I’ve been banned from eight internet forms not because I installed members but because I posted pornography or I talked about other forums or had viewpoints that were unpopular.
I assume you mean ‘insulted’ not ‘installed’.
Forums vary in how often they ban or actively moderate.
Pornography, I mean, come on, I think you get the problem here, even if you like it.
Some forums expect more rigorous posts than the ones you post here. Some, like this one, obviously do not.
1 Like
Why can’t there be universal rules for all forms why do they have different rules for various forms ?
There could be, but this would be an incredible restriction on freedom. No, you can’t run your forum - the one you built up yourself - the way we want you to, signed ‘the government.’
1 Like
It does puzzle me though.
Why cant the same rules apply that apply in real life?
You own a building → you can trespass people → unless you do it for the wrong reasons.
There is a lot of nuance irl, for instance you cant just tell someone that they cant enter a building because they are black. You’d get fcked in court so hard even your grandchildren would feel it.
Meanwhile on the internet, social media sites can literally do whatever the f they want to you, without rules, without recourse, without even having to explain why they are doing what they are doing.
You drop a few completely random words and the internal filters outright ghost your comments and content, never to be seen by people.
While sure, it’d be a restriction of freedom in the reverse if the government told you that you cannot ban people, shouldnt at least some of the real world nuance apply instead of all of your rights being forfeited due to corporate ToS-es?
1 Like
I agree. Facebook, for example, has behaved ridiculously and perniciously. This has been documented very well. Old MZ even admitted this in a kind of vague way if I remember right. And something like facebook is so enormous that being banned can affect many things, not just your access to one way to contact people. This happened to me and it really messed up a couple of groups I worked with for a while. And I never recovered the friends I’d gathered there, which I was planning to use professionally at some point. I don’t think I was banned. I think they thought I was someone trying to get into my facebook. But they kept me out of it. I could never get an explanation. I couldn’t get access. There was no one I could talk to. I didn’t publish opinions anywhere. I didn’t break any of those rules. It would be like the phone company, in the days when we had landlines, shutting off my phone.
Hopefully the various websites create a spectrum based on the values and tastes of those owning or moderating them. So, one can manage to find a place that fits. Here we get a lot of very strange posts, mini-guru, gibberish artists, but we are unlikely to get banned. Other places you don’t have to wade through so much fantasy about philosophy and even how rigorous a post is written is a criterion. If there was going to be some government top down rules, I’d want one of the rules to be that there have to be a range of forum attitudes and moderation for the forums people want. I don’t think that works, but I certainly don’t want the government deciding how forums should be run and have 1 set of rules for that.
You own your own house, you can literally not allow people in for any reason (you don’t have to tell them it’s because they’re black, even if it’s true)
Thats true, but your house is not public or part of commerce.
That is to say, you do have private “places” on the internet as well (as ironic as that is). For instance your cloud storage or one drive. Such things. Naturally nobody SHOULD have access to that (but ofc corporations reserve the right for that too).
So yeah, that distinction is absolutely valid, but the nuance exists for that in real life too.
There is a difference between a public bakery you are running, and your house.
You can deny access to your house to nearly anyone for any reason (exception being government agencies and such).
If you open a place however such as a restaurant or a public forum… you do take on a few more responsibilities and extra civil rights laws.
But for some reason only irl. On the internet those laws are borderline completely missing.
End users have borderline no form of right to anything when it comes to digital data.
Not privacy.
Not ownership.
Not justification for denied service…
Websites on internet have substituted the regular media, so we should expect similar restrictions when it comes to freedom of speech.
If a guest in a TV talk show says something that can trigger lawsuit, the latter is extended to the interviewer and the producers. There is legal liability for the hosts on whatever the guests say.
Similar case is for the website. The OP mentioned pornography. A post like that can cause age verification restrictions to the forum. It is the website owners’ responsibility to follow the rules, so any misbehavior of the guests put their business at stake.
Now, when it comes to big sites like Facebook, we need to account for other factors as well:
- Posts that can damage the reputation of the website. People that slander you are not welcome at your house. Why should it be different for the websites?
- Posts that can be harmful for the websites’ credibility/income, or pose a threat on losing followers/audience are logically excluded: 1) Several sites have ads. If you write a post that is harmful to those that pay for the ads, the website has a motive to delete it. 2) If you write a post that a lot of readers hate and ask to be removed, many website hosts focus on the “big picture”: freedom of speech comes secondary compared to loss of viewership/revenue.
This is what it shouldnt come down to.
That some people get to freely take away your rights, just because its obvious thats where we are headed.
At least it shouldnt be this blatant.
But sure. Of course it will be, and you and everyone in the western hemisphere is going to lose way more than just free speech over the coming years and decades if this direction persists and the populace does not remove globalists and letoid liberal insane trash from the decision making process.
A thought that is less and less probable with each passing day cause new generations gain access to voting and there is also an active replacement of the populace going on.
It is what it is.
I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic that things like free speech and human rights will become better or worse, respectively. I do not think that there was any moment in history that the populace was not misguided and ruled by some sort of oligarchy.
Today the banks and entrepreneurs are the most powerful, in the past they were different types: industrialists, landowners, merchants, aristocrats, etc. In all the cases, the people in power had their spokespersons to influence the people’s reactions.
Even if the modern globalists and the ultra-capitalism defenders are removed, other forms of mass influencers will arise. This is the name of the game.
Correct. But the amount of rights and the way you have been treated were WILDLY different throughout history.
Sure, even when we were living in caves there was an alpha and the clique of strongest the others had to conform under. Thats nothing new, but refer to the above.
The notion that there was, is and always will be a social hierarchy has very little to do with the categorical suppression of speech, rights and overall trying to deconstruct democracy and human way of life that has not been experienced in the west in potentially hundreds of years depending on the country and region.
1 Like
100 years ago we had the fascist governments all over Europe. Dictatorships existed until the 70s (Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal, Papadopoulos in Greece). The May 68 in France was a movement against the oppression at that time. The Civil Rights Movement in the US in the 1950s was fighting against the racism. Thus, the West has experienced worse in quite recent years.
For the East, you know better how the communist parties suppressed free speech and human rights.
Democracy is and always was fragile.
Never questioned that.
One just would think that once we achieved democracy, people would be more inclined to defend it.
Originally, i really believed that the kind of dictatorship i.e. the UK is facing right now would be met with riots halfway.
Then i had to realize that the great majority of people are not only sheep but outright mentally retarded and would vote for, and stand by the idea of their own extermination.
That specific kind of feeling when you keep on assuming that most human beings are sane, rational, thinking individuals, until an event comes around where true colors are shown and you suddenly realize that you lived in a fucking zoo all along.
1 Like
The worst enemy of democracy is itself.
One of the best philosophers in Greek antiquity was Plato. He lived in Athens and wrote texts against the democracy. Seeing how irrational many false decisions his compatriots made out of pure emotional judgement, he proposed the philosopher-king instead.
The curse of democracy is that regular people prefer emotional rather than rational decisions. An excellent orator with a passionate dream of society reformation can persuade the crowds to follow him/her. Even if the reformation is fake (no substantial change) or can lead to worse outcomes, selling it properly is all it takes.
The globalists and mass influencers regularly propose new plans, new strategies, etc. Trump, for instance, was elected by promising MAGA. In what way it was never clear, but the catch-phrase is top-selling product.
Well said.
1 Like
Indeed indeed… this is specifically the kind of example im thinking of whenever i say that humanity has developed only technologically, as tool users, but never socially, emotionally or mentally.
We are literally looking at thousands of year old problems which are still so actual, on point and valid as if they had been formulated 5 minutes ago, based on the present day status of society.
Heck… not only are they valid, most of them go completely unsaid, disregarded and above the heads of 9 billion people…
1 Like
I would say instead that they make value decisions. The process of getting them to make the decision must seem rational and appeal to their values and trigger their emotions.
Overlapping this is deciding to go with my team, which they think shares their values. What is my team’s position on the issue? But you never have to ask. That’s either obvious given the decision or pundits on your team have been screaming it for a while already.
I would like to agree with that. However, I have in mind certain instances in my country, where the criteria of voting had zero rational and only emotional value. Even the voters were admitting that.
I’m sure there was a brave few who would say it was just emotional, but I meet very few willing to say their position or choice of candidate or philosophical position is purely emotional. Everyone wants to say they are making the rational choice. I mean, I’ve know the ‘fuck you’ vote. Where the person voting is aiming their disdain at the entire system, but those people are rare. Like someone who says I just like Trump, Harris is the rational choice, but I am going with my emotions. I can’t see it. (and you can switch around the candidates, I can’t see anyone asserting that nor that it’s true. They really believe X will lead to Z and Z is bad or good.)
Harris was the emotional vote, Trump the rational one.
The thing about emotions is, they don’t tell you you are thinking emotionally.
It’s not about that people won’t admit it. It’s about that they don’t even see it.
Not to mention that they don’t only not see it, the emotion actively pushes back against the idea.
What makes people animals is not being emotional, it’s not being aware that their emotions influence their thoughts.