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Sure is a good thing Twitter and Facebook don’t impact or influence modern society, boy would that be a scary thought!

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Or for a view that (I think?) is closer to what fox.ferro is saying:

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Believe me, I am all aboard the wipe them from existence train.

But the stance that @fox.ferro has that someone like Alex Jones or Richard Spencer should not face social consequences for their words and actions from society is, well, wrong. Sorry, can’t buy your groceries or bank at the store of your choice? Tough shit. They deserve to be pushed out of civil society completely. Their choices and actions led to that outcome. Pretending that one should not face consequences for the words they use is ridiculous. It is an understanding of free speech that is incorrect.

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That it has been “weaponized” to the extreme is what’s different now.

I’ll have to assume this guy got hit on the head recently and just forgot nearly all of human history.

I mean sure there were all those religious wars, the gulags, McCarthyism, a billion other examples, but now that someone is criticizing ME on twitter things have gotten out of control.

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WaPo published a pretty great response to all this.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/18/complicated-obvious-factors-behind-changing-norms-speech/

The premise:

Let’s start, though, by acknowledging that the essay does raise an interesting issue, though probably not the one its authors intended. It is the case that speech has different boundaries than it used to, though, of course, it’s certainly not the case that it has boundaries now where none used to exist. Now, as in 1969 when the letter quoted earlier was published, we’re at a point where the boundaries are being moved. And that’s spurring hand-wringing.

So what’s changing?

His answer is three big bullet points, easy elaborate on extensively:

  • We’re adjusting to a world of pseudo-privacy

  • Cultural standards themselves are changing

  • There’s a generational change underway

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If ‘freedom to starve’ is the result of ‘free speech’, it is an understanding of free speech that is incorrect. Why even bother with a pretence of a first amendment. Gulags would be quicker, and cleaner.

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Not sure why it’s strange to think that people can say whatever the hell they want to and that anyone hearing it can say whatever the hell they want to about it. That seems like the first amendment to me.

If someone says something stupid and other people think or say ‘that’s stupid’, that seems to be the first amendment working as intended.

We don’t prevent people from saying things, even stupid hateful things, but we can sure as hell think and say and respond both in words and actions to those things. And we should, as members of a society that protects and values free speech.

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At what point should the government force association? Yes, we do have laws for public accommodations saying you cannot discriminate based on certain protected classes like the color of one’s skin. However we freely allow a business owner to judge one on other criteria, like what they are wearing or even the content of their character. Asshole is not a protected class. If a whole town decides someone, personally, is an asshole and does not want that asshole in their shops, should the government intervene? By what criteria should businesses be forced to do business with that asshole? Can the ice cream parlor reject them but not the grocery store?

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I guess my main problem here is the control of identity. That you may not even be a racist, but hey, facebook’s shadow profile says you are, and you have no oversight or control over it. Maybe you even were a racist at some point, but are trying to move on. Just stop saying racist shit, right? But how do you present that desire to reform when the only two platforms anybody will ever check likely have already banned you for something terrible you said? Something that is likely still ‘on the record’ - how exactly does one ‘stop saying something’ recorded in the past but presented in the now? Consider the recent effects of when Twitter arbitrarily altered the timeline presentation to no longer be chronological (a decision now reversed, I think - I don’t use it. Or facebook.).

Literally everybody is an asshole at some point in their lives, banned or not how much of your online life am I entitled to dig through in order to deny you an icecream? 20 years ago the cost for doing such a thing was so high any attempt to do so would be ridiculous and consequently prohibitive. Nowadays the cost is a sub-second database query after I ping your phone when you walk into the shop.

But it’s fine as long as they just go after the nazis, I guess.

In the mid naughties I had a credit card with a major bank. At some point I paid it off in its entirety and cancelled it. Sometime after the closure said bank made an erroneous charge against it that I was unaware of, and for ~4months I had an balance that I no longer made payments against. Eventually I got in touch with the bank, they admitted the fault and reversed the outstanding balance.

Unfortunately for me, though, my credit rating absolutely tanked over this period, though I wasn’t initially aware. Experian, a private company I had no real knowledge of, no direct interaction with, and didn’t knowingly give consent to track me, was now telling other 3rd parties I was a bad debtor. In the initial aftermath I found it difficult to get credit anywhere. Experian refused to change it, saying they only reported the facts of what the bank told them and it was up to said bank to issue a retraction/amendment with them. Despite admitting fault initially and reversing the charges, the bank refused to do this and my arguments and pleas went unacknowledged.

I suppose I could’ve ‘lawyered up’ at some point, but in reality at the time I was too poor and consequently powerless to fight it. For 10 years my credit rating was lower than it should’ve been. It had immediate and lasting effects on my life and wellbeing, all for something I didn’t even do. I didn’t (and don’t - I’ve never missed a payment before or since) identify as being a ‘bad debtor’, but I sure had no control over being shunned as one and paying the price for it for many years afterward.

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Sigh.

Ok this is super all about what the cancel culture thread is about. This is, fundamentally, something already covered at length there.

Couple of points as I am drunk and typing this on my phone instead of going to bed:

Identity != behavior.
Full stop. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. Being black is an identity in a way that saying or doing racist things is not. One is a fixed permanent thing, the other is not.

Conflating these two is going to lead to nothing but frustration and miscommunication. And not distinguishing between them means be prepared with a fire retardant suit because someone who is a racial or sexual minority who experiences all sorts of social shunning for intrinsic parts of their physical being is going to be super not ok with you saying its just as bad to treat racists poorly for their views as it is for racists to treat a black person for their skin color.

You will have planted your foot in your mouth, and will catch heat for that. That’s life, sometimes getting burned is a great teacher.

There is a big goddamn motherfucking capital D DIFFERENCE between saying some random dumb shit online in a tweet versus being a major ideological supporter and leader for a toxic ideology. Sure as shit no one here is saying it is good or ok for you to be expelled from society for saying dumb shit as a teenager. I mean look at the examples I gave above. These aren’t shades of grey, but pretty clear ling established patterns of harm that go well beyond simple one off. Alex Jones is a complete piece of shit. His being a piece of shit is not limited to one example. He has exhibited a pattern of t behavior that goes well beyond any acceptable social bounds. If he found his life difficult because no business or bank wants to do business with a racist, conspiracy mongering, lying pile of human excrement? Well too fucking bad for him. I hope it happens to him.

But there is no goddamn comparison to some dumbass teenager saying the N word on Facebook or whatever. Like that isn’t cool, and if his peers (because its usually a he it seems) call him out in class or whatever? Thats just. But ain’t nobody suggesting that they should be barred from any business or whatever. Unless the person working the counter at said business was the recipient of said epitaph.

Its a gradient. There is no absolutes here. Its not like there is one single standard of ‘person did X so receives Y punishment’. And fuck yeah this stuff goes wrong in all sorts of ways. Social media is so incredibly toxic. Minor infractions can get dogpiled into oblivion. And certainly small things get blown way out of proportion I am certain.

But, like, that doesn’t mean there aren’t people deserving of the harshest social sanctions, including loosing the ability. to conduct business. But just because complete social pariah status may be deserving for Richard Spencer, Alex Jones, Vladmit Putin, Marjorie Taylor Greene or whatever doesn’t mean every person who says some careless or stupid harmful thing can, or should, face that. Just… no.

This has nothing to do with what we are talking about. Or, more accurately, this is an example of the types of old school power and privilege networks ability to destroy you on a whim. see even in the worst cases it is exceedingly rare to see consequences rise to the level of what the rich and powerful could do to your average person on an unthinking whim. Even the greatest social media campaign against Alex Jones would scarcely cause him as much harm as your bank making a stupid fuck up did to you. If every business were to simultaneously decline to do business with him, the impacts to his life would quite possibly be less than you experienced because he has money and influence, and will sadly have the ability to find someone willing to work with him. Sure he may face some headwinds, but his status and money would largely insulate him.

You got shafted for a decade in an error, in ways that probably cost you money.

I mean freedom of association is a thing. Just as I can decline to do business with a shop that has one of the thin blue line flags on it, so too can a business decline to permit a white supremacist on their premises. And if they don’t like it, they are fully free to renounce white supremacy at any point and stop advocating against violence and loss of civil rights for minorities.

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Sorry, but when I say ‘identity’ I’m talking about race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation. I’m not talking about racism, bigotry, sexism, homophobia.

Even if you think things like gender and sexual orientation are ideas, they’re ideas about oneself, not ideas about others. They’re your identity. Bigotry is an idea about others, so I don’t think it is your identity. It’s just a bad idea about others.

Then invite Nazis or Klansmen over for dinner, or let them eat at your lunch counter in all their regalia. But you can’t force other people to do that.

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Sidestepping the truck fire, I do think there’s a useful point buried in @fox.ferro 's uh posts that is being elided while the dunk contest is (fairly enough) going on.

It’s a slippery slope point, but nonetheless:

Let’s say Twitter rolled out some scarlet letter for accounts, not just individual posts being flagged as disinformation or whatever.

Let’s say - big stretch here - the algo is flawed and some number of accounts get inappropriately branded.

Or, probably more likely and I’d be shocked if this service didn’t already exist: let’s say some company provides algo-driven “online reputation verification” and some number of people are mistakenly assigned a score or traits that negatively impact the report generated and sold to prospective employers considering these people for leadership or sensitive roles.

Two questions here: First, chances the algo isn’t almost stupidly biased toward the dominant cultural groups and ethnicities regardless of its other failures? Second, chances these outcomes are systemically worse than the old boys network that has existed as long as humans have gathered for shelter in the night and the favored hunter’s son got an unearned cushy spot by the fire?

Not saying there aren’t or won’t be flaws to mitigate as these aspects of society are increasingly driven by technology. But I think it’s easy to get worried about the AI dystopia and become unmoored from the actual current reality it would be replacing.

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Yes, I think the point of dunking on the NYT editorial is that it is not a battle cry against treating other people badly, when badly means e.g. refusing to sell them a house. It’s a battle cry against treating people like the NYT editorial board badly, when badly means criticizing their editorial.

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Mr. Greenfield’s hobby horse is non-lawyers are extremely dumb and unable to think straight. It got very tiresome.

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I certainly hope my post didn’t come across as mere dunking on @fox.ferro . Rather it was an attempt at a more thorough explanation on why the concepts being described are different, and how proposing social consequences does exist on a gradient.

So the point you bring up I do feel I covered

So I very much grant that idiot teenager and Alex Jones should not face the same level of opprobrium, even if they used the exact same words.

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Oh I didn’t intend to take a swing at anyone so much as they to talk about something I thought was worth the electrons without sticking my hand in the truck fire, sorry if I came off that way.

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Not at all! I was just hoping I didn’t come off as taking a swing at them either. Because it was very late, and I was very much not entirely sober while writing that on my phone, so chances that I bungled some part of my intent was real.

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Thanks for the trolling, Bloomberg:

If you’re one of the many Americans who became a new pet owner during the pandemic, you might want to rethink those costly pet medical needs.

This reminds me, the Wall Street Journal’s infamous “the Tax Relief Act leaves many families behind” graphic is almost 10 years old:

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