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On January 15th, 2018, World Socialist Web Site reported that users are unable to share a promotional video for a January 16th online meeting, "Organizing Resistance to Internet Censorship."
Facebook has blocked users from sharing a social media video promoting the January 16 online meeting "Organizing resistance to Internet censorship," featuring World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board Chairman David North and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges. The initial post of the video, uploaded Friday, cannot be shared by any user. Those who attempt to do so receive an error message that seems to imply a technical failure.
Users reported, however, that upon clicking "If you think you're seeing this message by mistake, please let us know," they were presented with a notice that clearly indicates the content had been blocked in the name of keeping Facebook "safe."
WSWS published an open letter about internet censorship and net neutrality on November 25. The FCC repealed net neutrality rules on December 14, 2017.
In this AC's opinion, Facebook is certainly within their rights to refuse to host any content for any reasons they choose. However, for many people, Facebook is the internet.
Should we worry about entrenched services such as Facebook and Google using their positions to suppress information? Does the presence or absence of net neutrality change one's analysis of the situation?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday January 17 2018, @10:40PM (11 children)
Mmm... Bias you say.
Imagine an academic setup for a workplace, University of some kind. How would you like a democratic (as opposed with meritocratic) decision process in regards with the choice of curricula? Wanna take the risk of 'your ignorance is as good as my knowledge.
The old definition of socialism needs patching for workplaces where the biggest value is located in wetware rather than hardware. Happens a lot in software engineering - just look a Linux and imagine where will it be with a democratic governance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday January 17 2018, @11:42PM (6 children)
Well ideally the knowledgeable person will be elected to lead the project. The carpenter leading the framing crew, the electrician leading the wiring crew, the accountant looking after the books and the software engineer handling the software, with the one the group agrees is the best being the lead.
Unluckily the ideal comes against human nature where likes and dislikes can be more important then actual skill, which is also a problem in current (representative) democracies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @12:14AM
You have a better grasp of human nature than the woo-woo thing that c0lo has.
The Workers that I have encountered want to get the stuff done in the best way, get their compensation, and move on to the next task.
Putting the most-able guy in charge expedites this.
Thinking that Socialism queers that notion rather than bolstering it is simply a demonstration of prejudice.
(Reading Dilbert regularly will give you plenty of examples based on real life experiences, showing that the common rigid Authoritarian workplace model is very likely to give bad results.)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 18 2018, @12:33AM (4 children)
Like in: ideally the best prepared person gets to be elected to push the strategy/tactics required for the best governance of USofA population... and yet you finish with the Orange Clown at the head.
While this (by the number game) needs not** to end in the demise of USA , in the conditions a business (with lower resources than a country) or a project the failures due to mismanagement tend to be more frequent. For every Mondragon success there are hundreds of other cooperatives that failed.
Agreed.
It boils down to: human nature does not guarantee the success of socialism - even if it does not guarantee its failure.
---
**even if the survival result is still not guaranteed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @02:21AM (1 child)
...for the best governance of USofA
...when you have a media whose job it is to inform the public.
When you have the Lamestream Media that USA has, whose job it is to maximize profits for The Ownership Class, you get Drumpf.
I've mentioned the statement by CBS's CEO numerous times.
They knew perfectly well what they were doing to the country--and they didn't care.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 18 2018, @02:49AM
I hope you'll agree that's necessary but not sufficient.
E.g. an informed public is absolutely useless if that public is only able to react based on "The Truth" that was fed to them, with no thinking of their own (one would contrast "education" vs "indoctrination/taming" as concepts here?)
Which does show that the condition to reach the the status of ideal are far from trivial. With the immediate corollary: the more necessary condition, the less probable the ideal status.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by dry on Thursday January 18 2018, @04:08AM (1 child)
Nature itself does not guarantee the success of anything. Lots of failures in new businesses in any system and even the forest outside sees only a few trees succeed after millions of seeds start out.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 18 2018, @04:29AM
But it does. Entropy, for instance, will ever be higher as the time passes - uninterrupted growth is how one usually define "successful", right?
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 17 2018, @11:55PM (3 children)
look [at] Linux and imagine where will it be with a democratic governance
You mean like Debian, which has adopted systemd?
N.B. In contrast, elsewhere in the (meta)thread, I have linked to Switzerland's brand of Direct Democracy.
There, a decision made by "government" can be rescinded by popular vote.
As for the Linux kernel, so far, I'm just fine with The Benevolent Dictator for Life.
The old definition of socialism needs patching for workplaces where the biggest value is located in wetware rather than hardware
...or perhaps not.
Swedish Worker Cooperative Software Development Company Has No Boss [soylentnews.org]
...and you, as so many others here, have made the mistake that Socialism and Democracy are different things.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 18 2018, @12:52AM (2 children)
Another remarkable and somehow singular example of success - just as Mondragon (yes, I know, there are other successful cooperative, but the proportion of them warrants the "somehow singular" characterization).
As I said somewhere else, intrinsically socialism and democracy aren't bad - just they don't guarantee the success (much less optimality, whatever way optimality is defined).
---
It may appear as strange idea, but I'll say it anyway: the same way as money, the means a production (and their ownership) are also a mean not an end**.
If you like a SciFi projection, imagine a post-energy/material-scarcity society as sorta depicted by StarTrek (replicators and teleporters available) - you still think the "ownership of production means" would be relevant to that society? (in a minuscule scale of it, today we see the - pale - situation with "on demand fabbing" - inexpensive 3D printers and/or CNC machines).
--
** I'll let you ponder what could be that end. That is, if you accept the idea as a hypothesis at least.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 18 2018, @02:49AM (1 child)
The page lists others.
Your hyperbole has fallen flat (as usual).
just as Mondragon (yes, I know, there are other successful cooperative[s]
Had you not had your head stuck up a dark orifice so many times, you would have noticed the DOZENS of times that I have mentioned the thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of worker-owned co-ops in northern Italy.
I've also mentioned The Marcora Law [google.com] which seeds that.
Boston and Quebec are getting to be co-op hotspots.
Madison, WI has been for some time.
I'm expecting Oakland to really ignite any day now.
There are numerous places all over the globe with great ideas. [google.com]
Meanwhile, USA.gov (and UK.gov and AU.gov) are stuck on stupid with Oligarchy and NIH.
.
replicators and teleporters [...] 3D printers
Who is building them and fixing them?
Where do the inputs come from?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday January 18 2018, @03:47AM
(note: mate, I expect better from you than foul language. Please behave and we can continue to have a dialog. Otherwise, I'll relegate you in my personal "don't care" category.
Pay attention to my posts, those that aren't grinning at least, and see that I value cooperation more than competition, the social more than the private, etc. But I'm old enough to know that nothing is perfect and those I already mentioned here aren't sufficient)
Would you be so kind to compare the number of people involved into coops with the number of people that are not?
Because you must admit that "thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands" could mean just as low as 8000 people or even less (if the same person is part of more than one coop).
Mate, I never said that coop-style economy is impossible. Nor did I say coops are shit.
I only said that coops aren't the guaranteeing a success and optimality by themselves. There's something more that need to get into their chemistry than the simple "we are a coop, wooohoo, now we're set for life".
Pretty much the same apply to the direct democracy in Switzerland - you simply don't wave a fairy wand and coops are magically successful.
I'll let the reader imagine what else is necessary - (I hate answers and The Truth, even when they are my answers and my truth, because they have the tendency to kill the thinking. You can imagine my feelings about the answers and "The Truth" of others)
Don't know about other places, but the community and cooperation spirit is not as dead as the rumors are exagerating.
First of all, I wasn't depicting a reality, I only set up a mindframe (this is why "If you like a SciFi projection") in which "ownership of production means may become irrelevant". In this context (pure speculative), here are the answers:
- presumably, building and fixing is done by whoever is qualified to do it and is trusted by those around it that it will do it properly. Potentially even a specialized maintenance robot may do it.
It's not like, in a post-scarcity world with replicators and teleporters, a part which is required for repair/maintenance cannot be asked for someone that operates another replicator (and transported by teleport).
- Where the inputs come from? Pure energy, available at so low cost in the post-scarcity world that it wouldn't matter. Picard ordering a cup of tea from the replicator doesn't seem to care too much about E=mc2
Just in case you really don't know about the "maker movement", pay a visit to reprap.org [reprap.org]. It's not the only site, you'll be able to find many other sites supporting the makers (even if just by presenting the designs or knowhow).
Yes, nobody is making (yet) stepper motors and what not at home, but:
1. they are cheap nowadays, much cheaper than the computers were at the beginning of the open-source movement. And don't tell me that you scorn open-source movement because it uses paid-for and personal computers
2. it's a start (has been quite a long time ago).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford