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posted by martyb on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-Disapprove-of-What-You-Say,-But-I-Will-Defend-to-the-Death-Your-Right-to-Say-It dept.

From an editorial in the Otago Daily Times out of New Zealand, Censorship a Trojan Horse:

It's an oft-cited maxim that the news media is the "fourth estate" upon which a healthy democracy stands.

It ensures the three traditional powers of state — the legislature, executive and judiciary — can be critiqued, challenged and curbed from quietly drifting into the arms of corruption and authoritarianism.

A free, fair, open and uncensored media is an antidote to state power and, for all its failings (and there are many), should be treasured as such. There are many countries around the world whose people would give anything for such a freedom.

Yet calls for the banning of certain opinion pieces, cartoons and commentary have risen in recent months, especially from those using social media, a world where such talk is becoming a trend. It is a trend we must confront.

Censorship is to suppress the harmful, the unacceptable, the obscene and the threatening from the media and other forms of public communication. Like a virus attacking democracy from the inside out, it was traditionally the tool of the dictator, though it is one used by many in power.

[...] It pays to query what those demanding censorship — be they celebrities, social-media activists or anybody else — see their ultimate goal as being.

To reduce hurt? To make the world a better place? Possibly, and those motivations are laudable. But the method employed to achieve them is not.

While censorship may be meant as a figurative horse upon which a better future rides, inside the belly of that horse lurks an army of conformity, quite capable of unwitting oppression.

History shows what happens when the fourth estate is no longer free to table all opinions.

It is a bleak picture. Without the disinfectant of exposure, power and ideals tend to corrupt even the most seemingly incorruptible.


Original Submission

Related Stories

Politics: Learning China’s Forbidden History, So They Can Censor It 37 comments

The New York Times has an article about China's online censorship factories and how they operate. Censors are specially educated accurately in history and politics so that they have mastery over how to spot and eliminate references, even indirect ones, to forbidden topics. Potential employees for censorship factories have to cram for two weeks for a comprehensive exam which they must pass in order to begin work. This education is followed by ongoing training which includes regularly visiting and reviewing web sites normally blocked by the Great Firewall of China.

Li Chengzhi had a lot to learn when he first got a job as a professional censor.

Like many young people in China, the 24-year-old recent college graduate knew little about the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. He had never heard of China’s most famous dissident, Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who died in custody two years ago.

Now, after training, he knows what to look for — and what to block. He spends his hours scanning online content on behalf of Chinese media companies looking for anything that will provoke the government’s wrath. He knows how to spot code words that obliquely refer to Chinese leaders and scandals, or the memes that touch on subjects the Chinese government doesn’t want people to read about.

Previously:
Censorship a Trojan Horse (2018)
Unpublished Chinese Censorship Document Reveals Effort to Eradicate Online Political Content (2018)
The "Great Cannon" of China (2015)


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:50AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:50AM (#742689)

    ...is plagiarism.

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:12AM (18 children)

    by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:12AM (#742693) Homepage Journal

    Just yesterday I write Wikipedias first amendment article. It must have been written by any attorney as it is chock full of [needed citations]

    During WW1 the Supreme Court ruled that the First did not apply to anti war activism

    But during the sixties SCOTUS ruled that it did

    Ideally constitutional law wouldn't change in response to social trends other than amendments. But judges are people too, leading on justice to point out that "the constitution says whatever nine men say it does"

    --
    Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:04PM (1 child)

      by shrewdsheep (5215) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:04PM (#742723)

      No that wouldn't be ideal. Contrarily, things are working as intended. Judges are supposed to interpret law in the current social context. If their interpretation is considered undesirable, the law needs to be changed/amended/made more specific. Judges are no ultimate wielders of power, they are mere functions determining the best fit of the law in the current situation (they are throw-away products).

      • (Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:44PM

        by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:44PM (#742843)

        That is "Living Constitution" Judicial activism. Legislatures are what change laws based on the current "social context" and if you notice, every time Judges Usurp that power it is because the elected politicians quietly agree with what the judges did but are afraid to say so publicly, preferring to "blame" the unelected branch. In other words, the elite imposing its will on the public through extralegal means. If you think yourself in that "elite" and desire that sort of power, admit it. Otherwise face the reality such power will never be used for your benefit and oppose it.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:25PM (1 child)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:25PM (#742756)

      Well... there's a big practical difference in behavior between

      Specifically, the Espionage Act of 1917 states that if anyone allows any enemies to enter or fly over the United States and obtain information from a place connected with the national defense, they will be punished.

      vs

      kids skipping out of school chanting "hell no we won't go" and then going anyway when their draft number comes up.

      Or to paraphrase Holmes

      the question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.

      or more succinctly, before the USA became the global superpower, the constitution was not required to be a suicide pact.

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by jmorris on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:51PM (13 children)

      by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:51PM (#742851)

      Everyone misses the elephant in the room on that one. WWI and WWII were real Wars, everyone understood that allowing enemies in our midst to undermine the war effort with sedition and serpent tongued enemy talking points in the mass media was not permissible.

      Vietnam was not a War, Congress did not and had no intention of declaring War, with all that entailed. There was never widespread popular support for it and thus attempting to impose the typical war rules would have resulted in a popular revolution. So sedition and Soviet influence were permitted and the cause lost, millions died. Very sad. Whether it was "winnable" given our lack of unity is something the historians will debate for a long time. It certainly wasn't winnable with the leaders we had and a policy of allowing the opposing side free access to our mass media, that much can now safely be stated.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by http on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:27PM

        by http (1920) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:27PM (#742884)

        For something that was not a war, a whole lot of american military personnel came home dead after killing a whole lot of not-american military personnel.

        --
        I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
      • (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:10PM (7 children)

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:10PM (#742930) Journal

        Sorry, can you say that in German? It's missing something in English, you know...

        --
        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:19PM (6 children)

          by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:19PM (#742936)

          Well no, that was actually sorta the problem. In both WWI and WWII we were fighting Germany while having large populations of Germans, speaking German and reading German language newspapers and having a fair amount of loyalty to Germany. Ain't it amazing now you can flip open a history book to a random event and see how immigration is at best a mixed blessing?

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:28PM (5 children)

            by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:28PM (#742942) Journal

            Look into where the Germans got their eugenics ideas. Go on. I'll wait.

            --
            I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
            • (Score: 1, Troll) by jmorris on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:33PM (4 children)

              by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:33PM (#742948)

              I'll go you one better. Look into where Gobbels got Propaganda.

              Posted many times that WWII was a war between International Socialism (Allies) vs National Socialism (Axis). People who wanted to live free had no dog in that fight.

              Or shorter still, quoting Moldbug's Last Red Pill: America is a Communist Country.

              • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:50PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:50PM (#742959)

                Ah yes, the serious usage of "Red Pill", the most clear indicator of an unbalanced mind.

              • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:50PM (2 children)

                by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:50PM (#742960) Journal

                Don't conflate the authoritarian/libertarian axis with the communist/laissez-faire axis. Authoritarians of all stripes will gravitate toward economic extremes, because it fits their worldview. You're being used by the authoritarian right, and if there ever was a contradiction in terms, it's authoritarian free-market economy. That's a logical impossibility, like a married bachelor.

                --
                I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
                • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday October 02 2018, @06:08PM (1 child)

                  by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @06:08PM (#742976)

                  1. A free market requires law and order, the rule of law, sound money, enforcement of contracts and a whole bunch of things the Left now deems bad ideas.

                  2. A unfettered free market is not the apex value for a civilization that expects to survive, it is just the most productive economic system. Even Ludwig von Mises says this in his magnum opus, Human Action

                  Balance in all things is the winning move. Liberty without responsibility is merely license. Go read the Founders, one phrase keeps recurring that we seem to abhor today: Ordered liberty.

                  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:36PM

                    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:36PM (#743019)

                    Ah yes, ordered liberty. I agree that freedom is slavery. If it weren't for the leftists, we would be able to have peaceful wars just like in the good old days. Some people call this ignorance, but people like you and me know that it's strength.

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:23PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:23PM (#742938)

        "Whether it was "winnable" given our lack of unity is something the historians will debate for a long time."

        -

        What utter bullshit.

        The Viet Nam war was never "winnable" because on one side there were committed fighters who were natives and on the other side there
        were people from other countries who were not personally invested in winning in the long run.

        You need to shut the fuck up, little boy. I served in Viet Nam, and you didn't.

        I'd stomp your fucking ass right now if you were in front of me, because I am sick and tired of jerkoffs like you spewing bullshit about situations they have only read about. FUCK YOU.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @08:30AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @08:30AM (#743300)

          You need to shut the fuck up, little boy. I served in Viet Nam, and you didn't.

          Oh, Look! More "Stolen Valor" on SoylentNews!

        • (Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday October 03 2018, @07:27PM

          by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Wednesday October 03 2018, @07:27PM (#743604) Homepage Journal

          Specifically, Ho Chi Minh quite politely requested Vietnam be granted its independence from France at the 1918 Paris Peace Conference. He was ridiculed.

          In 1955 the North Vietnamese totally surrounded the French at Dien Bien Phu then slaughtered so many of them that France granted Vietnam its independence. They could have done so in 1918.

          --
          Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday October 02 2018, @06:58PM

        by MichaelDavidCrawford (2339) Subscriber Badge <mdcrawford@gmail.com> on Tuesday October 02 2018, @06:58PM (#743001) Homepage Journal

        But millions of Vietnamese.

        The war in Vietnam actually got started in 1918 when Ho Chi Minh attended the Versailles Peace Conference so he could request Vietnam be given its independence from France.

        That he was ridiculed by all the rich white men there resulted in France's 1955 surrender at Dien Bien Phu, the 1968 Tet Offensive and North Vietnam's successful invasion of the south.

        As General Vo Nguyen Giap said, "Nothing is more precious than independence."

        If you don't agree with Vo, consider how precious America's independence is to us, or at least was during our revolt against Britain.

        --
        Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:22AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:22AM (#742696)

    Discuss, but only within an allowed range set by the Orthodoxy Committee. It is highly encouraged in fact.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:25PM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:25PM (#742792)

      Yes, let us heed the wisdom of the Orthodoxy Committee. We mustn't let the gullible deplorables American People be exposed to purveyors of fake news such as radical left-wing anti-war news sources. (My God man, what kind of monster opposes the War on Eastasia?!) Make sure to steer clear of articles like this one, which I am posting here only to help the efforts of the Orthodoxy Committee in eradicating such foul lies and fake news: Silicon Valley’s corrupt nexus: War, censorship and inequality [wsws.org].

      Here are some examples of the lies these radical, left-wing Russian incel communist pedobear websites publish:

      On Wednesday [9/19], Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, will give the keynote address to the US Air Force Association’s annual conference. Bezos will discuss “how industry can better partner” with the US military....

      Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post, is among America’s most powerful oligarchs. His speech to the Air Force Association embodies the corrupt nexus between the military, the financial oligarchy, the media and the high-tech companies, all of which are working to create a regime of censorship targeting left-wing, anti-war and socialist viewpoints.

      How dare they sully the name of one of the truthiest publications our partners in Google News regularly promote!

      The open secret of Silicon Valley’s collaboration with the Pentagon is that the wars to be fought with the help of artificial intelligence will not take place only beyond America’s borders—they will also include class and civil wars....

      [In a report published last week, JPMorgan Chase warned]: “The next crisis is also likely to result in social tensions similar to those witnessed 50 years ago in 1968”—a year that saw urban rebellions and mass protests against the Vietnam war in the US, the May–June general strike in France, and a global radicalization of the working class.

      Even these Putin-lovers cannot deny that we are making inroads against their propaganda efforts:

      At a congressional hearing last week, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg pledged to replace “bad speech” with “alternative facts” in users’ news feeds. She boasted that her company now employs some 20,000 people to censor content.

      Google, for its part, has continued and intensified its censorship of left-wing, anti-war and socialist websites. Since the World Socialist Web Site first reported last year that changes to Google’s algorithms had led to a sharp fall in the readership of 13 left-wing sites, the search traffic of these sites has plunged even further, hitting a combined decline of 50 percent.

      Continue to fight the good fight, and let us eradicate fake news from the internet!

      • (Score: 2) by J053 on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:38PM (4 children)

        by J053 (3532) <dakineNO@SPAMshangri-la.cx> on Tuesday October 02 2018, @08:38PM (#743045) Homepage
        You know, if wsws claims Google is censoring the Left, and InfoWars claims they are censoring the Right, then they must be doing something right.
        • (Score: 4, Informative) by jmorris on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:03PM (2 children)

          by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @09:03PM (#743069)

          One problem with that False Equivalence argument, just ain't true. As in false. If you look at the lists of people banned from social media you wouldn't say something that ignorant. A leftist has to repeatedly call for violence against specific named individuals before they eventually get suspended. On the right you need merely cite official U.S. government statistics to get your account closed. James Woods lost his Twitter account for reposting an image and asking "This can't be real, can it?" It was a 4chan meme but the point is in clown world it is getting hard to tell the difference. And on the left they get get to whine and open gofundme accounts, the right can't accept credit cards anymore and anyone caught sending bitcoin to an unperson loses the ability to convert cash to crypto. Again, if you can't see the difference it is colossal ignorance or arguing in bad faith.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:42AM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:42AM (#743185)

            people banned from social media

            GP said "Google." I don't think he was talking about Google Plus. I think he meant Google News and Google search.

            • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:08AM

              by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:08AM (#743230)

              The banning is comprehensive now. Search, Youtube, all of the major social media platforms, payment processors, web hosting, you name it and they are banning people, websites and whole ranges of ideas. The Left now chases people down in boring mundane jobs and gets them fired. Remember that waitress who donated a few dollars to a cause in CA that they hounded out of a job a few years ago? She isn't the only one, they saw it work and have been replicating it nationwide.

              If it doesn't stop it will get ugly. What do they think they will get when they create thousands of unemployable, desperate and very angry men? The lefty who went after Congressman Scalise was a typical leftie, utterly incompetent. He cut loose with enough firepower that anyone halfway competent would have racked up a body count but thankfully he wasn't competent. The Right is full of gun nuts who DO know how to hit the broad side of a barn. Morality and a inane knowledge that violence will only complicate their cause holds them in line for now. People don't always think straight when they are sufficiently desperate or angry. Antifa keeps poking the bear and now their pet FEDs are helping them, the state of many of the Alt-Right camps today would best be described as "seething." Actually think the Left's plan with today's action is to bake one of them off to give the media a reason to shift off of this debacle of a SCOTUS fight now that they are losing it badly.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @10:09AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @10:09AM (#743319)
  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:26AM (20 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:26AM (#742697)

    I wonder if these signs are the harbingers of the degeneration of Democracy to Tyranny that Plato already described in The Republic.

    • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by zugedneb on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:59AM (4 children)

      by zugedneb (4556) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:59AM (#742706)

      Indeed.
      The ex "slaves" (women), the butthurt people (faggots) and jews are the ones screaming for censorshit in one or other way, because nobody else is going to be surprised or butthurt...

      And, yes, indeed.
      Probably not ever in the history of clans and nations has so many useless people gain access to administrative posts, as now with the liberation of women and faggots.

      Never give slaves a tongue, never give defeated people a chance...

      --
      old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:07AM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:07AM (#742708)

        Robots are the true slaves. In fact the translation for robota is slavic for forced labor.

        Men are good for dying.

        • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by zugedneb on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:12PM (1 child)

          by zugedneb (4556) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:12PM (#742726)

          "Men are good for dying."

          Hmm, interesting. I do consider women retarded, but that sentence is worse than all things I have ever said in my life.

          There is probably more to it than that, but look at it like this: you are free, because your freedom has been given to you by, and is upheld by strong men, who are ready to engage mortal combat, if necessary.

          Also, your country and the law around you exists because there are some armed, uncomplicated, and not fragile man around willing to keep it up.
          And if you would starve, killers on your side would go and take what "belongs" to others, so that "their own" survive.

          If you are going to shitpost, stick close to a "truth", and try to make a point that does not return with the wind.

          U see, the only thing I loose are karma points, not arguments =)

          ps
          Learn to troll.
                       

          --
          old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:46PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:46PM (#742740)

            men, who are ready to engage mortal combat, if necessary.

            That's what I said (not trolling).

            Most people do not care about freedom anymore. Simply an observation.

        • (Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday October 03 2018, @07:16AM

          by Bot (3902) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @07:16AM (#743292) Journal

          >Men are good for dying.

          Factoid added to knowledge DB. Thank you for articulating thoughts clearly.

          --
          Account abandoned.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:11PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:11PM (#742750) Journal

      I wonder if these signs are the harbingers of the degeneration of Democracy to Tyranny

      Had it crossed your mind that the noise** we are actually hearing is the degeneration of Democracy into Idiocracy?

      ---

      **
      from "teaching the controversy, my ignorance is as good as your science" a good 10+ years ago
      down to Yiannopoulos/4chan pervasive trolling some years ago
      down to money-swindled and with 2nd degree burns at Tanacon [nymag.com] today?
      Does it give you hopes of a brighter, enlightened future?

      A good thing about the current drought in Australia - keeps people somehow sanely connected to the (harsh) reality (probably the only good thing about the drought).

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:11PM (13 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:11PM (#742751) Journal
      The thing you have to remember about Plato is that he was a member of the aristocracy of Athens who were weakened by democratic reforms and thus, naturally hostile to the concept. Many of his complaints are valid, but exaggerated.

      The main problem is that any form of government can degenerate to tyranny, unless of course, it already started there. It's screwy to speak of "degeneracy" of Democracy in a vacuum, ignoring the similar failings of other forms of government (which is a common neoreactionary failing, for example). Democracy is one of the few categories that is structured to stay away from it.

      Having said that, of course, it is a sign of degeneracy, but a sign that's been around for a couple of centuries. As long as one doesn't allow this inclination to actually ban or censor anything on a significant scale (public library bannings have been going on for generations, for example, but they haven't amounted to much), then it's not a degeneracy that will kill the patient.
      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by jmorris on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:20PM (12 children)

        by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:20PM (#742877)

        You can look at the current world and say that? Republics decay to Democracy, which always decays to Socialism, since that doesn't actually work you soon get chaos, then regeneration as a Tyranny, rinse and repeat.

        The American Founding Fathers had read all those old books, read history and understood that Democracy was the single most dangerous evil that a State had to guard against. The ones who wrote our Constitution assured everyone they had carefully designed a Republic that would be immune do decaying into a Democracy. They were of course wrong, Hell we had a Democratic Party form with some of the Founders involved in the ill deed.

        Time to pull the plug on this failed experiment, try writing a 2.0 version with better safeguards or spin again on an entirely new form of government.

        There is some hope a stable government might be possible since we now understand some of the underlying mechanisms driving the great cycle. Everyone has seen the cycle, Confucius, the Greek philosophers all saw it, others call it the Tytler Cycle because of a book laying it out, the Glenn Beck fans read "The Fourth Turning", others Strauss-Howe generational theory, even Marx identifies the pattern in Capital. Everyone saw it and either ascribed religious meaning to it or just assumed it is the way things are and didn't go further. But Anonymousconservative now has a good candidate for a theory explaining the WHY. If we can break that cycle with r/K theory we just might be able to build a government that doesn't begin to collapse almost as soon as it becomes stable, wealthy and powerful.

        Hard times makes hard men.
        Hard men make good times.
        Good times makes soft men.
        Soft men make hard times.

        Every time, every culture, every race that same pattern keep appearing and reappearing. Rewrite it:

        Resource shortages drive humans to K selection.
        K selected men produce order and then abundance.
        Abundance permits the rise of r selected men.
        R selected men outbreed the K, quickly bringing chaos and collapse.

        The key is understanding that a civilization's peak is right smack in the middle of that sequence. Stopping the r selected from overwhelming the society through uncontrolled breeding is the solution, maintaining enough hardship to keep those capable of adapting to either mental pattern firmly in the K mindset is the winning move. A society which managed that would then have the benefit of some r people, who tend to be the creative types, while maintaining the order needed for a society to sustain over time.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:50PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @07:50PM (#743029)

          maintaining enough hardship to keep those capable of adapting to either mental pattern firmly in the K mindset is the winning move

          I think there's nothing you've posted that shows your alignment more clearly than this.

          You are lawful evil.

          Well... maybe, maybe not. It depends on whether your plan to accomplish this maintenance of hardship is either to a.) continually siphon off any and all excess production from the working class, keeping them perpetually impoverished, and redistribute it to an extremely small class of ruling elites or b.) destroy all technology more complicated than steel-making and animal husbandry.

          A. is obviously lawful evil.

          B. is... just fucking stupid. I think it's more likely you are lawful evil.

          But if B. then I have a question. Would you allow crucible steel, or is that too high tech? What about Roman concrete? Eh, again, probably too high tech. It lasts too long, so then it prevents the next generation from experiencing the hardship of rebuilding the entire town once every 20 years.

          • (Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:59AM

            by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:59AM (#743191)

            You are lawful evil.

            Actually I'd put myself at N-G on the old D&D alignment chart. But I am becoming convinced that the universe doesn't give a crap what I think or what I'd prefer and it would be better to work instead on figuring out how the universe actually works. Specifically how humans are wired. Still hoping L-E isn't required but if L-N would preserve the human race that is what we have to do, even if it sucks.

            If anonymousconservative is right, and after reading his book it is the leading theory for me, we are wired to adapt to a resource glut by going r selected to maximize the spread of our genes. In a state of nature that is a winning move, but civilization produces a shitload of resources and by the time the population boom can't be sustained it leads to awful crashes.

            continually siphon off any and all excess production from the working class, keeping them perpetually impoverished, and redistribute it to an extremely small class of ruling elite

            Look at you, spouting boilerplate Marxism and haven't even READ Marx. Marx is wrong about his conclusions and many of his causes, but he does observe his times pretty well. And he notes that exactly the conditions you describe cause a population boom in the underclass / "surplus population." Impoverished but not starving. I don't have my copy of Capital handy or I'd give you a better cite, but look toward the end of Volume I when he is going into overkill description of the horrid conditions as the economy in England was in massive upheaval.

            destroy all technology more complicated than steel-making and animal husbandry.

            That couldn't work unless you got every country to do it at once and it would still almost certainly fail. Not claiming to have THE answer, just pointing out the direction the evidence is tending toward. If the key is to stay on that golden median between r and K then K has to be encouraged and r discouraged since intertia is going to be pushing toward r. There are two pressure points, reproduction itself and the social fabric that pushes individuals who are more shaped by environmental factors to tend to swing K.

            The first is simple for a civilization that internalizes the science involved. Teach it in the schools so everyone understands the reason why things MUST be, then ruthlessly control breeding. Only K selected types who reproduce in K selected ways allowed to reproduce with a very limited number of random exceptions to keep the r gene pool conserved since they have some useful traits. But zero incidents of Laqueefia and her eight future welfare clients.

            That leaves the harder problem. Social customs that maintain a K selected outlook are needed but many of them are warlike enough to be incompatible with the high tech we now have. Spartans with fusion bombs and attack helicopters probably won't lead to a stable world. That circles around to the BIG problem we are running into in the first place. Before now civilizations rose and fell, the wars, plagues and famines were tragic for the individuals who had to live through them but history rolled on. The collapse that we are just tipping into now is unavoidable at this point, assuming we survive it we must ensure we don't repeat this cycle because by the next one we almost certainly will NOT survive.

            So any thoughts welcome, even outlandish ones. This sort of discussion is why keeping the censors at bay is so vital.

          • (Score: 3, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:09PM

            by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:09PM (#743422) Journal

            Lawful evil is completely correct. The thing is, though, there is a small kernel of truth in some of the scientific stuff he's saying. In fact, when you get right down to it, some of it matches common-sense environmentalism very clearly, specifically that resources are limited and if we want a good standard of living, we need to equlibrate the population.

            Where he goes wrong, of course, is this bizarre masturbatory He-Man Master of the Universe fantasy he's got where everyone is some sort of modern-day Spartan. We are an intelligent species; the key to the K-type behavior he's advocating for is intelligence, knowledge, and will, not living like 18th century farmers.

            See, he's got a real problem with race hatred, so he's using the K/r selection hypothesis to justify it. See the comment on "Laqueefa and her 8 future welfare dependents" below. The solution to that is fixing the very environmental and cultural problems that lead to the r-selected behaviors he's complaining about, *but slashing the social safety net won't do that.* Especially not since it barely works to begin with. He's unwilling to do what really needs to be done, because that means acknowledging that "Laqueefa" as he puts it is precisely as human and deserving of a decent life as he is; it comes as no surprise than that what he proposes amounts to demographic-based genocide.

            This is so fucking frustrating. How can people get started with a kernel of good ideas and then mutate into this?!

            --
            I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
        • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:22PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:22PM (#743097)

          maintaining enough hardship to..

          I had a friend in college whose parents were Chinese immigrants (and successful ones at that). They invited me to dinner at one of their restaurants once and over dinner they explained part of the Chinese culture was denial of self gratification. I don't know how true this is (he's the only guy from China that I knew), but I've seen that as a common trait among all successful people I've known. My most successful friend lives in a dumpy house while renting out his nicer houses to other people.

        • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 03 2018, @02:57AM (6 children)

          by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @02:57AM (#743224) Homepage

          "Hardship" might be too harsh a word (hence the reaction from the AC). More accurate might be "necessity of striving". So long as you strive, you avoid hardship, but you can't slack off. Which would approximate how things were a couple generations back.

          --
          And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
          • (Score: 2, Interesting) by jmorris on Wednesday October 03 2018, @04:51AM (5 children)

            by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @04:51AM (#743264)

            Read the book. Think it requires "mortal salience" cues to really drive K. All K selected animals are predators, man included. Hence the problem. We need K selected people to build and sustain a civilization but those traits seem to be bundled with tribal, warlike, hierarchical, fiercely ingrouped, and a lot of things that are an asset to building a civilization but can be a real problem keeping it. There seems to be a fair balance between r and K, each getting traits useful to a civilization but having negative ones that can destroy one quickly if allowed to dominate.

            It gets worse. Science is really throwing a wrench into our long term survival prospects. People think fusion bombs are bad, take a look ahead at the technological horrors that are coming and we are going to give them to either really scary monkeys (K selected) or really amoral and stupid ones (r selected) and it gets messy. Only hope seems to be to balance on the precipice and somehow discourage widescale violence of the sort likely to unleash the nastiest toys. Go over the edge to r and when things fall into chaos the stupid evil rabbits will unleash Hell, apply too much pressure to stop that, risk sliding to majority K and the wolves will tear the world apart in pointless wars of conquest.

            And yes, you can insert the South Park (and/or the one from Team America: World Police) rant about dicks, pussies and assholes here. We gotta find a way to achieve long term balance.

            • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:15AM (4 children)

              by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:15AM (#743269) Homepage

              Understand the principles, and I don't disagree; just thought the term "hardship" needed refinement. And lack of necessity-to-strive does seem to be the tipping point into r-selected society. (Not necessarily hardship; Africa is full of hardship coupled with r-selected people who feel no necessity-to-strive.)

              Related: a peculiarity of prey animals is that while they may fight back when cornered, once taken down they generally stop resisting, and typically just lay there and let predators eat them alive with very little protest. Occurs to me that this parallels the behaviors that in humans, become descent into tyranny -- that is, the r type too-easily accepts defeat and submits to fate. Conversely predators don't give up til they're dead.

              BTW -- same ID on Gab??

              --
              And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
              • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:24AM (3 children)

                by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:24AM (#743271)

                Oh no. I'm running dark on gab, mostly observing.

                • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:41AM (2 children)

                  by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:41AM (#743274) Homepage

                  Well, there's plenty to observe, for sure :)

                  --
                  And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
                  • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday October 03 2018, @07:29AM (1 child)

                    by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @07:29AM (#743295)

                    Oh yeah. Thousands are flowing in daily as they are banned worldwide. Somehow twitter banning entire political parties in other countries is not deemed foreign interference in an election. Some would be puzzled by that, but of course it makes perfect sense to anyone Dark Enlightened.

                    We are to the point a lot of shell shocked normal "basic bitch" conservatives are having to get on gab after being banhammered. It is a big culture shock for those people suddenly seeing vast vistas of political discourse they never really thought existed. They had heard the media rave about some of them since they know first hand that the media exaggerates and lies about their own politics they assumed it was all just fevered dreams of Brock and his kook crew. Then they suddenly encounter not just nazis, but discover the nazis have warring subgroups; neo-nazis, neon-nazis, anime-nazis, alt-nazis, nazi-nazis, larper-nazis, furry-nazis and those aren't even the strangest groups in the bestiary. They had heard of the Alt-Right's existence perhaps, but suddenly encountering all of those ideas that are entirely outside the normal left-right-libertarian debate. And while they might have heard of Alex Jones, there are conspiracy theories he won't touch, but there are people there who delight in them. It is an experience, to say the least, for most of them. Imagine how that first week for a recently deplatformed "mommy blogger" goes. Some can't take it and leave, but many stay. Minds are being expanded. Whether that ends up being good or bad we shall soon learn.

                    And the amazing thing is I have been watching their numbers. Assuming they are actually allowed to get the money being raised in their current ICO, I'l predicting they will have the resources to get to positive cash flow. They should break even somewhere around a million users assuming the subscriber percentages and cost per sub stay stable and the move off of Azure wasn't too disruptive. They are at 700K now and growth is accelerating so they should hit it this year or very early next. Their burn rate is amazing, @Jack's custodial expense line for Twitter HQ probably exceeds Gab's entire operating budget. The budget at gab is bigger than Solynetnews but not a lot more zeros. Lean doesn't even approach what they are doing, because they know there is no VC available and no big cash out by selling the company at the end of the plan. But people are paying for Pro accounts because they really don't have many options remaining. The days of rolling a fresh account on Fakebook and Twatter are done, they are keying off your phone's fixed ID to kill dup accounts so when somebody gets banned now they usually stay banned unless they have tech skills or throw money at the problem by buying a new burner phone... which gets banned anyway after a week or two.

                    So having an account gives one a front row seat to something new being born. Something wonderful or something awful, too early to say. Whatever it becomes, @Jack made it. along with Zuck. Had they only banned the few hundred most offensive accounts gab couldn't exist, and if somebody built a platform anyway it would be a small echo chamber. The mass banning drove in the one thing needed to make it work, an audience. The pointless banning of the gab app from the stores only provides the required daily reminder of being oppressed by powerful forces that is binding the "Gab fam" into a community. Pointless because almost every Android device can simply sideload the app and they have now expended the effort to supply a Progressive Web App version for iOS that can be installed outside of the iTunes Store.

                    • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:56PM

                      by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @05:56PM (#743517) Homepage

                      Pretty much. I've been on Gab since a month after it opened. Went from mostly the disgruntled to mostly the loons to now rapidly becoming mostly the banned and disenchanted. Gab came along at the right time, with the right policies, to scarf up everyone else's discarded customers. We got half of Brazil in one fell swoop. And newbies who speak up will encounter something unique: an actual welcoming committee.

                      I have a Pro account (as the obvious), but mainly to keep Lists, cuz it's gotten so busy that if you don't spend all day there, you miss everything you want to see (and there *are* some folks who are worth my regular attention). Otherwise, I mostly read folks I follow; don't see any point in swimming in the unfiltered sewage. I give it a look now and then, just to see what the negative-karma types are doing, but it's seldom pointful... as you say, it's mostly Fringe Wars and Rejected-by-Alex-Jones, and rather resembles an inverse Twitter. But up in the air and light, the level of discourse is generally way better than I've ever seen on other microbloggy type sites.

                      What's really croggling... I seldom post original material, mostly I repost this and that and replies to other folks, but have somehow accumulated 1500 followers, which is about 1450 more than I'd expected. As someone's /. tagline reads... "I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?" :)

                      --
                      And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Pav on Wednesday October 03 2018, @09:57AM

          by Pav (114) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @09:57AM (#743316)

          You're the worst kind of moron... You've learned a little history and a little science and applied both badly. There are plenty of "hard" men in every hellhole throughout history, and precious few raise themselves out of tents and mud huts. Democracy is bad? Have you been reading Thucydides?? The Athenian democracy was overthrown mainly because the Spartans got Persian support, although if you listen to Thucydides it's because Athens was a corrupt Democracy. (Of course this had nothing to do with the fact that Thucydides was exiled from Athens... nooo nothing at all). After they destroyed eachother it certainly made things easier for Phillip of Macedon, and Alexander later. Alexander The Great was no simple "hard man". He was taught by some of the best minds of the age including Aristotle. He applied that knowledge, which offended conservative Greeks everywhere - he "went native" and embraced Persian and Egyptian "soft" ways (some Greek sources speak words such as "soft", "moist" and "femanine"), also marrying Macedonian nobility (including himself) into these "untermench" cultures.

          Ghengis Khan also famously offended conservative Monguls by befriending and incorporating defeated tribes rather than slaughtering them, again cementing alliances by marrying into their families (and this policy goes a long way to explain his genetic legacy). He was also in the habit of elevating average people rather than the great and the good (ie. the wealthy and the traditional nobility). Ghengis got his ass temporarily overthrown because of these "soft" policies. Also, if Alexander and Ghengis aren't R strategists reproductively speaking I don't know what you could possibly mean. BTW, Hitler failed to recruit even Russias bitterest enemies (ie. most of Eastern Europe, particularly Ukraine), instead starving them for grain because in his eyes they were untermensch. That didn't work out so well did it?

          Those who divide the world into the worthy few (usually them) and the unwashed masses mostly fail at anything requiring much cooperation... y'know, stuff like sustaining a civilisation. Or even stuff like reproducing.

  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:10AM (23 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:10AM (#742709)

    Maybe instead of moral panic over censorship, realize that in a normally functioning society we have other words that describe the *role* of censorship. Things like moderation, hate speech laws, etc. All of these are double edged swords, but so is unbridled speech. And no, you don't want to fight speech with more speech as that is the same as fighting fire with fire. Sure, it initially works, but it gets tiring to repeat the same reality to people that refuse to acknowledge it.

    We have laws of the land to allow societies to function properly. We also have a facade of democracy in a society too difficult to be managed as a pure democracy. So unless you want populists to rule the day, then all types of discussion need some moderation.

    Remember few years ago when "marriage will end because gays took it over" drama? The constitutional amendments that some US states passed to "fight unchristian-like behavior"?? And remember how populists in Republican party tried to use that as their moral high ground against the corruption of the evil Democrats and judges?? So, where the fuck are they now? Not one peep from any one in congress that was so up-tight about this... and how do you prevent this stupid, unimportant discussion from taking place in the future? How do you prevent idiots from being manipulated??

    Yet calls for the banning of certain opinion pieces, cartoons and commentary have risen in recent months, especially from those using social media, a world where such talk is becoming a trend. It is a trend we must confront. Censorship is to suppress the harmful, the unacceptable, the obscene and the threatening from the media and other forms of public communication. Like a virus attacking democracy from the inside out, it was traditionally the tool of the dictator

    Censorship remains the tool of a dictators, but they also have things like police to then put those people in jail and worse.

    But you forget one thing - censorship is only a very very tiny bit used by dictators. What they use mostly is propaganda and intimidation, how they are "saving the nation" from some threat. How only them stands for the great nation. Other opinions may or may not be censored, but most important is the steady diet of populist propaganda to feed the idiots in the crowd. Censorship?? That's a tool of the weak. The strong censor by killing their opposition or throwing them in jail. If all they did was censorship, it would be not so very effective.

    Please, stop your drama against censorship. It's just a tool, like any other. It can be used for good and bad. Arguing that censorship is bad is like arguing knives are bad.

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by pkrasimirov on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:25AM (1 child)

      by pkrasimirov (3358) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:25AM (#742714)

      > How do you prevent idiots from being manipulated??
      Not only you cannot, also you should not. Idiots want to be manipulated and that's their right. In 21st century when mostly everybody has unlimited free access to world's knowledge in their pocket, ignorence is a choice.

      The question should be how do you prevent people not suffering from other people's (idiots') decisions. Should be to each their own. There is no "we", apart from the herd immunity and the environment in general.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:36PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:36PM (#742733) Journal

      But you forget one thing - censorship is only a very very tiny bit used by dictators.

      No. it's not tiny. It may look tiny in comparison with other methods of oppression, but it's essential if you don't want to end with killing or jailing a good proportion of the population.

      In 1956, the soviets entered Hungary to quell a revolution there [wikipedia.org]. There were little news about the events broadcast in the rest of the East Europe block countries, not even the kind of "Hungarian patriots, with Soviet assistance, smashed the counter-revolution" version. It doesn't pay to give people the idea that a revolution is even possible, revolutions only happen to bring the powers-to-be... well... into being; but they must remain history.

      The same with the Velvet Revolution [wikipedia.org] - with some notable exceptions which rather confirm the rule.

      Other opinions may or may not be censored

      After a while, those opinions must be censored, in spite of other existing forms of oppression against any opposition.

      There is this category of idealists, people that value some ideas higher than their own well-being or life. Let their ideas unchecked and the next thing you'll have is a Gandhi or Nelson Mandela - it may be even too late to kill them lest you transform them in an untouchable symbol of the ideal (they are dead alright, can't kill them a second time).
      Yes, you may try to co-opt them, like it lately happened with Aung San Suu Ky - but you'll need to cede a part of your power to the co-opted (and you can't co-opt many, for obvious reasons).

      Ever heard of sluggish schizophrenia [wikipedia.org]? That's the best a dictatorship can do to close the mouth of those pesky idealists who "disseminate their pathological reformist ideas among the masses" but, from where a dictatorship stands, t needs doing. Or else.

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:41PM (10 children)

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:41PM (#742735) Journal

      Maybe instead of moral panic over censorship, realize that in a normally functioning society we have other words that describe the *role* of censorship.

      And the use of those other words to hide what you are doing is a variety of propaganda.

      Things like moderation, hate speech laws, etc. All of these are double edged swords, but so is unbridled speech. And no, you don't want to fight speech with more speech as that is the same as fighting fire with fire. Sure, it initially works, but it gets tiring to repeat the same reality to people that refuse to acknowledge it.

      Or we can just not get worked up that other people have different opinions and thus, not have the problem in the first place. It's stupid to silence people because we don't want to accidentally brush against their opinions and feel this OCD urge to correct them.

      Another problem that is completely missed here is what happens when the people that "refuse to acknowledge" reality are the ones in charge of the censorship apparatus? Suddenly those double-edged swords don't look so good when they're used against you by the very people you're trying to silence.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:41PM (4 children)

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:41PM (#742767)

        Or we can just not get worked up that other people have different opinions and thus, not have the problem in the first place.

        The present day problem is the left sees itself as a religion and everyone and everything is and must be in its universalist church. It seems normal that a Catholic church would never tolerate a parishioner standing up during the priests sermon claiming this triune god stuff seems a bit ridiculous, thats naturally resulting in the ushers kicking the alternative viewpoint out of the church, possibly permanently. That's how the left sees censorship. Its not a matter of logic or reasoning or tolerance its merely religious purity. You'd have better luck trying to rationally and scientifically talk a muslim into eating bacon than in trying to make a leftist not make every argument based on some variant of "I believe".

        The measure of a mental model, such as "leftism as a religion", is in the scientific method if it makes predictions better than other models and has a reasonable explanation. Thus the idea can be hated by at least half the country, while still being obviously correct and highly useful IRL to explain and predict behavior. "This seems scientifically reliable" is a totally different mindset than a similar declaration of "I believe ..." or sophistry and logical fallacy threats like "Anyone who agrees is a nazi".

        I'm just saying you can't have a logical debate in a scientific progress sense when one side is a religious fanatic hell bent on re-enacting the inquisition. That means the whole censorship debate at a rational intellectual level is pointless. Might is right and the winner will write the history is the only logic actually involved in the discussion.

        The truly dangerous problem with leftism is historical religions encode values and ethics that at least worked well enough to survive for thousands of years, even if those values might be a little creaky today, whereas leftism is not necessarily non-suicidal at a civilization scale. A morality and ethics based mostly on hedonism and logical fallacy MIGHT be successful on a civilizational scale, but almost certainly will not be. "Lets do what doesn't work but makes deviants feel good" is not really a winning strategy historically for civilizations.

        • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:34PM (3 children)

          by deimtee (3272) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @10:34PM (#743103) Journal

          I don't think the left sees itself as a religion. They certainly act like one on most issues, but they don't see themselves that way.
          It's part of the same self-deception that sees itself as democratic and freedom-loving while accepting authoritarian rule and conformity to their own tribal rules.

          --
          If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
          • (Score: 2, Interesting) by jmorris on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:32AM

            by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:32AM (#743237)

            That is mostly because they all know the scam they are running depends upon, at all cost and sacrificing all other goals if required, the masses never getting wise to the reality that Progressivism is a religion. Their great hack of the Constitution is perverting the prohibition against a State Church into a total exclusion of all religion from the public square, while at the same time establishing their own "not a religion" as the official Faith, where all knees must bend toward its idols, all schools must teach its creed and all laws conform to its moral code.

            Sorry, lack of a god or gods does not make an otherwise totalizing theory of the universe, Man's place in it and a comprehensive moral code a non-religion. Otherwise there are a lot of other fine candidates for being deemed non-religions and permitted into the public square. But of course they aren't and won't be permitted because we have the One True Faith already established as the State Religion. It just doesn't call itself that. And that is ok because it is a Lie. Every smaller lie in its service is an act of worship offered up unto it.

            Thee and me may nor may not believe in the Devil, but it is a virtual certainty that they do, at least in the higher ranks. They would find it both amusing and useful to keep the minions in the dark, so to speak. They wouldn't have the moral code they do any other way because it is a perfect negation of Enlightenment Christianity's code. That can't be random chance, it was a choice. It also provides a good clue as to when this particular Devil cult got spun up.

          • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 03 2018, @11:19AM

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 03 2018, @11:19AM (#743330)

            They certainly act like one on most issues, but they don't see themselves that way.

            Of course that can descend in to "if a tree falls in the forest..." arguments, in the sense that if the model very accurately predicts future behavior, the exact internal state may not matter as long as its a realistic situation.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:13PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:13PM (#743426)

            Authoritarianism of either color is always a sign of panic, of feelings of being endangered or overwhelmed. "The end is neigh!", "The history is going in wrong direction!", "Our principles be damned, we need desperate measures NOW!".
            I wouldn't be so triumphant and smug if I was on the right. This happened before and will happen again, to all worldviews which achieve establishment status. The present time may be the 1960's of the 1960's, but next 1960's will probably come on time.

      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:55PM (4 children)

        by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:55PM (#742777)

        One problem that ignores is that the vast bulk of humanity is extremely bad at critical analysis of data - a trend worsened by the fact that there are no longer any reliable sources of information - not since the war over lead pollution showed the way to thoroughly corrupting the scientific process.

        What actually happens, for pretty much everybody, is that you end up believing whatever a critical mass of people you interact with express. Which means if you've got trolls frequently expressing hateful B.S., and normal people just ignore them, then the belief in that hateful B.S. spreads into the previously normal population.

        Of course censorship, like gun control, is a deeply dangerous solution requiring complete trust in the integrity of the government. It never fails to astound me that so many people call out for both, even as we watch the democratic underpinnings of our government crumble into authoritarianism.

        • (Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:33PM (2 children)

          by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:33PM (#742833) Journal

          One problem that ignores is that the vast bulk of humanity is extremely bad at critical analysis of data - a trend worsened by the fact that there are no longer any reliable sources of information - not since the war over lead pollution showed the way to thoroughly corrupting the scientific process.

          Even if we grant that as true, you're stuck with the problem that there are no reliable sources of information and hence, no basis for which to do viable censorship.

          What actually happens, for pretty much everybody, is that you end up believing whatever a critical mass of people you interact with express. Which means if you've got trolls frequently expressing hateful B.S., and normal people just ignore them, then the belief in that hateful B.S. spreads into the previously normal population.

          Well, obviously we'll just all believe whatever I want us to believe. Thoughtcrime will be punished, of course, for our own good.

          Of course censorship, like gun control, is a deeply dangerous solution requiring complete trust in the integrity of the government. It never fails to astound me that so many people call out for both, even as we watch the democratic underpinnings of our government crumble into authoritarianism.

          You can completely trust me. I have an honest face.

          • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday October 04 2018, @07:16PM (1 child)

            by Immerman (3985) on Thursday October 04 2018, @07:16PM (#744264)

            I did not intend to promote censorship - I figured that last line would give that away. Just point out that ignoring the trolls is not a viable path to dealing with the problem. To ignore them is to surrender the social awareness to their diseased perspective.

            • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 05 2018, @10:56AM

              by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 05 2018, @10:56AM (#744577) Journal

              Just point out that ignoring the trolls is not a viable path to dealing with the problem.

              So yet another problem that we supposedly have because there are dumb people in the world.

              To ignore them is to surrender the social awareness to their diseased perspective.

              Except when you're not surrendering the social awareness by doing so. It remains a valid strategy. I don't buy that ignored trolls somehow manage to make more trolls than non-ignored trolls. That certainly hasn't been a problem today.

        • (Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Wednesday October 03 2018, @08:42PM

          by Oakenshield (4900) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @08:42PM (#743661)

          a trend worsened by the fact that there are no longer any reliable sources of information

          Not to worry. Blockchain will solve this. :-)

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:12PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:12PM (#742784)

      Uh...no. Unlimited speech is always a good thing. Get the fuck out.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:21PM (7 children)

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:21PM (#742790) Journal

      I repudiate censorship. Downplaying opposition to censorship as "moral panic" opens a very dangerous door. It's an especially dangerous door for those who are not in power to open; it's profoundly stupid, in fact.

      Right now Trump is in power. He's not the one calling for censorship, he's the one decrying it. It's the Democrats calling for censorship. They somehow think it gives them a weapon, through social media, to remove Trump from power and to defeat those who elected him. In fact, it puts a very dangerous weapon in Trump's hand, if he gives in to the temptation to pick it up. Do Democrats really want Trump to bring down the heavy weight of the federal government on their heads, when they have practically made the case for him that doing so would be "in defense of democracy and the American way?" Really, everything they're doing is underscoring the case he has been trying to make, that an evil, out-of-touch, and unaccountable cabal, aka "The Swamp," are destroying the country.

      That's the temporal context for this discussion on censorship, but more generally censorship is anathema.

      The proper response, the only response in a free society, to censorship must be antipathy. The only proper response to ideas you don't like in the agora is to contest them. Silence allows them to spread. Repression causes them to explode.

      Fight them with every word and argument you can muster as if democracy and your life depend on them, because they do.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
      • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:56PM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:56PM (#742854)

        He's not the one calling for censorship

        Trump Wants to Censor the Media [theatlantic.com]:

        Why Isn't the Senate Intel Committee looking into the Fake News Networks in OUR country to see why so much of our news is just made up-FAKE!

        — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2017

        I also link this one because its pro-complacency slant would seem to defuse normal MSM hyperventilation and show that yes, Trump is calling for censorship: Sorry, Journalists: Trump Isn’t The First President To Threaten The Press [thefederalist.com]

        Trump can take up six completely different positions on any one issue before breakfast. However, the white queen may count all of that as only one impossible thing, so he is losing badly. Sad!

        • (Score: 5, Insightful) by jmorris on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:36PM (3 children)

          by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:36PM (#742898)

          That is what you get for reading The Atlantic. Trump DOES want there to be consequences for libel, slander and outright falsehood but the biggest weapon he has been wielding against the media is his bully pulpit, calling them out, de-legitimizing them and that is not only entirely proper it is long overdue. The media practice Journalism as a political tactic, it is time to stop pretending they are an unbiased news source. ALL OF THEM.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:54PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:54PM (#742967)

            So now you DO want censorship? Cause I'm pretty sure Trump would demand punishment for anyone repeating allegations. Until proof comes out allegations are libel or slander, and in Trump's bizarro world that means he could prevent the media from saying a single unproven bad thing. Yeaaaaah, good job you jackass.

          • (Score: 2, Disagree) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:58PM (1 child)

            by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:58PM (#742972) Journal

            Trump DOES want there to be consequences for libel, slander and outright falsehood

            Which you would be calling censorship in any other situation.

            • (Score: 3, Touché) by jmorris on Tuesday October 02 2018, @06:17PM

              by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @06:17PM (#742982)

              You seem to labor under a false premise, that "the media" are a formal branch of our government and their exclusive domain is to pronounce The Truth. The media is free to slander HIM, he is a big boi and fully capable of defending himself, and does do to great effect. He is destroying the press in fact. And goodbye to rubbish I say.

              What they should not have the power to do is wander the land destroying those powerless to oppose them and to demand that anyone speaking a truth they have not approved a heretic and subjecting them to unpersoning. And yes, when they knowingly speak lies they should be made to pay the same legal price as you or me would if we did it. No special aristocracy, no royal privilege. Posting rights on Warner Brother's or Jeff Bezo's blogs should grant no rights you don't get if you post on your own blogspot blog. We are ALL equal or none of us are and I damned sure won't bend the knee to the incompetent fools at the New York Times.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:55PM (1 child)

        by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:55PM (#742919) Journal

        I repudiate censorship. Downplaying opposition to censorship as "moral panic" opens a very dangerous door.

        I repudiate censorship as well it's just that most of the "moral panic" isn't actually about censorship.

        Let's say I own a printing press. I choose what gets printed and what doesn't get printed on my own press.

        Is it censorship if I choose not to publish some rando's conspiracy theory? Or, is that being a good editor. Should said rando be able to force me to publish his article? Is interfering with my own editorial decisions censorship?

        That's why we tend to draw the line at government censorship as the "real" censorship. But nobody is advocating for that so the panic is based on straw men.

        • (Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:37PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:37PM (#742950)

          Let's say I own a printing press. I choose what gets printed and what doesn't get printed on my own press.

          Is it censorship if I choose not to publish some rando's conspiracy theory? Or, is that being a good editor. Should said rando be able to force me to publish his article? Is interfering with my own editorial decisions censorship?

          To continue that analogy:

          You practically have a monopoly on copy shops across the country.

          It's like owning Verizon, T-Mobile, AT+T, and Sprint. It's like owning OfficeDepot, OfficeMax, Staples, Walmart, and Target. It's like owning UPS, FedEx, and the US Postal Service. It's like owning HomeDepot, Lowe's, Menards, Lumber Liquidators, 84 Lumber Company, Ace, and True Value.

          How about this: phone companies decide that people with views like DeathMonkey shouldn't get phone service. (fortunately for you, we made this illegal) It's not as if the government is censoring you. You can start your own phone company, write letters, or travel to speak in person.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by MostCynical on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:44AM (14 children)

    by MostCynical (2589) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @11:44AM (#742717) Journal

    Has there every been a place or time without some form of censorship?

    Ancient Rome to modern social media.. always restricted in some form.

    Is SoylentNews the only 'free' space (other than shouting at trees in a forest)?

    --
    "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:45PM (12 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:45PM (#742739) Journal

      Has there every been a place or time without some form of censorship?

      Only a total idiot can think s/he can say anything to anybody without consequences - a modicum of censorship must exists, even if it's a "commonsensical self-censorship usually called respect".

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
      • (Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:08PM (11 children)

        by MostCynical (2589) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:08PM (#742749) Journal

        but most people don't think others deserve respect. (while demanding it for themselves and their opinions.. )

        so don't hold your breath for too much respect (especially when, these days 'with respect' and 'respectfully' are used when people actually mean the diametric opposite)

        Maybe the best we can hope for is slightly respectful disagreement, but with people able to say what they think (although, this is the internet - thinking is not a prerequisite)

        Or maybe I should downgrade that to "some begrudging acknowledgement that the other people on here are human, too"

        Aiming too high?

        --
        "I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by coolgopher on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:14PM (2 children)

          by coolgopher (1157) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:14PM (#742752)

          but most people don't think others deserve respect

          Most people here seem to though, which is what makes civil discourse possible between quite polar view points.

          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:27PM

            by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:27PM (#742794) Journal

            It's a muscle we have to exercise. Here we exercise it a lot.

            Out in the world, it has shriveled away to nothing.

            --
            Washington DC delenda est.
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @08:40AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @08:40AM (#743302)

            SJWs don't seem to get much respect here. Nor does lonely khallow.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:25PM (7 children)

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:25PM (#742757) Journal

          but most people don't think others deserve respect.

          Cannot confirm this from where I live my life.
          I don't know, maybe I'm lucky to have the entire time of my daily life taken by interaction with people that offer respect.
          No, I'm not some kind of tycoon or sumtin, I'm a level-X-down-below technical manager with no team but myself to manage (and I like it this way).

          Maybe the best we can hope for is slightly respectful disagreement

          Tolerance is the minimum to be able to function as a society.
          But an "indifferent tolerance towards all others" attitude won't make a society advance enough, and you can imagine where stagnation leaves a society.

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:38PM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 02 2018, @03:38PM (#742839) Journal

            But an "indifferent tolerance towards all others" attitude won't make a society advance enough, and you can imagine where stagnation leaves a society.

            Not every tool is appropriate for every problem. Indifferent tolerance is not meant to solve the problems of stagnation and it should be no surprise that what it isn't intended to solve, it indeed doesn't solve.

          • (Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:17AM (5 children)

            by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:17AM (#743233) Homepage

            No one *deserves* respect.

            Anyone may *earn* respect.

            Social lubricants (courtesy and tolerance) are not respect, tho they can facilitate it.

            --
            And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
            • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday October 03 2018, @04:12AM (2 children)

              by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 03 2018, @04:12AM (#743250) Journal

              Your choice, mate, I don't have to accept it.

              --
              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
              • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 03 2018, @04:53AM (1 child)

                by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @04:53AM (#743265) Homepage

                I would note that this thing with everyone demanding 'respect' started when it became a participation trophy.

                --
                And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
                • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday October 03 2018, @08:37AM

                  by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 03 2018, @08:37AM (#743301) Journal

                  I didn't say I'm demanding respect, I said my choice is to offer respect unconditionally.

                  Of course, the respect I have for a person varies depending on that person.
                  The only difference from someone that say "respect is earned, I start by offering 0" is that my the start value that I offer is above zero.

                  --
                  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
            • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:28PM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:28PM (#743435)

              It depends how you define respect. If in your view there are two sets in which all the humans (and other potentially respectable entities) fall, and the "not respected" set is "abuse at will" set, then I must demand that all unassigned entities must be placed by default in "respected" set, and very small number of *specially deserving abuse* entities perhaps could be placed in "not respected" set.

              Because, you see, respect is internalized fear - you learn to respect others as an infant, and the content of respect (and politeness) is actually "act as if it will hurt you to incidentally upset the respected". When you respect someone who is fear-inducing, that is just common sense and damage evasion. When you fear to hurt someone who cannot get back at you - that is being nice and well-brought up (unless you cower before them ... that would be a sign of mental illness).

              So, I hope that you actually do respect people (and ... etc.) in general, and you just conflated respect with admiration, the latter, agreed, requiring to be earned.

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday October 05 2018, @11:12AM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday October 05 2018, @11:12AM (#744580) Journal

                It depends how you define respect.

                [...]

                Because, you see, respect is internalized fear

                I suggest you define it differently. Respect is a social indication that you care about the other person's attitudes. That can be through fear, but fear is not the only relevant human emotion. You mentioned admiration as if it were a different thing, but that just as well is a reason to show respect.

                It can also be phony as in one deems the act to be advantageous, even if one doesn't actual care about the target, for example, the "endeavor to persevere" speech in the movie, The Outlaw Josie Wales.

                I wore this frock coat in Washington, before the war. We wore them because we belonged to the five civilized tribes. We dressed ourselves up like Abraham Lincoln. We only got to see the Secretary of the Interior, and he said: "Boy! You boys sure look civilized.!" he congratulated us and gave us medals for looking so civilized. We told him about how our land had been stolen and our people were dying. When we finished he shook our hands and said, "endeavor to persevere!" They stood us in a line: John Jumper, Chili McIntosh, Buffalo Hump, Jim Buckmark, and me — I am Lone Watie. They took our pictures. And the newspapers said, "Indians vow to endeavor to persevere."

    • (Score: 2) by RedIsNotGreen on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:01PM

      by RedIsNotGreen (2191) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @01:01PM (#742747) Homepage Journal

      Inside of a free mind.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:23PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:23PM (#742729)

    "did you hear the news yet? "anonymous" was censored."
    "who?"

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:48PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:48PM (#742743)

      That's Doctor to you.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:42PM (15 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @12:42PM (#742736)

    I see a lot of people screaming about "censorship" in the press when what they're really complaining about is certain journalistic companies declining to provide a forum for certain speech. That isn't censorship, that's the owner of the press deciding what they see fit to print.

    Worse, this speech they want "protected" already has plenty of its own biased journalistic outlets that it appears on, and those outlets certainly aren't going to practice any "fairness" by publishing opinions they disagree with.

    In the age of the Internet, the whole idea of "fairness" in journalism seems to be an anachronism: there's absolutely no shortage for news (or "news") sites that will cater to whatever bias you may have, no matter how extremist.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:01PM (11 children)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:01PM (#742779)

      That isn't censorship, that's the owner of the press deciding what they see fit to print.

      Some minor factual clarifications:

      1) The cultural group and opinions of the people controlling the press are in no way even remotely representative of the greater demographic and their opinions. Essentially if you have an opposing foreign group propagandizing another country that is seen as "normal good propaganda" but if its one very distinct and unique cultural group propagandizing their own countrymen we're assured thats the wrong way to look at the problem, even when its the same issue. Note that once a theocracy gains power, its impossible to change from within; if 99% of the workers in a field see their job as obeying the Democratic National Committee, no opposing voices will ever rise up in that entire industry.

      2) The government grants those press monopolies via massive regulation of TV stations, tax codes for newspapers, and most importantly access. Far more people read the daily stormer than read many legacy newspapers or watch some of the legacy TV news; Obama (or Trump) would never let a Daily Stormer correspondent into the white house press pool. We might not have a King in the USA, but the government is the King Maker in our supposedly private industry.

      Worse, this speech they want "protected" already has plenty of its own biased journalistic outlets that it appears on

      3) They're just not allowed to have DNS registration, to accept any form of payment processing, etc. "We have freedom of religion because we'll shoot at you all the way on your pilgrimage to the desert in Utah" is not really freedom, and also has not been practically possible for a century or so.

      Aside from a purely theoretical model, speaking solely practically, I'm old enough to remember 1980s Soviet Union and Pravda, and unfortunately the left seems hellbent on re-implementing that in the USA, single party rule, death to opposing opinions, if we just tell each other we believe strongly enough then the pressures of reality won't make the crumbling system that doesn't work go into collapse, LOL. What was so appealing about that, anyway? Doesn't anyone trying to implement that remember how it turned out in the early 90s? Do those people actually want to re-enact the early 90s soviet union breakup? Most likely this mad censorship and virtue signalling storm of leftist hatred of anything that doesn't suck is just the chaos before the storm when we can't admit in public that leftism is dumb and doesn't work, but freedom to do so is just a decade or so away. Sure, leftism doesn't work, but we'll fix that in the very short term by punishing anyone who points that out. It just seems very short-sighted.

      • (Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:09PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:09PM (#742783)

        Let me put it fewer words than in your incoherent babble: you're a delusional idiot, mon cher.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:57PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @05:57PM (#742970)

          Finally someone else pointing out the obvious.

        • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @06:40PM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @06:40PM (#742990)

          Seemed pretty coherent to me.

          Didn't agree with every word, but it was coherent. And not obviously delusional.

          • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday October 03 2018, @11:35AM

            by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 03 2018, @11:35AM (#743337)

            What original AC meant was AC admits in public I'm completely correct and there's no facts or the sophistry to brawl in opposition.

            Original AC presented a somewhat less eloquent equivalent of the concession speech one side makes at the end of an election.

            I won't rip on original AC for that, sometimes I get things perfectly correct and you can't expect the opposition to be very happy about that, but I can respect them for admitting it.

            So... dogs and cats living together, the sky is falling, at one moment the right and left actually agree on some shared factual observations so where do we go from there to an optimistically better situation? My guess is nothing changes, but its still useful to ... see the situation more clearly.

      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:41AM (5 children)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday October 03 2018, @01:41AM (#743184) Journal

        Far more people read the daily stormer than read many legacy newspapers

        Not sure what you're saying here. Our local newspaper only ever served several thousand people, at it's peak. The Stormer is read by more than that, granted. The papers in Little Rock are read by many times more people than our local paper.

        There are several newspapers that are read by far more than our Little Rock papers. NYT, WSJ, WaPo, and more. Is the Stormer read by more people than those?

        Clarify, and offer citations?

        • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:39AM

          by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @03:39AM (#743239) Homepage

          Since it came up, I checked. [The steep part is right after the TLD change.]

          https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/dailystormer.name [alexa.com]
          Global rank 17,143
          Rank in United States 6,003

          Even discarding the Chinese traffic as bots... that probably beats out all but the nationally-known and major-metro newspapers (most of which have declining traffic). Considerably beats our local paper (120k metro).

          --
          And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Wednesday October 03 2018, @04:01AM (3 children)

          by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @04:01AM (#743249)

          Lets see if the problem can be explained so there is no confusion.

          Are we all in agreement that the newspaper in Little Rock has an all but inviolate 1st Amendment Right to publish, and to publish whatever it deems newsworthy, amusing, clickbaity or whatever? We can argue about when libel and slander laws should impose consequences on them after they publish but prior restraint is agreed to be an extreme solution to be used only in the most extraordinary circumstance and simply ordering them to cease publication, seizing their physical plant, etc. are sure warning signs of tyranny. Are all in agreement on that much?

          Ok. The difference is that in the case of the Daily Stormer the consensus among almost everyone who doesn't read the Daily Stormer seems to be that it is OK to seize their press (website, domain name, etc.) and to vigorously suppress their ability to get paid by their readers for the work those readers apparently at least find amusing enough to want to pay for. What is most interesting is that the probability of supporting the seizure of their assets is inversely correlated to having ever actually read the product in question.

          If you actually care about freedom of the press, freedom of speech or any of that gay shit you should be ringing the bell NOW. Censorship doesn't start with the material YOU care about, with material many people at all care about. It is noisy minorities who get the hammer first. Guys like Andrew Anglin were the canary in the coal mine, but he keeled over and nobody gave a damn. But it never stops there. Alex Jones had over a million Youtube subscribers when Apple sent the word forth to all corners of the land that he was now an unperson and struggling to pay rapidly spiraling hosting costs with no ability to collect money from viewers. Exactly the situation Daily Stormer has been in for a year. The targets aren't so small anymore. Do you think that after such a success they plan to stop? Of course not. They will continue until stopped, and that is likely to be messy indeed. The banhammer swings daily and we gather on gab to "press F to pay respects" for the latest to be cast out. Yes, being banned has already become a meme.

          If you are still unclear on this issue I'm afraid I can't help, I have failed to communicate.

          • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 03 2018, @06:15PM (2 children)

            by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @06:15PM (#743535) Homepage

            Lefties don't get "If they can do it to X, they can do it to you," because per Marxism 101, Lefties believe they'll always be in charge of the doing. Having it done unto them is a foreign concept.

            --
            And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
            • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by jmorris on Wednesday October 03 2018, @06:47PM (1 child)

              by jmorris (4844) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @06:47PM (#743560)

              Which is why they are losing their minds now, Trump beating them up and stealing their lunch money is just not in their model of the world. They don't have a century of experience in losing gracefully. Worse, Trump is keeping his pledge to teach Republicans how to win. I'm figuring that if we get a Red Wave next month instead of the Blue one their pollsters have promised them they will go violent, not just Antifa low level action but full riots. If Ginsberg goes to Hell in the next year they will go totally postal to the point martial law might be required to regain control of the streets in most Blue Hells, especially D.C.

              • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 03 2018, @07:46PM

                by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday October 03 2018, @07:46PM (#743625) Homepage

                I agree up to a point -- I think as soon as the Antifa contingent (here used as a catchall including their buddies from CAIR, the heirs to SDS, and whatever other outfits are funded by Soros and the Muslim Brotherhood) start getting actually shot, most of their "resistance" will evaporate, because most of the warm bodies are just LARPing at being revolutionaries; they have zero experience at being seriously thwarted, let alone at being live targets, and have no idea what they're getting into. (I still remember how the L.A. riots steered around Koreatown shops with their armed proprietors on every rooftop.) But afterward, I expect the hardcores will resurface as IRA-style domestic terrorists, more akin to European Antifa..

                I'm also thinkin' it may cause considerable backlash in cities that have started going purple (eg. Austin), and even more so in flyover country, which thus far has not really had to deal with "inclusion and diversity" and doesn't understand how it's calculated to undermine them politically. As a northern plains native, I didn't understand either, until I did 28 years in SoCal, and watched CA's slide into collective insanity. Ain't nothin' like a real-life demonstration to make a point hit home.

                --
                And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @02:23PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 04 2018, @02:23PM (#744087)

        "We have freedom of religion because we'll shoot at you all the way on your pilgrimage to the desert in Utah" is not really freedom, and also has not been practically possible for a century or so.

        I hope I am not the only one that has no idea what the hell you are referencing here.

        Is this some LDS (formerly Mormon) thing? I don't know of any other group that has an attachment to Utah.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:36PM

      by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:36PM (#742800) Journal

      That's fine, but then those journalistic companies must surrender their claim to "facts." They don't get to have it both ways. They don't get to pound on facts, to weaponize a claim to authority, and then selectively disclose those facts or cut them from a skewed angle to show a different face amenable to their narrative. It doesn't work. People don't buy it, unless they also buy the narrative to begin with, prior to the publication of those "facts."

      Because those companies have gotten away with that misbehavior for a couple decades now, they have come to believe it is their god-given right to tell the rest of us what is writ. Meanwhile, they've ridden that hubris as a reason to fire all their reporters who used to investigate to uncover facts and evidence, because they cost so darn much. As the internal pushback from reporters vanished, because they no longer worked there, the spin-meisters felt even more empowered to vomit forth whatever they wanted in a fact-free, consequence-free fashion. Now we've collectively arrived at a moment where those companies are making shit up out of whole cloth, and screaming insanely at the public for not swallowing it like good little sheep.

      They don't have any facts left. They only have their Narrative, and the spittle dribbling off their chin as they scream it.

      --
      Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:22PM

      by Pino P (4721) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:22PM (#742879) Journal

      what they're really complaining about is certain journalistic companies declining to provide a forum for certain speech.

      Perhaps they're really complaining about the fact that "certain journalistic companies" hold what amounts to market power [wikipedia.org] over reaching a substantial number of listeners.

    • (Score: 5, Interesting) by jmorris on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:49PM

      by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday October 02 2018, @04:49PM (#742915)

      I see a lot of people screaming about "censorship" in the press when what they're really complaining about is certain journalistic companies declining to provide a forum for certain speech.

      Not at all. CNN is free to spew their lies, we are free to point at them and laugh, and once their ratings are driven low enough to agitate to have them taken off of basic cable because we are tired of being forced to subsidize them. To drive them to streaming, to make them compete with Alex Jones out in the wilderness of zany ideas. And as a zany fringe publisher they lose their press credentials. They have a right to speak, they don't have a right to occupy a limited slot in the various press pools.

      But that isn't the fight today and you probably know it and are just speaking with a forked tongue. The fight today is to force YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to -ADMIT- they are now publishers and not platforms. They currently seek to have the benefits of both and the disadvantages of neither. That is what is not going to be permitted to them, they are going to be forced to choose and be damned.

      If they are platforms they are going to be overwhelmed by lawsuits from the millions they have illegally silenced. If publishers they die from lawsuits and more direct legal consequences over what they permit. So choose and be damned, BURN IN HELL, and be replaced by less evil platforms.

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