the way. Conspiracy or ignorance?

Money is debt youtube.com/watch?v=J7sBehblZk8
National debt (5 part series) youtube.com/watch?v=t6qHXtn0xX8

After taking the red pill I wonder “Why isn’t this taught in school? How can so many people be so wrong? Is it a conspiracy?”

Bill Still in the Money Masters video claims both the gold standard and the federal reserve system gives control to the “masters” while the proper way is to have the treasury simply issue debt-free money like Lincoln’s Greenbacks or Franklin’s Colonial Scrip, and so as long as we argue for a gold standard or for the fed system (pitting one side against the other), we totally miss the correct system that would remove their power. Conspiracy? So it would seem.

Money Masters youtube.com/watch?v=miD_mtAEdRs Read the comments. Not a single thumbs down.

People get the government they deserve and when they don’t have the attention span to find the truth, they get treated like the mindless cattle they aspired to be. Education is the only way out.

Conspiracies involve a great deal of complexity and many different kinds of individuals, some probably follow orders convincing themselves they’re doing what’s best while others at the top probably do it for purely malicious reasons. Either way the road to hell is paved with good intentions as the old saying goes. Conspiracy thrives in an environment of ignorance for without that it wouldn’t exist.

Totally agree.

“Kindly let me help you or you’ll drown”, said the monkey putting the fish safely up a tree.

Outright tyranny is too obvious so instead you kill and destroy people under the pretense of kindness or reason.

Unfortunately, I think the technical details matter to the questions here. Some of the conflict on this question comes from the different ways to describe what’s happening. The common metaphor for the internet of “cyberspace” makes it feel like websites are open rooms that people walk into and out of. Under that description, it does seem quite similar to a mall or a company-town sidewalk. This seems to be the description you rely on later in your post.

But on the back end, there’s another description, and that’s the one site owners are likely to use: the site is a file on a computer (the server), and “visiting” a website really means requesting the file, which the computer agrees to send back, and the user’s machine then turns into the websites we’re familiar with. “Posting” something on a website means sending a piece of text to the server and asking the server to repeat that text every time someone requests the site. Under this description, requiring a site to protect free speech means forcing the site’s owner to say things they don’t want to say. Under this description, the balance of free speech seems to weigh more towards the site owner, who is saying, “Say what you want, just don’t make me say it”.

Should the law favor the way the non-technical user sees the interaction, or the way the site owner sees the interaction, or should it attempt to say which description is “real”? (And I’m sure there are other descriptions, though perhaps more obviously irrelevant; files and requests are really metaphors themselves for structures and interactions composed of small electrical charges)

That’s a good question. My intuition is that speech is different, but I find it hard to articulate why. One possibility is that speech by its nature has more content than skin color or religion, i.e. it affects a business more to have someone in their store saying “black power, white genocide” than it does to have someone in their store who is black. That seems right to me, and it might be enough that in the balance of interests, we could consistently permit restrictions on a business from discrimination in the latter case and not in the former (though I am ambivalent on whether restriction in either case is wise; while I abhor discrimination, it is naive to think that bigotry can be regulated away).

I say it’s almost always an illusion. Most conspiracy theorizing is like the teleological argument in theology, and is wrong for the same reasons. Humans look for purpose in things because we’re social animals evolved to read minds and be wary of the secret intentions of those around us. When we see things happening at a societal scale, we apply the naive theory of mind that served us in tribes of a few hundred, and conclude that there must be some group of people who understand and manipulate all of society to their own ends. But much of what happens is emergent from a bunch of uncoordinated decisions. Stock market fluctuations, voting patterns, exchange rates, political movements, etc. etc. are all the result of the collective decisions of many individuals, none of which interact with enough other individuals to collude sufficiently to bring about their desired outcome. Certainly some people have more influence than others, but influence over a chaotic system is very different from control of that system. The way that a chaotic system responds to stimuli is inherently unpredictable.

Well, it’s more than just being able to stumble-in and I think the free speech case is stronger for websites than for malls because malls do not broadcast the speech all of the world on search engines. What goes on inside of a mall generally stays inside the local community (outside of news coverage). So if malls can be considered mainstreet, how much more are websites?

Forums sometimes have sections reserved for upgraded members where conversations are hidden or they have sections open to the general community that also do not appear on search engines, so it seems there is an easy way for site-owners to “Say what you want, just don’t make me say it” by simply not being public with the speech. But that’s the thing they don’t want to do and it’s transparent to me that they want their cake as well as eating it. They want to censor public speech on the grounds of the utilization of private equipment and thereby have some control over public opinion. That, I think, is what the founding fathers sought to avoid.

Well, the government is “by the people and for the people” so the best interest of the people seems to be the best interpretation of law. Therefore, are the people better served by having speech censored or by neutering those wishing to censor?

Someone in a store saying “black power, white genocide” can be interpreted as being disruptive to business depending how they’re saying it. It’s different if one had a t-shirt with the black power words or politely handing out pamphlets, but to be accosting customers or yelling or even standing on a soapbox speaking is interfering with the right of the store owner to conduct business. What constitutes disruption is subjective and seems hardly a solution because one could just about make any case for disruption, so it would have to be stated clearly what disruption means. It’s not the content of the speech, but the actions taken by the speaker that constitute disruption.

Someone could claim a black person being in a store constitutes disruption because customers are uneasy in the situation, but the black person is not doing anything in action to cause disruption. Effectively, the owner wants to censor the black person’s blackness from the store.

In my mind, censorship is akin to murder and there isn’t much distinction between either method of silencing folks. We could censor black people by throwing them in rivers or censor white people by banishing them from the community. Either way, it’s the same effect. If I get banned from here, how will anyone know I wasn’t taken out and shot? The only difference is that I know better, but as far as the community is concerned, I may as well be dead.

Yes, just yesterday I listened to Peter Schiff talking about a guy who went into a starbucks demanding audio equipment so he could hear the music. Because they didn’t have such equipment, he filed a suit for $10k. Peter says the guy has had several of those suits in a short time and calls them “driveby lawsuits”. Then he went on to talk about handicap accessible swimming pools where instead of providing the access to the handicap, businesses just close the pool. Some of the laws are getting ridiculous and it’s an artifact of a prosperous society when we start to care more and more about those around us. Reminds me of this bit from the Sopranos:

[i]Tony: This broad she’s from Russia, dirt poor. She had some kind of osocarma disease in her leg when she was nine. She says that nowhere else in the world do people expect to be happy except for here in this country, and still we’re not. And we got everything. And when we’re not, what do we do? We go to shrinks. For what, $6 or $7 a minute?

Dr. Melfi: There’s some truth to what she says. But should that be a source of shame? That when the desperate struggle for food and shelter is finally behind us we can turn our attention to other sources of pain and truth? [/i]

When societies prosper, they wonder why there aren’t more women in power and more minorities and more catering to the disabled and so on. They lose sight of the traditions which built the society and therefore undermine the very thing that caused the prosperity. I know because I’ve been there and then it dawned on me one day that “Hey, maybe there’s some value to these goofy traditions. Let me think it over for a while.” Then it all came together and made sense why empires rise and fall.

Natural selection can’t be teleological or it wouldn’t be natural selection, but natural selection itself could be a means to an end just like we use genetic algorithms to find solutions to problems. Life could be the universe’s way or reorganizing itself and natural selection is simply finding the best way to do that.

Yes, we have to be aware of our tendencies. That’s why I go back and forth because it sure seems like conspiracy, but I also know I have a propensity to see it that way.

Chaotic systems are only considered unpredictable because we don’t have instruments sensitive enough to gather the data accurately enough. Chaotic systems are not random, but are extremely sensitive to initial conditions. So, they aren’t inherently unpredictable, but essentially unpredictable. Just a minor distinction as a matter of trivia. :slight_smile:

Is this a conspiracy?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ9ce-yMEfc[/youtube]

Is she stupid or was she hired because she will tow the line? The latter seems like conspiracy to control public opinion.

Thanks for the good conversation!