POG Politics Thread Version 3

Funny that these posts exhibit EXACTLY the point I was making about liberals not able to engage with censorship and freedom of speech in a practical way.

The capitalist instantiation of censorship and lack of freedom of speech does not play out in the direct removal or banning of speech, as it if often presented abstractly in liberal philosophical discourse.

Offering up niche alternatives to youtube (or, lol, "do it yourself" video hosting?) would be like saying I could get my speech out using a self published newspaper as an alternative to the Washington Post.

You understand that is exactly the point I am making, right?

Incidentally I think upscroller just got removed from the google app store lol

I really don't understand the point you are trying to make, and I very much value your perspective so please take this and my above as encouragement to elucidate and not as criticisms or attacks on you.

I don't understand why you say censorship is "often presented abstractly in liberal philosophical discourse" in response to a concrete example presented by a liberal.

Of course I cannot build a megaphone louder than WaPo, but that's not because of capitalism, that's because WaPo is an organization of thousands of people acting in concert and I have maybe a dozen friends and another two dozen family members.

This doesn't mean that I am being "censored" by anything other than the scarcities of time and attention, unless I agree to stretch the term beyond its socio-semantic importance - one voice among a million is always drowned out, so then censorship is the norm and not the malum?

unless your point is that capitalism specially enables that degree of organization, which I think would be a really interesting contention to explore, but I very much doubt this is what you mean.

happy president's day

washtington - literal slave owner, and openly genocidal

lincoln - leader of maniacly genocidal usa, who orderd mass execution of dakota

I don't really think the points are related. Shadow banning is censorship. LeBron James and Jake Paul speech having further reach than mine is a jump as a denial of free speech.

If it's about some sort of grand collaborated effort by rich people to say capitalism good communism bad then whatever. We see the connections we want to see.

Said otherwise don't think trying to pigeon hole this slightly different definition of free speech into the established term is useful. Just call it something else.

😆

they're a smaller organization now though, since they've just laid off all of their staff purposed to report on racial issues

that is censorship.

look at all the idiot hacks who are popular pundits or reporters who praise the empire and condemn all criticism.

now try to think of any actual opposition to the empire that has any kind of voice. there aren't any.

Phil Donahue had a very popular show(maybe their number 1 show?). he opposed war after 9/11 and was never heard from again.

Chris hedges was a leading reporter for the NY times. he fanatically opposes USA empire. he got fired, and publishes in obscurity.

Abby martin is a brilliant reporter and smoking hot, and no one knows about her. if she had the views of Rachel maddow she'd be the most famous pundit on the planet.

after 9/11 bill Maher on a show called "politically incorrect" said it's stupid to call terrorists "cowardly" who took over planes with box cutters and intentionally flew them into buildings. he lost his voice, and had to shout for years how awful Muslims are, and how great the USA is before he got a platform back.

I mean there are just endless examples of censorship. if it wasn't for censorship we wouldn't be celebrating a slave owner today

those are concrete examples of actual censorship.

it's not that Bill Maher's show got moved to the 3:00 AM slot or something, which would be more akin to the YouTube algorithm argument.

it was removed from the platform entirely ('canceled')

Maybe it would be helpful, to escape the pitfalls of binary semanticism, to think of censorship as a spectrum

at one extreme, all references to the offending utterance are obliterated and any resurgence or repetition is met in kind

at the other, all speech is accompanied by a 'dislike-count' tag and ordinately presented accordingly

Then we are really just disagreeing on what the 'significant' threshold points are on the spectrum.

maybe even further up, forget about ordering, just saying "this is unpopular" itself has a censory effect

This is just a quibble about semantics. If you want to restrict the discussion to the literal definitions of censorship and freedom of speech then of course there is not anything to discuss because they are liberal terms created/defined explicitly to justify capitalist society. So the discussion becomes circular. What I am trying to get at is that the LARGER point of things like freedom of speech and censorship is the control/dissemination of information and ideas.

The REASON liberal philosophy offers for things like freedom of speech is to say we all have an equal right to exchange our ideas with other people. My point is that liberal philosophy is wrong. "Freedom of speech" as it exists does not accomplish that end. Liberals think that purely by allowing speech that have created equality in the exchange of ideas. But that is incorrect.

So we have to move beyond philosophically contextualized definitions. "Freedom of speech" is of course going to look legitimate when exercised by the very mode of production that has defined it.

Wrong perspective. The reason you cannot build a megaphone louder than the WaPo is because you are not absurdly wealthy and Jeff Bezos is. THAT is the point.

The normative question is should people be more entitled to spread their ideas simply because they have more money? The obvious answer is no, but whether you answer yes or no to this question, it is important to understand that it is no different than asking if people should have freedom of speech. They are both concerned with the same end. If freedom of speech allows me to go scream my ideas into a forest while Jeff Bezos can have millions of people read his ideas, it is no different than the speech being restricted to only those of the ruling class.

What I meant when I say it is presented abstractly, I am saying the concept is presented as a magical rule rather than looking at the practical outcomes.

The abstract, liberal question of censorship is "Was my speech forcibly banned" rather than asking the practical question of "is there any difference between my speech being banned vs it being made completely irrelevant because I am not wealthy enough to won the WaPo or Twitter.

Looking at the material conditions cuts through ideology.

Bezos' wealth enables him to organize thousands at his behest, and I agree with you that this is an inappropriate circumstance. I also agree that "capitalism", in a vague* sense, in turn enables both the extreme accumulation and the opportunity provided by that accumulation.

But it is the concentration of influence (which in capitalism is ultimately disposable material wealth) which yields this outcome, and we can/have see/n that occur outside of capitalism - to the extent we can see outside of capitalism at all 😉

* (I would say "unrestrained capitalism" but that probably swallows the discussion so I ~won't)

my verb choice for the status quo would be "undergirds"

but it should not be taken for granted that (make sure you're sitting down, birdman) material is the best measure of quality/utility/worth/etc beyond basic comforts and security - golden handcuffs, eg.; harken encore Epicurus!

does it help or hurt a person to be served? the master-slave dialectic is freshly rung itt

I think I mean "all the actual conditions".

fwiw, as a self-described liberal, I do not see it as a matter of "right" - well, technically in the USA we do formally have the "right" and that triggers another set of issues dealing with the rule of law, but damned if I can't avoid digression

My justification for demanding freedom of speech is that individuality is a necessarily good (like cogito-level, 'but for individuality...') and that individuality is itself inextricably entwined with expression. There's also the practical benefit of growth through exchange, but I know that one is more perilous: basilisk itt.

Money is speech in gold old USA so mostly we have freedom of money.

while (alive) {
let lived_reality = social_engagement( ideological_dressing( mental_carapace( lived_reality ) ) );
}

not fully committed to this, but kinda maybe something like it

things get messy (err!) when the layers penetrate one another

Linux Desktop isn't popular because it doesn't solve the problems windows solves with devices, multimedia, etc.

As the great Terry Davis said, Linux just wants to be a 1970s mainframe. All those file permissions etc have no place in a consumer OS.

MacOS is an attempt to make a user OS on top of Linux and it is decently popular.

I recently learned how to deploy the tiny immutable Linux OS like bottlerocket and SLE Micro and use those as a base for kubernetes and that is completely irrelevant but it was fun and increased my footprint.

I am not sure I agree with this and I also do not understand how it is germane to this discussion.

And when you say "we have seen" or "can see", what are you referring to?

Good. You should not say this.