US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1649

On July 10 2019 04:19 KwarK wrote:
It’s also worth reminding people that wage theft by employers is the biggest kind of theft.

On July 10 2019 04:22 Destructicon wrote:
By your description of capitalism vs socialism I lean socialist as it is the fairer distribution of wealth, taking into account productivity of the laborer, hence merit.

And on command vs free economics I lean towards free as the competition usually yields better results.

And I abhor nepotism, people should make it based off their own merits/work not of whom they know or are related too.

On July 10 2019 04:22 Destructicon wrote:
By your description of capitalism vs socialism I lean socialist as it is the fairer distribution of wealth, taking into account productivity of the laborer, hence merit.

And on command vs free economics I lean towards free as the competition usually yields better results.

And I abhor nepotism, people should make it based off their own merits/work not of whom they know or are related too.

On July 10 2019 06:16 Destructicon wrote:
I saw this news piece earlier today and wanted to start a discussion on it.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/9/20687521/donald-trump-president-twitter-blocking-appeals-ruling?fbclid=IwAR11abql0rDYJUsjuz3iwJBBZncld6wqg9s-KD-nt2sOKDP2STtbmQSsiVs

The gist of it is.
1. Trump created his twitter account before becoming POTUS.
2. Trump blocked some people on twitter.
3. Last year a has ruled that blocking them is a violation of the 1st Amendment as he is a public figure and, his tweeting is the equivalent of creating a public forum and everybody should have the right to participate in it.
4. The White House appealed the decision but today the appeal court defended the lower court interpretation.

I am bringing this up as I think there are some weird implications here.

Basically the court is saying that blocking people is the equivalent of denying them free speech.

Yet, twitter is allowed under Article 230 (The Internet Decency Act) to itself censor certain speech and/or ban certain people based on what it defines as hate speech, despite this being protected under the 1st Amendment.

Isn't this court ruling in a way, a double standard?

If Trump is not allowed to block someone, as it is a violation of the 1st Amendment then, shouldn't twitter be unable to say, ban Benjamin Carl (Sargon of Akkad) given that he was also a public figure (ran for MP with UKIP)?

If we now consider social media to be a public forum, even if owned by private companies than, shouldn't article 230 be amended to eliminate the potential to censor certain protected speech or people?

I'm personally of the opinion that the big tech companies have abused article 230 to selectively censor certain discourse and an amendment is well overdue.

On July 10 2019 06:16 Destructicon wrote:
I saw this news piece earlier today and wanted to start a discussion on it.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/9/20687521/donald-trump-president-twitter-blocking-appeals-ruling?fbclid=IwAR11abql0rDYJUsjuz3iwJBBZncld6wqg9s-KD-nt2sOKDP2STtbmQSsiVs

The gist of it is.
1. Trump created his twitter account before becoming POTUS.
2. Trump blocked some people on twitter.
3. Last year a has ruled that blocking them is a violation of the 1st Amendment as he is a public figure and, his tweeting is the equivalent of creating a public forum and everybody should have the right to participate in it.
4. The White House appealed the decision but today the appeal court defended the lower court interpretation.

I am bringing this up as I think there are some weird implications here.

Basically the court is saying that blocking people is the equivalent of denying them free speech.

Yet, twitter is allowed under Article 230 (The Internet Decency Act) to itself censor certain speech and/or ban certain people based on what it defines as hate speech, despite this being protected under the 1st Amendment.

Isn't this court ruling in a way, a double standard?

If Trump is not allowed to block someone, as it is a violation of the 1st Amendment then, shouldn't twitter be unable to say, ban Benjamin Carl (Sargon of Akkad) given that he was also a public figure (ran for MP with UKIP)?

If we now consider social media to be a public forum, even if owned by private companies than, shouldn't article 230 be amended to eliminate the potential to censor certain protected speech or people?

I'm personally of the opinion that the big tech companies have abused article 230 to selectively censor certain discourse and an amendment is well overdue.

On July 10 2019 06:16 Destructicon wrote:
I saw this news piece earlier today and wanted to start a discussion on it.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/9/20687521/donald-trump-president-twitter-blocking-appeals-ruling?fbclid=IwAR11abql0rDYJUsjuz3iwJBBZncld6wqg9s-KD-nt2sOKDP2STtbmQSsiVs

The gist of it is.
1. Trump created his twitter account before becoming POTUS.
2. Trump blocked some people on twitter.
3. Last year a has ruled that blocking them is a violation of the 1st Amendment as he is a public figure and, his tweeting is the equivalent of creating a public forum and everybody should have the right to participate in it.
4. The White House appealed the decision but today the appeal court defended the lower court interpretation.

I am bringing this up as I think there are some weird implications here.

Basically the court is saying that blocking people is the equivalent of denying them free speech.

Yet, twitter is allowed under Article 230 (The Internet Decency Act) to itself censor certain speech and/or ban certain people based on what it defines as hate speech, despite this being protected under the 1st Amendment.

Isn't this court ruling in a way, a double standard?

If Trump is not allowed to block someone, as it is a violation of the 1st Amendment then, shouldn't twitter be unable to say, ban Benjamin Carl (Sargon of Akkad) given that he was also a public figure (ran for MP with UKIP)?

If we now consider social media to be a public forum, even if owned by private companies than, shouldn't article 230 be amended to eliminate the potential to censor certain protected speech or people?

I'm personally of the opinion that the big tech companies have abused article 230 to selectively censor certain discourse and an amendment is well overdue.

On July 10 2019 08:52 Falling wrote:
re: IP
I see no reason to radically overhaul it when we could just go back to the original formulation as expressed in the US and try that again.

The more I think about how they formulated the problem the more genius I think it is. IP is a limited monopoly. "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors…the exclusive Right to their…Writings"
Emphasis on limited. Just go back to 14 years default IP and an additional 14 years IF you renew. By default it goes into the public domain otherwise.
14-28 years is tons of time to make profit from your ideas and then everyone else can build on your ideas and go from there. Incentive to create, but you don't have corporate dragons sitting on IP for generations, long after the original creators are dead.

A couple of years ago, I was interviewing a former senior White House official when the name Jeffrey Epstein came up.

Unaware of my personal history with Epstein, this person assured me that the New York financier was no serious harm to anyone. He was a good guy. A charming guy. Useful, too. He knew a lot of rich Arabs, including the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, and, further, he had clever ideas about creating bond issues for them. “OK, so he has a girl problem,” this person threw on, almost as an afterthought.

Epstein’s name, I was told, had been raised by the Trump transition team when Alexander Acosta, the former U.S. attorney in Miami who’d infamously cut Epstein a non-prosecution plea deal back in 2007, was being interviewed for the job of labor secretary. The plea deal put a hard stop to a separate federal investigation of alleged sex crimes with minors and trafficking.

“Is the Epstein case going to cause a problem [for confirmation hearings]?” Acosta had been asked. Acosta had explained, breezily, apparently, that back in the day he’d had just one meeting on the Epstein case. He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told” to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” he told his interviewers in the Trump transition, who evidently thought that was a sufficient answer and went ahead and hired Acosta. (The Labor Department had no comment when asked about this.)

And so, it seemed—until the news of Epstein’s arrest on Saturday for allegedly trafficking minors—thus continuing a pattern of blatant exceptionalism that surrounded him, and his social and business nexus.

For almost two decades, for some nebulous reason, whether to do with ties to foreign intelligence, his billions of dollars, or his social connections, Epstein, whose alleged sexual sickness and horrific assaults on women without means or ability to protect themselves is well-known in his circle, remained untouchable.

On July 10 2019 09:24 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:

People exploited the system and we don't care enough to change/enforce it.